The Laundromat Library is Back! (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 WiseWebWoman.         

• Battery
  Remain
  Age
  Bite
  Produce
  Workshop
  Forest
  Critic
  

A whole BATTERY of studies have shown that if you get the Love-of-Reading Bug to BITE a child at an early AGE, you'll get a person who will REMAIN a reader and learner when s/he grows up.

That's where the Laundromat Library League program comes in.  You don't have to PRODUCE a fancy WORKSHOP to teach parents to induce that love of reading, just get parents to read to their kids.

The LLL puts small libraries of donated children's books in laundromats, to encourage parents to read to their children while waiting for the laundry to be done instead of handing them a screen to play on.

It's also been shown that children love to be read to by people they know and love best, it encourages them to want to read for themselves.

When we first put up the one at the laundromat we use, it was fabulous.  People would even take books home and leave others, which is encouraged.  Adults started their own section of books in one of the boxes without us saying a word.  It was a joy.

Then Covid made us put it away, wrapped in plastic on a shelf at the top of the laundromat office.

Now it's back and if you want to be a CRITIC of my excitement or rain on my parade, then you simply don't see the FOREST as you're looking at too many individual trees.

Encourage your laundromats to put in such libraries, encourage the parents who come in to use them, and let's raise up a generation of readers.

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Today is:

Africa Day / African Liberation Day  -- African Union; related observance

     Heroes' Day -- Lesotho

     President Yajya Jammeh's Birthday -- Gambia

First Patriotic Government / National Day -- Argentina (Dia de la Revolucion de Mayo)

Flitting Day -- parts of England; Scotland (traditional day on which leases were up for the year and people moved)

Geek Pride Day / Nerd Pride Day -- celebrate the geek / nerd in you!  Geek culture is the obvious choice to laud when it's Glorious 25 May, Star Wars Day, and Towel Day at the same time; began in Spain as "Día del Orgullo Friki"

Glorious 25 May -- in Terry Pratchett's Discworld

Independence Day -- Jordan(1946)

Liberation Day -- Lebanon

National Brown-Bag-It Day

National Missing Children's Day -- US (promoting awareness of the problem of missing children)    

National Senior Health and Fitness Day -- US (don't let age get in the way of staying healthy!) 

National Tap Dance Day -- US, birth anniversary of Mr. Bojangles

National Wine Day

Offering to Demeter -- Ancient Greek Calendar (date approximate)

Poetry Day -- Florida, US (since 1947, the state legislature declared this for all public schools in the state; if you don't live in Florida, enjoy a poem today, anyway)

Procession of the Statue of Artemis -- Ancient Greek and Roman Calendars, at Ephesus (date approximate, but always near the Thargelia)

Self-Reliance Day -- an internet originated holiday, based on the idea that we should all become more self-reliant in this day when it is a dying art.

Star Wars Day -- Part IV, A New Hope was released this date in 1977

St. Bede the Venerable's Day (Patron of lectors; Father of English History)

St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi's Day (Patron of the ill; against illness and sexual temptation)

Towel Day -- Douglas Adams fans, unite!  Always know where your towel is.   

Week of Solidarity with the People of Non-Self-Governing Territories begins -- United Nations

Anniversary Today:

Lord Guildford Dudley marries Lady Jane Grey, 1553

Birthdays Today:

Brian Urlacher, 1978

Ethan Suplee, 1976

Lauryn Hill, 1975

Justin Henry, 1971

Jamie Kennedy, 1970

Anne Heche, 1969

Stacy London, 1969

Mike Myers, 1963

Connie Sellecca, 1955

Jessi Colter, 1947

Karen Valentine, 1947

Frank Oz, 1944

Leslie Uggams, 1943

Ian McKellen, 1939

Raymond Carver, 1938

Tom T. Hall, 1936

K.C. Jones, 1932

Beverly Sills, 1929

Robert Ludlum, 1927

Miles Davis, 1926

Jeanne Crain, 1925

Claude Akins, 1918

James Joseph "Gene" Tunney, 1898

Igor Sikorsky, 1889

Philip Murray, 1886

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, 1878

John Alexander Dowie, 1847

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803

Debuting/Premiering Today:

Wonder Woman(Film), 2017

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi(Film), 1983

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope(Film), 1977

"The Subject Was Roses"(Play), 1964

"H.M.S. Pinafore"(Comic Opera), 1878 

Today in History:

First recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet, BC240

Alfonso VI of Castile  takes Toledo, Spain back from the Moors, 1085

Henry the Navigator is appointed governor of the Order of Christ, 1420

The Diet of Worms ends when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw, 1521

Richard Cromwell resigns as Lord Protector of England following the restoration of the Long Parliament, beginning a second brief period of the republican government called the Commonwealth of England, 1659

Jews are expelled from Warsaw by Marshall Mniszek, 1784

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates convene a Constitutional Convention to write a new Constitution for the United States, 1787

In the May Revolution, citizens of Buenos Aires expel the Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros during the Semana de Mayo, 1810

The Patriots of Lower Canada (Quebec) rebel against the British for freedom, 1837

The first telegraphed news dispatch is published in Baltimore Patriot, 1844

Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore opens at the Opera Comique in London, 1878

The Republic of Formosa is formed, with Tang Ching-sung as the president, 1895

John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in Tennessee, 1925

Henry Ford stops production of the Model T to begin the Model A, 1927

Jesse Owens of Ohio State University breaks five world records and ties a sixth at the Big Ten Conference Track and Field  Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1935

The first ascent of Kangchenjunga (8,586 m.), the third highest mountain in the world, by a British expedition, 1955

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Organisation of African Unity is established, 1963

Star Wars (retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in 1981) is released in theaters, inspiring the Jediism religion and Geek Pride Day holiday, 1977

Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge, which kills approximately 10,000 people, 1985

Israel withdraws its army from most of the Lebanese territory after 22 years of its first invasion, 2000

32-year-old Erik Weihenmayer, of Boulder, Colorado, becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, 2001

Oprah Winfrey airs her last show, 2011

The first commercial spacecraft, SpaceX Dragon, docks with the International Space Station, completing the maneuver at 12:02pm EDT, 2012

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg receives an honorary degree from Harvard University, after dropping out in 2004, 2017 

Mia Mottley, of the Barbados Labour Party, becomes the first female Prime Minister of Barbados, 2018

China’s Wolong National Nature Reserve releases the first footage of an albino panda ever taken in the wild, 2019