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 …
Morning low of 21 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 36. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Good morning, Moosekind! What a temperature drop we had yesterday—from 70 F. in the early afternoon to 48 F. with a freezing wind and one or two drops of rain! The newspooper yesterday confirmed that we’re in drought mode in this area.
The news this morning concerns two moose who were incased in ice in a remote village (Unalakleet) in Alaska. It seems they started fighting over a gurrl moose, locked horns, and fell into the water. Then they froze. Two men on a hike from a nearby camp found them and rescued the carcasses for dog food. Yikes!
The other news isn’t good, so I won’t comment. My cold, now in its fourth week, seems determined to cling to me like a lover. Buy Kleenex stock, friends! My face is healing.
Our elder son invited us to dinner last night as he was making Beef Burgundy. During dinner he told me I was not to bring up anything political at Thanksgiving. “We’ve moved on.” I pointed out that I hadn’t said one word about politics or Thing all evening and that he was the one who’d brought it up. DIL backed me up on this. “At Thanksgiving,” I said, “we will discuss dogs, babies. flowers, and smooth, round rocks.”
Feel as if I’ve already said everything there is to say. BTW, if anyone wants to travel to Northern Virginia for the Million Woman March in January, you’ll have free room and board with yrs truly! We can take the Metro into DC or all contribute to a Lyft driver to get us there (45 minutes, normally). My house will sleep five others comfortably or even six, if someone doesn’t mind sleeping on the sofa.
The Moose is acting up, which means I have to clear my preferences, but I don’t have time to do that right now. I need to cook breakfast for Miss Pink Cheeks and Grandpa. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!
I guess I understand people wanting to “move on” and being sick of hearing about it – we have been living and breathing this election for about 15 months and it is a little more difficult for us. For some, it is just another election, someone new is president and life goes on. Maybe it will work out that way and we are alarmed for no reason although I have my doubts.
But in some ways they are right – we need to let go of the things we can’t change because not doing so will begin to impact our health. We really do not want the Electoral College to change the results of the election unless they uncover some sort of massive fraud (which is unlikely).
So, we need to proceed as though our elected officials care about keeping us safe and make sure they know our positions on issues that are important to us. If our Republican representatives only hear from their Republican constituents they will think they are safe to continue with their anti-people agenda. We at least need to have them stop and think about the next election and worry about an anti-Trump backlash in 2018.
Electorally, we won the popular vote and the margin in some of the states we lost was razor thin. We need to take comfort in the knowledge that our principles were not repudiated, we don’t need to give up on our values and our commitment to diversity but we may need to let the heat burn off the electorate – they were out of power for 8 years and they are really angry. They were determined to have someone from other than the Party of Obama and it did not matter who (or what!). If Hillary had won the electoral vote, the election would have been declared rigged and instead of peaceful demonstrations there would be a bloody war.
President Obama said to trust in our institutions so I am going to do that and hope that we end up with just an ordinarily awful Republican administration until we can win back Congress.
We don’t go anywhere for Thanksgiving any longer so we are safe from politics talk for the time being except in our own little echo chamber. :)
Thanks for your very sensible comment, Jan. Well put. I feel better already.
Men find it easier to move on, because to them it’s just another election, albeit one with unfortunate results. Women have seen the destruction of a lifelong dream of seeing a woman president in the White House. Those of us of a certain age will go to our graves without seeing it.
GOS has been full of good ideas lately. In addition to calling my (fortunately Democratic) senators re Medicare and Social, I can do what someone else advocated: sending postcards to people who would not take our online emails. Yesterday at the Post Office I bought 20 prestamped postcards. As the very nature of postcards precludes enclosing any lovely anthrax spores, they’re more likely to reach Paul (Granny-killer) Ryan and Mitch McTurtle. In my experience, when you email a person on the Hill, you have to live in that person’s state or your email gets kicked out.
Re Thanksgiving—as it happens, everyone at our Thanksgiving dinner is a Democrat. They’re not necessarily Hillary supporters, but some of them have a cultural past of being discriminated against. Someone once said, “Every Jewish baby is a slap in the face of Hitler,” so I will just smile at my newest grandson and think of that.
Later!
Great idea about post cards! You are right, mail gets there too late to help and I know for a fact that email just triggers a bot response. I really don’t want Ron Freaking Johnson having even my throwaway email accounts so I will call his office from my cell phone.
