Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: July 7th through July 13th

July 6, 2019 JanF Community 71

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?

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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!
 

 

35 Comments

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

    Morning low of 59 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 81. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

    • When I saw that DKos only had a piece on Eliz W. goes to Essence to talk to black women – I threw this up in the middle of our hail storm

  4. Good morning, Moosekind! We arrived back in Ashburn late last night after a drive through some superbly awful traffic. A three-hour trip took five and a half hours. (Well, we did stop for fast food for half an hour.) We are dogless and childless this morning, but have errands to do before settling down to watch the World Cup at 11.

    It’s partly cloudy, with patches of blue showing through the white veil of cloud in NoVa this morning, with more thunderstorms expected this afternoon. The current temperature is 74 F., going up to 85 F., with 95 percent humidity.

    We had a very pleasant stay in Williamsburg with the family. Younger Son and family were across the hall from us. On Friday we took Miss Pink Cheeks to Colonial Williamsburg with us: she thought it great fun to see the people walking around in 18th-century costume and to eat lunch at The King’s Tavern. It felt like a million degrees and we grandparents were dying for a nap, so we left after lunch.

    Yesterday we all decided not to go to Virginia Beach in view of the thunderstorms that threatened in the afternoon, so we went for a ride on the Jamestown Ferry instead. I hadn’t realized the James River is so huge! Anyway, it was quite enjoyable standing on the deck in the breeze. The journey lasted only 20 minutes. On the other side there was nothing to see so we turned around and came back. During the journey I thought of the enslaved people being brought from Africa to Jamestown. This was their first sight of America.

    Today will be spent retrieving the dog from his “hotel” and packing for our departure on Tuesday.

    Wishing a good, quiet day to all at the Pond and may our team win the World Cup!

  5. Sunday Meese. Survived yesterday’s hail and thunderstorms in my area with only one internet outage and no damage to puter. Today will be 85 here in NYS.

    Puerto Rico

    • Her name was vaguely familiar – and when I looked up “For My People” it too was vaguely familiar. Best I can guess is that Momma may have read it aloud when I was very young and pieces of it stuck with me. It certainly wasn’t taught in any of my formal education classes. Momma insisted that poetry was meant to be read aloud, that you can’t get the meaning without the cadence, but she had little time for that once she was single parenting. (As to your question about poetry and memorization – at least in Houston, that stopped about 1963. The last year I did that in school was 5th grade.)

  7. Up & watching the news & Le Tour. Today is the team time trial, which is just beautiful to watch. Each team starts 3 minutes apart, riding along the course so close together they’re basically 1 unit. It is dangerous, riding so close — but really they whole Tour, they’re riding closely surrounded by riders, so it’s not that different. Anyway, when any news show plays a Trump clip for the next month, I have something to flip over to. And Goddess bless the Miami Herald reporter who investigated Jeff Epstein. Let’s hope this also gets Sec. Acosta — I’d love to see an investigation of every plea deal that p.o.s. gave to a trafficker or rapist. What was his motivation for this? Was it money, or did he attend Epstein’s parties?

    • Money, always. The donor class – for both parties – always get a different sort of justice. That the people enabling him could not understand that there should be no quarter given to people who prey on children is despicable. The Republicans lost an easy Senate seat in Alabama because they did not “get” that. Even Republicans – who will do anything to hang onto power – couldn’t vote for Roy Moore.

  8. Started the day at 68 and mid 70s now heading for upper 80s. Sunny but really humid at the moment which is not particularly comfortable. Closed up the house already. Rain moved in yesterday late afternoon – like 2.5″ worth of it – so we only got 15.8 KWHs. That brings the m-t-d to 104 with this morning’s driblet. On track – whether we stay on track depends as always on how much generation we get today.

    There is an apparently quite successful divide-and-conquer split-up-the-Dem-House-caucus anti-Pelosi tweet out that has many people I admire, respect, and follow very angry. Of course what Pelosi was responding to is not in the tweet and I cannot get to the geedee article to see. What I do know is that Pelosi does not gratuitously insult any of her caucus. And that she had to have been asked specifically about the 4 WOC Justice Dems listed in the tweet or she would not have responded the way she did – that popularity and twitter followings don’t give them any more votes than anybody else. A comment everyone applauds when aimed at Bernie for example. So I am very upset that the dividing seems to be happening and staying out of it – especially staying out of it until I can find out what Pelosi is responding to. Cuz basically I think that tweet was sent out by one of the Rs (Republicans or Russians) for the very purpose of breaking our caucus so we’ll fight among ourselves instead of fighting the Evil Ones.

