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The Communist's Daughter follows 16-year-old Dunyasha McDougald (played by Sofia Banzhaf), the daughter of two happily married communists, as she tries to fit in at a new high school during the Reagan-era 80s.

Courtesy of CBC Gem

You will find the oddest things on CBC Gem. Arriving Friday is a daft time-warp comedy that makes merriment with communism.

The Communists Daughter is a very droll farce that really has no point apart from fun, frolics, jokes about the 1980s and the ineffable struggle of a teenage girl who wants to fit in but is held back by her communist parents. It doesnt make a blind bit of sense but thats fine. Its deranged enough to detain you for a splendid escape.

Its 1989 and 15-year-old Dunyasha McDougald (Sofia Banzhaf, who is tremendous) is happy to go along with most everything her dad (Aaron Poole ) and her mom (Jessica Holmes from Air Farce) have taught her about the evils of capitalism, the American media and consumerism. That is, until she moves to a new neighbourhood and falls for a strapping local boy Marc (Kolton Stewart). While wanting to stay true to her familys ideals, she knows shes marked as a dork.

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The little series is drenched in eighties pop culture and what Dunyasha really wants is to be Molly Ringwald. This is a bit tricky since her family doesnt even own a TV and she knows more about the Soviet economy than about movies and clothes popular in her Toronto suburb. All of this is played for farce, some of it very amusing. At home, theres her parents and brother, Boris (Ryan Taerk), who is finding the communist thing a bit boring. But theres also Oleg (Vieslav Krystyan) who apparently came to visit from the Soviet Union years go and just stayed, living in the basement.

Things get more complicated when dad Ian decides to run for local office, promising longer lunchbreaks and such. His main opponent is Rod Bigmann (Chris Locke), an ardent capitalist, like most local people. Turns out hottie Marc is Bigmanns son. So, right there, youve got a Romeo and Juliet thing going on. Shenanigans ensue.

What is admirable about the series eight episodes at about 10 minutes each is the sheer gusto of all involved in this dopey, harebrained adventure. Again, one is reminded of the excellent young talent working in Canada. Apart from Banzhaf, theres fine daffy comedy from Zoe Cleland as Tatiana, who is actually from the Soviet Union and finds McDougald-style communism bizarre. Tatiana also has her eye on Marc, the minx. Then theres Nadine Bhabha (from Letterkenny) as Jasmine, who tries to guide Dunyasha toward being cool. You will also find that George Stroumboulopoulous turns up several times as some guy who has a TV show covering the election. Hes good, this Strombo guy.

The Communists Daughter was written and directed by Leah Cameron (one of the main writers on CBCs Coroner) and, according to a press release, it is loosely based on her own childhood. The series was funded in part by a Kickstarter funding campaign and, yes, it was a labour of love, and the end result is adorably daft and sweet.

Tim Minchin, right, as Lucky Flynn and Milly Alcock as Meg in Upright.

Courtesy of CBC Gem

Also streaming on CBC Gem now is Upright, a beauty of a drama-comedy from Australia. An on-the-road odyssey, it is both funny and at times deeply moving. It opens with our sad-sack anti-hero Lachlan, known as Lucky (Tim Minchin), trying to take an upright piano to his childhood home, driving across the vast Australian landscape. Hes barely started when he crashes into a pickup truck driven by a very angry, extremely foul-mouthed teenage girl, Meg (Milly Alcock).

They team up, out of necessity. He needs to keep moving with that piano and shes been injured, so she needs help. Their journey is, at first, one long bickering session, much of it very, very funny. (Alcock is like a force of nature here.) Until, that is, the real reasons that have both of them on the road become clear.

Neither is a happy person and both have regrets and baggage. A strange, brittle series, with manic comic energy at times, it is deeply rewarding in the end stick with it beyond the first episodes and manages to be eloquent without being sentimental.

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Great farce material: Having fun with Communism - The Globe and Mail

Loved and Lost is a project about memorializing those lost to COVID-19 in NJ. NorthJersey.com

This story is part of Loved and Lost, a statewide media collaboration working to celebrate the life of every New Jersey resident who died of COVID-19. To learn moreandsubmit a loved one's name to be profiled, visit lovedandlostnj.com.

Nancy Blair of Lyndhurst was committed to her family foremost.

In her 20s, she left college and her accounting studies behind in Taiwan to move to New York and pave a way for her parents and her two younger brothers to one dayjoin her.

In her 30s and as a married woman living in New Jersey, she raised her three children with her husband, John Blair, and helped her parents buy a house near her home in Harrison.

And in recent years, as a grandmother, she often invited her children, spouses, and grandchildrenfor Chinese and Italian meals followed by hours-long conversations.

Nancy Blair of Lyndhurst died of complications of COVID-19 on April 22, 2020.(Photo: Courtesy from Blair family)

She always wanted the family together, especially holiday events," John Blair said. "She would do all the cooking.

