Category: Family History
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Musings & Thoughts for July 21, 2020: A Quick Update
Hi, Constant Reader. I’m a bit pressed for time right now, but I just wanted to share an update about my toxic sibling Vicky. Yesterday, while I was checking my email accounts – yes, I have several – I found a response to an email I wrote in March to Vicky’s cousin Juan Manuel. In…
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Weekend Musings for Sunday, July 19, 2020, or: Memoriae nunquam pereunt
Well, it’s already early afternoon on Sunday, July 19, 2020. It’s a hot, steamy day here in my corner of Florida; the temperature outside is 90˚F (32˚C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at a sticky 65% and an easterly breeze blowing at 8 mph (13 kph), the heat index is 104˚F (40˚C). Later this…
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Weekend Musings for Saturday, July 18, 2020
Hello, there. Well, here we are on Saturday, July 18, 2020; it’s early afternoon in my corner of Florida, and it’s a hot, cloudy one at that. My weather app informs me that that the temperature outside is 86˚F (30˚C), but with humidity at 77% and an easterly breeze of 12 mph, the feels-like temperature…
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Dealing with Stormy Family Relationships Isn’t Easy
As the fifth anniversary of my mom’s death draws ever near – it falls on Sunday, July 19 – I find myself in an emotional tug-o’-war, just as I have done over the previous four anniversaries. I’m trying hard not to let myself fall into a depressed fugue, but at the same time I can’t…
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Why July is NOT My Favorite Month: Part Two
I hate July. First of all, if you are a Florida resident – or a resident of any of the Deep South states that were once part of the Confederate States of America, for that matter – you know that July is when the summer heat starts rising to almost intolerable levels. It’s not, of…
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Why July is NOT My Favorite Month: Part One
July is my least favorite month. Last Tuesday – July 7th – marked the fourth anniversary of a hearing I attended in a Miami-Dade County civil court’s probate division judge’s chambers to settle a dispute between my half-sister Victoria and me over our late mother’s estate. Vicky had filed a “Lost or Destroyed Will” petition…
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Movie-Watcher Memories: The Late Show and ‘The Longest Day’
I was 12 years old when I saw Darryl F. Zanuck’s The Longest Day for the first time. It was sometime during the summer of 1975 – I don’t recall the exact date, but it was around the tail end of my summer vacation from elementary school. Back then, my widowed mother, Beatriz Diaz-Granados, and…
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Movie Watcher Memories: ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ at 40
On May 21, 1980, Twentieth Century Fox released director Irvin Kershner’s Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to writer-director George Lucas’ Star Wars, which was retroactively retitled as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope for its Summer 1981 re-release. Like Star Wars, it opened mid-week close to Memorial…
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Movie Watcher Memories, or: Mom Nixes Shark Pic
I was 12-and-one-quarter years old when Steven Spielberg’s Jaws made its theatrical debut on June 20, 1975 and lived with my widowed mother, Beatriz Diaz-Granados, in a house in the unincorporated community of Westchester in suburban Miami-Dade County. At the time, it was just us two living at the house on Southwest 102nd Ave; my…
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Memoria Mater & Other Bits of My Mind II
With Mother’s Day – my fifth since my mom’s death in 2015 – getting farther and farther away in the rearview mirror of life, I still find myself with no shortage of things to write about her. A remarkable woman, Mom was, and she led an interesting, even adventurous life. Born and raised in the…
A Certain Point of View, Too 