Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Aug. 20th through Aug. 26th

August 19, 2017 JanF Community 90

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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– Page One of Comments are HERE

  • Page Two of Comments are HERE

37 Comments

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

    Morning low of 61 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 84. Chance of thunderstorms.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

    • Sigh – an entire generation is passing – and young people today know nothing about them.

      • I have been reading about Dick Gregory and this sample of his humor made me laugh out loud – twice!

        Gregory talked in 2003 about his experience trying to integrate a restaurant in Mississippi before the march, showing he could inject some humor into a serious story:

        “We tried to integrate a restaurant, and they said, `We don’t serve colored folk here,’ and I said, `Well, I don’t eat colored folk nowhere. Bring me some pork chops.’ And then Ku Klux Klan come in, and the woman say, `We don’t have no pork chops,’ so I say, `Well, bring me a whole fried chicken.’ And then the Klan walked up to me when they put that whole fried chicken in front of me, and they say, `Whatever you do to that chicken, boy, we’re going to do to you.’ So I opened up its legs and kissed it in the rump and tell you all, `Be my guest.’ “

  4. Good Sunday morning Meese. 62 here in Saugerties going up to 83.
    Sunday morning and am drinking my first cuppa java.
    Missed seeing most of the news from Boston so am going to go chase down some clips
    Did see this last night:

    This mornings Sunday sermon at Orange will be “Affirmative action mythology, white resentment, and bogus cries of ‘reverse racism,’

    • I was following it on Twitter while it was happening. I can’t believe the NY Times headline this morning called Trump’s tweets “praise” for the demonstrators. JHC, he called them “anti-police agitators”!!

      It is nice to see that in great American cities the resistance is strong.

      I am still trying to sort out what is happening. I would like to think that blatant racism from the highest elected office in the land was a bridge too far. But we have been down this path before – only to find it a dead end.

      Check out this video. I wondered why the statue in Durham NC crumpled – when I saw the video, I thought it would THUD not collapse. I have been seeing the various timelines but this Mic video puts it clearly and succinctly..

      • This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder if THIS TIME we can cut through the b.s. and make some progress. Heather Heyer’s cousin wrote an op-ed about the reaction:

        The cousin of Heather Heyer, who was killed last weekend amid racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Va., expressed her disappointment over the lack of attention on racism in the U.S.

        “Why is it that the death of a white woman at the hands of a white supremacist group has finally gotten the attention of white folk? Why have we been turning our heads the other way for so long? How many black families, Latino families, Asian families, Native-American families before us have been left broken from this ugly vein of hatred in our country? Too many,” Diana Ratcliffe wrotein a CNN op-ed on Saturday.

        Ratcliffe uses the op-ed to go after white supremacists, saying society has allowed them to accumulate too much power.

        “The so-called ‘alt-right,’ or the white nationalists, have no place in America, and they don’t deserve a place on our political spectrum,” she said.

        “We elected a black person, we made friends with some minorities, and we patted ourselves on our backs, saying, ‘Well done self, we have eliminated racism,’” she continued. “Clearly, we have not. It’s been lurking in the shadows, waiting in the spaces of the words we say and the words we don’t say. The actions we take and the actions we don’t take.”

  5. Good morning, Meese, it’s a nice-looking Sunday outside in NoVa. Currently it’s 68 F., going up to 85 F.

    Completely missed the news about Boston because all yesterday morning and afternoon I was immersed in preparing for the visit of m’daughter-from-Austin, my son-in-law, and the son-in-law’s mother. They all came to dinner and it was a wonderful evening.

    Had the night from hell, waking up at 3:30 a.m. and being unable to go back to sleep. Was attacked in the garden the other day by angry gnats, so am itching like mad. I’ve got plenty of anti-itch gel, but it’s a nuisance to keep putting it on. Hope to catch up on sleep later.