Nancy died on April 22, 2020 at Hackensack University Medical Center. She was 75.

Nancywas born Jian-Hua Wang in China and was the oldest of three children.When she was a child, her family relocated to Taiwan, fleeing communism. When Nancy was in her early twenties, she moved to New York to work as a nanny, a job she didnt enjoy because she got so fewdays off,her husband said.

Eventually, she found work as a bookkeeper and accountant at Chinese restaurants in Queens, which would allow her to save money and bring her parents and brothers to the United States.

She was a very happy and kind person, with a good frame of mind, her husband said. She was always very considerate of her family.

Nancy had two children, Marsha and John Khan, during her first marriage. She met John Blair one day when he dropped envelopes at her house in Queens that he had printed for her then-husband. A friendship ensuedthat would continue for years.

After her divorce, Nancy moved in with her mother and would confide her struggles to John during their almost daily phone conversations.

The conditions werent so good with her mother, and I felt she should get out of there, and then we started to make some plans to get married, John Blair recalled.

The couple moved to Harrison, where they bought a house close to the train station so John could easily get to his printing job in Manhattan. Nancy, meanwhile, worked as an accountant at local businesses, includinga dress shopand a lumber yard. At the lumber yard, she met a builder constructing houses in Harrison and asked him to save one for her parents, who were still living in Queens.

She moved her parents into there,'' John Blairrecalled. "It was a three-family, so the other two floors they rented out.

Nancy liked to give financial advice, her husband said, andshared tips with anyone who would listen.

She was a giving person in every respect, John said.

Nancy and John, who also became parents to a son, David, eventually moved to Lyndhurst. In 2007, to celebrate their retirement, the couple toured several countries in Europe as part of a cruise.

Nancy Blair, of Lyndhurst, and her family. Blair died of COVID-19 complications on April 22, 2020.(Photo: Courtesy photo from Blair family)

Nancy, who had successfully battled stomach cancer 20 years earlier, fell sick last March, days after she and her younger brother, Jenn Wang, buried their mother, Ruoh Yeh Yong Wang, who died March 18, 2020. The siblings had visited their mother at her nursing home in Hackensack for weeks before her death.

Nancy'sbrother, who lived in Texas, returned home and soon feltsick as well. He died March 28 of COVID, 10 days after his mother.

The day her brother died,Nancy was diagnosed with pneumonia. John said Nancy was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center a few days later by ambulance and later tested positive for COVID-19. She never returned home.

Her purse still hangs on a chair in the kitchen where sheleft it, he said.

I never moved it from there," he said, "just with the idea that she would come back.

MonsyAlvaradois theimmigration reporter for NorthJersey.com. To get unlimited access to the latest news about one of the hottest issues in our state and country,please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email:alvarado@northjersey.com

Twitter:@monsyalvarado

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Loved and Lost: Nancy Blair fled communist China, paved way for family to start over in US - NorthJersey.com

Valheim / Wikimedia Commons

Like more than 5 million people who bought the game since it launched in February, Ive been playing the surprise hit game Valheim. Its potent mix of Breath of the Wild and Minecraft with a viking aesthetic is shockingly polished and doesn't feel like it's missing much despite still being in early access. But its a struggle to survive Odins trials alone and much more fun to play Valheim with friends. You can do this by simply joining a friend's session, but if you don't mind spending a monthly fee on top of Valheim's $20 price, the best way to enjoy Valheims multiplayer is to pay for a service to host a dedicated server for you.

That simple change opened up the game I wasnt expecting. By creating a home base for everyone of my friends playing Valheim, I started a commune where everyone works together for the good of the whole. On our little commune in the digital forest, communism is working beautifully.

This is what a typical day is like on our Valheim dedicated server.

I logged into Valheim on late Sunday morning. Fellow Motherboarders Jordan Pearson and Emanuel Maiberg had been hard at work. Emanuel had constructed most of a massive stone wall, complete with parapets, along the edge of our base. Jordan had been running into the fields and gathering the massive amounts of stone Emanuel needed for the project. I marveled at the wall then tended to our carrot and turnip garden, made some soups for everyone, and fed our pigs

Emanuel and Jordan logged off but my friend Jim logged on. He and I traveled to the swamps and spent a few hours pulling out a hoard of iron. We dropped off the iron scrap in boxes next to the smelters and logged off. I came back on later that evening and found that the iron had all been smelted, turned into bars, and stored in its proper place. Two other friends on the server were gathering supplies to explore the mountains. Theres talk on the server of finally finding and killing Bonemass, the games third boss, now that weve got the iron to make the equipment wed need to keep everyone alive.

