Ailantha - Blog

The Wonderful People And Wonderful Food Of Dohuk

4/20/2019

...Continued from 4/11/2019:
Today my daughter Claire arrived back home in Chicago from Duhok, Kurdistan, where she spent two weeks giving daily training seminars to the nurses from the Intensive Care and Coronary Care Units at the Azadi Teaching Hospital,

...on such subjects as CPR,

...tracheostomy

...prevention of bedsores,

...and arterial blood gasses,

...among other subjects.

Claire could not say enough good about the nurses with whom she worked,

...who were dedicated practitioners and enthusiastic students,

...and who warmly welcomed her to their hospital with open arms.

Especially gracious and kind was Saadia Alturki, who is in charge of nursing education with the Kurdistan Ministry of Health and who facilitated the seminars.

Saadia and Claire handing out certificates on the last day of class.

In fact Claire found the Kurdish people in general to be very nice, friendly, and hospitable.
And then there was the food. The Kurdish food was, according to Claire, "wonderful," and always beautifully displayed and presented.

Claire's favorite Kurdish food - besides the sweets, of which she says she copiously partook - was the flat bread called naan, of which she also claims to have copiously partook.

   "How much of a piece of naan this size would you eat?" I asked Claire.
    "All of it," she replied.
    She really liked the naan.

It's probably true of all of our cultures that hospitality and food go hand in hand. In any case it was absolutely true in Dohuk.
Claire and the other MedGlobal volunteers were invited out to dinner most nights by members of the Ministry of Health.

     Claire usually ate her lunch in a restaurant and afterwards the waiter would invariable set a complementary piece of cake or baklava or some other sweet in front of her. " I never said no to the sweets," said Claire.
        One day in the hotel where she was staying the elevator broke down and the staff knocked on the door of each guest and gave everyone a slice of chocolate cake and a cold chocolate drink as a gift for having to walk up the steps.
                                                   ***

A few days before she left Kurdistan, when I was Face-chatting with Claire about her classes for the nurses at the Azadi Hospital, she said, "Leaving behind education is the most sustainable thing we can do."
This is true. But it's perhaps just as true of taking an education with us when we leave.

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Sarah "Slip Of The Tongue" Sanders, Character Assassin

4/19/2019

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The Mueller Report was released yesterday.
And in spite of the mountains of evidence and testimony by Donald Trump's subordinates that he repeatedly tried to coerce them into obstructing the special counsel's investigation, Donald Trump is innocent of any criminal obstruction,

...because his personal toadstool and defense lawyer William Barr said so.

      Corrupt, disgusting, a flagrant abuse of power by a President and a toady Attorney General and a blow to our American system of justice, yes. But a complete surprise? Well, sadly, no.
        Except maybe to Donald Trump, who, when he learned that Robert Mueller had been appointed Special Counsel in the Russia investigation, cried out, "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm f**ked."
         But the Mueller Report is finished and so far Donald Trump appears to be not at all f'd as he'd feared. In fact yesterday after the report was released - that is, as much as the report as escaped William Barr's Trump-protecting redactions - Trump professed to be having a good day,

...and he even posted a fun little Game-of-Thrones-style tweet in honor of himself.

Life seems to be ever full of happy surprises for Donald Trump.
I suppose the only slightly happy surprise in the Mueller Report for the rest of the country was that so many of Trump's toadstools, low as they were willing to go to carry out his will, ultimately refused to completely debase themselves for him.

Then there's Sarah Sanders,

...who, we learned from the report, had absolutely no problem completely debasing herself to please Donald Trump.
That is to say she lied, telling the press, not once, not twice, but numerous times, that she herself had heard directly from "countless FBI agents" that they'd lost confidence in their Director,

...James Comey,

...and that they were "grateful and thankful" that Donald Trump had fired him.

Seriously, listen to her in this video,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU9O0Zz2kLo

