Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: June 12th through June 18th

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.

           

32 Comments

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

    Morning low of 60 in Madison WI, on its way up to 80. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

    • Even Madison, a place that historically had little gun violence, has seen a dramatic uptick in shootings. Guns are too easy to get and we are seeing what an armed America looks like. The NRA scares everyone into thinking they need a gun and the headlines create more fear and more gun purchases. Now, when people are angry or unhinged, they shoot.

      • I hope we can get gun legislation passed – I really think HRC took a brave position to go up against the damn NRA.

        You know I am not anti-gun. I am however totally behind restricting who can buy them.

  2. So there was a West Wing reunion yesterday here in Austin & I didn’t know a thing about it. Grrr! Lawrence O’Donnell (among others) was here. I’d have liked to shake hands, seen the reunion (the Paramount theater was packed to the rafters & it’s a big venue. I sent a tweet to Lawrence that I hoped he had a good time here & he liked it.

    Oh — and fuck the NRA. Watching coverage of the Orlando shooting, listening to an agonized mother that doesn’t know if her son is dead or alive, but 20 people are dead…. If I got my hands on a TARDIS, top priority would be preventing their rise.

    On a good note — I walked yesterday. Waited a bit late, the hottest part of the day, but I got in 1.4 miles so yay.

  3. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s a gorgeous day here in NoVa, with a clear blue sky. Current temp. is 85F.—can that be right? Don’t believe it. Going up to 89 F. today, so hamburgers for dinner, people! I’ll prepare what goes on the burgers, but Dearly will have to cook them on the grill.

    It is horrific about the 20 people dead and others wounded. What is WRONG with this country? Don’t tell me, I know, the NRA. Only way to get rid of them for them to turn their guns on themselves. Ain’t gonna happen, they have metal detectors that screen out gun-toters at their meetings.

    Today would have been Anne Frank’s 87th birthday. What would she have thought of the world today? Sometimes, when I think of books that have changed my life, I think of all the ones I’ve read, hers exerted the biggest influence.

    She’ll be one of my “better goddesses” for the rest of my life.

    In other news, still sore from what my fiendish trainer made me do on Thursday. We worked on legs. Hope I can make myself go to the gym before the race.

    Have a good Sunday, all!

  4. Not entirely sure what the weather is doing today – sunny at the moment, rain predicted – but the A/C kicked on at 8:30 and I have that puppy set at 78. Sigh. Watered this morning because this time of year I can’t depend on rain – being enough if it happens at all. Still battling fleas. I think I’m winning, but not sure. 1st-world problem while our country is dealing with 3rd-world problems like the shooter in Orlando.

    I was raised on John Wayne movies – check your guns when you come into town (i.e. are out in public/around bunches of people). Not sure what these people were raised on, besides an NRA-enforced nasty psychedelic something or other. Guns do not make you strong, safe, right, or superior. Guns have only one purpose, to kill. Hunting may or may not be a valid reason to use them. (Do you eat what you kill? If you do, good hunting. If not, killing for fun is psychotic and you need a shrink – after those guns are gotten out of your hands.) But defense isn’t even possible. A shield is a defensive tool that can be used as a weapon. A sword is an offensive weapon that can be used in defense. A hammer or screwdriver are tools that can be used as weapons of offense or defense. With guns its all offensive – the “defense” part is where you went offensive before “they” could go offensive. FOR MOST PROBLEMS, GUNS ARE NOT THE ANSWER. And I am so glad that Hillary wants to deal with not only the immediate problem of getting/keeping guns out of the hands of those who should not have them, but also wants to deal with the national mindset that sees guns as the answer.

    More 1st-world problems – my George Foreman electric grill died yesterday (fortunately just as I finished – the residual heat cooked the last batch, just took longer) and the muffin cups separated from my muffin tin this morning as I was getting the muffins out. So. I am set for next week – peanut butter and jam muffins, breakfast sausage, pork-veggie-pasta soup for lunches, pork chops for dinner – but I’m going to have to spend some money before I can bake muffins (as muffins – I can go back to baking them in a cake pan and cutting them into squares instead) or grill breakfast sausages. Also when I opened my “case” of BRM gluten-free flour, it’s the wrong kind – rice instead of bean flour mixture – so I’ve got to take it back. Except they may not take it back as I no longer have the receipt. Not sure what I will do with it if they don’t. I can’t eat and don’t want or like that much rice flour. I’ll manage. Goddess knows those aren’t anything like serious problems. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  5. Dear Goddess, it’s not 20 people dead in the nightclub shooting, it’s FIFTY!

    Fifty dead and 53 injured! Jesus Christ, even for this country that’s horrendous!

    Goddamn stupid gun nuts! Throw yourselves off a cliff, why dontcha.

  6. Good morning, 57 and partly cloudy in Bellingham. We enjoyed dinner and a visit with our grand girls last night and will have lunch with our daughter, her husband, and our grandson today. It’s fun to be with them and to feel the estate selling blues easing a bit.

    Best wishes to all for a relaxing and safe Sunday.

  7. Just a brief check in today, so heartsick about the attack on LGBTQ people in Orlando, just down the road about 60 miles from me. I am also sickened by the media’s enabling Republicans like King and Scott and others to rush to TV and put this horror squarely in the “Islamic Terrorism!” box, when it seems clear it was a combination of factors – an unstable and violent young man, by the account of his ex-wife, some attachment to ISIS based on his 911 call at the time of the shooting pledging allegiance to ISIS, and above all homophobia. He targeted a well known gay club that was having a widely publicized Latino night – that is not an accident or a target of opportunity. He wanted to murder gay people. He may have some connection to ISIS, we’ll find out I imagine, but I am outraged at these politicians glossing over the homophobia in order to bolster fear and hatred of Islam.

