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, 39 and cloudy in Bellingham. I really feel like I’m on the late left coast today…..I’m just waking up and you all are well into your day! I have an easy day ahead with a hair appointment this morning and Ava here this afternoon. She called last night to ask if Grandpa could pick her up after school, so of course he can :)
They will go to the museum to see an exhibit about birds and then she has a library book about making rag dolls to share with me. Both girls will be here on the 18th so I think they are plotting a sewing day.
I’m am still trying to get my day started! I have been scattering my energies hither and yon and getting caught up in phone conversations which are huge time wasters. I think I finally have a chance to catch my breath and will assess where I am and what I need to do the rest of the day.
Your day sounds wonderful!
Good Friday Morning Meese.
29 here in Saugerties going up to 42. Did not think I would catch any of the R debate – but got stuck having to make some fixes on my Sunday piece at Orange, and next thing I knew – it was on and live blog was up – what a horror show.
To get the taste of it out of my mouth and brain I searched the news and found the antidote – music!
The Grammy’s for life time achievement are called the “Special Merit Awards.”
The 2016 recipients are: Ruth Brown, Celia Cruz, Earth, Wind & Fire, Herbie Hancock, Jefferson Airplane, Linda Ronstadt, and Run-D.M.C.
Here’s a sample from some of them
Celia Cruz & The Fania All Stars – Quimbara – Zaire, Africa 1974
Earth, Wind & Fire – FANTASY (Live)
Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit, Live from Woodstock 1969
Y Andale, Linda Ronstadt
Music is a great idea!
I was on Twitter when the undercard debate started and that was pretty ugly. Why is Hillary Clinton’s marriage (Fiorina: “I actually love to spend time with my husband”) such an obsession with these folks? And they are all still running against President Obama, not “Democratic president Barack Obama” but Barack Obama personally. Yes, I get that your party needs a boogey man and a Black boogey man is even more effective. But President Obama is not running this year.
I have a few articles up in open tabs about the debate and will read them later.
But here is an article you might find interesting, Dee:
Not surprising. And this is not surprising at all:
Bolding mine. Women are taught from early on that women are incompetent and they see it reinforced in a society where men are overwhelmingly in positions of power, men make more money, and so on. Maybe a woman president will help that mindset – we definitely need more woman role models. I am doing my best to raise my daughter with the idea that there is nothing a woman can’t do but we have to undo centuries (millennia) of conditioning. The matriarchal societies that flourished in early human history belie the notion that women are unqualified. And I believe we lost a lot of our power by ceding it rather than having it taken away. Time to take it back.
“Losing our power by ceding it rather than having it taken away”: don’t know that I agree with that. When men make it impossible for a woman to earn a living to support herself and her children because of social intimidation and threats, how is that ceding power? Threatened with murder or starvation for myself and children, I think women would opt for the safer course.
I read once that Virginia Woolf sat down and thought about what if it had been Shakespeare’s sister who actually wrote all those plays? If people back then thought a woman had written them, they wouldn’t have been produced (always supposing that Wilhelmina Shakespeare could have found the spare time to do any writing in the first place). The film “Orlando,” a very strange little film, showed how ugly male-dominated society was in the 1600s. It still is. My own husband, after living under the same roof as a raging feminist for 48 years, still dislikes reading murder mysteries written by women.
Sigh. The hatefulness and misogyny persist to this day—think of Coulter’s Twit that Nikki Haley should be deported and last night’s declaration that the next four years will be worse than the last eight years if Hillary is elected. You’re right that a woman president would be a very strong role model for girls. I do hope she wins.
Of course not all of our power was ceded (most was grabbed) but when I see women who buy into the patriarchal notion that men must be in charge and women should not worry their pretty little heads about runnin’ stuff, I want to shake some sense into them. When we don’t actively demand our rights we are subtly telling those in power that we are fine with the status quo. And once a group has power and control the pathways to power it is 1000 times harder to get it back. It is like the gerrymandering of congressional districts. The Republicans took power in the states and set up districts that will lock in their power. If it looks like Democrats will start to make inroads, they simply tighten up the gerrymanders … and then add restrictions on voting as belts to their suspenders.
