Self is participating in bushboy’s Last on the Card Challenge.
Her Last on the Card for June 2022 is a real heartbreaker: Roman Ratushny’s obituary in The Economist of 25 June 2022.
A Ukrainian activist, Roman Ratushny volunteered the first day of the Russian invasion. He was killed near Izyum on 9 June. He was 24.
Self just returned from a loooong trip overseas: Northern Ireland, London, and Oxford. It was her first overseas trip in three years.
In 2020, The Penn Club closed its doors forever, ending 100 years in its Bloomsbury location. Self mourned! This building was her home-away-from-home whenever she was in London. A haven. Just off Russell Square.
As soon as she got to London, in early May, she rushed to Bedford Place. She found that the building remained unchanged: the red door even seemed freshly painted. She walked right up to the door and peered through the glass: she saw the narrow lobby, the stairs leading to the upper floors.
She took a picture of the main entrance: who knows if it will still be there, the next time she’s in London:
Posting this for Clare’s Cosmos’ Share Your Desktop Challenge.
I’ll say again, no one can write naval battles like James D. Hornfischer. When he died, June 2021, the world lost many stories, still begging to be told.
On 27 February 1942, the world had its first taste of the “astonishing range” of a new type of torpedo, the Japanese Type 93. An international flotilla of carriers, cruisers and destroyers (American, Australian, English and Dutch) were in defensive formation, trying to stop the advance of a massive group of Japanese battleships heading towards the strategic Australian port of Darwin.
The first to be hit was the HMS Exeter, but the Australian captain of the Perth raced towards it, “firing floating smoke pots into the sea that churned out white clouds” and bought the Exeter precious time. The next to be hit was the Dutch destroyer Kortenaer, which was screening the Allied flotilla from the west and “found herself broadside to a spread of Long Lances.” After one “tremendous explosion” produced “a tower of seawater that swallowed her nearly from forecastle to fantail,” the ship lay “broken in two, jackknifed and foundering . . . a few men desperately scrambling to cling to her barnacled bottom. A few of them” were still able to flash a thumbs-up sign to the passing Allied ships. “No ship stopped to take survivors,” there was no time.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
George Holliday, who recorded the beating of Rodney King, died on September 19th, aged 61.
Lead sentence, The man on the balcony,The Economist Obituary, 2 October 2021:
It is quite an amazing article.
It has been QUITE a summer. How fast it went. And now the Olympics are over, we’re out of Afghanistan, and fall is just around the corner.
You’re alive, we’re alive, wear a mask.
Thank you to the host of this challenge, Clare’s Cosmos!
Support Literary Magazines
Self has short stories in all of these literary magazines.
Gratuitous self-promotion, what?
Stay cool, dear blog readers. Stay cool.
Enjoy the rest of your summer!
Self cannot believe we’re in August!
Please let her make it to at least December. Please don’t let Delta Variant come HERE!
Thanks to bushboy’s world for hosting this unique challenge.
One view is in March, the other is in April.
Thank you to Becky of The Life of B for hosting the #TreeSquare Challenge!
Not sure how old she was here: perhaps in her 40s?
Self’s desktop this month is Dearest Mum, wearing traditional Filipino formal attire (the scoop back, the butterfly sleeves) at her beloved piano.
Her name was NENA DEL ROSARIO. A graduate of Curtis Music Institute in Philadelphia (which she entered at 11), she won the New York Times International Piano Competition at 14, played twice at Carnegie Hall, passed away 4 June 2021. Long, hard fight: she got covid in Manila in March.
Much love to her nurses: Sol, Amy and Rodelyn.
A friend brought these from her garden when she heard about Dearest Mum.
I’m also posting for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day (FOTD) Challenge.
Three years after her first appearance in Carnegie Hall, Dearest Mum played there again, for the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concert, Main Hall, 5 January 1952. She was just 16.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
Thanks again to Cee Neuner for hosting this wonderful challenge. I love the picture of wild daisies she posted today.
This gorgeous bouquet is from my oldest best friends, Bob and Diane Varner. We lived in side-by-side apartments in Menlo Park, when we were in our twenties. She and Bob moved to El Granada many years ago, but we kept in contact.
Yesterday, I broke the news to them that Dearest Mum didn’t make it. She fought a long, hard battle in Manila with covid, lasted three months. She was admitted to Makati Medical at the height of the latest surge, in March.
I’d been having weekly FaceTimes with her since the start of the New Year. When she missed one week, then another, I called and they said she had a fever. Then, dread test results: positive for covid. She was sent home from the hospital in May, no longer with covid, but she never quite recovered. She lasted till June! She passed very peacefully in her sleep, two days ago. She was 85.
In the afternoon, I was rushing out the door when I stopped and was dazed. Amazed. Speechless. Aren’t these the most GORGEOUS roses you have ever seen?
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
Kanlaon 