Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Sept. 13th through Sept. 19th

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?

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.

65 Comments

  1. Good morning, Motley Meese! The week begins …

    It is 48 degrees in Madison WI, on its way up to 71. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Good morning Moose pond peeps
    64 and rain here in the NY mountains. I’m finally feeling human after my jaunt to NYC – the events were great but I stayed in an over-air conditioned hotel – and air-conditioning makes me ill. Couldn’t get the air off – wound up ironing my sheets to get warm at night. Tried to shake off the numb discomfort, but was also aware I was in the city on 9/11 – as a former worker in the WTC I stopped and said a silent prayer of remembrance

    I spent most of the day yesterday wrapped in comfy quilts, snoozing and scanning the news.

    I still keep an eye on NY Fashion week – though my attire is mostly sweat pants – I haven’t given up on my early training as a fashion illustrator.

    So I found this story interesting

    A powerful show brought “Black Lives Matter” to the runway at New York Fashion Week

    When Kerby Jean-Raymond, the founder and creative director of the New York fashion label Pyer Moss, was just 10, he and his friends jumped a fence to go play basketball in their Brooklyn neighborhood. What happened next was among the first of several upsetting experiences he had with the police.

    “We were all put down on our knees, face down,” he says. “The cop had his hand on his gun the whole time and was threatening us with it, kind of like flexing for it.”

    By the time he was 18, Jean-Raymond said, he had been stopped and frisked by police a dozen times—a number that’s unfortunately not at all unusual for black men and boys in New York City, according to the police department’s own records.

    Like it or not, race continues to play a big role in the way people interact with each other, particularly in the United States, where racism is still common and where law-enforcement authorities have killed black men in several controversial cases recently. That reality and Jean-Raymond’s own experiences as a black man informed the intense, eye-opening video about police brutality that he played at the opening of his recent runway show at New York Fashion Week.

    Seguing into

    Black Lives Matter leader lands Yale teaching gig

    One of the newest teachers at the vaunted Yale University burnished his Ivy League resume in the Black Lives Matter movement.

    DeRay McKesson will be teaching a one-credit course this fall as a guest lecturer at Yale Divinity School, according to higher education blog Campus Reform. The outspoken activist will be joining U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., and the Rev. Nancy Taylor, whose Old South Church in Boston is located near the site of the 2013 marathon bombing, to teach a special three-section course as part of a new leadership program. The young activist will teach the first section of the course, entitled “Transformational Leadership in the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.”

    And Charles Blow on the Sanders campaign

    Bernie Sanders and the Black Vote

    I have to admit I am very unhappy with the choice by the Sanders campaign to use Cornel West as their main black endorser/front man – given that Cornel has left a very bad taste in many mouths due to his potty mouthed ranting at President Obama and his recent dissing of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Toni Morrison. (which if you have missed it – is a subject taking up a lot of black air space – here’s one response )

    Blow points out some of this:

    West’s critique of the president has been so blistering and unyielding — he has call Obama “counterfeit,” the “black face of the American empire,” a verb-ed neologism of the n-word — that it has bordered on petulance and self-parody.

    seeya later – gotta eat before hunkering down to respond to Sunday comments at orange.

    • I thought that the choice of Cornel West as the “gateway” to black voters was rather odd. The Black Twitterers I follow are adamant that dissing President Obama is a non-starter for them. They are peeved now at the Bernie supporters who are Tweeting things like “Obama never stood on a picket line, Bernie did” and those who are calling the president a corporate whore.

      The next Democrat has to run on respecting President Obama and continuing his policies in order to get the black vote. Period.

      Did you see that the latest MSNBC poll shows that Republicans are getting 20-22% of the Latino vote, down from the 27% that Mitt Romney got? If our candidate, as expected, picks up more white voters than Barack Obama did and that pattern on Latino voters holds, there is literally no pathway to victory for a Republican presidential candidate.

      • Yup – the only Latinos supporting Repubs are the hard core white right wing ones – from what I gather – mostly Cuban, with a few old timey “Hispanics” who disassociate themselves from newer arrivals.
        Dissing Obama will not end well – and the Berniacs aren’t doing anyone a favor. Thankfully my friends who support Bernie don’t fall into that category.