Healthcare has to be where we put our energy – people’s lives were changed for the better when Medicare was passed and when the ACA was passed. We can’t let the Republicans drag us back to the gilded age where people’s bodies were used up building the wealth of the 1% and then tossed to the side to die.
Diana, if you haven’t been to the dr about that “cold” please go. It may be what we used to call walking pneumonia. {{{HUGS}}} and Healing Energy.
Thank you, bfitz! I had a pneumonia shot last week. It was called Prevnar-13. I’ll look up the symptoms of walking pneumonia and see if they include unending production of a certain unmentionable substance, coughing all night (didn’t last night because I took cough medicine), and a voice that sounds like a heavy truck rumbling across a gravel driveway.
If that’s what it is, I’ll email my quack.
Good morning all
Trying to find my center this morning. 37 degrees here in Saugerties – we have rain and snow mix in the forecast.
I am looking forward to our campus teach-in on Dec. 1st
What will it involve, Denise?
Some things that will be covered:
How the election played out and what that has to do with the Voting Rights Act
Immigration/Sanctuary Campus
Political Education gerrymandering (looking toward midterm elections)
building broad coalitions (united front) resistance to fascism
Sounds excellent!
Brrrr! It’s 36 degrees here. Woah. Naturally I did very little yesterday, no long walk. Maybe this afternoon, since I don’t have to cook. I have enough lunch for the work week & bought an Amy’s mushroom risotto bowl for Thursday. Anyway, I’m chilling on the couch, waiting for Joy Reid’s show to start.
Right around freezing at dawn, not sure which side as I was apparently visited by a raccoon overnight – the bird water dish was overturned. Still 37 heading for 57 and sunny. Got 6.77 KWHs yesterday. Hoping for at least as good today.
It’s getting so I feel like I’m living two lives. The world is turning as it always has. While it’s the “new normal” the seasons are progressing as they always do. The daily and weekly routines are the same. And at least for the next year unless I get fired or hit by a bus or something this will not change no matter who is doing what in either Little Rock or DC. (We won our local elections so really nothing changes there except whatever might be impacted by state or federal funding cuts.) And yet there is the amorphous dread upsetting my tummy and mucking with my already disturbed sleep patterns. The knowledge that the coming administration will unleash, unless we can find a way to block it, all the worst of America and people I know and love will be impacted and may die because of it. My personal worry is Social Security – if that is put back off limits I will be OK. I’m an old white lady living in a mostly blue dot in a small blood red state – I’ll be safe because I’ll be ignored. That makes me feel just about as good as being up 1400′ and 800 miles from the coast when Ike hit – half my relatives live on the Gulf Coast.
Well, I’ve finished my Sunday morning routine. Am about to get some more coffee and head for GOS. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{{HUGS}}}}
We have to call our senators every day, bfitz. If they record massive amounts of phone calls from citizens re Social and Medicare, apparently that has some impact. And it’s local offices you have to call, not national.
I’m not sure mine have local offices – but I’m going to check, of course. By local I mean up here in NW AR and not just in Little Rock.
This, bfitz: “I feel like I’m living two lives”
I have to keep plugging away because I have a teenage daughter to raise and a business to run. So I have to put a brave face on that while inwardly worrying like hell about her future – our future. The seasons are progressing, it will be winter soon and then spring and then summer again. But right now it feels as though we have suffered a cataclysm that will manifest in the most awful ways on January 20th. People in Wisconsin know what it is like to have the social compact discarded and the things we care deeply about irreparably harmed. But we always had the federal government, the Obama Administration, as the second level safety net. Now that will be gone.
We in the South never had a state-level safety net to shred. Our only hope was federal. Which in a sense is why I think the corporatist Rs will find a way to save it. The easiest for them would be to “nuke” the nuclear option so we Dems can filibuster anything like that and “take the blame”. That way they can continue to vote with their party but we’ll still have that safety net. Boozman doesn’t have to worry about re-election for 6 more years and he’ll be re-elected in NW AR as long as he wants to run, but he is R-WalMart rather than TP or christofascist like Cotton, so I think he’ll help us on this. Not much else, but this.
Morning all. Cold front moved in and it got into the 30’s last night, and will again the next couple of nights – which is fine with me, I like a bit of cooler weather.
