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

Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings posts give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.

Welcomings will be posted at the start of each week (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!
 

 

40 Comments

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

    Morning low of 52 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 66. Rain showers are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Sunday Meese.
    58 going up to 77 here in the Catskills.

    Survived the ‘event’ here yesterday. Large turnout, everyone had a good time. About 15 people are still here.

    Puerto Rico

    Wrote about this Medicaid funding cutoff – again – for this morning. No one is paying attention. I guess it will take deaths – many deaths, to get coverage.

    • Oh, my GODDESS, Dee! The “long national nightmare” we endured because of Watergate is nothing compared to what’s going on today! Eff The Occupant and his visceral loathing of brown-skinned people. As you say, hundreds, even thousands will die because of lack of care.

      Can you send your essay to the WaPo? Could it be an op-ed?

        • Only because the media ignore it!

          Why don’t you send it in anyway, just for the hell of it, making sure to include your background of achievements. You can’t win a contest you haven’t entered. :)

  3. Up & watching the news. So much devastation in the Bahamas. And the kleptocracy continues, and I think that “negotiations with the Taliban” story is just to distract us from the thievery & corruption. Here, listen to mellow, drifty Rise Up from my boys.

  4. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s another lovely day here in Ashburn. Current temp. is 69 F., going up to 82 F. I love cool September mornings!

    Just finished breakfast, getting ready to watch FI in Italy.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

    • Just read & tweeted. Boosted tweets in the diary/comments as well. That’s the best I can do. sigh.

  5. Welp, we survived another week. The overnight “low” was 72 and it’s already 75. I’m gonna have to close up the house as soon as I finish typing this. sigh. Clear so far although the forecast is cloudy this afternoon. Worst possible timing for electricity production but life is what it is. Yesterday we got 14.8 KWHs and the m-t-d is 106 so still on track. Better than the start of August!

    Yesterday’s twitler HOF was a supposed meeting with the Taliban (was that a rabbit?) and Kamala’s not jumping on a supporter’s calling twitler “retarded”. Kamala said she didn’t hear exactly what he’d said and firmly stated the use of that word (and other pejoratives) is always wrong. That of course didn’t make any difference to the folks who hate her for whatever reasons. (Some of those reasons are quite valid for the folks in question. What’s sad is of course they will consider everything she says & proposes that benefit them to be pandering and lies. But that is their business. Only the folks hurt by some of her former not just words but actions have the right to decide she’s making up for them.) Her followers trying to make light of it and especially ringing in the “what about bernie” were making it worse. Just yesterday morning in the Khive diary someone was saying WOC have to be 5x better than WM to get ahead. Using bernie’s subterranean bar to judge her – well, as I commented, if they have to do that she might as well go home now. It isn’t right that she has to be 5x better than a white man (make that 100x better than bernie) to win – but it’s fact. She’s very good at hearing the feelings and meaning of what her supporters are saying. She’s gotta start hearing the actual words they’re using. The former is what makes her town halls and rallies so energetic and touching. The latter will turn into campaign ads – she needs to make sure they can be turned into campaign ads for our team, not theirs.

    Today is Tricia’s birthday. She’d have been 49.

    Most of the Sunday chores are done. Partly because I can’t do my baking or grilling today – missing some ingredients I thought I had and it will be too hot by the time I get them. Partly because my friend did my floors yesterday, bless her. It’s “value for value” as Aji puts it – she’s doing that to pay back a loan I made her in an emergency (because she refused to take it as a gift). But I consider it a blessing. It makes a huge difference in my comfort and depression levels, it’s something I cannot do for myself, and I can trust her to do it right. But I still have to close up the house and get in my walk before it gets any hotter. I’ll go read Dee’s diary when I get back. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Bfitz, in my opinion the MSM are more afraid of her than of any of the others, hence the beginning of the Hillary-ization of KH.

      (Disgustedly) Did you hear that Boobajugger is slapping a tax on solar collectors? Presumably, since you bought your array some time ago, that won’t include yours?