        • It is likely that the Berniacs I see on Twitter are mostly the bad actors because I see most of the tweets as the result of retweets of the “Doesn’t this make you angry??” variety (they do!!!). The ones I meet elsewhere seem civil and willing to engage in a discussion of ideas rather than personalities.

          I have no problem with any of Bernie’s positions: I just see huge holes where the issues I care about are not being discussed. The “everything can be tied back to income inequality” theme is Jansplainin’, in my opinion; that smacks of “listen to what I tell you that you should care about!!!”.

      • Charles Blow, a columnist for the NYTImes that I like, had similar negative comments on West. He went on to describe Sanders in a way that somewhat surprised me in its forcefulness

        There is an earnest, if snappy, aura to Sanders that is laudable and refreshing. One doesn’t sense the stench of ambition or the revolting unctuousness of incessant calculation.

        There is an idealistic crusader in the man, possibly to the point of being quixotic, but at least it doesn’t come off as having been corrupted by money or power or the God complex that so often attends those in pursuit of the seat behind the Resolute Desk.

        http://motleymoose.net/2015/09/13/1776/week-long-welcomings-from-moosylvania-sept-13th/comment-page-1/#comment-3851 bold mine

        As you know, I am backing Sanders because I think he is the best of a not very good bench that the Democrats are offering up. I wish we had more and better candidates but we don’t. I think that many of those who support him are from the tiny antiwar branch of the party. That branch is small, has no power, and has no money which means that nobody cares about them.

        • Bernie is also right about the “soap opera aspect of politics” but he is not the only victim of the not-serious-at-all press. Hillary Clinton’s personal emails are the new target and there are moves afoot to submit her email server to forensic analysis to find out exactly what she said in the emails planning her daughter’s wedding and her mother’s funeral. :( Anyone who thinks that those emails would not find a way into the press and be used to mock and embarrass Secretary Clinton are living on another planet. Soap opera, indeed – one of the longest running soap operas in American politics.

          • I have no interest in those emails. None. I think there was nothing criminal in so doing but don’t understand why on earth she did it. Nobody I know mixes personal and professional emails. But there is nothing wrong in what she did though he does seem a bit inept and has, of course, started many soap operas.

          • Well, I used my personal email for my elected official stuff, so there’s one. I can also give you a reason why she would. No matter how careful I am and was to never give out or send from my uark.edu email, I still periodically get/got personal and J.P. emails on that account. Hillary not only has a personal life that she wouldn’t want to accidentally get emails on a .gov account, she is also affiliated with the Clinton Foundation and I can’t think of a bigger “whitewater” type witch hunt going on for up to 8 solid years than to have Clinton Foundation emails accidentally get on a .gov address. They already tried to link Clinton Foundation and abuse of SoS power which went nowhere although I’m sure they’re planning to bring it back once they finally get bored with the eghazi nothing burger. I think Hillary was very wise to have her emails come to a single address on a separate secure server where she could make sure only government business got forwarded on to wherever it needed to go on a .gov server.

          • Well, we all have different styles! The very thought of having my business and professional emails not separate has me woozy! No way. It is inconceivable to me. I very definitely want my emails kept separate and have kept them that way for years but people are different and do what works for them.

          • I think it is different depending both on your work and how you use your email. For example, my work email address is my personal email address also because I only have one email account that gets pushed to my phone. So it contains emails from clients, from my daughter’s school and coaches, from my family, from places I purchase things, both personal and business. So if my email account were to become discoverable in a legal matter involving a client, I would have to do some serious sorting. In cases where I emailed a person at the client’s site in a personal way, discussing our kids, for example, that email has no bearing on the matter. Does it get included or not? I never had anything classified Top Secret but some of the client emails I send and get sent include personal information, account codes, passwords etc and I would want to protect them from email voyeurs.

          • I’ve set up email folders and the first thing I do every morning is go through my emails – delete the requests for money, forward work-related stuff to my uark.edu, move to file as appropriate for the rest. I had a separate email for campaigning, but I still got emails going to the wrong address. Not a problem if it was just my personal email, but potentially a very large problem when it was a campaign-related email hitting my state university work address. And that’s just with a piddly JP local government race. But yes, everybody works their own way. (Now when it comes to money, that’s where I do separate everything. I have 2 active checking accounts, and a 3rd of course when I was campaigning, and 3 active credit cards that I use for specific categories of stuff, no waffling. If I need to move money from one account to another to cover something, that’s what I do – I don’t just pay something out of the other account.)

