Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: June 7th through June 13th

June 7, 2015 JanF Community 149

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 (every Sunday morning). 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 now 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 and use the link.

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48 Comments

  1. Last night’s workout was soooooo hard. ohmygosh. My heart rate monitor says my average for the workout was 91% of my maximum. You’d think I’d sleep like a rock after that – and you’d be wrong.

    Eating breakfast so I can drink my extra-super-duper strong tea. Luckily, we have very few new applications today, so if I have to leave in the afternoon, it should be ok. Got Snow Patrol in my head today – Weight of Love

  2. Good morning, Moosekind! 68 F. here in NoVa under partly cloudy skies, going up to 94 F. today with a Code Orange alert for air pollution. Ugh. Today is Field Day for Miss Pink Cheeks’ kindergarten class, so I hope to go there and lend moral support.

    Never got here yesterday, I was so busy in the morning getting Miss PC off to school and then looking after Babylicious. He was miserable yesterday owing to little sharp white teefies erupting through his gums. The whole day he only slept 1 hour. Thank Goddess it was one of Mommy’s telecommuting days, so I was able to deliver him to her at 4 p.m.

    Been reading yesterday’s posts. Glad Mr. Dee is safe! Sorry it’s so hot for another in Austin and bfitz in Arkansas. Portlaw, hope you’ll come through the knee operation with minimum discomfort. Glad about the poet laureate and hurray for Bubbanomics—great to see you again!

    Let’s hope this will be a GOOD day for everyone in the Pond and beyond! (And let’s also implore Thor to stop it with the lightning bolts and rain—enough already, dude.)

  3. Wow. Did y’all hear about the Nobel laureate scientist who said he doesn’t like women in his lab because (stupid 1950s reasons)? He resigned, thank goodness. but I follow a science twitter-er & she is so on this morning, you must read her timeline:

    https://twitter.com/niais

    • and it has been storified (also – I noticed both Anthea Butler & Goldie Taylor commenting on this awesome rant)

      ElizabethD ‏@_ElizabethD 3m3 minutes ago

      @niais @Summer_Ash Your rant is sow awesome I have storified it. “Sarah Tuttle Pwns Tim Hunt ” http://sfy.co/j0i3Z Love, love love it.

  4. 81 already heading for 95 or so in Fay., AR – still sunny (topped 210 KWHs for the month as of a few minutes ago) – which is great for the mood but not so good for the new plants and trees in my garden/yard. My 2 pots of annuals need regular watering and usually that’s all but I’ve got a new lavender plus 2 hazelnut bushes that need “establishment water” this year and probably next – and of course once the rain stops for the summer I need to water the cherry tree and Bradford pear at least once a week. I do not water lawns or any of the trees that can manage on their own which is most of them.

    Walked in the door to work stuff, just barely got my 1st cup of coffee (and haven’t finished drinking it yet) when the soon-to-be new Chair sat down beside me wanting Budget information. She and the current Chair are in a meeting right now, so I thought I’d better check in real quick – and finish my coffee :)

  5. Good morning, it’s 54 and sunny in Bellingham today. My one bucket approach to weeding and pruning seems to be working…….fill a 5 gallon bucket with clippings, rest, wander off and do something else, empty the bucket, rest, and then fill it again. A slow pace is all my knees can handle this year, but have to keep telling myself it’s ok.

    This isn’t ok……I’ve also been telling myself I can stand the endless election nonsense for a few more months, then I realized the election is NEXT fall….aargh! The R’s will be careening around in clown cars and on Harleys forever. I need a new coping strategy!

    • Ha!! A clown-cycle for the scariest clown of them all, Scott Walker. Every day there is a new story about how much damage he is doing to our state … and how, by his own account, he saved us. Charlie Pierce called it two Wisconsins:

      “There are now two Wisconsins. There is the actual Wisconsin, which is being dismantled, brick by brick, because it insisted on electing people who enjoy doing the demolition work. And there is a virtual Wisconsin, which is being sold at the moment everywhere but in the actual Wisconsin by Scott Walker.”

