I have been thinking an awful lot about life lately.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about death.

I recently passed my three-year anniversary for surviving both bladder and prostate cancer. The photo above is with the surgeon who saved my life, though perhaps that’s a wee bit melodramatic since the bladder cancer wasn’t advanced (the prostate cancer was).

This is also about 24 hours after I’d finally been able to eat ten very difficult days.

I knew going into this surgery that I would end up with a urostomy. As a lifelong paraplegic with spina bifida, my body simply didn’t leave many options. Anything but a urostomy had tons of risks.

So, I agreed.

I also knew going in that this would likely severely impact my sexuality, and it has.

Again, at least for me, that’s a small price to pay to be given a few more years of life.

I remember one day a couple days after my surgery. I was struggling mightily. I was convinced I was dying, and I could hardly complain because 60 years with spina bifida is quite the gift.

But, I wasn’t ready.

You know what really shook me? I was alone.

Yeah, my macho bullsh** had told everyone things would be fine. I was fine. The ostomy would be fine (I was actually terrified). I didn’t want to be a burden.

And yet, I was sitting there in my hospital bed believing I was dying. I was alone. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted company. I wanted touch. I wanted nurture. I wanted to be a burden.

In case you haven’t guessed, I did survive.

In fact, a year later I would be the subject of a documentary, wheel 150 miles, and eliminate over $20 million in medical debt for hoosiers.

Don’t ask me what a hoosier is. Nobody knows. We live in Indiana.

Coming out of that hospital experience, I knew I wanted to live differently. I wanted to be more communal. I wanted to both be a burden and be burdened by others. I wanted to figure out my touch issues. I wanted to learn how to say “I love you” without the trauma that always seems to accompany those words.

I remember getting home. I remember struggling with my ostomy, and I remember the frustration of not having anyone to share that frustration with. Oh sure, I’d eventually go to an ostomy clinic. But, there’s a difference. You know? It’s not that I needed a caregiver. It’s not that I wanted anyone to fix it. It’s that I didn’t want to be alone in all of it.

Three years later, my father has since passed and this has left me the only survivor of my immediate family.

I was supposed to be the first to go, but I’m still here and they’re gone.

Weird.

I have friends. I have lifelong friends. I have close friends. I have not so close friends. Once my health went into a downward spiral after my cancer surgery, I had a friend fly in from Seattle and stay for a month.

I was pi**ed about it the whole time, to be honest. She stayed anyway.

I had others who ran errands, sent food cards, listened, and enjoyed the heck out of my inspiration to ask people to send me refrigerator magnets out of a weird cancer journey coping skill. It was a blast.

I had one therapy center that works with people who have autism send me individually made pictures and cards. It was so lovely.

I had an employer wait patiently. I know a friend who lost her job after her ostomy surgery. Mine waited patiently for me to return. Okay, patiently might be a stretch.

But, I wish I’d somehow invited someone into the ostomy journey. I wish I’d asked for more help. I wish I’d let myself be a bit more vulnerable. I wish, I really wish, I’d not have been alone when I believed I was dying.

I am still learning how to be interdependent. It’s a lesson I’ll likely take to my grave, though I’m sure hoping that’s not anytime soon.

We need each other. Sometimes, yeah, when you have a disability the need is a little more intense, a little more personal, and a lot more intimate. But, we all need each other. Sometimes, it’s a matter of figuring out who in your life is comfortable with what. I’m a strong emotional presence, but I suck at caregiving (Okay, I did reasonably well with my father in hospice.). Some friends are technical, others emotionally supportive, some caregivers, others willing to jump into any embarrassing scenario with vulnerability and a few laughs, and some, yeah some, will just plain go away.

It’s all good. It’s all part of life.

When you read my stuff on here, just know you’re not going to get a Hallmark greeting card. Sometimes, there’s a happy ending. Not always. Sometimes, I have a point. Sometimes, I just need to process. Most of the time, I want to build relationships and connections and discover that person who says “me too.”

I’m grateful I’ve survived three years, but here’s hoping whatever time I have left is spent with a whole lot more loving and an awful lot less masking.

Peace, RP

It's the summer of 1984 when we open the pages of Alyson Shelton's "Get a Grip," an unusually, I'll say it, gripping hi-lo novel written in verse format that combines Shelton's usual gift for honest storytelling with a strong social impact.

For those unaware, "Hi-Lo" publishing stands for High-Interest, Low-Readability. It's an increasingly popular branch of publishing that creates meaningful storytelling for older children, teens, and even adults who read below their age level. While these books have far too often also tackled simplified subject matter with which most teens and adults can't identify, publishers like West 44 Books, an imprint of Enslow Publishing, have realized that it is possible, and preferable, to create age-appropriate stories using language that is more accessible.