What we really need is for women of the next generation, with our help, to refuse to be treated as second class anything. I recall with horror when I found out that young women in the generation that started college in the 90s thought that the gains of women just dropped out of the sky and that they did not have to be feminists or womanists or even care about equal rights, equal pay, equal access, reproductive rights. You can’t let up because our rights are not enshrined in the constitution like the rights of white male landowners. Every right we have has been “granted” and can easily be ungranted if we let up.
Absolutely true, Jan. I too am appalled by young women who take such hardly won rights as we possess for granted. On the subject of ceding power, I think it was Marilyn French who described women who feel fine with patriarchal society as “caryatids.” They hold up the status quo.
What I greatly fear more than anything is that the right to abortion and contraception will be taken away. The right to abortion already has been taken away if you happen to be born in the wrong state and if you’re a member of the wrong socioeconomic class. If you don’t have the right to say what’s going to happen to your own body, you don’t have any rights. Even the right to vote becomes meaningless if you have no say over whether you can obtain contraception or abortion.
Good morning, meese! Friday …
It is 34 degrees in Madison and that is the expected daytime high as well. Cloudy skies in the forecast.
I can’t stay but will be back with my news snippets after I finish a few early morning tasks.
See all y’all later!
Another lousy night’s sleep. Ugh. I’m keeping an eye on the spacewalk this morning — can’t believe it’s the 1st by a British astronaut.
Sweet tributes to Alan Rickman at King’s Cross Station. And my earworm was U2’s cover of Everlasting Love till I went to youtube to get the video & it suggested Disappear. Just seeing that picture of Michael Hutchence made my head start playing that song.
Didn’t watch the Rethug debate last night. Let them fight amongst themselves. Did watch Rachel Maddow interview Hillary. That was really interesting.
Hope I can stay awake all day.
Thanks for that reminder! I try not to watch live TV because I get frustrated when I can’t fast forward through the commercials. I did DVR Rachel Maddow’s show and here is the video:
I hope you can stay awake all day, too! I have had a very busy week and when I am busy, I can’t sneak an afternoon nap – I miss that!
Good morning, Moosekind! It’s a brilliantly sunny morning, 27 F. at the moment in NoVa, going up to 51 F. This morning I’ll sort out some income tax stuff, get my hair done, and meet the Circle sisters for lunch. (I still call them that, even though we’ve disbanded the circle.)
Fell asleep during last night’s Rethug debate, which appears to have been nothing but name-calling anyway. Just saw an excellent GOS diary on Facebook that I somehow missed (probably because I avoid GOS a lot) by a 21-year-old who said he’d felt the Bern but recovered because after investigating, he discovered that Bernie has not laid out any policy positions. So he’s now changed to #HillYes.
Found a way to slog through heavy nonfiction. At the gym when I’m using the treadmill or elliptical, I read Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Climate Change vs. Capitalism. Yesterday I read a very interesting part. It was Francis Bacon who turned around the theory that the Earth was a living entity to be revered, feared, and treated with consideration. He laid the foundations for viewing the Earth as nothing but a resource from which riches could be extracted. James Watt, by inventing the engine, made it possible to fuel industries by burning coal instead of having to depend on a source of flowing water (that is, for water-powered mills).
We’re still extracting and poisoning the Earth and Gaia is dying. Sobering thoughts! Klein says there’s still time but—and this is a huge BUT—there must be the political will to act. The Rethugs refuse to govern at all. Look what’s happening to the drinking water in Flint, and consequently to the suffering population. Rick Snyder ought to be arrested, tried, imprisoned, and held up to scorn for “saving money” by using the poisoned water to “save money.”