Valheim is fun to play alone, but a dedicated server with a large group of people encourages this kind of asynchronous communal play, and shows Valheim at its best. When you play Valheim alone, you are rewarded with skills and equipment that make your character stronger, as you do in most video games. When you play on a dedicated server where friends are free to come and go, it is equally if not more rewarding to see what you can do for your virtual viking community.

Players could steal treasure from each other's chests or destroy what others have built, and it's fair to predict that kind of thing would happen in an online video game, but the exact opposite is true. People log in and the first thing they ask is "what do we need?" They help each other construct projects that will help the entire group. Rather than hoard treasure greedily, everyone pitches into the same pile all are free to take from as they need. Our Valheim server is a collectivist utopia.

If you want to play with others, theres a few options. Whenever youre playing, you can invite a friend into your game and play together. But when you log off, your friend cant access the world anymore. If you want an always-on, persistent world that people can jump in and out of at will, then a dedicated server is your only option. You can run one on your machine, but it can be finicky. Playing Valheim on the same machine youre running a server on can cause performance issues and if you need to reboot your machine, itll pull the server down. Thats not great if a friend happens to be logged on.

The easiest option for playing Valheim on a dedicated server is to rent a computer from a speciality service that hosts gaming servers. Theres a ton of these services out there running games like Ark, Conan Exiles, and Minecraft. I use one called g-portla and pay $14 a month to run the server. Its worth it. The only negative is that we have to input the IP address every time we want to play.

When I stood up the server, everyone I knew was playing Valheim but we were all playing solo games. Id jump between friends' servers and hang out for a bit, but eventually someone would need to log off and wed retreat to our own worlds. I bought the server and resolved to stop server hopping. This would be home, I told myself, Ill convince the others to come. I spent a solid weekend building a giant mead hall that would serve as a large base of operations for multiple people.

As I worked on the mead hall, friends would log in and look. Groups gathered to help me kill the first two bosses. Sometimes people would gather wood for me out of pity, but few put down roots. Then they started dying on their own servers, dying in ways that required hours to fix.

Valheim can be punishing. When you die, you lose some experience and everything you had on your corpse is dropped where you did. Getting that corpse can be a trial, especially if youd died near higher level enemies. As I worked the mead hall, my friends playing solo would die in some far flung region of the map. Jordan had to sail to a new continent just to take down an early boss, a trial which came with several forehead-slapping complications. These disasters pushed people to the dedicated server and the security of a group. Its much easier to make a corpse run when youve got a friend to help and the resources left over from a large group of players just sitting around the mead hall.

On the dedicated server, everyone is working towards the same goal and everyone can do the thing they like in Valheim without feeling as if they need to worry about the busy work. Emanuel has been working the wall while the rest of us adventure. Jim doesnt like the home-body life so hes helping gather resources in dangerous lands. Two other friends are wearing cheap armor and charting the map, leaving a trail of bodies they may never recover.

Most of this is happening when Im not around. I dont have to be there to run the server or worry over it crashing on my desktop PC. Thats all handled for by a server farm. Its well worth the money and has made Valheim, an already great game, into a contender for game of the year.

Sunday evening, I showed a real life friend around the digital world Id help build in Valheim.

Whos in charge? He asked.

No one, I said.

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Communism Works Beautifully On Our Dedicated 'Valheim' Server - VICE

The problem with Luljeta Bozos recent comments is that its a sentiment shared casually by many.

The Socialist Party electoral candidate sparked outrage recently when during a TV interview, she appeared to praise elements of the communist regime. As a part of a discussion on the almost 50 years of communist rule, she was asked about Dictator Enver Hoxha and the impact he had on the country.

She responded that if you put them on a scale, for me he has more positives than negatives. Bozo added that Albania was a constitutional dictatorship, that it developed Albania, and increased its industrial production.

I have heard many say similar things. I have heard people say that everyone received an education, had access to healthcare, and no one was out of work. I have heard people say there were positives and negatives, good and bad.

And maybe for the privileged, there were positives. But can we really put these above murders and the mass and systematic violation of human rights?

During communism, the countrys entire economy was controlled by the state. All production, agriculture, and industry were nationalized and private enterprise was strictly forbidden. While this did lead to economic growth for some time, towards the end of the regime, the system began to collapse. There wasnt enough food and people were forced to queue for rations. After they cut off relations with the Chinese and Soviets, shortages of everything from machine parts to wheat and animal feed were exacerbated.

A network of sigurimi and their informants amounting to a large percentage of the population, reported back to the state on their family, friends, and neighbors. I remember a hairdresser telling me she discovered her husband had been spying on her and her clients for decades and she had no clue until communism fell.

People told tales on their circle, others fabricated stories to take the heat off them. The accused were shipped off to prisons, gulags, and forced labor camps.

A friend of mine, lets call him Endri, showed me a gunshot wound in his leg. He was shipped off to work in the mines at the age of 13 because a distant family member had committed a political crime. After seven years of labor, he was released and he and a friend tried to escape to Greece. Albanian guards shot his friend in the head from behind as he ran abreast with him, the second bullet passed straight through Endris leg.

