Category: Alex Diaz-Granados
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Tempus Fugit: Remembering the House at 1001 in Coral Estates Park
Half a century ago this week, in the Miami suburb of Westchester, my mother and I moved into the house we would call “home” for the next five years – a one-story, 1505 square foot, single-family house that sat on a 7,777 square foot lot: 1001 SW 102nd Avenue. Built in 1963, the house was…
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Tempus Fugit: July of 1972, or: Things I Remember from Midsummer of ’72
Tempus Fugit. It’s hard to believe, but 50 Julys ago, I was a nine-year-old boy, living in South Florida with my widowed mother in a small apartment in Sweetwater far removed from the lifestyle – and the family we left behind – we had enjoyed in Bogota, Colombia. Four months earlier, less than a week…
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Musings & Thoughts for Tuesday, March 8, 2022, or: On Hitting the Half-Century Mark After a Life-Changing Event…and Unreliable Memories
Hi there, Dear Reader. It’s early afternoon in Lithia, Florida, on Tuesday, March 8, 2022. It is a hot early spring day in the Tampa Bay area. Currently, the temperature is 88˚F (31˚C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at 61% and the wind blowing from the south-southwest at 6 MPH (10 KM/H), it feels…
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Thoughts of Thanksgivings Past, or: My Very Worst, Very Bad Thanksgiving Story of All Time
Hi there, Dear Reader. It’s late morning here in my corner of west-central Florida on Tuesday, November 23, 2021. It is a chilly – by Florida standards, at any rate – day. Currently, the temperature is 58˚F (14˚C) under sunny skies. With humidity at 68% and the wind blowing from the north at 11 MPH…
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Musings & Thoughts for Monday, November 22, 2021, or: Pondering a Wayward Relative’s Situation in the 2021 Holiday Season
Hi there, Dear Reader. It’s late morning here in my corner of west-central Florida on Monday, November 22, 2021. It is a gray and cool autumn day. Currently, the temperature is 68˚F (20˚C) under cloudy skies. With humidity at 96% and the wind blowing from the north-northwest at 6 MPH (10 KM/H), the feels-like temperature…
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On Poetry: ‘Where Time’s Winds Blow’
I rarely write poetry. I am, first and foremost, a writer of prose, with a side dish of screenwriting added for good measure. Poetry is a genre that I don’t tackle much because I always feel like, “Nah. This is drivel. It doesn’t sing.” In today’s parlance, poetry, my friend, is not in my comfort…
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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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A Writer’s Tale: Truth or Fiction?
“Yeah, I know what your English Professor tried to tell you. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.” ― Dean Wesley Smith Where do you get your ideas from? All writers of fiction, from Jane Austen, Herman Melville, Jules Verne, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Harris,…
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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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A Writer’s Tale: A Brief Discussion of Characters in ‘Reunion’
In the summer of 1998, I wrote a short story about a man, his best friend, and a woman who died. Because I wrote the story around the same time that South Miami High’s Class of 1983 held its 15th reunion – an affair that I did not attend because I could not afford the…
