An Encouraging Sign for the A to Z Challenge, with Wordless Wednesday and Words for Wednesday

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To enjoy more blogs participating in the A to Z Challenge, click here.     

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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 Elephant's Child.    

This week's prompts are:

1. Stop
2. Reasonable
3. Best
4. Kind
5. Dragon
6. Drinking

And/Or

1. Flower
2. Foster
3. Sing
4. Pieces
5. Darker
6. Thinking

“Mama, why would the DRAGON be DRINKING tea out of a FLOWER petal cup with the princess and the knight?  Jimmy said all the dragons do in stories is capture princesses and eat them, and that the knights have to kill the dragons and steal the treasures back and make them stop.”

Shawna stood with her book open, showing her mother the illustration.  The whimsical scene was pictured just as she’d described it.  On the next page, Mr. Dragon had been persuaded to SING for their entertainment.

For a moment Mama stood, THINKING how best to answer the innocent face standing there looking up at her.  She wasn’t ready to do as her son had done, try to argue the DARKER side of life, with what many would call REASONABLE and mature and responsible ways of looking at the world.

All that would come for the child soon enough.  For now, she could afford to FOSTER a gentler way to see things.  

“It all depends on whose version of the story you believe,” she answered, choosing her words with care.  She felt as if she were putting PIECES of tile together for a mosaic, and she wanted to be careful about how it would look at the end.   

“There have always been those who love war and fighting and who want you to believe that dragons are the enemy, who want to see themselves as tough dragon-fighters.  How do we know there weren’t KIND dragons that lived their lives and never fought a soul?  Maybe they just never got to tell their stories.

“When you hear one side of a story, always STOP and remember there’s another side, and the rest of the story might be the BEST of the story.”

Mama smiled and Shawna smiled back.  “How about we have some tea and cookies ourselves, and I’ll read the story to you,” Mama offered, and was rewarded with a smile and a resounding, “Yes!”

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Today is:

APAWS International Pooper Scooper week -- The Association of Professional Animal Waste Specialists believe every dog should have its day, but not on someone else's lawn!

April Fool's Day  a/k/a Huntingowk Day or Gowkie Day in Scotland, because an April Fool is called a gowk; in England it is All Fools Day or April Noddy Day, as an April fool is a "noddy"

Azalea Festival -- Muskogee, OK, US (month long celebration with citywide events throughout)

Capture of Brielle Remembrance -- Brielle, Netherlands

Civil Service Day -- Thailand

Community Spirit Days -- an open invitation, all month long, for any town or community to involve itself in a special service project

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

Edible Book Day -- Sponsored by the Edible Book Festival, Austin, TX, US (celebrating books and culinary creativity by making edible representations of books, then eating them)

Fossil Fools Day -- part of the conservationist movement of many organizations that want us to decrease reliance on fossil fuels and stop corporate polluters

Greek Cypriot Day -- Cyprus (EOKA Day)

International Fun at Work Day -- originally sponsored by Playfair, which encourages non-foolish humor that is non-toxic 

International Tatting Day

Investiture of the New Captains Regent -- San Marino (sometimes listed as National Day)

Kalends of April -- Ancient Roman Empire; also

    Festival of Fortuna Virilis -- Fortune in her role of bringing luck to women who want better relationships with men

    Veneralia -- ritual yearly washing of the statue of Venus

Kha b-Nisan -- Assyrians (traditional New Year celebration)

Loki's Day -- by some calculations, but more likely it was moved to this date to celebrate the trickster of all time on the trickiest day of the year

Miyako Odori -- Kobu Kaburenjo Theatre, Kyoto, Japan ("Dance of the Old Capital", the highly anticipated geisha dance and music festival, through the 30th)

National Day of Hope -- US; recognizing victims of child abuse and neglect, a day to recommit to make the world safe for children

