Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings posts give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.
Welcomings will be posted at the start of each week (usually Saturday night with a Sunday date). To find the posts, just bookmark this link and Voila! (which is Moose for “I found everyone!!”).
The format is simple: each day, the first moose to arrive on-line will post a comment welcoming the new day and complaining (or bragging!) about their weather. Or mentioning an interesting or thought provoking news item. Or simply checking in.
So … what’s going on in your part of Moosylvania?
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NOTE: The comments page will split off after 20 or so left margin comments with the most recent comments on the current page. To see the older comments, scroll to the bottom of the page (right before “Leave A Reply”) and use the Pages Tool to view previous pages, shown here with 3 pages of comments available and Page 2 circled.
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Good morning. It warmed up, still cool enough to have the windows open but Thursday & Friday working in the office, I’ll be wearing capris. For now, I’m happily watching astronomy and when I start working I’ll listen to Bono’s charming memoir between calls.
Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind! It’s partly cloudy here in Ashbuggy, meaning we can see some sun, but it’s supposed to cloud over completely by afternoon. The current temp. is 56 F., going up to 70 F. We’re in for a warm first week of November.
I have two deadlines to complete today, despite the fact that Miss Mandy woke me up at 20 minutes to 5 this morning I have to spend the afternoon screaming at Vanguard. I wonder whether I can transfer the few remaining dollars I have in my Vanguard IRA to a no-load fund like T. Rowe Price. Vanguard hasn’t let me access my account since July, when someone pretending to be me tried to hack my it. Sigh. I’ve done everything they asked and they STILL won’t let me have access! Well, I won’t bore you with that.
Other than that, life is quiet here. Dearly didn’t sleep a wink all night so has gone back to bed. I used the bed (after it’s made) to fold clean laundry, so I can’t do laundry. I’m going to take Mandy out for a walkies so we can get that over with and she’ll stay quiet while I work.
BTW, I hear that foul Musky Elon is forcing his people to work 84 hours a week, the dirtbag. Wish the Furies would get after him. Wishing everyone at the Pond a good day, however.
Holy smokes, what on earth will it take to get Vanguard to give you access to your account! They should be sad that you got hacked and work diligently to restore access, not make it more difficult. I decided some years ago to forgo the very best interest rates and returns for the comfort of having my IRA connected to my bank. That way, I can always find a human being – in person, if need be – who can help me. If it were my money being held hostage, I would move it toot suite – I think the receiving institution, once you set up that account, makes the transfer arrangements and they will be able to cut through the bs and get your money out. I don’t have a lot of money in my IRA but I would get itchy if it were not at my fingertips.
You know, I’m thinking of doing just that. T. Rowe Price is a no-load mutual fund in Baltimore, which is a 2-hour drive from here (I think).
That will be my next move.
Good Wednesday Meese.
Feliz Día de los Muertos!
Impressive!
Chitown Kev featured this tweet thread about Black Twitter and white folks from Tim Wise
in yesterday’s Black Kos – and I posted the entire thread. Please read.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1587230127783649281.html
1/ As people flee Twitter, or threaten to, in response to Elon’s takeover and the harassment it has already spawned and likely will bc of less content moderation, there are some things I’ve noticed. Please follow this thread and share it. It’s sorta important…
2/ To illustrate the point I want to make (and will, shortly), first, a brief story. It takes place in New Orleans, in 1996. I am sitting in a workshop (as a participant, not facilitator), and we are discussing racism and community building…
3/ After a Black woman has been sharing her stories of dealing with racism, a white woman begins to cry. As one does. Then when the facilitator calls on her, she talks about how “hard” this work is and how dispiriting…
4/ She despairs of ever undoing racism, either among some in her own family or professional circles, or society more broadly. She again talks of how “hard” it all is and how it makes her want to give up sometimes…
5/ At this point the Black woman who had previously spoken reached out, touched her leg, and with a cutting snark too brilliant for the white woman to get it, said, “Is it hard, dear?” The white woman cried more and insisted it was, yes…
6/ That day was the day I forever understood that Black people are possibly the only thing standing in the way of utter destruction. White folks, even liberal ones, will often fold up their tents and go home when it gets too difficult…
7/ But Black people cannot, by and large, do this. They have never been able to do this. They have to stay and fight no matter the cost. Now, back to the “Twexodus”…
8/ I can’t say it scientifically. Not even sure how to prove it quantitatively. But I can say that after much careful observation, the people threatening to jump ship (and from what I know those who have) have been overwhelmingly white…
9/ Even as Black Twitter catches the most hell, deals with racism, misogynoir, all the things, all the time…they are here, fighting and refusing to concede this ground…
10/ While a distressing number of white progressives talk about how “toxic” it will become (or has already) and how they just can’t be around that. “Is it hard, dear?” Rings in my ears yet again…
11/ And yes, I know that women face more than I do as a man. Rape threats are an entirely different thing. I get it. But, um, yeah, so Black women face that every day. They aren’t bailing the same way…
12/ To those white folks worried about Twitter toxicity. Please, AMERICA has been toxic for Black people for hundreds of years. If they can manage to fight on, survive and thrive despite it, you can deal with ugliness in your timeline.