      Sucks to be us.

  7. The great Ornette Coleman has joined the band in the heavens.

    Ornette Coleman, the alto saxophonist and composer who was one of the most powerful and contentious innovators in the history of jazz, died on Thursday morning in Manhattan. He was 85.

    The cause was cardiac arrest, a representative of the family said.

    Mr. Coleman widened the options in jazz and helped change its course. Partly through his example in the late 1950s and early ’60s, jazz became less beholden to the rules of harmony and rhythm, and gained more distance from the American songbook repertoire. His own music, then and later, became a new form of highly informed folk song: deceptively simple melodies for small groups with an intuitive, collective language, and a strategy for playing without preconceived chord sequences. In 2007, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his album “Sound Grammar.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/arts/music/ornette-coleman-jazz-saxophonist-dies-at-85-obituary.html?&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

  8. Good morning, meeses! Friday …

    It is 58 degrees in Madison on its way up to 69. Cloudy skies in the forecast. Storms rumbled through last night but they did not last long enough to disturb my sleep.

    A Cleveland judge ruled that there is probable cause to charge the cops who killed Tamir Rice. However, the judge has no say in the matter and the prosecutor is still “investigating”. I am not sure the purpose of the ruling other than to state the obvious but at least the judge did not rule that there was no probable cause. This puts the heat on the district attorney to do the right thing.

    Two more reminders that the Supreme Court ruling expected later this month on same-sex marriage will not mean the end of discrimination. In North Carolina, the state legislature overrode the governor’s veto and passed a “religious freedom” law allowing magistrates to refuse to marry gay couples. In Michigan, the governor signed a law allowing religious adoption agencies that receive state money to deny services to people who offend their religious feelings including married same-sex couples and single people. The Detroit Free Press called it shameful:

    Discriminate all you want, religious bigots, and explain yourself to your god on judgement day. But, Gov. Snyder, don’t give them taxpayer money and don’t claim you are doing it for the kids. The kids need parents. Period.

    See all y’alls later!

  9. How could I have missed this shameful shaming Scarlet Letter law?

    Sen. Marco Rubio (R) was among the Florida state legislators who voted for the so-called “Scarlet Letter” law in 2001 that required single mothers to publish their sexual histories in the newspaper in order to place their babies up for adoption.

    Five U.S. congressmen — Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R), Lois Frankel (D), Jeff Miller (R), Gus Bilirakis (R) and Dennis Ross (R) — were state legislators at the time and voted for the controversial bill. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D), Frederica Wilson (D), Daniel Webster (R) and Bill Posey (R), who were also state legislators back then, voted against it.

    The law, which passed with overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, required unwed moms who wished to put their babies up for adoptions to post details about their recent sexual encounters in the newspaper in an attempt to contact the father, even if the woman was a victim of rape or incest. The purpose of the bill was to inform estranged biological fathers that their children were being adopted and give them the chance to intervene

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/11/florida-adoption-bill_n_7565046.html bold mine

    Horrifying.

  10. Good morning, Meeses.
    It’s going to be sunny with temps in the mid eighties.
    Need coffee and news and then long looks at my lists of things I absolutely must do before Monday.
    Hope it’s a good day for all in the Pond and beyond.

  11. 64 going up to 87 with rain here in Saugerties.

    Most of the local news here is focused on the hunt for the two prison escapees from Clinton-Dannemora prison.

    The prison is one of NY’s most notorious – and no one has ever escaped from it before.

    • When I was reading the accounts earlier in the week, I was surprised at the age of the prison … built in the 1800s. The town business is incarceration and the residents simply accept the imposing walls in the middle of downtown as part of the landscape. Yesterday, I was reading that the fugitives are possibly in Vermont (look out HappyinVT!!).

      I can’t imagine them escaping without inside help.

