Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Oct. 8th through Oct. 14th

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.


Page One of Comments are HERE

  • Page Two of Comments are HERE

41 Comments

  1. Our high for the day of 67 was at 4:30 this morning. We are now inching down to tomorrow’s pre-dawn low of 40. Cloudy enough my PV system is still in night mode, darn it. Got 10.9 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 84 and not likely to make 90 for the day unless it clears off by noon.

    Too many hits, too many Evil things going on – the natural events damage/kill quickly – our nation’s response kills slowly but just as surely. And kills more people. Genocide by deliberate neglect. So we will do what we can as communities and individuals for now. And do our best to take back Congress and later the White House and get our nation back off this Evil track. Meanwhile my community needs fundraising got a boost from a Village angel which eases the most urgent and is a blessing.

    Soloing at work while the other staffer is at a dr.’s appt so I’d best get to it. Will check the Villages first – partly to see how urgent it is for me to get the Puerto Rico/V.I. helping links out – as in are they in the diary proper or do I need to get them in there via a comment ASAP. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  2. Good morning, Moosekind! Fair this morning with less humidity. We received exactly one-half-inch of rain yesterday, so the grass is still brown. Current temp. in NoVa is 66 F., going up to a meretricious 83 F. later. This is not October weather! Where are the red-and-gold leaf dances, the scents of gingerbread and apple pie?

    First World problem, I realize. Fuming at FEMA this morning, sick about P. R. and the Virgin Islands. Have begun to wish I could fall into a Rip Van Winkle-type sleep for 20 years and wake up to a better world.

    Off to exercise pretty soon. Every photo album and bursting plastic bag of photos we possess are strewn around our dining room and family room. After all that, we never found the photo. Daughter-in-Austin discovered a wedding photo (but not THE photo) in an album she owns, so we’ll try to scan that.

    Hoping for a peaceful day for all and help for Puerto Rico and the V.I.!

    • Did you watch the gubernatorial debate last night? I followed it for a while on Twitter and it sounded like Dr. Northam did a good job.

      • Jan, hubby looked for it and couldn’t seem to find it. Glad to hear Northam did a good job. He’s not my ideal candidate but at least he’s prochoice, which no Rethug is. We’ll be hot-footing it to the polls on that day!

        Hope Miss Pink Cheeks can go with us.

  3. Good morning, 47 and partly sunny in Bellingham. tRump angst disturbed my sleep again last night so I’m slower and sleepier than ever this morning. Reading twitter is not a good way to wake up!

    Nancy LeTourneau
    ……..

    It is still hard for me to fathom how this country went from the wisdom and grace of Obama to this nutjob.

    Nancy LeTourneau added,

    Donald J. TrumpVerified account @realDonaldTrump
    The Failing @nytimes set Liddle’ Bob Corker up by recording his conversation. Was made to sound a fool, and that’s what I am dealing with!
    6:57 AM – 10 Oct 2017

    • Oh, gawd, I did not see that tweet! Bob Corker was taken out of the running for Secretary of State because he is only 5’7″ and tRump was “casting” his cabinet based on their physical qualities. Now he calls him “liddle”? He is truly a disgusting man. Anyone who voted for him should be ashamed of themselves and anyone who continues to support him should be shunned.

      I was reading that Corker is a key player in the tax cut legislation the Republicans want to do. If he refuses to vote it out of his committee, it dies. I wish he would give the sh*tgibbon a taste of his own medicine and treat him like the piece of crap he is.

  4. Good Wednesday morning Meese.
    After writing about USVI for Black Kos yesterday – am up early getting ready to do a stand alone post – since so few people read Black Kos.
    Will have it up at about 6:30AM – will post the tweet here and hope to get some help getting the word out.

  5. Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …

    It is 52 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 61. Chance of showers this morning then mostly cloudy the rest of the day.

    I did a quick scan of the news and I am going to go bury my head somewhere. A movie mogul is a big fat pig. This is not breaking news, people! For the press to go after Hillary for this – like she is responsible for every Democrat who can’t keep his penis in his pants – is insane. This is NOT the most important thing going on, not even the 100th most important thing going on. People in Puerto Rico are thirsty and hungry, water is being rationed, and hospitals are closed because they have no power. The shitgibbon’s aides have a plan to tackle him if he reaches for the nuclear football in a fit of peeve, 800,000 young people who trusted our government may be sent to countries they do not know, and 36 million people’s health cares is still at risk!

