Hummuna, hummuna the woman said when "the smugglers" took the alien mask off yet another sample. "Where'dya git it?" Another woman asked.
"Long, long story probably best answered by the people it 'attacked', then resisted arrest, flung some friends into a wall," the wounded came forward, "And was 'apprehended' for not having identity papers!"
"This is gonna be good shug, I'll catch up."
"I really do think people want their court TV back."
The woman had pulled me away from a little clutch of reporters outside a courtroom. Dressed in Sunday best to my wrinkled four day old outfit. "I probably don't. I don't see color." She undid a purse snap. "That's what my grandson said you'd say." Her smooth, well-taken care of hands paused on the big handle of the purse. "M'am. What are we talking about here?" She looked across the hallway at the flag. "That did this. Who did this to Our Country."
I reached out and patted her hands. "I'm just me. As a journalist I just report on all sides. I wish someone had not used that word, infiltrated. But, from what I understand," she gave my patting hand back to me. "Yes?" I looked at my little stack of reporter's notebooks in my lap not confident I really understood. "The pieces add up to the facts that somehow people did. I mean, you know, I talk to a lot of people, and, and most people were not thinking about spys and operatives that would, you know, want to harm us."
"I know that." One hand was reaching into the purse. "My grandson said to get these to you," she pulled a taped up envelope from the purse. "He trusts you to," she let the envelope fall on my lap when I wouldn't just take it, "Do the right thing." She re-snapped the purse and promptly stood. Smoothing skirt on her backside. "Nice meeting you," she said. Her heels not noisy but not unheard as she walked away.
"Here hold this," the man thrust the boom at me and dug through his pockets for car keys. "I'm just gonna put this here," a woman said as she wheeled a camera mounted on a tripod on wheels to where I'd sat on a knee wall resting an elbow holding a boom on my thigh. "I have to run to my car to smoke."
"Vhat are vee vilming today?" A man in a vintage 50's suit came and asked me. "Not entirely sure. It seems like housewives but, er, the people seem, uh, foreign."
"Great to see you got some work girl," a hooded person cupped hands and hollah'd. "Oh, I did not." I muttered. "Get up," the camera woman ordered. She snapped the battery case on a light meter closed. "What are you doing here anyway?"
"Process of elimination," I head pointed to a skyscraper.
"Sorry to hear it."
"Oh, I wasn't aiming for the Networks anyway."
Two of the actors arguing were getting louder and louder. A man in a jogging suit came and asked the camerawoman, "Is this in the script?" She snapped back, "I wouldn't know. I'm not her." She pointed the light meter at a woman with a script.
"You're chariot has arrived," the normally pensive writer smiled at complex mission accomplished. The other woman frowned.
To a question about "re-joining".
The young man had been grown up to not lose his perma-smile, since it's a dead giveaway on feelings like "disappointment". In fluid situation such feelings can have groups losing part of themselves and/or individuals "mess up". Not that anyone's perfect, but minimizing what's coming up for me, while a line of workers is going for timing, efficiency, quality, productivity, and "a big finish" even on tiny tasks, well, we'd been learning as we grew professionally.
There were qualifications, equivalencies, criteria, and challenges to be wrestled with in an interim. That we'd lost workforce to an infiltrated "Federal" wasn't putting a fire under our collective American ass because, clearly, it's going to be better if we "safeguard" and "heal up" the parts of our self as a nation that shattered.
This was not the first Town Hall type meeting on all matters in the universe the man had attended. But he was a deep thinker and his "back burner" was bubbling alongside listening.
The [airquotes] "special" people, er, ah, professionals will have further meetings for more details.
"Because it took them so long to, I dunno, come to grips with all that has happened so far," a special friend had traversed the gulf between man and woman, husband and wife, to begin a third-party-involved conversation. The man had been excited about "the news" even at the prospect of "it might be twins". But, later he told, as the new reality of war took over "the new normal", it was like being on a bridge like the Golden Gate as a hurricane built, wrastled with, and demolished the infrastructure. "Everything has to be weighed in considerations and re-considerations." He looked down at his feet. Way before decision-making, when possible.
