What Happens When Newbies Use the Coffeemaker (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 River.  https://river-driftingthroughlife.blogspot.com

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. bewilderment 

2. gossamer 

3. previous 

4. umbrella 

5. survivor 

6. midnight 

7. windowless

Charlotte'scolor of the month is Olive Green if you would like to include it.

As she sat in the WINDOWLESS janitor's closet around MIDNIGHT, wedged behind a battered old UMBRELLA stand which had been repurposed to hold brooms, her mind flitted over the myriad of circumstances which had put her here in a state bordering between bemusement and BEWILDERMENT.

Her grandmother and her best friend's grandmother had been best friends, too, and they'd called themselves The Fairy Grandmothers, even to wearing home-made GOSSAMER wings when they went on their missions of mercy.  The two had loved to scheme to help people in tight or difficult circumstances, people who wouldn't ask but could use a break, and they'd taught  their granddaughters to do the same.

The granddaughters preferred to do their helping without being in the limelight, having neither the gray hair nor charming ability of the elderly to act a bit outrageously and get away with it.

This month they'd pooled funds to assist a SURVIVOR of a recent apartment fire, who'd moved with her two children from their PREVIOUS address, now uninhabitable, with only the clothes they were wearing and a couple of gift cards from the Red Cross.  The two had just managed to slip an envelope with money into the door jamb, knock on the door, and run off.

At that moment, a maintenance crew member who was working very late on a plumbing problem that couldn't wait had chosen to exit the apartment where he was working.  Her friend managed to get into the elevator just as the door shut, and she'd ducked down the side hall and found the janitor closet door mercifully open and hoped he wouldn't come in there before leaving.

He didn't, and after listening carefully she snuck out and gotto the elevator herself to go down and meet up with her friend.  Over her shoulder as she'd rounded the hall corner, she'd seen the woman framed in the open door, wearing what was obviously a hand-me-down Olive Green housecoat, open envelope in her hand and a shocked  expression on her face.  

The memory of this was etched in her mind, it was one which would stay with her a long, long time.

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Today is:

Armed Forces Day -- Myanmar

Cherry Blossom (Sakura) Viewing and Celebrations begin -- Japan (the festivities get started around now, and vary by region depending on when the trees bloom in that area over the next 6 weeks)

Commemoration of Sen no Rikyu -- Omotesenke School of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, Japan (remembering the influential master in The Way of Tea)

Corkscrew Day -- M.L. Byrn of New York patented "covered gimlet screw with a 'T' handle" on this date in 1860

Little Red Wagon Day

National "Joe" Day -- no, it isn't official, but today you can make everyone call you "Joe" if you want, and call them the same; probably started by someone who had no memory for names

National Letting Go of Stuff Day -- see lettinggocafe.com for details

National Spanish Paella Day

 

Quirky Country Music Song Titles Day -- after all, they do need their own day; sponsored by Wellcat Holidays www.collthings.co.uk/2008/04/25-funny-country-song-titles.html

St. John Damascene's Day (Patron of pharmacists, icon paiting, theology students)

St. Rupert of Salzburg's Day (Patron of Salzburg; celebrated on the 24th in the rest of the Church)

Whole Grain Sampling Day -- sponsored by the Whole Grains Council   http://wholegrainscouncil.org/get-involved/whole-grain-sampling-day

World Theatre Day

Anniversaries Today:

Mary Pickford marries Douglas Fairbanks, 1920

Birthdays Today:

Brenda Song, 1988

Stacy "Fergie" Ferguson, 1975

Nathan Fillion, 1971

Mariah Carey, 1970

Quentin Tarantino, 1963

Xuxa, 1963

Maria Schneider, 1952

Austin Pendleton, 1940

Michael York, 1942

David Janssen, 1931

Anthony Lewis, 1927

Mstislav Rostropovich, 1927

Sarah Vaughan, 1924

Harold Nicholas, 1921

Carl Barks, 1901

Gloria Swanson, 1899

Thorne Smith, 1892

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, 1886

Edward Steichen, 1879

Patty Smith Hill, 1868

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, 1845

Nathaniel Currier, 1813

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Starlight Express"(Rock musical), 1984

"Funky Winkerbean"(Comic strip), 1972

"Singin' in the Rain"(Film), 1952

"La Rondine/The Swallow"(Puccini Opera), 1917

"The Colleen Bawn"(Play), 1860

Today in History:

Ptolemy V ascends to the throne of Egypt, BC196

Pope Clement V excommunicates the entire population of Venice, 1309

Juan Ponce de Leon discovers Florida, 1513

The first English child born in Canada at Cuper's Cove, Newfoundland to Nicholas Guy, 1613

The dike at Hardinxveld breaks, causing the Alblasserwaard flood, 1709

Spain losses Menorca & Gibraltar, 1713

John Parker Paynard originates medicated adhesive plaster, precursor to the band-aid, 1848

First reported sighting of the Yosemite Valley by Europeans, 1851

M L Byrn patents "covered gimlet screw with a 'T' handle" (corkscrew), 1860

The first international rugby football match, England v. Scotland, is played in Edinburgh at Raeburn Place, 1871

Famous Apache warrior, Geronimo, surrenders to the U.S. Army, ending the main phase of the Apache Wars, 1886

The first Japanese cherry blossom trees planted in Washington, D.C., 1912

The first successful blood transfusion takes place in Brussels, 1914

Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States, is put in quarantine, , 1916

Charlie Chaplin receives France's distinguished Legion of Honor, 1931

Nikita Khrushchev becomes Premier of the Soviet Union, 1958

The Good Friday Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history at a magnitude of 9.2 strikes South Central Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage, 1964

The Concorde makes its first supersonic flight. 1970

Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins, 1975

The Norwegian oil platform Alexander L. Kielland collapses in the North Sea, killing 123 of its crew of 212, 1980

The Solidarity movement in Poland stages a warning strike, in which at least 12 million Poles walk off their jobs for four hours, 1981

The US FDA approves Viagra, 1998

HMS Scylla (F71), a decommissioned Leander class frigate, is sunk as an artificial reef off Cornwall, the first of its kind in Europe, 2004

The UN General Assembly condemns Russia's annexation of Crimea, 2014 

Russia's Soyuz TMA-16M launches to deliver three crew members to the international space station to research the long-term effects of micro gravity, 2015

Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi announces the country is now a "space power" after successfully shooting down a satellite from space in a ballistic missile test, 2019

China’s Chang’e-5 lunar explorer mission finds glass beads strewn across the lunar surface contain potentially billions of tons of water, making future lunar colonies more likely to be easily sustainable, 2023