Dee, what a great diary you wrote this morning at Dkos! I’ve commented over there, won’t repeat it here, but I’m bookmarking your diary for future reference, particularly if any of my students want to know what they can do.
For myself, calling my Congress critters about ACA, Medicare and Social Security will be my first focus – I may write an op ed for our local paper directed at everyone, no matter who they voted for, for whom Medicare and Social Security are important. We are really going to need to convince apathetic voters that the Republicans, not just Trump, are a threat to their immediate well being in order to make progress in taking back Congress, without which a Democratic President will be hamstrung even if we win in 2020.
Everyone have a great day!
Please link those here!!
‘Each One Teach One:’ A call for partisan, community political education and action
(It saves me having to weed through the things that make my eyes – and soul – hurt)
Good morning, 56 and cloudy in Bellingham. I’m finally sleeping again but my brain seems very foggy and it’s hard to find and keep a focus. So another day of busy work and T Day prep. We’ll have a simple gathering this year but it still involves a few flowers and cooking. Fortunately I can just “do it” without to much thought.
Best wishes to all for a restful Sunday.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 19 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 36. Sunny skies are in the forecast. Yesterday it did not officially get over freezing. Winter!
President Obama held his last foreign press conference in Peru yesterday. He is now officially the calmer-in-chief as he seeks to tamp down alarm from our allies and trading partners … and us! I saw the knives out for him on Twitter (c’mon, you guys!) because of his conciliatory tone. Have they not been paying attention for the last 12 years?? This is the “no red states no blue states” guy, a man who has been treated like crap for 8 years and has never lashed out in public. He is also a constitutional law professor who believes in the constitution and the enduring institutions of America. I can only hope he is right. I am less confident that turning the keys over to the party whose stated goal in 2009 was to make America a failed nation – so that Democrats would lose elections – will end well. Our political enemy is not Trumpism, by the way, it is Republicanism – Trump is just the latest ugly face of it.
Short school week this week as we commemorate the genocide of the native people of North America. As always, we will take the days off that are given to us and celebrate in our own way. On Wednesday, I will hunt and gather at our local grocery store and bakery and on Thursday we will eat a meal, enjoy each other’s company and thank the goddess for her bounty.
See all y’all later!
Good morning Meese
We had a little snow last night – it’s cold here this morning – 36.
Have a short deadline this week to write for Sunday and to do some “filler” for the Holiday
Have turkey – will cook on Wednesday – we are staying home
Seeyas!
President Obama in a press conference yesterday in Peru:
Yikes! I hope to hell not.
It saddens me to see his sniping at the Clinton campaign (and I hope is it just Politico’s typical “rile people up” style) , but I do agree with this assessment:
The 2010 midterm “shellacking” set the stage for the withering of our state party organizations. You can’t go back to the well 6 years later and express surprise that it is dry.
Transcript: Press Conference by President Obama in Lima, Peru
Good morning, Meese, it’s sunny and partly cloudy here in NoVa: 33 at the moment, going up to 46 F. today.
Feeling very conscious of the amount of work I have to do between now and Thursday. Today tending Younger Son’s dog at 1 p.m. and picking up Miss Pink Cheeks from school falls to me, because Dearly will be working his shift at the airport.
Have been staying off Facebook and am pleased to find how much more time I seem to have.
Let’s all think of some accurate, pithy terms for the proposed gutting of Medicare and Social Security. “Granny killer” would be good for the Medicare one, don’t you think? I wish “home wrecker” weren’t associated with infidelity. Many on Social will lose their homes without their Social Security.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!
It’s actually chilly enough this morning I wore a sweater. If I had been outside for longer than a block, I’d have wanted a jacket. But mornings are supposed to warm up, so this is probably the only day I’ll need one.
I got no exercise this weekend, but I did get a lot of mending done. I have several pairs of pants I hadn’t worn in forever because they needed mending, and I just hadn’t done it. So Saturday & Sunday, I played stuff on the dvr & sewed. Won’t help me at the race in February, but I have a lot more clothes to pick from now.