Some of us were in awe at how much stuff teenagers had already gone through in just preparing for (and hopefully warding off) world war.
A press conference type word from NATO. Recent but clearly aimed at piecing military action into the puzzle of the future.
Some important points:
Europe and Canada will send 4-5 billion in monies for American weapons and air defense to Ukraine in July.
Some countries are figuring out conscriptions.
China is doing a lot of build up without much transparency.
°°°°°°°°°°°°
Taiwan is trying to work through civilians working with military.
Saw it on WION
°°°°°°°°°°°°°
The U.S. is navigating where lines between the Services sometimes merge, sometimes chain, sometimes combination in situation like Venezuela and Border Patrol/ICE strategy.
so people formed two lines. The bravest amongst us took up position up front. Some people tucked younger siblings into hopefully protected spots. Some middle agers kept falling back in line, some clustered.
One trainer explained she was going to toss us the "medicine ball". The other shook her head, yeah. The one showed us how to "plant feet" and what zone our arms should be in. The other bounced the medicine ball off her knee higher and higher into the air. The one asked, "Ready?!?" The other hucked it into a person's stomach. The person doubled over. The one trainer put the ball down and went over to the person.
Everybody else got in her line.
but not too many days from clean. He'd been given a vehicle after winding up in Oklahoma on a bus from a midwest airport. "Not a fun visit," he pre-warned youth that he had worked with as he waited to talk to ranking military.
"What's he doing here?" An injured contractor asked his wife. She found out from the neighbors-who-know-everything. Her sundress was torn on the bottom edge where it had gotten stuck on a nail. She held the edge up like it might drag in a puddle now that it was torn. "It's about the war," she popped open the cooler and popped the top off a longneck and handed it to her husband. "But we're not at war," the man said. He took a gulp of the beer. Of the several people just hanging out, no one said anything.
The smell of bacon and eggs was coming from a little apartment above the General Store. "They want you to come up Zetty." The teenage girl in red clay'd Keds had stopped about a dozen feet from the dusty man. One foot smoothing a line on the ground. Hands behind her back like an ice skater. "Thankya lil miss."
Feet heavy on wooden stairs. A small deck with fading stain, gray even in the sunshine. A woman had cooked for the men. She picked up her keys and pocketbook, kissed the dusty man on the cheek, and left.
The dusty man zipped up a zipper on the side of his pants and extracted a rolled and folded map of Europe which his dusty hands smoothed out on a small dining table. The other men looked too big for the room. Too not fragile to the fragile knick knacks. Too tough for off-white rug and off-white loveseat. But they were perfectly calm. "Tell," one of them ordered the dusty man. "It was a long bus ride, just kidding." One guy looked at a taller, broader guy like, Is this a jokester? Taller held up a hand like a crossing guard. The dusty man pointed to spots on the map. Maybe eight places. His other hand outlined rivers. "Flood prone. No surprise, not choice land." He held up two fingers, and said, "Watch. I will show you where the chaos will collapse into frontline."
"You must leave," the dusty man was told. "My love to your family Zetty." Some were putting on glasses, one was taking off glasses, and one crossed his arms and focused on the faces of the others while glancing at the map.
Outside, no people. Just a four-pack of glass Pepsi bottles and some Honeybuns.
The man's eyes misted. His face went slack. "Then why'd you just backhand her?" People were streaming to and from getting hotdogs and beer from concessions.
The little woman had gone into shock and was against a wall, bent over looking like she was looking for something. She dabbed at the drops of blood from her split lip on the concrete and was trying to put them back into her lip. The other people from our never really parting as a unit caught up from the stadium seats.
"It's not about hate. It's not about hate." The technically "attacker" was with his arms blocking his face and blubbering. This made some of us see him as he had been, pulled from the bottom of a latrine-house with face so swollen from boot kicks and fist punching he didn't look like our friend or anyone but a captured "terrorist".
Oh my God
Oy vey
"We're a mess, but we'll catch up," a woman leader pecked a kiss onto the cheek of a newly with work "returned". "You sure?"
"I can't promise."
Hummuna, hummuna the woman said when "the smugglers" took the alien mask off yet another sample. "Where'dya git it?...
