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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Puerto Rico
Good morning, meeses! Saturday …
It is 43 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 59. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast. Tomorrow will be in the 60s and there is a hiking trail calling out to me.
I did not watch the video from Memphis but I have been reading the descriptions. Ghastly. I wonder how you recruit policeman – of any color – for a job that requires dehumanization of everyone you confront. I am going to wait for the quick takes to settle and then find some trusted people to read to try to understand it all. Nothing will change until the psychological profile of people entering law enforcement changes – you can’t recruit psychopaths who would actively beat a man to death and then retrain them to respond to the humanity of the people they confront in the line of duty.
The MAGAt who assaulted Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was sentenced to 80 months in prison. NOW, charge, convict and sentence the men who planned the attack and sent the insurrectionists to the Capitol to overthrow the federal government. If Merrick Garland does not charge anyone this year, the window will close and there will be no one held accountable. There can’t be a trial next year. As it is, the 2024 election will already be a referendum on who will have pardon powers to free all the January 6th rioters and destroy what’s left of the rule of law. :(
Marj’s Kevin may not have the votes to remove Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Relations Committee. At least a few Republican members realize that removing someone because you disagree with their positions in retaliation for removing people who actively incited violence against their colleagues and other elected officials is not going to do anything but pour gasoline on the fire. It suggests that maybe some people realize that what goes around comes around and how thin and unmaintainable the Republican House majority is. Maybe some rules about rhetoric could be devised that would show people where the bright line is? It should be easy to show that “actively stating that the Israeli government should be not be killing Palestinians” does not equal “here is my rifle, I am going to kill Speaker Pelosi and four of my House colleagues.” I guess we will see if the handful of members who are considering voting no on the committee membership resolution are bought off by some sort of promise or if they have the courage of their convictions. We know what happened to the Republicans who had the courage of their convictions in the 117th Congress – most of them are now looking for work.
I am still waiting for tax forms – the TurboTax-promised January 27th release is now February 3rd. I was able to find and download the Wisconsin partial year resident paper form and there does not appear to be anything unexpected. I am just anxious to get my money back before the government runs out of money.
See all y’all later!
Good Saturday morning, Meese! It’s 31 F. on another beautiful day in Nowheresville. We are promised 54 F. for a high, with winds of only 5-10 mph.
Yesterday we went to visit our friend, with Dearly Beloved driving. Dearly and his oxygen cylinder occupied the front seat of the car while I lolled around the back, trying to look rich, as if I always have a chauffeur-driven car. It was a beautiful, if windy and cold day.
Our friend is prettier than ever; her husband, a Punjabi from Africa, immediately hit it off with Dearly, who spent 4 years in Rhodesia when it was still called that; the darling daughter who is now 13, artistically talented, brilliant, and as pretty as her mother, was off from school as it was a teachers’ workday; and the jolliest four-month-old baby I’ve ever met. She smiled and made faces and stared at all of us.
The dog was cute too. At the end of the visit, we met 15 chickens and two small ‘n’ scared white roosters. Our friend said the roosters are so intimidated that instead of bellowing, “Cock-a-doodle-DOO, out-of-bed-with-YOU” in the mornings, they’re more like, “Cocka? Doodle? You?”
As if our friend didn’t have enough to worry about, she has to consider the foxes who are after her chickens and the coyotes who are after her little dog. The house backs onto woods. It’s a lovely house, with—-wonder of wonders—-a very large picture of elephants over the fireplace. Definitely my kind of house. Harry grew up in Kenya, so he loves them too.
Have just been notified that Elder Son and DIL are down with colds. Eric wanted to know if we still want to have Ethan for a sleepover (he seems cold-less, so far). I’ve been looking forward to it, so yes.
Today I have errands, letters, and possibly a walk with two writers from my group to discuss what we can do about the size. It seems too cruel to tell the newcomers to buzz off to the other writers’ group or start their own. One thing I do know: I can’t do another meeting. Once a month is enough, given my other responsibilities.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!
P.S. The WaPo has a long article about the insane denialism of Rethugs in Arizona this morning. I read it. Goddess help us! And no, I haven’t watched, and cannot watch, the video in which the young man is murdered. Nor can I watch the other video. Imagine, that guy beat up the husband of the woman he hated and wanted to kill!
Good morning. Normal Saturday doing laundry, watching the news, eating breakfast. Later will pick up groceries and get in my mile walk. The news is just so awful. Here, Ukraine, Jerusalem…. Will definitely listen to happy music when I walk, need something to cheer me up.
It’s 47 heading for 54 and partly cloudy at the moment. The clouds are moving in fast though and according to the widget are going to stay until about next Thursday. The PV installer didn’t come by so unless he fixed it remotely, the system fixed itself yesterday afternoon. So on a day that without any snow on the panels would have given me over 8 KWHs and with the panels half covered would have given me over 4, I got 1.239 – sigh. The m-t-d is 141.9 with 4 (mostly to totally cloudy) days left in the month. Even a goal revised down to 160 is iffy. At least it’s already more than what the 2.5K system did in January 2015.
Shopping yesterday was a jolt. Oatmeal, raisins, cocoa, decaf, OJ, frozen veggies, frozen fruit, ground flax – no meat, eggs, cheese, GF baked goods, or treats of any kind. $56.22. Admittedly I got 2 packages each of the oatmeal and raisins but except for the cocoa and ground flax seed I got “Great Value” store brand. I don’t want to even think what the tab would have been if I’d gotten brand names stuff. Thank Goddess I’m not on food stamps. At least in all the red & purple states I know of, they greeted the Social Security & Disability COLA with cuts to food stamps greater than the COLA actually is. So folks dependent on them just got shafted. (Yes, I know. Cruelty is the point.)
I need to get over to twitter and start my online chores. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 39 and cloudy outside my window today. I worked in the garage yesterday, clearing away all the frozen greens I had prepped before Christmas and preparing a space to use for seed starting. But we have another cold front coming so I will wait until the weather is warmer before I do more. It was nice to be outdoors and busy again. I need to tend to my desk today so I’m procrastinating, but I’ll eventually get there. Best wishes to all.