"Get a Grip" gets hi-lo publishing absolutely right and exactly where it ought to be.

In "Get a Grip," competitive gymnast Kelly is a seemingly ordinary teenager whose summer plans include watching every single moment of gymnastics in the Summer Olympics.

Kelly's excitement shatters when her beloved brother Michael dies.

Suddenly, nothing makes sense anymore and not even a long-desired invitation to join an elite gym can help Kelly make sense of life without her brother. Before long, Kelly immerses herself in gym life. It's both an obsession and a distraction from grief, from friends who don't understand, from parents who won't talk about it, and from her own chaotic feelings.

I've been familiar with Alyson Shelton's work for quite some time having first reviewed her award-winning 2006 feature film "Eve of Understanding," a film that also finds its narrative foundation in the complexities of grief.

Since that 2006 introduction to Shelton, our paths have periodically crossed creatively and I've been a guest poet on her acclaimed Instagram Live series inspired by George Ella Lyon’s poem, Where I’m From, where she’s hosted over 250 writers.

With "Get a Grip," her first teen novel, Shelton tells a meaningful and relatable story in a way that's accessible without compromising on the quality of storytelling and while also trusting the dignity and intelligence of her target reader.

And yes, just because your reading skills are a bit lower that doesn't mean you're not intelligent. Intelligence is expressed in a myriad of ways, and Shelton seems to get that.

The magic of "Get a Grip" is that it not only brings an important subject to readers, that of grief, in an accessible way but it also manages to make grief itself more identifiable and accessible. For those who struggle to express the language of grief, "Get a Grip" is here as a sort of introductory primer to the various ways that grief shows up in our lives from relationship changes to stress and anxiety to difficulty with focus and a whole lot more.

I found Shelton's approach using verse completely and utterly engaging. It adds a rhythm to the storytelling that amplifies the language and the emotions. I'll openly confess it. I cried more than once in "Get a Grip," identifying both with the story (though this paraplegic, wheelchair-using amputee will never be seen on a balance beam) and the lovely character of Kelly.

There will be some who will lament Shelton's decision to not give more time to diving deeper into Michael, however, it's a decision that resonates with me because so much of grief is unexplained. By leaving this narrative thread more open, Shelton leaves open the greater possibility of teens relating to the characters and getting in touch with their own grief.

I've always loved Shelton's work, but I'm tempted to say that "Get a Grip" is my favorite effort yet owing to its meaningful subject matter and impact on those who are more vulnerable and at-risk.

"Get a Grip" isn't just about gymnastics. It's about life and loss, grief and the vitality of human connection. It's a lovely and meaningful hi-lo effort destined to stand as both a wonderfully written novel in verse, and it will also find its place in therapeutic worlds for those with reading difficulties and a hard time sharing life's most difficult experiences.

Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic

We have this tendency to pluck out the shiny moments from our lives and hold them up to the light shouting “This is my miracle!”

We have a tendency to look at our happiest moments and our successes and say “This is proof that I’m healing.”

And then, we slink away. We slink away when our light doesn’t shine and success doesn’t come our way. We slink away on the days when success doesn’t happy, relationships end, sickness knocks us down, or another trauma makes it feel like the cycle has won again.

What if every single part of you is the miracle you’ve been waiting for?

What if every moment of our lives is part of the healing and part of the journey?

It’s not that “bad things happen for a reason.” That’s b.s. prosperity theology trying to assign meaning to the fact that sometimes life just plain sucks.

But, what if our healing doesn’t depend upon our ever achieving success or marriage, being healthy or even being happy?

What if healing is really learning how to integrate all of life’s experiences into how we live and love, work and play?

We’ve been sold this idea that love is always happy.

It’s not.

We’ve been sold the idea that once we heal from our traumas that we’ll find our way to the perfect relationship.

Some will. Some won’t.

We’ve been told that if we just believe enough and pray enough that our bodies will heal or that God will heal us.

That’s a crock.

We’ve been told if. We’ve been told if. We’ve been told if we do this or do that, reach this or reach that, practice this or practice that we’ll heal and finally be worthy of the love we crave.

It’s a lie.

We’re worthy now. We’re worthy broken. We’re worthy dirty. We’re worthy imperfect. We’re worthy when we have crappy days and raging flashbacks. We’re worthy when faith is hard to find and we need others to hold space for us just so we can continue another day. We’re worthy when we’re in so much pain we can barely breathe. We’re worthy when the love we crave never finds us, we’re out of spoons, and when we’ve had relationships end, jobs fail, and bodies break again and again.