  3. Good morning, Meese! It’s 61 F., headed for 81 F. here in NoVa, on a fair morning after a blessed day of rain yesterday,

    Have been so immersed in frantic downsizing that I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the news. There’s a possibility we may be moving sooner than we thought: we’ll know for sure Wednesday morning. Sold three baby things off Craig’s list, will put up some vintage gay novels on eBay either today or tomorrow.

    Watched the James Blake “takedown” by that white officer with a problematic past several times on TV. If I were Mr. Blake I’d sue–sue–sue. President Obama’s election uncovered the deep, festering sore of racism in this country. We thought it was healed, but it had merely scabbed over.

    Now Hillary Clinton’s campaign is exposing the depth of contempt and hatred for women that seems to be held by the majority of men in this country. Makes me long for the society described in Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, in which religion was largely gone from society.

    • We are going to have to flip over the rocks and watch the hatred and contempt slither out a few more times: first, electing the first black president, second, electing the first woman president, and finally, when we elect our first Latino president, probably in 2024. Hopefully, by then the number of dead-enders left in the voting population will be so small that their candidates will not consume 90% of the media coverage as they do now. Ugly is click-bait and until people get bored with the same old same old, it will lead the news. I rarely go beyond the headlines right now because I know what I will read when I click.

    • I’ve done the downsizing thing more times in my life than I care to remember. At best it reminds you about not becoming too attached to material goods. But I’ve still got books I don’t even want because they are so old and tattered they’d just end up in a landfill. Good luck with it.

      And yes, the contempt and hatred for women is a festering sore – it never even really scabbed over, we just put a bandage on it and ignored it. Just like having a black president turned on the light in the kitchen and showed a floor covered with racist cockroaches, having a woman president will do the same. But it’s still a good thing to do.

  4. Good morning, 56 and partly cloudy in Bellingham today. It’s good to be home, on the green side of the mountains. It was over 90 in Kennewick with dry, hot. and dusty air.

    We stopped at the cemetery as we left yesterday, and it was good to share a peaceful moment with RonK at his parents grave site. Our week of saying good bye to his mom has given both of us a deepened appreciation of the comforting power of funerals.

    We’ll rest today and then tend to the garden. It looks like the deer knew we were gone and just moved in!

    • Home and comfort seem to go together. Not sure what to do about deer. Rabbits are easy – just plant some clover for them 20 or so feet away from whatever you don’t want them to eat. Haven’t found anything deer like better than whatever you don’t want them to eat.

  5. I posted my check-in in the wrong place, re-posting here:

    Slowest mile ever, but the best one. 1.07 miles in 1h 20 min. But it was great. My friend had to stop a couple of times, walked with a cane, but it was great. They had the survivors do a “walk of honor” before the start, he she is. walking by herself, with a cane:

    http://s208.photobucket.com/user/BeckyHelton/media/a340901a-dc5c-49ab-8c9e-7873287a75e6_zps5pwdylkv.jpg.html

    I walked most of the mile backwards, talking to her. Her boyfriend walked with her, she has a strap that she wears around her waist so people can help her walk. She took a break at the halfway point. This was totally worth missing church for.

  6. 75 most of the way through Sunday in Fay., AR. Flavor of the week is orange – baked orange muffins this morning and since I had the peel of a whole orange to work with also baked orange oatmeal cookies. Made 3-weeks’ worth chicken-pasta-veggie soup and threw the last few crumbles of orange peel that were stuck to the grater in that, too. :) Then I grilled 5-weeks’ worth breakfast sausage patties and finished up with 5 2-oz portions of pork sirloin for this week’s dinners. Now all I have to do is clean the kitchen. heh. Actually mostly done, only the electric grill and the soup pan which I’ll do when the grill cools down.

    Haven’t looked at the news and am not really planning to. If I go to GOS at all it will be to lurk in the pootie diary and see if sheddhead has checked in. Not that I can do anything for her one way or the other but she’s on her 3rd week of being homeless and I worry.

