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The Posse Weighs In On What Went Down At The Oscars

3/31/2022

Books By Patti Liszkay
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THE POSSE WEIGHS IN ON WHAT WENT DOWN AT THE OSCARS

Yesterday I got together with my Wednesday morning girl group, formerly known as the Panera Posse,

...now the Zoom Posse,

...to spend a few hours, as we've been doing for many years worth of Wednesdays, discussing, dissecting, dissertating and group-thinking a plethora of topics ranging from the personal to the local to the national to the global to the cosmic.

Yesterday we naturally got around to weighing in on Will Smith's assault of Chris Rock last Sunday night at the Oscars.
Though our reactions ranged from disapproval to disparagement to disgust over the whole business, what most vexed one member of our group was that one Hollywood celebrity smacked another Hollywood celebrity and now we're being bombarded nonstop with news updates and video replays and commentaries on the who, what, where and why of it, as if this were the most important event on the planet. Meanwhile Russia continues to destroy Ukraine but we're all forced to turn our attention to what went on among a batch of Hollywood glitterati at the Oscars.
To which I responded, "But don't you see, it's all part of the same thing going on everywhere! Putin attacks Ukraine! A mob attacks the United States Capitol! Lindsay Graham and Josh Hawley and the rest of them verbally attack Ketanji Jackson! Donald Trump verbally attacks half the world! Will Smith attacks Chris Rock! People have started attacking trans folk with hurtful memes on my Facebook page! Everybody everywhere crosses every line and everybody thinks it's their right to assert themselves however they want over everything!"
However, after having had my say, I had to concede that my friend's comment did put L'affaire Will Smith/Chris Rock into perspective: On the scale of global events, it's getting far more publicity than it should merit.
One of the other members of the Posse offered that after Chris Rock's joke comparing Jada Pinkett Smith to the character of G.I. Jane,

...Ms. Pinkett Smith should have stood and taken a bow. I thoroughly agreed with this. Taking a bow at that moment would have shown real grace and class on Jada Pinkett Smith's part.
I then suggested that if Will Smith had wished to show his support for his wife, instead of storming the stage in a rage he should have held his peace until he was called up to receive his award - or if he didn't receive an award he could have held a press conference after the ceremony - and shared his wife's struggle with alopecia, educated the world on this disease, and put in a word for women everywhere who, like his wife, suffer from alopecia. He could have honored his wife by telling the world how fine and brave and beautiful she would always be in his eyes. This then would have put Chris Rock in the position of being the déclassé boor who needed to explain himself and offer an apology.
The Smiths could have proved themselves before the world to be a class act. What they proved instead was that wealth, fame, success, and physical attractiveness,

...in no way equal class.

And my Zoom Posse member was right: The thing is getting too much attention. And yet we're still not yet ready to stop weighing in on it.

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A Vessel For Ego

3/30/2022

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BOOKS BY PATTI LISZKAY
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Available on Amazon.

A VESSEL FOR EGO

Will Smith has apologized publically - if not terrifically contritely - to Chris Rock for hitting him at the Oscars ceremony the other night. Perhaps Smith's tepid apology, even if its purpose was mainly to excuse himself rather than to ask Rock's pardon, did at least serve to sort of glue back together whatever incorporeal, indescribable thing was broken by the world having to witness an act of violence committed by one person against another on live television.
But then, as I once read somewhere, a broken thing can be repaired, but it would be better if it hadn't been broken in the first place. And so it is with Will Smith: His apology-extra-lite to Chris rock may serve to somewhat repair the fallout of his misbehavior. But it would have been better by far - for Chris Rock and the rest of us who now have to deal with our own reactions to the incident and all the publicity it has generated - if Will Smith would have behaved himself in the first place.
But what is it about this time that we live in? From where came this pervasive moral ignorance that mistakes swaggering machismo for strength? That preaches that whoever can hit the hardest verbally or physically is right and is entitled - even expected - to do so? That it's admirable and courageous to stomp on the rules of decency and law?
That it makes you a hero to assault on live television a comedian who made a joke about your wife's appearance?
Said wife, who, by the way, had no reason at all, regardless of Chris Rock's joke about her shaved head, to feel badly about her appearance as, even without her hair, Jada Pinkett Smith looked stunningly beautiful at the Oscars.

