It's a wonderful life and a land of opportunity

These are tough times that will definitely be noted in our history books. Crime and violence are at all time highs (which can be seen as big lows). Many small businesses have shut down and many big businesses have scaled down. COVID-19 will go down in our history books as an extremely challenging event.

These are especially trying times for highly overactive people like myself who hate looking at the calendar in their phones and finding not much scheduled.

But contemplation can have an upside, especially when you’ve had a wonderful life to look back on and some fun things to look forward to. My parents were holocaust survivors from Germany who ended up having wonderful lives in the United States and my siblings and I have been blessed with tremendous opportunities.

My very smart parents did not get to go to high school or college in Berlin. But my mother’s brother Harry Rosenfeld was younger and able to go to high school and college in the USA and became the editor in charge of the Watergate investigation for the Washington Post.

My older brother was a very successful lawyer, my older sister is still a very productive realtor married to a very smart doctor, my younger brother is an Emmy winning sound mixer and I’ve had a wonderful career first as a newspaper reporter and then directing movies and television. Oh, and as a columnist for a weekly newspaper in a wonderful small town.

I’ve been invited to the town of Nelsonville, Ohio which is having a celebratory event for my movie “Mischief” that was shot there in 1984 and we’re hoping some of the cast members will show up.

I’m heading soon to teach in Budapest, Hungary where one of my classmates at the American Film Institute has created week-long film classes (in English) and I’ve taught there before and made a film there as well and it’s an incredibly beautiful city.

My first feature film, “Yellowbeard,” is going to play soon at the Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon and it’s very silly but fun and hopefully some of you will show up to see it. I’ve recently written my first play and it’s getting a good response and hopefully will open soon now that COVID-19 is being considered less of a risk factor.

So yes, I’ve had a wonderful life and I love where I live and even in very trying times, I have to be extremely grateful to have grown up in the Land of Opportunity.