Category: Personal Thoughts
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Life in the Time of COVID-19: Ennui, Angst, and Other Frustrations
Well, Constant Reader, another weekend is upon us here in my corner of Florida. Right now it’s early afternoon here, and the temperature outside is 92 degrees Fahrenheit under mostly sunny skies; with humidity at 62% and a westerly breeze of 11 MPH, the heat index is 108 degrees Fahrenheit. If it wasn’t so beastly…
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Random Thoughts & Musings for July 2, 2020, or: Finding Bits of Bliss in Troubled Times
Well, here we are on July 2, 2020, a few short days before the Fourth of July weekend and the fifth – or is it sixth?- month of the global pandemic caused by the spread of the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19. And because we live in a troubled and extremely divisive period exacerbated by…
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Life in the Time of COVID-19: Rugged Individualism or Self-Centeredness? or: Why America Can’t Flatten the Curve
So what’s next? Ban wearing the color of blue? Or black or red? No more stripes? Plaid only Tuesdays? Why do we have politicians that do not understand what the constitution is. Some sheep are all for this. Give me a ticket and I am suing for violations of my constitutional rights. – Jennifer W., conservative…
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Sunday Thoughts for June 7, 2020
Hi there, Dear Reader. I hope all’s well with you, wherever you may be on this Sunday in June, 2020. Here in my corner of Florida it’s just past two on a cloudy and rainy afternoon; Tropical Storm Cristobal is churning out in the Gulf of Mexico, and though it is further north from where…
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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…
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Memoria Mater: Mother’s Day 2020 (and Other Pieces of My Mind)
Yesterday was Mother’s Day, the fifth occurrence of the celebration honoring mothers, motherhood, and the bonds between mothers and their children since my mom, Beatriz Diaz-Granados, died, Needless to say, it was a difficult day for me; I was close to my mother, who passed away on July 19, 2015 at the age of 86…
A Certain Point of View, Too 