Which begs the question: As beautiful as Jada Pinkett Smith is in spite of the medical condition that caused her hair loss, as ultra-successful, super-wealthy, uber-famous, and enormously gifted with talent, good fortune, opportunity and every resource as the Smiths are, why would one little joke from Chris Rock rock their world?

the answer is because, as the whole world learned on the night of the Oscars, along with his great fortune and fame Will Smith also has a gargantuan ego which in fact makes his world a very fragile one. And so when Chris Rock, who gets paid to make jokes, made a joke at Will Smith's famous wife's expense he felt compelled and entitled to publically assault him.
Which begs another question:
Why did Will Smith get away with publically assaulting Chris Rock? Weren't there security guards at the Oscars? Weren't there officials or administrators there who could have called the police? Weren't there hundreds of spectators in the audience and staff in the wings, any one of whom could have called 911?
Why was nothing done? Why wasn't Will Smith physically escorted out of the venue? Why was he permitted to stay and a short time later handed an Oscar?
That is what's really causing the public agita over the incident: That Will Smith did what he did and, so far, has gotten away with it.
And then we had to watch him be awarded an Oscar and listen to him praise himself in the form of a lame apology for doing what he did out of his abundance of love for his wife and talk about God and weep and call himself a vessel for love.

A vessel for ego is more like it.
A man doesn't show his love for his wife by decking a jester over a joke. A man shows his love by being a good, faithful, dependable, kind and loving husband, which, according to the vast accumulation of tabloid reports over the years, Will Smith has not always been to Jada Pinkett Smith. Nor, if these stories are accurate, has she always been the most faithful of wives to him.
So it's likely that Smith's assault on Rock was merely an attempt to convince the world, his wife, and himself otherwise.

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The Justice's Wife

3/26/2022

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Amidst all the terrible front-and center news stories these days,

...and the terribly annoying ones,

...there's been another story lurking on the side bars and second pages that in a different time, a time before half the country could shrug off a violent attempt to overthrow the United States government, would have left every American shocked to speechlessness.
Over the past few days news outlets have been reporting the revelation that Ginni Thomas,

...the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,

...was involved in the attempt to overturn the 2020 American Presidential election and have Donald Trump re-instated as President.
It was recently uncovered during the Congressional investigation of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol,

...that soon after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden Ms. Thomas began pressuring Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was himself instrumental in planning the January 6 "Stop the Steal" rally that was the beginning of the attempted insurrection,

...to take action to overturn the election results.
Among the documents that Meadows turned over to the Congressional investigators were dozens of emails sent to him by by Ms. Thomas urging him on in their crusade to keep Donald Trump in office:

"Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!! ... You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America's constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,"

"I can't see Americans swallowing the obvious fraud. Just going with one more thing with no frickin consequences... the whole coup and now this... we just cave to people wanting Biden to be anointed? Many of us can't continue the GOP charade."

“Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition. I hope this is true.”

Among Mark Meadow's responses to Ginni Thomas:

“I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left. Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do.”

“This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it.

Ginni Thomas's emails to Mark Meadows also indicated that she was in communication with Sidney Powell, Donald Trump's legal advisor, Qanon conspiracy theorist and purveyor of fabricated voting fraud claptrap:

“Sidney Powell & improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and Fraud exposed and America saved.”

"Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down."

Thomas's texts show that she was also in communication with Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner about supporting her efforts to keep Trump in office:

“Just forwarded to yr gmail an email I sent Jared this am,”

Ginni Thomas was present at the January 6 Donald Trump rally during which Trump directed those present to march on the United States Capitol, the march that turned into an attack on our government. A few days after that thankfully failed event Thomas wrote to Meadows of her disgust with Mike Pence for certifying Joe Biden's election victory:

"Most of us are disgusted with the VP and are in a listening mode to see where to fight with our teams."

Now, all of the above words and behavior came from the wife of a Supreme Court Justice who, according to the New York Times, once said of his wife, that she works “24/7 every day in defense of liberty.” and that, “We are equally yoked, and we love being with each other because we love the same things."

Is it within the realm of believability that a man who, in his own words, is yoked to his wife and loves the same things she does would have had no knowledge of this great personal crusade that she was involved in? That he who is a guarantor of justice and the laws of our land would not have known that what his wife was promoting was nothing short of sedition?
Perhaps these questions would be less troubling if Clarence Thomas had not been the only Justice on our country's Supreme Court to object to the release of the White House documents to the January 6 Commission; if he had not been the only Justice who held that any White House documents pertaining to January 6 should be kept secret under executive privilege; and if the documents he was arguing to keep secret did not contain his wife's seditious emails.
With the revelation of Ginni Thomas's connection to the attempted overturn of the election, the members of the January 6 Commission are considering whether or not to subpoena Ms.Thomas to testify before the Commission.
Which begs several questions: Why are the Commission members merely considering subpoenaing Ginni Thomas? Why hasn't Ms. Thomas already been called before the Commission to answer for her actions? In fact, why hasn't her husband Justice Clarence Thomas been subpoenaed by the Commission to answer for why he didn't recuse himself from the case concerning the release of the January 6 White House documents?
Does the one whose job it is to mete out justice to others stand outside the requirements of justice himself?