      • The Birchers who own the MSM and the berners both are more afraid of her than the others. She’s not up to Hillary’s standards but she’s the closest. She also has the most of Hillary’s team on her team and her policies are expanded/updated versions of Hillary’s for the most part. She’s also much more of a fighter – Hillary did civil & corporate law, Kamala did criminal law – than Hillary. She’s not the only one who’s plans could put us on a life-sustaining trajectory but she’s the best chance in my opinion. Castro’s plans are almost as good – as in they are better for some issues but not enough in others to be ahead of her overall platform. But Castro is being ignored rather than attacked so while we know he’s golden, not enough other folks do.

        I’m not surprised about the tax. The extractive fuel industry has been pushing for that for years. They aren’t profitable at all without the subsidies we’re giving them and at this point even with the extractives being subsidized and the renewables not, the renewables are cheaper. So the only way they can compete is by getting the government to make renewables more expensive. One more reason we’ve got to get the Rs out of office. It is not now and never has been twitler. All these evil plans, programs, and actions were put together by the Birchers, have been surreptitiously slipped in until now when they have enough power to be blatant about it and go full bore on getting them in place too solidly to be removed once twitler is gone. As to your question, I bought mine in 2014, upgraded in 2015, and actually got a 30% tax credit. I doubt seriously there’s anything they can do about that now.

        • As to your question, I bought mine in 2014, upgraded in 2015, and actually got a 30% tax credit. I doubt seriously there’s anything they can do about that now.

          Thank Goddess for that!

  6. Good morning, 58 and cloudy in Bellingham. We had an intense thunder and lightning storm last night, followed by a down pouring rain. The quiet calm outside my window this morning is a powerful contrast, and a timely reminder of the power of nature.

    RonK survived his hike, but after 8 hrs on the trail and 22,000+ steps he arrived home very tired last night. He was the oldest participant so he was rightly worried about his ability to “keep up.” This hike was very steep so I hope his bruised toes will remind him that more gently walks in the forest are still an option!

    Best wishes to all on this quiet Sunday morning.

  7. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 57 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 68. Showers and thunderstorms are in the forecast.

    I am glad to see that “inviting the Taliban for a round of golf diplomacy” is getting the scathing rebuke that it deserves. I laughed out loud (bitterly) at the tweets suggesting that Republicans were upset about their president inviting terrorists to Camp David – a place that used to be a symbol of presidential reflection and measured diplomacy. Their president has trashed everything about the presidency! They were fine with becoming pro-Russia because Trump wanted it and they will be fine with him becoming pro-Taliban if Trump wants it – they have no principles except that a white male should be president and that he should sign tax cuts and give them white supremacists and misogynists for the federal courts. They can harumph all they want, their actions belie their words.

    Busy week here – I could claim last week as lost because of the holiday and end of month landing on a holiday weekend but now there is no excuse to not get projects work done.

    See all y’all later!

    • Orange Dude really, really wants that Nobel Peace Prize, doesn’t he? I honestly believe he thought a second round of Camp David Accords would do it for him and give him bragging rights over Obama. But then someone probably mentioned that Begin and Sadat received the peace prize, but Carter did not. Of course, this is even assuming that the invitation was real and accepted, and we’ve reached the point with this administration that even that simple assumption should be questioned.

  8. Monday Meese
    56 here in the Catskills of NY – going up to 73. Sitting here enjoying peace and serenity – the guests/visitors here for over a week have gone home.

    • It is not surprising to see Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) there – he is on the right side of a lot of issues Democrats care about. He should be considered as a VP candidate for a lot of reasons including that his spot would be filled by a Democratic governor. I am not going to advocate for the election of anyone who would have their Senate seat filled by a Republican – the Senate is critically important for a Democratic president to have any success (and to stem the tide of deplorable federal judges); we have enough electable candidates without risking handing the Senate back to Mitch McConnell should we win it back by one seat in 2020.