    Meanwhile since I’ve already been in Dee’s Kamala diary from yesterday RTing like mad, I’ll get some coffee then head back to DK for Dee’s Sunday FPer. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Nancy Pelosi is not the most articulate person; I say that as a Pelosi fan and also someone who reads her news conference transcripts. I am sure that it was a poorly worded response that Dowd jumped on, pretty much along the lines you suggest. She was not elected Speaker for her actual speaking ability but for her ability to pull together coalitions to get things done, to sense what will pass and cut out the rest and to choose the right battles. The people attacking her are very likely people who don’t like her anyway. There are a lot of left-wing knives out for her because she didn’t start impeachment proceedings on January 3, 2019 and she will never please them with her pragmatic approach to legislating. It made me want to puke to see people retweeting stories from The Intercept, the Glenn Greenwald screed. People are lemmings and it is easy to see how stupid people on social media helped ratfk the 2016 election.

      • The “progressives” have had their knives out for Pelosi since she took impeaching W off the table. Magic impeachment has been a part of the LW credo for some time. But yes, she’s Speaker because she can get progressive legislation through. Not because she’s articulate or eloquent when blindsided or harassed.

  9. Good morning, 62 and cloudy in Bellingham. I’m so happy to be home, and my house is quiet, yay! It’s been a very busy and very fun week but I need a rest. The Fiddle Tunes concerts were wonderful, especially the morning one featuring all the students. The teachers are all internationally know musicians and they preformed in the afternoon. In between we enjoyed some nice meals and time with Sophie and her parents. The motel we booked was a challenge though…..dirty, uncomfortable bed, elusive hot water, close to a busy street, etc. Looks like Sophie will be attending the workshop next year we’ll find a better motel.

    Time for coffee, solitaire, and then maybe the news. Best wishes to all.

  10. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 61 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 79. Sunny skies are in the forecast. I was able to keep the air conditioning turned off most of the day yesterday until late afternoon when the air outside got too hot to keep the house cool. I hope for another one of those days!

    The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team won the World Cup in a very exciting game. Rose Lavelle, who got the 2nd goal on a brilliant left-footed kick, is a former Wisconsin Badger which makes the win extra special. Plus she is 24 – the face of the next generation of players. I hope interest in the sport, and the women who play it, does not wane after the tournament. ESPN just inked a deal with the NWSL to broadcast some of their games this summer after the league lost their broadcast “partner” back in February – a once in awhile game on Lifetime TV. In a country that broadcasts poker games as sport and re-runs golf tournaments on cable TV, to not have a TV presence for a sport that drew millions of viewers over the past month should be embarrassing.

    Speaking of embarrassing, people are using a column by Maureen Freaking Dowd to attack Nancy Pelosi? JHC on a popsicle stick, people, are you insane?!?? First, Dowd is not a reporter, she is bitter person who happens to have been given a column in the Paper of Record to spew whatever nonsense burbles to the top of her pinhead. She despises Democrats and her intent is to trash us and our electoral prospects whenever possible – who can forget her column titled “Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk”? I have not read any of her columns since she stopped being interesting, about 20 years ago. Click bait of the worst sort and so many people with heads filled with sawdust instead of brains clicked and were drawn in.

    Today will be a big day in the courts – Epstein may finally have to pay for his crimes (and no, anyone who enabled him or joined him is NOT an ally and they can burn) and the census case takes a twist as the DOJ attorneys defending the indefensible, and being asked now to lie to the courts, have either quit or been fired as a new “team” of liars is rolled into place. Speculation is that Trump will issue an executive order bypassing Congress on one of their explicit Constitutional duties and they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find any members of the bar willing to defend that in court. I hope that it gets to SCOTUS quickly and Roberts does what he should have done last week – shut the whole thing down.

    I have a lot of news to catch up on as I had my nose to the grindstone last week and went news-light over the weekend.

    See all y’all later!

  11. Good Monday Meese

    64 and cloudy here in Saugerties NY going up to 86.

    Getting prepared to head to Netroots Nation on Wednesday. Just dug out my laptop – and it isn’t charging so have to go get a new power cord. Sigh.