Is answering before the law for one's wrongdoing not required of the politically powerful and well-connected?

Or is that sort of thing only required of the fools on the ground?

References:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/politics/ginni-thomas-mark-meadows-text-messages/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/us/politics/ginni-thomas-trump-mark-meadows.html

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A Reflection Upon The Frog Cake; Or, Not To Worry, The Kid In Me Is All Right

3/21/2022

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A REFLECTION UPON THE FROG CAKE; OR, NOT TO WORRY, THE KID IN ME IS ALL RIGHT

In my previous post I wrote about the yearning of my ten-year-old self to eat one of the green, cream-filled frog cakes my mother brought home from Haegele's, the neighborhood bakery, for the family on St. Patrick's Day (https://www.ailantha.com/blog/the-saint-patricks-day-frogs-revisited).
The reason I didn't - couldn't - eat my frog cake was because, through inauspicious fortune, St. Patrick's Day fell in the middle of Lent and I had given up sweets for Lent. And so I couldn't possibly put one bite of that tempting little confectionary amphibian into my mouth for fear of displeasing God, before whom I would have stood terribly ashamed of myself for having given in to temptation.
Back then I hadn't yet reached the juncture where I began questioning why, considering the infinite catalogue of good and evil actions we human beings are capable of, it would matter to God one way or the other what we did or didn't put into our mouths on which days of the week or year. Back then it seemed perfectly logical that what would really make the creator of all space, time, the universe and everything in it happy would be for me not to eat that frog. So I didn't.
Of course my personal theology nowadays has quite evolved from the catechism that molded my beliefs and those of a good number of my contemporaries back then,

....and these days the tale of my uneaten St. Paddy's day frog is just a droll little childhood story, the likes of which everyone accumulates a pocketful of along the way.
Still, this story, though meant to bring a chuckle, made some readers sad. Maybe world events being what they are, all our hearts are feeling more easily saddened and sensitive these days, And though I suppose the writer in me sometimes lays the hyperbole on as thick as the icing on my famous rosette mini-cupcakes,

...or my chocolate cream-filled mini-cupcakes,

...the truth is, the kid in me truly doesn't feel even the least twinge over the memory of that uneaten frog. My inner child is perfectly fine over the treat foregone all those years ago.
Perhaps this is because over the years that memory has been piled on by the mountains of memorable sweets that I've eaten since then, not to mention the sweets yet to be eaten, Lord willing.
To those friends and relatives who offered recipes and suggestions on how I might recreate a St. Paddy's Day cream frog in my kitchen - thank you! And if it's not in the cards for me to make the pilgrimage back to Haegele's Bakery in some mid-March, I think that one of these times I may well give a home-made frog a whirl.

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The Saint Patrick's Day Frogs Revisited

3/17/2022

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"Equal And Opposite Reactions" "Hail Mary"
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THE SAINT PATRICK'S DAY FROGS REVISITED

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, and in honor of a certain yummy cream-filled pastry from my childhood that I still to this day think about and yearn for at this time of year, I'm going to re-post a blog that I wrote on March 17, 2019 about this particular St. Paddy's day delight.
Happy St. Patrick's Day to all. May your day be as sweet as a St. Patrick's Day Frog.

THE SAINT PATRICK'S DAY FROGS

Back when I was young, when my family lived in a row house on Barnett Street in Northeast Philadelphia (our old house today, below),

...and I was a student at St. Timothy's school,

...I used to love St. Patrick's Day. I loved the day for three reasons. First of all, even though St. Patrick, beloved Catholic saint as he was, did not merit for his feast day a Holy Day of Obligation on the Church calendar - which would have snagged a day off from school for us Catholic kids - St. Patrick's Day was nonetheless treated as a day of fun at St. Timothy's. We were allowed to wear something green with our uniforms and bring our crayons to school and towards the end of the afternoon our usual classwork was suspended, and we were allowed to instead color pictures of St. Patrick that Sister would hand out to us.

