Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Apr. 29th through May 5th

April 28, 2018 JanF Community 98

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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41 Comments

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

    Morning low of 28 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 50. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Moose Note:

    I had to upgrade something because the Social Media sharing is no longer working. If anything acts oddly, please let me know ASAP.

    Thanks!

  3. File in the “Let That Be A Lesson To You” folder:

    One week after five African-American women say they were discriminated against at the Grandview Golf Club, the white golf club owners are facing a dip in business — and a potential investigation. […]

    [State Sen. Vincent Hughes (D-Philadelphia-Montgomery County)] sent a letter to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, calling for an investigation into racial and gender discrimination at the club and expressing his support for the women. “It is appalling that someone would call the police for a non-violent incident where the only crime was being black on a public golf course,” he said.

  4. Sunday Meese

    Am sleepy after staying up too late last night – have to now collect tweets for PR twitter roundup – the pickings are slim

    More Windrush scheduled for this morning at DKos.

    seeya later

  6. Tired, yesterday was a long day, but happy. Such a good, supportive, sweet group. Today: church, and make lunch for next week. Nice, mellow Ordinary Love for this morning. Love this:

    Your heart is on my sleeve, did you put it there with a magic marker.
    For years I would believe, that the world, couldn’t wash it away

    Link to 2 pictures I posted at the orange place. When I do a diary, I’ll do one at both places.

  7. Good morning, 48 and cloudy in Bellingham. We’re meeting our grandson and his family midway between Bellingham and Seattle for his birthday brunch this morning. So hard to believe he is now 17 yrs old! I always enjoy our dining room birthday celebrations, but meeting at a restaurant is much easier and I need that this year.

    Best Sunday wishes to all.

  8. 59 heading for 72 and sunny again. got 22.5 KWHs yesterday and the current m-t-d is 419.3 – W00T! Doing good, definitely more than I use in a month so banking for A/C weather in a few months. Clothes are hung on the line for the first time this year. (Charlie over the fence for the first time this year. Rotten little kitty. sigh. Gone an hour and just got back so at least he’s OK.) Almost all the Sunday chores done – peanut butter honey muffins this week.

    Not sure what political stuff I can do right now – other than RTing a few things I find on my TL & all Denise’s roundups I get to. But now it’s warmer I’m going to start checking out other kinds of volunteer opportunities. I’ll of course staff Dem HQ when it opens but that won’t be until September. We shall see what we shall see. Meanwhile I need to check DK and do my internet tour then take a walk around the neighborhood to see what’s blooming where. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  9. Monday Meese
    44 and cloudy going up to 52 with rain here in NY.

    Puerto Rico

    • Thanks for the update on PR, Dee! Last year I remember reading that PR’s electricity wouldn’t be restored until May and being absolutely appalled.

      And now it’s May Eve, and it still hasn’t been restored.

  10. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 45 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 72. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    I am not sure why anyone expects a social gathering of the craven journalists who damaged our nation and the people they are supposed to be covering, would be anything other than a crapfest. My eyes are still burning from seeing David Gregory dancing with Karl Rove at one of these things. They bring a comedian in to roast the press and the White House and then they get outraged when they get roasted!

    This tweet from a professor from the Columbia School of Journalism tells you what you need to know about why the need for this dinner is a fiction:

    His conclusion:

    And for that support, our students get to see some of the worst of access journalism: the sucking up to the powerful, the onanistic orgy of journalistic self-congratulation, the next-day hangover of ritual humiliation and pitiful self-loathing … 5/
    Full disclosure: I’m on the faculty of @columbiajourn, one of the J schools where #WHCA recipients go. So I guess I should be grateful for this dinner, which supports students who attend the school where I teach… 6/
    But here’s the thing: At good J schools, students are taught to be independent, intelligent, empathic finders of fact. In other words, we teach them to be the opposite of what they see at that dinner… 7/
    So keep holding your dinner if you want, #WHCA. But do it for yourselves. This event does more damage to journalism than a handful of scholarships can possibly repair. End

    See all y’all later!

  11. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s a beautiful morning in Ashburn, with a current temp. of 40 F., going up to 68 F. The sun is gilding the woods outside under a clear blue sky. Last night I went out to the courtyard to see the full Beltane Eve moon, and it was glorious.