We’re worthy when we relapse. We’re worthy when the abusive cycle continues. We’re worthy. We’re worthy. We’re worthy. We’re so worthy.

What if healing is just figuring out how to live my life and love who I am wherever life takes me? What if healing is trusting that we can love and be loved when our bodies break and our lives are filled with both joy and sorrow?

What if every single part of our lives is part of the mind-fu** magical miracle that we’ve been chasing and we just have to figure out how to live in the midst of it all with our love intact?

We don’t have to change. We don’t have to chase. We have to love over and over and over again. And, it’s that love that helps us figure out that integration and that wholeness we so often crave?

But, what if today and for right now we’re enough?

I would love to tell you that it was the opening montage of Jane Schoenbrun’s latest flick Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma that convinced me that I was in for another cinematic delight after Schoenbrun’s last film I Saw the TV Glow was my top film for 2024. The montage, an inspired mishmash of Camp Miasma meets Friday the 13th memorabilia enveloped by the sounds of Okay Kaya’s smashing cover of R.E.M.’s Nightswimming, is absolutely one of the year’s best intros and one of the best opening scenes I’ve seen in quite some time.

And yet, I expected Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma to mind-fuck me in the best of ways even before the opening scene.

Schoenbrun delivers.

Schoenbrun had promised us a tapestry of Friday the 13th bumper-to-bumper with Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and that’s exactly what we get.

Hannah Einbinder, of Hacks fame, whips us into a frenzy as Sundance darling indie filmmaker Kris Williams, whose Psycho remake, told from the perspective of the shower curtain, dazzled audiences and landed her the opportunity to revive the DOA 80’s slasher franchise Camp Miasma.

If that doesn’t sound impressive enough, and it should, Williams also wins the favor of that franchise’s original final girl, Billy Presley, played to Gloria Swansonish perfection by the seldom been better Gillian Anderson.

There’s really not a moment of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma that I would change. I pictured film critic pal Nick Rogers in orgasmic delight with the film’s iconic needle drops, and Schoenbrun tosses in an iconic villain and a seismic blending of romance meets robust gore. Einbinder and Anderson truly impress here, though I’ll admit I really couldn’t take my eyes off of Anderson’s Norma Desmond torchlight dazzler with a Southern drawl that is still giving me chills.

Anderson’s Billy went into isolation after that first film’s success at Camp Tivoli, the abandoned camp where the first film was shot. Kris has eyes on signing her on to the film, a key little nugget that leads Schoenbrun once again to take us along on their unique storytelling, and a visual feast that made me want to watch it again immediately.

This is a film I wouldn’t dare describe in great detail. It demands an open mind, and while I’m proclaiming it one of the best films of the year it’s definitely not a film that will work for everyone.

Jack Haven is here as Little Death, a long ago bullied and brutally murdered camper whose gender fluidity continues Schoenbrun’s mastery at giving us entertaining films that matter a hell of a lot.

While I loved the opening needle drop, my favorite was an extended and demented journey of sorts with Counting Crows’ “A Long December.” We also spend time here with Sally Shapiro’s “Anorak Christmas,” Sade’s “No Ordinary Love,” Andy Shauf’s “Satan,” and Donna Lewis’s pop delight “I Love You Always Forever.”

There’s so much absolute delight in this 80’s slasher coupling with queer love story. We also get pop-ups from SNL’s Sarah Sherman, Kevin McDonald, and Dylan Baker among others.

It’s hard to express how much I loved Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, another complex and layered thriller from Schoenbrun that explores identity, culture, and the idols we make and project in a film that also has some badass kills.

I can’t recommend it enough.

I was in my late teens when I really began living a life of independence. I’d moved out of my parents’ home at seventeen shortly after my high school graduation.

I went back briefly around 20 following my first amputation. My doctors had insisted I could not recover without support, so off to one of the least supportive places I knew.

Home.

Three days after returning home, I’d heard about my failure in going from crutches to a wheelchair often enough that my mental health was becoming a precarious situation.

On Christmas Eve (because I’ve always had a flair for melodrama), I attempted suicide or at least made a gesture.

After several weeks of recovery, I made the decision that I would never again return home.

The result of this decision, from which I never wavered, was that I spent a good amount of my early 20s trying to learn how to live independently without any real skills to do so. Between struggling through trauma and a complete lack of life skills, I became entirely too dependent whether talking about physical care, mental health, or finances.

By my mid-20s, I’d started to figure things out. My first Tenderness Tour, a 41-day and 1000 mile wheelchair ride alone, showed me that I had remarkable skills that I’d simply never learned how to use.

So, I learned.

Then, I began a years-long journey the other way.

I became too independent.

Well, kinda sorta.

