Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Apr. 28th through May 4th

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 (usually Saturday night with a Sunday date). 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 is HERE!
 
Page Two of Comments is HERE!

 

41 Comments

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

    Morning low of 28 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 52. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Sunday Meese. Good morning. 44 here in Saugerties NY going up to 47 with rain.

    Again.

    Puerto Rico

    • Sorry the Welcomings post was late! I usually prep it at the same time that I do the Fighting Back post on Saturday and since I skipped the Fighting Back this week – no prep! Which threw off my internal moose clock.

      I saw you were tweeting at a celebrity berner about kumbaya. Challenging candidates past positions – and current choices – is called “vetting”, something we were not allowed to do in 2016 without being scorched. Bernie Sanders is not getting the free pass that the Hillary-hating press gave him and he is not going to be tiptoed around so as not to “upset” his rabid followers. His rabid followers turned out to be trumpers – drawn to his whiteness and nihilism – and we don’t need them to win in 2020. Whenever someone says “don’t attack a fellow Democrat!” we need to look very closely at the type of behaviour they want us to overlook. I am not willing to overlook a Democrat of Convenience’s hatred of the Democratic Party because I don’t trust someone who 7 years ago wanted someone to primary a sitting president of our own party for insufficient purity.

      • Yeah – I got pretty pissed at being told to shut up and make nice.
        No way.

  3. Tired, and I should have used more sunscreen, my arms are sunburned. Watching the news, another mass shooting, and Trump has to read off a teleprompter to condemn it. I wish we could leap ahead to 2020 & be rid of him.

      • I think anything other than a natural going-away would cause his flying monkeys to do even more terrible things than they are now. I think even if he falls ill, that will be called a conspiracy. I want him gone yesterday; if I had a time machine I’d go back to the 1970s & try to prevent him even becoming a thing.

  4. G’morning Meeses – at least I hope it’s good for you. Goddess knows it’s not for a whole lot of folks. But the sun is shining, at least at the moment, and that helps. Helps me anyway. We generated 18 KWHs in yesterday’s partly cloudiness which is not bad and the m-t-d is 437 which is also not bad.

    Murf ate all of his breakfast all by himself after just two days of the very mild steroid regime. It’s still kitten chow and I’m hoping he’ll transition off that to the adult food as he gets to feeling better – if only to keep the other cats from getting it – but if kitten chow is what he’ll eat, then that’s what he’ll get. Since I’m giving them a little bit of canned food twice daily I think it’s OK if I have to downgrade their kibble if cost becomes an issue. Everybody else seems stable state – if the older boys aren’t as healthy as I’d like they also aren’t having the GI issues they were having a few months back and the youngsters are doing just fine judging by their rampage-and-rest cycles and the amount of wrassling-generated cat fluff layering my entire house.

    Evil Ones being evil. Every chance they get and at every level. Over and over I see people calling out & trying to change the behavior of the “free” press which is useless. We do not have a free press. We have a corporate-owned press with the corporations so consolidated as to be a monopoly. The only reason the press isn’t as overt with its propaganda as Hitler’s (or Putin’s) is the FCC. Which is one of the many reasons those corporations have been driving for complete control of all three branches of government. We have to circumvent the press now with social media (as best we can considering who owns those platforms) and get Dems back into power to change it. If the Dems are going to notice the problem this time around. They haven’t in the last 40 years that I’ve been watching.

    No news on any front for Aji or my other friends dealing with health and financial issues. Which sux. I suppose in the grand scheme of things a dozen individuals’ health and well being doesn’t really matter. But they matter to me so – prayers, invocations, and a little cash on a more or less regular basis (& of course prayers & invocations for the ones who don’t need the cash/are also doing the giving but have health issues). I’ve done a layer of Sunday chores and visited Bobby’s diary. Need to get over to Dee’s after I get some more coffee. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  5. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s partly sunny and 53 F. in Ashburn after a very unpromising beginning. This morning when I got out of bed the sky was cloudy, and while I was cooking breakfast it became very dark and actually rained. It won’t be warm for the cookout at Elder Son’s house today, but at least it won’t be raining.