    Seem to have spent the entire summer entertaining the family! Elder Son and family want to come to dinner this coming week because their house is torn up and very noisy because of the construction crew working there. Pray Goddess it will be finished soon—they’ve certainly approached the work in leisurely fashion.

    Wishing everyone a good day—hope I can get time to read the fascinating posts that are coming.

    • I am sorry you did not sleep well! I hope you can catch a nap. I was awakened at 2:30 by what sounded like gunshots but was probably fireworks (there was a small string of bursts about 10 minutes later). I did not think I would fall back asleep but I did.

      My morning was supposed to be spent catching up on accounting projects and my “holy mackeral that stack of things to-do is about to topple over!” Instead, I got distracted by something in my Inbox related to the news of the Boston rally and that led me to read and interact. I will be sad tomorrow morning when the accounting projects are still not done and my schedule gets disrupted and I can’t finish yet again.

      Will you be able to observe the solar eclipse tomorrow? I am told we will see 85% of it here assuming that the clouds stay away (thunderstorms are predicted). I have a friend who is going to somewhere-in-Illinois to see it at 100%. I will “watch” it on TV where my eyes will be protected from the sun.

      I found this hilarious (from Borowitz): Trump Says Sun Equally to Blame for Blocking Moon

      Attacking the media for its “very unfair” coverage of Monday’s solar eclipse, Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that the sun was equally to blame for blocking the moon.

      “The fake news is covering the eclipse from the sun’s side instead of the moon’s side, but if you look at it from the moon’s side the sun is blocking the moon’s side,” he said. “There are so many sides you can’t count all the sides.”

      Additionally, Trump tore into the sun itself, calling it a “showboat” for its role in the solar eclipse.

      “The sun thinks the world revolves around it,” Trump said. “Sad.”

      Ha!!

  7. Didn’t get in a workout yesterday, I did get 2 dishes made for next week. Got portable lunch so I can eat outside on Monday. Going to lunch with friends after church, but I’m going to have gym stuff in the trunk so I can go after. Spain, Finland, cholera outbreak in Yemen….and then our own madness here. What’s Going On — this is a remake, maybe it’s time for another

  8. No idea what the temp is but it’s hot and sticky. I’ve still got the house opened up because it’s warmer in here than out there thanks to my weekly baking (cinnamon muffins and oatmeal cookies), but as soon as that reverses, I’m gonna have to turn the A/C back on. Had to have it on yesterday, too – but only from 5:30 pm on. At least my PV system is working. The techie swung by yesterday and reset it – while I didn’t get the 17 KWHs I’d have gotten if it hadn’t been down at all, it was still early enough that I got 15.78 and the m-t-d is 205. The morning is relatively quiet so I’m putting off vacuuming for a bit. The laundry is almost done but I thought I’d check in while I had a spare minute.

    Delighted that so many cities are showing what real Americans are like. The America Hillary believed in, worked/is working towards, and called out to. The one I believe in and work towards making more real. My mother would be 87 today if she were still here. She’s been gone 28, almost 29, years. But if she were here, she’d be part of the Resistance and at whatever rallies she could get to. Meanwhile the community needs list is inching forward towards getting some folks off it. I know of some folks who should be on it but refuse to be as long as “people who need help more” are on it. Well, if holding on is all the blessing they can give to others in need, that’s still a blessing. And it still helps clear the debris from the Channel of Good and increases the flow.

    Washing machine just finished. Need to hang out the clothes, then I’ll go read Denise’s FP and Michael’s British breakfast. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  9. Good morning, 65 and partly sunny in Bellingham. Summer is winding down, the air is damp, and the light is changing. We had a fire in the outdoor fireplace last night during dinner and a blackberry cobbler for dessert……season changing markers for our family!

