They Emptied the Change from the Gumball Machine (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.    

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

This week's prompts are:

• consider, 
• rather, 
• superstitious,
• paraskevidekatriaphobia, 
• table

and/or

 

• bigots, 
• different, 
• gender, 
• hyperbolise, 
• teeth, 

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.

"PARASKEVIDEKATRIAPHOBIA, friggatriskaidekaphobioa, triskaidekaphobia, HYPERBOLISE, transubstantiationalist, supercalifradulisticexpialicodious..."

"What are you doing, child-o-mine?"

"Practicing big words because they sound funny.  And besides, Laney said she'd be ready to play with me by the time I finished learning them."

Trish, often called "kidlet" by her big sister, was holding a paper with all these long words written out very carefully, which she showed her dad.

"I needed time to work on my report and I couldn't send her outside to do something like pick a bouquet for the table, not with those Pebble Grey skies looking like they're ready to let go any moment" Laney said, coming into the room.  "I've decided to CONSIDER the RATHER SUPERSTITIOUS beliefs behind what makes people BIGOTS, whether against those who are of DIFFERENT races or of a different GENDER."

"That's quite a big project," dad mused.

"It's my Senior Thesis and I wanted to do something I hadn't seen done before, and I don't expect it to cover every aspect, just a few of the more prominent ones we see in early US history."

"Good for you."

"But I've had enough of studying for the moment.  C'mon, kidlet, lets go to the kitchen TABLE and play a game while we wait to get our TEETH into whatever's bubbling on the stove right now."

"It's my famous beef and barley stew with my five-grain bread," dad said, "and I need to go give the stew a stir and see if the bread's ready to come out of the oven and cool.  We'll all play until supper's done."

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

Today is National Feral Cat Day  in the US.  It is sponsored by Alley Cat Allies.     

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

Today is:

Boss's Day -- either celebrate, or roll your eyes, both are acceptable responses (begun by Patricia Bays Haroski in 1958 in honor of her boss, who was also her father; this date was his birthday)

Chrysanthemum Festival -- Japan ("The Festival of Happiness", various shrines; through Nov. 15)

Clean Your Bug Zapper Day -- internet generated, and we're getting a bit overboard here, aren't we?

Day of National Concern About Young People and Gun Violence -- US (students around the nation are asked to sign the Pledge Against Gun Violence)       

Day of Pope John Paul II -- Poland

Dictionary Day / Learn a Word Day -- Noah Webster's birth anniversary

Dress Like A Dork Day -- does someone have it out for us with these?

Elephantine Festival -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (several such celebrations of elephants were held around this time of year in Egypt)

Ether Day (first demonstrated use, see History)

Feast of 'Ilm (Knowledge) -- Baha'i

Hagfish Day -- a day to celebrate the uniqueness and necessity of even the ugliest of sea creatures, like the hagfish

National Fossil Day -- US (National Park Service information) 

National Liqueur Day

National Support Your Local Chamber of Commerce Day -- US

National Take Your Parents To Lunch Day -- US (sponsored by Kiwi Magazine, encouraging parents to go to school and have lunch with the children, learning what goes into a healthy lunch) 

Niihama Drum Festival -- Niihama, Japan (three day festival with two ton drum floats)

Sennin Musha Gyoretsu -- Tochigi, Japan (procession of 1,000 warriors; through tomorrow)

St. Hedwig's Day (Patron of brides, duchesses, difficult marriages, widows; Bavaria; Berlin, Germany; Gorlitz, Germany; Silesia; against the death of children, jealousy)

Teachers' Day -- Chile

World Food Day -- UN

Anniversaries Today:

The first birth control clinic in the US is opened, 1916

Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah, 1875

Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England's first residential college for women, 1869

Zion's Co-Operative Mercantile Institution, America's first department store, opens, 1868

The Collegiate School is established(forerunner of Yale University), 1701, Old Style Date

Birthdays Today:

John Mayer, 1977

Kellie Martin, 1975

Flea, 1962

Tim Robbins, 1958

Melissa Louise Belote, 1956

Barry Corbin, 1940

Bob Weir, 1947

Suzanne Somers, 1946

Gunter Grass, 1927

Angela Lansbury, 1925

William Orville Douglas, 1898

Eugene O'Neill, 1888

David Ben-Gurion, 1886

Oscar Wilde, 1854

Noah Webster, 1758

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"The Red Mill"(Musical), 1945

"The Man Who Came too Dinner"(Play), 1939

"Billy the Kid"(Ballet), 1938

Jane Eyre(Publication date), 1847

Today in History:

Jadwiga (yes, a she) is crowned King of Poland, 1384

Olivier van Noorts' ships reach the Philippines, 1600

George Washington takes Yorktown, 1781

Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, is guillotined, 1793

Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers, 1843

Dentist William T. Morton demonstrates the effectiveness of ether, 1846

Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" is published, 1847

John Brown leads a raid on Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, 1859

The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is "discovered", 1869

John Harwood takes out a patent on a self-winding watch, 1923

The Disney Company is founded, 1923

Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army, 1940

Fidel Castro is sentenced in Havana to 15 years in prison, 1953

The People's Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon, 1964

In response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada invokes the War Measures Act, 1970

Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, 1973

Pope John Paul II is elected after the October 1978 Papal conclave, 1978

Wanda Rutkiewicz is the first Pole and the first European woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, 1978

Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, 1984

Reinhold Messner becomes the first person to summit all 14 Eight-thousanders, 1986

Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, is officially inaugurated, 2002

A 1,255lb. portion of the Chelyabinsk meteor is recovered by divers in Russia, 2013

New Zealand, Malaysia, Angola, Spain and Venezuela are elected to the United Nations Security Council, 2014

Ed Whitlock, 85, becomes the oldest person to ever finish a marathon in under 4 hours, completing the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 3 hours 56 minutes, 2016

In an experiment on microbial fuel cells, Pete the Fern at the London Zoo becomes the first plant to take a selfie, 2019

Egyptian archaeologists announce the discovery of more than 20 painted wooden coffins from the Theban necropolis of Asasif, 2019

NASA launches the Lucy probe on a 12-year, four-billion-mile trek to explore 8 of the so-called Trojan asteroids, 2021

The Amazon River's largest tributary, the Negro River, falls to its lowest level ever confirming the rain forest is enduring a significant drought, 2023