    I’m still investigating winter boots. A friend swears by Uggs (I’m concerned about the suede) and another by Muck boots. The Columbia MINX II look interesting but while I can find stores in the area that carry the Columbia line, I’m apparently either going to have to call or visit each store to see if they carry that style. Not that I can buy any at the moment – that promotion and raise I’ve been congratulated for still hasn’t been put into the system. Since it’s supposed to be effective 7/1, I’m depending on that backpay to get the boots.

    On a more serious note, I’m more or less a pagan but I’m not a “practicing” witch because I really don’t know how to be. The few rituals I’ve read I feel stupid doing. So I’m hoping “purposing” a candle for health and healing by sitting it in the middle of my bedroom altar will channel something good. My best friend who is also the other office person at work is going in for surgery Tuesday – supposed to be at the hospital at 0530 with surgery supposedly starting at 0800 – and is expected to be out at least 2 full weeks plus working part-time for several weeks thereafter. Since I won’t be able to safely burn the candle while she’s in surgery, I’m planning to burn it tomorrow evening. If any of you folks who’ve more knowledge/skill can think of something else I could do, please let me know. (And channel a bit yourself if you have it to spare.) Thanks,

    • Alas, I don’t know much about candles but I do send good wishes to your friend for health and healing.

    • Candle magic is not really a “pagan” thing although many pagans I know use it. It is ancient … candles have been used for a long time by humans to focus energy and intents. The Catholic church of my youth had votive candles (they cost money!) that would be lit for prayer requests. I have a cyber candle that stays “lit” in a browser tab that serves as my daily reminder of people who need my good intentions; when someone I know is going into surgery or needs a special focus, I often “light” a second one. I stopped lighting real ones because they worry me when they are left unattended and it seemed wrong to blow them out when I left the house while the person in need was still in need. What does that say???

      People have spent a lot of time dwelling on the color of the candles. For example, I think of green as healing because it is one of the colors of the earth. Others say it is for money and profit. I find the white candle most meaningful for surgery and generally include a hover asking for the light to guide the surgeon’s hand and to illuminate the path to recovery.

      The easiest “rule” to remember, at least for this kitchen witch, is No Rules: do whatever feels right.

      • I got a true hand-made beeswax from local bees candle from a Market vendor. So it’s beeswax yellow. I’ve always thought of green as healing – sometimes money is part of healing, but it’s a subset. :) I “white light” general purpose Divine Order good stuff.

        I use your candle code Nurse Kelley gave me in diary comments over at GOS for whatever good intention (healing, sorrow, need a job…) but of course it’s just code in the email. I really like the cyber candle – it’s safe and more environmentally sound anyway – but sometimes I want the compounding effect of a multisensory and physical “prayer”. And thank you. If the rule for kitchen witches is No Rules, then I can stop feeling inadequate for not doing it right.

        • We used to have a candle store nearby (in Oshkosh, actually) that had seconds and unsold candles from various holidays. It was in a huge warehouse building and we would go there and buy bags of candles on the cheap (anything but the scented ones, they make me sick). I have not been there in years and the white candles, my favorite multi-purpose ones, are pretty expensive in grocery stores. When I need a real candle, when I need the touch and motion as well as the sight, I light one and put it in the sink while I am out of the house. That feels safe.

          • I’ve been wondering if putting it in the woodstove and closing the door would be workable. I mean it’s very safe and I wouldn’t have to worry about the cats knocking it over – but it sort of separates it from the house. On the other hand, maybe that’s a good thing. The smoke would actually go outdoors via the chimney joining the more natural part of nature. Uhmm.

          • Actually, it’s safer not to light a candle at ALL unless you’re going to be home to watch it. It’s safer not to even leave the room. If that sounds too strict, well, once I knew the child of a firefighter. He said his father forbade having a candle of any kind in the house. He apparently had had to fight too many fires in houses where someone had lit a candle and forgotten about it. That has made me more careful about it, I can tell you. :)

          • I had a very expensive reminder about that one time. A friend left a candle burning in my fireplace (for safety!) and did not realize that the damper was closed. The smoke from that unattended candle over the course of several hours sent black soot throughout the house that damaged my computers and required extensive repainting of the ceilings.

            I should probably resist the urge to burn a real candle regardless of how important the intention feels because I really have an icky feeling about blowing it out simply because I have to leave the house. The physical presence of the burning candle is certainly powerful but there are other ways to focus energy that are less dangerous.

