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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Good morning, Motley Meese! The week begins …
It is 47 degrees in Madison WI, on its way up to 60. Cloudy skies are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Good morning Meese.
Got up at 3AM and haven’t gone back to sleep – was waiting for this to be posted (morning Jan!)
Hope folks in flash flood areas are safe.
It’s 49 degrees here in Saugerties atm – going up to 61.
Off to make a fresh pot of java and to see if I can find some good news.
Ha! Sunday, first day of Welcomings week, waits for me to get up, doesn’t it? We have a posting “timer” – I could set it to post at a certain time but there is no way to pre-post a comment so it would be a lonely place. :) So I post when I get up and because I just add the “stock” comment, it is pretty quick but does require an awake human.
Usually I am here all by myself for hours on Sunday mornings!
I put a few news pieces up in tabs when I scanned the news this morning and have not gotten back to reading them yet. I did find this interesting: yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Immigration and Nationality Act, another LBJ initiative that changed our country in profound ways:
That was a BHD!! Apparently, at the time, LBJ did not think it was: “”The bill that we sign today is not a revolutionary bill,” Johnson said at the Statue of Liberty. “It does not affect the lives of millions.””. But look at this chart!
What a diverse nation we became!
Thanks for that. Didn’t realize it was yet another gift to us from LBJ.
Was looking at some good news:
California measures target racial profiling and excessive force by police
Brown signs legislation to protect minorities from racial profiling and excessive force
and reading the predictable pushback from cops.
California shows us what we could have as a nation if we had a reasonable legislature combined with a center-left executive. Jerry Brown is not always right on everything but he does a good job of balancing the possible with the should-be-done.
Cops are going to have to just get over it. If they had shown any interest in policing themselves, they would not have these initiatives forced on them. I feel sorry for the cities where the police are responsive to the calls for justice because they are tarred with the same brush. But for every place like that, there are a hundred more meeting those demands with angry resistance. It must be enormously frustrating to keep having to fight these battles over and over again, just like the right of women to control their bodies, fair admission policies at universities … STILL being litigated in the Supreme Court. Some days it seems like the backlashes set us back further than the advances got us; I hope I am wrong.
When it comes to bad cops, it’s about 1 in 4 – which is a pretty bad ratio anyway – but when it comes to protecting bad cops because they’re “wearing the uniform” it’s closer to 99 in 100. And yes, if they’d policed themselves none of these regulations would have come up.
Got up for workout but going back to bed. I was up 4 times last night. Didn’t eat anything unusual, but still got up over & over. Sigh.
Good morning, Moosekind! Another drizzly gray morning, 52 F. now, heading for a high of 61 F. That roast beef and Yorkshire will be welcome on a day like this. The guests will also enjoy stewed apples and custard, the apples being the ones from our own trees that I froze for winter use. Now, of course, we have to eat everything in the freezer before we move—if we do.
Too exhausted to pay much attention to the news. Did get my hair done but badly need a manicure. “Tea and Strumpets” is drawing some interest from the Facebook ads. Jan, I’ll need to consult you on the December short-short story. I’d like to find an illustration and cross-post it here, as it was Denise’s birthday post that gave me the idea.
Wishing a good day to all and cheer to the ailing!
If you want me to create an empty post for you to “fill in”, I can do that. Sometimes it is easier to work with that than finding all the buttons for Add New Post – plus then it shows up in the Drafts area of your Dashboard making it very easy to find while you are working on it. As far as illustrations, if you have something, it is fairly simple to upload it into our media library. If you want me to do it, just include a link and I will import it and give your our link for your post. When we add photo in the Featured Photo area of the post, it follows the post to Facebook and Twitter and dresses up our front page!
Thank you so much, Jan! I will contact you nearer the time.
Good morning, Meese. Winter is coming! It’s advance team, Fall, is already here. I love it!
Diana, thanks for your good wishes. I did go to the corner store to buy some lemons. All they had were organic ones and tney were $1.99 each. I thought that was a lot, in fact obscene, so only got one and now it seems too valuable to cut and squeeze. So, it’s in a pretty little dish on the counter with its price tag still on.
The news from Syria and Afghanistan is dreadful
Hoping for a better day for our weary planet.
Dear Goddess, Portlaw! At the Asian store near where we live, fat fresh lemons are 4 for $1.00. A few years back I bought a whole lot of them and piled them in a small basket to set on the countertop in my son’s newly remodeled kitchen when he was selling his townhouse. The bright yellow against the dark green quartz countertop looked gorgeous.
Anyway, hope your cold is leaving fast.
