Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Jan. 5th through Jan. 11th

January 4, 2020 JanF Community 97

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!
 

 

40 Comments

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

    Morning low of 27 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 39. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Sunday Meese. 37 here in the NY Catskills with possible snow later today.

    This:

  3. Puerto Rico

  4. We’ve got gorgeous weather here — wore short sleeves & capris for my walk yesterday, and if I walk again today, it’ll be the same. I discovered that doing the running plan out in the world is much harder than on the elliptical machine; so I’m going to repeat week 1 next week. MSNBC is changing their weekend schedule, so I’m watching the last show of one of my favorites.

  6. Sunny morning here in Fay., AR – always a lift to the heart this time of year. Most times of year except in serious drought conditions and even then…Weather widgets can’t come to agreement on the temperature. One says 54 going to 57. The other says 49-feels-like-43 going to 54. I’d call either one good and walk outside today if it weren’t for the wind which is blade-sharp. Yesterday we got 7.2 KWHs and we’re at 20 for the month with this morning’s driblet. Looks to have 🤞🤞 the same or a little better for today and maybe even tomorrow.

    So far 2020 is having severe problems deciding whether it’s gonna be a good year or a bad one. Life in this country is getting more and more like a potentially deadly game of Chutes and Ladders – a game I’ve never liked. But all “my folks” are surviving. Some more comfortably than others. Some having to put off more stuff that needs to be done than others. But surviving. I don’t know for how long – for my friends, the nation, or the world – but we’re alright right now. I know that’s not true for a lot of folks – Indigenous anywhere, kids in cages (most of whom are Indigenous too), the folks bombed in the Middle East… – so prayers for all. But thankful that those I know are OK. IF we can win the election. IF it’s not too late. IF we can get into power and have enough power to actually fix things and not just hold evil off for another year or two. We shall see what we shall see. For now, pray, work, do our best.

    My friend just showed up and we’re going out for coffee, so I’ll do my other internet stuff later. Healing/Helping Energy to all who need it and accept it. To their shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  7. Good morning, 45 and cloudy in Bellingham. A cold wind is blowing the trees around outside my window so I’ll need to stay indoors and keep my joints warm today. Thanks to the wind I didn’t get the pruning done I wanted to do yesterday but I did clip some evergreen huckleberry, yew, red twig dogwood, and blooming salal for a fresh winter bouquet. It’s so nice to just step outside and see what I can find.

    I’ll finish putting Christmas away today and then I can focus on the sewing I set aside last month. I have two queen size duvet covers, eight pillowcases/shams, two 86″ circular table cloths, two 70″ table squares, and eighteen napkins in the works. And I thought I could sew it all before Christmas, silly me!

    Best wishes to all as we begin a new week.

    • Princesspat, I was (and remain) nothing like the passionate gardener that you are, but I do miss being able to step outside and see what’s growing in my backyard. There is a large garden space here, in which residents can claim a plot and plant whatever they want, and I did enjoy walking around it the other day. The rosemary, thyme, and several other plants are still growing.

      What I miss the most living here are fresh, homegrown tomatoes in the summer.

  8. Good morning, Meesefolk; 30 headed to 36 today, with the same unrelenting grey that has characterized so much of this winter. I have been around, lurking quietly in the background from my phone. There was a SNAFU with my internet that left me hoarding my available bytes until I could get things sorted out, so commenting was out of the question (I’ve long since given up on trying to type anything longer than a text message from my phone; the fat fingering coupled with poor proofreading leave me feeling quite the fool).

    Jan, re your question about the future of the UMC. The proposed plan has to be approved at General Conference first, which is not a given, since there is likely to be some contentiousness driven by forces that are not purely Spirit-driven (that’s my nice Methodist way of saying that there are outside forces on the Right who may try to derail and disrupt the plan). However, IF it is approved, the net effect will be that the Church will be able to legally ordain LGBTQI pastors, and marriage will be available to all. That will be the default status of the Church. If any congregation does not want to be part of that, they will have to affirmatively opt out through a vote of the congregation, and they will no longer be a United Methodist church. There will be mechanisms in place to safeguard the pensions of all current United Methodist pastors; I haven’t yet read the part of the plan which covers church properties. No individual church “owns” its building; because of the connectional system employed by Methodists, the buildings are the property of the Church, not the church. So it gets tricky with property, and I haven’t dug into it yet. I haven’t read any reasoned, knowledgeable speculation on this, but if I had to guess, I’d say that the majority of the African UMC churches will leave the connection. In the U.S., I think it will be less than a majority, but a still-significant number, and most of those opting out will be in the Deep South. But that’s just my guess, which I wouldn’t recommend taking to the bank. At any rate, I’ll be covering some of this in my Tuesday post, although my current plan is mostly to focus on an instance of the historical relationship between Methodism and a popular social movement (sad to say, there’s generally more following than leading). I haven’t quite decided on any of this yet, so if I change my mind, I’ll just add any more information here in the check-in comments.

