Seen In the Middle of Nowhere on a Country Road (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.    

This month Elephant's Child is providing the prompts, and we thank her for continuing to herd the cats and facilitate our ability to enjoy Words for Wednesday.    

This week's prompts are:

• ancient
•  life
• water
• melody
• lied

 

And/or

 

• medal 
• speaker
• cords
• paper
• false 

Charlotte (MotherOwl) has selected New Start Yellow as the colour of the month.

 As always, have fun.

"If someone called times back then 'the good old days,' it's FALSE and they LIED.  As you'll see on our tour, LIFE in ANCIENT times wasn't easy."

The docent giving the tour of the city ruins was standing in front of a huge mural of a sunrise which had been restored.  The sun, a vivid New Start Yellow, rose over a depiction of what the town really looked like when people lived there.

"This mural gives us a great overview of the town, not every old site has it's own portrait somewhere to help us figure out what was where.  

"You can see at this end of the city is the well where the women went to draw WATER each day.  They carried gallons per day, and didn't get a MEDAL for doing it, either.  The men had the equally onerous job of procuring wood for the fires, since everything had to be cooked over a wood fire, winter and summer."

The docent was a good SPEAKER and pointed out places they'd see as they walked through the town.  Then he led the way, stopping to show places and items of interest, the preserved parchments, "since they didn't have the same kind of PAPER we have now," pottery and furniture, samples of cloth and pieces of CORDS used to pull drapes which had somehow survived the ravages of time.

There were even musical instruments, and he'd learned to play a simple MELODY on one of the stringed instruments.

It was a fascinating look into life then, with him vividly describing the hard work it took to get food and keep a city going in days with few conveniences, no modern medicine for illness and terrible sanitation.

He always ended it the same way, "Thank you for taking the tour with me today, and when you get back on your bus, don't forget to be thankful you get to travel on more than your own two feet, which is all most of these people had."

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Today is:

Arbor Day -- Jordan

Armed Forces Day / Remembrance Day -- Nigeria

Army Day -- India

Basketball Day -- rules for the game were first published this day in 1892(day debated, year is certain)

Chosun-gul -- North Korea (Korean Alphabet Day)

Dia del Maestro -- Venezuela (Teacher's Day)

Feast of the Ass -- Ancient Roman Calendar (celebrates Vesta being saved by a donkey)

Feast of Entering Heaven and the Two Lands -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)

Fiesta Del Senor de Esquipulas/Pilgrimage of Cristo Negro de Esquipulas -- Esquipulas, Guatemala (Festival of the Black Christ)

John Chilembwe Day -- Malawi

Lenaea -- Ancient Greek Calendar (a Festival of Comedy; date approximate)

Moliere Day -- France

National Hat Day -- begun by a hat loving individual who has chosen to remain anonymous

National Strawberry Ice Cream Day

Procrastinator's New Year -- declared by someone who had a really great sense of humor

Sailing of Wadjyt -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (the icon of the cobra goddess, Wadjyt, is carried on the Nile to visit many cities; date approximate)

St. Ita's Day (Patron of Limerick, Ireland)

St. Paul the Hermit's Day (the first of the Egyptian hermits; Patron of clothing industry, weavers)

Thiruvalluvar Day -- PY, TN, India (remembrance of the celebrated Tamil poet)

Tree Planting Day -- Egypt

Tsunahiki Matsuri -- Japan (various shrines hold tug-of-war festivals in which the team for god Ebisu vie with the team for god Daikoku; if Ebisu wins, the next year will have good catches at sea, if Daikoku, it will bring good harvests)

Anniversaries Today:

Opening of the British Museum, 1759

Elizabeth I is crowned Queen of England, 1559

Birthdays Today:

Drew Brees, 1979

Chad Lowe, 1968

Mario Van Peebles, 1957

Charo, 1951

Andrea Martin, 1947

Margaret O'Brien, 1937

Ernest J. Gaines, 1933

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929

John Cardinal O'Connor, 1920

Lloyd Bridges, 1913

Gene Krupa, 1909

Elie Siegmeister, 1909

Edward Teller, 1908

Aristotle Onassis, 1906

Goodman Ace, 1899

Pierre S. du Pont, 1870

Philip Livingston, 1766

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, a/k/a Moliere, 1622 (baptismal date, actual birth date unknown)

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Hill Street Blues"(TV), 1981

"Happy Days"(TV), 1974

The Democratic Donkey(symbol in newspaper comic), 1870

"Stella"(Goethe Play), 1816

Today in History:

Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon lays siege to Jerusalem under Zedekiah's reign, in a siege lasting until July 23, BC588

Christopher Columbus sets sail for Spain from Hispaniola, ending his first voyage to the New World, 1493

Third sitting of the Council of Trent opens, 1562

The British Museum opens in Montague House in London, 1759

John Etherington of London steps out sporting the first top hat, 1797

The first US built locomotive to pull a passenger train begins its first run, with Mr. and Mrs. Pierson on board for the first US railroad honeymoon trip, 1831

The donkey is first used as a symbol for the Democratic Party, in Harper's Weekly, 1870

The Coca-Cola Company, then known as the Pemberton Medicine Company, is originally incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia, 1889

James Naismith publishes the rules of Basketball, 1892

Tchaikovsky's ballet "Swan Lake" premieres in St Petersburg, 1895

Dr. Lee DeForest patents a 3-element vacuum tube (one of the inventions that later made radio possible), 1907

The Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority becomes the first Greek-letter organization founded and established by African-American college women, 1908

The Boston Molasses Disaster, 2 million gallons of molasses spill, 21 killed, over 150 injured, 1919

The first building to be completely covered in glass, built for the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, is completed in Toledo, Ohio, 1936

The world's largest office building, The Pentagon, is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia, 1943

The US Supreme Court rules that "clear and present danger" of incitement to riot is not protected speech and can be a cause for arrest, 1951

The first Super Bowl is played in Los Angeles; the Green Bay Packers defeat the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10, 1967

The USSR launches Soyuz 5, 1969

The United Nations deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from occupied Kuwait expires, preparing the way for the start of Operation Desert Storm, 1991

Wikipedia goes online, 2001

An intense solar flare blasts X-rays across the solar system, 2005

ESA's SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron, and other surface elements on the moon, 2005

The Stardust space mission returns dust from a comet to Earth, 2006

Chesley Sullenberger lands US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in NYC. All passengers and crew members survive in what becomes known as the "Miracle on the Hudson", 2009

The American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan unveils its newest exhibit, a replica skeleton of a Titanosaur dinosaur (found in 2010 in Argentina), the largest known dinosaur at 70 tons, 37m, 2016

Chinese scientists confirm that they have germinated a cotton seed on the moon on board the Chang’e 4 lander, 2019

The underwater volcano Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha'apai violently erupts with a 20km ash plume, sending a tsunami over nearby Tonga, with shock waves heard in New Zealand, 2022

Mexico begins enforcement of one of the world's strongest anti-smoking laws, banning smoking in public places such as parks and beaches, 2023

English singer Elton John wins an Emmy Award for his television special "Elton John: Farewell From Dodger Stadium", giving him the final piece of his EGOT, 2024