This Has To Stop (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday and Sandee at Comedy Plus.     

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Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts to encourage us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.    

This month, the prompts are being provided by Mark Koopmans, and are being posted by Elephant’s Child.           

This week's prompts are:

1. Ghostlike
2. Holly
3. Incidents
4. Joking
5. Kilogram
6. Lactate

And/Or

1. Magnanimous
2. Needles
3. Outboard
4. Particle
5. Quiz
6. Rancor

"Look here, Mark," Uncle Abe said.  "I'm going to have to give this sow a shot to help her LACTATE.  She's birthed the piglets, all right, but we'll lose them if we don't get her making the milk."

Mark, always squeamish around NEEDLES, wasn't sure he wanted any part of this.  He was in for it, though, having been sent to spend the next few weeks at his dad's family's farm.

"Very MAGNANIMOUS of you to take him," Mark's mom had said.  Since he'd never had a PARTICLE of interest in farming, Mark wasn't so sure he'd have used that word.

Still, it was better to be here than back home right now.  Ever since the fire tore through the house, leaving them living out of a hotel room with suitcases gleaned from items they'd salvaged and the donations of friends, he'd felt like he was in the way as his parents navigated working and trying to rebuild.

Nanny and Pappy had welcomed him, as had Uncle Abe and Aunt Judith.  There were no more children around the farm any more, and they'd wanted to spent time with him more than just the every-other-Christmas visits they'd had up until this point.

Uncle Abe told Mark to hold one of the piglets up to the mama and let her be sniffing and licking at it while he slapped her rump a few times then jabbed her with the needle.  The sow squealed and looked back at Uncle Able, with surprise but no RANCOR, then turned again to the baby in front of her.

Since coming to the farm in the previous weeks, Mark had grown used to such INCIDENTS as birthing animals and had learned a little about steering a tractor.  He had learned that KILOGRAMS are real measurements, not just a word that lived in the math book at school to bring him trouble by making him convert measurements from it to pounds.

Last weekend, he'd gotten to enjoy taking the boat with the OUTBOARD motor on the lake to go fishing, and he'd endured Pappy's JOKING around with him when he'd caught the smallest fish of the day.  Then, on his last cast, he'd caught the biggest fish of the day and been able to have the last laugh.  Aunt Judith's fried fish that night was the best he'd ever eaten, for more reasons than one.

He'd also found out that HOLLY bushes hurt if you accidentally run into them trying to back away from a cow.  He'd since made friends with the cow, but not the bushes.

One day they'd gone into town.  It was quiet and GHOSTLIKE to him, compared to the busy city in which he'd always lived.  He was getting used to quiet, though.

The medicine had done the trick and the piglets were happily nursing when Uncle Abe and Mark finally went back into the house to get ready for bed.  The rest of the family were there to QUIZ them on how it had gone, and everyone was satisfied with the outcome.  It had been a great day.

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Today is:

Anniversary of the Arengo and the Feast of the Militants -- San Marino

Annunciation of the Virgin Mary -- Roman Catholic Christian

    Lady Day/Quarter Day -- England; Ireland; Wales (traditional New Year's Day)

    Varfrudagen -- Sweden (waffle day)

Day of the Shining Ones of Heaven move Upstream -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)

Festival of King Amenhotep I -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (rituals depicting his death and burial, performed for the Deir-el-Medina workforce; date approximate)

Hilaria -- Ancient Roman Empire ("Day of Joy", honoring Attis)

Hindu New Year -- Hindu (local custom/date may vary)

    Hari Raya Nyepi Tahun Baru -- Indonesia (New Year in the Balinese Saka calendar)

    Nyepi Day -- Bali, Indonesia (Day of Silence, Balinese New Year/Saka New Year celebration on which everything is closed, even the international airport)

    Ougadi -- Mauritius and some regions of India (the Telugu New Year)

Independence Day -- Cyprus; Greece(1821)

International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade -- UN

International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members -- UN

International Waffle Day -- based on Sweden's tradition of having waffles on Annunciation Day

Little Red Wagon Day

Medal of Honor Day -- US (first one awarded this date in 1963)

Mother's Day -- Slovenia

National Day of Celebration of Greek and American Democracy -- Greece; US

National Lobster Newburg Day

National Pecan Day -- anniversary of George Washington's planting of Pecan trees at Mt. Vernon in 1775

Numbskulls and Clodhoppers' Dance -- Fairy Calendar (i know a couple of people who qualify on both counts; i need to find out how to buy tickets!)

