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'...

Photo credit: Professor Peter C. Townsend, Miami Dade Community College Talent show spotlights gifted, unusual acts Catalyst, March 12, 1987 issue Alex Diaz-Granados Diversions Editor If you want to see some of the campus' "class" acts, then you don't want to miss the fifth annual talent show, today at 12:30 in Room 6120. According to Sonia Meistrell, program coordinator of arts, "There will be 12, maybe 13 acts which give us a variety of offerings. This year's show will be a combination of bands, solo singers, a magician and even a classical music act." And it's all students only. "In the past," Meistrell said, "a few faculty members would perform with a group of students, but this year the acts are being done exclusively by students." One of last year's students was Ira Sullivan, a member of Emerald City, which recently played campus. Meistrell said, "We have a few small details to take care of still...

Author's Note: This review first appeared in an issue of Catalyst, Miami-Dade Community College, South Campus' student newspaper in  November of 1986.  Star Trek IV - a treat you will enjoy this holiday season Alex Diaz-Granados Copy Editor Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, actor-director Leonard Nimoy's second entry in the continuing saga of Admiral Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the crew, is the best film of the series to date. It's a holiday present sure to please. The Voyage Home takes up the story three months after the rescue of Spock from the doomed Genesis planet. Self-exiled on Vulcan with his officers, Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) has saved his friend, but at great cost - his son is dead, his beloved Enterprise destroyed and his career is in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the Klingons are demanding the Federation Council extradite Kirk for his "crimes against galactic peace,"(if stopping a Klingon plot to take Genesis can be called ...

The following column was first published in the Opinions page of  Catalyst  on March 6, 1986, the day after my 23rd birthday:   It's cold outside and darkness is setting in as I fidget on a hard concrete bench at the bus stop. I have done everything that I had to do today -- wrote my column, studied for tomorrow's test, called a few contacts for stories and all the other jobs on my list. Now I'm free.  Out there, somewhere, a bus is making its way through heavy traffic, depositing people here, picking up people there. Its course is not a straight line from point A to point B; it zig-zags all over the place. It will take 20 or 30 minutes to reach campus. If the traffic is heavy, perhaps longer.  I look around. There are 15, maybe 20, people sitting, standing, pacing back and forth. On a bench to my left, a pair of basketball players concentrates on their textbooks.  A wizened old woman, obviously neither student nor faculty -- her clothes seem almost as old ...

Finding Balance: How to Juggle Academic Responsibilities with a Healthy Social Life in College For millions of American high school juniors and seniors, going to an institution of higher learning is the first big step forward in their post-graduation future.  After all, not only is a college degree necessary to start a career in many professions, but going to a college or university – often an out-of-state one – is a cultural and emotional transition from the dependency of adolescence to independent adulthood. If you are a high school upperclassman this year and plan to attend a post-secondary academic institution, perhaps you are looking forward to the freedom (and challenges) of living away from home for the first time.  Perhaps you are anticipating the new opportunities to make new friends and enjoy the college party scene.  Some of you may also be worried about how tough your professors may be or how to juggle your class schedule with off-campus responsibilitie...

The future belongs to those who prepare for it today. – Malcolm X If you are a high school student in your junior or senior year and are seriously considering going to a college or university after graduation, you should start thinking about preparing yourself for the challenges of college life now instead of waiting till your first day on campus as an incoming freshman. In addition to taking the SAT and a plethora of pre-entrance exams, choosing a major, registering for classes, applying for scholarships or financial aid and improving your study habits, you should also adopt a positive “I-want-to-be-here-and-learn” attitude about going to classes and completing your coursework.  The expression “A positive attitude determines success in all things” sounds like a cliché or one of those aphorisms that we find in Chinese fortune cookies, but there’s a lot of truth behind it (otherwise it would not be a cliché). If you don’t believe me, next time you happen to be in one ...

Since the late 1940s - as a result of the passage (in 1944) of what is colloquially known as the GI Bill - Americans have been brought up to believe that almost universal availability of a college degree is the Golden Key to attaining the American Dream.  For the young men (and women) of the Greatest Generation, their kids and grandkids, the idea that going to a college or university and earning a degree practically guarantees success in getting a good-paying job, owning a house, and the ability to raise well-educated children has been drummed into our collective consciousness that it almost seems like an inalienable birthright. From my perspective, although there are many grains of truth to the Great American College Myth, it seems to me that going to college and earning a bachelor's or post-graduate degree is less a guarantee of getting a well-rounded education and attaining financial security and more of a quixotic endeavor that does more harm than good. According to Time ma...

