Left to my own devices

         Yesterday was the closing night of the 32nd St. Louis International Film Festival, and there I watched the new film, All of Us Strangers . It was written and directed by Andrew Haigh, who adapted it from the Japanese novel Strangers , by Taichi Yamada. I've seen two of Haigh's previous movies -- Lean on Pete , and Weekend -- the latter a good, solid film, and the former being my favorite movie of 2018 (when it was widely released here in the United States).     

My childhood home went on the market last week (already under contract, apparently), and episodes 9 and 10 of Star Trek: Picard season 3 aired last month. Neither one of the aforementioned things at first appear as though they would have anything in common. And they don't, at least not to most people. For yours truly, however, they both represent a fondness for a certain era of the past.

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...

Her name was Dorothy Shirley, but to me she will always be Shirley Shirley. It can be argued that she had two first names and, for a kid no older than ten, it's easy to see how one could get confused. I remember my mom exasperatedly trying to explain to me how her name was Dorothy, not "Shirley Shirley," as I was prone to (innocently) calling her. We went round and round about this, like some unintentional Abbott & Costello routine. "Who the hell is named Shirley Shirley?!" mom exclaimed at one point. I still didn't understand, but decided to back down, not wanting the back & forth to continue. Dorothy Shirley lived across the street and slightly to the south from us, at the corner of the street. We knew everyone on our little block of Draper St. when I was growing up, save one. That's just the way it was. Directly across from us were the Tuchels, Bob and Wanda. Bob died in 2019, aged 98. Wanda is still living. Next door, to the north, were th...

Growing up on South Draper St. in Champaign, IL., I had the best bedroom a boy could wish for. With walls and trim painted in orange and beige, it was a fun little room. In the evenings and on the weekends I'd watch PBS on the small black & white TV situated across from the bed. On the bed, I'd sometimes build a fort and pretend I was defending it from an oncoming horde. A desk somehow fit in there, as well, and I'd put the small blue typewriter my parents gave me on it, and plunk-out short stories, or use it to interview my 3rd grade teacher for a writing project. Of everything in my childhood bedroom on Draper St., I think perhaps my favorite part of it was the window. This portal to the outside world was big enough for me to sit on the sill and take-in what was beyond, yet feel safe enough within the confines of the room itself. The window looked-out onto our back yard, where there was a tall Sycamore tree (so tall, in fact, that I could see it from the play...