  12. #JusticeforElijah – trending

  13. Puerto Rico

    Nearly two years after Hurricane Maria, the town of Utuado is finally getting a new bridge over the Viví River to replace the old concrete and steel one that was heavily damaged during the storm and has been closed ever since.
    “This is the main road in and out of town,” Héctor Cruz says, as a crew uses a crane and other heavy equipment to construct the new bridge. Cruz is the director of emergency management in Utuado, a community in the highlands of central Puerto Rico.
    After the storm, massive landslides and downed trees blocked mountain roads, cutting the town off from the rest of the island for weeks. Many residents have not rebuilt their homes, and many roofs are still covered with blue tarps. If a hurricane hits Puerto Rico this season, it would be a huge setback, Cruz says. “We will have even more washed out roads, less access,” he says. “We’ll have the same level of destruction, and next time the problems will be even worse because many things have not been addressed yet.”

  14. At work, Monday morning. A whole 5 day week…. that’s gonna feel long. I was actually asleep when my alarm went off this morning, that’s unusual for me. It’s 79 degrees at 6am, high in the upper 90s. Sadly, that’s not global warming, that’s just Texas. Anyway, I put extra (instant) tea in my tea today, to help me cope. And then I saw this tweet:
    https://twitter.com/JulianCastro/status/1148081905679654913

  15. Good Moon Day morning, Meese! At a quarter past seven the sky was almost pitch-dark. There were lightning shows from 11 to 2 a.m. (I was awake due to Hell Night), and at 7:30 we experienced torrential rain. It’s still raining hard now and there’s a flood watch until 10:45 a.m.

    Currently the temperature in dark, rainy Ashburn is 76 F. and, according to the weather gadget on my phone, it’s pretty going to be in the 70s all day. The weather gadget on my laptop tiresomely refuses to work.

    We watched the game and were delirious when Team USA won! It did seem to me that the Dutch had better control of the ball and also a tighter defense than our team, but the teams were pretty evenly matched—no one scored until the 51st minute! Anyway, I hope this leads to higher pay for the team and more interest in the game from now on. It did my heart good to see camera cutaways to the crowds in various parts of the country. Soccer is the beautiful game: the players never stop moving until half-time unless there’s an injury. Looking forward to more of this.

    Today will be spent madly preparing to leave tomorrow. Miss Pink Cheeks is due to be dropped off here around tea time. We don’t fly until 5 p.m.—that is, if we get on. The next flight after that is around 10, so it could be a very long night. Thank Goddess my friend in Montreal bowed to the 21st century and acquired an iPhone! I’ll be able to text him as to our status.

    Woke up to the exceedingly annoying news that Tom Steyer is going to jump into the presidential race. Are there no limits to white male egos? I’m so sick of amateurs.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and in Puerto Rico beyond!

  16. Low at about 4 am was 68 – it’s overcast and 72 now. I hope it gets over the overcast. This past week we’ve been having the sorts of “monsoonal” weather – midday sun then afternoon showers – that is totally not normal around here. Not even the “new normal” we’ve been experiencing over the last 30 years. Goddess only knows what weather and climate will be like before it cycles down again. For one thing Goddess only knows if we (as a culture) will quit being short-sightedly and stupidly greedy soon enough to stop dumping carbon in the atmosphere before natural feedback loops take over and we can’t stop it. sigh. Anyway we generated 17.7 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 120 so still on track.

    As a Kamala supporter I’ve been very pleased with the plans she’s been bringing out. But I’ve just – like over the weekend – discovered something in her history that I very seriously hate and I’m not sure at this point what I’m going to do about it. As AG she opposed something like 20 Native applications for “land into trust” (the process by which Tribes can get back some of their treaty/reservation land stolen from them over the last 100 years – just the treaty lands that we broke the treaties to steal, not talking about the bigger picture of it was ALL theirs once) – and tried to reduce the reservation boundaries for the Colorado River Tribes. That’s actual harm done Native communities. & Natives who’d otherwise support her can’t because of it. Not just that she did it, but that at least when she was AG she was confined to CA. As president she could damage all the Tribes. Unless she addresses this – not just an apology but a plan to help Natives get their land back rather than keep them from it – well, she won’t have the Native vote and I’m not sure about mine. At this point I’m hoping to heaven somebody (besides me – I emailed her campaign) brings this up timely and she does the right thing so I can go back to supporting her whole-heartedly.