I’ve been playing Discotheque on repeat in the car. Yes, it’s a loud, rocking dance-y song, but it’s deeper than it gets credit for. Like my boys say:
You know you’re chewing bubble gum
You know what that is
But you still want some
You just can’t get enough of that lovey-dovey stuff
Good morning, 49 and cloudy in Bellingham. I enjoyed working in the garden yesterday, doing some light pruning, clipping greens for the T Day flowers, moving the twiggy patio furniture into the garage, arranging the chairs that stay outside around the wood stove on the upper patio, raking leaves and pine cones, etc. The patios now look like outdoor winter rooms, but best of all I had a few yam free hours!
So today I’ll start cooking. I like to make a rich stock from roasted vegetables and chicken parts so I can make the gravy a ahead of time. And the seasoned butter and cranberry relish can be made today as well. I ordered desserts from the co-op bakery, and will buy rolls. So today will be busy but not overwhelming.
My family is still struggling with election angst, but it give me hope to see how they are responding. I want to find a meaningful way to work in support of voting rights and to protect healthcare options and RonK will be doing more work with Whatcom Land Trust, a group buying and preserving land for public use. Lisa will be working to develop a voting support and information group for high school kids in her community, Erica is working on several projects at her university, and our sons are talking about what they can do. Our work may be small and local but it makes our community stronger, our lives richer. and it is what we can do.
I’ve been saying to the Village group at GOS that not only are we stronger together, we’re only strong together. Sounds like your family is on it. :)
36 at sunrise 50 now and heading for mid 60s – sunny again although that’s supposed to go away tomorrow. Depending on cloud cover, of course, but currently on track to get close to Nov 2015 generation (199 KWHs) although not quite there. Hopefully the cold weather will convince the oak tree to shed it’s leaves since I can’t get an arborist to call me back. (Considering the soil where that tree is planted, I never expected it to get over 20 feet tall. Wrong.)
Still in the daze of living in two worlds. Three if I count what has become my role of community fundraiser/Kossack artisan/vendor supporter over at GOS. Which makes it hard to concentrate on any of those worlds. sigh. Will track down local as well as DC contact info for Boozman and Womack. Still not sure about Cotton. If I do him, it will probably be via postcard. (Thanks for the idea, Diana).
Got work to do – and I’m expecting a call from the stove repair guy. Truly hoping I don’t need to replace the stove as I don’t like the new models, even if I didn’t want to use that $500 for something else. Bright the day, Meeses and for those out doing stuff, wind to thy wings. {{{HUGS}}}
Which stove, bfitz? The wood-burning stove or the one you cook on?
The one I cook on. It’s at least 20 years old (apparently came from Montgomery Wards back when we had one – it was in the house when I bought it) – gas range. It’s new enough the oven has an igniter (which I’ve replaced twice) instead of a pilot light, old enough that I could disconnect the cooktop igniter and use a match to light it. Cooktop works just fine in power outages. (Of course the oven doesn’t.) And old enough that all the control nobs are in the front and I don’t have to potentially reach across hot pots to program the oven (instead of just turning it on). All the new ones I’ve seen, aside from being seriously expensive even on sale, have a programming panel for the oven at the back.
My wood burner is a Jotul and works just fine as long as I have decent wood to burn in it (which I do at the moment). Jotuls aren’t really designed to cook on though. :)
Interesting, bfitz. I hate the new programmable ovens, actually.
You have a Jotul—we had one for 21 years and it was so good! It made the middle level of the house habitable in the winter. No longer was I upstairs cooking dinner in splendid isolation while the rest of the family stayed warm by the Franklin stove below. After we bought the Jotul, the rest of the family were upstairs with me.
Loved that thing and cried when it had to be hauled off. Forget what was wrong with it, but we couldn’t use it any more.
Morning all. Chilly here, got into the 30’s overnight, so my heat kicked on for the first time this season – and naturally, woke up to see an error message on the thermostat. The service people will be here late this afternoon – ugh. I’m predicting now it will need a part that won’t be available until after Thanksgiving weekend. Fortunately, our little cold snap will not last too long, and I can get along without heat for the duration if that happens.
I’m kind of numb on political news right now – I’ve mourned, I’ve figured out a few things I can do, and now I’m just stunned at the degree of corruption that Trump appears poised to get away with, given the complicity of our media. The disparity between the coverage of the Clinton Foundation’s imaginary scandal and the very real rot of Trump’s financial doing is pretty breathtaking. Ugh. I’m going to try to just keep calm and hope that the Dems get their act together – I was encouraged to see Schumer talking tougher about the opposition. I’m with Green Day, who sang this chant at the American Music Awards on TV Sunday – “No TRUMP! No KKK! No Fascist USA!”
