The View Up Here

I haven't blogged here at all in the last year because I've been over on my  Korea Dreambus: A Journey of Faith blog . As I stare into the last two hours and twenty minutes of 2025, I'm filled with gratitude and amazement. This past year has brought so many new beginnings and opportunities that I need to mark them down in one place. I am extremely fortunate to have been awarded grant money from the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts for my documentary film on my pilgrimage to the holy sites of the Korean Catholic Martyrs. Korea Dreambus is now just about done with a few minor edits and some sound work to go. I worked with two different editors, which was a challenge but which ultimately enriched the project. My public screening will be held on Jan. 17, 2026 at St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry.   We screened SOULED , my short film, in April of this year in Elmira. It was a great turnout, and I was so excited to finally share it. The film was a se...

Over the last six months, I spent most of my blogging time on the  KoreaDreambus site , rather neglecting The View Up Here, but now we're ready for some updates!  Quit the circulation half of my newspaper job in the first half of the year -- totally liberating! I continued to have problems with my shoulder from the poor work station I had, but it's been on the mend more recently. Spent the summer arranging a pilgrimage trip to Korea and preparing to make a film about the Korean Catholic martyrs.  Bought a camera package (pre-owned) and a new iPhone for the pilgrimage film. I am now in the process of sorting, transferring, and cataloging over 3,000 media clips and photos! I've also been prepping my MacBook Air to do some basic video editing, for which it's not optimal, but it will have to do for now. I got a new external drive to help with media storage.  Re-named "Dreamhouse," my short film shot in October of 2023 to "Souled." IMDb page is up but nee...

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and the Strawberry Moon! What a glorious time to be alive. I have a few sweet as strawberries updates for you, my dear reader. And so it begins: summer produce! First -- you should go to my new site that details my upcoming pilgrimage and personal documentary film in Korea! Yes, I'm going! It's happening! https://koreadreambusdocumentary.blogspot.com/ Second -- I ended up leaving the secretarial half of my job, continuing on with the staff writer post. I will also add teaching theology part time this fall - this time to high schoolers. I am very pleased with the combination of writing and teaching. And yes, both jobs have cleared me to be gone for three weeks to go to Korea.  Third -- My short film, renamed "Souled," is now very close to picture lock (final picture edit). I've hired a composer, a sound mixer, and a color correction guy. Post production is in full swing, and boy am I excited to get that pic...

 There is a lot to report on, friends. Let's run down the list! My short film has been renamed "Souled," which fits the theme and style of the film much better than the long-standing working title Dream House. "Souled" is moving right along in postproduction. I'm in the process of hiring a composer, and I've secured a fantastic sound mix man and a color correction guy. The edit is allllmost picture lock... We're very close! Also the poster is well on its way. That will appear here and everywhere else I can post it as soon as it is ready. Another dream is about to become a reality! I'm headed back to Korea this September to make a pilgrimage to my former town of residence and to the holy sites of the Catholic Korean martyrs. And yes, I'm going to make a film about the experience. The project formerly known as "Korea Dreambus" is being resurrected...appropriately as a Catholic pilgrimage film. Much more on that in the coming weeks! Le...

You win a prize if you catch the reference in this blog title. Comment or message me and we'll work out what the prize will be! I'm currently at my main digs for writing these days, a place in Fairport called Junction 361.  Coffee house and beer bar all in one. And steps from the Erie Canal. New artist show every month. Barista with a thing for K-dramas. Can it even get any better? I think not. I come here with my writing partner on Monday nights (most weeks), and on a Saturday night, this is where I need to be to get sh*t done.  I'm working on getting an editor for Dream House, and I'm writing a new screenplay that involves... wait for it...  a time travel emergency at a mall in 1973. I know! Trust me, it's going to work. I've been creating video reels for Instagram at work and can say that I'm now feeling pretty comfortable editing on the Instagram app.  Not bad for a Gen-Xer with a Boomer brother and Greatest Generation parents.  Yes, I'm happy and pr...

Of course, here in Rochester, we expect our extra winter days in spring, but still things have been greening up rather nicely. Although I had to bring my potted tomato plantlets in because we have a frost warning tonight. Which, if I'm honest, just ticks me off. I mean, really, May 17 frost? Dude. Some good things are afoot, though, including a new job as a staff writer at the Catholic Courier, getting Korea DreamBus into the next phase (only took me 13 years), and a short story being published next month. One might say my late-blooming bloom is starting to, well, bloom. I'm still not sure what's going on with my short film Dream House, as my DP had to back out and I'm still trying to work out equipment for a shoot in June. If it doesn't happen then, I'll have to reschedule.  Tonight I got to see one of my favorite musical acts play again, the tremendous Old Blind Dogs. What a way to celebrate! I love these guys. I also reconnected with an old friend while at th...