...doubling down on what she'd said a day earlier when she contradicted statements made by members of the FBI that James Comey was highly respected, admired and liked by rank-and-file members of the agency.
   Watch her insisting with wide-eyed sincerity that she'd heard from "a large number" of agents, glibly adding, "And that's just myself, and I don't even know that many people in the FBI."
     Listen to how she doesn't just lie, but expands the lie, embroiders it. When asked how she heard from such a great number FBI agents unhappy with James Comey, she talks about having received "emails, text messages, absolutely."
      But when questioned under oath by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Sarah Sanders admitted that she'd lied, or, as she called it, had a "slip of the tongue." She confessed that her statements to the press about having heard from disgruntled FBI agents regarding James Comey "were not founded on anything." She'd made the whole story up as she went along.
        And though she knew better than to incriminate herself by lying under oath to the Special Counsel, she had no qualms about lying when there was no legal penalty for doing so, and by last night on the Sean Hannity Show she was once again telling the same lie as she'd told before about FBI agents praising Donald Trump for firing James Comey.
          But here's the thing about Sarah Sanders' lie. It wasn't something she'd had to say to protect herself or even to protect Donald Trump. It was, and continues to be, in no way necessary to her self-preservation. Sarah Sanders' lie is an act of character assassination of another human being, which she did, and continues doing, to please and bolster Donald Trump.
           Sarah Sanders has shown herself to be among the lowest, lying-est toadstools in Donald Trump's dark, dank, poisonous environment.
         And she's definitely as accomplished and boldfaced a liar and character assassin as he is. In fact she's even better.

References:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/biggest-revelations-mueller-report-191610144.html

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/18/politics/sarah-sanders-mueller-report/index.html

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/18/mueller-report-sarah-sanders-comey-1282275

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/attorney-general-to-provide-overview-of-mueller-report-at-news-conference-before-its-release/2019/04/17/8dcc9440-54b9-11e9-814f-e2f46684196e_story.html?utm_term=.b8ede85fc30d

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What Is Our Notre Dame?

4/17/2019

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   The day before yesterday I stood numbly watching the online live-stream video of Notre Dame in flames, my hand on the shoulder of my husband Tom, who sat sobbing.
      Like so many millions around the globe, we love Paris.
     I was a French major in college and spent my junior year in Paris studying French language and culture at the Institut Catholique de Paris. After college I spent three years working for the U.S. Army in Germany, during which time I returned to Paris more than half-a-dozen times, several of those times with Tom, who was an Army officer at that time stationed not far from where I worked.
       How many times during those years did I stroll with friends or alone or later with Tom through the student quarter known as the Quartier Latin, along the Boulevard Saint-Michel, across the Pont Saint-Michel to the île de La Cité, then to the square across from Notre Dame?
     I was nineteen years old when I first saw Notre Dame. It was the first of the great world cathedrals that I'd ever seen. I was truly wonder-struck.

I was most enamored of of the rose windows, which I'd learned in one of my classes were made in the 13th century and could never be replicated because the formula used to make the distinctive colors had been lost centuries ago.

         At the time it seemed so amazing to me that one could walk into that magnificent cathedral for free and spend as much time as one wished caught up in the beauty and splendor of the place. Equally amazing was it to me that while I lived in Paris I could visit Notre Dame any time I felt like it.
        Such were my thoughts as I watched Notre Dame burn, or at least in those moments when I could force myself to believe that what I was seeing was actually happening. And I was gripped with a great pang of regret that my children, none of whom have been to Paris, would never see it.
          And I felt an almost surreal sensation of being at a momentous point in the continuing timeline of history: April 15, 2019, the day when Notre Dame Cathedral, an 800-year old man-made wonder of the world, was destroyed by fire, gone from the planet, never to be seen by future generations.
         We've since learned, thankfully, that Notre Dame was not destroyed by the fire, and some of its greatest treasures were spared,

...including the 700-year-old, 8,000-pipe organ,

...and the rose windows.
      And French President Emmanuel Macron has promised that France, with the help of the the world's most brilliant architects, would rebuild Notre Dame, hopefully within five years. As of today almost a billion dollars has been pledged to the rebuilding, most of it from the French people.
       As President Macron said in his inspiring speech:
     Notre Dame is our history, it's our literature, it's our imagery. It's the place where we live our greatest moments, from wars to pandemics to liberations. ... I'm telling you all tonight — we will rebuild this cathedral together. This is probably part of the French destiny.
       Notre Dame has been called the sacred heart of Paris, the soul of France.
     Which has set me to wondering: Here in the United States, among our many national monuments,

...is there any one building,

...or any one structure,

...that we think of as the soul of America,

...our history,

...our literature,

...our imagery?

Some celebrated national treasure built by our forebearers ,

...the loss of which we'd all mourn on such a personal level,

...that our loss would pull us together as a nation,

...transcend our divisions,

...and cause individual Americans to rush to finance the restoration of that which we'd lost, seeing its rebuilding as our national destiny?
But then maybe that's not a question that a country can answer in less than a thousand years.

References:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/04/15/notre-dame-cathedral-fire-5-things-know-famed-paris-church/3474807002/

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-met-notre-dame-macron-kass-20190416-story.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/world/europe/france-notre-dame-religion.html

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The Lalesh Temple

4/13/2019

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...Continued from yesterday:
     For the duration of her stay in Dohuk, Kurdistan, Claire will be giving daily training sessions for the nurses at the city's 200-bed public hospital, which is also a teaching hospital.
      Last Tuesday, April 9, Claire had the day off as it was a Kurdish national holiday. Every April 9 the Kurds celebrate the anniversary of the liberation of Bagdad and the fall of Saddam Hussein.
   Claire spent the holiday with some fellow MedGlobal volunteers seeing the countryside around the Dohuk area.

Claire also had off yesterday, Friday, as the work week is Saturday through Thursday, Friday being the Muslim holy day. Thus Friday is the weekend, as, she informed me, nobody works on the holy day.

I spoke to Claire via Facebook chat yesterday morning, which was late afternoon in Dohuk.

When we spoke she was in a coffee shop in town with some MedGlobal volunteers with whom she'd spent the day.
They'd just returned from a trip Lalesh, a small mountain village about 50 miles from Dohuk.

On the way to Lalesh.

Their destination was the Lalesh Temple, the holiest shrine in the Yazidi faith,

...to which all Yazidis are expected to make a pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime.

When Claire and her friends arrived at the entrance they were warmly welcomed by the keeper of the temple, who allowed them to take pictures. However they were told to take off their shoes, as it is required that one be barefooted inside the temple.
Next to the temple door there is a sculpture of a black snake, the symbol of wisdom for Yazidis.

Claire said that within the vast temple grounds there were many buildings and thousands of barefoot people who'd made the pilgrimage to this holy site.

These ancient pots stored in an underground chamber hold oil used to light the lamps, one pot for each day of the year.

In this room Pilgrims tie three knots in a scarf as a prayer. When one's knots are untied the prayer will be answered. One unties the knots in a scarf before retying one's own knots.

I love the significance of untying each other's knots.

All over the grounds pilgrims were having picnics.

One family invited Claire and her friends, obviously foreigners, over to their picnic. Though the family among them knew only a few words of English and Claire's group knew no Yazidi, the international language of friendliness, hospitality and generosity sufficed.

I asked Claire what there was to eat at the picnic and she told me that this family had a whole roasted goat. However, being a vegetarian, Claire ate the beans and rice which they had also brought.
Claire said everyone in the family was happy to meet some Americans.

And these Americans were happy to meet this family.

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Nursing As A Team Sport

4/11/2019

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My daughter Claire is currently in Kurdistan with the international medical organization MedGlobal (See post from 4/4/2019, "On Her Way To Kurdistan") ,

...whose doctors and nurses have recently arrived in that autonomous region of Iraq to help care for the Syrian, Iraqi, and Yazidi refugees who have sought asylum there after fleeing war and violence in their own countries .

Claire has been communicating with the family via Facebook, sending us brief updates and pictures almost daily, and she and I were able to have a chat this past Monday despite the 7-hour time difference.

Claire left Chicago one week ago today and by the following evening she had arrived in Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan, where she was met by members of the MedGlobal team.
While waiting for a flight carrying another MedGlobal volunteer she and her escorts had a look around Erbil,

...stopping at a beautiful market,

...and climbing a hill to the Erbil Citadel, which offered a panoramic view of the city.

From Erbil the MedGlobal escorts drove the new volunteers to their destination, the city of Dohuk, outside of which the refugee camps are located.
The following day, Saturday, the MedGlobal team was invited to a meeting with the Kurdish Ministers of Health (Claire is seated at the far left end of the table and is wearing the pink-striped jacket),

...and there was a press conference to let the people of Dohuk know that the MedGlobal volunteers had arrived to work in the camps.

Claire told me that she's appeared on Kurdistani television twice so far.

Later in the day there was time for an exploratory stroll around Dohuk,

...including a beautiful market called The Bazaar, where one can find lots of fresh vegetables,

...mountains of dried fruits and nuts,

...and sweets.