Truthfully, I just stopped asking for and/or allowing help. Yes, I went off disability and got to work. Yes, I had my own place. Yes, I learned how to drive.

I also kept having hygiene show up on performance evaluations.

I also struggled with laundry. I struggled with financial management for many years. I stopped going to doctors. I’d lost three days a week of home health when I left disability, and I struggled mightily.

In my mind, I was struggling for the cause of independence.

About seven years into the now annual Tenderness Tour, I was surprised when a group of three nurses from the hospital where I worked decided I shouldn’t go alone in my journey from Indianapolis to Chicago.

So, they went with me.

It was remarkable and also stressful for me. I didn’t want them to see my physical needs. This was partly understandable, of course. They were co-workers. However, they were also friends AND nurses.

Still, I persisted.

By the end of that tour, I was healthier than I’d ever been finishing one of my long distance trips.

I’ve had a support team ever since.

And yet, it wasn’t until my third amputation about six years ago that I really began to see how much my “independence” was masking my humanity and actually causing me harm.

The cancer journey from three years ago amplified my growing awareness I’d inadvertently created an isolated life despite living in a body that calls for community.

Then, there was yesterday. It was a sign, perhaps, that I’ve begun more successfully living a life of interdependence. We gathered for a 5k event, an event I started 23 years ago, and friends drove over two hours to join the event. These friends include Erin, an active runner, and her always present and supportive wife, Reyna.

Indianapolis, along with much of the state, happens to be going through a really hard time now because of weather issues and flooding. While the event was held at a location with little risk, there’s always a risk.

And yet, we gathered.

I woke up feeling pretty well, though a weird pain had caused me to hydrate a bit more than usual. As I gathered at the event, I made sure to empty my ostomy so it wouldn’t become an issue.

It became an issue.

About five minutes before the race would begin, I could tell I might need to empty again. However, the restroom was across the field and I was one of the kick-off speakers.

Ugh. “I can make it. I can make it,” I told myself.

We pushed off. I still believed I could make it.

By about 1/3 in, I knew my ostomy pouch could pop if I made one wrong move. For the record, paraplegics always make at least one wrong move.

So, I said to Erin, who had compromised her running to sort of do a fast walk alongside me, I need to find a restroom. Erin, who’s been on my Tenderness Tour more than once, understood the assignment.

We began looking. She began contemplating how she could sort of shield me while I took care of it. Options were limited early on a Saturday morning with poor weather. Then, it also started to rain.

Sigh.

We finally found a place. Will it be open? It was open. Erin quickly made her moves, got me inside and offered help if needed. I’m sure she was secretly relieved it wasn’t needed, but she’d already helped a lot.

The truth is that if Erin hadn’t been there, I’d have pushed on. And, in all likelihood, my pouch would have popped and I’d have played off the wet as being rain.

I’d have known the truth.

Instead, self-care won for the day and I finished my race. Heck, I didn’t even finish in last with a bathroom break thrown in.

This sounds little, but it’s huge for me. I’m not someone who has a lot of help in daily life, and this opportunity to have a longtime friend assist in an embarrassing situation that could have been way more embarrassing was a sign that maybe I’m realizing we need each other and we make each other better.

I finished precisely because I acknowledged a need and allowed that need to be met. While I didn’t need physical help, knowing Erin was willing to go there was even more profound for me. We’d planted that honesty so it could actually be said.

Profound.

I still screw up. Truthfully, I’d still say that physical appearance is often a weakness though way less of an issue than it used to be. When I’m tired? It’s right there.

Isn’t it weird how becoming more interdependent is actually helping me become more independent?

This is a love letter of sorts.

This is a love letter to a body. My body. This is a love letter to the people who have loved my body during the times I couldn’t.

This is a love letter to a body that has survived spina bifida and hydrocephalus and three amputations and bladder cancer and prostate cancer and a urostomy and nearly 100 surgeries and countless wounds and.

Well, you get the point.

This is a love letter to the body I can’t always dress, yet also to the body that has wheeled thousands of miles to make the world a better place.

This is a love letter to wounds that won’t heal, kidney stones that keep coming back, extra pounds that won’t go away, and scars that tell stories both spoken and unspoken.

This is a love letter to a body that has experienced more hate than love, and This is a love letter to a body that has never experienced a day without pain.

This is a love letter to a body that has been bathed by strangers and friends, dressed and cared for, healed and nurtured.

This is a love letter to a body that learned violence but chose peace.

This is a love letter to a body that fears touch yet craves affection.

This is a love letter to a body isn’t always clean, is never trendy, and leaks in mysterious ways and at inconvenient times.

This is a love letter to a body that was given little hope yet demanded possibility.

