Evolution Of The Wasp From Nest To Movies

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

                    A long thin body:  the Wasp                                                        

                                                                     

                Oh look!  A wasp nest.  The White^note  Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or WASP, is a largely American trope that today is used to describe the stereotypically "white" (and mostly upper- or upper-middle class, as the term is usually not applied to working-class poor whites and white Southerners associated with Deep South stereotypes.... even though those groups technically fit the definition) people in American society and culture.  Trope:  A literary trope is the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech. Keith and Lundburg describe a trope as, "a substitution of a word or phrase by a less literal word or phrase." Wikipedia                                                                                

  The death of the WASP Elite is greatly exaggerated....... "it’s possible to imagine adaptation rather than surrender as a different WASP strategy across the 1960s and 1970s. In such a world the establishment would have still admitted more blacks, Jews, Catholics and Hispanics (and more women) to its ranks … but it would have done so as a self-consciously elite-crafting strategy, rather than under the (1) pseudo-democratic auspices of the SAT and (2)the high school resume and (3) the dubious ideal of “merit.” At the same time it would have retained both its historic religious faith (instead of exchanging Protestant rigor for a post-Christian Social Gospel and a soft pantheism) and its more self-denying culture (instead of letting all that wash away in the flood of boomer-era emotivism). " So wrote "New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is using the death of President George H. W. Bush to mourn the caste the late president belonged to." Ross Gregory Douthat is an American political analyst, blogger, author and New York Times columnist. He was a senior editor of The Atlantic. He has written on a variety of topics, including the state of Christianity in America and "sustainable decadence" in contemporary society. Wikipedia

In the United States, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants or WASPs are an ethnoreligious group who are the white, upper-class, American Protestant historical elite, typically of British descent. WASPs dominated American society, culture, and politics for most of the history of the United States.

Today,  a lady on ABC said she was a wasp.  I about fainted.

                        Paul Rudd as Ant Man called Scott Lang, who in real life is NOT a wasp, even though he's white.  

So when I was watching TV a few minutes ago and heard a Walt Disney character remark that she played the wasp in the movie with the ant man, I couldn't believe my ears. 

Evangeline Lilly as the Wasp called  Hope Pym

I had to check on google to see if I heard right.  And sure enough, there is the movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp is a 2018 American superhero film based on Marvel Comics featuring the characters Scott Lang / Ant-Man and Hope Pym / Wasp. Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, it is the sequel to Ant-Man (2015) and the 20th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

Ant-Man and the Wasp had its world premiere in Hollywood on June 25, 2018, and was released in the United States on July 6, 2018, as part of Phase Three of the MCU. The film was a critical and commercial success, receiving praise for its performances (particularly those of Rudd and Lilly), humor, and levity, and grossing over $622 million worldwide. A sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, is scheduled for release in February 2023.

                                               

Notice: from bottom, the Apoides of (wasps and bees), and above that, the Formicidae (ants) 

Evidently this wasp refers to the insect variety known to exist and pal around with ants according to the filmmakers.  A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. The wasps do not constitute a clade, a complete natural group with a single ancestor, as bees and ants are deeply nested within the wasps, having evolved from wasp ancestors. Wasps that are members of the clade Aculeata can sting their prey.

A wasp's diet varies between species. In most instances, wasps feed their larvae bits of insects that they have killed and chopped up, but the adults feed on sugars from nectar, aphid honeydew or a sugary liquid produced by their larvae.

Wasps have appeared in literature from Classical times, as the eponymous chorus of old men in Aristophanes' 422 BC comedy The Wasps, and in science fiction from H. G. Wells's 1904 novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth, featuring giant wasps with three-inch-long stings. The name 'Wasp' has been used for many warships and other military equipment.

You don't want a nest of wasps that might have attached themselves to your house.  Look under the eaves once in a while.  Wasps have generally earned themselves a bad reputation. But despite their occasional aggression, these insects play an important role in the ecosystem.  There are over 7,000 wasp species living in the UK, comprising a huge variety of solitary and social species. The majority are parasitoids, which have young that eat insects or spiders alive. However, the most commonly seen wasps are the black and yellow social species.

Resource:

https://newrepublic.com/article/152533/death-wasp-elite-greatly-exaggerated

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestants#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20White,history%20of%20the%20United%20States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant-Man_and_the_Wasp

The View's View of a Republican Spokeslady, Alyssa Farah Griffin

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Alyssa Farah Griffin (born June 15, 1989 in Los Angeles) is an American political strategist and television personality. She was the White House Director of Strategic Communications and Assistant to the President in 2020 during the presidency of Donald Trump. Griffin appears on CNN as a political commentator. 

Still hard to chat with  the other Democrats on the view during commercial breaks...as noted by "ok magazine" "She stood there awkwardly".....

