Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: March 27th through April 2nd

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

Welcomings will be posted at the start of each week (every Sunday morning). To find the posts, just bookmark this link and Voila! (which is Moose for “I found everyone!!”).

The format is simple: each day, the first moose to arrive on-line will post a comment welcoming the new day and complaining (or bragging!) about their weather. Or mentioning an interesting or thought provoking news item. Or simply checking in.

So … what’s going on in your part of Moosylvania?

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.

31 Comments

  1. Good morning, Meese! It’s 67 F. here in NoVa on a cloudy morning, going up to 78 F. today. It may rain. Then again, it may not. Who knows?

    Latest meme from “Good Morning, Merrycar”—Hillary, the front runner, is in TROUBLE! Bernie is gaining on her! Yada, yada, yada. Apparently the Sandernistas booed her during one of her speeches. They’re so tiresome. When is the NY primary, for Goddess’ sake? I’d like to see this wrapped up.

    Struggling with the website this morning. Never expected to get live tech support from WordPress in the form of a chatbox at 6:57 a.m., but I did. He was very nice. I may have to ask again re getting the latest graphic on the home page. I can’t figure out why the other graphics got on it but not this one. Went into the WordPress stats and found out that 7 p.m. Friday evening is the most popular time for visiting. How funny!

    Busy day here—getting hair done, folding laundry, working some more on Granddaughter’s story (I actually got Scene 2 written last night), and having lunch with the Circle sisters. April 7 will be here before I know it, yikes! I have to confirm that the last email address I have for Political Granddaughter is still in use. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!

  2. Went to bed at 9 last night, only woke up twice, so that was good. Last night, MSNBC was it’s old self. First, Wendy Davis on Chris Hayes’ show — being all Wendy Davis on Donald trump. It was a thing of beauty. Then — Rachel shook off that PhD in politics & spent a long A-block on the whole “pro-life” thing. It was like a nonfiction, short version of The Handmaid’s Tale. Again, a thing of beauty.

    head is being lazy & just playing the last thing I listened to – Take Me To Church, which is totally fine with me

    • Don’t know if you saw it on my earlier post, but I’ve finished Season 3 and am into Season 4 of WD – you wanted to talk about the farm? I am so hooked on this show now! lol

      • So, now that there are more people — which of the actors are British? I always like to see if people can tell. I was really surprised, because I thought I could spot a fake accent, but no.

        • I cheat because I always look up casts on IMDB when I’m binging on a TV show – so I know Andrew Lincoln is British. I kept asking myself where I’d seen him before, and didn’t quite believe it when my brain told me “Love Actually”, but yes, indeed that was him holding up those signs to Keira Knightley! I don’t know about most of the rest at the farm, but in the 4th season, I knew “the Governor” was English, because I remembered him from the original BBC TV miniseries ‘State of Play’. But now I have to go look up the rest! English and Australian actors are so good at the American accent now – they used to be terrible, but now, I think a lot of people didn’t know Hugh Laurie was English when he played “House”.

          • the 3rd season gets a bit……. difficult (but the thing with the Governor is way better on the show than in the comics – I stopped reading the comics at that point)

            there are more Brits — Maggie, for one (which I couldn’t believe because her Georgia accent is perfect)

          • I just saw that on IMDB last night! Although she was born in the US, I’m sure her natural accent is British since she grew up there. And I agree, you can’t tell at all. I finished the 3rd season last night, may give it a breather for a few days, just to stretch it out. Really enjoying it though.

          • Seeing her on Talking Dead – the discussion show afterwards — her natural accent is British & her voice is a different register. Same with Lincoln – his regular speaking voice is a different register than Rick’s. It’s startling.

    • Glad you got a decent night’s sleep. Long may that continue. I hope Wendy Davis takes another shot at the governorship. I’d love to see my home state return to sanity.

      • if you didn’t watch either Hayes’ or Maddow’s shows last night, find them online, both were great

  3. Good morning, 49 and partly cloudy in Bellingham today. It’s been a long week for the family so TGIF! I’m going to the pool this morning and looking forward to Ron coming home this afternoon. He needs a few days of cooking and gardening to recover!

    As you all know I enjoy reading Nancy LeTourneau’s writing at the Wa Monthly…..

    “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

    When the response of some of the folks on his side is to constantly point out the fact that we’re not there yet rather than celebrate the successes along the way and try to figure out if we can engage to move the ball further down the field, we spread the kind of cynicism that impedes progress.

    The Stones were right. You can’t always get what you want. But it’s also true that if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.

