Some Days More Than Others (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, BeThere2Day, 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 yours truly, right here.

This week's prompts are:

illusion

glue

strength

exclude

basis

sculpture

and / or

museum

unfortunate

talk

suspect

drawing

colleague

(Please feel free to use these or ignore these words, they are meant to spark your creativity.)

Note:  People asked me last week what was in the bottom drawer, and the character obliged by answering.

Professor Tibbs crossed the quadrangle and as she always did, stopped to admire the SCULPTURE outside the art building.  It was Escher-like and was part optical ILLUSION, its colors the BASIS for the continuation of the color scheme in the recently redesigned foyer of the building itself.

There had been a short-lived movement to have the piece moved into the actual MUSEUM complex, but at such TALK the artist himself had said it belonged outdoors and he would EXCLUDE himself from the faculty if it were moved.

Professor Tibbs smiled to herself over the memory as she made her way to that artist and fellow professor's studio.  He was her favorite COLLEAGUE and they had lunch together often.  She walked in to find him giving advice to a student about a DRAWING, so she waited quietly, enjoying how he made his points and suggestions without dampening the student's own creativity.

He's gentle with souls, just like Paul was, she thought to herself.

When he was done and they were walking to the cafeteria for lunch the people who passed them smiled.  Sometimes people new to the campus would watch them and SUSPECT there might be more than simple friendship at work.  This was quickly laid to rest.  As Professor Tibbs used to joke, "He's half my age, half my weight, and twice my height, it would never work.  Besides, I have to sleep alone, I snore!"

Her reasons for not seeking more than friendship from any of the men in her life was held in that bottom drawer in her study.  It was all she kept from the life she'd once hoped to have, a bottle of sand, sealed shut with extra-STRENGTH GLUE, her "teenie-weenie-bikini" as Paul had called it that no one now would ever have believed she could wear, a few mementos and the pictures from their wedding day.

They'd been married at the pier shown in the picture on the wall, and the UNFORTUNATE turn of events that had taken Paul away from her had occurred with a speed that could still take her breath away if she let herself dwell on it.  Sometimes she'd open that bottom drawer and sit with the memories, but most of the time it was all locked away, physically and mentally.

"I live in what is, not what could have been," she was wont to say.  As like her beloved as this colleague was, she basked in friendship and nothing more and he was always tickled by her sense of humor and kindness.

It was enough for both of them.

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Today is:

All Souls' Day -- Christian (celebrations in Ecuador are among the most colorful; 2nd of the Dias de los Muertos in Mexico) related observances:

     Dead Relatives' Day -- Sicily

     Dia de Finados -- Brazil; Portugal

Aztec Day of the Dead -- Ancient Aztec Calendar (date approximate)

Balfour Declaration Day -- Israel

Cookie Monster's Birthday -- go have a cookie to celebrate! (but only after your dinner, as Cookie Monster now points out; boy, things have changed)

Coronation of Haile Selassie -- Rastafarian

Dveselu Diena -- Ancient Latvian Calendar (day for families to gather with the spirits of their ancestors at the graveyard to celebrate the continuity of life)

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

Indian Arrival Day / Arrival of Indentured Laborers' Day -- Mauritius

International Day to End Impunity -- International (calling for the ending impunity for crimes against journalists and media workers)

Karatsu Kunchi -- Karatsu and Saga, Japan

Look for Circles Day -- internet generated, and we run in circles looking for who created it and why!

National Deviled Egg Day

Potting-Shed Investitures -- Fairy Calendar (Garden Fairies)

Plan Your Epitaph Day -- sponsored by Dead or Alive of Arcata, CA, because a forgettable epitaph is almost a fate worse than death, so make plans to do yours right!

Practice Being Psychic Day -- but you already knew that, didn't you?

Refuse to Capitalize the First Letters in Your Name Day -- k.d.lang's birth anniversary

Soulcaker's Play -- Cheshire, UK

St Eustachius' Day (Patron of difficult situations, fire prevention, firefighters, hunters and hunting, torture victims, trappers; Madrid, Spain; Poli, Italy; against fire and torture)

Anniversaries Today:

North Dakota becomes the 39th US State, 1889

South Dakota becomes the 40th US State, 1889

Birthdays Today:

k.d. lang, 1961

Shere Hite, 1942

Stephanie Powers, 1942

Pat Buchanan, 1938

Ray Walston, 1914

Burt Lancaster, 1913

Paul Ford, 1901

Warren G. Harding, 1865

James K. Polk, 1795

Marie Antionette, 1755

Daniel Boone, 1734

Debuting/Premiering Today:

The Spruce Goose makes its first (only) flight, 1947

KDKA Radio Pittsburgh, PA, US makes the first scheduled radio broadcast, of election results, 1920

Today in History:

The African Free School, the first free school in NYC, opens, 1787

The popular vote for US president is first recorded and Andrew "By God" Jackson (a/k/a Old Hickory) defeats John Quincy Adams, 1824

New Zealand officially adopts a standard time to be observed nationally, 1868

Johnny Campbell officially leads the crowd in cheering at a University of Minnesota football game, the official birth of cheerleading, 1898

The British newspaper the "Daily Mirror" begins publication, 1903

The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" with the clear understanding "that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities", 1917

Charlotte Woodward, who attended the historic Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention of 1848, becomes the only one of the women who attended to live long enough to cast a vote in a national election, 1920

Australia's Qantas Airways begins service, 1922

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is established, 1936

In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden (and only) flight of the Spruce Goose; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built, 1947

Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case, 1960

The Morris worm, the first internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, is launched from MIT, 1988

The International Space Station becomes permanently staffed, 2000

China makes its first orbital docking as its unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft successfully docks with the orbiting Tiangong 1 space station module, 2011

The New York Marathon is cancelled due to the damage from Hurricane Sandy, 2012

Separatists in Eastern Ukraine hold elections in Donetsk and Luhansk; Russia will recognize the elected leaders, but Ukraine and Western nations declare the elections illegitimate, 2014

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull scraps Knights and Dames from Australia's honours system, 2015

The Chicago Cubs defeat the Cleveland Indians in the World Series, ending the longest MLB championship drought at 108 years, 2016