Almost Always (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 Susan Kane and posted by River.       

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. steam 

2. overview 

3. bury 

4. foundation 

5. survey 

6. reveal 

and/or: 

1. headline 

2. fling 

3. hand 

4. emerald 

5. safe 

6. vein

use either list or both, or mix and match, just have fun.

If you wish to include Charlotte/Mother Owl's colour of the month it is salmon pink for March.

(Note:  this story is mostly true, with a little bit added, and the family in question is very distant relatives of ours, so i've painted it with a broad brush.)

The family story isn't worth a HEADLINE in the local news, but it does REVEAL a crack in the FOUNDATION of their lives.

A quick OVERVIEW: when Mama was sick, brother and his wife took matters in HAND, working their regular jobs and keeping her house in good condition, he mowing her lawn and doing upkeep, she cleaning, both making sure Mama was SAFE and in a good place with excellent care, making sure the grandchildren went to visit often.

Sister, a widow, visited Mama when it was convenient and didn't lift a finger.

They'd barely had time to BURY Mama when sister began the antics.  You know the kind.  Brother, as executor of the estate, wanted to carry out Mama's wishes to the letter, making sure both of them got half (or as close to half as you can get when some items of personal property, hard to value, are involved).

Sister wanted to STEAMroll over him and bully him into giving her everything.  In that VEIN, she tried to thwart his every move, objecting to repairs to and sale of the house, disagreeing with his SURVEY of Mama's possessions ("Mama gave me the EMERALD ring, and the good china, and the antique SALMON PINK table linens!  They don't count, she told me they were mine!" that sort of thing).

Sister's way to FLING him a bone in the whole proceeding was to say, "You sell your house, buy Mama's house from the estate and repair it yourselves.  Then you'll have her house to remember her by, and you can give me all the money and personal possessions from the estate."

This is ongoing among distant family, and brother is grieving.  He's lost Mama (Dad passed away over 20 years ago, but it still hurts, too), and now he's losing sister, who has always been difficult but never quite like this.

I'm taking it as a warning.  Do not let someone's death turn you into a monster.  It happens, and it's not pretty.

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Today is:

Barthelemy Boganda Day -- Central African Republic

Big Red Horse Day -- birth anniversary of Man O' War and Secretariat

Borrowed Days begin -- old English/Scottish/Irish legends about how March borrowed the next 3 days from April; these are still seen as weather prognostication days based on several different legends

Day of Redress -- Fairy Calendar

Knights of Columbus Founders Day

Little Red Wagon Day

Martyrs' Day -- Madagascar

National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day

National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day -- as recognized by AICPA

Smoke and Mirrors Day -- some sites call it "Festival of Smoke and Mirrors Day," but appropriately no one knows who started it

St. Armogastes of Africa's Day (Patron of the poor and torture victims; against poverty and torture)

St. Gladys' and St. Gwynllyw's Day (the Welsh "Bonny and Clyde", who led a life of crime before their conversion)

Whole Grain Sampling Day -- sponsored by the Whole Grains Council   

Youth Day -- Taiwan

Anniversaries Today:

Harry Hamlin weds Lisa Rinna, 1997

Yeshiva College (now University) is chartered in New York, 1928

Birthdays Today:

Hideaki Takizawa, 1982

Jennifer Capriati, 1976

Lucy Lawless, 1968

Elle Macpherson, 1964

Christopher Lambert, 1957

Kurt Thomas, 1956

Earl Christian Campbell, 1955

Karen Ann Quinlan, 1954

Bud Cort, 1950

George Blaha, 1945

Eric Idle, 1943

John Major, 1943

John Joseph McLaughlin, 1927

Pearl Bailey, 1918

Sam Walton, 1918

Eugene Mccarthy, 1916

Philip Ahn, 1905

Denton True "Cy" Young, 1867

Isaac Mayer Wise, Rabbi and Founder of Reform Judaism, 1819

John Tyler, 1790

Carlo Buonaparte, father of Napoleon Bonaparte, 1746

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Woman of the Year"(Play), 1981

"The King and I"(Play), 1951

"Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows"(circus), 1919

"Mutt and Jeff"(Comic strip), 1908

"Jevgeni Onegin/Eugene Onegin"(Opera; Tchaikovsky Op. 24), 1879

Today in History:

The city of Salvador da Bahia, the first capital of Brazil, is founded, 1549

Treaty of Saint-Germain is signed, returning Quebec to French control after the English had seized it in 1629, 1632

Swedish colonists establish the first settlement in Delaware, 1638

Ludwig von Beethoven, age 24, debuts as a pianist in Vienna, 1795

Construction is authorized of the Great National Pike, better known as the Cumberland Road, becoming the first United States federal highway, 1806

Niagara Falls stops flowing for 30 hours due to an ice jam, 1848

The United Kingdom annexes the Punjab, 1849

Ohio makes it illegal for children under 18 & women to work more than 10 hours a day, 1852

Queen Victoria gives Royal Assent to the British North America Act which establishes the Dominion of Canada on July 1, 1867

Queen Victoria presides over the opening of Albert Hall in London, 1871

The Knights of Columbus are established, 1882

Dr. John Pemberton brews the first batch of Coca-Cola in his back yard, 1886

The North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement goes into effect at 03:00 local time, 1941

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage, 1951

NASA's Mariner 10 becomes the first spaceprobe to fly by Mercury, 1974

The Canada Act 1982 (U.K.) receives the Royal Assent from Queen Elizabeth II, setting the stage for the Queen of Canada to proclaim the Constitution Act, 1982

Catherine Callbeck becomes premier of Prince Edward Island and the first woman to be elected in a general election as premier of a Canadian province, 1993

Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO as full members, 2004

The Republic of Ireland becomes the first country in the world to ban smoking in all work places, including bars and restaurants, 2004

Thirty-five countries and over 370 cities join Earth Hour for the first time, 2008

A transistor-like transcriptor is built out of DNA and RNA molecules by American bioengineers at Stanford University, 2013

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announces that Arab leaders will be combining their military resources to combat violence in the region; Saudi Arabia has already led joint forces in airstrikes on Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen, 2015

UK Prime Minister Theresa May sends a letter to the EU invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, formally triggering Brexit, 2017

The megaship Ever Given is freed after nearly a week stuck in and blocking the Suez Canal, 2021

A new study of Pluto based on 2015 footage from NASA's New Horizons Telescope is published which shows evidence of cryovolcanoes and ice lava, 2022