No Substitute (Six Sentence Story) and White Picket (Good Fences)

“‘Measure with my hand, use no substitute, from the floor three up, from the left four across, then the key’ — what?” Jonathan asked.

He, Buddy and Julia were in the back portion of the basement, Buddy bending himself almost in half to keep from knocking his head on the ceiling.

The musical code had sent them down there, with Julia admitting that since she had taken possession of her Grandfather’s house, this was the place where she had done the least cleaning and repair.  “There could be anything down here,” she said, then added with a laugh, “and knowing my Grandfather, there probably is!”

“It’s easy enough to measure up from the floor and to the left from where the walls meet, but his hand?” Jonathan mused.

“His conducting baton, remember, he always said it was his second hand,” Buddy answered.

Linking up with Zoe's Uncharted Blog, where she hosts Six Sentence Stories, and the cue is Substitute.

***********************************

Gosia, of Looking for Identity, has taken over Good Fences, and it's now Good Fences Around The World.  Post a picture of a fence or gate, link back to her blog, and go visit others to see what interesting fences there are out in this big world.

For some reason, i love white picket fences.  They just symbolize “home” to me.

Even though i've never had one, i love these fences!

Today is:

All Souls' Day -- Christian (celebrations in Ecuador are among the most colorful; 2nd of the Dias de los Muertos in Mexico) related observances:

    Dead Relatives' Day -- Sicily

    Dia de Finados -- Brazil; Portugal

Aztec Day of the Dead -- Ancient Aztec Calendar (date approximate)

Balfour Declaration Day -- Israel

Bon Om Touk -- Cambodia (a/k/a The Water Festival, it is Cambodia's largest party, always held for two days around the time of the full moon in November)

Cookie Monster's Birthday -- go have a cookie to celebrate! (but only after your dinner, as Cookie Monster now points out; boy, things have changed)

Coronation of Haile Selassie -- Rastafarian

Dveselu Diena -- Ancient Latvian Calendar (day for families to gather with the spirits of their ancestors at the graveyard to celebrate the continuity of life)

Festival of Hathor -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)

Indian Arrival Day / Arrival of Indentured Laborers' Day -- Mauritius

International Day to End Impunity -- International (calling for the ending impunity for crimes against journalists and media workers) 

Karatsu Kunchi -- Karatsu and Saga, Japan

Look for Circles Day -- internet generated, and we run in circles looking for who created it and why!

Men Make Dinner Day -- BBQ is not allowed, but you can go to menmakedinnerday.com for ideas

National Deviled Egg Day

National Traffic Directors Day -- meaning radio and TV traffic directors, who always schedule your favorite shows when you just can't watch, and put more and more commercials in when they can; on the anniversary of the first commercial radio broadcast in Pittsburgh in 1922, sponsored by the Traffic Directors Guild of America 

Ohara-Matsuri Festival -- Kagoshima, Japan (one of Japan's largest autumn festivals, with 22,000+ dancers in the parade; through tomorrow)

Potting-Shed Investitures -- Fairy Calendar (Garden Fairies)

Plan Your Epitaph Day -- sponsored by Dead or Alive of Arcata, CA, because a forgettable epitaph is almost a fate worse than death, so make plans to do yours right!

Practice Being Psychic Day -- but you already knew that, didn't you?

Refuse to Capitalize the First Letters in Your Name Day -- k.d.lang's birth anniversary

Soulcaker's Play -- Cheshire, UK

St Eustachius' Day  (Patron of difficult situations, fire prevention, firefighters, hunters and hunting, torture victims, trappers; Madrid, Spain; Poli, Italy; against fire and torture)

Thanksgiving Day -- Liberia

Anniversaries Today:

North Dakota becomes the 39th US State, 1889

South Dakota becomes the 40th US State, 1889

Birthdays Today:

k.d. lang, 1961

Shere Hite, 1942

Stephanie Powers, 1942

Pat Buchanan, 1938

Ray Walston, 1914

Burt Lancaster, 1913

Paul Ford, 1901

Warren G. Harding, 1865

James K. Polk, 1795

Marie Antionette, 1755

Daniel Boone, 1734

Debuting/Premiering Today:

The Spruce Goose makes its first (only) flight, 1947

KDKA Radio Pittsburgh, PA, US makes the first scheduled radio broadcast, of election results, 1920

Today in History:

The Plymouth, Rhode Island, Massachusetts Bay, and Connecticut colonies combine forces and attach the Great Swamp Fort of the Narragansetts during King Philip's War, 1675

The African Free School, the first free school in NYC, opens, 1787

The popular vote for US president is first recorded and Andrew "By God" Jackson (a/k/a Old Hickory) defeats John Quincy Adams, 1824

New Zealand officially adopts a standard time to be observed nationally, 1868

Johnny Campbell officially leads the crowd in cheering at a University of Minnesota football game, the official birth of cheerleading, 1898

The British newspaper the "Daily Mirror" begins publication, 1903

The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" with the clear understanding "that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities", 1917

Charlotte Woodward, who attended the historic Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention of 1848, becomes the only one of the women who attended to live long enough to cast a vote in a national election, 1920

Australia's Qantas Airways begins service, 1922

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is established, 1936

In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden (and only) flight of the Spruce Goose; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built, 1947

Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case, 1960

The Morris worm, the first internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, is launched from MIT, 1988

The International Space Station becomes permanently staffed, 2000

China makes its first orbital docking as its unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft successfully docks with the orbiting Tiangong 1 space station module, 2011

The New York Marathon is cancelled due to the damage from Hurricane Sandy, 2012