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

April 7, 2018 JanF Community 104

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 is HERE!
     

  • Page Two of Comments is HERE!
     


 

44 Comments

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

    Morning low of 19 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 37. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Dee, I don’t know if you have seen this but I thought you might find it interesting. Cornell is putting together a searchable database of fugitive slave ads – discussed here – and tweeted out at @fotmproject.

    The Freedom on the Move (FOTM) public database project, now being developed at Cornell University, is the first major digital database to organize together North American fugitive slave ads from regional, state, and other collections. “Ironically, in trying to retrieve their property — the people they claimed as things — enslavers left us mounds of evidence about the humanity of the people they bought and sold,” Dr. Mary Niall Mitchell, professor of early American history at the University of New Orleans and one of the three lead historians on FOTM

    • Had not seen – this is fantastic! Thanks Jan – digitizing of data few people ever see is really important

      • Especially data the “dominant culture” would prefer wasn’t seen so they can pretend it – and the situation/culture it gives evidence of – doesn’t exist.

  3. Sunday and 23 degrees here in the frozen north :(
    Spring got lost.

    I’m mad again – FEMA (Brock Long) held a press conference in Puerto Rico – making excuses for what it didn’t do, and denying all criticisms – it isn’t being covered in the US press – Bobby is going to try to get online to cover it – because the news articles about it are all in Spanish. One suggestion Long made to prepare for the upcoming hurricane season is Puerto Ricans have to take responsibility – it isn’t FEMAs job to fix – they should do things like “learn CPR”
    Gah!!!!!!

    • Learn CRP? Like the students who are supposed to be able to prevent being murdered by overarmed nazi madmen by learning CRP? GOP = Genocide On Purpose.

  5. It is cold again — 40s this morning, not a record but still crazy for this time of year. Got all the food stuff done yesterday so this afternoon I absolutely will get a walk in. And some house cleaning.

  6. While the windchill is 23, the actual temp is 32 so I’m hoping the overnight low didn’t do any (more) damage to my cherry “crop” than yesterday’s did. And of course hope that yesterday’s didn’t do enough damage to keep me from getting cherries this year. Overcast again, which I don’t need, but there was a break in the clouds to the east just as the sun was coming up over the hill and the still-bare treetops to the west were painted in gold for a few brief moments. Hoping that’s a good omen for Aji as she’s about 700 miles due west of me. Yesterday the sun came out just after noon and the day ended with 16.3 KWHs generated – if it does that again today we’ll at least be on track for 300 for the month if not 400. Current m-t-d is 68.4 – the average is less than 10/day so far. But it’s still higher than my average daily use so that’s good.

    I’m really starting to glaze over with the news. I see it on twitter and respond one way or another (including by ignoring, depending on what that news is), but it’s not registering. I can’t tell you several hours later what the big todo was about. I just noted and responded and went on. It’s like swatting flies or cleaning up cat barf. Just deal with it the best I can then get back to whatever I was doing. Which other than my household stuff – dealing with food, what little cleaning I do, firewood and/or yardwork depending on weather and season – is trying to boost signals. I RT fundraiser diaries, Aji’s stuff, AIDS Ride diaries, the “twitter roundups” in Black Kos, the Fighting Back post here… – I don’t know how much good it does. Very few of them are RT’d further out if I’m understanding my twitter “notifications” tab correctly which is depressing – but I do it anyway because some of them are. Wish I could think up more to do – had enough money to help further on the ones needing funds – but at the moment I can’t. So I do what my hands/head find to do and keep on keepin’ on.

    Need to visit Denise’s diary and the various Village things as well as twitter then get back to housework. And coffee – with a baked-this-morning molasses spice muffin :) Bright the Day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • I’m having trouble absorbing the daily news flow too bfitz. It’s an overwhelming deluge of events that basically horrify me. I know I need to stay aware and be as proactive as I can be but some days it’s just to much. Stay warm and keep baking muffins….I can smell them from way across the country!

      • {{{princesspat}}} – I’m beginning to think that not absorbing it is the best way to handle it. That analogy of it being like dealing with cat barf kind of came to me as I was typing it but the more I think of it the better I like it. See it, do what you can with it, then go on about your business. You need to be aware in a general sense and you need to do what you can when you can. But you really can drop yourself into a black hole so deep you can’t get out if you focus on it – and that’s part of what they are counting on. That people get too upset, so upset they feel hopeless and helpless and too depressed to do what they can to stop the evil.

        I’m doing my best to stay warm and glad you like the muffins. :) moar {{{HUGS}}} and also Healing Energy.