The second reason I loved St. Patrick's Day was that the day after the following day was March 19, St. Joseph's Day, which, while also not a Holy Day of Obligation, was important enough a Church feast day that it was a day off from school.
But the very best thing of all about St. Patrick's Day was the St. Patrick's Day Frogs.
The St. Patrick Day Frogs were a delicacy to be savored only on St. Patrick's Day and found only at Haegele's Bakery, which was a block up Barnett Street from our house.

The Frogs were a sort of amphibian-shaped pastry, the bottom two-thirds of which was cake and the top third a mound of vanilla creme the kind of which was used to fill creme donuts. The cake bottom and creme top were covered with green fondant upon which was piped icing eyes and a mouth.
       Every St. Patrick's Day my mother would buy each of my four siblings and myself a St. Patrick's Day Frog. For me coming home from school to my St. Patrick's Day Frog was on a par with the the delight of waking up on Christmas morning. I truly loved those bright green cream-headed cake frogs.
          I believe - though the passage of years may have blurred the time line for me somewhat, and if anyone wishes to correct me on the exact year I will stand corrected - but I believe that I was nine years old and in 4th grade at St. Timothy's when I ate my last St. Patrick Day's Frog .
           It was when I was ten years old and in 5th grade at my new school, St. Christopher's,

...that my Catholic conscience bloomed and, likely inspired by the more advanced doctrine taught in the 5th grade catechism in tandem with the exhortations of my teacher, I became aware that it was required of me to give up something for Lent. I believe I picked sweets because that's what everybody else in the 5th grade of my new school said they were giving up for Lent. So I gave up sweets, too.
       It was to my joy when I came home from school on that St. Patrick's Day to find that my mother had traveled across town to Haegele's to buy my brothers, sister, and I our Frogs. And to my horror when I remembered that it was Lent and so I couldn't eat my St. Patrick's Day Frog.
       I wanted so badly to eat that Frog, to bite into that sweet green icing at just the spot where one hit part cake and part creme, my favorite way to eat it. I yearned to eat the Frog, I longed to eat it, but I knew that I couldn't eat it because it was Lent and I'd given up sweets and I truly believed at ten years old that a Catholic could no more put into her mouth something she had given up for Lent than she could eat meat on Friday.
     And it wasn't just that I longed for my St. Patrick's Day Frog. I grieved for it, too, because now I knew that St. Patrick's Day arrived in the middle of Lent, that it would always arrive in the middle of Lent, and that I'd never eat another St. Patrick's Day Frog for the rest of my life.
      I don't remember who ended up eating my Frog.
      But I'm sure I didn't grieve for too long, and I rather think that was the last time my mother made the trip to Haegele's for the St. Patrick's Day Frogs, anyway.
       Anyway, that was sixty years ago, and in truth I'd forgotten all about the Frogs.
Until last night when my brother Joe sent my sibs and myself this picture that he found yesterday on the Haegele's Bakery Facebook page:

I swear, somehow, someway, I will eat another St. Patrick's Day Frog before I croak!

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The Mysterious Dining Room Wall Pits

3/15/2022

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THE MYSTERIOUS DINING ROOM WALL PITS

...Continued from previous post:
And so by Monday afternoon of last week my old dining room wallpaper was gone, the chair rail was gone, and all cracks, craters, faults and flaws in the walls had been plastered over, sanded down, primed and cleaned up, and the walls were ready to be painted.
Or so I thought.
I ran my hand over the renovated wall surfaces. Considering the mess they'd been, they were now so perfectly smooth and flawless.
Or so I thought.
It wasn't until two days later, after Tom applied the first coat of semi-gloss to the walls,

...that the pits appeared.
On areas all around the wall there were now constellations of mysterious tiny pits, some like pin pricks,

...others like small pock marks.

"The heck did these pits come from?" I asked Tom.
He had no idea, but assured me that he did nothing differently with the paint or the roller than what he'd been doing for the past 50 years.
We scrolled around the internet looking for an answer, but the plethora of possibilities we came across were as imponderable as the oracle at Delphi. So we consulted a handy friend who knows from home remodeling projects.
The problem, the friend told us, likely originated in the plastering phase. Chances are that the patching compound wasn't sufficiently stirred to get all the air bubbles out before the compound was applied to the wall. This caused the bubbles to surface and burst into tiny holes on the wall. Our friend suggested that the problem could have been remedied by a second coat of patching compound before the primer was applied.
So now we were two layers past the source of the problem.
Our friend broke it to us that the only dependable solution was to sand off the paint and primer and spackle the holes, then re-sand, re-prime, and re-paint the walls.
"But why," I asked our friend, "did the pits only show up after the first coat of semi-gloss? Why didn't we see or feel them before?"
Our friend didn't know the answer. Neither did we. Yet another mystery.
However, what was perfectly clear was that we now had three options moving forward:
1. We could call that contractor back to fix our walls;
2. We could write off the contractor and Tom could do the repair work himself; or
3. We could say @#$% it and live with the *&%# pits in the %&#* walls.
We decided on option number 2.
I went around the room and marked every spot where the walls were pitted.