Morning all – well, it’s still barely morning here, I slept in after staying up late reading. it’s finally a bit cool here – only in the 70’s yesterday and will be again today – I think it’s back to the 80’s later in the week, but we’re probably finally in what passes for fall in north Florida. It’s my favorite time of year here, and pretty much everywhere, except very little leaf color change to look forward to here.
Off to the GOS to check out Denise’s diary, then chores to do today. Have a great day everyone!
MSF leaves Kunduz.
bold mine
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/10/4/doctors-without-borders-leaves-kunduz-after-airstrike-hits-hospital.html
I am heartsick over the bombing and the deaths. MSF does life-saving work. Just heartsick over the needless agony and waste of human life.
I hope there is an explanation for why the bombing continued after those doing the bombing were told that they had targeted a hospital.
We have no idea who is really in charge of the military response there and who had their hands on the controls. But the United States presence, even in a limited capacity, means we are responsible for those we train and equip. :(
That sux. Precision bombing is a lie the military has been selling since WWII (maybe WWI) – and every single time the “collateral damage” gets bad press (or any press), they’re shocked, shocked I tell you, that they somehow hit something they weren’t supposed to. And that’s unfortunately the best of several very bad explanations for this.
Good morning, 49 and light clouds in Bellingham today. The Malazan books pulled me into their world last night so I’m sleepily blinking my eyes and wondering what magical events will happen today. I have mixed feelings about the books, but I seem to be caught up in the world Erickson has built.
http://atg-reviews.com/gold-articles/malazan-book-of-the-fallen-worth-time/
Good 1st Sunday afternoon Meeses – We’re at our high for the day of 69 at 1527 CDT and mostly sunny. We have now reached the time of year that my oak tree shades the east side of my roof until almost noon (the reason I didn’t want my solar panels there but was overruled by “technology” sigh) so daily max is only 15 KWHs. Still, with the sunshine so far I’m getting about 15 KWHs per day and will have close to 60 for the month already by the end of today. Fall is definitely here and Winter is coming in – had my first fire Friday evening. Also yesterday and this morning although it’s too warm right now (but I’ll re-start it in another couple of hours). So in addition to my regular Sunday baking/cooking/housecleaning I spent a couple of hours splitting firewood (electric torque splitter) and filling both the house wood rack and my new porch wood rack. So basically I’m checking in to see if everybody’s relatively OK (in good enough shape & working internet access to check in counts) but will read everyone’s comments and the interesting new stuff at work tomorrow. {{{HUGS}}}
Wonder Woman!!!!!
:) Nah – Wonder Woman would be if I were using an 8-lb splitting maul like I did 30 years ago. heh.
bfitz, wish I had your energy! Kudos to you for doing all that!
Not sure I deserve the kudos – when you live alone, you do it or it doesn’t get done. But thank you anyway. :)
Good morning, meese! Monday …
I feel badly for the people of South Carolina caught in an “epic” rainfall that is leading to flooding and lives lost. But I wonder if they realize that their state government rejected the science of sea-level rise because it was an inconvenient truth that ran counter to the ideology of the Republican Party. So instead of being prepared, they are left saying inane things like “who could have predicted this?” Well, 97% of scientists, that’s who … including some from your own state.
Busy morning here. See all y’alls later!
Good morning Meese.
Have been following an issue in Detroit – which applies to other cities.
Black women raise money and awareness for rape kits
EnoughSAID has a website:
What is the point of having rape kits – if they are ignored?
Unbelievable. Horrifying,
Good for EnoughSAID
Having the kits lets them pretend they give one good god damn about dealing with the rape issue. Not only do they mostly not, they mostly think that the victim deserved it for one reason or other and know perfectly well that a number of those rapes were committed by the “boys in blue” and really don’t want to open up those ones.
Exactly. “Let’s shut those wimmens up by pretending we give a damn about them”.
Good morning, Moosekind, and welcome to another dreary day of downsizing! At least we have blue skies and sunshine today—50 F. right now, going up to 67 F.
People will be coming to cut a hole in our dining room wall, banish the ugly weeds from the garden, and so on. However, enough about my boring life.
Denise, I hope the women in Detroit succeed in their mission to get all the rape kits tested. What bugs me is that men—and they mostly are men—commit all these crimes and get away with it. It’s as if it’s just one more thing on their “to do” list.
Very sad about the floods in South Carolina. Weather has been the “breaking now” headline on GMA just about every day this year so far. I still feel outraged and heartsick about the hospital in Kunduz. There had BETTER be an apology by this country to MSF!
Back to business: half the furniture is leaving the house on Wednesday, so have to “downsize” the bedding and drawer contents of two bedrooms. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and beyond, and hello to the Lone Moose who took a little tour through Manchester, New Hampshire the other day!