Well, now that I’ve cheered everyone up, I’m going downstairs to breakfast. :) Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!
I don’t know if we will have the political will to act. The problem is that our system of government seems to create amnesia in people and we ping pong between political parties giving no one the long term power to fix things.
In the 1970s, the environmental movement started gaining traction and President Jimmy Carter was putting in place policies to deal with our overuse of fossil fuels (remember when there were long lines at the gas stations?). We thought it meant a real change but then Reagan cheated and won the 1980 election. Then we got Clinton and the environment started getting attention again. Then Bush cheated and won the 2000 election (are you seeing a pattern?). Obama has put Mother Earth back on our priority list but we are going to need more Democratic Party presidents … 8 years then 8 more years at least … to right-path us. It will be difficult because Americans forgot how sucky Republicans were in 4 short years in the 1970s and then 2 short years in the 00s. Some things require sustained effort and addressing climate change is one of them. There is not one single Republican presidential candidate who believes in climate change. Not one. We cannot let them get power back.
Good thing you read that diary on Facebook and not GOS – the berniebros went after that kid with a can opener. Not the idea of him changing candidates since apparently they don’t have an argument for why he should change back – a total ad hominem on whether he actually was a white male college student and whether or not he’d ever been a Bernie supporter in the first place. And making a real stink over the fact that he publicly asked for folks in HNV to proofread before he submitted it and didn’t state in his diary that it was a collaboration – even though it wasn’t – with the Hillary people. It was so bad several long-time people like mallyroyal wrote diaries protesting the behavior and I think several of the worst are on timeout (or at least being investigated by the Help Desk). Fortunately the HNV people have been very supportive and he’s weathering the s***storm fairly well as far as I can tell.
Mah Gawd, bfitz! Wish I knew whose on timeouts. I’m so nosy. I feel sorry for that kid. I haven’t written a diary for GOS since I got raked over the coals for my two Hillary diaries last year.
Not sure who got timeouts – just going by some comments in mallyroyal’s diary about that. But yeah, I may or may not write another “register voters” diary but I’m damn-sure not going to write a Hillary diary. Not in that atmosphere.
Above freezing again this Friday morning – apparently we got cloud cover just after sundown that didn’t clear until just before sunrise – heading for mid 40s today as we slide back into winter. Crazy day. Had to pick up something before work and it wasn’t ready so late getting in, then lots of stuff to deal with until the meeting started. Now that it has, I’ve got a few minutes to check in with everybody before I get back to trying to clear my desk. 3-day weekend will be nice. As in, nice to not have to come to work. The daytime highs will be above freezing but hard freezes for the overnight lows. Thanks for the Rachel Maddow link – I’ll listen to it when I get a minute. Everybody have a lovely day. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 32 and light rain in Bellingham. Note to self…..morning coffee tastes better when I remember to add the coffee. I’d best pay attention today! I’m going to the pool this morning and then I need to do something outdoors. The national zeitgeist is getting to me.
Interesting observation by Nancy LeTourneau…..
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2016_01/quick_takes_30059290.php
I’m not investing a lot of energy in either Iowa or NH. I’m already looking at SC – where Hillary has super strong support.
Then comes Super Tuesday March 1:
Alabama 60 D, 50 R Open
American Samoa caucus (D) 10 Open
Arkansas 37 D, 40 R Open
Colorado caucus79 D, 37 R Closed
Georgia 116 D, 76 R Open
Massachusetts 116 D, 42 R Mixed
Minnesota caucus 93 D, 38 R Open
Oklahoma 42 D, 43 R Closed
Tennessee 76 D, 58 R Open
Texas 252 D, 155 R Open
Vermont 26 D, 16 R Open
Virginia 110 D, 49 R Open
Here’s an old quote about it:
Thanks Dee……reading these words makes me feel better.
Interesting … so it is not the uncommitted now committing to Bernie but the once committed backing off and deciding to take a closer look at both candidates. Nothing wrong with that; I hope everyone who caucuses is thoughtful and weighs the pros and cons of each candidate.