    Googled keto diet side effects and discovered that my debilitating lack of energy is owning to the keto regime. I can’t afford not to have the energy to do my work—I have commitments.

    Yesterday a fellow member of the Communications Committee and I interviewed the lifeguard at the pool here and got more than we bargained for: in answering one of the questions I’d written, he broke down crying twice. I didn’t realize he was Syrian, I thought he was Turkish. He’s had to flee his native land, most of his birth family is dead, and he can’t even work at his chosen profession. All he ever wanted was to live in his homeland, surrounded by the family and friends he’d known all his life, work at his job, follow his faith, and become a husband and father. Now, instead of being an architect in Damascus, he’s a lifeguard in a town that’s the middle of nowhere and has only his wife and child here, no other relatives.

    It’s very sad, but not exactly what we wanted for a 600-word article for the summer issue, which will be devoted to the Ashby Ponds Olympics. I’ll cobble something together. I’ll type the other stuff up separately and try to think of a market. He doesn’t want his name used as he fears the regime. One of his biggest griefs is that no one over here is talking about the destruction of Syria.

    I think we’d all be giving a lot more attention to Puerto Rico, Syria, and Yemen if we weren’t so distracted and disheartened by what daily originates in the White House and on the Hill. A human being can only give attention to a finite number of things at one time. Sigh. Remember the days when we didn’t have to think all that much about the government? We just got on with things.

    Still feeling tired so might have a little rest before lunch. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

    • A diet that made me unable to work would be a nonstarter. Is there a supplement you can take to counteract the effects you are feeling?

      • Jan, I’m not sure. I hate this diet, but unfortunately it WORKS. It is said that after two weeks the extreme fatigue goes away. Yesterday I allowed myself an English muffin and some fruit, so was up a pound this morning.

        As soon as I get to a reasonable place, I’ll switch to the Grapefruit Diet, which is much easier and at least gives one some and Vitamin C with the grapefruit three times a day.

  6. Good morning meese, it’s 49 with a high of 81. My roommate and her caretaker went through a whole lot of organizing yesterday which inspired me to start attacking move boxes from the last move and the one before that. I’ve made pretty good progress so far and am accumulating a pile of flattened boxes for recycle, other recycle and trash. Also found a bunch of electronics that could be donated.

  7. I don’t often see eye to eye with AOC but her response to tRump’s propagandist and her boss’ Puerto Rican hate is 🔥🔥🔥.

  8. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 41 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 48. It is raining now and the forecast calls for cloudy skies and fog. That looks like a pattern for the week where the temperatures won’t get above the mid-50s and rain is in the forecast for several days. At least NO SNOW!

    A new group formed by Cecile Richards announced their debut yesterday. Called “Supermajority” their goal is to engage women:

    Dubbed Supermajority, the organization is the creation of Cecile Richards, the former head of Planned Parenthood; Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter; and Ai-jen Poo, executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. The group, which describes itself as multiracial and intergenerational, has a goal of training and mobilizing 2 million women over the next year to become organizers and political leaders in their communities.

    Richards, Garza and Poo spent the past year traveling the country talking to women about how to harness their activism. They found that despite increased energy, many women find getting involved in politics intimidating and are unclear about how to do more than just march or protest.

    “Women are mad as hell and we’ve been in resistance mode for two years,” Garza said. “Now it’s time to equip people.”

    Here is a link to their website: SuperMajority.com. The only thing I see a bit troubling is that they have allied with the group PantSuit Nation which started out as a group support for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but had problems with leadership and a definite white woman problem. It will be interesting to see what they do – I have a lot of respect for the work that Cecile Richards has done. I will follow them on Twitter.

    See all y’all later!

  9. Good Monday morning Meese

    37 here in Saugerties, NY with frost on the ground, going up to 59.