    And California is on fire!

    I will come back online later to tweet out some Puerto Rico stories but I am going to mute out the distractions.

    See all y’all later!

  6. Good morning, Moosekind! Well, whaddaya know, we’re getting some sprinklies this morning! Current temp. in NoVa is 72 F., going up to 74 F. today.

    This from our BlogGoddess Jan:

    I did a quick scan of the news and I am going to go bury my head somewhere.

    Good advice. I just scanned the news and now have a headache. Denise, I’m sorry I missed Black Kos yesterday. Things around here have been crazy lately, and they’re even crazier on weekends.

    The publisher contacted me yesterday to let me know they have everything they need to start work on Saving the World Through Sex, and that I should expect a proof copy somewhere around St. Crispin’s Day.

    Wishing everyone as good a day as possible, given the situation.

  7. Cool enough this morning that I actually wore shoes. Eating oatmeal, drinking tea. Bought tickets for opening weekend of Star Wars last night. Going with my friend, bought us commemorative glasses. Looking forward to it. If you didn’t watch Rachel last night, go to msnbc.com & watch it. Stuff on the Russian hacking — with Nigerian youtube videos, no less. The devastating California fires; and then the Weinstein story. And, man oh man, she really “Racheled” that. Among the epicness — she had former MSNBC employee Ronan Farrow on to talk about his New Yorker story, and 1. did talk about his backstory with Hollywood & powerful men & abuse 2. asked Farrow why NBC/MSNBC didn’t get this story, since he has taped interviews. Chris Hayes also covered the story well, with Irin Carmon & Jess McIntosh talking about how liberal feminists have, in actual fact been calling out even men “on our side” for years for this kind of shit. And the Rachel to Lawrence toss, which is always great, was especially great & you should also watch Lawrence.

  8. I am clueless about rap music and rappers
    Don’t listen to it because so much of it is misogynistic. That goes for a lot of country western, and hard rock too.
    So when I saw Eminem at the top of my trending list this morning – I almost didn’t open up any of the tweets – however I did.

    The words

    • thank you for the “lyrics” one — I did a google search for a transcript & found a lot of stories, but no actual transcript

  9. 45 just before daylight which we don’t have much of anyway right now, supposed to clear off and head for 65 today. Only got 3 KWHs yesterday, the m-t-d is 87.8 with this morning’s driblet. We gonna need a lot of sunshine to reach 300 this month. But it’s still possible.

    I don’t watch news. They play the sensational game – but they play it so anything really important, actually life-threatening, actually killing people, is ignored. There’s a lot of sensational stuff they could be running, could have been running in 2016 that would have kept us from having mad king donald in the White House, but they won’t. The owners of the media put him in office and they are keeping him in office because the folks who are dying are the ones the owners of the media are fine with killing.

    Meanwhile I will do my community needs stuff and community building stuff as best I can as my part of The Resistance. And try to finish out the last few months at my paying job as efficiently as possible. Need to check in at the Villages then get to work. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  10. Good morning, 44 and raining in Bellingham. Now that the garden is basically ready for winter I’m spending more time in my sewing room, and I’ve already thought of more projects than I can possibly complete but that seems to be the way I do things.

    Yesterday’s fun was planning a quilt and pillow shams for our Oregon grand girl using Dr. Who themed fabrics. I was trying to be lazy with quilt math but I finally had to chose a size and make a drawing so I could order the fabric, and that stretched my brain. Then I had the frustration of ordering fabric online because my local quilt shop doesn’t have the Dr. Who prints. So I’ll make the blocks and then buy the banding and backing fabric there. I enjoy the creative process of planning a project, but the challenge is staying focused and completing it!

    Time to find my swim suit and go to the pool. Hope it’s a good day for all.

  11. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is 55 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 61. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    I was glad to see more Puerto Rico stories in the news this morning. It is now a humanitarian crisis with FEMA “graciously” providing 200,000 meals to feed 2,000,000 people. The water is unfit to drink in many places and no progress is being made to rebuilt the power grid. They can’t run on diesel generators for 2 years – they need to re-establish power so that the economy can start working again, so that stores can reopen, so that the pumping stations can get water to people and people can boil it. If anyone in our government cared about Puerto Rico as more than a photo op (I heard that Paul “Mr. Death” Ryan is going there) they would put a full-time professional manager in charge of Puerto Rico recovery and they would get Brock Long off the camera. He is a younger less gross looking tRump but his soul is just as shriveled as his boss’ is.