This is a love letter to a body that has been hit and burned, sexually assaulted and laughed at.

And yet, this is also a love letter to a body that has sat on ledges with suicidal souls, flown across the country to bring home a young child to his family, companioned the dying, and refused to let anyone feel alone.

This is a love letter to a body that has loved me when I couldn’t love it back.

This is a love letter to a body that has loved me and loved me and loved me and loved me.

This is a love letter.

Just two days ago, I found myself arriving to my downtown Indianapolis office early and leaving nearly four hours later than my usual departure. The hours in-between were filled with meetings, obligations, difficult conversations, and massive over-peopling for someone who is a people loving introvert.

Sometimes, I just want to rest. I want to rest in life. I want to rest in my faith. i want to rest in the presence of God.

By the end of Laura Kauffman's "The Meeting Place: Quiet Spiritual Practices for Dwelling with God in Prayer," I was convinced that Kauffman would get this challenge and be an ideal guide for helping to address it.

"The Meeting Place" weaves a tapestry of two ancient practices - spiritual direction and contemplative prayer - to create a meeting place of sorts, for slowing down and gently having that desperately needed encounter between one's soul and God.

In some ways, "The Meeting Place" is a simple book. At less than 200 pages, "The Meeting Place" will most benefit people like me - those who have long been curious about spiritual direction and those who've struggled to slow down long enough to consider it. Each chapter combines one of Kauffman's personal stories alongside a more practical exercise designed to make these practices more accessible and more achievable.

Kauffman, unsurprisingly, is a spiritual director herself. It's also not surprising that she's published three books of poetry, because "The Meeting Place" finds its success in maintaining gentle rhythms and Kauffman's lyrical and soothing voice.

I can easily see "The Meeting Place" being used as a devotion, amongst prayer groups, on retreats, or in spiritual direction (though, admittedly, I'm relatively a newbie in the latter).

From a beautiful cover to visual dialogue that immerses you in what feels natural and safe, "The Meeting Place" is an ideal place to start for those craving a deeper relationship with God and a safe place to explore what that means.

I have a confession, though it’s perhaps not an uncommon one.

I didn’t always work.

I’m a paraplegic and double amputee with spina bifida. I wasn’t supposed to live more than three days, though you can probably tell pretty quickly they were wrong about that.

Even as it became apparent that I would survive, the expectations were low. I started off in a school for the disabled, though when IDEA was passed I was mainstreamed into public school.

I wasn’t supposed to graduate. I would never live alone (my parents were encouraged to put me in a nearby facility). I would never work. I wouldn’t do most things independently.

Having a pretty extensive childhood sexual abuse background didn’t help.

I showed glimpses of promise. I was on the speech team. They discovered early on that I could write. I was creative. I was friendly. I prospered on the speech team and in Junior Achievement.

Still, I graduated in the bottom half of my class (barely, I was just under the halfway point). I struggled with focus. I struggled with self-care. I struggled with social skills.

I tried college. Ugh, I failed.

I tried a job. Ugh, I really failed.

So, I went on disability. Still, there were signs. I moved out of my parents’ home at 17. I was homeless twice, but I never went back.

A few years into my life on disability, I decided to really start dealing with my trauma and left Indianapolis on a 41-day and 1,000+ mile wheelchair ride around Indiana. Alone.

I finished it.

Then, I thought to myself “If I can do that, surely I can work.”

So, I tried college again.

I attended a small, mostly Black college in Indy where I found just the right mentor, Father Boniface Hardin.

I graduated. With straight A’s. As valedictorian.

WTF?

I had a job the day after graduation with an inpatient behavioral health unit. I stayed there nine years. I secretly wondered if it was a fluke. That was tested when the hospital closed.

I went to work for a behavior consultant. I stayed there for a bit.

Then, I went to work for a youth mentoring agency. That wasn’t so great.

I even spent nine months at Barnes & Noble. I loved it. It didn’t pay much, but the job was amazing.

Then, I found a job with a state agency. I’ve been there for 19 years and, if all goes well, I’ll retire in about four years.

Again, WTF?

A lot of people still wonder why I ever went to work. I had a monthly check. I had a home. I had three days a week of physical supports.

First off, I will confess that I’m pretty lucky. It all worked out. Despite being approved for disability on the first try (extremely rare), I truly believed with the right supports and planning, I could build the life I wanted.

It’s not a perfect life, but it’s a good life.

I own my home. I drive. I have an employer that “gets” disability, but they also don’t cater to it. Just like everyone else, my a** gets kicked when I fall short.

I’ve been married (that was a mistake). I’ve been to seminary. I’m ordained. I’ve had multiple ministry roles on top of my full-time gig. I’m also an author, a film critic, and an award-winning activist.

