Rememberances

This is a very powerful video I received. We Americans seem to try and forget our history as soon as we can; the Ukrainians don't.  Perhaps we  hurry and try to forget those sacrifices made by others..by our ancestors.

This video shows the winner of "Ukraine's Got  Talent",  Kseniya Simonova, 24,  drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II.  Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch.
 
The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about $130,000.00 

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated. 
 
It is replaced by a woman's face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman's face appears. 
 
She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier. 

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house. 
 
In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye. 

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million. 

Kseniya Simonova says:  
"I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there's surely no bigger compliment."

Problems...Soulutions..Nope

O.K., maybe just a little French lingo...to keep my Cajun relatives happy;

Bush n'était pas le problème. Obama n'est pas la solution :

If you can understand French it reads, "Bush wasn't the problem.  Obama's not the solution.

This was a headline from the French paper Le Monde.

What film character is Barack Obama?

A thought occurred to me today that President Obama is Hedley Lamarr ( Harvey Korman) from the classic Mel Brooks film, "Blazing Saddles". how many of you remember the following conversation between he and Taggart (Slim Pickens)? 

Hedley Lamarr : My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.
Taggart: God darnit, Mr. Lamarr, you use your tongue prettier than a twenty dollar whore. 

I think, considering our president's opinion of himself and his ability to talk for hours without saying a thing or contridacting himself with the very next sentence, that this is pretty spot-on...but it's just my opinion.