    • Will pray for your friend, bfitz. And all it takes to be a Pagan is to declare yourself one and live accordingly, which you certainly do through your connection with nature and your kindness. Blessed be.

      • Thank you for the pray/healing energy. And also the encouragement. My very dear friend who was also a witch passed on just over 4 years ago and communications had been difficult for a couple of years before that (both health and only a cell phone with bad reception issues) – and she was kind of winging it, too. While her family had been witches since before the Burning Times, it sometimes skipped a generation and she was only 5 when her witch grandmother died so a lot of what her grandmother tried to give her only stuck in a little kid way. But she was still a safe source to take my questions/concerns to – One of the many reasons I miss her so much.

  7. Good morning, Meese! Monday …

    It is 52 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 79. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Finally, a full work week, M-Tu-W-Th-F, with no interruptions. I am hoping it gets me back in the work groove that has been missing this summer. I think I am beginning to understand why parents get their kids cars right after they get their licenses … the need to drive hither and yon increases with their age and decreases in attractiveness with my age.

    On Wednesday the GOP presidential candidates will make a pilgrimage to their god Reagan’s library to debate. I wonder what the movie actor president would think of the cable TV reality show presidential candidates. This pretentious set unveiled by CNN made me laugh out loud:

    Today Rowan County clerk Kim Davis will go to work and if she follows through on her threats, she will order her employees to stop issuing marriage licenses. I found an article about the deadenders resisting the 1967 ruling Loving v Virginia fascinating. That Supreme Court order had to be litigated in Alabama and Mississippi in 1970 and it took until 1972 for Georgia to recognize it! Five years.

    U.S. Army Sergeant Louis Voyer, a white man, and Phyllis Bett, a 17-year-old black woman, went to the Calhoun County courthouse in Alabama on November 10, 1970 to get a marriage license, but they were refused by local probate judge G. Clyde Brittain. Eventually Brittain received support from the state’s attorney general to challenge that Alabama’s law took precedence over the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia. Because Voyer was a member of the military, it was the Nixon administration itself that had to argue Alabama’s anti-miscegenation law, originally passed in 1854, was unconstitutional. The federal government won, and the state’s law was struck down.

    At the time of the Loving ruling, 15 states still had anti-miscegenation laws on the books, but then state law after state law was overturned in court. Some of the last holdouts were in the deepest of the deep South: Mississippi and Georgia. District Judge Harold Cox — the same notoriously racist justice who presided over the Mississippi burning trial — reluctantly ruled Mississippi’s anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional in 1970 under strong urging from the Fifth Circuit. Georgia, the final state, complied with the federal ruling on interracial marriage by Valentine’s Day 1972.

    I sincerely hope that Kim Davis is not in the news for 5 more years.

    See all y’all later!!

    • Morning Meese – headed to school here in the cool (it’s 59)

      Happy to see

      Trump, Republican campaign light up Spanish-language radio

      the more pissed off Latin@s the better :)

      Immigration advocates and others have used Spanish-language radio in specific markets to pounce on Trump and other Republican candidates.

      In Las Vegas, the state’s largest union and immigrant organization saturated the Spanish-language airwaves with an ad denouncing Trump. “Mr. Trump says he wants to be president to make America great,” said the announcer. “We think America is great.”

      The ad urged listeners to take part in an August rally, which drew about 1,000 people in a march to the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. “We got a really strong turnout,” said Bethany Khan, speaking for Culinary Union Local 226. More than half of the 55,000 members are Hispanic.

      Nevada is one of several swing states where both parties are courting Hispanic voters.

      Carlos A. Sanchez, coordinator of political campaigns for the liberal People For the American Way, calls Spanish-language radio “a powerful tool” for reaching Hispanics not easily accessible through other media.

      He said his organization has produced Spanish-language radio ads against Republican Marco Rubio in Denver and Miami, and against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in Milwaukee.

      • Great news! It is important that we point out that it is not just Trump … it is the Republican Party. We can’t let the candidates who are moving to the right to try to get in the Trump spotlight Etch-A-Sketch away their radical views on immigration, birthright citizenship, and racial equality when the general election rolls around. It was really strange to see in the recent Marquette Poll, the gold standard for Wisconsin polls, that Walker had a positive rating with Latino voters. I am sure it relates to his former pro-path-to-citizenship stand, the one he had to renounce once he started touring the country. Voters need to be made aware of his “new” mainstream GOP viewpoint on deportation and birthright.