But why did I decide to work?

To be honest, part of it was control. I was tired of people telling me how much I could make, where I could live, and what I could do.

I wanted things that being on disability weren’t going to give me. So, I set out to try to learn how to live differently.

It doesn’t work for everyone, though I know lots of folks with disabilities who do work whether that’s self-employment, part-time, volunteer, or freaking rich.

I believe we all deserve the good life. We all deserve to live, love, work, learn, play, and pursue our dreams.

I still haven’t had sex standing up, but I keep hoping for a miracle there.

I’m kidding.

Maybe.

My job these days is hard, but I love it. As I inch toward that day when I can retire and live a different sort of life, I find myself increasingly grateful for the people who encouraged me and the people who discouraged me.

I made a lot of mistakes on the road to work, but I grew up around parents who worked hard and it rubbed off on me. I love working.

I don’t know if work is right for every person with a disability, but I do believe every person with a disability deserves the opportunity to define and pursue their hopes and dreams. Sometimes, doctors and parents and experts are wrong and you really can live the life of your dreams.

My life’s not perfect, but I’m so grateful for it and I’m so grateful I followed my heart and believed in myself.

Peace, RP

Anna Baumgarten’s last film, Disfluency, was a film that snuck up on me with its power and emotional impact. It seemed to linger, deservedly so, in the world forever with a successful festival run and subsequent indie distribution. I’m not sure it ever found as wide an audience as it deserved, but the story about a young woman (Libe Barer) and her experience with PTSD after a college assault is a story that still sticks with me.

So, when I saw Baumgarten’s name set to arrive at the 2026 Indy Shorts International Film Festival, I knew I’d be making checking out the 7-minute short film Balloon Animals a priority.

Balloon Animals is both different and very much the same from Disfluency, humor is a little more abundant yet the film, like Disfluency, finds its emotional core in the quietly swaggering weirdness of life, imperfect friendships, and the unexpected moments of human connection that can help us move forward.

The film is set within the late-night dimness of a soon-to-be closed grocery with two employees, sublimely captured by Angela Giarratana and Izzi Rojas, mind-numbingly yet endearingly playing a game of Marry, Fuck, Kill with cartoon characters and Meryl Streep characters.

Admit it. You’ve done it.

You can tell that they’re winding down the minutes until closing time when in walks a woman (Kelsi Roberts) who wants some balloons.

Balloon Animals is a beautiful film. It’s beautiful to look at. It’s beautiful to listen to. It’s characters are beautiful people, ordinary souls caught up in the wacky extraordinariness of everyday life. Giarratana and Rojas capture the kind of young women we likely encounter everyday of our lives, weird-ass workplace friends who will likely move on within the next few months and never look back. They’re in that point in their lives when it’s “in the moment,” and it’s in this moment that we gain a deep appreciation for who they are in their weirdness and wonderfulness.

As someone who has lost my entire family and had cancer a couple times in the past five years, I’ve come to appreciate these little moments of connection. They are both exhilarating and enough to reduce me to tears. The same happened for me as I was watching Balloon Animals.

Similarly, Kelsi Roberts is absolutely perfect in a role that is best left undescribed so you can enjoy it for yourself. It’s a meaningful encounter we’re having here, but it’s not too meaningful. It’s light. It’s real. It’s odd. Set amidst the industrial lighting and late-night darkness of this likely suburban grocery, this story really comes vividly to life and Kelsi Roberts really drives it all home.

Balloon Animals was a nominee for the Short Film Grand Jury Prize at Sundance earlier this year. Like everything Baumgarten creates, it deserves to be seen far and wide. Lensing by Sevag Chahinian is inspired, a slightly off-kilter blending of humor and humanity set within the kaleidoscopic tapestry of life. The visuals alone would make Balloon Animals worth watching, but this is also terrific storytelling with an equally terrific ensemble.

Baumgarten has become quite the truth-teller. Balloon Animals continues her cinematic tendencies toward uncommon tenderness. This is a beautiful film. I hope you get the chance to check it out for yourself.

Sundance winner The Baddest Speechwriter of All just short of quietly leaps out at you. It’s not so much because co-directors Stephen Curry and Ben Proudfoot make it so. It’s more because 93-year-old Clarence B. Jones commands your presence whether it’s with his refreshing honesty, quick wit, or sharpness of mind and spirit. The film picked up Sundance’s Short Film Grand Jury Prize, a first for two-time Oscar-winner Ben Proudfoot (The Last Repair Shop, The Queen of Basketball) and a pretty fine debut from first-time director Curry.

