Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: July 26th through Aug. 1st

July 26, 2015 JanF Community 121

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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24 Comments

  1. I see on the Orange that today is Denise’s Birthday!! Happy Day and a Year of Good Things and Good Health. Hope there is some chocolate to eat today! Happy, happy day.

    • I was really surprised to wake up and find that diary from Sis Joan – still grinning :)

      Thank you Sis – there will be lots of chocolate and cake

      My sister-comrade from the Young Lords who is hosting the women’s gathering I’m going to today – which is an annual event – cooks up a storm – she is well versed in both Puerto Rican and African-American food specialties – so I am gonna be stuffed – with collard greens, potato salad, arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas), fried chicken, ensalada de bacalao (codfish and avocado salad) candied yams…and lots more

      We will have fun all day eating and swimming and dancing – and in the evening we gather in a circle and each woman shares a quote or a poem from a woman who inspired us.

      Every year we older ladies welcome into the circle young women – so that when we are gone – the tradition will continue.

      Hugs!

      • What a perfect day! And remember, you can eat what you want on your birthday and never gain a pound! It’s one of those birthday magic things.

        • heh – since I am skinny – I can always eat whatever – my battle is to put on some weight!

      • Happy Birthday and Happy Lammas!!

        It sounds like you have a wonderful day planned. Enjoy!

      • What a lovely celebration, Denise! (I feel a short story coming on…h’mm…)

        Happy birthday, dear Sister! Hope it’s a wonderful day and a wonderful year for you!

        Will head over to Bernie Central after breakfast to read Sis Joan’s diary.

        • Sigh – Bernie Central

          I wish Bernie would post and stop the madness – he’s a class act – some of his followers – not so much

          • I suspect that if Bernie thought their blathering was more than white noise, or that they would even listen to him, he would step in. Some of those folks are using Bernie as a bludgeon to take whacks at long-time enemies. It is less FeelTheBern than BernItToTheGround.

            I like that we are talking about income inequality and wage theft and economic fairness. Dr. Martin Luther King’s message was about economic justice as well as racial justice. He was killed in Memphis where he was helping the sanitation workers with their strike. We need to rekindle a union movement, one that rises out of the ashes of the teaparty scorched earth policies. I can’t think of a better way to promote that than to have every Democratic candidate talk passionately about it.

      • Glad I dropped in long enough to see it’s your birthday! Sending warm enjoyment energy to enhance the lovely day you already have planned. :)

  2. Yes, there is good news and very exciting news

    LONDON, July 31 (Reuters) — The world is for the first time on the verge of being able to protect humans against Ebola, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, as data from a trial in Guinea showed a vaccine was 100-percent effective.

    Initial results from the trial, which tested Merck and NewLink Genetics’ VSV-ZEBOV vaccine on some 4,000 people who had been in close contact with a confirmed Ebola case, showed 100-percent protection after 10 days.

    The results were described as “remarkable” and “game changing” by global health specialists.

    “We believe that the world is on the verge of an efficacious Ebola vaccine,” WHO vaccine expert Marie Paule Kieny told reporters in a briefing from Geneva.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/vaccine-success-holds-hope-for-end-to-deadly-scourge-of-ebola_55bb7ea6e4b0d4f33a025bc5?

    • Excellent news! I am glad that the international organizations established to promote a healthier world are doing this great work. We are quite literally all in this together; even if the moral imperative were not there, we can’t build a wall to protect from disease and the eradication of deadly diseases at their source is essential to our own survival.

    • Here’s a good interview with Dr. Bertrand Draguez, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Medical Director

      They are the group I trust the most – here’s hoping that this trial vaccine continues to be successful

  3. Good morning, Meese, and a blessed Lammas to you all. Did you see the blue moon last night?

    Today is Daughter-in-Austin’s birthday, as well as the birthday of our sister Denise. August is a month of birthdays in our family, so we celebrate a lot.

    We went to see the baby yesterday—Great Mother, seven adults, including the pediatrician, and Mr. Baby, all in that tiny hospital room! DIL looks radiant. Elder Son looked a bit haggard after sleeping all night in a chair. Daughter’s parents couldn’t stop grinning at the sight of their first grandchild. The little family is going home today. DIL’s parents are staying at the house and have been looking after the Labrador, who wants to know whatinell happened to the giants who take him for walks?

    Baby is so small and sweet! He was born at 7:40 p.m. on July 30, weighed 7 1b. 9 oz., is 21 inches long, and slept sweetly through our visit, despite being handed around like a Christmas basket.