        • That’s been one of Hillary’s constants – the Party of Trump, linking GOP policies with Trump’s loud mouth.

  8. Good morning, Meese! It’s 50 F. on a beautiful September morning in NoVa, working its way up to 77 F. I have to get ready to walk Miss Pink Cheeks to school, so will be brief. Hope bfitz’s friend will have a successful surgery today and that Jan will get through her workload all right.

    Another frantic Monday—my office is still a mess, have to go to the gym and the post office as well as UPS, have to upload pictures and descriptions of vintage gay sci-fi novels to eBay, must either prepare all the apples on the porch for freezing or give them away—yikes! Because of all the downsizing stress my eczema is back, worse than ever.

    Also worse than ever is the news—massive forest fires in California and other states, refugees in Europe. And one can’t do anything about either of them except send up prayers.

    Hope it’s a good day for denizens of the Pond and Beyond.

    • I am following your downsizing narrative closely as it is something that my parents will need to do sooner rather than later. My own hope is that they decide that it is better to do it themselves making their own choices but the longer they delay, the more likely it is that the kids will be making their decisions for them. Few people, it seems, want to leave their house of many years. Having moved many times as a child and as an adult, I have never developed a connection to my physical abode. I will be fine living in any place that suits whatever my lifestyle is at the time. When I geared up to move into a smaller home a few years back, I found many boxes that had moved from place to place unopened and a lot of those finally made it to a dumpster or were rehomed.

      • I wish we had been able to move Ron’s mom into assisted living sooner. After we furnished her apartment to look like a smaller version of her home she (and the rest of the family) were pleased and relieved and she settled into living there, even calling it her “new home.”
        Family decision making often results in unintended consequences though. No one wanted an estate sale while she was still living so her collections are in storage. And now the reality of what’s involved to unpack, sort and sell them is feeling quite daunting……especially to me!

        • It is difficult to sell off someone’s lifetime of belongings when they are still on the earthly plane. At least you have them somewhat cataloged having gone through them recently. I hope that you have help doing the final sort!

      • Jan, we thought we had until March 1 to do the “decluttering” type of downsizing. We were planning to put the house on the market next May. However, now we have to “turbo-downsize” because there is a possibility that we will move as early as this year!

        We’ve managed to sell some of the baby stuff and I’ve Freecycled lots of Rattling Good Reads, but some of it is heavy going. What to do with my gay sci-fi novels? They’re free on Craig’s List but so far there’ve been no takers. Ditto the encyclopedia. And there’s all my Pagan fiction and nonfiction. Have to get rid of that somehow as well.

        • Have you tried offering them up for the NN auction? I think they’re accepting items for that right now.

          • I’ll see what I can find out. I just realized the auction is already running but you may still be able to donate. I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything.

          • Thanks, bfitz! Bill in Portland Maine gave me the linky, I offered my gay fiction collection, and it has been accepted! Now—wonder when the auction will be held?

          • I was going to suggest BiPM – C&J is where I saw the reminder. The auction’s ongoing right now.

  9. Greetings to the Pond. It’s a gorgeous day here. The news coming out of Europe, Egypt, California is depressing. Of course, many people that I know were thinking only of tennis at the US Open.

    Will be in and out of the city for a bit so if you don’t see me it just means you have to behave without my suggesting that you do.

    Hoping for a better world.

  10. Walked 2 miles this morning – in 41 minutes. Got a meeting with the agency director this morning. Not overly nervous, but still….. It’s for the charity campaign, we’re going to ask for some things to give away as incentives, and permission for some posting on the intranet.

    Earworm: Yahweh

  11. 67 in Fay., AR heading for 80 this Monday – working our way through the season change. Highs and lows moving back into summer mode over the course of the next few days, then heading back down again. I need to start moving firewood back into the house and borrow my friend’s electric torque splitter as most of the wood I’ve got needs to be split before I can use it (or else I’ll burn up all my kindling to keep it going).

    Thank you all the Moose folks for your prayers and good energy for my friend. The surgery is for what used to be referred to as “female troubles” – depending on what they find/have to do she may be home as early as tomorrow night or as late as Thursday. {{{HUGS}}} to you all.