A month has slipped by, but before we head into Thanksgiving et al., I want to post a few thoughts about my pilgrimage last month. First off, I have to tell you that I don't have any pictures of the pilgrimage. Why, you ask? Because my phone had a major malfunction a little over a week ago, and I lost all photos since June (which hadn't been backed up - my bad). So you'll just have to take my word for it when I say the beauty and peace of the North American Martyrs Shrine in Auriesville, NY was worth the 6-hour round trip in the bus with 35 middle school students. The Shrine's grounds comprise what was the 17th century Mohawk village of Ossernenon. The Shrine itself is a massive Church built in the round and named the Colosseum, inspired by the Colosseum in Rome where so many Christian martyrs were maimed and killed in the persecutions. The museum there also provides information about St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American named a saint by the Catholic Church...

Readers, I am so thrilled to share this! Last weekend I was honored to work as a script supervisor for a truly remarkable short film called "Babbo," shot on location in the Southern Tier of NY.   Written and directed by veteran actor Jeff Austin , the story takes places in the 1970s and involves an old Italian "babbo" ("dad") who was once a champion bowler but who now needs a cane to get around. He bowls at the local alley, but he can't hit them like he used to. His loving son tries to cheer him up with some bowling alley shenanigans, but it only makes things worse. He grumps at his wife (in Italian) and buys a sports car to feel better about himself, but the real medicine comes when he thwarts the theft of his son's TV using...wait for it...his bowling ball. Resolution, reconciliation, and restoration follow. This was Jeff's passion project, seven years in the making, and was produced by his long-time friend Linda Miller . A sweet script, funn...

2018 ended with a grinding, gasping, crushing sound in my little world. I found out a couple weeks before Christmas that a registered sex offender had been living downstairs from me, and although his crime was 20 years ago and had nothing to do with children, he had somehow violated whatever parole he was on. I saw the Staties leading him to a police cruiser as I returned home from work one night. I made eye contact with him; he threw me this sad little smile. I'd known for some time that he was lost and drifting, very nervous and paranoid. Now I know why. I pray for him because he seemed gentle but lost, not evil by any stretch. But it was distressing, and since I'd just moved into the apartment in October and had experienced quite a difficult transition, even more jarring. A few days after that, I discovered some very disturbing news about someone who once meant a great deal to me. The reverberations of this are still rippling through me. My judgment of character, so...

Glorious!

“Son of God,” produced by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett and directed by Christopher Spencer, was an enormous disappointment. Despite some strong performances, including Darwin Shaw (Peter) and Sebastian Knapp (John the Evangelist), it wasn’t even close to being the greatest Jesus movie of all time, and in fact, it wasn’t even a good movie. Not only was it shallow, disconnected, and self-important, it neglected to show a crucial aspect of Jesus’ saving ministry: relationship. Jesus had and has relationships with us, and with the Father, and he invites us into his intimate relationship with the Father. Nowhere did this crucial element of his life and teaching appear in this film.   The-who-what-where-in-the-what-now? (Trying to make sense of this movie) The episodes of Jesus’ ministry were never connected with who Jesus was as a person,  and characters were drawn with neither depth nor passion. They came and went with no explanation and with no real ...

At long last, I've finished something.  Happy Valentines Day!

During my six days off at Thanksgiving break this past year, I realized how stressed out I was at the administrative job (I had already given my notice, but it really hit home that I'd made the right decision). One of the things that happened during that time was that I started writing furiously, again. Then I happened to find a competition at a local church called "Poetry Alive Word, Art and Film Festival," so I had a brain wave to make a short film meditation. Mind you, I haven't made anything remotely like a film in a very long time. The Korea Dreambus! project stalled (no pun intended) a few years ago, but maybe after I've proven to myself that I can still make a film, I can get back to that with renewed vision and get 'er done. Anyway, so the short film meditation is called "Desire of the Everlasting Hills" (or "Desire" for short on my hard drive in which the current rough cut is called "Ruff Ruff Desire"). I've lifted ...

Alone Time When you're a little kid, no one uses the phrase 'alone time.' More like 'go to your room!' or 'you're grounded' or 'we don't want to play Battlestar Galactica with you.'  (Okay, chances are, no one's ever said the latter to you, but I heard almost that exact phrase when I was little. That says a lot, actually). My point, and I have one, is that when we're little, we hate being alone. We want to be with the grown-ups past bedtime, we don't want to take a nap, we don't want any down time. We fight down time and sleep and all the things that now, in our middle years, we would give our left kidney to have built into our day. Imagine, every day at 1:30, business shuts down so everyone can take a 30 minute nap!  What a beautiful world it would be. This weekend, my roommate is in SanFran visiting her sister, so I have the place to myself. And it's nice to have the alone time. Not that I don't spend hours a d...