13/ And please know none of this is meant to romanticize suffering or the strength often born of it. It is simply to say that when you’ve been wading thru the shit for hundreds of years, you learn how to wade through it. It’s the only choice you have…
14/ But when you haven’t had to (a privilege) it’s easy to take your toys and go home, so to speak. I think the white folks who DON’T do this tend to be those of us whose consciousness was formed by the Black freedom struggle…
15/ because when THAT was your entry point for social awareness you learn that justice is a long game, and you might well never see it. Better than you have come and gone without seeing it. But you have to take your place in the long line of those willing to die for it…
16/ White folks who, on the other hand, were not principally informed by that struggle get dispirited easily because they haven’t learned from that inter generational resilience…
17/ Some of us came to anti racism first, and THEN our progressive politics because of how we were raised and around whom (this is often the Southern white progressive story). Others came to progressive politics and then that included anti-racism but just as one of many issues…
18/ I would say that if you come to your anti racism just as one more thing in your liberal/left bag of issues, you won’t be ready for the difficulty you’ll face no matter which issues you focus on in your work/life…
19/…but if you start with a grounding in the Black freedom struggle, or develop that grounding, you will develop the kind of resolve and long-view that keeps you in the fight and wards off the kind of despondency that leads many to pack it in…
20/ James Baldwin explained it this way: “If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it bring must be borne…” Black people know this. White progressives must learn it.
Wow! Just, wow! A lot to chew on in this one.
Thanks for showing it, Dee.
Thanks Dee, I saw the thread on twitter and reading gave me pause. I’m a white woman in a blue state and feeling more discouraged than I have a right to be….
Marrying Puerto Rico – from my dear friend Mariposa
Lovely!
It’s 51 heading for 74 and sunny at the moment. We generated 6.3 KWHs yesterday. If we did this daily, which we won’t, even with the crippled system we’d get to 180 for the month. I wish I could get more than “make nice” from the nice PV installer. Yes, I’m an old lady who’s clueless about most things technological. But I can read charts of energy production per panel just fine, thank you. Yes, I have one in-your-face, can’t-deny-it, under-producing PV panel. I have 12 more producing at 80% or less than what the top 3 are producing. Which he’ll – ahem – look at – ahem – when we (finally) get the replacement optimizer for the one panel that’s producing at 20% of what the top 3 are producing.
I’m looking forward to being back on standard time as of Sunday. If my brother 45 years ago had temporarily but passionately settled in AZ instead of AR, which started the chain of events that got me here, maybe I wouldn’t be stuck with DST now. Oh well, alternate realities or something. Perhaps there’s a time-space continuum where that happened.
Cat food, cat boxes, cat barf have all been taken care of. Finishing breakfast and heading over to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Thursday Meese. 39 here in Kingston NY going up to 68.
Puerto Rico
Good morning. Warm morning heading to an unseasonably warm afternoon in the mid 80s. Got in my mile, though my achilles was complaining a bit. I went to Twitter to check for news, but my feed is full of happy people who went to the opening night of Bono’s book tour, and other friends happy for them, and others excited for their turn…… I really don’t understand how people have Twitter feeds full of ugliness, unless you follow awful people. Anyway, I’m listening to the audiobook and it is really lovely.
The problem is not following ugly people but following the news which reports on ugly people and following political figures who are attacked by the terribles. I notice that a lot of people are starting to screencap the conversations they want us to be aware of instead of linking to the Twitter accounts of the terribles. I try to avoid retweeting a tweet that would amplify someone awful and ugly. A screencap does not notify the bad person that they were retweeted and any conversation about them is not going to spill over into your mentions if the quoted tweet is a dead end.
Good morning, meeses! Thursday …
It is 57 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 55. The Canadian front is moving in today bringing rain and cooler temperatures. My car had to be kept overnight for an additional repair needed which was discovered during the planned work – one of the things I have come to expect as I try to keep my very old car running well. I would like to get over 200,000 miles (people tell me that I can expect to get at least 220,000 miles with this vehicle) but I am watching it closely – when the next big expense hits, I will have to weigh keeping it running versus getting something newer. Right now, car prices are inflated and interest rates for car loans are ridiculously high so putting money into my old car in order to have reliable transportation is an easy call.