    Yesterday was busy, with the Formula I race that we were able to watch only in increments because the family came over. While Younger Son, DIL, and Dearly nailed the bookcases to the wall and then attached the doors to the bookcases, I took Miss Pink Cheeks, Mr. Preschooler, and Mr. Pee Factory for a walk. We saw turtles swimming in Fisherman’s Pond, which thrilled the children.

    Pee Smell Report: I know you’re tired of these reports, but I just want to say that after trying the Extrac-Vac fluid, plus Nature’s Miracle, plus an Internet remedy I found, it’s still not completely gone. It’s lessened, but it’s still present. Perhaps a professional cleaner can get rid of it once everything is in place.

    Today Dearly Beloved will install the shelves in the bookcase and tomorrow I can start putting the books in! That alone will cause several boxes to be emptied.

    Remember during the “Zero Dark Thirty” incident when Obama eliminated Osama? Or rather, President Obama’s Seal Team did. Someone suggested to the Secretary of State that she shouldn’t go to the Situation Room in the WH because it was the night of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “F*ck the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” she is said to have replied.

    Indeed. They should stop having that stupid event. I applaud everything Michelle Wolf said, especially her calling out the MSM for their enabling Thing to attain the presidency. I despise them all.

    Wishing a merry Beltane to all at the upgraded Moose Pond!

    • I am glad the Moose Pond upgrade did not wreck anything but the new features that were included did not work. The Facebook security changes messed things up and now I think I have a bit of a mess to sort out.

      We have been part of a group called Networked Blogs which provides a service (app) that reads our news feed and posts automatically to Facebook and Twitter. However, the posts stopped working because Facebook changed some rules. I thought I reauthorized it and it worked once then stopped again. SO … I upgraded something called JetPack which would have allowed us to dump Networked Blogs but its Publicize feature didn’t work. SO … I found a plug-in for social media that I am working with but on Sunday when I was testing, I ended up with duplicate posts on Facebook – some that looked like they came from Twitter, some that came from the new plug-in and then some from Networked Blogs. SO … I have something that will work but I have to sort out how I am ending up with duplicates. I need to go back to the drawing board and run some controlled tests to track everything. I was bummed out because it took me over two hours to get the new settings in place. I was glad that the JetPack upgrade didn’t kick us all offline, though.

      • Yikes, Jan, this sounds serious! I am totally befuddled. I did reestablish the Twitter, Facebook, and Google connections for my website. The links seemed to have been broken somehow. I thought it was a disturbance in the force, but perhaps it was just Facebook acting ugly.

        • I found the source of one of them – Twitter appears to send a link to Facebook on its own but it is not a very good link – it doesn’t expand as I would like it to. Once I get that working, I think I can turn off the Networked Blogs.

          The Twitter link from the new plug-in has my nice featured image in place but no text! So I will have to tweak that and then that will be done. There is another tweet that comes out that must be coming from the Networked Blogs. It has some text but not a very nice image. I need to track that down.

  13. 60 outside, 66 inside even though I accidentally left the bathroom window open and the furnace off overnight. Offhand I’d say Spring is definitely sprung! Considering that by some ancient ways of tracking things Beltane is actually the 1st day of summer (with the Solstice being “mid-summer”) I guess that figures. Wish that last hard frost hadn’t killed all the fruit on my cherry tree. It had been totally covered in blossoms – I was thinking “cherry jam” this year – then boom! gone. sigh. Oh well. Got over 22.7 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 438.4! W00T!! with still a day’s production left to go. If it stays as sunny as it is now, we could end the month at 460 which ain’t bad at all. :)

    So the latest HOF is over WH correspondents being roasted at a WH correspondents’ roast. Deary, deary me. I’m glad I stopped paying attention after reading enough to see what the blather was about. There seems to be a very real difference between “correspondent” and “journalist” – apparently always has been. I remember reading journalists covering WWII speak scathingly of “correspondents” covering the war “from a Paris bar” during the early years before the Fall of France. Nothing new under the sun.

    On the community side, some movement on the various fundraisers at DK which is good. And Aji’s gotten another patron and is now at 13 patrons & a hair under 65% of her goal which is progress. She’s also posted several more things at the site, including some open (free to non-patrons) content. The link needs sharing of course.
    https://www.patreon.com/AjiWings/overview. Not sure what’s happening with MBNYC because he’s gone radio silent again. And here in Fayetteville I may be checking out a volunteer organization tomorrow to see what sort of opportunities they have now that it’s getting warm enough – and light enough – for me to go out and do it.