    Time to get back to applying for jobs. I saved some I found last week to apply for this week, so that I have the requisite applications recorded for unemployment. I’m getting down to the wire with my unemployment, so in 2-3 weeks, I’ll probably start hitting the retail sector. Blech…but being unemployed has convinced me that I am really not at all ready to retire. Good day to and for all!

    • Jan, here’s more. UMJeremy is a UM pastor, not of the traditionalist wing, but definitely an institutionalist. Still, like most UMC pastors that I know, he’s quite open and unthreatened by varying perspectives:

    • {{{DoReMI}}} Holding the Good Thought for both job and internet. As to the “not ready for retirement” mebbe so, mebbe no. If job hunting & income replacement weren’t a part of your daily situation and your energy was going where you want it to go instead, well, that’s a totally different thing. But while money is still an issue… moar {{{HUGS}}}

    • We talked about it at church this morning. My pastor sees it as hopeful. That we would be able to truly welcome everyone, marry anyone and ordain anyone with the calling – those are all something we’ve wanted for a long time. But it has quite a few hoops to get through. Bureaucracy……

      • I see it as hopeful too, and because folks like Good News were involved, I’m hoping it won’t be sabotaged at GC. But there is a provision that makes it basically all or nothing. If Judicial Council finds anything against Church law in it, the whole thing would be scuttled even before GC. Given the stakeholders who were involved in drafting the plan, that seems unlikely, but it does cause me mild heartburn. I’m far more concerned about the possibility of ratfckers at GC who decide the pro-inclusion folks don’t deserve to have any church at all.

    • Thank you, that was extremely helpful. In my experience, the division of real property is often the most contentious in any split and to have the properties owned by the Church helps. I am also glad to hear that the core church “UMC” is the one that will be welcoming. Let the haters come up with a new name.

      Good luck with your job search decision! I find semi-retirement fine but could not be completely retired as I never developed any hobbies and don’t have enough money to travel or do any of the other things people do when they have no job. I will work until I can’t! I mostly like what I do so that helps.

  9. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 27 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 39. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    I find it absolutely terrifying that the United States border patrol is stopping and detaining American citizens of Iranian descent who are trying to return home from visits to Canada. I guess it is no different than the treatment of German Americans and Japanese Americans during World War II – you are never truly an American if you are not white and don’t have an Anglo Saxon surname. I was having a discussion with friends about the war crimes being planned by the Trump Administration and I wondered – after two 21st century regimes of Republican warmongers with the slight blip of decency from 2009-2016 – if maybe we really are just another shitty country with no guiding principles. The fact that the Republican Party is fine with tRump targeting cultural sites in Iran and refusing to leave the sovereign nation of Iraq when ordered to means they accept our new role as a rogue nation. Do individual military members have a right to refuse to commit a war crime? It would be interesting to know if our military would carry out an order to bomb a cultural site. Or maybe it would be better to not know. :(

    It is difficult to believe that it is only January 6th – it feels like New Years day was a month ago. I have a number of accounting projects that I am determined to not let linger – I am trying a new strategy to triage projects so that I am not scrambling as deadlines approach (and there are a lot of them in January). Worrying about deadlines takes a lot of energy that could be better spent meeting those deadlines. :)

    See all y’all later!

    • Worrying about deadlines takes a lot of energy that could be better spent meeting those deadlines. :)

      Jan, I feel your pain! (Wry smile here)

  10. Monday Meese. It is Three Kings Day, Día de los Reyes Magos.
    Decided to update and republish my diary from last year

    • {{{Dee}}} Holding the Good Thought for no tsunami in Puerto Rico – they’ve got enough problems already and with the damage from the earthquake itself .