  12. Good morning, Moosekind! Another hot, polluted day here—74 F. now in NoVA, going up to 91 F. or worse this afternoon. Lots of phone calls to make this morning. Was very tired yesterday since I didn’t get an afternoon rest. Babylicious sleeps for one hour in the morning and that’s it for the day. Drives me nuts trying to keep up with him. My Web guy just wrote, wanting to know when I’d have the updates ready.

    Over on GOS, a guy I follow was saying how frightfully easy it is to set up one’s own site using WordPress. I wouldn’t find it easy at ALL. I’m not crazy about the way my Web site looks but it’s the best I can afford at present.

    Have no great faith that a grand jury will return the right verdict in the Tamir Rice investigation. In my opinion, the only way to eradicate race prejudice would be to require all whites to live as people of color for a year. I read that in the Tlingit tribe, all males were required to live as women for a year. Wonder what kind of reversal of viewpoint that caused?

    A good day to all in the Pond and beyond!

    • It is not frightfully easy to set up a WordPress site. In relative terms it is much easier than to build it from scratch using older coding techniques but it requires a lot of work, and knowledge, to get the structure in place. Once the structure is in place and proper options for maintenance selected, I would agree that it is very easy to keep the site up-to-date without any technical knowledge. But those are two different things. You can set up a WordPress site with 3 clicks of the mouse but it would not be the type of site you would enjoy working with.

      • Thank you for saying that, Jan. I was starting to feel inferior. I could no more create a Web site than I could do desktop publishing and create covers for my e-books. I have my own little set of talents, which include writing and editing, and that’s that. Acquiring Web skills and desktop publishing skills would take time and energy that I no longer have, and as for doing my own covers—some people are artists and some are not. I can give a real artist some idea as to what kind of book cover I’d like, but I’m incapable of executing the concept.

        I think everyone should do what she’s best at.

        • I agree! I have had clients who insisted on doing IT work including web site setup and it is frustrating to come in after them and clean up the messes they created. One guy, after I ripped him for disrupted his firm’s email flow with his attempts to create a web site, complained that I was too hard on him … he was not an IT person. Exactly so!

          You saw what it took to get the new moose in place. It was three clicks by HappyinVT to set up the WordPress site and then lots and lots of clicks over 3 weeks to create a web site that addressed the needs of the end users … you guys! It is still not where I want it to be; I am going to end up having to write a plugin (programming) to manage Comment reading the way I want to (I want to know who replied to me and to more easily find comments I have not read yet). But I will first have to learn the ins and outs of the WordPress database and how to code and package a plugin. More than three clicks!

  13. Leaving early & taking a nap yesterday was such a good idea. I slept well last night, feel better today – though it is still freezing in this office. I brought a sweater, I’m wearing shoes & socks – fer cryin’ out loud, socks on my feet & I’m not working out & it’s June. And still I’m cold. At least they’re watermelon socks.

    Leaving at 5 will be interesting, the parade for the Republic of Texas Bike Rally is this evening & people will be coming into downtown of that as we’re trying to get out. I set Someone New to be playing when I turn my car on, so at least I’ll be listening to happy music while I sit in traffic.

  14. bwahahahahahaha:

    Tauriq Moosa retweeted
    Chris Clarke ‏@canislatrans Jun 10

    So if I understand this correctly, a scientist who said women in science cry when criticized quit his job after 48 hours of criticism.

  15. Good morning, it’s 54 and partly cloudy in Bellingham today. And lucky me, all I have to do today is go to the pool this morning, and be in the garden this afternoon. The birdbath rock was put in place yesterday so now I can start planning how to plant the new rock gardens, I’ve got a list of plants for the containers, and my weeding bucket is empty and waiting. I’ll have as much fun as my knees can stand!