    Danny Westneat, at The Seattle Times……

    Overlooked in all the national insanity: Local women are on the rise like never before

    It’s likely that after November most of the I-5 power corridor will be run by women. Bellingham, Mount Vernon, Everett, Lynnwood, Kirkland, Seattle, Bremerton, Burien, Auburn, Olympia and probably Tacoma and Vancouver all will have female mayors. (Some already do. But only 20 percent of mayors nationally are women.)
    ~snip~
    Could the real story of our little local races for mayors and city councils be that we’re seeing the first risings of a tide against our toxic, testosterone-fueled national politics?

    Ain’t exactly clear, as Buffalo Springfield also said. But something’s happening. Maybe, just maybe, it’s a start to getting us out of this mess.

    • Running governments is a perfect example of “women’s work”. I think women are generally more detail oriented and, unless their souls have been shrunk into husks by Republicanism, they have more empathy and understanding about people’s lives. Government should be about people and especially at the local level where the people are. Men making the rules for everyone has not worked out well for humanity.

  10. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 64 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 82. Showers and thunderstorms expected all day. We will probably not see much of the eclipse but I am working on locating a livestream. I did google “next solar eclipse” and it is not that long of a wait (April 8, 2024) and it will be crossing more blue states including the top of New York and Vermont. We will be well into the 4th year of The Recovery, Democratic rule cleaning up the awful messes from the tRumpian dystopia, and the mood will be better. :)

    Today the shitgibbon announces his “decision” on Afghanistan. The generals will make the giant toddler think that it is his idea and he will play “commander in chief” on TV with a stern visage and empty eyes exposing his empty head (I will not watch). Rumor has it that they will increase troop strength by about 5,000 and allow our soldiers to embed in Afghan units so that they can get blown up more frequently. :( In a few years, there will be young men and women sent to Afghanistan who were born after the attacks of 9/11. No, it was not the “good war”. No good ever comes of invading Afghanistan and only a country as stuck on itself as America could think that. Bush’s War will enter its 16th year this fall with no end in sight.

    The funniest thing I saw on the Internet yesterday is that the troop increase will be on live TV at the same time Paul Ryan is hosting a CNN “Town Hall” where he will discuss his new tax plan. tRump literally cannot give up the tiniest slice of the limelight! Ryan’s tax cut, by they way, is one where giving more money to the wealthiest Americans will trickle jobs down on the have-nots. In other words, the same stuff that they have been peddling for decades and which nearly destroyed the state of Kansas until they elected enough sane people to override their governor’s veto. You can’t legislate a different “reality” and the reality is that when businesses and individuals get tax breaks they don’t spend it hiring people unless they need more people to work for them! The way to grow an economy is to put more money in the hands of people who spend money and the way you do that is by raising the minimum wage, giving people health care, and making it easier to pay off college debt and to go to college in the first place. But that makes life better for the poors and the almost-poors and Republicans hate that.

    See all y’all later!

  11. Livestream of 2017 Solar Eclipse from NASA:

    Coverage will begin at 12 p.m. Eastern. But the main events begins at 1 p.m. Eastern, when the total eclipse itself will begin to pass across North America. For any given location, the total eclipse will only last a few minutes.

    NASA will use 68 telescopes along the path of totality to get as much information about the phenomenon as possible.

    The path of the total eclipse begins on the West Coast, in Oregon, and over the course of a couple of hours, the moon will block out the sun across the country, concluding in South Carolina. […]

    “Over the course of 100 minutes, 14 states across the United States will experience more than two minutes of darkness in the middle of the day,” explains NASA. “Additionally, a partial eclipse will be viewable across all of North America. The eclipse will provide a unique opportunity to study the sun, Earth, moon and their interaction because of the eclipse’s long path over land coast to coast.”

    NASA coverage: Eclipse 2017

  12. UT took down 2 Confederate statues overnight! I am so happy & proud. That makes 3 gone overall — Jefferson Davis was taken down back in 2015. The news showed a group of kids watching & singing “na na na na hey hey hey goodbye”. Just about has me in happy tears. So I’m gonna stop there. Happy, proud.

    • It wouldn’t let me type in a zip code – it tried to figure mine out from my IP address. It was wrong but close enough.