  7. Good morning, 48 and cloudy in Bellingham. A quiet Sunday morning here……RonK is reading and Ryan is sleeping. His mom and dad will be here soon so it’s been a short visit. I had planned a family dinner but given the lingering reality of how sick I’ve been we’re going to have lunch at the bookstore instead.

    I did have enough energy to do a bit of sewing yesterday so that is welcome progress. Now I need to carefully rebuild some stamina, because when I get tired the deep fatigue is alarming.

    A nice moment by Lenoard Pitts, at The Seattle Times….
    The shared humanity of moon gazing

    We are, in other words, small against the fabric of All That Is. So far as we’ve been able to determine, we’re out here alone. So each other is all we have. But then, it should be all we need.

    Overstreet’s and Gorosh’s little movie is a gentle reminder of this, a hymn to our common humanity. It is an invitation to put down the remote control once in a while. Put down the cellphone, put down the bills, stop yelling at one other.

    And look up.

      • I agree – although this last year I haven’t seen Her as much as I would like, I can still “send out Energy” just knowing She’s there to send it by. And when I can see Her, stand beneath Her, well, I can feel the Energy as it flows.

  8. Monday Meese
    27 here in NY going up to 43. I see snow is in the forecast for tommorrow – ACK!

    I can’t even believe I’m posting this – Day 200


    Talked with Chef Bobby (newpioneer) quite a bit yesterday – he was struggling with one bar of internet connection to get a diary up at Kos – gave up – it will go up (fingers’ crossed) at 8 AM this morning – it is a powerful rant.
    I hope it can get onto the rec list. What he has to say needs to be heard

    • Can you post the tweet of his diary here? I usually only check my Twitter stream when I finish my news scan and then not again until mid-day. I want to be able to find it.

      • Will do – just called PR – can’t get through – so not clear yet what time it will be posted

      • Just talked to Bobby – he is walking to a friend’s house so he can get online to post the story
        Stay tuned

  9. Good morning, meese! Monday …

    It is 27 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 28. The weather widget says it is snowing but is expected to only be a dusting (less than .4 of an inch, it swears!) Wednesday we finally start warming up into the 50s and then 60s on Thursday. I am ready.

    A quick scan of the news headlines suggests that all the problems in Syria are caused by … President Obama!! Of course no one is mentioning that George W. Bush planted the seeds for decades of unrest in the region by starting a war of choice that plunged it into chaos. Every problem is always the fault of the last Democrat who touched it and sometimes Democrats who were simply alive when the bad thing happened – as those who think that President Obama was responsible for the horrible Katrina response. The level of susceptibility of the American people is why bad actors knew they could sway our electorate and convince them to turn the Congress back over to Republicans after four years “in the desert” and the presidency after eight years. Maybe less short memories than no room for anything except the last stupid thing the saw or read.

    This week ends in a Friday the 13th and, two days later, a new moon. I will watch with interest what kind of energy manifests.

    See all y’all later!

  10. Good morning, Meese! Cloudy and cool today in Ashburn, Virginia. It’s 36 F. right now, going up to 46 F. Will it never get warm? I’m so sick of being cold.

    Yesterday the F1 race was on at an unusual time, which disrupted my routine. This morning I woke up at 3:30 and that was that. Couldn’t get back to sleep, so now I’m so tired I can’t even get up the energy to eat breakfast. In a little while some coffee will put me right.

    My ongoing beef is that the desk from eBay still has not arrived and I don’t expect it will ever arrive. I want my money back. Without that desk I can’t hook up my printer to print out the airline and hotel stuff I’ll need to travel at the end of May. I also can’t organize my paper, laptop, etc. I’ll never buy anything from eBay again, ever, and will badmouth it to anyone who will listen.

    At the moment I feel too weighed down by the major lifestyle change and ongoing Horrible Mess in our apartment to get worked up about the news. I also haven’t heard from the Progressives Club here, which worries me. I’d like to talk to the fellow members to find out what their plan of action is for the coming primaries and midterms.

    Wishing a peaceful day to all at the Pond and beyond.

    • Sorry to hear that your eBay issue is not resolved. I don’t suppose you have any recourse to get the money refunded by your credit card company or PayPal or whatever. Does your apartment complex have a Business Services office where you can use a computer that is connected to a printer? An apartment complex I rented in short-term had that and it was quite handy.

      • eBay has a system in place for refunds that is pretty responsive to the buyer. I’ve only had to get a refund once, and I had it within 24 hours of placing the complaint. (In my case, it turned out the seller had died before they could send the order; I got a note from a family member well after the fact, explaining the situation and asking if I still wanted the item!)