HAHAHA!! “Note to self…..morning coffee tastes better when I remember to add the coffee”. Indeed!! I have on more than one occasion set my coffeepot for the next morning and forgotten the water – turns out you need both!
Have a great day; offline and outside sounds good except maybe not here where it is really cold right now and something wet is spitting from the sky off and on. ;) I might settle for offline sitting on my couch playing Words With Friends.
Morning all – well, still barely morning. Slept very late this morning, after my struggles with my back yesterday I guess I needed to. My dogs are so good – they don’t wake me up, they just wait patiently to go out. Warmer and rainy here, but we’ll get the chilly weather back by Monday, I think.
I am totally unsurprised at the results of that study of student evaluations of female teachers – I experienced that phenomenon for my entire 20 year teaching career, and it’s one of the reasons I couldn’t wait to get out. Having to hear from the deans every year in my annual meeting about problemmatic evaluations pushed me to be basically easier and easier on the students, which they might have liked better but which I think did them no favors. Based on the many letters from former students I got over the years, thanking me for pushing them hard in class, I firmly believe students can’t really evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher until they’ve been out of school for a couple of years. Now, obviously, there can be serious problems that students rightfully should point out to an administration – if a teacher is truly abusive in some way in class, or habitually misses classes or something, that kind of thing needs to be dealt with. The problem is that the last couple of generations of students I taught have trouble discerning the difference between demanding teaching, which they should want, and abusive teaching.
I also think my women students, from the early 90’s to now, consistently do hold themselves back in class, compared to the men – the women typically are afraid to raise their hands if they’re not 100% sure they’re right, whereas the men have no problem, generally, throwing answers out there whether they’re right or not. This is a vast overgeneralization, of course, but it was a troubling pattern. These are by and large young women from privileged and protected backgrounds, who nonetheless hold themselves back, and it was hurtful to see.
I spent yesterday flat on my back watching Galaxy Quest and then Sense and Sensibility in my own private memoriam for Alan Rickman. I see the Oscar nominations were announced yesterday – it’s an indicator of what a flawed system they have at the Academy for nominating performances that he never got a nomination in his entire career. Here is an actor who created two indelible characters (at least) – Hans Gruber in Die Hard, and Prof. Snape in the Harry Potter movies – that people remember and appreciate for long years after the movies came out; he made every movie he was in better. If that kind of skill isn’t worthy of award recognition, it’s hard to understand what is. And don’t get me started on the lack of diversity in the nominations this year – again! – NO black or Latino actors nominated, despite great performances from Idris Elba, Michael B. Jordan and others. Chris Rock is hosting the Oscars this year – he is going to roast them for this all-white parade, I am sure.
Ok, I am going to try to make a chicken, mushroom and bacon pie today or tomorrow, if I can find sheets of puff pastry – my grocery store didn’t have any last weekend, I’ll try another store today. I still remember the little chicken and mushroom pies from Marks and Spencers in London, when I lived there for a year as a 20 year old, so I’m going to try to recreate them with a British recipe I found on the internet.
Have a great day everyone!
How’s your back doing today?
I have been pondering your comments about teachers and trying to remember my own college days. It was a very long time ago and, because I finished my degree as a part-time student, I was not part of the university culture. I already had a job and a career and wanted the piece of paper to make sure that I was not going to miss any raises or promotions because of an educational limitation.
It would seem to me, though, that students should want their teachers to be tough on them, to teach them valuable things that they would need in later life. But I can see that in today’s job market, any edge a person can get (A’s versus B’s?) is grasped at, and it sounds like, demanded. I see the local school district wigged out about the number of kids not going to college, even when it is not a good fit for some kids, and the pressure they put on kids in high school to take AP courses to get a head start. Hey, how about getting the fundamentals down and enjoying high school as the last time in your life when you have few responsibilities!
