A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Image by David Mark (Pixabay) Hi, there, Constant Reader! Welcome to yet another edition (and my 400th blog post for 2019) of Bloggin' On, the virtual space on A Certain Point of View  in which I step out of my usual personas of media product reviewer and/or occasional political commentator. Well, it's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving 2019, the fifth observance of the holiday that I spend with other folks instead of my immediate (or even extended) family. Mom died in the summer of 2015, five months before the holiday season of that year. I cut all relations with my older half-sister as a result of long-standing resentments that had been building for decades, but especially after Mom and I discovered what she had in mind for the "after-Mom-died" phase in both our lives, so I have not observed any holidays with my closest blood relation since the Fourth of July of '15. And most of my surviving cousins on both sides of my family live in Colombia, so I can'

My former neighborhood, as seen in Google Maps. Contrary to what the satellite photo shows, there is no restaurant in the middle of East Wind Lake Village.  Hello, Constant Reader, and welcome to another edition of Bloggin' On, the blog-within-a-blog section of A Certain View in which I write about topics that don't fall neatly into my usual reviews-and-political commentary content categories. It's Sunday, November 24, and as I mentioned yesterday, Thanksgiving 2019 is just around the corner. I'm trying to not get into a funk about my fifth major holiday season without my mom, but it's hard not to think about it. We were close, my Mom and I, so her absence around this time of year is a bit more palpable than in others. Anyway, enough about that. Right now it's mid-afternoon in my little corner of Florida; the temperature outside is 70℉ (21℃) under sunny skies. It's definitely not as chilly as it is in more northerly regions of the U.S., but it doe