    Today the structural dismantling of the ACA begins with the executive order. From what I have read the opening up of associations to provide junk coverage is very likely to do more damage to the small business insurance market in the short term. In states where Republicans are in full control, it will be a problem. State insurance commissions will still have a lot of power and to the extent that they are run by Democrats, there will not likely to be much change. For people who have complained that they could no longer buy junk insurance that doesn’t cover anything, they will get their wish! I really have no sympathy for them and I wish we had a government that understood that when people get sick and aren’t covered, they still get medical care and the rest of us subsidize them. Costs are passed on and in some cases hospitals close because they can’t afford to provide free care. The same mess we were in before! I have two hopes: one is that it comes under legal attack and the other is that it is just a teeny tiny fig leaf for the small “fingered” one and has no impact except to please his base.

    See all y’all later!

  12. Good Thursday Morning Meese

    Am pounding the keyboards to meet my Sunday deadline – so just popping in for a sec
    I have Randy Rainbows spoof of hit video Despacito, in which he makes mincemeat of Trump playing in the background – you’ve got to see it :)

  13. Good morning, Meese! This Thor’s Day we’re under cloudy skies, which is fine. It evidently rained a bit during the night, although it had stopped by 6 a.m. when I went out to get the paper. Current temp. is 64 F., going up to 66 F. The Metro section said that here in the DC area we won’t have real autumn temperatures for another couple of weeks.

    The WaPo had a front-page story on Puerto Rico this morning. If everyone keeps publicizing it enough, perhaps the right kind of help will get there. Can you imagine the primitive existence we’d be living here on the mainland without electricity? Makes me want to collect firewood and get an old-fashioned percolator for the coffee. Meanwhile, poor old Puerto Rico will not get its electricity back for six months, unless a miracle happens.

    My priestess friend in San Juan wrote to say that another priestess was sending her “D” batteries for her fan and still another friend was sending her a battery-powered radio. She’ll let me know whether she needs anything else. She told me the U.S. mail is working in San Juan. I’m not sure where she’s living right now—her house was considerably damaged.

    Honestly, since January I, along with everyone else, have been waking up to say, “Now, what?” right after discovering we’re all still here and so far, the grid still works.

    Let’s all try to have as good a day as possible, doing what we do and hoping we live long enough to see The Occupant in prison and the country restored to its rightful balance.

  14. Morning, meeses. I’m up too early, couldn’t sleep. Currently 46 degrees with a high forecast of 75. Hopefully today will be less hazy/smoky than yesterday.

      • Not directly near, thankfully. I’m about 120-130 miles from Santa Rosa and 60-ish miles from Yuba and Nevada counties.

    • {{{basket}}} – Healing Energy. Hoping you guys get rain or something to help put out those fires. moar {{{HUGS}}}

      • Thanks bfitz. It’s a while yet before the first rains, usually around end-October. Although when I moved here in September 2014, it rained heavily the day after I arrived!

        {{bfitz}}

        • Yeah, I know they aren’t due yet. Rains to quell the fires comes under the heading of a miracle right now – enough rain to control/extinguish the fires without being so much as to cause landslides. That’s one definition of a true miracle. moar {{{HUGS}}} and Healing Energy and stay indoors as much as you can until the air clears.

    • Basket, hope you’re staying indoors as much as possible! That’s what my friend in Lafayette is doing.

      Do you have a mask to wear if you have to go outdoors?

      • I don’t, but I think I’m okay for now since it’s not too bad (I’ve been in worse haze)

      • The granny killer Paul Ryan added to the shitgibbon’s admonishment to Puerto Rico “You have to get back on your own two feet”. Someone pointed out that he would never say that to Texas where there are 30 Republican House members. Of course not! But the United States government invaded Puerto Rico, turned it into a colony, and legislatively enslaved the people – the federal government owns the problems from the hurricane and the awful state of the infrastructure from their neglect. The Republicans are taking their lead from their donor companies that mine and pollute and then declare bankruptcy when it is time to clean up, leaving it to others. Not this time. We won’t let them.

        Aunti Maxine gave them the whatfor and a Congresswoman from New York did also. More need to speak up.

  15. 43 just before dawn, 47 now, and heading for 78 – very clear sky so I’m hoping we make up for some lost ground. Yesterday generation was 9.7 KWHs and the m-t-d is 97.5 – 300 for the month is still possibly but we’re gonna need a bunch of sunny days to do it. This time of year 13 KWHs/day is maximum and I haven’t gotten that at all this year.