      Wish I could comment in your diary, which I very much enjoyed. Epiphany/Three Kings Day is a much more logical time to give presents and much more logical way to hand them out than the magical Teutonic elf/gnome/whatever who magically comes down way-too-small or non-existent chimneys to fill equally non-existent stockings. I like internal logic even in my myths. 😁🎁😁

  11. Ah, Monday — but at least this is a short work week, I’m taking Friday off for my birthday (and Monday & Tuesday of next week). My church was on the news, about the proposed split. We are hopeful that this will mean a peaceful co-existence. Maybe. But humans are very talented at messing things up. Here’s my favorite poet, offering some hope:

    Put your hands in the air
    Hold up the sky
    Could be too late but we still gotta try
    There’s a moment in a life where a soul can die
    In a person, in a country ,when you believe the lie
    There’s a promise at the heart of every good dream
    It’s a call to action not to fantasy
    The end of the dream
    The start of what’s real
    Let it be unity
    Let it be community
    For refugees like you and me
    A country to receive us
    Will you be my sanctuary
    Refujesus

    • I’m sorry, anotherdemocrat!! I keep forgetting that you are UMC also and I keep assuming DoReMI is the person to ask about the schism. It is definitely helpful to get the perspective on the split from two very different parts of the country. It is encouraging to see a denomination discuss how their doctrine hurts people and to try to find a way to heal instead. I grew up in the Catholic church and they will never relent on the hate; they can’t even bring themselves to declare that there are often very good reasons for a woman to divorce her husband and insist that she must live a hell on earth or lose her spot in heaven. Your church at least doesn’t pretend that God gave y’all the rules – they realize many of them are from men and can be changed.

      • I count on AD to provide the perspective that comes from attending the sort of UM church I think of as stereotypically Methodist. It was a huge shock to move to a rural area of MI and discover that the bigotry and small-mindedness from “the outside” was alive and well within the walls of the church building too. It’s not that I think that Methodists are exempt; it’s just that I’d never encountered conservatism in the church before. My church isn’t the worst of the worst, and I think there’s a better than 50% chance we will stay UMC. But the rationale is likely to be more about preserving “our” tradition than it is about committing faithful, radical inclusion. (And frankly, our congregation skews so old that having any marriage in the sanctuary would be a novelty.)

  13. Good Moon Day morning, Meese! What looks like a beautiful day is unfolding out of doors. Just took the Mont-ster out to the courtyard for business, and it’s not nearly as cold and windy as it was yesterday. Currently it’s 37 F. in Ashburn, with a projected high of 48 F. However beautiful the weather is at this moment, we’re expecting a rain/snow mix tonight.

    Never made it here yesterday because of family matters. Mr. Kindergartener, who up until yesterday morning had behaved beautifully during his stay here, had a tremendous fit of sulks when we arrived at the restaurant for breakfast. He continued to lie down on the bench seat next to Miss Pink Cheeks, never touching the hot chocolate or the chocolate chip pancake (ugh) he had previously stated he wanted. Consequently I was in a bad mood the whole of yesterday and only got over it by reading a spy thriller. (Novels are my drug of choice when something bad happens.)

    So here we are with only one Christmas-related object to haul downstairs to the garage storage unit. Things are returning to normal—no visiting children, the convertible sofa in my office once more looking like a sofa rather than a pull-out double bed, and so on. Dearly is going through the Christmas cards to determine which we’ll keep.

    I’m reading Malcolm Nance’s The Plot to Betray America. Miss Pink Cheeks gave it to me for Christmas because it had a yellow cover and she knows yellow is my favorite color, and also because she inferred it’s an anti-Trump book. It’s a chilling read, let me tell you, and so interesting that even I can’t wait to go on reading and Goddess knows I’m not big on nonfiction.

    Lots to do today, as usual. Had to laugh at Jan’s comment about the energy expended in dreading project work. Years ago a friend was fretting about filling out an SF-171 form to apply for a government job. “If you’d work on it for half an hour a day instead of moaning about it, you’d finish it in four days,” I told her. I knew it took two hours to fill out that form because I’d done it myself.

    Therefore (sitting up straight and drawing a deep breath), I’ll stop whining about feeling overwhelmed by the thought of my project and get to work writing it. Just had an idea about how to proceed. After I finish it, I’ll be able to interview a very handsome, courtly 88-year-old in the next building. My new friend here described him as “a good Christian man,” which made me chortle inwardly. What would she say if she knew what I really am? This man has been the recipient of two miracles in his life, one in Vietnam and one, more recent, in Poland.

    Can a person feel happy and sad at one time? Happy that the sun is shining and the holiday hoopla is finished; unhappy about poor, beautiful, burning Australia and the state of our nation. Who’d have thought Thing would start WWIII because of being impeached? Any plans I had to travel by airplane this year are DEAD. That’s the first thing they’ll hit.