    • My thoughts will be with you and your friend bfitz. May the surgery be successful, her recovery as easy as possible, and may your friendship last long.

  12. Good morning…..52 and cloudy in Bellingham today. I’ll go to the pool soon, then laundry and more garden cleanup. The damn deer even ate my hydrangeas! I wonder why they are such a nuisance now and were not a few years ago.

    We need to address some computer issues this afternoon. I’ve got W 10 installed on the newer laptops but RonK needs to make some decisions re his photos before using his new desktop computer. We had just purchased it when his mom died so it’s still in the box. Fortunately trying to find photos on various phones and computers and organize them into a file for the funeral alerted us to the differences between W 10 photo organization and the rather cobbled together system he’s used to working with.

  13. Thanks for your prayers/good wishes. As to the deer, my bet would be the fires are driving more of them into the more populated areas – and putting pressure on the resources. I doubt a deer would go for hydrangeas as a first choice. They’re browsers and prefer leaves and green tips of trees and woody shrubs (and apples, of course). Good luck on your computer issues – and also with your MIL’s stuff. There is an up side to poverty. We sorted/shared out Momma’s stuff between the 5 of us plus the 3 teenage grandsons over the course of 3 hours. {{{HUGS}}}

  14. Bfitz, have been thinking about your friend all day. Hope she’s doing well. Princesspat, good luck with your computer issues! I still have issues with the Mac but perhaps now, with no baby care, I can do something about them.

  15. Good morning, meese! Tuesday …

    It is 67 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 84. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    The marriage license standoff in Kentucky appears to be over. Kim Davis will not issue licenses but she won’t block her deputy clerks from doing so. The Oath Keepers have been asked to stay away and have indicated that they will comply.

    In other legal news, the ex-cop who killed Walter Scott in cold blood and tried to cover up his crime was denied bail. He complained, in his court hearing, that he just wanted to go home and be with his infant son who he had never seen. Tough. Walter Scott just wanted to be somewhere, anywhere, breathing.

    In a bid to get headlines, Scott Walker unveiled a plan (for Day One, I assume) to destroy public employee unions nationwide, force right-to-work on all 50 states, and eliminate the National Labor Relations Board. He got headlines, but probably not the ones he wanted: most of them started out “Walker floundering …” “Desperate Walker …” “Losing big in IA and NH, Walker …”. It simply demonstrates how ignorant he is: the NLRB actually benefits both business and labor by resolving disputes that previously would have required costly litigation. When you reflexively hate all government, you miss that Good Government protects everyone, not just “union bosses”.

    The president announced some changes in FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, that streamlines the process and allows for earlier filing. Helping more kids get federal aid will cut down on the number of kids leaving school with unbearable student debt. I will put up a post with the speech and the fact sheet later this morning.

    Interesting analysis on California’s Republican Party and what killed it … and the warning to today’s national Republican Party:

    Twenty years ago, a similar wave of anti-immigrant sentiment washed over the Golden State, and voters responded by passing a ballot initiative that blocked undocumented immigrants from receiving a litany of critical state services, including public education and health care. Strongly championing Proposition 187 helped then-Republican Gov. Pete Wilson win re-election in 1994 but the victory for the California GOP turned out to be short-lived. Political analysts believe the referendum mobilized dormant Latino voters and helped transform the state into a Democratic stronghold. No GOP presidential candidate has won the state since George H.W. Bush in 1988, while Democrats have had a lock on most statewide offices and the state legislature since 1996.[…]

    … this field or Republican candidates have all but declared war on immigrants and Latinos,” [Arturo Carmona, executive director of Presente.org, a California-based Latino civic advocacy organization said]. “That’s not something that we can let go of.”

    The Republicans seem determined to grab and hold onto the third rail of electoral politics. Please process, GOP.

    See all y’all later!

  16. Good morning, Meese! Yet another glorious morning here in NoVa, and from my office window I can see squirrels busily crossing the street to find the best acorns. It’s 48 F. now, heading for a high of 83 F.

    Jan, was most interested in your post about the death of the Rethug party in California. Hope it happens again, nationwide.

