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Many (although not all) pages on this site include a date and possibly time at which the event described occurred, the page was posted, or the page was updated. Here you can narrow a search down to as narrow a period as you like; or, alternatively, broaden it to all of time, set the Maximum Retrievals Per Page to 1000 and browse every page here!
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BBQ Becky
| By: Paul S. Cilwa | Occurred: 4/29/2018 Posted: 4/17/2024 |
Page Views: 157 | |
| Topics: #Politics #JenniferSchulte #BBQBecky #Racism #SocialMedia | |||
| Rarely has a person made such an unbelievable ass of themselves for the whole world to see. | |||
The incident involving BBQ Becky, whose real name is Jennifer Schulte, took place at Lake Merritt in Oakland, California, on April 29, 2018. Schulte called 911 multiple times over a three-hour span to report Kenzie Smith and his friends, all of whom are Black, for using a charcoal grill in an area where a sign said it wasn't allowed. This incident was captured on video and quickly went viral, sparking a national conversation about racial bias but, more importantly, it provided an opportunity for Americans to express their antipathy towards racists by making fun of the poor creature. And I was one of them.
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SJA Yearbook Photos
| By: Paul S. Cilwa | Occurred: 3/11/1969 Posted: 4/15/2024 |
Page Views: 396 | |
| Topics: #Autobiography #StJosephAcademy #StAugustine | |||
| Our official class portraits…restored and colorized! | |||
Although I was the high school yearbook photographer, I did not take the senior class photos. A professional did that, of course. And so I never got the photos. But I do have a copy of the yearbook; and two years ago I began the process of scanning the halftone images from the pages; removing noise (like the halftone dots), colorizing each image, and finally replacing the background with a cleaner portrait backdrop. I hope someone appreciates this!
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Oratorical Contest
| By: Paul S. Cilwa | Occurred: 3/1/1969 Posted: 4/14/2024 |
Page Views: 164 | |
| Topics: #Autobiography #StJosephAcademy #StAugustine | |||
| My schoolmates, declaiming. | |||
I have no idea who sponsored it or why, but my high school yearbook says this was an Oratorical Contest. But it looks like it had a lot of enthusiastic participation! (How was I not in this? I don't even remember being asked!)
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Varsity Cheerleaders
| By: Paul S. Cilwa | Occurred: 2/17/1969 Posted: 4/11/2024 |
Page Views: 131 | |
| Topics: #Autobiography #StJosephAcademy #VarsityCheerleaders #Cheerleaders | |||
| You gotta love the enthusiasm! | |||
As yearbook photographer, one of my assignments was taking photos of the varsity cheerleaders. These girls were the most popular so this was pretty much my only chance to interact with them; and I made the most of it! (Well, so did they!)
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St Joseph Academy Activities
| By: Paul S. Cilwa | Occurred: 2/1/1969 Posted: 4/11/2024 |
Page Views: 229 | |
| Topics: #Autobiography #StJosephAcademyyearbook | |||
| My school had lots of things for the kids to do. And I took photos of them. | |||
Like every high school, St. Joseph Academy had various clubs and offices so we kids could learn to govern ourselves. At the time, it just seemed like time-fillers; but, of course, now I realize we were learning skills then that would apply to our adult lives. As yearbook photographer, I had the assignment of photographing the various clubs and their officers. Not all the photos made it into the yearbook, so some of these are being seen for the first time!
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73
| By: Paul S. Cilwa | Occurred: 4/8/2024 |
Page Views: 415 | |
| Topics: #Autobiography | |||
| I am now in my prime, as 73 is a prime number. | |||
The number 73 holds a unique place in mathematics and popular culture. As a prime number, it is significant because it can only be divided by 1 and itself, making it a building block in the realm of numbers. Its the 21st prime number, and interestingly, its mirror, 37, is the 12th prime number1. This mirroring relationship is part of what makes 73 special.ppIn popular culture, 73 is known as the Sheldon prime in reference to the character Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory, who claims its the best number because it combines several mathematical properties. Its also the smallest natural number with twelve letters in its spelled-out name in English. And, last but not least, it is the age I just turned today.
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A Groovy Trip Down Memory Lane
| By: Paul S. Cilwa | Occurred: 12/1/1968 Posted: 4/8/2024 |
Page Views: 540 | |
| Topics: #Autobiography #StJosephAcademy | |||
| Just some random memories triggered by photos of old school chums. | |||
In going through the yearbook photos I took, there are a small number of candids, just random shots of classmates I took since I had the camera anyway. And looking through them now, I find those little mind-movies playing as I recall those long-ago days.
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Ring Day
| By: Paul S. Cilwa | Occurred: 9/20/1968 Posted: 4/7/2024 |
Page Views: 272 | |
| Topics: #Autobiography #StJosephAcademy #StAugustine | |||
| The day some of us received our class rings. | |||
So, one day on or near September 20th, we had Ring Day. This is the day we receive the class rings we've ordered…if we ordered one. They were coveted but not required. My family couldn't afford one, so this is an AI photo of a generic one. But I got to attend the ceremony anyway, to record it for the yearbook.
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AI Art LOLs
| By: Paul S. Cilwa | Posted: 4/5/2024 |
Page Views: 374 | |
| Topics: #Autobiography #Art #AIArt | |||
| Well, the computer won't just "do it for you." | |||
About a year after we were introduced to AI-generated art, I see the online world divided into two camps: The ones who now think every image, especially if it conflicts with their prejudices, is an AI-generated fake, and those who've started using it to bring their wildest notions into a kind of alternate visual reality. My approach, is different, however; I see AI as just another tool in my painter's kit. My paint is pixels; my canvas, your screen. AI is just one of my brushes, along with traditional digital graphics apps. As such, I don't expect it to do the whole job for me (although when it does, it's awesome!) but rather, I ask it to compose elements I then incorporate into the final image. But even then I don't always get what I want; and, sometimes, the spurious results are hilarious.
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The Cross and Mary Joan
| By: Paul S. Cilwa | Occurred: 4/10/1969 Posted: 4/5/2024 |
Page Views: 424 | |
| Topics: #Autobiography #StAugustine #MaryJoan #MissiondeNombredeDios #GreatCross | |||
| To say the Cross overlooked everything in town would not be an understatement. | |||
To say that Catholicism permeated my town of St. Augustine would be an understatement. It had, of course, been founded by a Catholic conquerer, Don Pedro Menendez of Spain. I had attended Cathedral Parish (Catholic) elementary school; I now attended St. Joseph Academy, a Cathloic high school. Of course, I went to Mass every Sunday plus many weekdays as an altar boy. And we had a giant Cross looking over our shoulders at everything we did, so big that on any overcast night its sky shadows dominated the whole town.
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