Today, 30 years after the regime fell, there are still up to 6000 people who were executed or died in prison and are still missing. Their families do not know where their remains are and excavation orders for suspected mass grave sites have been pending with the Prosecutor for three years and counting.

There has been no apology, there is no national or regional memorial and no national day of remembrance. The Socialist Party who is currently in power has not condemned the crimes of their predecessors, and the process for compensating those who were persecuted or had family members murdered has stalled.

Albania has not dealt with its past- thats what makes comments like this, even if they contain truth, so controversial. The fact that there are thousands of people in this country, still suffering the consequences of that time, means that any claims of benefits of the regime are inappropriate. Perhaps once Albania has dealt with its collective trauma, when people have located the remains of their loved ones, and when the state has apologised for its crimes, then we can begin to dissect the positives and negatives of history.

While I dont doubt the benefits of education, employment, and healthcare, I prioritize the right to life.

Perhaps we could ask the families of those who lost loved ones, whether they would prefer an education or to be able to bury their remains with dignity? Or those that were tortured and suffer PTSD decades later if they would prefer a job or an end to their suffering? Maybe we could even give them the choice between losing their ancestral homes and livelihood or getting a free checkup at the hospital.

I am pretty sure which one they would choose.

My point is that while some may believe there were positives to communism until we have dealt with the legacy and scars of the negatives, it is an insult to discuss them.

Albania needs to implement a comprehensive program of truth, memory, and remembrance. All documents and archives containing data from that time need to be made public with no limitations. School books must include full information on what led to communism, how it impacted society, and what happened after it fell. There must be a national memorial in a prominent place, a day of remembrance, and an official apology and condemnation from both the government and the Socialist Party. Anyone who worked in politics, security, or the judiciary during the communist period must be removed from public office, the legal system, or any position of authority. Everyone who is entitled to compensation must receive it and the scope of the compensation program must be widened to include everyone with a claim. Investigations into crimes of communists must be started and completed in a swift and efficient manner. Relevant institutions must prioritize the search for missing persons, excavations, and the identification of victims. Bodies must be returned to families, and perpetrators must be identified and punished. I would go so far as to say that any praising of communism or Enver Hoxha, including events held to commemorate his death should be prohibited by law.

This is just the tip of the iceberg but they are some of the steps that should be taken to allow Albania to reconcile with its past and to move forward with dignity.

Whether her comments were taken out of context or not, for me, its morally and ethically wrong to put the word positive in a sentence discussing communism while so many are still suffering.

Fjal kye: Albania, communism, Edi Rama, luljeta bozo, Socialist Party, Tirana

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Comment: The Casual Sentiment that 'Communism Had Positives and Negatives' - Exit - Explain Albania

Albanian human rights organizations have condemned comments made by Socialist Party candidate Luljeta Bozo, who spoke in favour of communism and dictator Enver Hoxha.

In recent a television interview, Bozo was asked what she thought of the regime and dictator. She answered:

If you balance it out, for me there were more positives than negatives.

Her comments sparked outrage as she is running in the 25 April general elections in the Tirana district. So far, there has been no apology or condemnation of her comments from the PS. Following the fall of communism, the communists just changed the name of their party to the Socialist Party. Several key communist figures still hold positions of authority in Albania today.

The organizations including Historiaime, Aleanca LGBT, and ** invited the PS to distance themselves from the statement.

Defending the dictator and trying to see his activities and the anti-human system he represented, in a positive light is a missed opportunity to do justice to the thousands and thousands of lives destroyed under the regime, they wrote.

They added that Albania cannot move forward if it doesnt separate itself from the communist past while considering what happened as crimes against humanity.

The letter states that freedom of speech and expression is a key part of the democratic system, but in Germany for example, the promotion of Nazis is illegal.

The crimes of the communist system, inspired, conceived, and ordered by the dictator Enver Hoxha have caused wounds tht hurt our country even today, they wrote.

Albanias communist regime was one of the most brutal and repressive. During almost 50 years, there were 34,134 political prisoners, 984 prisoners who died in prison, 59,009 interned, 7022 killed in exile, 6023 killed during the regime, and 308 who suffered severe mental health problems in prison.

The bodies of the missing, some 6000 people, still have not been located or returned to families. Excavation orders for suspected mass grave sites have been stuck at the prosecution office for three years.

Bozo is an engineer. During the aftermath of the November 26 earthquake, she was present in the media and spoke about poor construction that led to the collapse of buildings. She was then announced as a candidate for the Socialist Party for the upcoming elections.

Fjal kye: Albania, communism, communist, luljeta bozo, Socialist Party, Tirana

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Socialist Party Asked to Distance Themselves from Candidate who Praised Communism - Exit - Explain Albania