    Well, Moosekind, my life is getting easier in some ways. Younger Son has told me it would be easier for him to simply drop off Miss Pink Cheeks near the school and walk the rest of the way with her and Babylicious. Then he’ll drive Babylicious to day care. So now I have only to pick up MPC three afternoons a week. She lost a tooth yesterday in school; this morning her father texted me that although she was delighted with the dollar bill under her pillow, she was vexed that it wasn’t “folded properly.”

    Dearly Beloved is tasked with measuring furniture today to see whether it will fit the new apartment. I still have all those apples to process, as well as going to the gym. Another task for me will be gathering financial info for the meeting tomorrow.

    Read on Facebook that some people I admire never read or watch the news. Although this would result in greater peace of mind, I don’t think I can do that. I’m the daughter of journalists. I’d feel irresponsible, as if I weren’t a well-informed voter. It’s a conundrum.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!

    • So many changes Diana! Will the new apartment be close to MPC’s school? We don’t have regularly scheduled after school time with the grand girls this year and while I miss seeing them I’m adjusting to a less busy calendar.

      • No, princesspat, the new apartment (if we actually get it this year) is not at all close. We will have to make other arrangements for Miss Pink Cheeks. I miss hugging and kissing Babylicious 50 times a day, so will have to get a Baby Fix this weekend. On the other hand, I’ve got more done in the past week and a half than I have in the last 13 months! :)

    • Ha!! “she was vexed that it wasn’t ‘folded properly.'” That sounds like my daughter when she was that age. Anything that was unkempt caused her distress. Now, as a messy teenager, you would never know she ever felt that way! :)

      I have tried to resist reading the news but on the days when I can’t sit and read for a while, I feel cast adrift. I have trimmed some of my reading list: I now ignore stories about Trump, email servers, and early polling (unless the polls include Walker – then I have some Schadenfreude for breakfast). If I skipped the news altogether, I would have missed an excellent essay on the death penalty plus the ODS that is a centerpiece of the Kentucky governors race, an election that could finally be the tipping point for acceptance of the Affordable Care Act. If Kentuckians resist the teaparty and say “hands off my healthcare!”, that will be, as Joe Biden might say, a Big [redacted] Deal.

  17. Did 1.72 miles this morning. Our nice cool weather went away, it is back to muggy.

    Earworm is the intro to Bad – a beautiful, strumm-y guitar bit that is the wake up thing on my alarm. I actually look forward to it going off. While I’m walking, there’s a half-floor that I sometimes do twice; on the times I’m doing it again I play “Loft You Up” in my head, on the times I’m not, it’s Springsteen’s “Going Down”. Helps me remember & keeps my pace going.

    Mojo to all and their family & friends who are in difficulty. There’s just so much going on with everyone. Sending wellness thoughts out to all.

  18. Good morning, 50 and cloudy in Bellingham today. We may have resolved the computer/photo issues the easy way……with less stress and a clear head the W 10 photo management system works just fine! So now we can replace RonK’s 8 yr old (but still new to him) desk computer. My hope is that once everything is on W 10 and we have moved through the learning curve our computer life will be more simple to manage.

    I hope to spend some time in my sewing room today but I’ve gotten re engaged in reading the Malazan series and the garden needs attention as well so I’ll prolly do a bit here and there and then wonder if I accomplished anything!

  19. 65 when I walked in, 71 now and heading for 82 in Fay., AR this Tuesday. I just heard from my friend’s fiancee (as in just – he called as I was writing this, so I’m re-writing) she went into surgery at 8 and just got out. She’s be in the recovery room for at least another half hour but so far everything seems to be fine. W00T!!! And thanks for everybody’s prayers/healing energy.

    Everybody’s “don’t do it” advice on the candle in the woodstove came too late. Still want to address the concerns though – it’s a Jotul, the damper is open, and I latched the door so it’s safer than it would be if I were home but had gone to the bathroom or something while it burned on the table.

    Have a good Tuesday at the Pond. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Glad it’s a Jotul! We used to have one. It served us faithfully for more than 29 years. I miss the carvings on the side and the quaint old Norse lettering, but I do like the new woodstove. We can see the flames and it takes up a lot less room. :)

      • I’ve got the smallest one they make that has a “glass” front. So it sits on the hearth in front of the closed off open fireplace, it’s maybe 12″ d x 18″ wide – and I can see the flames :) The main problem with it is getting a small enough log. It was my first present to myself when I paid off the mortgage.

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