It's Leap Day, Year of the Water Dragon! I like mixing my East/West calendars, so what? It's been awhile since my last update. Nothing earth-shattering has gone on here, but I did attend an R.I.T. alumni event last Friday evening that proved to be fun, surreal, and fruitful. I reconnected with people with whom I went to film school, including someone who might be in a position to get me some work at some point down the line, and one of my very first screenwriting students. Now THAT was trippy. I knew he looked familiar to me, and I barely had a chance to talk to him at the end of the evening. He reminded me that he had been a student of mine. I had to ask for his name, and as soon as I heard it, I felt suddenly like I was in a time vortex, spinning around on my axis. I think we call that "full circle." I used to kick myself and bemoan my time at R.I.T. because it wasn't this or it wasn't that, and I did go into a soul-crushing amount of debt to get that MF...

Last night I attended a wonderfully inspiring event at the Writers Guild Theater: Beyond Words - A panel discussion with WGA and Oscar-nominated screenwriters, sponsored by The Writers Guild Foundation , the Writers Guild of America, West , and Variety. I went courtesy of Ithaca College's Pendleton Center (they take good care of me). I took notes - though I didn't see many students taking notes - this is because I've still got a grad student alive and well somewhere in my head. Here are some of the gold nuggets from the panelists: Tate Taylor - (The Help) - Write it long and cut it. Be fearless to write everything, then cut and slash later. "Don't be afraid to take a crap on your computer." (That got a lot of laughs.) You'll figure out what you were going for after the first draft is done. Don't over-think it while you're writing it. Stan Chervin - (Moneyball) - Get your pitch to two sentences so that anyone can see your movie immediately. Aa...

Went back to R.I.T. this afternoon when there were people around, and I was blown away by the School of Film and Animation's presence on the ground floor. It is magnificent. The fourth floor is now all Photo. No wonder it seemed empty and lifeless last night (no offense to any photogs out there). Anyway, the newish digs of the film program are a far cry from when I was there. My friend and colleague Jack, who started teaching there when I did and is now a chair in the program, gave me the tour. Such an amazing space, and the program has grown immensely. Remember I said an MFA in anything other than animation didn't exist? Now there's an MFA in Production and in Screenwriting. Those lucky devils. But I wouldn't trade my days in for anything. Those were golden years, and they are spawning several more golden years. Aside from meeting with the Career Services specialist and hanging out in the SOFA, I went to the Memorial Art Gallery with a dear, old friend and saw th...

I think I'm headed into a new season (aside from winter, that is). I feel like I'm working toward a more forward-thinking, inspired phase rather than a sad, sentimental longing for what's passed. Because, you know... I have to admit, these warm temps and sunshine really help. I've always known I have a severe sensitivity to the lack of sun and Vit. D. I had started to slump into the bleak, depressed state that always comes over me in late fall (and lasts for six months). Thankfully, this superlative high pressure system with temps in the 50s and 60s and bright sun this week has been the shot in the arm I really needed to remind me of what I'm working towards. Eyes on the prize and all that. I long to be in sunny southern Cali. Imagine never having seasonal depression again! So I'm headed to Rochester this afternoon to attend an alumni networking event at R.I.T. (where I did my MFA in film). I'm going with resumes and business cards in hand, and I'll ...

Greetings, Programs! I realize I've already satisfied my quota for today, but I'm motivated to write more. Imagine! As anyone who's known me for more than ten minutes can tell you, I'm a huge fan of the Tron films. Tron: Legacy was, for me, both a flash back to my teenage self watching light cycles race on the Grid for the first time, and a reminder of why I chose to write and make films in the first place. The man who envisioned and directed T:L, Joseph Kosinski, is actually the subject of this post (ah, eventually she gets to the point). Now, there already exists in the blogosphere some excellent investigations into who Joseph Kosinski is , mainly because when he was attached to T:L, few knew the name readily. Check out the link I just posted to see the work he did pre-T:L, which was his first feature film. So what's next for JoKo? Oblivion! I mean the film, "Oblivion," about a lone soldier (Tom Cruise) on a bleak, post-apocalyptic future Earth, repair...

On January 5th, I'm headed back to L.A. to make dreams come true and further refine my driving skills. I spent two glorious weeks there, couch surfing, doing as much as possible, taking meetings, connecting with fellow R.I.T. SOFA alums, hanging out with Ithaca College's L.A. Pendleton program, hiking up to the Hollywood sign, lounging on Zuma beach, and yes, drinking mai tais in a tiki bar. Folks, I cannot describe the feeling (and I call myself a writer). A sense of belonging as I've never felt it before, at least since my childhood home. A feeling of well-being, of potential, of creative drive and inspiration. I spent a morning on the Warner Bros. lot, and I was moved to tears several times, knowing in the depth of my being that I needed to be a part of that world. I spent an evening at Disney Animation with my new friend TL, who is one of those soul sisters I will treasure throughout my life. There, at Disney, I saw people who engaged in their creative work, and t...