    Loved this:

    Puerto Rico

      • He’s probably relieved because he doesn’t have to thank the literal pile of crap in the White House. I wonder about some of the people who have received awards from the Republican Party’s president, if they will want to re-receive them from a decent person once we take the White House back? I know that my daughter’s President’s Award for Outstanding Academic Excellence document from her 2018 graduation has the orange orshole’s scrawl (and Betsy DeVos’!) on it. I have the signatures covered with a scrap of paper – the Academic Excellence was real, but having Hillary Clinton’s signature would have made it more authentic.

  10. Wow, it’s early. And I haven’t been sunburned since my 20s, I’d forgotten how hot & itchy it is. Anyway, happy Monday everybody. I’d really like it if we could go a week without a mass shooting. Or a day, even. Very jolting to come home from the Ride on Saturday to all the awful news. Spending a day with happy, positive, supportive people all doing a good thing got me spoiled for the real world. Guess it’s time to pull up Head Full of Dreams, with that great speech from The Great Dictator as the intro. May it be so:

    We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.
    We want to live by each other’s happiness.
    Not by each other’s misery.
    We don’t want to hate and despise one another.

  11. This story has me raging mad

  12. Good Moonday morning, Moosekind! It’s partly cloudy here in NoVa, with veils of white cloud whipping across a blue sky. The current temp. is 38 F.—ugh. It’ll go to 62 F. today, but the good part is that the rest of the week will be warm.

    Don’t like the news, as usual. Today will be busy with typing up interview notes, Balance and Strength class at 11, a cosy “Girls’ Lunch” with my neighbor at the Deli, and then home to compose questions for tomorrow’s interview. Haven’t heard back from the publisher yet, but may be able to view the corrected galleys today or tomorrow. I wish this book would come out in time for Memorial Day weekend, as it’s perfect beach reading. It won’t strain anyone’s brain.

    Does anyone remember the 1950s-1960s novelist, Taylor Caldwell? One of her books was on sale, so I bought it. Might pick up some useful tips for the Tarts, who seem to haunt me: they just won’t leave me alone, even when I try to write something Rill Serious.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond! Today is bfitz’s last day at work, if I remember correctly. And tomorrow is Beltane!

    • RE: Taylor Caldwell. The name sounds familiar but maybe only because I remember seeing it from my prolific book-buying days when I belonged to several book clubs and would spend hundreds of dollars a year on real-paper books. I can’t say I remember reading anything by her.

      • Wow, that doesn’t say much for her writing ability. I seem to think The Shoes of the Fisherman was a big best seller of hers, not that I ever read it. I’m not terribly keen on novels about the Christian religion.

  13. Welp, starting the day out not so good. My friend’s insurance which covers her husband since he’s between jobs decided her husband’s doctor didn’t mean it when Rxing a specific dosage of thyroid meds and cut him off – side effects of cold-turkey withdrawal include severe depression along with some TMI physical stuff. My friend is off trying to deal with that. On my own bat, I got here and discovered somebody’s borrowed – at least I hope borrowed – the power cord to my personal laptop which I left here over the weekend so I could use it today once IT got here and replaced my desktop with the new person’s IMac. (The department Chair promised the department would replace it if it doesn’t show up before I leave.) So they had to leave the desktop up and set up the IMac next to it. We’ll swap out the ethernet cable once she gets here this afternoon after new employee orientation. My friend’s situation is unfortunately “normal” for this society’s attitude towards bottom-quartile income people. My own isn’t so bad. I have a desktop at home (thanks to a very sweet and dear friend) and only use the laptop for travel (which I don’t do that much) – and here at work for music when I’m soloing since the speakers on this desktop don’t work.

