Another Week: Number 159

We have finally reached the bottom of the long, descending stretch of track that begins annually on Labor Day. The holidays are over, school was back in session on Monday, and web design clients started talking to me about updating things.

The weather eased again in the middle of the week. Our snow cover was gone by Wednesday, but then a thin layer of sleet fell on Saturday.

NFL football has been an entertaining diversion. Sunday afternoon saw the Detroit Lions beat the Chicago Bears 19 to 16 at Soldier Field after a Bears rally fell short, ending their regular season with two losses. But then the lackluster night game — featuring the Baltimore Ravens at the Pittsburgh Steelers in a winner-take-all matchup for the division title — finished with the most astonishing fourth quarter I can remember ever seeing. I had counted Aaron Rodgers as done upon his last loss with Green Bay, but he will play at least one more game.

The Bears hosted their first playoff game in five years on Saturday night against the Green Bay Packers, with each team having won once in the regular season. It was yet another legendary comeback in a season of legendary comebacks, with the Bears winning 31 to 27 and stunning all my neighbors in their faded green and gold — an unmistakable declaration that things are going to be different going forward.

I walked 3.21 miles this week.

ICE executes an American mom

When I was a kid in third grade, there was a famous news photo — Saigon Execution — showing a South Vietnamese police chief putting a bullet into the head of a Viet Cong captain. I stared at that photo quite a bit, horrified by the cold-blooded brutality it depicted, and astonished by how different life was on some street on the other side of the world. It was inconceivable.

This past Wednesday morning, reports started coming in on CNN about someone being shot in Minneapolis.

Militarized Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had invaded the Twin Cities at the beginning of December. On December 26, some YouTube parasite went viral with an exposé alleging fraud at Somali American-run daycare centers.

Now, on the morning of January 7th, a woman named Renee Good had dropped her son off at school, then arrived on a residential block, joining other citizens who were using whistles and car horns to alert residents to the presence of ICE. Good was in her Honda Pilot, stopped sideways on Portland Avenue South, and at 9:37 a.m. local time, two ICE agents got out of their Nissan pickup to confront her.

Seconds later, when she turned the car’s steering wheel away and began to roll, a third agent shot her several times and then casually walked away, calling her a “fucking bitch” while she died.

Less than 36 minutes after this, in Brownsville, Texas, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was already promoting an alternate narrative about ICE agents being “stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis.” Noem claimed that “They were attempting to push out their vehicle, and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle.”

This was all horseshit. The weather wasn’t “adverse.” No one was stuck in any snow. Good didn’t attack anyone. Multiple videos emerged in the following hours showing the incident from many angles.

An American mom was summarily executed in the land of the free and the home of the brave because one of Donald Trump’s stormtroopers didn’t like her attitude. The case was closed before it was ever opened. Kristi Noem stuck to her story and declared the 37-year-old mother of three a domestic terrorist. Trump echoed and embellished the lie, insisting, “She ran him over.” Vice President JD Vance enthusiastically supported the shooting.

And that, my fellow Americans, is that.

The Trump Administration has now demonstrated that it can shoot and kill whomever it chooses on impulse, and there’s nothing that anyone can do about it. Guardrails, checks, balances, accountability, and the “rule of law“ are all yesterday’s smoke rings.

The Descendants (2011)

Wednesday night at my mom’s, we watched a George Clooney movie that I think I have probably seen before, but I’m not completely sure. Alexander Payne directed it, and I know I liked Sideways and Nebraska, but maybe I was distracted during my first viewing of this one. I’m glad to have finally paid attention.

In The Descendants, Clooney plays the scion of a wealthy family whose trust controls 25,000 acres of virgin land on the island of Kauai. As a lawyer on Oahu, he’s the sole trustee and is under family pressure to sell — but meanwhile, his wife is hospitalized in a coma after a recent boating accident.

There are some comic elements to the movie, but really, it’s a fairly intricate story about wounded humans attempting to navigate life’s difficult turns.

Clooney’s character has two daughters — a young Shailene Woodley and newcomer Amara Miller, who both turn in strong performances. Judy Greer is also quite good.

As for Clooney, who is often regarded as playing himself, this is some of his best work. Sure, he looks like a suave movie star — but his face and voice register chords struck deep inside.

My mom and I both enjoyed this movie. She was especially impressed by the Hawaiian setting. She’s never been there. I felt it was authentically captured.

Molokai: The Story of Father Damien (1999)

Because Wednesday’s Hawaii movie was a hit, and because my mom is a devout Catholic, on Friday night we watched Molokai: The Story of Father Damien.

In Hawaii, I have seen the Father Damien Statue in front of the Hawaii State Capitol, and the Father Damien statue at Holy Rosary Parish on Maui. I knew the bare outlines of Father Damien‘s story — how he ministered to the leper colony on Molokai and ultimately died of the disease himself. I have gazed at Molokai across the Pailolo Channel. I have eaten the island’s purple sweet potatoes.

I can’t say that this dramatization added much to my understanding. David Wenham plays the Belgian priest, who ministers to the leper colony on Molokai and ultimately dies of the disease himself.

For a movie only 27 years old, this felt more like a religious epic from the 1950s. Many meaningful moments are held extra long to let their significance sink in. There are a lot of bandaged, suffering extras. The whole story is a solemn procession to the inevitable. Damien is thwarted by authorities on Oahu, but supported heartily by Crown Princess Liliʻuokalani  (Kate Ceberano), who performs her famous “Aloha ʻOe” for the community.

Peter O’Toole plays an unbelieving but curious Hansen’s sufferer, and Kris Kristofferson is Rudolph Meyer, a sympathetic agricultural baron up the mountain from the colony.