I don’t remember anyone asking me to evaluate my teachers but I think the only one I would have given a fail to was a Finance teacher in graduate school who wanted the students to consider him god. I ended up getting an F in that class and decided not to finish my MBA because life is too short to spend it trying to please people whose opinion is unimportant.
Good morning, meese! Saturday …
It is 21 degrees in Madison with a daytime high of 22 degrees. We are dropping into the deep freeze today with tomorrow morning’s temperature expected to be -13. The wind chills could get to 40 below. I am very glad that I have nowhere I need to go except maybe stock up on provisions.
I had a chance to scan the news and it is interesting. They finally arrested a Bundyite, a guy named Fluffy Unicorn(!). He decided to “use” one of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife vehicles for a trip into town for snacks. These guys and their snacks!! Apparently in America it is still illegal to steal a government vehicle … occupying government land, not so much. Some of the locals are finally getting irritated with them. The city and county wants them to pay for the costs of the occupation and the rancher whose fence they ripped down to “demonstrate open lands” is angry at them. He had his crews rebuild the fence and said he has no problem with BLM. No one likes these Bundys, they should just go home.
I am trying to ignore the Republican primary because there is nothing we can do about it and it is pretty ugly. But the Cruz v Trump cage match is fascinating. Charlie Pierce on Ted Cruz and his birther crisis:
When you depend on dupable people, willing to believe that Barack Obama is a Kenyan, to get elected, you run the risk that those same dupable people will be duped into believing another lie, one you prefer they wouldn’t.
The buzz now is that the Republican powers that be have resigned themselves to Trump winning the nomination and are now working to carve out their piece of his action. One Twitter wag said this frees the Republican Party from having to worry about minorities. :)
The people of Flint MI filed a class action lawsuit against the state and the governor is demanding that the federal government declare a state of emergency for the unnatural disaster his government caused. I am torn about this. I don’t want people to get sick and die but at what point does a state government have a responsibility for its non-wealthy citizens? Michigan gave over a billion dollars in tax cuts to their businesses and individuals and now they are crying to the federal government for help? How about you INCREASE TAXES to pay for the fix? The people of Flint MI should sue Grover Freaking Norquist.
I will put up the president’s address and put more news there. I have a bunch of accounting things I need to do that got set aside because of my busy work week.
See all y’alls later!!
Good morning Meese
Thank you Jan for some early morning Charlie, to go with my coffee.
My local Macy’s is closing. Sorry for the folks losing jobs – but I cancelled my charge account there back when Donald Trump became their “spokesperson” and was doing the birther thing. A lot of other folks have done the same.
It is amazing to me that the Republican Party establishment has essentially thrown in the towel on trying to Beat Trump. Their chosen one, Rubio, is imploding and they are realizing that Cruz is in many ways worse than Trump. There is some concern, though, about what Trump coattails are going to look like. Can the Republicans win down ballot on “Mexicans are rapists” and “Deport Nikki Haley”? They have always been able to spray deodorizer on some of their uglier policy positions and convince more moderate Republicans to keep voting for them. There is no way to get the stench out of Trumpism. I think our candidate can beat Trump but it would be a bonus if Trumpism gave us a shot at winning back Congress.
I don’t usually push diaries from orange – but this one is important – about a children’s book celebrating George Washington’s happy slave chef Hercules, and one of his enslaved daughters
Please check it out and sign the linked petition – I have already gone over to Amazon and written a negative review – as have many others.
Denise, will check out the diary and sign the petition!
Thanks Di
I’m not usually online on Saturday’s but I needed to look something up so just dropped in to check who was doing what. Thanks for the link. I’ve gone over there and signed the petition.
My group is doing their training out in a state park this morning so it’s on me to get myself out there. For right now, I’m eating breakfast & watching Up. Must get myself out of the house today.
Good morning, Moosekind! It looks like Brigadoon outside with grey skies and heavy fog. It’s 40 F. right now in NoVa, going up to 48 F.