The pattern mostly corresponded to where the mysterious panels had been plastered over (see previous post, https://www.ailantha.com/blog/the-mystery-behind-the-wallpaper).
And so Tom sanded, spackled, and repainted the walls,

...which now look fine.

It's clear that we do not have good home remodeling karma.

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The Mystery Behind The Wallpaper

3/11/2022

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Books By Patti Liszkay
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"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
By Patti Liszkay
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THE MYSTERY BEHIND THE WALLPAPER

I've always loved my dining room wallpaper.

The old-fashioned flower print was on the walls when we bought the house 35 years ago,

...and has been the backdrop for all the dining that's gone on in that room,

...as well as the feasting and celebrating,

...not to mention the various and sundry other activities and endeavors that have taken place there, some more enjoyable,

...than others.

The thing is, I loved my dining room wallpaper. Until suddenly one day I didn't, and was hit with the notion that the wallpaper had to go. And not only the wallpaper but the wood chair rail and the chandelier along with it. Out with the old, I decided, and in with something new.
Furthermore, in honor of our recent kitchen update (which will continue [Aggggh!] with the upcoming replacement of the floor),

...I decided to say adieu to the chair rail in the kitchen as well.

And so I hired a guy.
First he pulled off the chair rails,

Then I watched my long- loved wallpaper come down.

Now, I had always assumed that the dining room wall paper was as old as the house, which was built in 1972. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I assumed that this wallpaper must be an original feature of the house. I guess I had just gotten into the habit over the years of saying about the wallpaper, "This paper is (20, 30, 40, 50) years old. Doesn't it still look just like new?" In fact, that it was holding up so well despite its advanced years seemed all the more reason not to toss it. (Mayhaps on some deep psychic subconscious level I even wished to identify with the wallpaper: aging, but still attractive and functional).
However, when the wallpaper came down a couple of discoveries came to light: 1. This wallpaper was not part of the house's original decor; it was put up just a little over a year before we bought the house, and 2. Before the wallpaper, there was something on the walls that nobody around here can decipher.
The clue that the wallpaper was not as old as I'd thought was revealed by some pre-wallpaper era drawings found on the bare walls:

The pictures were dated and signed,

And so from these drawings and dates we could surmise that the wallpaper went up sometime after September 5, 1985 and before December 23, 1986, which was when Tom first looked at the house - without me. In fact, Tom liked this house so much that, sure that this was the end of what had been a long, tiring, new-house-hunting odyssey, he wanted me to come and see it, too.
But at the time I was pregnant with our fourth baby, tired, suffering from morning, afternoon, and evening sickness, and dealing with Christmas.
"If you like the house so much," I recall telling Tom, "let's just and put a contract on it. If it has four walls, a bathroom and a spot to put a washing machine in I'm on board." And so on Christmas Eve, 1986, we put a contract on the house, sight unseen on my part. But it was all good. When I finally saw the house I liked it just fine. Especially the dining room wallpaper.
But I digress.
Anyway, the second thing that the stripping of the wallpaper revealed was that before the wall paper adorned the walls something else did. It's exactly what that something was that we can't figure out.
We found what appeared to be eight panels around the wall.

What were these panels? Remnants of some built-in wall decor? Mirrors? Over-ambitious shelving?
We don't know. All we do know is that they were a devilment to remove the wallpaper from and a pain to plaster over. I would love to know what they were, though, and to have seen what the wall looked like when they were in place. But that may well be a mystery lost to time, plaster, and a new coat of paint.

Epilogue:
I recognized one of the names on the drawings as that of a little girl who used to live in the neighborhood but whose family moved away years ago. She would be all grown up and gone by now, anyway.
But it's not outside the realm of possibility that I might be able to get in touch with her or one of her family members. If I should ever find out the answer I'll share.

