For Halloween (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, Steve at BeThere2Day, Catsynth, 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.    

The prompts will be posted by Elephant's Child this month and are provided by  Sean Jeating.   

This week's prompts are: 

• church, 
• hazel, 
• hollow,
• red, 
• whirlpool

and/or

 

• cave, 
• Mary, 
• near, 
• rapid, 
• white

 

Charlotte (MotherOwl)  has given us Pebble Grey as the colour of the month.  If you can also incorporate it into your stories she (and I) will be grateful.

While she wasn't Roman Catholic, she had loved the old CHURCH just up the road from the home where she grew up.

It was on several acres of property, with a graveyard and a HOLLOW in one side of the rather steep hill on which the building sat.  The Pebble Gray stones of the steeple had seemed to touch the sky when you stood right at the bottom.

While the space in the hillside wasn't quite a CAVE, it almost seemed so in her eyes when she was young, being deep enough to have two small benches and a statue of MARY clad in WHITE with the traditional blue veil.  Just outside, two HAZEL trees stood sentry, and she wondered now if they'd been planted for protection back when much of the church lore included a great deal of local superstition.

After wandering through the graveyard, sitting a few quiet minutes in what she'd found out years later the priest had called "the Marian Grotto," and wandering through the garden, she finally entered the side door of the church which was kept open, just as it had been all those years ago, for those who wished to seek sanctuary and prayer.

At the back of the church, very NEAR where the main doors opened, was a huge stone baptismal font with a RED base.  It was actually there for two reasons, baptisms and to simply provide holy water for people entering the church to use when making the sign of the cross.

Several of the children when she was young had gotten together, some members of the church and some not, and had decided to try to create a WHIRLPOOL in that huge font, it was just too tempting to pass the opportunity when one got the idea.  They'd walked around and around, each dangling an arm in it (it was really almost a small pool), trying to get the water going in one direction so they could do a RAPID turn and go the other way, hoping it would work.

Before they could find out if it would be possible, the parish priest was standing over them with a frown.  When he noticed several of the children were not from his parish but probably went to the Presbyterian or Anglican churches further up the road, he'd decided to sit them all down and explain what the water was for, and why they shouldn't be playing in it.  

She smiled over the memory and realized while you can't go home again to stay, you can visit and it's plenty.

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Today is:

Africa Day for Food and Nutrition Security

Anniversary of the Declaration of the Slovak Nation -- Slovakia

Buy A Doughnut Day -- any wonder who started this one? (insert eye-roll here)

Checklists Day -- prevent tragedy, create great checklists; in honor of the development of the first well known checklist following a B-17 prototype's crash due to pilot error

Create a Great Funeral Day -- don't make your family choose the plans in the midst of grief, plan your sending away party now, it's more fun when it's done -- in advance!

Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions -- most former Soviet Republics

Deepavali/Diwali(Festival of Lights) -- Hindu; Jain; Sikh (second day of the festival)

     Kukur Tihar/Kukur Puja -- Day of Dogs

     Jain New Year

Hawaiki Nui Va'a Race -- French Polynesia (spectacular three-day open water outrigger canoe races from Huahine to Raiatea to Tahaa to Bora Bora)

Look in the Back of Your Refrigerator Day / Haunted Refrigerator Night (And hope the old hamburger isn't grazing on the moldy salad.)

Mischief Night, a/k/a Goosey Night, Devil's Night, Cabbage Night -- US

National Breadstick Day

National Candy Corn Day

Practice Winter Snuggling Night -- when it gets really cold, you'll be glad you practiced

St. Dorothy of Montau's Day (Patron of brides, difficult marriages, dying children, parents of large families, widows; Pomerania; Prussia)

St. Marcellus' Day  (as a Roman centurion who threw down his armor and refused to take part in pagan worship, he is Patron of conscientious objectors)

The Rhyne Toll -- Chetwode Manor, UK (through Nov 7) -- the Lord of the Manor may tax any cattle he finds on his Liberty (free pasture) on these days

Try on Your Halloween Costume Early Day -- to see how goofy you look, and make sure you have everything you need

Will Rogers' Days -- Claremore and Oologah, OK, US (celebrating the man's wit and humor at his birthplace and the museum dedicated to him; through Saturday)

Birthdays Today:

Nastia Liukin, 1989

Matthew Morrison, 1978

Gavin Rossdale, 1967

Diego Armando Maradona, 1960

Kevin Pollack, 1958

Charles Martin Smith, 1953

Harry Hamlin, 1951

Andrea Mitchell, 1946

Henry Winkler, 1945

Ed Lauter, 1940

Grace Slick, 1939

Claude Lelouch, 1937

Dick Gautier, 1937

Dick Vermeil, 1936

Robert Caro, 1935

Louis Malle, 1932

Ruth Gordon, 1896

Charles Atlas, 1893

Ezra Pound, 1885

William "Bull" Halsey, 1882

Emily Post, 1872

Alfred Sisley, 1839

Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1821

Richard Sheridan, 1751

John Adams, 1735

Debuting/Premiering Today:

Symphony No. 11 in G minor(Shostakovich Op. 103), 1957

"Panama Hattie"(Musical), 1940

"War of the Worlds"(Radio), 1938

Today in History:

Antioch surrenders to Rashidun Caliphate and his Muslim forces after the Battle of the Iron Bridge, 637

End of the 8th Crusade, 1270

King Henry VII, Tudor, crowned, 1485

Queen Isabella bans violence against Indians, 1503

The first Methodist church in the US is initiated (Wesley Chapel, NYC), 1768

Dr. Richard Gatling patents the machine gun, 1862

Founding of Helena, Montana (capital city), 1864

John Willis Menard, of Louisiana, becomes the first black elected to the US Congress (by special election, he was challenged by the loser, but was allowed to address Congress from the lectern), 1868

Daniel Cooper patents the time clock, 1894

Martha Hughes Cannon of Utah becomes the first woman US Senator, 1896

The first US Automobile Show opens in Madison Square Garden, NYC, 1900

Czar Nicholas II of Russia grants Russia's first constitution, creating a legislative assembly, 1905

Benito Mussolini is made Prime Minister of Italy, 1922

John Logie Baird creates Britain's first television transmitter, 1925

Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States, 1938

Anne Frank and sister Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1944

Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers to break the baseball color barrier, 1945

Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, 1960

The Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya; at 58 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise, 1961

The Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first time, 1973

The Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman takes place in Kinshasa, Zaire, 1974

Prince Juan Carlos becomes Spain's acting head of state, taking over for the country's ailing dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco, 1975

In Japan, NEC releases the first 16-bit home entertainment system, the TurboGrafx-16, known as PC Engine, 1987

Quebec sovereignists narrowly lose a referendum for a mandate to negotiate independence from Canada (vote is 50.6% to 49.4%), 1995

The last Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) early time-sharing operating system is shut down at the Canadian Department of National Defense in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2000

George Lucas sells Lucasfilm, Ltd., to the Walt Disney Company, 2012

Canada and the EU sign a free trade deal, 2016

India officially strips Kashmir of its autonomous status, its flag and its constitution, and brings it under federal control, 2019

The Grand Ole Opry broadcasts its 5000th Saturday night radio program, from Nashville, Tennessee, 2021

US Federal Agencies receive their first Executive Order ruling on their use of AI technology, 2023