In the Shower, Her Shelf/His Shelf (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday, an A to Z Post

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To enjoy more blogs participating in the A to Z Challenge, click here.     

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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 Elephant's Child.  

This week's prompts are:

• Feather
• Bookstore
• Comfortably
• Money
• Deliver 
  

And/or

 

• Exquisite
• Nudge
• Key
• Stepped
• World 

Charlotte (MotherOwl) has selected water blue as the colour of the month.  If you can include it in your story she and I will be grateful.

As always, have fun.

(Please note this is based on a true story which happened long before there was an internet for doing research.)

When they STEPPED off the plane, you almost could have knocked her over with a FEATHER.  At last, after years of planning and scheming, scouring the local BOOKSTORE and library for travel ideas, saving MONEY wherever they could, they were in France.

As they were both fluent in Cajun French, they knew they could COMFORTABLY get along with the language and go to the countryside, enjoying places many tourists skipped.  After a few days in Paris seeing the sights, it meant the WORLD to both of them to see the parts of France where they believed they'd traced their families to, families which had emigrated first to Canada when it was still a French colony, then been displaced to Louisiana.

Their trip was all they'd hoped, they enjoyed EXQUISITE meals, delightful wine tastings, saw countryside as pretty as they'd seen in the pictures of the travel books.

One day, they happened into a small restaurant in a pretty village which, like all they'd sampled so far, smelled heavenly from the street, enticing them in.  Water Blue tablecloths covered the few tables and they were escorted to a table by the smiling owner and served by a smiling waiter, both happy to have tourists they could easily talk to.

After perusing the menu, they decided on a piquant dish, hoping it would be as spicy and delicious as some of the piquant meals made back home, but with a flair of its own.

The waiter, hearing their order, stopped smiling and looked concerned.

"It's a very spicy dish, are you sure you want that?" he asked.

"We're certain," he responded, but the waiter wanted to make sure they understood.

"It's very, very spicy," he emphasized the word.

Here was a dilemma, the husband thought, how to NUDGE the nice waiter to get him to DELIVER a dish they really wanted to try.

Then he saw the KEY, a familiar bottle on another table.  Snatching up the bottle of Tabasco Sauce, he turned it over and pointed to the back of the label.

"This is made on Avery Island," he said, pointing to the address in small print.  "We live about 30 kilometers from there."

"Ah!" said the waiter, smiling again.

He brought them the dish, which was every bit as good as they'd hoped, adding another delightful memory to the trip.

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Today is:

ASPCA Day/Humane Day -- anniversary of founding in 1866

Birthday of Cybele -- Ancient Roman Calendar (great mother goddess)

Commodore Perry Day

Dust the Ceiling Fan Day -- before it gets hot outside and you have to turn it on and find out you forgot how dusty it gets up there the hard way

Eid al Fitr -- Islam (celebration of the end of Ramadan; began sundown yesterday, runs for 3 days, although local dating and official government observances may vary)

Encourage a Young Writer Day -- can't find out who started this, but it sounds like a great idea

Feast of Bau -- Ancient Babylonian Calendar (date approximate, around the same time of year the Romans honored Cybele)

Feast of Ezekiel the Prophet -- Roman Catholic 

Feast of the Rivers and Seas -- Ancient Sumerian Calendar (mother of Ea[Earth]; date approximate, around the same time of year the Romans honored Cybele)

Founder's Day -- Salvation Army (birth anniversary of the founder, William Booth)

Frances Perkins Day -- US (birth anniversary of the first woman appointed to a Presidential Cabinet position)

Golfer's Day -- anniversary of founding of the Professional Golfers' Association of America in 1916

Iroquois Thunder Ceremony -- Iroquois Native Americans (week-long ceremonial thanksgiving for the rain, which brings new growth in spring; date approximate, but most tribes celebrate in mid-April)