In fact, said Claire, there are so many lovingly displayed desserts in the shops of this town,

...that she declared Dohuk a Liszkay family's dream come true, referring to our hallmark love of sweets and desserts.
      When I asked Claire if she felt safe in the city she assured me that Dohuk is a very safe place, likely in no small part due to the armed soldiers and check points stationed all over the town.
     The following day, Sunday, the MedGlobal team headed out to the refugee camps.
       The Dohuk camps have been in existence for several years; at the camp Claire visited the refugees had shipping container houses and houses made of concrete blocks covered with tarps which, Claire said, are much better than tents.
     The medical clinics are already staffed with Kurdish health care providers, and the MedGlobal group and their Kurdish hosts came to the consensus that, along with helping with patient care, it would also be beneficial to determine what MedGlobal could do for the health care providers who are already working at the camps.
     It turns out that what the Kurdish medical staff needs most to better carry out their healing mission are more supplies, more money, and more training.
      To that end, Claire, who has Intensive Care experience, offered to use her time there to train nurses.
       "I like to support nurses," she explained.
      Subsequently it was decided that she could be of the most use not in the refugee camps but in the city hospital. So she was sent back to the hospital in town to give the nurses some training, teaching different lessons every day,

...such as this lesson on resuscitation with the ICU nurses.

Claire's first and continuing lesson to her students, however, has been on her personal motto: "Nursing is a team sport."
And, having been in high school,

...captain of the field hockey team,

...the lacrosse team,

...and the swim team,

...Claire knows about team sports.

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C. Auris

4/8/2019

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If you're looking for a scare, don't bother going to see "Us,"

..."Pet Sematary,"

...or any of the countless other spine-tinglers available on screens big and small to frighten the daylights out of us.
Rather have a look at the front page of yesterday's New York Times,

...where the story broke of a global outbreak of a deadly super fungus called Candida auris that's been killing hundreds of thousands of people every year while hospitals and researchers around the world have been scrambling to find a counteragent against it and keep its existence a secret from the public.
However since the revelation of its existence yesterday in the Times, the global scourge of Candida auris,

...or C. auris,

...has been picking up traction on news outlets and on social media.
     In truth the story of C. auris has all the elements of a horror story. Except that this story is true.
       An elderly man admitted to Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City was diagnosed with a mysterious infection. After 90 days in the hospital the man died, but what killed him did not. Tests showed that the C. auris fungus was everywhere in his room: the walls, the bed, the doors, the curtains, the phones, the sink, the whiteboard, the poles, the pump, the mattress, the bed rails, canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling. Special cleaning equipment was needed and ceiling and floor tiles had to be ripped out to eradicate it.
     In the Royal Brompton Hospital in London there was an outbreak of a mysterious, seemingly invincible fungus identified as C. auris. From where or how the C. auris arrived no one knew, but it spread throughout the hosptial like wildfire, infecting 72 patients in the intensive care unit. An infectious disease expert was called in to help the hospital clean out the fungus. The infectious disease expert had hospital workers set up a specialized device to spray aerosolized hydrogen peroxide around a room infested with C. auris. They left the device going for a week. At the end of the week every microbe in the room had been killed. Except for the C. auris. It was still growing.
        In a hospital in Valencia, Spain, 372 patients tested positive for C. auris on their bodies. Eighty-five of them developed bloodstream infections. Forty-one percent died within a month.
       And while hospitals and governments have struggled to keep the existence of this insidious drug-resistant super-fungus under wraps it has been proliferating and spreading around the world.

     So far C. auris has proven deadly mostly to the very young, the old, or the very sick. However the fear among epidemologists is that the fungus may begin sickening the healthy as well.
    Where Candida auris came from has not yet been determined. "It is a creature from the black lagoon," said Dr. Tom Chiller of the CDC. "It bubbled up and now it is everywhere."
     The belief, however, is that the C. auris outbreak is just another example of a drug-resistant germ borne of the medical and commercial over-use and misuse of antibiotics and antifungals. The current theory is that C. auris is resistant to antifungal treatments because of the ubiquitous commercial use of fungicides and pesticides on crops. Types of pesticides known as azoles are used on virtually every crop that's grown and have created such a hostile environment for fungi that the fungi are evolving and resistant strains are surviving, among them C. auris. And at this point the azoles used in crop sprays are essentially the same as are used in antifungal medicines. And the same that the C. auris is resistant to.
       At this point the only defense against C. auris appears to be good-old-fashioned hand-washing,

...and be healthy. Be very healthy.