How's Alyssa Farah Griffin enjoying "The View" from ABC's quarter-century-old daytime talk show?  

It’s a “pinch myself every day” kind of gig, says the 33-year-old former press secretary for Mike Pence and White House director of strategic communications for the Trump administration, from which she resigned in December 2020. She also testified before the Jan. 6 congressional hearings in June, and put former aide Cassidy Hutchinson in touch with Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee's vice-chairman, according to Farah Griffin.   In August, "The View" named Farah Griffin and Ana Navarro co-hosts to fill the show’s traditionally conservative seat vacated by Meghan McCain. They join Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines and Sunny Hostin.

As long as their show is sharing viewpoints of today's news from an assortment of women of the USA, they do the right thing by bringing on a Republican, and one at that who is very outspoken.  She brings to us a  view of many Republicans instead of the ones who have become far-right conspiracy theorists  like Marjorie Taylor Green,  who has served as the U.S. representative for Georgia's 14th congressional district since 2021. 

“I keep saying to my husband (Justin Griffin--Justin Griffin is the husband of Alyssa Farah. He engaged her in 2020 and later tied the knot with her in November 2021. Justin is an MBA candidate at Stern School of Business at New York University. Griffin studied political science at Stonehill College and completed his undergraduate studies at Clark University in 2012.

He also did a brief course on cybersecurity at Harvard in 2020.  He is all set to graduate in 2022 but a confirmed date has not been revealed.Nov 16, 2022).  

I'm not going to the Pentagon today,” Farah Griffin, also a former press secretary for the Department of Defense, says with a laugh. “The View” offers fashion, a hair and makeup team and challenges Farah Griffin to move out of a spokesperson role, she says.

She is a co-host of the daytime talk show The View for its 26th season, their representative of the Republican Party amidst most all Democrats on the View.  

Griffin was press secretary for U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Special Assistant to President Donald Trump from October 2017 to September 2019. In 2019, she was appointed the youngest press secretary of The Pentagon in history. 

She served as Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and the Press Secretary for the United States Department of Defense from 2019 to 2020.

Since August 2021, Griffin has presented The Hill's online news program Rising alongside Ryan Grim and Kim Iversen.

 Her father, Joseph Farah, born in New Jersey in 1954 to a schoolteacher father, is a journalist of Syrian and Lebanese descent who was executive news editor at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner before moving to Northern California to become editor of The Sacramento Union in 1990. He later founded the far-right website WorldNetDaily. Farah also In 1991 left the Union and co-founded the Western Journalism Center. He writes a weekly print column for The Jerusalem Post which is nationally syndicated through Creators Syndicate.  He is married to Elizabeth Graham and is a conservative evangelical Christian. He has five children, including a daughter from a previous marriage to Judy Smagula, Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as the Press Secretary for Vice President Mike Pence and later served as Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Media Affairs and Press Secretary for the Department of Defense.

Her mother Judy (née Smagula) is a Sacramento-based journalist who has written for HuffPost, the Associated Press, and Comstock's. Griffin describes herself as having been "raised in the right-wing media".

Alyssa has also been interviewed by PBS's Frontline for their program and Lies, Politics, etc...seen on YouTube and her major theme is that Donald Trump is a dangerous man for our Democracy.  I happen to agree with her, and she knows so much more than we, the people who are not involved in politics.  Her thought was that the Republican Party knows of Donald's source of finances and that they want some of that for their politics.  That's why they have stuck with him for so long.  

Alyssa Farah Griffin at age 33 is one very intelligent and "in the know" lady.  She announced on January 6th that the election was valid, but was ignored, of course.  Even her family that still believes in Trump has rejected her, so she has lost her family and position due to her convictions.    

Resource:

https://okmagazine.com/p/cast-the-view-ignores-alyssa-farah-griffin/

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

https://www.the-sun.com/news/4001144/who-alyssa-farah-husband-justin-griffin/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2022/10/03/alyssa-farah-griffins-first-month-the-view-cohost-sunny-hostin/8125861001/

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

Greenleaf and From Scratch Netflicks Presentations

 Nadene Goldfoot                                     

                         Keith David playing the Pastor Greenleaf of a Black Mega-church

One of the most enjoyable Netflix presentations I've watched are Greenleaf and then From Scratch, using one of the same actors, Keith David.    

Greenleaf is an American weekly prime time Soap Opera/mystery television series created by Craig Wright, and executive produced by Oprah Winfrey and Lionsgate Television. Clement Virgo also serves as an executive producer and director. It stars Keith David, Lynn Whitfield, and Merle Dandridge. Greenleaf premiered on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) on June 21, 2016.                          

 Pastor Greenleaf, daughter Grace played by Merle Dandridge, and wife, Lady Mae played by Lynn Whitfield.  

