A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Debris from a neighbor's house that landed on the patio of my former home in Miami during Hurricane Sandy's passage through South Florida, October 26, 2012. Photo Credit: Alex Diaz-Granados (own work)  Hello again and welcome to another installment of Bloggin' On, which is a feature on A Certain Point of View where I break away from the usual reviews and political commentary and just talk about everyday stuff or things that are on my mind that isn't the "usual fare" of this blog. Well, it's almost early evening here in my corner of Florida on Saturday, October 26. Right now it's partly sunny outside; the temperature is 81℉ (27℃) and the humidity is at 82%. It still doesn't feel like fall here, even though summer ended over a month ago. It's not as hot as, say, mid-July or August, but if memory serves, it used to start getting cooler in the Sunshine State by mid-October. Then again, I've only been living in this part of Florida fo...

As with  any  large metropolitan area  anywhere  in the world, the Greater Miami area has sections where I would not recommend passing through at night - either in a car or, worse yet, on foot. The rule of thumb for avoiding criminals in South Florida is “stick to the nice affluent neighborhoods, don’t go to the poorer sections of Miami-Dade County.” First, let’s be clear that when most people talk about Miami, they’re not just talking about the City of Miami itself (with its 400,000+ inhabitants), they’re actually referring to Miami-Dade County, which has a population of 2,693,117 or even the larger Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach Metropolitan Statistical Area, with its 6,000, 000+ inhabitants. I’m a native South Floridian, and I know that most of us think of Miami-Dade County as  Miami;  everything above the Dade-Broward line is  not  Miami. Second, I hate generalizing, especially when it comes to race relations and especially when ...