Worth What You Pay For It (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 Sandi and are being posted by Elephant's Child.            

This week's prompts are:

• Cyrillic
• Rogue
• Perish
• Paris
• Parish

 

And/or 

• A foolish waste of time
• Overcome
• Reading secret messages
• New orders

And/or

 

I (Elephant's Child) am going to continue to add a further challenge to the mix.  Charlotte(MotherOwl) has assigned a colour to each month of the year.  This month it is pine green and if you can include it in your Words for Wednesday contribution each week in January, she and I would be very grateful.

 

"What have we here?"

"Could it be the new orders we've been waiting for?"

"No, it's in the Cyrillic alphabet!"

"It's a code, I'm sure it was dropped by the rogue agent we've been after."

"You're probably right, let's see if we can decipher it."

A few moments of work later, they realized it was a warning to get out of there now.  A noxious gas started pouring into the room, and, not wanting to be overcome by it and perish in that dank hole, one of them grabbed his very thick pine green winter muffler and they each wrapped an end around their mouths to protect them as they ran up the stairs to get away.

Bursting out of the door of the basement of the parish house, the twin boys, who almost always lived with the Mission Impossible theme song playing in their heads, dove under cover of the bushes at the back of the vicar's garden.

"That was close!  We can't let him get away!"

"We won't, we'll cut around and barricade the other exit!"

Before they could come out from under their cover, they heard a familiar whistle.

"Awww!"

"Of all the luck!"

A second whistle told the boys it was time to hustle home, Mother was about to pull supper out of the oven and they needed time to wash up.

On the way home, they discussed their next plans, next mission, next game.  Their parents thought it was a foolish waste of time, all this make-believe spy business, always trying to catch the bad guys, pretending to be reading secret messages.

Still, they stayed out of trouble, and the vicar didn't mind their games.  "They only frighten the spiders in the basement and there's no harm in that," he used to say.  He even loaned them his spy thrillers to read, glad to have fellow lovers of the genre among the younger generation.

Years later, when one was a high-ranking operative in the military, the other a government agent with a base in Paris, their parents were most proud.

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Today is:

A Room of One's Own Day -- sponsored by Wellcat Holidays, for all of those who just want a space to call their own; on the birth anniversary of Virginia Woolf

Around the World in 72 Days -- this date in 1890, Nellie Bly broke the fictional Phileas Fogg's record and went around the world in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds

Big Rock Day -- discovery of the Cullinan diamond (3,106 carets) this day in 1905

Conversion of St. Paul -- Christian

     Observe the Weather Day -- a beautiful St. Paul's Conversion Day means a prosperous year, precipitation means an expensive year, clouds mean much loss of livestock, and wind means war looms in the year ahead

Dydd Santes Dwynwen -- Wales (For St. Dwynwen, Patron of lovers, especially Welsh lovers, and sick animals; the Welsh Valentine's Day)

Feriae Sementivae -- Ancient Roman Calendar (a Feast of Spring, asking protection for seeds sown in the fall, and those to be sown in spring)

Festival of Constructive Energy -- another internet generated day with no explanations

G. F. Betico Croes Day -- Aruba

IV Nurse Day -- US (sponsored by the Infusion Nurses Society)

January 25 Revolution Day -- Egypt

Luanda City Day -- Luanda City, Angola

Macintosh Computer Day -- debuted this day in 1984

National Irish Coffee Day

National Voters' Day -- India

Old Disting -- Norse Calendar (date approximate; a market day held at the same time as a sacrifice to the female powers.)

Opposite Day -- internet generated, and fun if you play it right

Robert Burns' Night -- Scotland; Newfoundland (celebrated with a Burns' Supper and reciting poetry)

     Dinner Party Day -- for Bobby Burns, of course

St. Ananias of Damascus' Day (Saint who baptized St. Paul)

Vasant Panchami / Saraswati Puja -- Hindu (celebrating Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge)

Winter-een-mas -- a holiday for gamers, begun by Tim Buckley; through the 31st

Anniversaries Today:

Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn, 1533 (secret wedding)

Moscow University is established, to coincide with St. Tatiana's Day, 1755

Birthdays Today:

Alicia Keys, 1981

Ana Ortiz, 1971

China Kantner, 1971

Dinah Manoff, 1958

Leigh Taylr-Young, 1945

Etta James, 1938

Corazon Aquino, 1933

Dean Jones, 1931

Edwin Newman, 1919

Florence Mills, 1896

Virginia Woolf, 1882

William Somerset Maugham, 1874

Robert Burns, 1759

Robert Boyle, 1627 (O.S. date)

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Rent"(Musical), 1996

"M*A*S*H*"(Film), 1970

"One Hundred and One Dalmatians"(Cartoon film), 1961

"Metamorphosen, Study for 23 Solo Strings"(Strauss composition), 1946

"The Guiding Light"(Radio), 1937

"R.U.R./Rossum's Universal Robots"(Play), 1921 (the word "robot" enters the world lexicon)

"Wedding March"(Mendelssohn, Op. 61), 1858

"La Cenerentola"(Rossini Opera), 1817

Today in History:

Founding of Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1554

Battle of Mikatagahara, in Japan; Takeda Shingen defeats Tokugawa Ieyasu, 1573

The Treaty of Utrecht marks the beginning of the Dutch Republic, 1579

Eliakam Spooner of Vermont patents the first seeding machine in the US, 1799

The first US engineering college opens, Rensselaer Polytechnic, Troy, NY, 1825

Sojourner Truth addresses the First Black Women's Rights Convention, in Akron, Ohio, 1851

Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" is first played, at the wedding of Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Victoria, to crown prince of Prussia, 1858

The soda fountain is patented by Gustavus Dows, 1870

Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company, 1881

Bilu, a Russian Zionist organization, forms, 1882

Nellie Bly beats Phileas Fogg's time around world by 8 days (72 days), 1890

The first US transcontinental telephone call is made when Alexander Graham Bell in NY calls Thomas Watson in SF, 1915

The League of Nations is founded, 1919

The 1924 Winter Olympics opens in Chamonix, France (in the French Alps), inaugurating the Winter Olympic Games, 1924

At the Hollywood Athletic Club the first Emmy Awards are presented, 1949

The first scheduled transcontinental flight in the US takes place, an American Airlines flight from California to New York, 1959

The Clementine space probe launches, 1994

Russia almost launches a nuclear attack after it mistakes Black Brant XII, a Norwegian research rocket, for a US Trident missile, 1995

During a historic visit to Cuba, Pope John Paul II demands the release of political prisoners and political reforms while condemning US attempts to isolate the country, 1998

Three independent observing campaigns announce the discovery of OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb through gravitational microlensing, the first cool rocky/icy extrasolar planet around a main-sequence star, 2006

Tropical cyclone Oswald makes landfall in Queensland, Australia, causing mass flooding, 2013

A British rowing team becomes the first female crew and the first crew of four to cross the Pacific, from San Francisco, California to Cairns, Australia in 257 days, 2016

Kisenosato is made yokozuna, becoming the 72nd Grand Champion of Sumo, and the first native Japanese to hold the title since 1998, 2017

Janet Yellen is confirmed as the first female treasury secretary by the US Senate, 2021

The Australian government buys the copyright to the Aboriginal flag designed by artist Harold Thomas, 2022