Although members of the Greenleaf family run a Memphis megachurch, their business and personal lives are tainted with greed, adultery and other sins.  All that makes an exciting story-line that keeps you guessing.  They keep you happy throughout the story with the singing and dancing on the stage of the church. 

 The singing is unbelievably great-mostly from another daughter of the pastor, Charity Greenleaf, played by Deborah Joy Imani Winans (born September 6, 1983) who is an American actress and singer, and member of the musical Winans family.  Charity has this fantastic voice and presentation, but she dreams of being the pastor.  

She starred as Charity Greenleaf-Satterlee in the Oprah Winfrey Network drama series, Greenleaf.  In 2015, Winans was cast in a series regular role in the Oprah Winfrey Network drama series, Greenleaf. She plays Charity Greenleaf-Satterlee, the youngest daughter in the family, who is also the Minister of Music. The series also stars Lynn Whitfield, Keith David, Merle Dandridge, and Kim Hawthorne.

Greenleaf follows the unscrupulous world of the Greenleaf family with scandalous secrets and lies, their palatial family mansion compound, and their sprawling Memphis megachurch with predominantly African-American members. 

The series' lead characters are Bishop James Greenleaf (David) and Lady Mae Greenleaf (Whitfield), who are the patriarch and matriarch of the Greenleaf family, and Grace Greenleaf (Dandridge), their estranged daughter who has returned home after 20 years following the mysterious death of her sister, Faith. 

Deep down, this family cares for and loves each other, but secrets, lies, adultery, sibling rivalry and other issues swarm the family as they try to keep themselves together. There are a variety of people who try to run the family out of their beloved church but they lay it all on the line to keep each other tight and close like any family.

    Kim Hawthorne, playing Karissa, wife of the Preacher's son

Starring:Merle Dandridge, Kim Hawthorne, Desiree Ross

Creators:Craig Wright.  Oprah Winfrey took a part as the father's sister.  

The two top female actors are:  Merle Dandridge as Grace Greenleaf, daughter of the preacher, and Kim Hawthorne as Kerissa who is married to Grace's brother.  

What impresses me, looking back, is that both parents are great preachers, and all their children can preach and vie to be preachers in their parents' church.  It shows that they can't help it, but they all are carrying that gene or genes to preach.  

A Rotten Tomato comment was "More than five years after its much-anticipated debut, the Oprah Winfrey Network finally premieres what should have been its flagship show.

On November 23, 2018, OWN renewed the series for a fourth season. The fourth season premiered on September 3, 2019. On November 15, 2019, OWN confirmed the renewal of a fifth and final season of the series, which premiered on June 23, 2020. A spinoff of Greenleaf is in works on OWN, and will focus on Whitfield's character and her new role as senior pastor.                                

                                 Zoe Saldana=Amy

In the Netflix's "From Scratch, Keith David plays Hershel, the father of the main character, Zoe Saldana who plays the part of Amy, who falls in love with an Italian Sicilian while in Italy.  The story-line takes place in Sicily in many of the scenes.  

A comment:  The acting was incredible - simply incredible - each and every actor in this show was amazing and brought so much depth to their characters. I binged the entire mini-series in a few nights, and by the last moment, I was ugly crying. I haven't cried this hard in a long time. This was a love story that shows you how to love, compromise, appreciate, respect, communicate. I loved the cultural nuances, the dreams that had to change, the realities of life, the complexities of families and choices. This is the best love story I have seen since 'The Notebook.' My husband isn't a fan of romantic movies; however, he was glued to the story as much as I was and appreciated it. It's a must watch.  I agree with this comment posted.  Especially Zoe Saldana, who I kept thinking was actually Kim Hawthorne, as they were similar-looking to my eyes, was a great actress who kept us crying.  

From Scratch is an American drama limited series created by Attica Locke and Tembi Locke for Netflix. Inspired by Tembi Locke's memoir of the same name, it stars Zoe Saldaña and Eugenio Mastrandrea. Its eight episodes premiered on October 21, 2022. Attica Locke was series showrunner..

                            Tembi Locke in 2019

This actually was Tembi Locke's true story.  Locke and her husband, Rosario "Saro" Gullo, a Sicilian chef, lived and worked in Los Angeles, California. Her husband died in 2012. They have one daughter who was 7 at the time of her father's death. She is a vegetarian, and urban homesteader, regularly growing produce on vacant lots in the city. Locke is a gourmet cook, and also enjoys hiking, running and fishing. She is involved in several social activism programs.

                                    K. David in 2010

Keith David Williams (born June 4, 1956) is an American actor. He is known for his signature deep voice and commanding screen presence in over 300 roles across film, stage, television, and interactive media.