One of my dead tree (but digital to me) newspapers says that Latino voters in Arizona are supporting Democrats. I am not sure I believe the headline though – when you read deeper, you see that the poll shows that they support the Democratic agenda. I am not sure that they – or any other voter – knows what the Democratic agenda is! If you watch the political ads, Democrats are for open borders, crime sprees by Those People, killing “babies”, making gas prices higher, and raising taxes on working people. I don’t know how candidates can cut through the bullcrap; the good news is that the election is almost over and sanity will return to my TV screen. The other good news is that the tRump judge reversed himself and said that armed vigilantes threatening voters at drop boxes is not protected 1st amendment speech and that they need to stand back and banned them from posting photos of voters on social media. He must have realized that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was going to hand his ass to him and did not want to become the Judge Cannon of the West, mocked for living in tRump’s colon.
My plans to organize my to-do list ran up against the reality of errands yesterday that ran long. I am hoping I can pick up my car before noon so that I can avoid the traffic that seems to increase mid-afternoon. I have a few errands to run after I pick up the car and definitely don’t want to be on the roads at rush hour.
See all y’all later!
Caribbean Matters
Good Thursday morning, Meese! It’s another gorgeous November day in Ashbuggy (yes, it is buggy). Right now it’s 47 F., on its way up to 71 F.
Things in our place are chaotic right now. I can’t get into the bedroom to claim my clothes, etc., because Dearly is in there sleeping. He can’t sleep more than an hour in our bed without having breathing problems, so he gets up and sleeps on the sofa. However, Miss Mandy claimed his spot on the sofa so he couldn’t sleep there. He tried but couldn’t really sleep in the recliner, so….we’re going to have to work out some new system.
This afternoon we’re supposed to go to see “Fiddler on the Roof,” which is being put on by the Drama Society here. It’s a 2-hour performance with a 15-minute intermission. I am wondering how Mandy will react to being left alone with “hooman” supervision. She is refusing food today, which worries me, although she did eat half a cup of her usual kibble. We’re still having problems trying to keep her off the bed at night. Problem is, I am in love with this little girl. She is so pretty and sweet! Everyone oohs and ahs over her when I take her out.
If Dearly decides he can’t be comfortable through a 2-hour performance, he can always go home. That might work. I paid $10 each for the tickets, so I hate for him to skip it.
I must get on with my stuff, so I’ll wish a good day to all at the Pond.
It’s 61 heading for 77 today – I grabbed the opportunity to clean/rinse out my HVAC filters before I got online so they’ll be dry by afternoon and I can put them back in before I need the furnace. They were surprisingly clean considering I’ haven’t done that since last August. Yesterday we generated 6.46 KWHs and the m-t-d is 12.9 which is actually on track for 180.
Not much going on here. Cats are OK. My sleep wasn’t any worse than usual. My hands are cold. My best friend’s birthday is tomorrow. We’ll get together Sunday for coffee or something. I guess I’d best get over to twitter and DK. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 43 and cloudy outside my window today. Our power was out for several hours last night and we fumbled around looking for flashlights and candles. So today’s task is to get some new flashlights and put them where they are readily accessible. And to trim the wax away from the wicks of the “ready to use” candles so they will keep burning.
I was at my local fabric store yesterday and it was a disorganized mess, so that was not a creative ecperience. The garden shop was better, and I did fine the hellebores I want to plant for winter color but I was to tired to buy anything so I just came home. I’ll try to go back today.
Best wishes to all.
Ha! A power outage always exposes how bad we are at being prepared for a power outage! We had a substation get flooded during one of the monsoonal downpours back in June and we discovered that all but one of our flashlights had no working batteries. We used cell phone flashlights but obviously that won’t work for long because they need power to stay charged (we would have used our cars to charge them up if we had run out). I ordered a chargeable mini-lantern and have it plugged into an outlet in my office and bought some of the right kind of batteries for the bigger flashlights. Now, of course, we will never again lose power! :)
Good morning. I put off my walking because it was supposed to be raining, so of course the rain moved to later in the day. And of course, I didn’t need to wake up till later so I woke up at 4:30. So here I am at the office, listening to Bono’s audiobook. He’s coming to town next week on his book tour. I’m thinking how to go hang around outside the theater, with something for him to autograph. Not going to try to buy a ticket — as I pointed out on FB, I could re-sell it for 2 months worth of my emergency expenses. But standing outside the theater with other fans, with something for him to autograph, all that’ll cost me is sore feet.
Friday Meese. 44 here in Kingston, going up to 71!