    My sister-in-law in Melbourne wrote this morning to say that so far they’re okay, although my niece and her family had to turn back from their proposed holiday place because of the smoke from bushfires. The biggest concern is that the fires in the states of New South Wales and Victoria will join. Dear Goddess, even in Auckland, 1,300 miles away the sky is orange! The WaPo said the snows on New Zealand mountains have turned coffee brown. Apparently the PM of Australia is just as stupid and evil as Thing.

    Wishing all at the Pond a good day.

    • I can’t bear to look at photos of the Australia fires; someone on Twitter said “look at these photos of dead animals!” – no, no NO. Yes, the PM of Australia is a climate denying mouth breather, there are becoming fewer and fewer places on this planet where decent men and women are in charge of government. Goddess help us.

  14. Here in Fay., AR one widget says 32 and one says 35-feels-like-29 – Either way there’s still frost on everything. Sunny again which is nice. We didn’t quite make it to 7 KWHs yesterday but we came close. The m-t-d is 26.7 so not exactly starting the month/year well. There’s a lot of stuff not starting the month/year out well so I guess we’re dealing with “as above so below” or something. But the reverse holds true. We can change the “as above” by changing our “as below” – and that’s where the “loving kindness” Hillary said we need more of comes in. Every act of loving kindness is not just resistance to evil, it actually erodes evil and washes that little bit away. Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work to replace the larger evil because of course we should. It just means that whatever is in our control, however small, is still a good thing to do and part of the process.

    Meanwhile everybody I personally know is surviving. Not thriving but surviving – some even relatively comfortably. So I’ll call it good for the day. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to all who need and accept it, to their shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  15. Good morning, 44 and raining in Bellingham. Between holiday overload and deep resting my internal clock needs to be reset as I’ve completely lost my sense of date and time. I’ll put impt family dates my 2020 calendar today and maybe that will help me reorient myself.

    My thoughts are with my mother this morning, as she was born on this day 98 years ago. My parents died in a car accident in 1995, when she was 73 years old. Gives me pause when I realize I’m now older than she was when her life ended. But she lives daily in my thoughts, so Happy Birthday Mom!

    Best wishes to all on this rainy Monday morning.

    • {{{princesspat}}} I understand the “gives me pause” – I’m 10 years older than Momma was when she walked on, the anniversary of which is the 18th. And yes, she lives daily in my thoughts. Healing Energy includes mental orientation Energy. moar {{{HUGS}}}

    • Those are sobering thoughts, princesspat. Gosh, it’s mind-blowing to realize that we are living longer than our parents did. My father died at age 58. My mother would have been 100 years old in October if she’d lived.

      We can only remember them and be thankful for the examples they set. The day doesn’t pass that I don’t think of my mother and father. I hope my children and grandchildren will remember me kindly.

  16. Good afternoon, Meesefolk; 36 when I got up and headed to 41. I did errands this morning just wearing a fleece instead of my winter coat, which is getting very little use this winter.

    Denise was being altogether too modest today, so I hope you have all seen this mural tribute by now:

    And because George Soros is more than a caricature (and because I have a very good friend who was a high muckety-muck with Open Society), I thought this was good news:

    Good day to and for all!

      • Having watched Twitter activist after Twitter activist disrespect you or disregard you, I think it’s about damn time that your likeness be plastered all over the “walls” of Twitter. That it’s also on a wall in East Harlem makes it even better.

  17. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 30 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 34. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Busy day so I only have time for a brief check-in. Is there anyone surprised that the right-wing is calling our concern over their president committing war crimes “hysteria”? You can’t make common cause when you can’t even agree on what is deplorable. Senate Republicans are fine with starting the impeachment trial with no commitment to calling witnesses planning to vote on that later. Ha, what chumps! McConnell controls the floor and the vote about witnesses during the trial will never be allowed to take place. “Moderate” Republicans now own this whitewash – history will treat you poorly.

    See all y’all later!

  19. I hate to complain about sunny, warm weather — but it is making the cedar trees entirely too happy. Do an image search for “austin cedar trees exploding”; it’s really awful. Fires in Australia, earthquakes in Puerto Rico, just disasters everywhere. And the run-up to another war. Either Rachel or Chris was talking last night about how this feels a lot like the build up to Gulf War 2 — the same lies, the same propaganda videos…. Here’s hoping we have learned something since then — or that it’s true that Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way.

    • Have you seen the discussions on Twitter pointing out that the problem has been made worse by the tendency to (and sometimes even insistence on) plant male trees? I’m not sure it applies to Austin’s cedars, but the conversation was fascinating.

  20. Second earthquake followed the first

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