    But, you know, we can’t stop people hating gays, we can’t stop people becoming religious fundamentalists, but there is one thing we can stop – NOBODY NEEDS AUTOMATIC KILLING MACHINES! It’s STILL about the guns, always about the guns.

    Ok, I have to stop ranting, hoping Pres Obama has wise and tough words for us shortly.

    • If the Rs were serious about the problem of “terrorism” instead of making mouth noises on their way to the bank depositing their NRA campaign “donations” they’d reinstitute the assault weapons ban the R Congress let lapse to stop arming the terrorists.

      And President Obama has had to make that speech too many times already.

  8. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Sonnet From the Tony Awards

    My wife’s the reason anything gets done
    She nudges me towards promise by degrees
    She is a perfect symphony of one
    Our son is her most beautiful reprise.
    We chase the melodies that seem to find us
    Until they’re finished songs and start to play
    When senseless acts of tragedy remind us
    That nothing here is promised, not one day.
    This show is proof that history remembers
    We lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger;
    We rise and fall and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer
    And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.
    I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story
    Now fill the world with music, love and pride.

  9. Good Morning Meese
    I’ve been up since the 3AM “Let the Dogs Out” routine – I spend my time while waiting for them to do their bizness catching up on twitter. Figgered I’d share a few tweets here.

    56 and cloudy here in Saugerties.
    Off to read the news

  10. Good morning, meese. Monday …

    Checking in from NoSpeed Internetville. Tethered to my cellphone hotspot to catch up on a few work projects.

    It was a good weekend to be mostly offline. I am so sick of the GOP death cult forcing their shoot-em-up mentality on us. There is no reason … zero … none … for a person to be able to buy an assault weapon. And the insanity of not merging the Do Not Fly list with the Do Not Sell Weapons To list! The Republicans own this one. But in an election year that already features scared GOPers with the Trump boat anchor tied around their necks, nothing will be done. And because the victims in Orlando are people who the GOP doesn’t think deserve to live anyway, there will be no hue and cry from their constituents for action. :(

    See all y’all later!

    • Yikes, Jan, sorry about the Internet outage! How I hate it when that happens!

      For me, it’s like being marooned on a desert island. For you, it’s worse because you make your living on it.

      Hope it’s fixed soon!

      • I am travelling and the place I am staying has slow speed Internet. There were a couple of projects I wanted to get a few things done on and I can connect for brief periods to my work network but it is slow going.

        My phone works but it is not the ideal way to connect.

  11. Good morning, Meese. Another beautiful summer day with a clear blue sky and a breeze. The breeze must be blowing the pollution away because there’s no haze.

    Still feeling heartsick because of the shooting. Someone on FB pointed out there were 247 murders of black people in East St. Louis, but I didn’t take in the year it happened. If that’s a fact, then we’ve had almost a hundred years of mass murders.

    Those tweets are extremely telling, Denise, especially the one about “today’s” and the list of mass murders in Australia in the last 20 years.

    Idiocracy prevails in this country.

  12. I keep playing over & over in my head:

    And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.

    My alarm went off late, and I have no energy after yesterday & it is hot already at 6am so I skipped walking today. I had lunch with my best friend, the cancer survivor. We talked about all the other stuff that had made this a hard week. The Stanford rapist isn’t getting off completely scott free, but let’s call it what it is — 3 months in jail is unpunished. There is social media now, and more awareness, so maybe his life will end up being affected. Oh — and Oscar Pistorius is in the news, being sentenced for murder (finally). His lawyer says he’s “broken”. Right.

    Anyway, I will hope once again that enough people will be outraged that we will do something about guns. But I don’t really believe that. Or that we will do something about homophobia. Wish I had a more optimistic post for Monday morning.

  13. 69 at dawn heading for mid-80s – we got the afternoon shower yesterday (1/2″) that cooled things back down a bit (turned the A/C back off) and are predicted to have the same today. We shall see.

    Haters gonna hate and there’s not much we can do about that. But we can damn sure stop arming them will military weaponry! And we can damn sure start enforcing the “don’t sell any guns to these guys” lists. And oh yeah, we can damn sure let the CDC start tracking our most serious epidemic. We may not be able to stop the hate but we can render the haters impotent. Yes we can needs to turn into yes we will right now – and yes we are before the next potential mass shooting.

    Gots stuff to do. Trying to get the energy to do it. Maybe more coffee. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  14. Morning all. hot, sunny and muggy, another summer day in Florida.

    Catching up on my twitter feed this morning, I see the Donald has progressed to implying our President is a terrorist – allrighty then. Hillary was at least given a chance to say some sensible stuff on the morning programs, apparently, but Trump was so bad, even the Morning Joe crowd on MSNBC were criticizing him. Obviously all this will appeal to his base, but I hope it won’t broaden his appeal – I just never know how good sense will really play to the American electorate.

    Well, off to get some stuff done – have a great day everyone – I leave you with the video of Ken Burns’ fantastic critique of Trump (and some other things) in his Stanford commencement address yesterday.

    • Thanks for the Burns speech! Here is the transcript. I have not had time to read it yet but I heard it was great. “Vichy Republicans”, brilliant.

    • I am not sure what the purpose of the Trump crazy speech was. The people it appealed to are already firmly in his camp. It would be more likely to peel off a few fence-sitters who are alarmed by his rhetoric. My daughter was worried about the notion of a Trump presidency and I told her that Democrats outnumber Republicans … we just need to vote. She wishes she could vote this year but will have to wait and use her first vote to beat Scott Walker.

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