  16. 84 (heat index 94) and muggy in Fay., AR at just after 11 a.m. CDT. “Normal” summer busy with added “busy” is probably good for my proposed position reclassification but it sure cuts into my Purple and Orange time :)

    Not sure I’m going to post my Hillary letter over at teh Orange after all. The Hate is Strong with these ones. I’m still thinking about it but…

    Whoever might be thinking of a solstice diary (this one or the next considering how close this one is) – and I’m no good at this or I’d do it myself – how about a different take from the usual “battle between Light and Dark” – this more or less came to me in a dream (more or less because I didn’t actually dream it, I just woke up thinking it):

    In the beginning Ceiling Cat and Basement Cat were given the task of providing times of work and times of rest, times for the hunters and times for the hunted. They divided up the days and the year between them – Ceiling Cat providing light for workers and hunters, Basement Cat providing dark for rest and the hunted – and they met every Dawn and Dusk to discuss how their shifts went. At Dawn just a few hours after midnight on the Summer Solstice Ceiling Cat says to Basement Cat, “Brother I am so very tired and this is the longest one.” Basement Cat licks her ear and replies, “Sister, remember what you told me last Yule. It’s the last one so make it a party. And then start shifting the weight to me for your own rest.” Ceiling Cat brightens up, gives Basement Cat a mock-bop on the head, and says, “That’s right. BEACH PARTY!!!!”

    and then the pictures go on from there. And blessings upon whoever (probably Jan) who actually makes it. :)

      • I meant to come back Friday afternoon and thank you – also send more good and healing energy for your surgery – but Friday got crazier as the day went on. Don’t know if you’ll actually see this (and probably won’t be able to find it again next week to see if you did), but sending you the energy anyway. :)

    • Love that about the cats, bfitz!

      As for Hillary-bashing—for some curious reason, the more Hillary bashing I see, the stronger my intention to vote for her in the primary and the general, if she makes it to the general. That said, I also dig Bernie Sanders’ method of dealing with the media. He tells them they’re asking the wrong questions!

      No candidate has done that for YEARS–not since Howard Dean. Good old Vermont, producing truth-telling people from its rocky haven.

      • I was reading an account on Charlie Pierce’s blog of an interview that Andrea Mitchell was having with Bernie.

        … it was quite a remarkable thing, because Mitchell kept dealing up nothingburgers in reference to the Clinton Foundation, and Hillary Clinton’s personal wealth and the “distrust” that Mitchell claimed was causing HRC a terrible problem. And Sanders resolutely refused to play. He stuck to what he wanted to say about infrastructure spending, and the money power in politics. He took it to HRC on her mushy stance on the TPP, but he was polite and firm. When Mitchell tried again on the Clintons and their personal wealth, Sanders spun it deftly around to the Koch brothers. Mitchell seemed completely flummoxed. Bernie knows more about what he’s doing than a lot of the people who are covering politics these days. It’s going to be an interesting campaign.

        He is a smart guy and knows that if you make the headline “Bernie disses Clinton wealth” then the headline will not be “Bernie comes out swinging against Koch brothers influence in politics”.

        Diana, you are right about the Hillary attacks. I will never be a Hillbot for a number of reasons but I am enjoying watching her campaign because it so angers the captive press that the anti-Clinton blows are not landing. And I happened to see something in my Twitter stream related to the comments being posted on Hillary’s new Instagram account and we are no more post-sexist than we are post-racist. That will backfire, I have no doubt.

        • One thing you can say about Hillary and the Press – she’s prepared for what they will do (and they will do it, some “post-sexist” society) should she be elected President and can handle it. The Heavens know she’s had enough practice over the last 40 years (and yes, the Press has been attacking her for that long).

      • Same thing for me and Hillary bashing – it’s what brought me back to Hillary in 2008. Bernie’s good and maybe (and maybe not) electable for president – but even if I weren’t backing Hillary because of what she’s done over the course of her life, I wouldn’t back Bernie in the primary. 1) I want him in the Senate. Hillary can do more with Bernie in the Senate than Bernie could do in the White House with some unknown in his place in the Senate. 2) He’s another old white guy. Yeah I know. Reverse racism/sexism – but I’m really getting tired of old white guys telling the rest of us what to do.

        Hope the cat thing comes about – somebody who has more technical skill and creativity than I do will need to do it – because I’d really like a different take on the light/dark, white/black business As far as the Moosylvania audience, yeah, preaching to the choir – but anything that’s put on the internet is bread cast upon the waters.