National Sourdough Bread Day

National Walking Day -- US 

Orissa Day -- Orissa, India

One Cent Day -- no history on this, just noted on several sites

Paraprofessional Appreciation Day -- honoring the contributions of paraprofessionals everywhere

Pigasus Award Announcement Day -- by James Randi, awarded to parapsychological, paranormal or psychic frauds

Reading is Funny Day -- a day to read riddles, jokes, and fun things with kids to show them how great reading can be

School Year Begins -- Japan, most schools and universities

Sizdeh Be-dar -- Iran (Nature Day, an ancient Persian celebration to get out and joyfully spend the day outdoors)

Sorry Charlie Day -- a day to recognize Charlie the Tuna, always rejected but never giving up, and anyone who has ever been rejected and lived to tell about it

St. Gilbert de Moray's Day (Patron of Caithness, Scotland)

St. Stupid's Day (First Church of the Last Laugh) 

Tree Loving Week begins -- South Korea (always the week that includes April 5, their Arbor Day)

Uzupis Day -- Uzupis District, Vilnius, Lithuania

Anniversaries Today:

Nunavut becomes Canada's third independent territory, 1999

Jim Bakker marries Tammy Faye LaValley, 1961

Birthdays Today:

Randy Orton, 1980

Jon Gosselin, 1977

Rachel Maddow, 1973

Susan Boyle, 1961

Libby Riddles, 1956

Annette O’Toole, 1953

Samuel A. Alito, Jr, 1950

David Eisenhower, 1947

Daniel Joseph “Rusty” Staub, 1944

Ali MacGraw, 1938

Gordon Jump, 1932

Debbie Reynolds, 1932

Jane Powell, 1929

Anne McCaffrey, 1926

Toshiro Mifune, 1920

Abraham Maslow, 1908

Clara "Mother" Hale, 1905

Lon Chaney, 1883

Sergei Rachmaninoff, 1873

Otto von Bismarck, 1815

William Harvey, 1578

Emperor Go-Saga of Japan, 1220

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"The Will Rogers Follies"(Musical), 1991

"General Hospital"(TV), 1963

"The Doctors"(TV), 1963

"Der blaue Engel/The Blue Angel"(Film; premier of Marlene Dietrich), 1930

Today in History:

The ruins of the city of Pompeii are found, 1748

Japan's volcano Unsen erupts, killing about 53,000, 1793

Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine, 1826

Cincinnati becomes the first US city to pay firefighters, 1853

Singapore, Penang & Malakka become British crown colonies, 1867

The London-Paris telephone connection is opened, 1891

The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago, Illinois, 1891

The Royal Air Force is created by the merger of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service, 1918

The Royal Canadian Air Force is formed, 1924

Generalisimo Frederico Franco announces the end of the Spanish Civil War, 1939

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake near the Aleutian Islands creates a tsunami that strikes Hawai'i, killing 159, 1946

The twenty-six counties of the Irish Free State become the Republic of Ireland, 1949

The Canadian government repeals Japanese Canadian internment after seven years, 1949

The BBC broadcasts the spaghetti tree hoax on its current affairs programme Panorama, 1957

Project Tiger, a tiger conservation program, is launched in the Corbett National Park, India, 1973

Apple Inc. is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, 1976

The Halifax Regional Municipality in Nova Scotia is created, 1996

Comet Hale-Bopp is seen passing over perihelion, 1997

Nunavut is established as a Canadian territory carved out of the eastern part of the Northwest Territories, 1999

Croatia and Albania join NATO, 2009

The world’s first smelling TV screen is unveiled in Japan, 2013

Bob Dylan receives his Nobel Prize for Literature at a private ceremony in Stockholm, 2017

The discovery of a major archaeological site on a reef in the middle of Lake Titicaca, in the Andes, and dating to the 8th and 10th centuries AD, is announced, 2019

For the first time ever, online sales in the US overtake retail brick and mortar store sales, with 11.813% online compared with 11.807% for general merchandise stores, 2019