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Potato Dreams Of America

3/6/2022

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POTATO DREAMS OF AMERICA

Last weekend I watched an offbeat, wonderful movie on Amazon Prime called "Potato Dreams of America."
The premise of the film at first sounded like that of a schmaltzily predictable bad Hollywood romantic comedy: a Russian woman becomes a mail-order bride to make her and her son's escape to America.
But the film turned out to be neither schmaltzy nor predictable nor bad nor a rom-com. However it tells a story that might well be tossed off as too dramatically unbelievable ― if the story weren't in fact the autobiography of filmmaker Wes Hurley.

Wes Hurley with his mother.

Hurley wrote his story as a dark comedy that starts out during his adolescence in the harsh final days of the Soviet Union. But in spite of the darkness there are moments of light and sweetness,

...as well as laugh-out-loud moments, as when the young protagonist imagines himself watching TV with Jesus,

...or deals with his grandmother.

The movie does, thankfully, move from darkness to light, and even during the scenes in which one is most worried or distressed for the safety or well-being of the intrepid heroine and her lovable son,

...one is grateful to know that this is a true story so that, as one reviewer put it, "The very existence of 'Potato Dreams of America' is its own happy ending."
But in addition to its likableness,

...the movie, for me, raised some thought-provoking questions:
What does it take to make a person reject the peer values of their country, their society, their family, and those all around them?

Does living under a repressive government - or a repressive religion, society or in any repressive environment - make people more unkind to each other?

Are people kinder the freer their country - or their religion - is?

And how is it that people who live in a free and democratic society will nonetheless choose to yolk themselves and others to the tyranny of an oppressive, intolerant religion?
And what difference does it make if a government changes its name from Communist to Republic if the lives of the people don't change?

...or if they're still under the thumb of a brutal tyrant?

And, finally, how much of a coincidence is it that this movie was released just a weeks before another true story of the human misery caused by an autocratic and imperialistic Russian government would begin playing out in real time?

Sometimes truth is more unbelievable than fiction.

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Earth To Vladimir Putin

3/3/2022

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EARTH TO VLADIMIR PUTIN

VLADIMIR PUTIN, YOU STUPID IDIOT!!!

All right. The above statement is indubitably simpleminded and unintelligent. But it felt good to say it, anyway. And it's not untrue.
Earth to Vladimir Putin: Before you invaded Ukraine one week ago nobody, nobody, NOBODY was threatening your country's borders.
Since the dissolution of the the Soviet Union in 1991 right up until today, not one of the freed former Soviet satellite countries that border Russia has shown the least interest in turning around and invading Russia. In fact, nobody in the world had any interest in a war with Russia. Not even after Russia seized Crimea in 2014 and Belarus became a Russian puppet state last year.

The West, Russia, China, in spite of all our obscene military stockpiles and occasional puerile saber-rattling, in truth we were all too economically interconnected, all too busy taking care of our own and each other's business to be bothered with such a nonsensical notion as land-grabbing from or starting a war with each other.
Except for you, Putin, you cruel, evil, soulless nematode: Seriously, did you really think that you could get away with invading Ukraine, with wreaking destruction on its cities and misery and death on its men, women and children without consequence?
Did it occur to you, you cold-blooded reptile, that the the glory that you hoped would be heaped upon your legacy might be sucked away from you and heaped instead by history onto a Ukrainian former comedian-turned-hero,

...and his people?

, Earth to Vladimir Putin: Is your own country safer and more secure now, your people better assured of their well-being, now that Russia is the world's number one enemy? Now that the rest of the world has cut off financial and material trade with Russia? Now that your citizens, your athletes, your artists, and your goods are unwelcome around the world? Now that your stock market has crashed and your money worthless on the world market? Now that Russians are already feeling economic hardship?
Did you not consider those outcomes, Putin, you demented, despotic MORON?

I'm sorry, but it felt good to say that as well.

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Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On Amazon

THE POSSE WEIGHS IN ON WHAT WENT DOWN AT THE OSCARS

BOOKS BY PATTI LISZKAY
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

A VESSEL FOR EGO

A REFLECTION UPON THE FROG CAKE; OR, NOT TO WORRY, THE KID IN ME IS ALL RIGHT

THE SAINT PATRICK'S DAY FROGS REVISITED

Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On amazon

THE MYSTERIOUS DINING ROOM WALL PITS

Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On Amazon

THE MYSTERY BEHIND THE WALLPAPER

Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On Amazon

POTATO DREAMS OF AMERICA

Books By Patti Liszkay
Available On Amazon

EARTH TO VLADIMIR PUTIN