  9. 45 days so far of 100+ degree days, I think this is the 4th highest number. We’re not going to beat 2011, when we had over 90, but wow. My brother texted me last week about some legal papers relating to my mom’s estate (yes, still) so I dashed home after work every day last week looking for the mail, and nothing. Nothing over the weekend either. Ugh, waiting for mail. And the news is, of course, awful. Trump is an awful child. For music today, something completely different. The book I was reading the last couple of weeks had to do with the crossroads — the magical kind. (our heroes decide that something’s gone wrong, the entity behind the crossoroad deals has gone off kilter & decide to fix that) And I’ve heard both Clapton’s version of the song & Robert Johnson’s in my head the whole time I was reading the book. Here’s the Robert Johnson version.

  10. Good Moon Day morning, Moosekind! The sky in NoVa is covered with a soft, puffy layer of gray cloud like an eiderdown. It may rain today. On the other hand, it may not rain today. I’m betting we’ll get a shower because I’ve replaced the cushions and the small carpet on the screened porch.

    Very busy day ahead: dentist in Herndon this morning, then back to Fairfax this afternoon to pick up the little ones at the school bus stop. I’ll stay with them until DIL arrives home around 5, but then I have a loathsome, hour-long drive up Rt. 28 North to Sterling, where Jennifer Boysko’s office is located. There’s a meet-and-greet for the volunteers tonight. By the time I blearily turn my steering wheel toward home, I won’t have had any dinner. Still, that won’t do my overlarge bohunkus any harm.

    M’Daughter and SIL in The Hills, TX, are going all out to save the environment. They’ve installed a bidet attachment from Amazon in their en suite bathroom, which Daughter says reduces the use of toilet paper by 80%; they’ve switched to bamboo toothbrushes; they now store leftover food in Mason jars rather than plastic containers, and she uses the string bags I gave her years ago instead of plastic or paper shopping bags. By the time I finished reading the list of what she does I was exhausted!

    Must get going, it’s already nearly 9 o’clock. Wishing all at the Pond a good day!

  11. It was just under 70 at dawn but is 77 (heat index 83) already and I’ve closed the house up for the day. The cats are not happy. We got 14.9 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 121 – still on track for 400 for the month, still not enough to cover A/C if I have to turn it on. Busy morning – almost as busy as a Sunday. (Not really – I just usually don’t cook breakfast except Sundays.) I tried out Aji’s blue cornmeal blueberry pinon pancake recipe – they’re delicious but I’m going to have to experiment with the amount of liquid. They came out more like crepes than pancakes. Probably the difference in altitude – I keep forgetting I need to adjust recipes that work at 7500 ft for my mere 1200 ft. Then I grilled the pork-turkey sausage patties to cover the next several weeks. Since I haven’t used turkey before I only did a small batch. I’m not sure I’ll do it again. There’s just something about the texture of ground poultry. It’s not bad but not what I’m looking for.

    Evil Ones being louder and prouder of their evil. Nothing I can do but point it out. But then I’ve been pointing it out for decades and it’s just gotten worse. Which is depressing to say the least. My various friends are dealing with combinations of health and financial issues that shouldn’t exist and wouldn’t exist if we weren’t a colonizer/systemic racist society – an evil elitist “civilization” that determines wealth and worth on what the 1% has – and nobody else is allowed to. More depressing to say the least. And the stupidity combined with the greed of the majority of white people who think it’s in their interest to keep it that way…sigh. That makes the majority of white Americans evil. more sighs.

    I’m waiting on a phone call about the wood bricks I’m planning/hoping to be using instead of regular firewood this winter. They still haven’t come in and at this point even if I could find a new firewood guy I’d be getting green wood. On top of all the issues that led me to decide to try the wood bricks in the first place. So I may not get my walk in. The bird feeder, if I go out the front door and around the house, is 200 steps round trip. I may just do “laps” so I can get some exercise but still be able to hear the phone. (Yes, it’s a kitchen wall phone. Why do you ask. LOL.) Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • LOL!!! I kept my landline for years longer than most, but I finally gave it up when a) the phone company bill got up to $80/month, and b) Kiddo wanted our rotary dial desk phone to use for a theatre prop. If I lived in Tornado Alley or a hurricane-prone area, I might have kept it, but that $80 on top of cell phones was too high a price for the unlikely scenario that all cell phones in my household would die simultaneously.