He has starred in such films as The Thing (1982), Platoon (1986), They Live (1988), Dead Presidents (1995), Armageddon (1998), There's Something About Mary (1998), Requiem for a Dream (2000), Pitch Black (2000), Barbershop (2002), Crash (2004), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), Cloud Atlas (2012), The Nice Guys (2016), and Nope (2022). He starred as Elroy Patashnik in the sixth season of the NBC series Community (2015) and starred as Bishop James Greenleaf in the Oprah Winfrey Network drama Greenleaf (2016–2020). 

 When asked in an interview on his narration work of The Bible if he was a religious man, he said: "I'm not a religious man. I'm a man of spirit. Religion can get political. I believe in God and spirit. I believe in church. I've been baptized. I've gone to Catholic, Baptist, Episcopal and Church of God in Christ."  You'd never know it when you see him as Pastor Greenleaf.  

What I enjoyed in both stories was the closeness that both 

families showed their affection.  The were the warmest of 

families.  They touched, kissed, let each other know they 

cared.  I think that's missing in a lot of our families.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenleaf_(TV_series)

https://mymajicdc.com/3691227/owns-hit-series-greenleaf-

returns-this-august/

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Scratch_(TV_series)

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoe_Salda%C3%B1a

How Many Like Me? 88+ Years Old?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

                      Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 24, 2022 at Steve/Molly's house.  Our immediate family was not in Portland this year and because of Covid, we are not socializing, either. The news just told us that the numbers of people needing the hospital is rising with Covid, the flu, which is so similar, and a child's virus, offshoot of Covid referred to as RSV (Respiratory syncytial virus)..  

We've had all our vaccinations and boosters, but at my age--not much natural immune system left that's workable so the need to be very careful.  My mom lived till 92, so I have high hopes that I have some of those long-life genes, but Dad died at 59, so what can I do but take care. Born in 1908, he had lived through the "flu"  of 1917, but had something like hepatitis that took his life from a blood transfusion, I believe.    

A ‘Tripledemic’? Flu, R.S.V. and Covid May Collide This Winter, Experts Say  Flu cases are higher than usual for this time of year and are expected to soar in the coming weeks. Another virus, R.S.V., already is straining pediatric hospitals in some states.

I woke up this morning, a few days after Thanksgiving,  wondering how many other 88 year olds were living in Gresham by themselves like me?  I was thinking of starting a business putting men to work who had nothing to do and would like to help us seniors who couldn't manage to do things like turn their mattresses over for a routine rotation.  I haven't been able to do that for ages by myself.

I had this idea that there were men sitting in the city library, reading, who might be there because they had nowhere else to go to keep warm and had no job.  I just heard on TV that the library would be open to 5pm for such people as a warm shelter.  

I could take these men, put a crown on their head that said something like HELPER, and they could go to a neighborhood and go to all the homes offering to turn their mattress for them for $5.  There's always other things that need their help, such as window washing, too.  I have a kitchen window that I can't get to or budge that needs help badly.  I guess the thing the men would need is transportation and maybe lunch at the home worked in.   They don't have to sing for their supper, just help out with a few of their muscles that we lack.  

On 2nd thought, in today's world, this wouldn't work.  The only group we could trust might be a scout troupe that was working on a badge of merit who also had their scout leader supervising, or a church group.  Well, it was an idea.  

Portland, where I was born and raised, has a population this year of  a whopping 2,197,000.  When my son was born in 1953, we had a population of only 554,000.  There's no listing for 1934, but in 1920, the population of Portland was only 258,288 and  by 1930 was 301,815 .  

Austin, Texas is close to our population with 2,176,000. 

 The 4th largest city in Oregon is Gresham with a population of 115,977 and is where I now live.  Spanning over 24 miles, Gresham has a population density of 4,967 people per square mile.

Me a long time ago in my family's home in Portland when we had a lot of snow.  I see a sled in the foreground. We kept the home in the family.  My son and daughter in law have lived there since then. 

Our Mom and Dad had moved into our home from South Portland, where they had been living with our Bubba.  Portland's population in 1930 was 301,815 and they married in 1932.  It was about 1935 when they moved into their permanent home in Portland.  The neighborhood was a new one, originally farmland.   

                        December 2008 in Gresham 

The average household income in Gresham is $69,723 with a poverty rate of 16.07%. A lot of us seniors depend on social security only.   The median age in Gresham is 36.7 years, 35.1 years for males, and 38.6 years for females.  So there's not many of us 88 year olds living in Gresham, then. We make up only 3% of the population.   The seniors, 65 and over, make up 14.1% of the population.  

Those in Gresham of any age with a BS or BA degree from college make up 22.7% of the population, of which I'm a part as I was a teacher in Portland and a sub in Gresham.  

Resource:

https://greshamoregon.gov/Demographics/

https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/gresham-or-population

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Portland,_Oregon

https://www.cdc.gov/rsv/index.html