  14. 71 when I got up – in the dark – heading for 85 so about 10 degrees cooler than yesterday. I hope with a commensurate reduction in humidity – yesterday was a “scrape the air off your skin with a knife” day. Normal for August but I don’t have to like it. We’ve had enough rain this month that the mosquitoes are all over the place. I got at least a dozen bites while hanging out my clothes yesterday (yes, i was wearing repellent). At least mosquito bites “go away” faster than fleas, ticks, mites, and chiggers. (And yes, I live in the South. Why do you ask? heh). Did get 19.75 KWHs which is the best for the month so far. m-t-d is 224 which is less than half what it “should” be. But it’s still energy so that’s good.

    Not paying any attention to pvl45 today. I know it will be stupid and evil. I’ll do what i can about it, if I can do anything about it, but I’m not going to listen to it. Community needs are not moving much even though I’ve got matches for MaureenMower’s living expenses and her car (needs to fix the exhaust to pass inspection by 8/31) – really irritating on the latter as the problem isn’t bad enough to need to be fixed right now except that it’s got to pass inspection pretty much right now. Otherwise it could wait until she got a job and a few paychecks under her belt. Other folks’ problems at least at the moment aren’t urgent. As we get closer to the first and rent comes due I’m afraid there will be more urgent ones. But we shall deal with that when it gets here.

    Need to get back to work. First day of classes means lots of syllabi being printed. Yes it’s a waste of paper but the students will have no excuse for not know what’s on the syllabus if it’s put into their hands on the first day of class. And last minute enrollments. among other things. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  15. Good morning, 56 and sunny in Bellingham. Yesterday was so busy with Lisa and Ryan, then Ava’s birthday dinner, and then GOT, whew! We’re going to watch the eclipse with the grand girls this morning and then I need to really focus on my very messy desk. I’ve been stacking the mail so I hope I haven’t missed paying the critical bills.

    I’m grateful for so much family fun but sometimes it’s hard to keep up :)

  16. Good Tuesday morning, Meese. It’s a minute before 6 a.m., too dark to see what the world looks like from my upstairs office window. Right now it’s 72, going up to 92 later today in NoVa. Thrilled to report that after today we’re due for ten days of temps with highs in the high 70s! My daughter, visiting from Austin, will be so envious.

    Have been spending so much time with Daughter that I haven’t paid a great deal of attention to the outside world. Was so tired after she left yesterday that I went to bed early, thereby boycotting Thing’s bletherings. I gather they were about Afghanistan, surely one of the bleakest, most uninviting-looking countries anyone ever fought over.

    Elder son and family are coming over for dinner, their own kitchen still being put together by the builders, so we’ll grill chicken tonight. I’ll make Peach-Blackberry Crisp for dessert. Daughter may visit after lunch, as her flight doesn’t leave until 8 p.m. and her husband and mother-in-law will be at the lawyer’s office. It’s been so great to see her!

    Wishing everyone a good day. The eclipse was kind of a bummer yesterday. I never was very excited about seeing it anyway, and it never became completely dark here in DC.

    • I think that is the problem with Afghanistan – “bleak and uninviting.” There is no way to root out whoever the rootees of the day are. Too many places to hide, too much impenetrable terrain. It is perfectly suited to be a land of warring tribes yet people keep trying to build central governments doomed to failure. The madness unleashed by nuclear weaponry – having to stay in Afghanistan to keep an eye on nuclear power Pakistan – makes it impossible to do anything that makes sense. Stupid stupid humans.

      In 2024, I hope to be better situated to travel to totality. It looked like it was great fun for those who were in 100%.

  17. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 68 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 73. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    I stepped away from my desk early in order to watch the eclipse coverage and then to sit outside as the shadow passed over at 1:15pm. There was not much of a shadow at 84% coverage because the rest of the sun is pretty bright! I wished I had had the glasses because it might have been fun to see but the views from NASA TV (I found it on my dish) were spectacular and I got to see it 5 times as they had coverage in Salem OR, Idaho City Idaho, Carbondale IL, somewhere in Kentucky and somewhere in South Carolina. It felt good to take a break from the politics and consider the earth’s realm.