  4. Morning all, good April 1st to everyone.
    The Sanders rally in the Bronx yesterday was a disgrace from start to finish – Rosario Dawson apparently warmed up the crowd with the standard slanders (e-mail! dishonest!) against Hillary, and Bernie I guess gave the standard stump speech, without even a nod to the neighborhood he was in – nothing about Sotomayor, for example. And the hastag #BronxIsBerning reveals such ignorance I don’t even know where to start. The Sanders campaign is now full on running against the Democratic Party and Hillary as Agents of Evil – I cannot see how on earth he’ll pivot to some unity talk in June, at least not one his followers would listen to.

    Hillary snapped back yesterday on a rope line when acosted with accusations about donations from oil and gas to her campaign (of which she has none, it’s from people working in the those industries that she gets donations) “I’m so tired of the Sanders campaign lying about me.” About damned time – and Al Giordano said this last night

    Listen up 'cause I'm not saying any more than this: Tomorrow a certain campaign that has turned the other cheek a lot gonna hit back HARD.— AlGiordano (@AlGiordano) April 1, 2016

    Man, I hope he’s right about this, because I’m tired of these Berner attacks on Hillary.

    Ok, everyone have a great day!

  5. TGessIF folks and happy new month. I finished out March with 421.7 KWHs. W00t! With today’s 45 going to 55 and mostly cloudy I’m getting a slow start on April but that’s OK – the longer the daylight days get, the fewer of them I need to make my “goals”.

    How the heck somebody who came from the Bronx could be so tone-deaf as to allow that #BronxisBerning hashtag I will never know. Hope Hillary will be careful about fighting back. The number one Hillary Rule is that she’s evil, therefore everything she does is evil. It’s Women’s Rules to Warp 15. So she has to manage to counter the lies without calling him a liar, etc. sigh. Maybe if she phrases it as being angry about Bernie’s attacks on her actually being attacks on supporters – which they are – she can keep the “high ground” which unfortunately she needs to do. When Bernie’s in the slop, it’s mud. When Hillary gets anywhere on the farm, it’s pig s***.

    Anyway, I bet WI is going to be close and NY going to be a slam for our team. The (white) kids may not know their chosen candidate is gratuitously insulting them at just about every turn, but the rest of the Dems do. Haz the gud dai :) and {{{HUGS}}}

    • I just finished watching the Purchase NY video:

      What struck me about the interruption from the Sanders voters was that they said “She wins, we lose!” THAT is exactly what is wrong with the “revolution” that Sen. Sanders is proposing, and the big lie: that if you don’t get everything you want NOW, you never will. Actually, no. Responsible change comes slowly and the truth is that when “She wins, we will get some of what we want and then be better positioned to get more in the future”. But that won’t fit on a bumper sticker and doesn’t resonate with the impatient youngs.

      • She and the crowd handled it very well though. Much better than any of the other candidates.

  6. Good morning, meese! Saturday …

    It is 31 degrees in Madison on its way up to 37. Morning snow showers are in the forecast.

    Gallup reports that 7 out of 10 women don’t like Trump. Sadly, because 9.9 out of 10 Republican women don’t like women either, he will still get the GOP nomination. It will be Donald Trump v Hillary Clinton in what is likely to be one of the ugliest campaigns ever.

    The president spent the last few days meeting with world leaders to work on ways of keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. He had a few things to say about Trump:

    The Republican front-runner came under fire from Obama on Friday over Trump’s recent comments that he would not rule out using nuclear weapons in Europe and that Japan and South Korea might need nuclear weapons to ease the U.S. financial commitment to their security.

    “The person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean peninsula, or the world generally,” Obama told a news conference at the conclusion of a nuclear security summit in Washington.

    The summit is the subject of the president’s weekly address which I will post as soon as the transcript is available.

    See all y’all later!

  7. Good morning, Jan, thanks for the transcript! I never get to see the front page of the newspoop because Dearly Beloved always hogs it, so I didn’t know much about what was going on with the nuclear summit. The mainstream TV media, of course, say nothing about it.

    It’s 50 F. and raining slightly here n NoVa, going up to 62 F. today. Need to trek to the grocery store this afternoon but hope to have the morning to myself.

    Visited my website this morning but no friendly “help” popped up today. I can’t figure out how to get the picture of the cloak on the home page. Jan, any suggestions?

    The TV peeps this morning gave the impression that if St. Bernard wins Wisconsin, it’s over—he’ll be the nom. because all the superdelegates will faint into his arms. Hope not. Also hope it’s a good, peaceful day for all at the Pond and Beyond!