    I don’t need to look at the news, I could give a generic synopsis on any given day. The Deplorable-in-Chief tweeted out a barrage of anti-American and/or racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic statements. The media is all over whatever deplorableness he tweeted out – with responses if the responders are famous enough. The R congress is bringing deadly deplorable stuff to the floor and only the watchdog groups are reporting it via social media. People of color and people in states that went Dem are dying of willful neglect. Every single day. Nothing new under the sun. So we resist, block, push back – and work on winning back Congress.

    Fundraising is very slow. A couple of angels are doing most of what’s getting done. I love the angels but they can’t do it all. Hoping we can get a bunch more of the smaller donors to step up and I can take another one off the list. But we did make the $500 match fundraiser for Aji last night to help with labor costs. One week closer to them being totally out of that toxic tin can. For this we are very thankful.

    Need to get over to DK Village – I had to leave pretty much as soon as i got the diary posted and the community links in there (in such a hurry I posted the PR helping links comment even though I’d already put it in the diary itself) – and of course get some work done. :) Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  16. Good morning, meeses! Friday … the 13th!

    It is 55 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 64. Scattered showers and light rain are in the forecast.

    In my tradition, thirteen is a lucky number – or at least not unlucky in any special way. It is a sacred number – the number of moon cycles – and certainly there is nothing unlucky about Friday, the end of the work week.

    The Trump Administration has shot themselves in the foot and cancelled the CSR payments to insurance companies. The intent is to scare people when they get their new premiums and don’t bother clicking to see what it does to their bottom line. For people in the Silver Plans, it means higher premiums but most if not all of it will be offset by higher subsidies. The sh^tgibbon and his destroyers hope that by cutting back on information and dealing what appears to be a major defunding, that he will rally people around their cause to repeal the ACA. Good luck with that! Putting in place plans – rejected legislatively – that could cancel millions of people’s health insurance will not make people like Republican policies any more. Charles Gaba pointed out that California had already anticipated this and rearranged their Silver Plans to maximize the payout from the federal government; in many cases the effective premium will go down.

    I am anxious to see how the health insurance industry responds. I guess supporting a political party bent on destroying their industry is fine as long as their CEOs get a tax break.

    A breaking news email just crossed my desktop saying that the United States government will lie and state that Iran did not comply with the nuclear deal (it did comply but Fox and Fronds has no idea what is in it so neither does the sh^tgibbon) and will therefore not certify compliance. It won’t be cancelled but will be tossed to Congress. We have made ourselves a pariah nation, one who is no longer trustworthy in the world community. The work that Barack Obama did to repair our reputation after the Bush years has been undone in 9 months.

    See all y’all later!

  17. Here is an early summary of where we stand with ACA. There will be lawsuits but they are unlikely to help in the short term. Cancelling the CSRs (direct payments to the insurance companies), as I mentioned, will increase the subsidies to individuals and increase the government’s share by $200 billion per the CBO. But it will also knock about a million people out of the market.

  18. Good morning, Moosekind, and happy Friday the 13th! It’s twenty past six, too dark to see what kind of day it will be. The weather gadget on my computer tells me it’s 58 F. now, going up to 66 F.

    We no longer watch the boisterous, self-promoting crowd on morning TV, so I don’t know what the weather forecast is. Yesterday it was so cool and drizzly (although not rainy) that I made gingerbread with lemon frosting for tea and an apple tart for dessert in the evening.

    My friend in California wrote to say she can now smell smoke even inside her house in Lafayette! However, she teaches in Livermore once a week and says so far there’s no smoke smell there. All the Witches in this country need to synchronize the casting of a rain spell for poor old California—such a wonderful place, and so beleaguered by weather.

    Yes, it’s awful about the CSRs, Jan! WHEN is Mueller going to take down Thing? This country is ruined and not even a year has passed since Obama climbed into that helicopter along with his family and lifted off from the White House lawn. And Puerto Rico continues to be neglected.

    Going into Twitter withdrawal today for the one-day boycott to support Rosie McGowan. Hope everyone will have a good day.

    • I did not know about the Twitter boycott! Since I cannot function without my Twitter breaking news, I will read but retweet judiciously as I am committed to keeping Puerto Rico hashtags trending.

      Did she really get suspended simply because she told a male celebrity to “fk himself”? I see that all the time.

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