Gotta pick up my cooked Thanksgiving dinner this afternoon from our local Fresh Market – I’m going to stay home on Thursday, as is my friend who I usually go out to eat with, and have a happy day eating my turkey and fixings, and playing WOW.
Everyone have a great day!
PS on my heating situation – the repair guy came, made some adjustments, it’s fine, and since I had paid for the next two service visits, he recorded it as a service and I didn’t have to pay anything more. YAY!
Good morning, meese! Tuesday …
It is 25 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 41. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast.
I am not sure I will survive a Trump presidency … the daily drama of the freaking transition is driving me nuts! No, of course a president-elect “reminding” a foreign leader that his permits are holding up his development project is not a conflict of interest! And the compliant media got called on the carpet in his Manhattan penthouse for being mean to him … after they gave him $2.5 billion in free advertising and pounded his opponent for 15 months over a faux controversy. And don’t even get me started on the free pass that neo-nazis – freaking neo-nazis!! – are getting in the media. Let’s normalize nazis, what could possibly go wrong?
Goodish news out of Wisconsin. The 7th Circuit ruled that the partisan gerrymandering that the Republicans did in 2011 was illegal. Of course it will be appealed to the notoriously anti-voter Roberts Supreme Court. And the damage is done … the state senate was lost in 2012 and because there was no firewall on the worst that Republicans could do, state laws were changed to make it more difficult for good government to ever make a comeback. :(
See all y’all later!
Nancy Pelosi on Democratic Party unity:
It is Ryan’s longtime goal to destroy every last thread of the social safety net:
Well, that’s reassuring. Thanks, Jan!
Good morning Meese
Coming up for air – have been pounding keyboards since 1AM this morning – had a deadline change at Orange – due to holiday – sigh.
34 here – going up to 36 – heh.
Heavy winter coat time.
Headed to school today – doubt half of the students will show up – they have probably already left for the holiday. My campus is in the midst of a mumps outbreak.
Thomas Sugrue – whose work I have great respect for – has an important Op-Ed in the NYT on Jeff Sessions
Interesting, bfitz. I hate the new programmable ovens, actually.
You have a Jotul—we had one for 21 years and it was so good! It made the middle level of the house habitable in the winter. No longer was I upstairs cooking dinner in splendid isolation while the rest of the family stayed warm by the Franklin stove below. After we bought the Jotul, the rest of the family were upstairs with me.
Loved that thing and cried when it had to be hauled off. Forget what was wrong with it, but we couldn’t use it any more.
And we’re back to sandals weather. It’s 60-something now, high in the mid 70s. Supposed to rain tonight. If I set the plants out to catch some, it probably won’t. Playing U2 in my head to keep myself awake.
Good morning, Meese! The Moose is really acting up this morning, telling me I have “duplicate comments”—crud. I just reopened it.
Another lovely, sunny, rainless day here, currently 32 F., going up to 48 F. Dearly Beloved is very excited about the monster telly being delivered today. It’s good that he’ll have it for the coming winter because he plans to retire from his volunteer job at Traveler’s Aid at the airport after Christmas. After all, he is 86 and it’s hard for him to work a 4-hour shift.
I’m still worriting away at all the things that need to be done before the family arrives for Thanksgiving dinner. I agonize over everything. The awful thing about “pot luck meals” is that after you ask people to bring a certain dish, they change their minds and bring what they want to bring. Thus we are winding up with three sweet potato dishes and four desserts. :( Let’s hope we don’t all die of indigestion.
Responded to my state delegate’s Thanksgiving message by telling her that I want to work with her on her campaign, and to work on getting Democrats elected to statewide offices next year. There’s a junior Trump in Virginia who wants to be Hitler. He frightened a lot of Hispanic people into leaving Prince William County. My delegate, Jennifer, is organizing a town hall and I want to attend that.
Other than that I can’t do phone calls or postcards to politicians until next week. It’s up to me and Dearly to get the house ready for the holiday dinner—the cook, housemaids, and gardener are all on holiday in Bermuda, the lucky things!