And yes, it’s that Stephen Curry.

Jones is actually Dr. Clarence b. Jones, a longtime lawyer and a speechwriter, the baddest, for Martin Luther King Jr.

Let’s just acknowledge up front that The Baddest Speechwriter of All is a blast to watch, a richly human film that could have easily become overly reverential. My guess is that Jones wouldn’t have had it that way. Curry and Proudfoot play it surprisingly subdued though terrifically stylish. The story is told through Jones’s personal lens including his doubts, his resistance, and the remarkable toll taken on Jones in crafting words for one of history’s greatest speakers.

Already picked up by Netflix, this 29-minute short is screening this week at the Academy Award-qualifying Indy Shorts Film Festival, a Heartland Film joint that’s always a blast and ideally suited to host such an entertaining and meaningful film. Proudfoot is no stranger to Heartland, so meaningful to the fest is he that he’s most assuredly a branch on the Heartland tree of life.

It’s fair to say that Jones, who passed away this past May at the age of 95, did indeed help define the language of the Civil Rights Movement. The Baddest Speechwriter of All captures the glory of it all without turning the film into an altar call. In addition to tightly framed interviews with Jones, Proudfoot and Curry utilize hand-painted watercolor animation sequences, courtesy of Daniel Bruson, to give the film an immersive, unforgettable quality that somehow makes the storytelling even more effective.

The Baddest Speechwriter of All is a glorious effort, beautifully paced with a tone that captures heart, humor, and surprising humility from a badass human who lived a truly remarkable life.

It’s a marvelous thing to give Dr. Jones his due, a reminder of the importance of history’s quieter moments and background players who sacrificed much and were often acknowledged very little. This is a film that asks important questions at a time in history when those questions are more important than ever. I’ll admit I’ve come to expect great things from Proudfoot, and he’s yet to let me down.

The Baddest Speechwriter of All is one of the highlights of Indy Shorts in 2026, and a film you won’t easily forget.

I was born on October 1, 1965 in Lebanon, Indiana, though my newlywed parents lived on the near-westside of Indianapolis. 25 days after my birth, 16-year-old Sylvia Marie Likens would die after weeks of being tortured inside a home at 3850 East New York Street where her carnie parents had entrusted Gertrude Baniszewski with her care, along with that of her sister Jenny, while they were on the carnival circuit.

While Sylvia’s murder is not likely the most horrific homicide to occur in Indianapolis, it is very likely one of the murders to have most tainted the soul of a city most recognized for its hoosier hospitality. It’s a murder that was so brutal that to this day you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who has lived in Indianapolis who doesn’t know the story.

The murder of Sylvia Likens has haunted me nearly every single day of my life.

I’m not going to go into the intimate crevisces of my own story, however, at one point in my childhood I began playing connect-the-dots between my own story and that of Sylvia’s. I became convinced, absolutely convinced, that I was channeling Sylvia.

Years later, I’m likely willing to admit that such a proposition is likely untrue. To this day, it feels true.

It was impossible to watch Ashton Gleckman’s 33-minute short film Sylvia without becoming immersed once again in my own memories, my own traumas, and my lifelong sense of kinship to this young girl who would die shortly after my birth. For those unfamiliar with the case, the placement of Likens in the Baniszewski home was at first successful it seemed. It was after her parents were late one week with a parent that the abuse started, intensifying over several weeks and involving the Baniszewski children along with other neighborhood children in increasingly severe abuse and torture that included beatings, burnings, neglect, branding and a myriad of other forms of abuse that all led to her eventual death.

Just as shocking as the actual murder, maybe even more shocking, was the communal abuse and neglect from the neighborhood children who participated to those who suspected yet did nothing. It was, in fact, the Sylvia Likens murder that moved Indiana toward its still in existence mandatory reporting laws when it comes to child abuse and neglect.

It may seem odd, some would even say inappropriate, for a film critic to dive into his own personal testimony within the framework of a film review. Yet, that’s perhaps a testament to Gleckman’s powerful filmmaking and intuitive tone. The very fabric of Sylvia invites one to feel and remember, relate and experience. Over the years, I’ve stayed connected to Sylvia. From a friendship with the late filmmaker Ivan Rogers, an Indy native who contributed the Likens Memorial in Willard Park, to my nearly buying the home at 3850 East New York Street before the home was eventually torn down, I’ve never lost the sense of Sylvia’s presence.

If you were to meet Gleckman, an up-and-coming filmmaker from Indiana in his mid-twenties whose childhood, I’m venturing a guess, bears almost no resemblance to that of Sylvia’s, you’d likely not suspect he’s the one whose artistic vision has crafted such an emotionally honest and devastating documentary short. The film, fresh off its world premiere at the Academy Award-qualifying Indy Shorts Film Festival, isn’t an easy film to watch - especially for those of us whose memories are still haunted by the day our city’s innocence was lost.