When I started taking journalism courses at a local college in the mid-1980s, I was under the impression that I was well-prepared to be a college-level writer for the campus’ student newspaper.  I had studied the basics of news writing, reporting, editing, and page makeup for two years in high school, and I had been a section editor during my sophomore and senior years.  I even earned A’s consistently in my journalism courses. So imagine my surprise, two years after I had graduated from high school, when I stepped into my JOU 1100 classroom for the first time and felt as though I had actually studied just enough to get by in class but had much more to learn. It’s possible that I felt that way because I had added Prof. Townsend’s class two days into the Fall term (my Pell Grant had just been approved and I needed to become a full-time student, so I added Basic Reporting and Introduction to Radio and Television to my schedule) and was nervous.  Perhaps I was keenly...

When I was a 25-year-old college sophomore and majoring in Journalism/Mass Communications, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take part in an overseas-study program co-sponsored by Miami-Dade Community College’s Foreign Language Department and the College Consortium for International Studies. At the time, I had just about taken most of the required courses for my Associate in Arts degree except math (my bete noir) and three credits’ worth of the foreign language pre-requisite. I had also, or so I thought, done everything I had set out to do as a reporter/editor at the campus student newspaper, so I was feeling a bit unmoored and restless without a plan for what I figured would be my final year on the staff. Looking back on it now, I’m not sure what, exactly, prompted me to sign up for the Semester in Spain program. Part of it, I’m sure, was a sense that this would be my best chance to go to Europe for a significant amount of time. Maybe it was my journalist’s instinctive...

In Spain, soccer is a wild, no-holds barred contest January 26, 1989 Alex Diaz-Granados Columnist SEVILLE, Spain (CCIS Program) When one is in Spain, one must do as the Spaniards do, or so we've been told by the College Consortium for International Studies Center staff when we ask about how to enjoy our free time here. This applies to everything -- from eating lunch at 2 p.m. and dinner between 9 and 10 p.m. to drinking tall glasses of "cerveza Cruzcampo" (the Spanish Budweiser) with tapas at one of the billions of bars in the city. And for those of us with a desire to be athletic (even if it's once during a 12-week term), it applies to playing sports. Because soccer is the national sport here, it was only natural that we, too, would want to catch a little "futbol fever." Most of the time we watched soccer games on Spanish television, although quite a few of us went to see the Spain-Argentina exhibition game or the Spain-Ireland game,...

Study abroad is more than educational: it’s an experience Alex Diaz-Granados Columnist (Originally published in the December 1, 1988 issue of Catalyst ) SEVILLE, Spain (CCIS Program) Over the past six weeks of my stay here in Seville as a participant in the College Consortium for International Studies’ Semester in Spain program, I have come to understand how challenging studying abroad really is. Several other students from this campus are also taking part in this program. In many respects, studying abroad is no different from studying at our home college or university. We have our schedule set up much like we do in the U.S. with lectures and reading assignments. We have midterms and finals, of course, although in some classes final exams are given at the director’s discretion. Unlike studying in the U.S., we’re learning about a different country’s history, culture, government and economic system, not by reading about these in a textbook, but by living in it. “It’s be...

High school doesn’t always prepare students for college. One of the concepts that most, but not all, of the teachers I had in high school tried to sell us was that if we worked hard, if we behaved and earned good grades, we would be prepared to deal with the challenges we’d face after commencement. I’m sure that this was – and still might be – true for students in advanced placement or “college bound” classes, but for those of us who attended regular courses in the core curriculum and then went to college – either at the two-year community college or four-year institutions, it was the educational equivalent of the snake oil and other fake remedies sold by “medicine peddlers” in the late 19th Century to cure almost any ailment known to man – but didn’t. (One thing that our high school teachers did not tell us was that more than half of us "regular class" students would have to take remedial courses in math or English at the community college level, but that's anothe...