      • My AT&T bill is almost $90 but that does include my internet. I can’t get the metrics for my PV system without internet. And I prefer being able to look up what I want to know via internet than have to watch TV or listen to radio in the hopes somebody will actually cover what I’m interested in. sigh.

      • I still have a land line for my business (it is required for DSL Internet access) but I put my home phone on VOIP. Where I lived before, AT&T used to keep me on old expensive plans and wait until I would complain and then say “oh, we have this great plan to save you money!” Why couldn’t they let me know that before I had a year of paying more than I needed to? Grrrr. This was back in the bad old days of having to pay for long distance – now most phone service comes with free long distance.

  12. Good morning, Meesefolk; 52 when I got up with a high of 70. Tomorrow is supposed to be 86; that will be a shock to the system after all of the cool-ish weather we’ve been having. It also means I probably need to get back out into the yard tonight instead of trying tomorrow. I spent Saturday working hard on moving plants and eliminating one of my gardens; it was supposed to be a weekend project, but when I got up on Sunday, I could barely move. I really need to learn to pace myself better and start working smarter, rather than harder. I keep assuming that I can maintain the pace that I did when I was 30. In fact, I can…as long as I don’t expect to be able to stand upright and move the next day. When I met with Joker from DK for breakfast in NC, she said that we really need an updated Our Bodies, Our Selves for seniors, because there sure as heck is whole bunch of stuff about getting older that no one ever mentioned. What to Expect When You’re Expecting was my bible when I was pregnant with Kiddo, and I would readily buy and read the senior version now.

    The new and sudden visa requirement for Bahamians surprised me only because the cruelty was so delayed. I fully expected the U.S. response would have been more heartless earlier on, but I guess it took awhile for the Miller Gang to think up another way to hurt people. My thoughts about Miller, 45*, and anyone going along with their agenda are really so far below what I aim for in myself that I should be ashamed, but mostly I’m just angry and lean towards wanting revenge even more than justice. I should probably work on that.

    Back to “work” which mostly means doing the bare minimum of the stuff I get paid for and getting more resumes out. Good day to and for all!

  13. Good morning, 62 and cloudy in Bellingham. Grouchy Monday for moi thanks to a disrupted night’s sleep and a bad case of tRump angst. My so called sleep was a series of naps and that’s not very restful. I’ll do my version of “forest bathing” and see if puttering around with hydrangeas and begonias restores some feelings of well being :)

    Best wishes to all.

  14. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 70 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 82. Thunderstorms have been rolling through the area since 11:30pm last night, a new line about every hour. The dog didn’t sleep, I didn’t sleep and I see a nap in my future. I am trying to figure out how to triage my work so I can get done just the minimum promised and then shut it all down.

    I see that Jon Ossoff is planning a run for Georgia Senate. I could not read the article because it is behind the AJC paywall so I will have to wait until it is reported by the free press or one of the newspapers I subscribe to. That would be great news – he has name recognition, he actually won GA-06 in the 2017 special there and was defeated in the runoff, and he is the right kind of progressive for Georgia (not a berner, if I recall). This will take the heat off Stacey Abrams who is intent on focusing on a rerun of the governors race in 2022 after she dismantles the unfair voting system there. The Senate is just the House with longer terms – a place controlled by one man; her intelligence and personality is a better fit for an executive position.