Sylvia remembers Sylvia through the lives of those who remember such as Sheila Jane Johnson Wells, one of Sylvia’s very few friends at Arsenal Technical High School. Wells, an African-American woman who vividly remembers Sylvia’s unexpected friendship, shares memories that feel palpable even now. There’s Andy Wysong, who would learn that one of his best friends was one of Sylvia’s perpetrators.

There are others. Unforgettable others.

Gleckman includes never-before-seen footage along with some archival records that many of us familiar with the case do remember. Gleckman takes great care to not exploit Sylvia’s memory, no small challenge considering the graphic nature of her killing and the many hard to fathom details of the crime. There are also archival interviews with Sylvia’s younger sister, Jenny, who passed away in 2004 at the age of 54.

Gleckman’s is not the first film to tell the Sylvia Likens story, though it is perhaps the first to not just treat Sylvia as a murder victim but also as a precious and valuable teenage girl. Gleckman’s insistence on honoring her life makes her death that much more devastating.

Indeed, there are tears flowing even as i write these words.

Screening at this week’s Indy Shorts and also available from the festival via its streaming option, Sylvia is a difficult but necessary film to watch about a girl I pray we always remember.

The photo above looks ordinary. Doesn’t it?

There I am, a very tired looking guy in a wheelchair surrounded by two women who were likely there at the finish line of an event to offer a friendly greeting.

There’s more.

This photo took place in Norris City, Illinois, a small Southern Illinois community with barely over 1,000 residents.

It’s the kind of place you move to get away from it all.

That is what happened for the woman behind me. Coming out of a marriage, she moved to the area in hopes of a quieter life for her young girls.

If you’ve read my writing for any length of time, you know that I started wheeling on an event called The Tenderness Tour when I was 24-years-old and at a particularly desperate place in my life.

I’ve been wheeling ever since.

The woman behind me, Kris, was a friend who’d volunteered for my Tenderness Tour one time.

She loved it. She loved my commitment to ending violence in the lives of families.

As her children grew old enough to be on social media, I was one of her friends they could add. She knew I’d be safe. She also knew I’d watch out for them.

I was and I did.

The two women next to my wheelchair both lost their children to violence.

Jake and Jessi were two young adults living in a small town. They went camping one night. They never made it home.

I was on a Tenderness Tour when it happened. In fact, I’d been messaging Kris the day before it happened. Jessi herself messaged me the day before her camping.

Then, silence.

A few months after their deaths, Kris messaged me and asked if I would come down to Southern Illinois to do a Tenderness Tour.

Obviously, I said “Yes.”

In the spectrum of tours, it was relatively short. It was a one-day tour with a couple events surrounding it. We raised enough money to start a scholarship program in her daughter’s name, but mostly we remembered her.

I wheeled from the area where Jake and Jessi had been killed, and I “wheeled them home.”

I still cry when I think about it.

Jake’s mom, holding my hand, wasn’t supposed to show up. It was still too much and too fresh. I understood that.

Then, she showed up.

I also still cry when I think about that.

I’ve never been a touchy human being. That’s probably an essay for another day, but on this day when that hand reached out there was no choice.

Touch can be a loving experience, but we have to make it so. We have to show up. We have to refuse to let the violence win or at least refuse to let it have the final say. I knew that nothing I was going to do was going to bring Jessi or Jake back, but I also knew that showing up mattered.

I still remember Jake and Jessi. I’m sure I will for the rest of my life, and I’ll keep wheeling for others just like them for as long as I can.

When you survive trauma.

When you survive abuse.

When you survive sexual abuse and sexual assault.

It can be so easy to become that which you were never born to be…

I’m so grateful.

So grateful.

I didn’t become.

I didn’t become a man who responds to conflict with violence.

I didn’t become a man who chooses fear instead of love.

I didn’t become a man who hits a woman or a child or another man.

I didn’t become a man who looks at a woman and objectifies or sexualizes.

I didn’t become that which happened to me.

I became a man who resolves conflict with peace instead of violence.

I became a man who chooses love instead of fear.

I became a man who believes “no means no” and makes sure that “yes” really means yes.

I became a man who celebrates boundaries and chooses tenderness and intimacy over sex.

I became a man who didn’t become.

I didn’t become a statistic.

I didn’t become “hurt people hurt people.” I became “hurt people learn how to love better and richer and safer and intentionally by making a better choice in every minute of every day.”

I didn’t become that which I feared the most.

I became who I was created to be.

Love.