Christmas Dog Toy Two (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

 ***********************************

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

***********************************

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 WiseWebWoman, and will be posted by Elephant's Child.  

   

This week's prompts are:

• Gnocchi
• Dynamite
• Chariot
• Bucket
• Periwinkle

And/or

• Noticeboard
• Blunt
• Bockety
• Fifty
• Shortbread

 Charlotte (MotherOwl) has selected Fawn Brown as the colour of the month.

We'd decided, since I had a DYNAMITE new recipe for GNOCCHI I wanted to try and he had a yen for SHORTBREAD, to head to the store and get the shopping over with for the week.

"Your CHARIOT awaits," he said to me with a grin, and I laughed, climbing into our car, which was hardly a chariot but not an old BUCKET either, it ran well enough and we had no reason to get another yet.

The shopping went as it usually does, I always end up with a BOCKETY shopping cart which has, as Erma Bombeck once put it, 3 wheels that want to go shopping and one that wants to go back to the parking lot.

As we pulled out of the lot, he said, "Oh, I almost forgot, mind if I run by the post office a block over?  I have something I need to mail out and it might as well go today while we're so close."

"Sure," I said, and a moment later he pulled up in front of the post office.  It was located next to a coffee shop and one parking lot led to the next.  He parked almost between the two buildings and ran in, leaving the car running which always makes me a bit nervous, and when he came out headed over to the coffee shop.

I thought at first he was going to run in and buy something, but he stopped at the coffee shop NOTICEBOARD under their awning and that's when I saw her sitting on the cement, curled into a ball and holding on to a backpack.

Hard times and a life spent on the streets was written all over her.  Her sweater, whatever its original color, had faded to PERIWINKLE and she had on Fawn Brown pants and shoes which were held together heaven only knows how.  He spoke to her for a few minutes, then pulled out his wallet and gave her something.

She got up and walked away crying, and he motioned to her to follow him.  When he opened the car door, he said, "Wait, I have a bit more to give you."

In the center console of the car he always kept some money in several denominations, and he found two more bills to give her.  She cried harder and thanked him, then walked away.

As he got in the car, he said, "She showed me the scars on her abdomen.  I don't know what she's been through, but I know one thing.  People tell me not to give cash to people on the streets, they'll just spend it on drugs, but I'm always BLUNT and say that's between them and God.  It's not my job to try to divide people into the deserving and the undeserving poor."

He knew I agreed wholeheartedly, and then he said, "Oh, and I need to put another bill in my wallet.  I always keep a $20 for things like this, just in case, it happens more often than you would think."  He pulled another bill out of the stack and put it in his wallet before driving away.

Since he'd given her the first $20 in his wallet, then dug out another ten and a twenty when she walked over, he'd given her FIFTY dollars total, a bonanza for her no matter how she used it.

Remembering the grateful and yet sad look in her eyes before she'd walked away, I agreed it was a good investment.

(Loosely based on a true story.  The comment about the deserving and undeserving poor is, in my book, a very accurate assessment.)

***********************************

Today is:

Acadian Remembrance Day -- Acadians of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island

Count the La's in "Deck the Halls" Day -- just so you can say you know

Feast of Hathor -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (goddess of joy, feminine love, and motherhood; date approximate)

Fiesta de Santo Tomas -- Chichicastenango, Guatemala (week long festival celebrating the town's Patron Saint that includes the Palo Volador dance, where men hang by ropes from 30 meter poles, spinning and swinging)

Ice Cream and Violins Day -- another of those silly made up holidays that no one can trace, but would be fun to celebrate.  Get yourself a bowl of buttered pecan or rum raisin -- if you are going to celebrate, do it in style -- and put in a Mozart or Bach CD, and enjoy!

Icelandic Yuletide Lad of the Day, Giljagaur -- Gully Oaf, who tries to sneak in the cowshed and skim the cream from the pails of milk

Ides of December -- Ancient Roman Calendar; other observance

     Festival for Tellus -- a/k/a Tellura or Tellus Mater, the personification of the earth's productive powers

Jum ir-Repubblika -- Malta (Republic Day)

National Day -- Santa Lucia (on St. Lucy's Day)

New Calendar Day -- time to get the 2024 model, unless you contribute to so many charities you are already flooded with them

Peace Day -- Korea (the fighting stopped in 1953, but the Koreas didn't sign a formal nonaggression pact until this day in 1991)

Pick a Pathologist Pal Day -- Wellcat Holidays reminds us that pathologists and coroners are an especially jovial lot, and befriending them is a good way to remind yourself that tomorrow is never guaranteed

Runic Half-month Jara commences (fruition)

St. Herman of Alaska (Orthodox Church Patron of the Americas)

St. Jodocus' Day (Patron of boatmen, harvests, mariners, sailors, watermen; against fever, fire, storms, and shipwrecks)

Saint Lucy's Day (Patron of authors, blind people, cutlers, glaziers, laborers, martyrs, peasants, saddlers, salesmen, sore eyes/eye problems, sore throats, stained glass workers; Begijnendijk, Flemish Brabant, Belgium; Conzano, Italy; Mtarfa, Malta; Perugia, Italy; Santa Lucia di Piave, Italy; Syracuse, Sicily, Italy; Villa Santa Lucia, Latium, Italy; against blindness, dysentery, epidemics, eye diseases, hemorraghes)

     Feast of the Light-bringer -- honoring Juno Lucina (Roman goddess of light) and Lucia (Old Swedish goddess of light), all now merged with St. Lucy

     Little Yule a/k/a Luciadagen or Santa Lucia (Festival of Lights in many parts of Scandinavia, honoring St. Lucia.)

Birthdays Today:

Taylor Swift, 1989

Amy Lee, 1981

Tom DeLonge, 1975

Christie Clark, 1973

Jamie Foxx, 1967

Steve Buscemi, 1958

Wendie Malick, 1950

Ted Nugent, 1949

John Davidson, 1941

Aga Khan IV, 1936

Christopher Plummer, 1929

Dick Van Dyke, 1925

Archie Moore, 1913

Kenneth Patchen, 1911

Mary Todd Lincoln, 1818

Heinrich Heine, 1797

Debuting/Premiering Today:

The Susan B. Anthony Dollar(USD coin), 1978

"Alice's Restaurant"(Song and Album), 1969

"An American In Paris"(Gershwin Symphony), 1928

Today in History:

The Council of Trent opens, 1545

Sir Francis Drake sets sail from England to circumnavigate the globe, 1577

Emperor Ferdinanad II delegates the first Anti-Reformation decree, 1621

The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes 3 militias which are today seen as the founding of the United States National Guard, 1636

Dutch navigator Abel Tasman becomes the first European to land in New Zealand, 1642

Dartmouth College in New Hampshire is chartered, 1769

Italo Marcioni patents an ice cream cone, 1903

The Relay 1 communication satellite is launched, 1962

Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final Extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or "Moonwalk" of Apollo 17, 1972

The European Union announces that Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia will become members from May 1, 2004, 2002

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured, 2003

The Baiji, or Chinese River Dolphin, is announced as extinct, 2006

Scientists in northeast Madagascar confirm a new species of lemur has been found, 2010

An unpublished early work by Hans Christian Anderson is found at the bottom of a filing box at the National Archives of Funen, 2012

The bones of a prehistoric penguin that was as tall as a human (1.77m) have been found on Otago beach, New Zealand, as reported in "Nature Communications", 2017

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announce they have been able to replicate nuclear fusion, the same reaction which fuels the sun, for the first time in a laboratory setting, 2022