Not Today (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, Sandee at Comedy Plus, and BeThere2Day.     

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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. Life
2. Lost
3. Told
4. Wild
5. Silence 
   

And/Or

1. Year
2. Enchanted
3. Twice 
4. Impossible
5. Stars

 

 Have fun.

"Mama, I've done my chores, may I go out now?"

Meredith was always itching to meet up with Nydia and Jamal so they could go listen to Tamira's stories.  Since the first time she'd entered the ENCHANTED circle on the beach a YEAR before, things had changed.  She'd LOST the slightly sad air she'd had about her from the time her parents TOLD her they were going to be moving.

"Sure, sweetheart, have fun, and make sure Tamira walks all of you home if you're out until dark."

"Yes, mama," Meredith answered, gave her mama a kiss and ran out the door.  She didn't bother to tell mama that Tamira always walked them home, since her house was right past all of theirs, except when the moon was full and she wanted to sit out the whole night.  That was Tamira's special secret, that she stayed out on full moon nights.  She claimed that was when the sand fairies came and told her the stories so she could tell them to the children.

First, Meredith went three doors down to Jamal's house where she stood by the rose bush and hooted like an owl, the signal she was waiting.  He heard her, and she could hear him call out to his own mother that he was going out.  The back screen door creaked open and shut, then they began walking to the end of the lane where they met up with Nydia, sitting on her own front steps and waiting for them.

They'd become such good friends that they were seldom seen apart, in school or out of it.  As Meredith said, "We all feel in our bones that we're connected."

All three now walked on in companionable SILENCE to the beach, then to the circle of sticks that surrounded the driftwood logs that was their place to hear Tamira's stories.  As usual, they were careful to enter through the right opening, so as not to make the sand fairies angry.

Usually Tamira was waiting for them, but this time they'd all sat and were watching the WILD waves breaking on the shore when she hobbled up with a cane.  "I'll be so glad when this ankle heals," she sighed.  "But LIFE is good when you have friends."

Her smile, after she'd sat and gotten comfortable, was as wide as ever.  "It is a night to stay until the STARS come out," she said, then added as if she'd heard Meredith's mama, "and yes, I will walk all of you home.  Now sit, focus on the horizon, and I will tell you the first story from the tales of the TWICE IMPOSSIBLE seas."

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Today is:

Birthday of Osiris -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)

Festival for Luna -- Ancient Roman Calendar

Festival of Mania -- Ancient Roman Calendar (to placate the Manes, a day when the Mundus, the portal to the afterlife, is open and the dead are free to roam)

Flag Day -- Liberia

Flitting Appreciation Day -- another "holiday" with no particular reason except that someone who enjoys flitting around wanted to celebrate it

Gangara Fire Festival -- Atago Shrine, Ikeda City, Japan

Independence Day -- Ukraine(1991)

International Day Against Intolerance, Discrimination and Violence Based on Musical Preference, Lifestyle, and Dress Code -- sponsored by the Romanian Humanist Association and the Sophie Lancaster Foundation

International Strange Music Day -- as declared by strange musician and composer Patrick Grant

Knife Day -- internet generated, but how would we cook without them?  today remember how much you do each day with a good kitchen knife.

National Flag Day -- Liberia

National Peach Pie Day

National Waffle Day -- Cornelius Swarthout patented the first waffle iron in the US on this day in 1869, so it is sometimes noted as National Waffle Iron Day     

Paryushana Parva -- Jain (start of the 8-day festival signifying human emergence into a new world of spiritual and moral refinement and a celebration of the natural qualities of the soul; the final day is Samvatsari, the most important day and focused on forgiveness)

Pluto Demotion Day 

St. Bartholomew's Day (Patron of bookbinders, butchers, cobblers, Florentine cheese merchants, Florentine salt merchants, leather workers,plasterers, shoemakers, tanners, trappers, whiteners; Armenia; Borgo Tossignano, Italy; Boves, Italy; Carpineto dell Nora, Italy; Civitella in Val di Chiana, Italy; Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Gambatesa, Italy; Gharghur, Malta; Lipari, Sicily, Italy; Maastricht, Netherlands; Magalang, Philippines; Plzen, Czech Republic; Potosí, Bolivia; Salzano, Italy; Trino, Italy; against nervous diseases, neurological diseases, and twitching) related observance

     Schaferlauf -- Markgroeningen, Germany (Festival to honor St. Bartholomew, Patron of Herdsmen, on this day or the weekend after; includes traditional barefoot race by children of active shepherds and water carrying contests; also now has a music festival)

     Wayzgoose -- a traditional day for master printers to throw an end-of-summer party for his workmen

St. Owen of Rouen's Day (Patron of the deaf; against deafness)

Vesuvius Day -- anniversary of 79CE eruption which destroyed Pompeii, Stabiae, and Herculaneum

Waratambar -- New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea (a native thanksgiving)

William Wilberforce Day -- Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, OH, US (birth anniversary of founder, in 1759)

Birthday's Today:

Rupert Grint, 1988

Chad Michael Murray, 1981

Marlee Matlin, 1965

Reggie Miller, 1965

Cal Ripken, Jr., 1962

Craig Kilborn, 1962

Steve Guttenberg, 1958

Stephen Fry, 1957

Oscar Hijuelos, 1951

Michael Richards, 1950

Gregory Bruce Jarvis, 1944

Mason Williams, 1938

Yasser Arafat, 1929

Hal Smith, 1916

Jorge Luis Borges, 1899

Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, 1890

Daniel Gooch, 1816

William Wilberforce, 1759

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"The Facts of Life"(TV), 1979

Today in History:

The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius buries Pompeii and Herculaneum, 15,000 die, 79

The Visigoths under Aleric begin to pillage Rome, 410

King John of England, a/k/a Humpty Dumpty for having to issue the first Magna Carta, marries Isabella of Angoileme, 1200

Six thousand Jews are killed in Mainz after being blamed for the bubonic plague, 1349

The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed, 1456

The first English convoy lands at Surat, India, 1608

Calcutta, India is founded, 1690

British troops invade Washington, D.C. and burn down the White House and several other buildings, 1814

Charles Darwin is asked to travel on HMS Beagle, 1831

The Panic of 1857 begins, touching off one of the most severe economic crises in US history (Which just goes to show you, the more things change, the more they stay the same), 1857

Cornelius Swarthout patents the waffle iron, 1869

The Wolseley Expedition reaches Manitoba to end the Red River 

Rebellion, 1870

Captain Matthew Webb became first person to swim English Channel, 1875

Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera, 1891

Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal, 1909

Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly non-stop across the North American continent, 1932

The treaty creating NATO goes into effect, 1949

France explodes its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world's fifth nuclear power, 1968

Voyager 2 (launched 1977) reaches Neptune, 1989

Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1991

The first RFID human implantation is tested in the UK, 1998

Argon fluorohydride, the first Argon compound ever known, is discovered at the University of Helsinki, 2000

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term "planet" such that Pluto is considered a Dwarf Planet, 2006

The 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have A Dream' speech is commemorated in the U.S., 2013

Astronomers announce the discovery of an earth-like planet named Proxima b orbiting star Proxima Centauri, 2016

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro orders the army to help contain fires in the Amazon after widespread environmental destruction, wildlife loss and international criticism, 2019

US adventurer Victor Vescovo is the first person to visit the deepest point of every ocean when he reaches Molloy Hole, in the Arctic, 2019