        I use eBay a lot, but I have two rules: nothing EVER from China (it takes forever and the sellers are rarely responsive to queries [if you even get the item]); and nothing from a seller who has a rating of less than 99. It’s saved me a lot of headaches, but I also have a pretty selective niche for what I buy; I’m generally buying from folks who haunt estate sales and resell on eBay.

  11. Still chilly — needed long sleeves & a jacket for my walk. 30 minutes, 1.46 miles. Wearing long sleeves for work, too. Hoping the situations in Syria and Palestine don’t…..I was going to say “get worse” but they’re already so awful. So, B-man wrote a song about Syria — there was a man who would plant flowers in bomb craters. They called him the Gardner of Aleppo. He was, of course, killed in the fighting. The first time I heard this song, I cried because it’s that gorgeous:

    I’ve been thinking ‘bout the West coast
    Not the one that everyone knows
    In the rubble of Aleppo
    Flowers blooming in the shadows
    For a summer of love
    A summer of love

  13. 38 and might get to 57 today. It can’t make up its mind whether to be sunny or not, keeps going back and forth. I’m hoping for sunny myself. :) Also no wind somewhere along 2:30 or 3 this afternoon so I can go out for a walk. If sunny, I’ll wait until this evening to build the fire. I’ve had one all day the last 3 days just to ease the SAD. I did get a sun-coming-over-the-hill just like yesterday – shafts of golden light gilding the treetops on the western horizon. Almost as beautiful as the rainbow Aji just posted in her Monday Photo Meditation. Yesterday I got 10.7 KWHs and the m-t-d is almost 79 so still not quite averaging 10/day. Hoping today’s will at least bring it up to that if not further.

    Gonna continue my thought of treating the political news like cat barf – deal with it however I can but once dealt with let it go and get back to whatever I was doing. There’s too much stuff to do – dwell on one pile of cat barf and you can’t deal with the next one. So I’ll continue RTing the folks I’ve committed myself to “boost the signal” for plus whatever wanders across my feed I actually want to boost and let it go at that.

    Gonna tour the internets – Aji posted early so I’ve already “boosted” that signal – then get some coffee and get to my offline stuff. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  14. Good morning all. Woke up to morning temperatures of 28, with a high of 36. This tweet captured my mood perfectly:

    Michigan Democratic convention is next Sunday, and I have some research to do before then. We select our AG and SoS candidates at the convention; the SoS is a no-brainer for me (I don’t even know if she has any competiton), but the AG candidates are all good, so I need to figure out my vote. I also spent more time than I wanted on Twitter DMs this weekend, providing a few pointers to first-time convention attendees. I’m gratified that people have decided to join the party and attend the convention, but I was equally nonplussed at some of the attitudes expressed. (No, it’s not a party, and with 30 minutes allotted for lunch, you won’t have time to go to a bar and have lunch and a drink.) I think I explained the ins-and-outs sufficiently to get across the seriousness of the business at hand; as long as MI Dems continue to select candidates at the convention, we have an obligation to do our due diligence and act responsibly. And I really, really hope there isn’t a repeat of 2017. The hate and vitriol was so strong and so overwhelming, it left me in a puddle of tears at one point. The BernieWouldaWon crowd won the leadership in many of the caucuses, and I’m hoping that after a year of actually doing the work, they may have a new appreciation for the slow slog part of organizing. We’ll see…

    • {{{DoReMI}}} – the berners are not as likely to have changed attitude as to have sloughed off the work to someone else then took off for some rallies. Hopefully they will keep out of your way this time. moar {{{HUGS}}}

    • Ha! Great tweet.

      Speaking of Michigan politics, do you have good candidates for the governor race? I know that Snyder is term-limited (thank goodness) but I am sure that there are similarly inhumane Republicans waiting for their chance to kill more poors. Wisconsin has 17 Democrats running and none of them is a clear front-runner. I know who I want to vote for but he is unlikely to win. I hope people don’t have as difficult a time coming together as they did for the 2016 presidential election. Pouting Berners peevishly voting for Stein or staying home literally handed our electoral votes to Trump! This year, we will have 16 losing candidates, and there will be a lot of people unhappy with the nominee. We need to convince them that the D is the most important thing and get out and vote.