References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-candida-auris.html

https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/candida-auris/c-auris-infection-control.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=candida+auris&client=firefox-b-1-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiOoL_QicHhAhUCA6wKHR4xCC4Q_AUIDygC&biw=1920&bih=925#imgrc=rTRCHfv1UsFHHM:

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On Her Way To Kurdistan

4/4/2019

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Today my daughter Claire, an Intensive Care Unit nurse at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago,

...as well as other places around the globe (here in Haiti operating a make-shift pharmacy with her husband Miguel),

(Here being air-lifted by helicopter from Sierra Leone)

...is on her way to Kurdistan, the northern autonomous province of Iraq, to a refugee camp outside the city of Dohuk.

Claire will be working with MedGlobal, an international organization whose workers bring healthcare,

....to victims of natural disasters

...displacement due to conflict

...disease outbreak,

...and poverty or insufficient healthcare.

Last year Claire worked with MedGlobal in Bangladesh, running one of the health clinics in a camp for the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar.

Over the past several years there has been a great influx into Kurdistan of Syrians displaced by the war, Christian Iraqis targeted by ISIS,

...and Iraqi Yazidis, people of their own ethnicity, language and religion,

...whose girls and women were routinely kidnapped by ISIS militants and cruelly enslaved (See post from 8/18/2015, "Question It!").
Observing the obligation of nations to grant asylum to refugees that has been considered international law and the law of humanity since ancient times, Kurdistan has set up a number of camps outside the city of Dohuk to accommodate these refugees and provide humanitarian aid,

...and it is in one of these camps that Claire will be providing healthcare with other MedGlobal workers for the next two weeks.
Prayers are always appreciated, for Claire, her fellow aid workers,

...and the refugees.

References:
https://www.medglobal.org/kurdistanofiraq?fbclid=IwAR25UVwbTgklEjaJffTdMzUFq7IHv5925xYvgaVKwf6w3RPM4kI9EDSf4PU

https://www.iraqinews.com/features/dohuk-received-3000-refugees-recent-kurdish-iraqi-encounters/

https://www.medglobal.org/histormedglobal/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_asylum

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A Tale Of Two Shoulder Massages

4/3/2019

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Bravo for Lucy Flores,

...the former member of the Nevada State Assembly who called out Joe Biden for coming up behind her and massaging her shoulders and kissing the back of her head as she prepared to ascend the stage to speak at a rally during her 2012 campaign for Lieutenant Governor of Nevada.
       Joe Biden responded to her that in all his years on the campaign trail never did he ever believe he acted inappropriately and if anyone suggested that he did, well, that was not his intention.
      To which Flores replied: "Frankly, my point was never about his intentions, and they shouldn't be about his intentions. It should be about the women on the receiving end of that behavior...You don't expect that kind of intimacy from someone that you have no real relationship with, to touch you, to feel you, to be so close to you."
        She went on to say that such behaviors as Biden exhibited were not being taken seriously from the perspective of the person on the weaker side of the power dynamic, that is, the woman.
        Bravo to Lucy Flores for clarifying what too many women have felt but couldn't quite verbalize.
        Myself, for example.
        Once, several decades ago, I was in church with my husband and kids when I was taken by surprise by the feel of two hands on my shoulders, digging in, massaging. I turned around to see a man that I sort of knew from church and from around town. He was a successful local business man, a rather vociferous guy, a glad-hander for sure. He was somebody that most everybody in our small suburb knew and probably most people liked in a general way. But in a general way was probably the most that I liked or even knew him. I'd hardly call him a friend. And I didn't like that he just started rubbing my shoulders in church.
         Did he injure me? No. Was it sexual harassment? I don't think so. Did he intend any offense? Surely not. Did he think he had the right to just start massaging the shoulders of a woman he scarcely knew? Apparently so. Was I vexed by this man taking the liberty of putting his hands on me in what felt like an intimate way? Yes, I was. Did I say anything to him about it? Of course not. I just smiled at him, very coolly, I'm sure, after which I probably simmered for a few moments then let it go.
         The following week I was once again in church, this time having purposely chosen for the family a different pew just in case Mr. Shoulder-Massager always sat in the same spot.
           Shortly after we'd settled into our seats I felt two hands on my shoulders, sinking into my anterior and posterior deltoids. Now I was steamed. I jerked around...to see one of my girl friends. I smiled and gave her a hug.
           What a difference a power dynamic makes.

References:
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/02/708921102/biden-finding-new-rules-apply-to-himtoo

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/31/politics/joe-biden-lucy-flores/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/us/politics/joe-biden-women-me-too.html

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"Us" Or, Our Zombies, Ourselves

3/31/2019

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I wasn't intending to see "Us."

...I'd seen the trailer and decided that this movie looked 'way too scary for me,

...and I didn't really want to see what kind of damage that big scissors in the poster was going to do.