    The Gallup tracker was back online and showed tRump approval at 35%. I wonder how many points he will lose because of his flip flop on Afghanistan. He is clearly a captive of the military industrial complex, despite his campaign rhetoric. I guess we can be grateful that he did not decide to privatize the war, handing it off to Erik Prince’s company, but I am sad for those who will lose their lives in another “surge”. Maybe the Americans still fighting the “Lost Cause” will volunteer to fight in another one and we can be rid of them?

    I hope that the protests at the shitgibbon’s campaign rally in Arizona are peaceful (that is an open carry state and there will be guns) and that he pardons the ugly face of birtherism and anti-immigrant. No, not himself – that will come later – the sheriff who cost the county $70 million in legal fees and fines, Republican “fiscal conservatism” writ large. It is interesting that Pence will be at the rally too. I wonder why. I better go read Twitter and see if anyone there has thoughts about it.

    See all y’all later!

    • Jan, if you find out why Pence is going to be there, do let the rest of us know. Somehow it seems sinister, as in Pence thinking, “Gotta see how this pardoning stuff works, might have to use it on Himself pretty soon.”

      • I was thinking about it and it seems to me that this is Pence showing Trump’s base that he is “one of them”. He will need them to govern and would need them to win his own election in 2020.

        That Trump invited him means that he knows that he won’t be president much longer. I think he has a scriptwriter right now figuring out a plotline where he resigns – not in disgrace but in disgust at the “bad Congress” and the “fake news” attacks on his family – and starts a media enterprise to feed his need to stay in the news.

  18. Good Tuesday Morning Meese.
    Eclipse didn’t even dim the bright here yesterday in The Catskills.
    I am waiting for Chris Reeves to post the video of Rev. Barber in Topeka KS – I heard he really rocked the house.

  19. Slept really badly last night, should have gone to the gym yesterday. Got gym stuff here today & I’m definitely going. Right now, eating oatmeal, drinking tea. I didn’t watch the Orange Shitgibbon last night & nothing Rachel or Lawrence said stuck with me. Here, listen to Little Things, it makes me feel better maybe it’ll work for you, too.

    We got 60% eclipse yesterday, it was cool. I went outside for lunch & even without glasses – the pecan trees made interesting shadows. (lots of oaks around here & their leaves are too small for it to work).

  20. 70 when I got up, 75 now and heading up. Not sure how much up, but up. Even with just a sliver of sun it never really got dark here, at least not outside. The Dept Chair’s office was pretty dim. Some folks were passing the special glasses around so I got a look. “Cheshire” sun. :) But it certainly showed up on my PV system. A really steep drop from 2.5k to .25k production and then an almost as rapid rise to 3k production – 16.9 KWHs total yesterday and the m-t-d is 241.

    Didn’t pay any attention to pvl45 yesterday and won’t again today. Nothing he says is worth listening to, much less getting HOF over – anything he signs needs to be checked out to see if we need to file a court case to stop it or if it’s just so much drivel, but cat barf has a greater chance of making sense than what comes out of his mouth. Community needs getting worse instead of better, darn it. Mufftootuff has to go back on (no, Unemployment didn’t pay when her Social Security Retirement check came in – which she asked about, several times, before paying some could-have-been-put-off bills…) and nancyjones’ car was towed, they found a few old parking tickets, added fines and fees and boom! $800 to get her car back. Still trying to get MaureenMower’s car exhaust fixed in time for the 8/31 inspection deadline… Sigh. But we’ll persist until the job is done.

    Gotta get to work. Stack of travel claims from the ASA conference last week. First week of classes. Stuff. Gonna have to check in with the Villages later, sigh. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

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