    Anyway, need to check in at multiple places and do my twitter thing then get offline again. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  14. Good morning, 49 and cloudy in Bellingham. My maple trees seem magical this time of year….every morning the leaves are fuller and bigger than they were the night before. The green is a lovely contrast to the grey sky and horizon.

    We enjoyed our family time with Ryan yesterday but I came home chilly and tired so I napped and read until an early bed time. Now it’s time to find some coffee and get to the pool.

    Best Monday wishes to all!

  15. May Day Meese

    40 degrees going up to (gasp) 77 here in NY – bizarre shift in weather for the next 3 days – when it will hit the 80’s

    Puerto Rico

    National Strike today – ignored by mainland media

    • NPR’s All Things Considered did a segment on the financial ruin that Puerto Rico was in before the hurricane hit: Even Before Hurricane Maria Hit, Puerto Rico Was In Financial Ruin. This was part of their investigation being done in conjunction with PBS (which you tweeted out).

      It is clear that there is a way out of this: Congress created this mess and they can fix it if they are willing to spend money. That it won’t get done under a Unified Republican Government – especially one bought by the special interests who are profiting from the mess in Puerto Rico – is pretty apparent. I hope that under a Unified Democratic Government – something we only had for 2 brief years in 2009 and 2010 – we move this to the top of the priority list.

      • Here’s hoping – however I’m not sure possible unified Democrats are going to do much either – we will see – I hate to sound cynical

        • I am sure that Democrats – who felt all-powerful after 2008 – never expected to lose Congress two years later. If we had, perhaps we would have prioritized better, had a sense of urgency about getting things locked in. The Republicans are governing via scorched earth, ramming through everything they can on party line votes and we would do well to learn from them. “Keeping our powder dry” was the worst strategy ever and we are all paying for it now with most of our “successes” having to come via executive order or department rules which are rapidly being unwound.

          Let’s hope that the next UDG remembers the lessons of 2017 and 2018.

          • Nancy Pelosi was running things like she knew it would happen. She pushed through over 400 pieces of progressive legislation. All but about 14 died in the Senate. The Senate was the problem because our team followed the existing rules and didn’t want to open the kettle of fish that changing them would – and did – bring. The next UDG won’t be hampered with maintaining the old Senate rules because the Rs have removed them.

    • I read a Russell Blake novella about a huge storm in Mexico (where Blake, the writer lives), that destroyed the electric power grid and, subsequently, law and order. The ATMs didn’t work, nothing worked! People started looting the grocery stores and law and order completely broke down.

      It’s a tribute to the law-abiding people of PR that a situation like that hasn’t developed. If it keeps on, though, what are people supposed to do? We have a glimmering of how utterly our lives depend on access to electric power. Just think if we didn’t have it on the mainland!

      Actually, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Certainly the Rethug monsters aren’t thinking about it or caring what happens to people.

  16. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 61 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 79. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast. This is the time of year where the temptation to turn on the air conditioner in mid-afternoon is strong. I will try to resist and cool the house as much as possible this morning so that it is comfortable later.

    Yesterday the tRump Administration disgraced itself (further) by lying about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. They want a war – “Bomb Bomb Iran” was not just a “clever” messaging tactic in the 2008 campaign, it is what energizes the war hawks in the Senate, what reminds them why putting party over country pays off for them: they can bomb nations that they don’t like and there are no longer any adults to stop them. :(

    Today’s news will be filled with speculation about who leaked the Mueller Questions and why. If they are the actual Mueller questions and they were leaked by the Trump legal team, their move is a head scratcher. Mueller won’t ask questions that he doesn’t already have the answers to – he is not gathering information, he wants Trump’s side of a narrative that is already stacked against him. If Trump decides not to meet with Mueller, that means that he is conceding he has no defense. I will watch it out of the corner of my eye today.

    The calendar flipped to May and I am not ready!!

    See all y’all later!

    • Good morning and happy May Day, Meese! It’s a beautiful morning here again, hope it stays that way. The current temp. in Ashburn is 42 F., going up to 79 F. later.

