Wisdom (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday, an A to Z Post

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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 me and can be found right here.

Please do not feel obligated to use all the words or prompts, or even any of them.  This is supposed to be fun, a way to get the creative juices flowing.

If you do write a story on your own blog, please leave us a link so we can come read it!

This week's prompts are

behavior

comfortable

bubble

pluck

share

ton

and/or

bear

conversation

line

action

quality

carrot

"She's got PLUCK, I'll give her that," someone said, watching from a COMFORTABLE distance as she approached the boss everyone called The BEAR, at least when his back was turned.

John was the most difficult person to work with in the whole company.  He'd gone through more personal assistants than HR wanted to think about, leaving an unbroken LINE of people exclaiming, "Never again."  He believed in using a stick instead of a CARROT, and his BEHAVIOR was always gruff.  Any ACTION or work not up to his standard of QUALITY brought out the worst in him, and his worst was not something anyone wanted to see.

When Shanon applied for the job, the hiring manager had been quite forthcoming in their CONVERSATION.  "I'm going to start by bursting your BUBBLE of excitement about being considered for this job," he'd told her.  "You are asking for the hardest job in the place.  John is the drive behind most of the success of this company, and he drives everyone here, some of them around the bend.  He's notoriously difficult to work with and for, and you need to really think about whether you want this job.  If you do, it's yours, but remember you were warned."

Shanon had decided at that moment, "There is only love."  She refused to think a single critical thought of John, refused to SHARE in any complaint about him, and wouldn't listen when others criticized him.  She expected to come in for a TON of teasing by others about being a "goody-goody," but it never happened.  The rest of the staff respected her ability to work with him and be his assistant.  They marveled at the fact that she actually liked him.

It served her well once he retired, he proposed her as his replacement.

(Based on a true story.)

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Today is:

Abolition Day -- Mayotte

Administrative Professionals Day -- US

Babe Ruth Day -- anniversary of the day dedicated to him in 1947 by every ball field in the US and Japan

Freedom Day -- South Africa

Furze-Hopping Event -- Fairy Calendar

Independence Day -- Sierra Leone(1961); Togo(1960)

International Guide Dog Day

King's Birthday / Koningsdag -- Kingdom of the Netherlands (Aruba, Curacao, Netherlands, and Sint Maartin); Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba

Matanzas Mule Day -- remembering the only casualty of one of the first naval actions of the Spanish-American War, a mule in the village of Matanzas, Cuba

Morse Code Day -- birth anniversary of Samuel Morse

National Prime Rib Day

National War Veterans Day -- Finland

Resistance Day/Day of the Uprising Against the Occupying Forces -- Slovenia

St. Zita of Lucca's Day (Patron of butlers, domestic servants, homemakers, housemaids, lost keys, maids, manservants, people ridiculed for their piety, rape victims, servants, servers, single laywomen, waiters/waitpersons/waitresses; against losing keys)

Tell a Story Day -- US (no history of origin, although celebrated in many libraries)

The Ennead Sail Through the Land -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)

Walk @ Lunch Day -- founded and encouraged by Blue Cross / Blue Shield

World Graphic Design Day

World Tapir Day 

Write An Old Friend Today Day -- a real letter, in the mail, remember how exciting it is to get those?

Yom HaShoah -- Judaism (Holocaust Remembrance Day; begins at sunset)

Anniversaries Today:

Ringo Starr marries Barbara Bach, 1981

Cornell University is established as New York's land grant institution, 1865

Birthdays Today:

Patrick Stump, 1984

William-Alexander, King of the Netherlands, 1967

Sheena Easton, 1959

Ace Frehley, 1951

Cuba Gooding, Sr., 1944

Earl Anthony, 1938

Sandy Dennis, 1937

Anouk Aimee, 1932

Casey Kasem, 1932

Coretta Scott King, 1927

Jack Klugman, 1922

Walter Lantz, 1900

Sergei Prokofiev, 1891

Jessie Redmon Fauset, 1882

Ulysses S. Grant, 1822

Samuel Morse, 1791

Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759

Edward Gibbon, 1737

Suleiman the Magnificent, 1495

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Chips with Everything"(Play), 1962

"Le roi de Lahore/The king of Lahore"(Opera), 1877

"Roméo et Juliette"(Opera), 1867

"L'africaine/The African Woman"(Meyerbeer Opera), 1865

Today in History:

Ferdinand Magellan is killed by natives in the Philippines led by chief Lapu-Lapu, 1521

Re-founding of the city of Bogotá, New Granada (now Colombia), by Nikolaus Federmann and Sebastián de Belalcázar, 1539

Cebu is established as the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines, 1565

The blind and impoverished John Milton sells the copyright of Paradise Lost for £10, 1667

The British Parliament passes the Tea Act, 1773

Beethoven composes Für Elise, 1810

US troops capture the capital of Upper Canada, York  (present day Toronto, Canada), 1813

The Foundation stone for new Palace of Westminster, London, is laid, 1840

The establishment of Jewish congregations in Lower Austria is prohibited, 1857

The steamboat Sultana, carrying 2,400 passengers, explodes and sinks in the Mississippi River, killing 1,700, most of whom are Union survivors of the Andersonville and Cahaba Prisons, 1865

In South Africa, the Group Areas Act is passed formally segregating races, 1950

Togo gains independence from French-administered UN trusteeship, 1960

Sierra Leone is granted its independence from the United Kingdom, 1961

Expo 67  officially opens in Montreal, Canada, 1967

Xerox PARC introduces the computer mouse, 1981

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, comprising Serbia and Montenegro, is proclaimed, 1992

Betty Boothroyd becomes the first woman to be elected Speaker of the British House of Commons in its 700-year history, 1992

Russia and 12 other former Soviet republics become members of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, 1992

The first democratic general election in South Africa, in which black citizens could vote is held, 1994

The last successful telemetry from the NASA space probe Pioneer 10 is received, 2002

The superjumbo jet aircraft Airbus A380 makes its first flight from Toulouse, France, 2005

Construction begins on the Freedom Tower for the new World Trade Center in New York City, 2006

Estonian authorities remove the Bronze Soldier, a Soviet Red Army war memorial in Tallinn, amid political controversy with Russia, 2007

The widows and children of the deceased Osama bin Laden are deported from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, 2012

North Korea's Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in of South Korea agree to officially end the Korean war and rid the peninsula of nuclear weapons, 2018