    The soldier killed in Afghanistan last week was born in Puerto Rico, the son of another Puerto Rico born military man. I am surprised that tRump’s head has not exploded from the cognitive dissonance created by his hatred of people of color and their contributions to our military. His brain is so rotted by his untreated mental illness that he probably does not even recognize a logical inconsistency. I suppose you only have dissonance when you try to rationalize two competing notions – in Trump Brain there is only one notion, the soothing and fluffing of Trump Ego.

    Big election day in North Carolina. Two open seats, one being filled by the death of the Republican who declared French Fries to be Freedom Fries after France refused to be a George W. Bush lapdog (we have no chance in that election) and the other where the Republican committed vote fraud so egregious that even the Republican Party had to admit that there should be a do-over. The pundits will declare that the outcome – whatever it is – portends the 2020 presidential election but what it really measures is how interested people are in an off-year special election. The Virginia elections later this year will be a better predictor of voter enthusiasm.

    See all y’all later!

    • The Virginia elections later this year will be a better predictor of voter enthusiasm.

      It’s interesting your saying that, Jan, because that point was made last night by one of the speakers at the Meet-and-Greet. Several of the candidates were there, as were some of the volunteers. The speaker said that Virginia was a bellwether state, and she was tired of hearing that Loudoun County is a purple county in a purple state. She averred that it’s a blue county in a blue state.

      There’s going to be a tremendous canvassing effort on the weekend of September 28th. We are going to knock on 100,000 doors. I agreed to do it provided someone else drives (I don’t know this county at all well), and that I canvass with a partner. Canvassing alone for Obama in 2008 was such a frightful experience I have no desire to repeat it.

      I’m hoping that other women are as fed up as I am with being frightened that the children we see on to the school bus in the morning won’t come home that afternoon, just because some aggrieved, entitled white thug chose to spray an elementary school with bullets.

      • Trying to predict anything from a low-turnout special election is foolish (but people will!!). Those elections mostly draw super-voters, people who vote in every election. In blood red parts of North Carolina, those super-voters are most likely to be Republicans. Your elections are in the normal cycle and people will go to the polls for a variety of candidates, not just one race – and unlike in North Carolina, your state elections may very well alter the balance of power in the legislature. It is the very definition of a Big Huge Deal.

  15. Tuesday Meese.

    Back to peace and tranquility here on the farm – all guests gone. 59 and cloudy going up to 78 here in the Catskills

    Puerto Rico

  16. Bahamas

    • Good Tiu’s Day morning, Meese. We have a partly cloudy sky in Ashburn with a current temp. of 67 F. Later it’s going up to 84 F. We’re in for a nasty hot few days—not as nasty-hot as the weather in Austin, but still awful.

      Have another busy day planned—mani at 10, lunch with Darling Niece at 11:45, then leaving here at 3 to pick up The Littles from the bus stop. Yesterday I stayed until Mommy arrived home at 5, then lit out to the godawful traffic on Route 28 to the HQ in Sterling. Got there right at six.

      Looking forward to a weekend away, during which I plan to catch up on a lot of things when we’re not walking on the beach or chomping doughnuts from The Fractured Prune. September looks like being a busy, busy month!

      Feeling a little disheartened that our candidate is not doing that great in the polls but I hope things will get better.

      Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!

      • The polls are meaningless right now. At this point the path forward is to build a campaign infrastructure in the early states, don’t stress New Hampshire – where the top three are concentrating on each other, and stay the course. No one has voted! You can start to see the Republican attacks being planned and I think when push comes to shove, Democrats won’t choose “far left” and those who cheerfully self-identify as socialists. Elections are won around the middle, center left and center right, not by scaring folks in the hinterlands. Our candidate has just the right amount of leftiness, in my opinion.

  17. Yesterday was another 100+ degree day, but today & tomorrow it might rain so the weather guy was hopeful it will stick to the mid-90s. And of course, the Trump administration can find a way to make literally any situation worse. Though the hurricane stuff shouldn’t surprise anyone, since they already did with Maria. Ok, time for the Great Dictator speech:

    <blockquote>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. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.</blockquote>
    

    Head Full of Dreams

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