Starting the day livid because one of my funds said “Your tax form is available!” and invited me to retrieve it from the website. Instead of showing me a login screen with my user name and password they threw security questions at me. They’re not MY questions. I would never have picked them as security questions because they’re all based on someone who had a normal life. My school career involved moving from country to country, and when I should have gone to high school the governor closed the schools, then we moved during my senior year, so I never had a “best friend in high school.” I can’t even call Janus on Monday morning and give them a piece of my mind because Monday is a holiday.
Oh, well, enough whining. Feel nervous about the stock market (most of my IRA is in it), nervous that Bernie might overtake HRC somewhere beyond Iowa and NH, and nervous about the idea of starting another reducing diet. Hate dieting.
Hope it’s a good day for everyone at the Pond and Beyond!
I have the same thing about security questions. “The name of the street you grew up on” – complete nonsense. “Your elementary school mascot” – I went to 3. And yeah high school. 9th grade my parents were in Algeria & I was in Austria, 10th everyone was here in Texas, 11th & 12th my parents were in Saudi & I was back in Austria. So a lot of the pre-done security questions just don’t work for me.
Yes, anotherdemocrat, it’s so stupid. “What was the name of your third-grade teacher?” I was in a country where they didn’t HAVE “third grade.” When we moved to Singapore and I went to a British school, they decided I was backward because I didn’t know the twelve times tables. I was eight, and they stuck me in the Mixed Infants class. When I’d learned the tables I was moved to my proper age group. There I regularly outshone the others, winning First Place in School three terms in a row, to my father’s never-ending delight. ;)
I don’t mind the ones that ask favorite color, or favorite sport, or even the name of your first cat or dog – the one’s you object to I would have difficulty with as well.
Morning all! Sunny and mild here this morning, don’t hate me. It will get chilly again in a few days, I think.
The debasement of American politics now seems virtually complete if the Republican establishment is accepting Trump as their candidate – aren’t these the people who a few weeks ago were saying they’d vote for Hillary over Trump? Yeah, right, I didn’t believe that either – Republicans ALWAYS value power over principle, and since the only thing they really care about is protecting the upper class’s low taxes, they can swallow just about anything else. I mean, they accepted Sarah Palin, the Snowbilly Grifter herself, they can accept anyone.
My back is doing better, although it was still a bit tender yesterday. I need to go to the grocery store but I may put it off until tomorrow, just not to take any chances. And it’s opera day! Today, a very rare thing, a broadcast from the Met of Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers”, an opera that has not been performed at the Met for 100 years. Great cast and in my view, you can’t go wrong with Bizet – Carmen is right at the top of my favorite operas for melody and story, so I’m looking forward to this. I’ve heard the famous duet for baritone and tenor, as every opera buff has – it’s gorgeous and the only part of the opera that is regularly performed in concerts – so I’m psyched to hear the rest of it!
Have a great day everyone!
Enjoy your opera Sis – and glad the back is better.
Geordie, ditto what Denise said. Oh, how my mother would have loved listening to “The Pearl Fishers”! I can’t listen because I’ll be having a mani and pedi.
Good morning, 42 and raining in Bellingham today. My need to be outdoors but not be soaking wet continues….such a dilemma! So yesterday I made some progress sorting and moving things in the basement storage area. Last year’s medical issues derailed my plans, so I hope I can keep plugging away at simplifying our life here.
Regardless of the rain I hope to find a few primroses today.
Overcast and just above freezing in Fay., AR. My battery died. Friends are a true blessing – as a friend picked me up, took me to finish my shopping, helped me get the corroded dead battery out, took me to get the new one, helped me put it in. So I only had the cost of the battery itself and not a tow truck or anything like that. My toes are cold and my fingers are numb. When I finish looking up some stuff I’m going to get a fire going and remedy those conditions. :) Hope everyone has a great day.