Memorial Day Displays (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 Charlotte/Mother Owl on her blog.     

This week's words are

Debt

Impression

Perception

Grocery

Lake

Tale

and/or

Height

Passion

Security

Movie

Sample

Wealth

Lest i give you the IMPRESSION that all my work is drudgery, how about a TALE of my day with Ms. D yesterday.

Someone once asked me what i do, and i answered, cleaning, cooking, babysitting, pet-sitting, laundry, errands, shopping, plant watering, limited gardening, or most anything else i can turn my hand to (i've polished silver and balanced checkbooks when called upon).  With excellent PERCEPTION she said, "It sounds like you do anything legal."

While i would add it needs to be moral as well, i mostly agree with the assessment, and yesterday was an example, but part of yesterday's adventure started last Saturday.

Among the letters that showed up in our mailbox last Saturday was one to a person who is not one of us.  In fact, it's not anyone who has ever lived here.  The address was actually across town, in a different zip code, and how that ended up here i will never understand, but there it was, in our mailbox, and on a Saturday long after the post offices closed for both Sunday and the Memorial Day holiday.

What put me in a bit of a PASSION about it is not to whom the letter was addressed (it was someone i don't know), but the fact that it was from The IRS.

Yes, the dreaded Internal Revenue Service, the people you probably least want to hear from unless you are in DEBT with someone who goes by the name "Knuckles" and has a propensity to break limbs, and not his own.

What makes it worse is that The IRS considers proof that they have mailed something to you as being the same as proving that you received it.  The fact that this man's IRS letter was in my mailbox all the way across town shows how false that is, but i really wanted to get it back to him as quickly as possible, and i was loathe to hand it back to the tender mercies of the same Post Office that sent it to the wrong place to begin.

Enter yesterday and Ms. D, my every-other-Tuesday client.  She called Monday and said she needed to run an errand and was concerned about doing it herself.  Her husband was career military, and she is therefore, as his widow, a military dependent, and it's getting close to time for her to get her new military ID.  She asked me if i know where the place is that you go, out on that end of town, and could i go with her as well as help her with her GROCERY shopping at the club store.

Of course i know where it is, it's right out there where Little Girl used to go for weekend drill when she was still in high school and, guess what!  It's just a few blocks from where that IRS letter was supposed to actually end up.

Time for an adventure!

Bright and early Tuesday morning i showed up and we had a plan.  We would go in my car all the way out to the military place, then drop off the letter, come back and get her car to go shopping since her car holds more stuff and those club store purchases can take up a lot of space.

We set out across town in good spirits, got out to that area past the small LAKE and found the drill field and the area associated with it.  Through the gate, around to the back to the buildings, and ... it was locked.  The sign on the door said it was open, but no one was there.

A nice chaplain was there for a meeting, he let us in, and another nice sergeant told us that one lady who ran that office was out sick and the other had car trouble that morning, she was trying to get to work by noon.  Also, they're going to be closing for 3 weeks starting this Thursday.

Because her ID doesn't actually expire for a few more months, we have time and we decided this wasn't our day, but i'll bring her back next month.  Meanwhile, we now know where to go, and it was off to the next adventure.

Down the road and across the highway was a subdivision with our destination.  We found the street with no trouble, but so many houses don't have the house number on them that it took a few minutes to figure out which was the correct home.

This is a working class part of town, not the HEIGHT of WEALTH nor the depths of some of the worse neighborhoods i've seen.  The home in question had the SECURITY of one of those Ring Doorbell devices that records anyone who comes on the porch.  Holding up the letter so it could clearly be seen in any video, i rang the bell, got no answer, and so stuffed the letter into the door where it would not blow away and it would be easy to find when someone came home.

Now i just hope i don't end up online in a video, like a mini-MOVIE, with the homeowner asking on the Nextdoor App, "Hey, does anyone know this crazy person who came and delivered a letter to my house?"  There are worse things, i guess, at least i was trying to do a good deed for the day.