      Had a grim night in the sense that Old People Syndrome kicked in—dear old GERD evidently didn’t like the Mexican dinner I enjoyed last night, so it woke me up. Lurched out of bed and made a cup of tea, that sovereign remedy for all ills. I’ll crash after lunch.

      Today we are going to put the books in the bookcase, hide the ugly office supplies, and flatten some more boxes to take to the trash bin in the garage. Who knows, our place may actually begin to look like a home rather than a storage room. It’ll still smell like hell, though. This afternoon I’ll open the French doors to the screened porch. Perhaps fresh air will help.

      Adjustment report: I miss the feeling of being utterly at home in my old neighborhood. I knew exactly where everything was, how long it would take to get to my errand destinations, and above all, the wonderful feeling of coming home to tea in a tidy house. On the good side, I tried the “Virginia Beauty Spa” in my new neighborhood. Although I didn’t emerge from the place looking like a film star, they did an even better mani and pedi than the nail salon in my old neighborhood. So there’s that.

      Wishing all a merry Beltane or happy May Day or successful strike day!

      • I am glad to hear you are settling in somewhat. I never lived anywhere long enough to feel a loss when I moved on. My current house is the longest I have lived any one place and since I plan to move to a place nearby, the loss of “things I am used to in my neighborhood” will be less sharp.

        I hope you get your nap!

  18. Skipped my walk because there was a 50% chance of storms this morning so of course it’s dry. Sigh. Well, I have my evening workout tonight. Was talking with a library patron yesterday, got started talking about how the Scots & Irish cuss way, way more than we do (especially in the south) and it started this song in my head. Which they’ll have to bleep on the radio, and I don’t know what they’ll do for live shows. But omg, it’s so beautiful & true.

    This is not love you’ve had before
    This is something else
    This is something else
    This is not the same as other days
    This is something else
    This is something else
    Shouldn’t need to be so fucking hard
    This is life on earth
    It’s just life on earth
    It doesn’t need to be the end of you, or me
    This is life on earth
    It’s just life on earth

  19. Morning, Meesefolk. Our high is going to be 79 today which is a bit of a shock to the system; I’m scrambling to change my dinner plans to something that doesn’t require hours in the oven. But this is Michigan, so I’m keeping my sweaters on standby, as well as the roast I had intended to have tonight.

    Diana, it may not seem like it yet, but it does sound you’re making progress in carving out your place of peace. I went back and read some of your previous updates, and quite frankly, I’m pretty amazed at how much you’ve been able to accomplish, all while continuing your activities with family and new neighbors. When my daughter moves (two weeks!), I’m going to keep your example in mind and remind her that slow, but steady, is an acceptable pace.

  20. Happy May Day! 61 heading for 75 and overcast, darn it. Not a great way to start the month. Yesterday finished out April with 22 KWHs for the day and 460 for the month. Targets for May, June, July, & August are to get over 500 KWHs per month. (Over 600 is technically possible but I’ve never done it.) We shall see what we shall see.

    Ignored much of my twitter feed yesterday as it was still responding to the RWNJs “ebil librul should apologize to SHS for stuff she didn’t say but we think” – and blowing off Genocide On Purpose policies that are killing people from Puerto Rico to the Native reservations and points all around not just all points in between. Denise’s Puerto Rico tweets are the most dependable regarding real people being harmed that hit my TL. (It’s not that other stuff doesn’t, just not as dependably.) I haven’t checked on fundraisers yet – what if any movement – but Aji’s Patreon stayed at 13 patrons & 65% of goal. sigh. I’ll keep RTing the link, of course, we’ll keep building – but it would have been nice for her on a lot of levels if she’d made the goal this month. Well, holding the Good Thought and RTing through May so we meet it by June 1st, the next time the pledges actually charge.

    My local bank was bought up a couple of years ago (once the founder died the kids didn’t want to be bothered with the source of their wealth) but pretended to keep the local policies until this year. Now that my credit union account is well established and my Social Security deposits there monthly, I’ve been drawing down the bank account. Today I’m pulling the rest of the money and closing it. Only pity about that is the local bank has 8 branches including one 5 blocks from home and the credit union only has one office up by the mall so traffic is icky. But that’s life. Need to visit the Beltane/May Day diary & the Village, do a tour of twitter, and get on with the day. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

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