Wow, you are in the midst of very heavy downsizing. Don’t forget to take the occasional nap.
Portlaw, naps are a thing of the past, sadly. No time.
As to the downsizing – “bless and release” is all I can think of. You don’t need it any longer. Somebody else does. Bless all parties concerned.
You’re a much nicer person than I am, bfitz! All I can think of is that if the house doesn’t sell, I’ll have three empty rooms and will have to get a job to pay back our IRAs. We’ve downsized those too, to pay for these repairs and whatnot.
The house will sell. When is the question. Since school has already started, ditto the federal fiscal year, you might not move it as fast as if you’d been doing this in July but it should still be sold by the end of the calendar year. A nice house in your area is always going to be in demand.
Eating breakfast, drinking tea, playing a Hozier tune in my head. (link is to most of his ACL set, so be warned, it’s long)
Had lunch with my old coach & workout group yesterday. If we’re FB friends, there are many pictures with me tagged. It was good to see him.
Got another follow up, this time with a dermatologist. Gets me out of the building for a few hours, at least. Happy Monday!
55 heading for 75 in Fay., AR and overcast. Going to be in the upper 70s for the next 10 days with lows in the 50s, so probably no more fires for a bit. I’m waiting for a meeting so will go back, read and fierce everybody’s comments from yesterday and today. Maybe I’ll even get time to read some of the other things – they all look interesting and I’ll get to the eventually. One of the nice things about the slower pace here at the Pond – when eventually comes I’ll still be able to find them :) Holding the good thought for everybody – but especially you East Coasters with the rains coming, if not there already. {{{HUGS}}}
Morning all, just a quick hi today. Denise, that is an inspiring story, I hope they succeed in getting at least some of those stockpiled rape kits processed so that rapists can be prosecuted.
The flooding in SC I fear is just a taste of what’s to come in the next few decades for low lying coastal areas – I cannot imagine how bad it would have been if the hurricane had actually made landfall. Shudder to think.
Be well and don’t drive yourselves crazy with chores everyone – I’m looking at you, Downsizer Diana! lol Although I know it all has to be done, and it will be crazy until you finish – but think of how relieved you will be when it’s all over!
Have a great day, all!
Thanks, Geordie! :)
Good morning, 49 and mostly sunny in Bellingham today. I’ll go to the pool soon and I hope to have some time in the garden. But first priority goes to my desk……time to pay bills again.
Pesky bills, needing payment every month!!!
I was in such a hurry this morning to check in and get to my projects delayed by a too-full weekend that I forgot to mention my weather.
It is 54 degrees right now on its way up to 62 … cloudy skies are in the forecast. Pretty much like yesterday. We will warm up tomorrow.
Now … back to it.
Good morning, meese! Tuesday …
It is 52 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 71 degrees. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast. This, from a weather alert, made me laugh out loud:
Does “fogged right up” sound very technical? I was expecting an ! after that to show surprise!!
President Obama has no more damns to give and will be stopping in Roseburg OR on Friday to meet with the families of the shooting victims. I hope he politicizes it … in an “uppity” way. Hillary Clinton pretty much said “we don’t need the NRA vote” with her release of a comprehensive gun reform package. She was never going to get West Virginia anyway … she is now an Obama Democrat and the white rural vote, duped into thinking that Democrats will come for their guns, will be lost to Democrats until they realize that Republicans don’t give a rats patootie about them.
Another busy morning here. See all y’all later!
Hillary is a HRC Democrat – but I hope she uses Bill’s “If you still have your guns, they lied…” on the sane gun owners. She’ll never get the insane ones which is a good thing – if she could get them, we wouldn’t want her in the White House. I think she’ll get a lot more of the white rural vote than most people expect. Especially once she turns Bill loose.
I actually hope she is an Obama Democrat: he built a coalition for the future. An HRC Democrat probably has too much DLC in her.
If she gets the rural white vote, fine. But she should not count on it and, like you said, if she has to dog whistle to their racism, we don’t want them or her.
I don’t think she is an Obama Democrat, certainly not on foreign policy. She is much more of an interventionist than he,. Her advocacy of a no fly zone in Syria brought out a rare jab from Obama
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/world/syria-exposes-split-between-obama-and-clinton.html
I think with all politicians, you have to distrust campaign rhetoric and look for a consistent record.
I agree about campaign rhetoric and looking at a consistent record … just not one that goes back to childhood. ;) I believe that people can change – we let President Obama evolve on gay rights, we should let the other candidates evolve on other things that they say they learned their lesson on.