Old New Year's Day -- until 1751, British Empire

Ramayana -- Hindu (through April 2nd; local customs/celebratory dates may vary)

Revolution Day -- Greece (anniversary of the revolt against the Ottoman Empire in 1821)

Sacrifice to Kronos -- Ancient Greek Calendar (private sacrifices to Kronos; date approximate)

St. Dismas' Day ("Dismas" is the name given to the unnamed "Thief on the Cross", crucified next to Jesus according to Biblical accounts, and who repented; Patron of condemned/death row prisoners, funeral directors/undertakers, penitent criminals, prisoners, reformed thieves; Merizo, Guam)

Struggle for Human Rights Day -- Slovakia

The Tichborne Dole - in Alresford, Hampshire, UK; since 1150, a gallon of flour is given to every resident by the Tichborne family head on this day, to avoid a curse

Tolkien Reading Day -- sponsored by The Tolkien Society on the anniversary of the fall of Sauron

Birthdays Today:

Danica Patrick, 1982

Lee Pace, 1979

Sheryl Swoopes, 1971

Sarah Jessica Parker, 1965

Marcia Cross, 1962

John Stockwell, 1961

Mary Gross, 1953

Paul Miles, 1952

Bonnie Bedelia, 1948

Elton John, 1947

Bonnie Bedelia, 1946

Paul Michael Glaser, 1943

Aretha Franklin, 1942

Anita Bryant, 1940

Gloria Steinem, 1934

James Lovell, 1928

Eileen Ford, 1922

Simone Signoret, 1921

Howard Cosell, 1920

Norman Borlaug, 1940

David Lean, 1908

Bela Bartok, 1881

Arturo Toscanini, 1867

Gutzon Borglum, 1867

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Barrymore"(Play), 1997

"Cagney & Lacey"(TV), 1982

Today in History:

The first Easter, according to calendar-maker Dionysius Exiguus, 31

According to legend, Venice, Italy is born today at noon, 421

Richard I is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France, leading to his death on April 6, 1199

Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scotland, 1306

Sir Walter Raleigh renews Humphrey Gilbert's patent to explore North America, 1584

Henry Hudson embarks on an exploration for Dutch East India Co., 1609

Lord Baltimore founds Catholic colony of Maryland, 1634

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christian Huygens, 1655

Mount Etna in Sicily erupts, destroying Nicolosi, killing 20,000, 1669

The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire, 1807

The Swansea and Mumbles Railway in England, then known as the Oystermouth Railway, becomes the first passenger carrying railway in the world, 1807

Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism, 1811

Greeks revolt against the Ottoman Empire, beginning the Greek War of Independence, 1821

In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers, leading to factory reform laws, 1911

The Georgian Orthodox Church restores its autocephaly abolished by Imperial Russia in 1811, 1917

The first successful tornado forecast predicts that a tornado will strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, 1948

The European Economic Community is established (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg), 1957

Canada's Avro Arrow makes its first flight, 1958

Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, 1965

The first fully functional space shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch, 1979

The world's first wiki, a part of the Portland Pattern Repository, is made public by Ward Cunningham, 1995

The European Union's Veterinarian Committee bans the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease, 1996

Protesters demanding a new election in Belarus, following the rigged Belarusian presidential election, clash with riot police, 2006

In southwest China, environmental and health concerns among residents are raised when 1,000 dead ducks pulled from the Sichuan River, 2013

The world's largest banana split ever, at 8,040 metres long, is made in Innisfail, Australia, 2017