      • We have four D candidates that I’m aware of; if there are any others, they’re too obscure to be a factor. Gretchen Whitmer is generally considered the frontrunner (and “Establishment” candidate). Abdul El-Sayed is extremely impressive in person (I’ve heard him 3 times), but he went from trying to appeal broadly to letting his Bernie flag fly. There are also questions about his eligibility based on residency issues, and he waited forever to ask the courts to settle the question. It’s likely to be an issue the Rs use against him, no matter what. Bill Cobb is a Detroit businessman, running an “outsider” campaign. The last is Shri Thanedar, a self-funding millionaire who has been running commercials since the Super Bowl to boost his name recognition. He just made a stumble (posting on FB about eating at Popeye’s before attending a black caucus meeting, and then saying he was just letting people know to come to the meeting) which is causing, shall we say, consternation.

        I’m never an early adopter of candidates, because I want to see how effectively they campaign and who they have on their staff. But I’m firmly in Gretchen’s camp at this point. Her likely R opponent is Bill Schuette, the current AG (and my third cousin); he’s as odious as he is ambitious. I think Gretchen has the best chance to beat him, and for me, that was the final deciding point.

    • Hi, Jan, yes, this place does have a kind of business center, although I haven’t noticed a printer there. My husband actually has a working printer but for reasons best known to itself, it refuses to print out my hotel voucher.

      EBay guarantees money back, but we can’t call until tomorrow because today is the last day the desk supposedly will be delivered. I’ll never order anything from those cats again.

      Meanwhile there is an estate sale today. A computer desk is among the offerings, so I’m going to go along and see whether it’s still available when the sale is open to residents. (I’ll feel like a vulture, actually, but on the other hand, it is perhaps a kindness to the surviving relatives to buy and remove the deceased person’s furniture.)

  15. Good morning, 50 and cloudy in Bellingham. I had planned on starting my pool routine again today, but I was so tired after yesterday’s family visit I think I’d best wait another week. I’ll be with my grand girls after school today so that will be my man activity.

    I hope to avoid twitter and start reading an actual book today too. Take care everyone.

    • {{{princesspat}}} Healing Energy and sounds like wise choices on all counts. moar {{{HUGS}}}

  16. Tuesday Meese
    35 and cloudy here in NY – have no idea if it is going to snow today.
    weather reports differ.

    Puerto Rico

    With all the media attention on Trump – Cohen doubt anyone will pay attention to Puerto Rico this week. Or to Flint

    • The ongoing situation in Flint leaves me so enraged that I can barely speak about it. There are, in fact, areas of Flint that have new pipes and clean water, but the distrust created by the EMs, plus the state’s disinterest and incompetency, have left even those residents skeptical about those claims. In Lansing, only about 45 minutes away, the city government spent years proactively replacing their old lines BEFORE a crisis developed; they’re the model that should have been followed in Flint, but our worthless governor and his cronies was too intent on covering their own backsides. And I’m sure that Flint being a majority-minority area had nothing to do with it. /s

      • What is being done to Flint is mind numbing – in it’s sheer cruelty.
        The long term effects of the lead poisoning will be felt well into the next two generations.

  17. Good morning, meese! Tuesday …

    It is 27 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 43. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    I was afraid to check the overnight breaking news in my Inbox but cooler heads must have prevailed in the White House after the current occupant’s unhinged rant yesterday about the terrible thing it is for our country that all of his associates are getting arrested. Yes … yes it is … please resign for the good of the country. I hope someone told him that firing Rosenstein and finding someone to fire Mueller will not stop the proceedings against his personal attorney – that prosecution was handed off to SDNY because it was not related to the Russia probe, it was just another sleazy corrupt thing uncovered in the course of investigating the sleazy corrupt Trump Family.

    There were a half dozen big stories yesterday – each of which would have been a front page story on its own. Lost in the BREAKING news was that the unhinged rant was at a cabinet meeting related to dealing with Syria’s chemical attacks so we have that to “look forward” to. The CBO reports that the Trump Deficit will be $1.9 trillion a year and that by 2028, 96% of the GDP will be spend paying for interest on the debt the Republicans have incurred. We already knew that deficits only matter under Democratic presidents but this level of hypocrisy should embarrass even shameless Republicans. It will be interesting to see how teaparty voters react. Heck, they probably won’t even hear about it since it will not be reported in their news bubbles! I will tell you one thing, the first 2020 Democratic presidential candidate who says “we must reduce deficits” should be laughed off the national stage.

    See all y’all later!

  18. Good morning, Meese! The faint glow in a clear sky leads me to hope today will be clear and sunny. Yesterday it was so cloudy, cold, and windy that I felt depressed: not to mention the snowflakes that fell randomly here and there.

