Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: March 31st

March 30, 2024 JanF Community 79

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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15 Comments

  2. Saturday Meese. 38 here in Kingston, going up to a rainy 47. I’m elated my South Carolina Gamecocks won last night – on to the championship game on Sunday.

    Puerto Rico

    While the nature of Puerto Rico’s status is often obscured by euphemisms like “territory” or “Commonwealth,” the island is simply a colony. It has been a colony since the early 1500s, first of Spain, then of the United States. The U.S. invaded the island and took it from Spain as a prize of war in 1898. For the next 50 years, the United States ruled Puerto Rico directly, its governors appointed by the president. In the 1940s and ’50s, the U.S. government allowed Puerto Ricans to draft a constitution and choose their own governor, but it never relinquished Congress’s plenary power over its possession. To this day, Puerto Rico has neither sovereignty nor political rights in the United States: island residents cannot vote for the president and have a single non-voting delegate (called a resident commissioner) in Congress. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, Puerto Rico “belongs to” but is “not a part of the United States.”
    Political subordination, unsurprisingly, has led to economic precarity. If Puerto Rico were part of the United States, it would be the poorest state: median household income is about $24,000, compared to $53,000 in Mississippi, the nation’s poorest state, and $75,000 in the country overall. The poverty rate, which is less than 20 percent in every state, is over 40 percent in Puerto Rico.
    Things went from bad to worse in the last two decades, as the Great Recession battered Puerto Rico, causing a steep drop in GDP and employment. In 2016, that culminated in a historic, $123 billion debt crisis. The following year came Hurricane María, which caused massive devastation and was followed by a months-long, nearly island-wide loss of power. Poor conditions on the island have contributed to a surge in outmigration and to one of the lowest birth rates in the world. At the same time, more Puerto Ricans are dying. The COVID-19 pandemic strained an already faltering healthcare system, leading to a “surge in deaths that reached historic proportions in 2022,” according to an investigation by the Washington Post and the Puerto Rico Center for Investigative Journalism.

  3. Good morning. Doing my usual Saturday chores, even though I have a long weekend. Watching local news, Monday’s weather looks bad. We need the rain, but really? Will try again for 3 rounds of 8 minutes running. I’m hosting the music diary tonight at the orange place – 6pm central. Come by with any astronomy related music you like. 

  4. It’s 60 heading for 75 and sunny. Yesterday we generated 18.9 KWHs and the m-t-d at 69.5 is on track for the “at least 400” goal. We’ll see if we can gain some more ground today.

    Nothing new that I know of with anybody. That’s not necessarily good. Several of the folks I try to keep in touch with aren’t in good situations. But hopefully it means things aren’t getting worse. Anyway, off to start my boosting day. Holding the Good Thoughts for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}

  5. Good morning, meeses! Saturday …

    It is 37 degrees in Tucson ???? with an expected daytime high of 61. Sunny skies are in the forecast. This morning I caught a glimpse of the waning crescent moon over the mountains just above the clouds in the pre-dawn sky. She looked like she had been drawn into the sky with a white ink drawing pen!

    I am going to ignore the news this weekend. The world is blowing up and people are terrible. I will watch the NCAA Womens Basketball Championship on Sunday which is a rematch of the semi-final game last year. There was quite a bit of drama following that matchup (Iowa v South Carolina) – this year they will have the chance to settle the dispute on the court.

    See all y’all later!

    • Today’s waning crescent over the Santa Catalina Mountains. The branches are from the palo verde tree that is just off my balcony. I often have to take photos around and through it.

  6. Good morning, 49 and raining outside my windows today. My thoughts are in the garden, but I’m grounded so I should be seated at my desk……but I’m avoiding that onerous task! When there’s a break in the rain I hope to go to a garden shop and just look around. Best wishes to all.

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