    Anyway a mid 60s to upper 70s partly cloudy day. It may or may not rain – which usually means that even if it does, it doesn’t rain in Fayetteville proper but goes around us. Yesterday we generated right at 20 KWHs and the m-t-d is 458 with this morning’s driblet. We shall see what we shall see. Murf is still being grumpy cat but he’s eating better and moving better. Other cats have managed to snaffle some of the kitten chow causing TMI issues so I’m hoping I can get Murf off the kitten chow soon. With my friend’s help I flea-goo’d all the cats yesterday. I didn’t see any fleas (or thank goddess have any bites myself) but the guys had been scratching so hopefully this will take care of it.

    Evil Ones being evil. Politically of course – but the Rs are just the political wing of the RW/Libertarian?Free to kill anybody for profit Market corporations (as in check out who owns the media and you know who owns the Rs). Whether we’re talking medical industry, financial industry, food industry… – this society sux. The minute you can put “Big” in front of anything – the minute they get bigger than needing 5 veeps – they stop being what they were created to be and become for-profit/stock value is the only value evil. We used to regulate these suckers. When they covertly got the power to stop the regulation, that’s when they could go overt. And they obviously did. Which of course means more Evil Ones doing evil things politically. There’s only one way out of this – totally swamp them at the polls. So “over vote” in every election at every level that they cannot pretend otherwise.

    Anyway I need more coffee and I need to get back to work. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Instant update – one of the professors borrowed my powercord when hers died just before class Friday. She’ll bring it back after class today. Which is a couple of hours before I leave so that’s good.

        • Even less good about my friend’s husband – he’s been out of work for weeks (& hasn’t been able to keep a job for more than a few weeks at a time) mostly due to his meds not being right and he’s taking it out on her as males usually do. So far it’s “only” verbal abuse accompanied by a few very vague threats – vague enough nobody really knows how to proceed because we can’t tell if he’s talking violence to property, animals, her, or himself when he says “OK, it that’s the way you want it, sorry about the mess when you get home.” But he came down to campus, found my car, and locked the doors – a trifling thing unless you know the security system malfunctions and goes off when opened by key (& the fob doesn’t work – as in really, the dealership tried reprogramming it but the system doesn’t “read” it) so we had to deal with the alarm system going off to get home. A “snotty little kid” thing – but I don’t like that sort of behavior even from kids much less a man in his late 40s. sigh. One more thing we shall see what we shall see.

          • In a decent country with a humane health system, his medical needs would be met. I certainly hope there will be no more incidents like these, or worse!

  14. Good morning, Meesefolk; 37 when I got up, with a whopping high of 45 today. There’s a 90% chance of rain, just to make sure we don’t overlook the Dreary, and then to make sure we’re thoroughly confused, it’s supposed to be 72 on Wednesday (but also with rain, because having a purely lovely day is too much to ask). April is one of the months that makes me weather-cynical; November is the other.

    I spent most of the weekend trying to fix things that weren’t broken and unable to fix things that actually are. I don’t think this is a metaphor for my life, but it was certainly the reality of my weekend. The door handle of my sewing room came off in my hand with no advance “I may be breaking” warning. Now I can’t get into my sewing room, and it will probably take removing the weird extra layer of molding around the door to make some progress. This shouldn’t be that hard, but nothing, but nothing is turning the door latch at this point. On the other hand, when I was doing laundry, I threw some clothes in the dryer, hit the start button, and nothing. I spent 45 minutes trying to figure things out, starting with the obvious (yes, it’s plugged in) and proceeding to the less-obvious (cleaning the start switch). I finally gave up, hung my clothes out despite the grey and chill, and ordered a replacement start switch. When Hubby got up to go to work, I mentioned there were dryer issues. He went into the laundry room, hit the on switch, and lo and behold, the dryer started. Yay for working dryer, but this ensures at least of week of teasing from The Hubby about my inability to push a button correctly. (To be fair, he also said not to cancel the replacement order, because it’s clear it’s being temperamental or wearing out.)

    Good day to and for all!

  15. Good morning, 50 and sunny in Bellingham. Our family weekend was fun, but so busy with food and fun that I’m beyond weary this morning. Unfortunately our daughter lost her car keys, so after a long search we’re waiting for AAA to tow her car to the dealer so a new key can be made and programmed. Then we’ll drive her car to Edmunds and return in our car. Lost keys are a hassle!

