Self decided that, for this prompt, she would look for actual lamps or ceiling fixtures.
Then she saw this picture: She snapped it in the parking lot of a movie theater in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Christmas Day, 2019: She’d just seen a movie with son and daughter-in-law (she forgets which movie).
She was entranced by the sky. There is a street light. And the lights of a car.
Still reading the same book. Yes, that book. It’s so interesting, self is reading at a crawl.
Here’s a particularly interesting passage, because it’s about a mass shooting that happened in San Bernardino, only a couple of hours south, in 2015. Aside from the fact that it took place in San Bernardino, site of son’s graduate school (Claremont), nothing much leaped out at self. It was a generic mass shooting (she knows, it’s awful that she uses the word “generic” in connection with a “mass shooting” but she truly can’t remember much about San Bernardino at all). Or maybe too much was happening in self’s personal life that year.
By 2015, when Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife shot and killed fourteen people in San Bernardino, the FBI couldn’t get into his phone. It was an iPhone 5C locked with a passcode that would delete all locally stored data after ten unsuccessful attempts to lock it. The FBI demanded that Apple write new software to undermine its own security features and unlock Farook’s phone. Apple refused, a legal and media fight erupted, and according to press reports, the FBI eventually hired an Israeli forensics firm to successfully hack the phone.
— Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence, pp. 222 – 223
Posting (one day early) for Six Word Saturday:
Last on the Card is hosted by bushboys world.
Self loves getting daily delivery of a physical newspaper. For the past four years, that’s been the Wall Street Journal. But she’s since decided to do a little scaling back, budget-wise. So, alas! She may not have many of these print wsj issues to share.
Last Friday’s wsj Page One was a winner!
Look at Biden’s new Secret Service detail! All business, they are!
For Take Your Child to Work Day, staffers’ children took on roles normally played by their parents. Aren’t they so precious! Self loves the poker faces, the shades, the adjusting of the earpiece. In keeping with the spirit of the event, POTUS also took questions from children of the White House Press Corps.
She loves POTUS’s affability: she hopes this becomes AN ANNUAL TRADITION!
(Though the paper was delivered on Friday, self only got around to taking a picture of the front page yesterday, making it the Last on her Card for April 2023)
Posting for Debbie Smythe’s Six Word Saturday.
I loved the murals on the walls of my hotel in Bacolod, Dear Departed Dad’s hometown in the province of Negros Occidental. The hotel, called the Henry Hotel Roost, is part of a chain of boutique hotels scattered around the Philippines, but the chain places particular emphasis on local (native) products.
Each of the 19 rooms in The Henry Hotel Roost has a unique mural depicting a different Negrense bird. Here are just a few:
I asked the hotel who the artist was, and they told me he went by “Otay,” which is the native word for barber. Apparently, this young man supports his art by working as a barber. His real name is Jovito Hecita, and he is a native of Talisay.
Stay tuned.
This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, hosted by Travels and Trifles, is “Environments”:
Self is currently in traveling mode. She just returned to Manila after two weeks in Bacolod. Her current environment is her brother’s townhouse in Makati:
Everywhere, she sees reminders of Dearest Mum, who passed away June 2021. Self attended the funeral by zoom: she couldn’t fly home because Manila was in the grip of a raging covid epidemic.
Self flew to Bacolod for this. Her Tita Gloria, the last surviving member of her father’s generation, who married self’s uncle Mario when she was just 18, turned 95 on 17 April. There was a big celebration to mark the occasion. Self was so glad she was able to make it!
The theme of the party was “Hawai’ian” so everyone wore printed shirts and dresses and were given leis.
Tita Gloria’s daughters-in-law ordered the beautiful flower arrangement.
Posting for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day.
A picture self took last November, in Andrew’s old room:
Andrew is phlegmatic, as usual. Lucia can’t help but look at the clicking camera.
Self spent Easter Sunday with Bacolod cousins. They took her to a beautiful, secluded spot on the Caliban River, near the city of Murcia, Negros Occidental. Families were picnicking on both sides of the river. It was the first Easter Sunday self spent in her Dear Departed Dad’s hometown, in forever.
Posting for Travel with Intent’s Six-Word Saturday.
Monday, self was visiting her cousin Anabel’s farm, in Murcia. That was where she spotted this spectacular hibiscus (She grew up knowing it as gumamela)
Posting for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day:
Kanlaon 