A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

  Image by  My pictures are CC0. When doing composting:  from  Pixabay   Hi, there. Well, here we are on Tuesday, September 29, 2020. It’s mid-afternoon here as I write this; I’m composing this blog post during my enforced “airplane mode” period, so by the time you read this it will be late afternoon in my small, depressing, and lonely corner of Florida. As you can guess from the post’s title, it’s a gloomy, rainy early autumn day here. According to the weather app on my smartphone, the current conditions indicate a light but steady rain, and the temperature is 77 ˚ F. With humidity at 93% and the wind blowing from the southwest at 11 MPH, the feels-like temperature is 77 ˚ F. I have lived all of my life in places where it rains heavily at this time of year. Mostly the Miami area, but I have lived for extended periods in Bogota, which tends to be rainy and chilly at least during the local wet season. I also spent three months, or almost three months, in ...

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...

It's been almost four years since I last saw East Wind Lake. (Picture by the author) Hello and welcome once again to another edition of Odds and Ends, my blog-within-a-blog where I step out of my usual role of entertainment writer and sometime political commentator. It's Saturday, November 23, and (as you can tell from the post's headline) it's the weekend before Thanksgiving. Right now, the temperature in my corner of Florida is 77℉ (25℃) under mostly sunny skies, which is nice because it's not too hot nor too chilly. The forecast low is expected to be 61℉ (16℃), but since I'll be indoors, I won't feel that slight nip in the night air. I'm a bit tired - not to mention somewhat out of sorts - today. I went to bed late last night after trying to watch The Empire Strikes Back (the 2011 Blu-ray edition) with my significant other. We didn't see much of it; we both fell asleep well before the film reached its midpoint. I think that waking up ear...