We drive right past our own neighborhood to get back near the club store, so we stopped to trade cars (and use the restroom -- never pass up the opportunity to take a nap or use the restroom!).  Then off to buy oranges and cold drinks and a new electric toothbrush and taste what the SAMPLE ladies were giving out at the big club store where Ms. G and i often go on Wednesday.

Ms. D had a great time telling me all about how to look for the items that are marked down or on sale, and once we'd woven our way around and back again, we took everything to her place where i unloaded and put things away.  She plied me with oranges and cookies and sent me home.

It's not a typical day of vacuuming and scrubbing toilets and mopping floors, but sometimes it's nice to do something different.

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Today is:

Arrival of the Swiss at the Port-Noir -- Switzerland

Clean Air Day -- Canada

Dia da Crianca -- Cape Verde (Youth Day)

Dia de la Marina -- Mexico (Day of the Navy)

Early Bird Day -- an internet derived day that reminds us the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese

Famadihana -- Madagascar (from now until November, various areas celebrate the Malagasay culture's "turning the bones," a fascinating reburial of the dead ceremony)

Feast of St. Justin Martyr (a/k/a Justin the Philosopher; Patron of apologists, lecturers, orators, philosophers, speakers)

Festival of Non-Linearity -- another one you find on the internet, no meaning or rhyme to it, but if you like to think in non-linear ways, enjoy today!

Festival of the Oak Nymph -- Celtic/Pagan (around this time of year, the Celts took a day to honor all hamadryads, the female nature spirits who inhabit oak trees)

Flip a Coin Day -- as noted by The Ultimate Holiday Site, which claims Julius Caesar invented it (doubtful, but the Romans did toss coins)

Gawai Dayak -- Sarawak, Malaysia (harvest festival begins today)

Global Day of Parents -- UN

Go Barefoot Day -- originally sponsored by Soles4Souls, which recycles shoes to those who have none; while i cannot find if they are sponsoring a day or week this year, it's a good reminder not to let your old shoes end up in a landfill   

Hari Lahir Pancasila -- Indonesia (Pancasila Day)

Heimlich Maneuver Day -- Dr. Heimlich first published his suggestion for aiding choking victims with "subdiaphragmatic pressure" on this day in 1974

Helen Keller Day -- sponsored by the Lions Clubs

Hen-Peeler's Holiday -- Fairy Calendar

Independence Day/National Day -- Samoa

International Children's Day

International Tabletop Day -- encouraging people to play games on a table, not online, face to face; formerly sponsored by Geek and Sundry  \

Kalends of June -- Ancient Roman Calendar; related observances:

     Day Sacred to Tempestas (goddess of storms)

     Festival for Juno Moneta (Juno as goddess of money)

     Festival of Carna (goddess of health and vitality, and also of doors and locks, which were to be repaired today)

Madaraka Day -- Kenya (National Day or self-rule/responsibility day)

Mint Julip Day -- Oxford University, England (the drink was introduced there this day in 1845, and they liked it so well, they dedicated a day to it!)

Mothers' and Children's Day -- Mongolia

National Hazelnut Cake Day

National Tree Planting Day -- Cambodia

Oscar the Grouch Day -- according to the Sesame Workshop, today is his birthday

Pancasila Sanctity Day -- Indonesia

President's Day -- Palau

Say Something Nice Day -- as declared by the mayor of a town in South Carolina who is tired of all the negative talk all the time

Stand for Children Day -- stand.org founded by a rally this day in 1996, seeking to ensure all children graduate from high school

St. Theobald Roggeri's Day (Patron of church cleaners, cobblers, porters, shoemakers; against fever and sterility)

Summer Library Book Club Season begins -- anywhere that school is out, check your local library for a summer book club for children or adults; you never know what world you will discover when you read

Superman Day -- publication of the first Superman comic was this day in 1938

Tailor's Day -- the first Wednesday of June is noted on many sites as the day to thank your tailor