National Bookmobile Day -- US, on the Wednesday of National Library Week

National Cinnamon Crescent Day

National Farm Animals Day -- US   

National Hug Your Dog Day

National Siblings Day -- US   

Safety Pin Day -- patented this day in 1849 by Walter Hunt

St. Macarius of Antioch's Day (Patron of plague victims; Ghent, Belgium)

Thank Your School Librarian Day -- US, on the Wednesday of National Library Week

Birthdays Today:

Haley Joel Osment, 1988

Mandy Moore, 1984

Ryan Merriman, 1983

Liz McClarnon, 1981

Shemekia Copeland, 1979

Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, 1957

Peter MacNicol, 1954

Steven Seagal, 1952

Paul Edward Theroux, 1941

Joe Don Meredith, 1938

John Madden, 1936

Omar Sharif, 1932

Dolores Huerta, 1930

Max Von Sydow, 1929

Chuck Connors, 1921

Robert Burns Woodward, 1917

Harry Morgan, 1915

Frances Perkins, 1880

Joseph Pulitzer, 1847

William Booth, 1829

James Bowie, 1796

Commodore Matthew Perry, 1794

Hugo Grotius, 1583(O.S. date)

Cybele, Roman goddess (traditional, year unknown)

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"The Entertainer"(Play), 1957

House of Wax(Film), 1951 Note:  first full color 3D film from a major studio

The Great Gatsby(Publication), 1925

Ein deutsches Requiem, nach Worten der heiligen Schrift/A German Requiem, To Words of the Holy Scriptures, Op. 45(Brahms' Requiem), 1868

Today in History:

Halley's Comet and Earth experienced their closest approach to one another when their separating distance equaled 0.0342 AU (3.2 million miles), 837

the lama Deshin Shekpa visits the Ming Dynasty capital at Nanjing. He is awarded with the title Great Treasure Prince of Dharma, 1407

The Charter of the Virginia Company of London is established by royal charter by James I of England with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America, 1606

The first law regulating copyright is issued in Great Britain, 1710

The Mount Tambora volcano in Indonesia begins its peak eruption period that lasts until July 15, 1815

The 10,500 inhabitants of the Greek town Messolonghi start leaving the town after a year's siege by Turkish forces. Very few of them survive, 1826

The NY "Tribune" begins publishing under editor Horace Greeley, 1841

The safety pin is patented by Walter Hunt of NYC, who sells the rights for only $100, 1849

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City by Henry Bergh, 1866

The first Arbor Day is celebrated in Nebraska, 1874

The Titanic leaves Southampton, England, 1912

Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata is ambushed and shot dead by government forces in Morelos, 1919

Warner Brothers debuts the first 3-D movie, "House of Wax," 1953

Adolf Eichmann is put on trial as a war criminal in Israel, 1961

In an attempt to thaw relations with the United States, the People's Republic of China hosts the U.S. table tennis team for a weeklong visit, 1971

A 7.0 earthquake kills 1/5 of population of Iranian province of Fars, 1972

H J Heinz, Van Camp Seafood & Bumble Bee Seafood say they would not buy tuna caught in nets that also trap dolphins, 1989

A rare tropical storm develops in the Southern Hemisphere near Angola; the first to be documented by satellites, 1991

President of Fiji Ratu Josefa Iloilo announces he will suspend the constitution and assume all governance in the country, creating a constitutional crisis, 2009

Apple, Inc., claims a value of $600 billion making it the largest company by market capitalization in the world, 2012

The Council of Europe suspends Russia's right to vote, 2014

The Hong Kong pro-democracy political party Demosistō is established by activists Nathan Law, Joshua Wong, and Agnes Chow, 2016

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg begins testifying before US Congress about data use and security, 2018

Scientists announce they have the first photo of a black hole ever taken; it is in galaxy M87, 55 million light-years away, and is 6.5 billion times the mass of Earth, 2019

The first drone home delivery service in Canberra, Australia is begun by Wing, part of Google's Alphabet company, 2019

The area around Lake Elsinore in Southern California experiences a superbloom of poppies after an unusually wet winter, 2023