I am unsure what to think about Secretary Clinton and foreign policy. As President Obama’s Secretary of State she was promoting his policies although I am sure she had opinions and also sure that some of her opinions formed the policies that we saw.
Foreign policy and international relationships are fluid … it is one of those areas where we have almost no control and where our options when something goes wrong are usually a choice between something bad or something awful. I will settle for hoping that the Obama Policy of “don’t do stupid stuff” is at least in the back of our next president’s mind.
I do know for a fact that every single Republican running will be worse on foreign policy than any Democrat we nominate.
My concern about Hillary Clinton, from 2008, was that she had to put forward a muscular foreign policy lest she be considered weak as in all girls are weak. I don’t see that in her this time around maybe because the Obama foreign policy has not been muscular and so she does not have to spit to show she is one of the guys. That should be freeing for her: let’s see what she does with this opportunity to simply be herself.
In 2008 not only did she have to overcome the “girls are soft” routine she also didn’t have the experience of being SoS. Things you might think are a good idea without that experience can turn out to be not so good once you’re in there. And I disagree with President Obama on the “no fly zone” – it has the multiple benefits of not putting American “boots on the ground”, not sending weaponry that appears to be finding its way into the hands of ISIL, and puts us in a very strong negotiating position. Hillary may or may not play “11th dimensional chess” but she is a stellar negotiator. She is always going to start from a position she doesn’t mind being negotiated out of.
She will build on Obama’s coalition and on his programs but she is her own person. She’s a lot further left than Obama on some things, not quite as left on others – her voting score while she was in the Senate was certainly left of his. The white rural voters she gets will be because of what good things she can bring to the table, not what bad things she can pander to. The thing is, she spent enough years as First Lady of AR to know what those rural voters need so she doesn’t have to pander to the bad stuff to get their attention.
Allergies are killing me. I’m amazed my cells have enough moisture in them to function, given the continuous exodus of water from my nose & eyes. Just incredible.
Eating breakfast, drinking tea. Checking FB, and Pat Rothfuss posts that a new part of Gilgamesh has been found. A museum bought a fragment of a tablet from a “shady character”. Hmmmm. However they got it, it sounds interesting.
Still got Hozier on my mind: Someone New – at ACL with the audience singing along. Adorable.
anotherdemocrat, is it the cypress trees that are causing your current misery? My daughter in Austin sometimes has to take to her bed for a day because her allergies are so terrible. Hope you’ll get some relief soon.
If it is something a plant puts in the air, my respiratory system hates it. Cedar, fall elm, ragweed…. all of it.
Never managed to control my own allergies so all I can offer is sympathy (and maybe increase your vitamin C intake).
Thanks for that link on the Gilgamesh story – so cool!
Wow for more of Gilgamesh!
Good morning, Moosekind! A sparkling October day, current temp 49 F., heading for a high of 74 F. Waiting for a telephone call and also waiting for the plumber. Then I want to go to the gym. Today will be another busy, horrible day of downsizing. There are workmen in the house putting in a new front door and a new door to the screened porch.
Was going to donate to Lupus, but when I called the number the recorded robot told me the office was closed on weekends and open Monday through Thursday. Silly me, I thought today was Tuesday and 9 a.m. was quite a good time to call if the office hours were 8 to 4. All right, Goodwill, here we come!
M’daughter in Austin said she was inspired by me to start organizing her own life, with wills, trusts, power of attorney, and so on. She and her fiance have been busy seeing lawyers. I’m so proud of her! She said she didn’t want Granddaughter, aged 21, to go through Downsizing Hell if Daughter and fiance were to die suddenly.
Yesterday it was only 66 F. even at 5 p.m. Amazing. One week we’re sweltering, the next having to light fires! Wishing a good day to all!
Well, of course, anyone can die suddenly and probably young people dying leaves a bigger mess because they don’t think about any of that and things are likely to be less organized.
I had to do all that back when I adopted my daughter … they needed proof that I had a plan for her if something would happen to me. It is easy to keep it up to date once you have something in place but taking that first step is often the challenge.
White healing energy coming your way and also to Austin for anotherdemocrat!
57 supposedly heading for 77 today in Fay., AR (yesterday never made it out of the 60s and I really wish I’d lit a fire last night because the house was 62 this morning). At least we’ve got sunshine today – just barely got 5 KWHs yesterday total – should get closer to 15 today. Allergies turn my mucus to sludge – spent a chunk of the night sitting up and scraping mucus (TMI?) and still have a headache. sigh.
Sending White Light/Divine Order/Green health and healing energy out in all directions. {{{HUGS}}}