    Couldn’t help laughing when I read on another site that Cohen has accused the FBI of eating a slice of his cheesecake! In our family we have a running joke that when a product we like disappears from the market, the FBI has taken it away.

    Yesterday we were too busy with the truck to do more unpacking but today we hope to get to it. I feel sad about the nice red truck that we’ve owned for 9 years. I used it as an object lesson for the grandchildren: “See Grandpa’s big red truck!” It has been so useful. Now Dearly Beloved has decided to sell it as we no longer live in a house and have little need of it. We can get by with one car. There’s a “shopping shuttle” that takes residents to a different shopping center every day. Haven’t tried it yet.

    Last night we had dinner at the Robin’s Nest, a kind of cafeteria here. Our nightly meal entitles us to the following: soup, salad, entrée, two side dishes, dessert, and a drink. As the entree and side dishes are quite filling, last night I snagged a packaged soup and salad and brought them back here for lunch today. When we eat in a restaurant here at AP, as opposed to the cafeteria or the deli, we get rolls and butter too. Tonight we will try for reservations at one of the restaurants.

    I wanted to go to a lecture last night, but was so ruined by the lack of sleep the night before I had to miss it. Today will have to be better! Will keep an eye on the headlines but otherwise will focus on tidying up our space. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and beyond!

    • Sounds like you had a reasonably good day and a better day ahead of you! In some ways it must be a relief to be able to get rid of one of your vehicles – I would love to not need a car with its headaches and expense.

    • So many changes Diana! Will you miss cooking, or can you still do so if you chose? I’m more of a special occasion cook now, but fortunately RonK still enjoys his dinner cooking time.

      We still need a truck because of the garden, and neither of us is ready to move on from that even though we should be thinking about doing so.

      Thanks for sharing your changing life adventure with us. I’m paying attention :)

      • Princesspat, I don’t miss screaming at the dog when I’m trying to cook. He used to drive me cray-cray, since I was always stepping on him. He believes, with some justification, that interesting things will happen when Mommy cooks, such as tasty bits falling into his ravening jaws.

        I did a slow-cooker stew last Saturday and we really enjoyed eating at home at a time of our own choosing. It was our first home-cooked meal here. We wanted to go to a movie at 7, so ate dinner at 6.

        I don’t enjoy playing “Reservation Roulette” every night. We couldn’t get reservations this evening for the restaurant that’s a few steps away, so we’ll go at 5:30 to sit in the hope of getting in. If we don’t, we’ll just take the shuttle over to the Robin’s Nest, where no reservations are needed and the food is just as good, although it’s more “down home”-type cuisine than gourmet.

        I’ve got a new recipe for slow-cooker chicken, so I’m going to do that on Saturday night. They’re showing “Philomena” in the theater here, and I’d like to see it.

        The problem is, so many new people have moved in that the demand for reservations can’t keep up. We’re waiting for the pub (even closer to our apartment than the restaurant) to open, but it hasn’t yet. High school students are the serving staff; Ashby Ponds even sends a shuttle to the local high school to pick them up! They can’t work past 7 p.m. if they’re under 16, though. Many of these students get college scholarships, paid for by the residents, at the end of the year.

  19. Walked again — 1.15 miles, shorter because I stopped at the bank on the way in. I did 50 squats in my cubicle yesterday, scattered throughout the day. Gonna do that again & I’m looking for ab things I can do standing up. Cool again — 50s but headed into the 70s. Probably no jacket tomorrow. So, the Toddler In Chief is upset — I hope they are able to get Cohen to flip on him soon so he does less damage on his way down.

  20. 36 windchill 28 and sunny which is very nice. It did get/stay mostly sunny yesterday so I got my walk and 20.4 KWHs generated. The m-t-d is 99.4 at the moment so we’ll hit the 10/day average within the next hour and start gaining. I like that. :) What I don’t like is whatever’s in the air that’s messing with my eyes. I can’t wear my glasses and I’m having a lot of trouble focusing – on anything but especially print. Having to cover my left eye to read anything more than a couple of lines long. Somehow I don’t think I’ll be online long or much today.

    As usual the political news came out of a firehose – I read a some, RT’d some, and mostly concentrated on Denise & Aji as far as what I paid attention to. I’m assuming today will be the same so I will at least try to do one good pass around the internet before I get offline. Wish I could sleep in the day time – I’d love to take a nap and “reboot” the day. sigh. Oh well, I’d best get to it. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Thank you for all the retweeting you do – and for the comments that go with them!

      • {{{Denise}}} – It’s not a lot of “resistance” but it’s something I can do. Thank you for putting them out in the first place. moar {{{HUGS}}}

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