Category: Personal Thoughts
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On Music: But…But…I LIKE Oldies!
When I was in my early teens – way back in the late 1970s – I knew that in a world where Funk, Soul, R&B, Pop, Hard Rock, Soft Rock and Disco were the dominant music genres, I was an odd duck. Even as a child growing up on two continents – I was born in…
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Musings & Thoughts for Tuesday, October 26, 2021, or: Of Reading Lists and Weighty Matters
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in A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America, Alternative History (Alt History), And the Last Trump Shall Sound: A Future History of America, Apollo Expeditions to the Moon: The NASA History – 50th Anniversary Edition, Blogging, Books, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, Harry Turtledove, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year, Life in Florida, Personal Thoughts, The Napoleonic Wars: A Global HistoryAbout My October TBR List Well, with November 2021 not that far away, it’s time to check how I am doing with my To Be Read list for October. Unfortunately, Dear Reader, I haven’t made much of a dent on that TBR list. Of all the books I’ve started reading this fall – starting last…
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Musings & Thoughts for Thursday, October 21, 2021, or: Remembering Arbetter’s – Hot Dog Nostalgia Strikes Again!
Hello, Dear Reader. It’s early afternoon on Thursday, October 21, 2021. It’s a warm “autumn” day here in west-central Florida. Currently, the temperature is 84˚F (29˚C) under mostly cloudy skies. With the wind blowing from the east-northeast at 6 MPH (10 KM/H) and humidity at 36%, the heat index is 86˚F (30˚C). Today’s forecast calls…
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Musings & Thoughts for Monday, October 18, 2021, or: Of Moms, Birthdays, and My ‘Maybe Later’ Pile
Hi, there, Dear Reader. It is late morning here in my corner of west-central Florida on Monday, October 18, 2021. It is a nice fall day; the current temperature is 74˚F (23˚C) under sunny skies. With humidity at 38% and the wind blowing from the east-northeast at 11 MPH (18 KM/H), the feels-like temperature is…
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Musings & Thoughts for Tuesday, October 12, 2021, or: Parting Shots of a Protracted Rift Between Siblings
“I blinked my eyes and in an instant, decades had passed.”― John Mark Green, Taste the Wild Wonder: Poems Today it dawned on me that it’s been over half a decade since I last had a polite, if not friendly, exchange of words with my half-sister Victoria after our mother’s death. It wasn’t even a…
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On Blu-ray Collecting: A Glimmer of Hope in the Continuing Saga of Late Pre-Orders
For those of you who are following the continuing saga of Perpetually Delayed Pre-Ordered Blu-rays, I have an optimistic update regarding the ship-out date of The Stand (2020). If you recall, July was a busy month for pre-orders on Amazon, at least for me. Some were of books that will be published between early October…
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Remembering My ‘Papi’: My Dad Died a Hero, But He Shouldn’t Have…..
Yesterday – Monday, October 4, 2021 – was my father’s 102nd birthday. I never had a chance to say “Happy birthday, Papi” to Jeronimo Diaz-Granados before he died. At least, not at an age in which I could say it uncoached by my mother Beatriz. I was less than seven months old when he celebrated…
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Papi, I Hardly Knew Ye….
Today would have been my father’s 102nd birthday. Had Jeronimo Diaz-Granados not been killed in a plane crash on the morning of February 13, 1965, who knows how many birthdays he would have celebrated with Mom, my older half-sister Vicky, and me. Would Dad – or Papi – have lived to be 102? I doubt…
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A Writer’s Tale: Of Names and Songs
Many years ago, when I still lived in Miami, Florida, I wrote a short story which was both a coming-of-age tale and also a look at an older man who must re-examine his youthful choices after a tragic incident kills his high school “crush.” As Reunion’s summary reads on the back cover and on its…
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Tempus Fugit…Again, or: My ‘Colombian Childhood’ is a Half-Century in the Past
Hey, there, Dear Reader. Welcome to another nostalgia-filled post in my occasional series, Tempus Fugit, in which I look back at certain periods of my so-called life, usually to remark that half-a-century has elapsed between Then and Present Day. Last night, while I was attempting to watch the first disc of Zack Snyder’s Justice League…
A Certain Point of View, Too 