    Part 2 of “Getting Unhexed” is now up on the Web site, http://goddessfiction.com. Part 3 will be posted next month and after that, “Tea and Strumpets” in October. Since yesterday have baked a loaf of bread, made Blueberry Cobbler, just now Blueberry Muffins (serves me right for buying 2 lb of blueberries the other day), and tonight, fruit salad with—blueberries!

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!

    • Happy Lammas, dear friend!

      We saw the moonrise last night and she was orangey, reflecting the sunset. Clear skies gave us a wonderful night’s sleep bathed in moonlight.

      Lammas, is, as you know, the First Harvest:

      Grain has held a place of importance in civilization back nearly to the beginning of time. Grain became associated with the cycle of death and rebirth.

      In early Ireland, it was a bad idea to harvest your grain any time before Lammas — it meant that the previous year’s harvest had run out early, and that was a serious failing in agricultural communities. However, on August 1, the first sheafs of grain were cut by the farmer, and by nightfall his wife had made the first loaves of bread of the season.

      By celebrating Lammas as a harvest holiday, we honor our ancestors and the hard work they must have had to do in order to survive. This is a good time to give thanks for the abundance we have in our lives, and to be grateful for the food on our tables. Lammas is a time of transformation, of rebirth and new beginnings.

      Give thanks for the blessings,
      give thanks for the lessons
      Give thanks for all that
      the Goddess Provides
      Give thanks for this showing
      our dreams are now growing
      Give thanks for the presence
      of the Goddess in our lives

      Thank You, Thank you,
      O Great Mother Thank You…

      Thank You, Thank you,
      O Great Mother Thank You..

      With the first Green Corn
      our dreams are now taking form
      We ask for the strength
      to see the true harvest born
      Mother of the Corn,
      of Hoof, and of Horn
      We thank you for the Bounty
      youve brought to our door

      Thank You, Thank you,
      O Great Mother Thank You…

      Thank You, Thank you,
      O Great Mother Thank You…

      Thank You, Thank you,
      O Great Mother Thank You…

      Thank You, Thank you,
      O Great Mother Thank You…

      Mother of the Grain,
      of the Sun and of the Rain
      We pray for an abundant Harvest again
      We give thanks for the Blessings,
      give thanks for the lessons
      We give thanks for all that
      the Goddess Provides

      Thank You, Thank you,
      O Great Mother Thank You…

      Thank You, Thank you,
      O Great Mother Thank You…

      Thank You.

    • Happy Lammas (saw the moon about 6 this morning – overcast last night until after I went to bed) and Wonderful news. Mr. Baby is about the same size my older boy was at birth. My boy is now 6’1″ and usually around 215 although he’d prefer to be about 10 lbs lighter – and 44 y.o. :) I’ve got 6 gallons of blueberries in my freezer for next winter which I got just before the solstice. I can’t eat much grain so what I put by is fruit. :)

  4. Good morning, moose peeps! Saturday …

    I let my body sleep until it was not tired and so here I am, later than usual. It is 76 degrees on its way up to 94 in Midwestern City in the Heart of the Country. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    People are awful. A Brooklyn landlord claimed that a Latino child damaged by lead paint poisoning “was not going to go to college anyway” because of his ethnicity and asked that the damage award be reduced by $2 million. Thankfully, a federal judge would have none of that.

    The right-wing blogs are demanding that the Republican Party shut down the government to defund Planned Parenthood. When the GOP candidates go to the Erick Son of Erick conclave later this month to kiss his, er, ring, they will have to declare all out war on women. Mike Huckabee already has, saying that as president he will call out the troops to stop abortions. Yikes!

    See all y’all later.

  5. Eating breakfast, watching Up. Kornacki did a really good debunking of the Perot myth. Though talking about it as if it’s ancient history…. I tweeted him that it’s not like those of us who were around them are all using walkers.

    Not sure what’s on deck for today. I’ll think of something, I’m sure.

  6. Good morning, 63 and sunny in Bellingham today. Most of the PNW is record breaking hot but we are relatively comfortable with afternoon temperatures in the low 80’s.

    Forecasters say the region saw its warmest June on record and July is close to setting a record as well. Thursday’s high of 103 in Portland was its hottest day this year, and the hottest day since July 2009.

    On Thursday, the high at Sea-Tac Airport was 91 degrees, the 10th day in 2015 with a temperature of 90 or above. That broke the record for the most days hitting 90 degrees or higher for the city. In 1958 there were nine 90-degree days.

    http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/extreme-west-coast-weather-32820999

    I’ve got a quiet day planned…..time in the garden while it’s cool, then reading in the shade this afternoon. I was so tired last night I missed seeing the full moon but RonK took his camera to the beach.

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