  17. Good morning, meese! Saturday …

    It is 60 degrees on its way up to 76. Evening thunderstorms in the forecast.

    John Boehner’s lack of a governing coalition was exposed again in the TAA/TPP vote yesterday. He could not deliver his party’s votes and when the Democrats decided that they wanted to slow down “fast track”, the TAA failed. A trade bill without the special labor provisions becomes a poison pill that will be filibustered in the Senate. I hope that House Democrats have a grand strategy in mind because dissing your president and the leader of your party seems a bit rude. President Obama made a good case for why we needed to have this trade agreement and not having it clears the path for China to set the rules in the Trans-Pacific trade zone. They will not include even the thinnest of guarantees on the environment, wages, and worker protections, by the way. Oh, well! At least he got to run with the stuffed presidents while he was lobbying:

    They caught the person who helped the convicted murders in NY to escape. Sad story, really, and one sure to tear apart the little town that the prison is in. The woman who was arrested said that one of the inmates made her feel “special”. I hope for her sake that they don’t kill anyone while they are on the loose.

    Hillary Clinton will have the first major rally of her campaign today at Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park (what a pretty venue!). The GOP short list was invited to Mitt Romney’s estate in Park City to kiss his ring and meet with some of his 2012 bankrollers. It will probably be a bit awkward for those who are running as “the guy who won’t make the mistakes Romney did”. I was struck by how these candidates are running to capture the vote of about 14% of Americans and thinking that by winning those races, it will somehow position them to win the 50%+1 they need for the presidency. It won’t.

    There is more news: from Kansas and Louisiana and Wisconsin; I will stuff it all into the President’s Weekly Address threads. I have been promised some Congo posts by rb137 and I hope that we will see one of them later today.

    See all y’alls later!!

  18. Good morning, all. Headed for 86 here. Yuck. I hate summer.
    Many errands today but have to find time to read about the TPP.
    Will check in later to see how things are in Mooseslyvania.
    Oh, speaking of Moosesylvania, I really like the New Pond and especially like the news feeds at the bottom of the page! Thanks!

    • Oh dear, is it Moosesylvania or Moossylania? It must be the former?????? Or something else entirely?

      • I am using Moosylvania but I can’t remember if I chose it or if it chose me. It should probably be Moosesylvania but something about that does not look quite right. Maybe because scanned quickly it looks like “mooses sylvania” which would make us appear illiterate!!

        We should ask our resident linguist, Diana in NoVa, to weigh in.

        • I think you are using the correct spelling. The other, which I sometimes use because there is no auto=correct for such an important word, can look as though the woods belong to Moses.

  19. Windy here – leftovers from last nights thunderstorms. 68 going up to 84.

    Wandered over to Wonkette and found

    California Lady Lawmaker Knows What Causes Droughts, And It Is Abortion

    Meese in TX should know:

    “Texas was in a long period of drought until Governor Perry signed the fetal pain bill,” she told the audience, presumably referring to HB 2, the omnibus Texas abortion bill that included a 20-week ban based on junk science. “It rained that night. Now God has His hold on California.”

  20. Up for my walking group. Ambitious day – going up one of the biggest hills in the area (Mt Bonnell, for those familiar with Austin). Be back later.

    • Jan, I think “Moosylvania” is the more accurate rendition, but feel impelled to add that if someone is using a smartphone to check in—well, “autocorrect” is beyond anyone’s control. With my smartphone I can’t be cute or playful in my text messages any more, to my chagrin. Of course, it’s possible to turn off “autocorrect,” but it does catch the typos I make when in a hurry. One simply has to choose which annoyance annoys one less. :)

      • Thank you for weighing in!

        I have that same problem with the auto-correct. I often invent my own words which requires that I click a little check mark in the auto-correct list which means “yes, this is the correct spelling of the word I want to use“. Sometimes it tries to capitalize words and it is awful with acronyms, making me painstakingly retype each letter.

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