But then I read all the critics' rave reviews that the movie was full of relevant metaphors and wit and humor and social commentary and syntax and conceptual...stuff.
However what ultimately convinced me to go and see this movie was one critic's observation that "Us" was more ambitious than Jordan Peele's previous hit, "Get out,"

... which I absolutely loved (See post from 3/3/2017, "Get Out and see 'Get Out.'").

I guess the problem was that I misunderstood the word "ambitious" to mean "wonderful," which "Get Out" was and "Us," frankly, wasn't. In fact, from the beginning of the film I kept waiting for it to start becoming wonderful. Never happened. All I could see playing out before me was a zombiesque slasher movie that sort of fell flat early on, specifically as soon as the zombies - or golems, dopplegangers, evil twins, or whatever you want to call them, but this was basically a zombie movie - mosied on into the house of their look-alike victims, introduced themselves and aired their grievances.
These slasher zombiesques, as it turned out, traveled not with the standard-issue random lumbering, slovenly, slobbering pack,

...but in a small family unit neatly dressed in stylish matching jump suits,

...each accessorized with a designer scissors,

...and they sought out specific victims, their human counterparts, who'd been plunked by fate onto the first-class deck of the cosmic Titanic, while they'd been shuffled into zombie steerage, as it were, about which situation they were plenty steamed.
However, instead of spending the movie as they should have, chasing after their human prey, who likewise should have spent the movie trying to avoid their zombie predators - these designer movie-zombie-types made themselves at home, barked orders and waved their scissors around at their terrified hosts,

...who often seemed not quite sure what they were supposed to be doing, but who definitely lacked the wherewithal to run out to the kitchen drawer and grab some scissors of their own.

   I'm actually making the move sound better than it is.
   I guess it was full of metaphors and symbolism, if you feel like calling all the ins, outs, and what-have-yous going on in the movie metaphors and symbolism. Of course if you want to you can find metaphors and symbolism in every movie ever made, good, bad, or indifferent.
   So I don't know, maybe "Us" did have metaphors and symbolism, but it lacked tension, except for what was created by the plinky, scary-sounding music. It lacked any real scares, unless you count gore. It lacked logic, and even a movie about look-alike zombiesques requires logic within the zombie-world frame of reference. It was just one sloppy, disconnected, indecipherable scene plopped down after another. Until it got downright dumb. Which is actually okay for a movie to be, as long as it's an engaging ride. Which, for me, "Us" wasn't.

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What Was Eating Marco Rubio?

3/30/2019

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Here's a screen shot I took of a CNN video of Donald Trump in Florida on Friday announcing that he is cutting off aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

But what's wrong with this picture? Which element of the composition seems off, unharmonious with the rest?
Look at Marco Rubio,

...head bowed, eyes downcast, his expression somberly pensive, one would say a study in some deep sorrow.

Nor did I just happen to catch Marco Rubio in an odd moment. This was his demeanor during most of the video. He seldom looked up and when he did his face had the same troubled look.
While I watched the video I wondered if Marco Rubio was troubled by Donald Trump's words when Trump said,

"We were paying them tremendous amounts of money and we're not paying them any more because they haven't done a thing for us,"

...or when Trump accused the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras of setting up the caravans, populating them with their "worst people" and sending them to our border. Perhaps it distressed Marco Rubio that Trump was cutting off aid as punishment to these already suffering countries.
Maybe while Marco Rubio listened to Trump say those things he thought of his own grandfather who fled from communist Cuba and entered the United States as an illegal immigrant. Perhaps Marco Rubio was remembering the story of how the immigration judge ordered his grandfather to be deported but later that day had a change of heart and his grandfather was allowed to stay in the U.S. and was eventually granted permanent residency.

Or Perhaps it was that listening to Donald Trump denigrate the people from the poorest countries on the planet for not doing anything for the richest country made Marco Rubio feel ashamed.

Or then again, maybe the sun was just in his eyes.

References
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/30/politics/state-department-aid-el-slavador-guatemala-honduras/index.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Rubio

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<<Previous

The Wonderful People And Wonderful Food Of Dohuk

Sarah "Slip Of The Tongue" Sanders, Character Assassin

What Is Our Notre Dame?

The Lalesh Temple

Nursing As A Team Sport

C. Auris

On Her Way To Kurdistan

A Tale Of Two Shoulder Massages

"Us" Or, Our Zombies, Ourselves

What Was Eating Marco Rubio?

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