Word: fending
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Mohammed Meerza is what the Afghans call "soft" Taliban. But there's nothing effete about him. He's almost burnt by the sun, his hard hands calloused. He lost his father at the age of five and grew up hungry and poor. As the eldest child, he had to fend for the rest of his family. Of his childhood, he simply says, "I have no good memories." He has come into the city of Kandahar on a winter's day in late January to speak to a reporter but has to leave before night falls and the risks of capture...
...from their makeshift FEMA trailers—their own solution to the housing crisis that still exists. This is a land where wealthy speculators purchase coastal land at upwards of one million dollars an acre, and where—just a few miles away—public housing recipients fend off efforts by local and state officials to dislodge them from their homes. This is a place where redeveloped casinos—opened only months after Katrina—glitter along the coastline and reap profits off eager gamblers, while rural African American residents still struggle to replace the schools...
...ideal - soft-spoken, tolerant, not too ambitious , with (we soon learn) plenty of time for single-parenting his somewhat noxious child. To Daphne he is, of course, a loser, and she's appalled when he seeks out her daughter. Most of the movie is devoted to her attempts to fend off his excellent intentions...
...poor farmer's son to have risen to the top of the Vatican hierarchy, Bertone must have had to develop steel under his outward affability. Vatican insiders note that in the new job--for which part of his task is to fend off those who want to derail the Pope's agenda--that thick skin may count more than Bertone's good humor. A Vatican official who has worked with the Cardinal in the past says, "I've never seen him betray his principles--but he's had to do everything just short of it." Adds the official: "He knows...
...most conspicuous thing about Simon's father was his absence: his marriage was stormy, and he was often away for protracted periods, leaving his wife Mamie and the boys, Neil and Danny, who was eight years older, to fend for themselves. Says Simon: "Each time he came back I thought, 'At last, we're together.' But it kept on like a yo-yo." Mamie Simon was resourceful: she worked at Gimbel's department store; she ran poker games in the house and took a cut of each pot. At the hardest times Neil and his mother were taken...