    • Actually, Wisconsin was considered one of the states that Hillary would lose in the primary: very very white and very very unpragmatic in its progressivism. She will keep it close enough so that Sen. Sanders will not outpace her by much in delegates. I refuse to call him “Bernie” any longer because the nickname suggests a cuddly person. He is anything but that and his nastiness is becoming more and more evident.

      I see the cloak on your home page. However, when I click into your post, I see a massive partial picture of the cloak and no text!! I am not sure what might be going on but if you are willing to add me as a user and give me Editor rights, I can look at it for you.

      • Thank you—how do I do that?

        I started clicking around and suddenly clicked on “Set featured image,” thinking that might be a good thing to do. Then it came up on the home page.

        • “Set Featured Image” puts an image in as a sort of thumbnail for the post. If you notice the moose front page, we have the Featured Posts over to the side. If you don’t assign a featured image, it shows with only text. Boring!!!

          You will have to ask your web guru how to add an Editor. I know how to do it for a WordPress software site but I am not sure how to do it for a WordPress.com site.

          I love how your site shows the stories on the front page, btw. Hovering over the photo to show the title and date is very cool looking!

  8. Slept in, eating breakfast. It got cold enough overnight to turn on the heater. This afternoon, I’m going to another birthday party for my friend who was told not to plan for #50. This is 51. And we’re having a party at a movie theater & seeing My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. Because she likes chick flicks & it’s her birthday.

    I should ride my bike some today. Not right now, though — did I mention it’s cold? 45. brrrr.

  9. Morning all! Big thunderstorms in the night here, and now cloudy and drizzly, although no cooler. Good day to stay inside and try to do my taxes while I listen to opera! Today is Madam Butterfly, Puccini, utterly gorgeous and heartbreaking. This is a production I wish I could have seen on stage, it was by Anthony Minghella and the pictures I’ve seen from it are stunning. Oh well, the music is main thing for me.

    So yesterday, the Clinton campaign started to fight back against Sanders’ lies and slander, thru surrogates (Sen. Boxer for one, and others) – and for once the media did its job and called out Sanders on the lie about energy industry donations to Hillary. Sanders’ surrogates, otoh, continue to confound logic – Rosario Dawson, again, at a roundtable in Harlem, attacked Obama again for not fixing everything in the first 2 months of his Presidency and suggested “he failed us” by not using social media more to spark support. Um, huh? This has prompted the massive ridicule you would expect – but apparently this is not Dawson’s first trip to crazytown, as she admired, in an interview in 2012, Clint Eastwood’s “empty chair” performance.

    I hope the pressure mounts to force Sanders to release his tax returns – David Cay Johnston, an excellent tax writer and expert (who I know) put out a great piece criticizing Sanders for not doing so, and it seems to have gotten a little traction. I’ve posted a few comments at Dkos on the diaries there calling for release as well – what hypocrisy, to slam Hillary on “lack of transparency” for the stupid transcripts while not releasing tax returns as every Presidential candidate does. This is an area where the media has really fallen down – remember how much flack Romney got on this, yet nothing much at all for Sanders. Sigh.

    Ok, have a great day everyone!

    • Gosh, Geordie, your post brings back such bittersweet memories. My mother faithfully listened to the Met broadcast every Saturday. She adored opera. When she was taking leave of this world, we played “Un Bel Di” over and over again, along with “Habanera” from Carmen. It is said that hearing is the last sense to go, so I hope she was comforted.

      She died eight years ago this month and I still miss her every day.

  10. Good morning, 48 and partly sunny in Bellingham. We started having internet interruptions yesterday afternoon and after restarting and resetting all the devices I am back on line but all the connections are very slow. Interesting how a speedy internet connection has become such an important part of our life.

    We’ve got a quiet day planned……puttering around in the garden and getting ready for next week and spring break with the grandkids is about all we’ll do today.

  11. Clear and sunny in Fay., AR but high in the mid 50s so have a fire going. Need to bake cookies and make lunch soon. Waiting to hear from DiL1 about goats coming to eat my invasive honeysuckle this week, maybe. Glad the media is finally doing its job enough to “vet” the O & G industry lies BS has been peddling (not that he made them up – he’s just parroting Rovian BS that was handily out there to make Hillary look bad to progressives). Wish it hadn’t come to this but considering BS’s history it was probably inevitable. Ask any female who lived through the “revolution” of the 1960s about the male contingent’s attitude towards females, involved in the revolution or not. Sigh. Anyway, hope everyone has a lovely rest of Saturday. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Ask any female who lived through the “revolution” of the 1960s about the male contingent’s attitude towards females, involved in the revolution or not.

      So true, bfitz!

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