    Meanwhile I need some coffee. And to probably mute a convo on twitter with somebody in the real estate business who’s swearing there’s no redlining, subprime mortgages, or race/religion as part of people getting homes. Because he’s been in the business for 20 years (he says) that makes him the expert. No stats, no history, just him being in the business. sigh. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Barack Obama was not a perfect candidate either. He had a blind spot for how the majority religion ran roughshod over the rights of people who did no not want to be forced to praise their god. His words were hurtful and were never corrected because his position is that people who don’t believe in his god should “just get over it.” I voted for him anyway.

      What you describe sounds like something that Kamala Harris can correct, a policy issue that someone will be able to educate her on not an immutable part of her being.

      • It is something she can correct. I’m hoping that she does. Strongly & vocally supporting (& voting for should it come to the floor) the House bill that just passed on the issue would do a whole lot along that line.

      • That particular case was mentioned and I see can see her POV – water rights in the west have always been contentious and basically bloody. It’s the opposition to applications for land-into-trust that’s the real kicker for Aji and others as far as I can tell. She opposed something like 17 to 20 of them. And Jerry Brown did not back her up – he said he didn’t know she was doing it. (Ahem.) Natives fear she’ll do that nationwide if elected president. And not only not let them get back their treaty lands but possibly take more of their land as she seemed willing to do in the case you linked to.

        (BTW the House just passed HR 375 saying Tribes were authorized to do this no matter when they became “official” tribes. I just called her office in DC to ask that she support this & if it actually ever comes up for vote, to vote for it.)

  17. Good morning, Meesefolk; 57 when I got up this morning and going up to a sunny 81…pretty much my definition of perfect summer weather. It gets yucky-hot later in the week which should bring some rain by Thursday, so I’m going to bask in this perfection while I can. The weather was lovely all weekend too, which should have resulted in full days in the gardens. Should being the operative qualifier; instead, I spent some time in the gardens but an equal amount (or more!) time napping, because the weather was so darn perfect. At one point, I sat in the backyard in a lawn chair, sipping lemonade, and cooling down from garden work for a bit…and woke up 1 1/2 hours later. I’ve always had the Hillary-ability to sleep anywhere and almost instantly, but I wasn’t trying to nap. It just kept happening. I’m still trying to decide if it was caused by a) actually being tired; b) weekend quiet; or c) whoa…time to get my iron levels checked. I suspect it’s mostly a and b, but I’m keeping c as an option to consider if it keeps happening.

    I watched the Pelosi/Dowd kerfuffle unfolding this weekend, but like bfitz, I didn’t know the background and like Jan, I don’t give MoDo much credit for well, anything, these days. I think I get what Speaker Pelosi was driving at, but I just decided to walk away from all the Sturm and Drang. I don’t understand how people have the drive and energy to carry on these Twitter fights as if they’re the most important thing ever. (See paragraph above…I mean this literally.) If people were putting as much time and energy into fighting against the concentration camps, I might feel differently, but mostly, I take the long view that this sort of twitter blow-up is a distraction.

    Anyway, good day to and for all!

  18. Good morning meese. It’s 63 with a high of 81 today. Pretty mild weather for summer, when normally we’d be having days in the 90s or 100s. However I will take this. 😁

    Back to work this week, and I’m not entirely prepared. However that’s what earns money to keep the lights on and the kitties fed.

    • {{{basket}}} – lights on and kitties fed is good! moar {{{HUGS}}}

  19. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 61 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 82. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.

    I was awake at 2am and, unable to go back to sleep, I got up and started working. I will need a nap today!

    The census question issue took another strange turn with Trump’s enforcer Bill Barr declaring that the Supreme Court is wrong and that Trump will bypass their ruling with an executive order. Article II versus Article III – who will blink first? Will John Roberts want to preserve his ability to go to Republican cocktail parties and tell Barr “wow, you got me – executive orders trump decades of settled law!” or will he shut the whole thing down? He could have shut it down last week and chose not to, so it’s anyone’s guess.

    Today, the ACA goes on trial in Texas where there is at least the possibility that a Texas court will strike it down and cancel the health insurance of over 20 million Americans. This is a warmup for the crazy rulings we can expect from Trump judges for the next 40 years. You own this, berners, and I hope the universe gives you what you deserve.

    See all y’all later!

  20. Good Tuesday Meese. 66 going up to 88 in Saugerties

    Go Amy!

    Puerto Rico

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