Save San Juan’s cats
Good Friday morning, Moosekind! It’s 43 F. this morning and clear. The temperature will rise to 74 F. degrees, which is good, because Miss Mandy pooped all over her bed last night, so I have some washing to do inside and drying to do outside on the screened porch.
Feeling very depressed this morning because I don’t know where to turn about Vanguard’s refusal to let me have access to my money. I have a doctor appointment at 11 a.m. I hope she is going to prescribe something for my problem, which is too indelicate to describe.
Have been enjoying the sight of the waxing moon at night. What is that very large, bright object near it? Is that Venus? Not sure. Wish I weren’t so ignorant of astronomy.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond—self included! :)
Venus is called the Morning Star and I am pretty sure she is mostly visible in the morning. You may be seeing Saturn which is quite bright and visible near the moon right now. I go to Earth and Sky when I need to see what is going on in the sky.
Good morning, meeses! Friday …
It is 37 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 54. Sunny skies are in the forecast. We had quite a downpour yesterday evening and lots of threatening clouds in the late afternoon. I got my car home before the heavy rain started but it was a close call.
The Musk Twitter story is hilarious! One headline this morning was "World’s Richest Man Decides to Set $44 billion on Fire." HA! Indeed, you wonder how he got so rich yet is so clueless. Someone on Twitter last night pointed out that Yahoo once bought something called Tumblr for a billion dollars and sold it later for a few million after they realized that they could not make any money off it and it was bleeding cash. Social media trends are fleeting, buying them rarely pans out. Even once solid streaming services like Discovery are getting hit when people just move on from them. There will always be something like Twitter, although one wonders who is going to run the servers if half the workforce is laid off! I suspect there will be a bare bones Twitter that someone buys from Musk in a couple of months. I just hope it stays up through the elections because it is a great source of information about where to vote and who to contact if you can’t vote.
It is heartbreaking to see what is happening to Wisconsin but not surprising at all. The Republican candidate for governor is running on the platform that if he is elected, he will see that Republicans never lose another election. It may not matter because SCOTUS ratfked the state when they allowed the partisan gerrymanders to lock Democrats out of ever having a majority in their state legislative bodies. Republicans are on the verge of a veto proof supermajority which means the disenfranchising of every single voter who chooses to re-elect Evers. Politically, I made the right decision moving to a state that still has Not Insane Republicans – there are a lot of built-in controls to avoid a Wisconsin kind of outcome and the state is trending blue. Wisconsin’s Republicans knew that destroying the university system and the public schools would guarantee that smart people would leave and that the ones left would be ignorant enough to dupe into giving them power. Big Republican money used to crush democracy is getting what they paid for – sad for those who can’t leave.
I have to unstack the things I stacked on my desk over the past week – it has been impossible to get ahead of my project list. I am hoping for a very productive weekend of catching up. I have some errands to run today and then I can settle in. I got my Wordle in two this morning which means I am very lucky and so I need to buy a lottery ticket for the $1.5 billion Powerball drawing tomorrow. As I mentioned to a friend, I will be happy with “just” a million!
See all y’all later!
It’s 69 heading for 74 and cloudy. Rain’s moving in this afternoon and the temps will start dropping then. We generated 5.9 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 18.8. That’s still on track for 180 but just barely. It won’t be by tomorrow. sigh.
For reasons unknown I kept getting a 406 error when I tried to post my check. I removed everything but the 1st paragraph and obviously it took that. I tried the other two below but it didn’t take both. Let’s see if it takes one.
Three of the cats got out yesterday afternoon and little Rennie stayed out long enough to scare the heck out of me. It wasn’t quite full dark when he came home but it was dark enough that I couldn’t actually see him up in the elm tree where he ran when I came outside to get him. Fortunately he’s the twin I can coax to come to me. Which I did and he did and I gave him a handful of treats as a reward when I got him inside.
It took the 2nd, let’s try the 3rd.
Nope. Something in my usual finish it doesn’t like. But. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
I am not sure what is causing the 406 any longer. I used to think it was related to the quotes (double and single) because they can hide malicious code but I removed them all and still 406ed the other day. The paragraph I ended up chopping out was a rant about Burp Keggernaugh and Mrs. Jesse Barrett and how terrible SCOTUS is since the berners turned it over to tRump to destroy. Maybe the 406 Mod is controlled by TFG and weeds out rude things said about MAGATs? It is also possible that once the web page cached on your computer gets “contaminated” you can’t clean it up and the lingering quotes in memory cause the 406. I will someday get to the bottom of it.
What it wouldn’t let me post was stuff regarding twitter. Not even nasty stuff about twitter. But obviously it isn’t the word twitter. Good luck in finding what the heck it is!