Left to my own devices

This little blog is ten-years-old today. I wanted to mark the occasion, but wasn't sure how. New posts have been a little sparse of late, as I'm not always sure what to say, or how to say it. There's mental energy involved in writing, and sometimes it just isn't there. Life, and all its idiosyncrasies, can get in the way. There's close to five started posts sitting here, in draft mode, that may or may never see the light of day. So it goes. Regardless of how frequently I write a new post, this blog has already lasted longer than my previous one. That was a very political endeavor -- almost exclusively so. I was a lot more righteous back in the early-to-mid aughts. Life, experiences, a bout with cancer, and simply aging conspired to mellow me somewhat, at least in what I choose to (figuratively) put to pen to paper about. Also, I owe a debt of gratitude to the late, great Roger Ebert.

Recently I watched the movie Driveways , about a woman and her young son who travel to her sister's house in upstate New York. The sister has passed away, and the woman must sort through the belongings in her house and get it ready to go on the market. An old man lives next door, a Korean War vet (Brian Dennehy, in one of his last roles), and he and the boy befriend each other. That is much of the heart of the movie, and it reminded me of me when I was a kid. My knee-jerk recollection of childhood is that it was friendless, though that isn't accurate. There were Derrick, and Kyle (more than one), and a handful of others who I hung out with, rode bikes around town with, played outside with until the streetlights came on, etc. We had our fun. Those relationships weren't constant, however. I'm not sure if childhood friendships ever really are? The long stretches of loneliness in between friends, filled with self-doubt and the uncertainty of whether there would be another c...