Victory Day -- Tunisia (anniversary of the Adoption of the Constitution of Tunisia in 1959)

Yobuko Otsunahiki -- Higashi Matsuura, Saga prefecture, Japan (two-day Big Tug-of-War Festival, with one team representing the land and the other the sea; victory for the land means good crops, for the sea means good catches)

Anniversaries Today:

Charlie Chaplin marries Paulette Goddard, 1934

Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, is founded as the first US land-grant university, 1808

Tennessee becomes the 16th US state, 1796

Kentucky becomes the 15th US state, 1792

Anne Boleyn is crowned Queen Consort of England, 1533

Birthdays Today:

Justine Henin, 1982

Alanis Morissette, 1974

Heidi Klum, 1973

Mark Curry, 1964

Lisa Hartman Black, 1956

Ron Wood, 1947

Jonathan Pryce, 1947

Frederica von Stade, 1945

Robert Powell, 1944

Rene Auberjonois, 1940

Cleavon Little, 1939

Morgan Freeman, 1937

Colleen McCullough, 1937

Pat Boone, 1934

Edward Woodward, 1930

James Hadley Billington, 1929

Bob Monkhouse, 1928

Andy Griffith, 1926

Marilyn Monroe, 1926

Nelson Riddle, 1921

Brigham Young, 1801

Jacques Marquette (Père Marquette), 1637

Debuting/Premiering Today:

FX(TV channel), 1994

Gremlins(Film), 1984

Cable News Network/CNN(TV network), 1980

"Live and Let Die"(Song release), 1973

"The Prisoner"(TV), 1968

"Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"(Album release), 1967

Today in History:

Hugh Capet is elected King of France, 987

Beijing, then under the control of the Jurchen ruler Emperor Xuanzong of Jin, is captured by the Mongols  under Genghis Khan, ending the Battle of Beijing, 1215

Friar John Cor records the first known batch of scotch whisky, 1495

Anne Boleyn is crowned Queen of England, 1533

Mary Dyer is hanged for defying a law banning Quakers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1660

The battle of the Glorious First of June is fought, the first naval engagement between Britain and France during the French Revolutionary Wars, 1794

U.S. President James Madison asks the Congress to declare war on the United Kingdom, 1812

James Lawrence, the mortally-wounded commander of the USS Chesapeake, gives his final order: "Don't give up the ship!" 1813

James Clark Ross discovers the North Magnetic Pole, 1831

American adventurer William Walker conquers Nicaragua, 1855

Treaty of Bosque Redondo is signed allowing the Navajos to return to their lands in Arizona and New Mexico, 1868

Thomas Edison receives a patent for his electric voting machine, 1869

Napoleon Eugene, the last dynastic Bonaparte, is killed in the Anglo-Zulu War, 1879

The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine to count census returns, 1890

Louis D. Brandeis becomes the first Jew appointed to the United States Supreme Court, 1916

The First Conference of the Communist Parties of Latin America is held in Buenos Aires, 1929

Charles de Gaulle comes out of retirement to lead France by decree for six months, 1958

New Zealand's first official television broadcast commences at 7.30pm from Auckland, 1960

Kenya gains internal self-rule (Madaraka Day), 1963

The Heimlich maneuver for rescuing choking victims is published in the journal Emergency Medicine, 1974

The first black-led government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 90 years takes power, 1979

The Warsaw Pact officially dissolves, 1991

Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupts for the first time in 600 years, 1991

Air France Flight 447 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil, Killing all 228 passengers and crew, 2009

General Motors files for chapter 11 bankruptcy, 2009

Russia enacts a country-wide smoking ban, effecting most public places, 2013

Switzerland’s Gotthard Base Tunnel is completed - world’s longest at 57km and most expensive tunnel costing €11bn, 2016

Prehistoric carvings of deer, between 4,000 and 5,000 years old, are found at Kilmartin Glen, Argyll, Scotland, 2021