    Regardless of the commotion it was good to be together celebrating our grandson’s 18th birthday. Best wishes to all on this Monday morning.

  16. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 43 in Madison with an expected daytime high of 45. The forecast calls for rain all day. This will be the last of the April showers bringing May flowers – tomorrow’s rain will be May showers!

    It is beyond depressing that the Democratic presidential primary in 2020 is going to be between two white men in their 70s. We will be squandering the excitement that Barack Obama’s presidency generated among our young people and embracing a politics of fear – fear of losing. Yes, it would suck to lose to Trump but there is no poll that says we will lose to him if we nominate someone who represents the future instead of the past.

    No time to do anything except wave hello – I have an eyes forward project that needs to get to clients by the start of the workday.

    See all y’all later!

  17. Tuesday Meese
    49 and cloudy here in NYS – going up to 58.

    Puerto Rico

  18. Good morning, Meese! Here in Asbburn we have a bright sky, which is blue covered by a veil of white. The current temperature is 50 F., going up to 77 F. or higher with a possible thunderstorm in the afternoon. It’ll be nice to be warmer for a change.

    It’s Beltane, y’all, so find a maypole and dance around it! The most beautiful maypole I ever saw was at the Waldorf School in Austin, years ago. My grandson, now a student at UT, was a student there at the time. After we dropped him off for classes that last day of April, M’daughter and I had breakfast at the “tea garden,” an open-air place behind the school where one can buy a hot drink and rolls to eat outside. After breakfast we strolled around the campus and noticed a maypole on the grounds of the high school. It was crowned by a huge, glorious wreath of yellow, purple, white, and other colors of flowers, with ribbons trailing from it. Have always remembered it with delight—both for its beauty and for the unexpected acknowledgment of Beltane.

    Not much to report except for a fun lunch yesterday with a woman who has really made the most of life here: “Feel as if I’ve died and gone to heaven!” She’s an ambassador for our building, and an inveterate book club organizer and party planner as well as an enthusiastic participant in card games.

    Formulated a set of questions for the woman I’m to interview this morning for the quarterly paper here. She started the art gallery. It’s a real pleasure to walk between two walls full of paintings on the first floor of the main clubhouse. Some of the people here are talented painters: others create ceramics, knit, crochet, or make objects out of wood.

    Today I’m having lunch with an old friend, a charming Englishwoman who lives down the road. Hope I can find the place all right, I’m the world’s worst driver.

    Jan, I seriously question that our choice is going to be between two old white males in November 2020. Biden is so yesterday it’s incredible, and Thing is evil incarnate. He may die of apoplexy before then, anyway. I think one of the others—it’s to be hoped, not another of the B-boys—will prevail as the Dem candidate. A lot of people are discounting “the incandescent fury of women” (Michelle Goldberg NYT quote), but it propelled the most diverse, Democratic takeover of the House in history. I think we can do it again.

    On that happy note, I wish you all a merry Beltane! If you don’t feel up to dancing, there’s still other stuff you can get up to. :)

    • The only maypole I have ever seen was one that two Waldorf schools were arguing over! Our group at the time used to borrow it from one of the schools for our own ritual. One year we went to borrow it and found that another Waldorf school had claimed it as their own and it was now 30 miles out of town (and in the control of people we did not know!) We were quite sad and settled for leaping over a (very low lying) fire that year. I usually celebrate Beltane on May 1st but it is definitely one of those holidays that does not adhere to a strict calendar. Heck, its not our calendar anyway but invented by the boys in Rome!

      • We had one as part of an SCA event I attended some 25 years ago – what’s really neat is that after the dance (if you do it right) you detach the ribbons from the top of the pole and slide off a beautifully interwoven ribbon tube/cylinder. I’m not sure what it would have been used for back in the day but it was colorful and very strong.

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