Un-Called-For (Six Sentence Story), Good Fences, Sammy's Poetry Day and Brian's Thankful Thursday

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"This is the FBI, we have a warrant for your address..." the spam call would have gone on, but i hung up in disgust, knowing quite well if they have such a document, they won't call and tell you about it beforehand.

My friend Chris grew up in a family which had some light connections with some of the New Orleans mafia families; she'd been told she could have a job with any of their businesses any time she wanted it, her father had made most of his money in those businesses, and her brother and sisters had gone along with it all.

Like her mother's side of the family, she'd shunned those connections, gotten her own job as a teen at a fast food place her high school friend's father owned, put herself through college, gotten her own career going.

When the FBI did decide to come after her family, they were living in 3 different cities and it was coordinated, all seven households found their front doors being kicked in by agents at the same moment -- 4am, when you certainly don't expect such a thing.

They searched her house and questioned her for several hours, and finally gave up in disgust on her, with one agent saying, "You really don't know anything or have any connection to the rest of your family, do you?"

She'd not spoken to any of them in years by their choice not hers (she was willing to be cordial and go to big family events, but they didn't want her), and she didn't know anything about their business and was afterward ignored by the powers-that-be, but i learned from her if there really is a warrant for you, you won't know until they want you to know, and it will be in person not from a phone call.

Linking up with Denise at Girlie On The Edge Blog, where she hosts Six Sentence Stories, and the cue is Warrant.      

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While Good Fences Around the World seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird, i still enjoy looking for and posting interesting fences, so i will!

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It's Angel Sammy's Poetry Day!  This week's image and my poem:    

I can't believe you did it

although you said you would,

you went to a plastic surgeon,

your nose job looks really good!

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Angel Brian's Family of Brian's Home - Forever hosts the Thankful Thursday Blog Hop.   It's time to share something for which i am thankful.  

Today i am thankful i was able to give my daughter-in-law my ukulele.  As much as i have enjoyed it, i'm not really a musician and i have very little time to play.  She plays guitar, ukulele and mandolin and will make good use of it, especially while her great-grandmother's 100-year-old ukulele is being repaired by one of my Sweetie's friends, who is an expert.

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Today is:

Aoi Matsuri -- Kyoto, Japan (Hollyhock Festival, a pageant reproducing ancient imperial processions)

Brown Bag-It Thursday -- it's cheaper and healthier, and you might like it enough to start a new habit

Cold Sophie's Day (5th Ice Saint; according to Nordic legend, this day may be very cold, but there will be no more frosts after this)

Flip Your Mattress Day -- because it's a good thing to do

Hyperemisis Gravidarum Awareness Day -- bringing attention to morning sickness that becomes life-threatening    

Ides of May -- Ancient Roman Calendar; related observances

     Feast of Maia and Vesta

     Mercuralia -- festival for Mercury

     Sacrifice day to the Tiber River

Independence Day -- Paraguay(1811)

International Conscientious Objectors' Day

International Day of Families -- UN

International MPS Awareness Day 

Kan Phuetchamongkhon -- Thailand (Royal Plowing and Farmers Day) 6th day 4th lunar month

La Corsa del Ceri -- Gubbio, Italy (festival on the eve of the saint day of the city's patron, St. Ubaldo)

Lag B'Omer -- Judaism (begins sunset today)

Mother's Day -- Paraguay

National Chocolate Chip Day

National Safety Dose Day -- cannot confirm they sponsor a day any more, but the Safety Dose people still want us to remember that more is not necessarily better when it comes to taking medicines, and to dose them correctly for children

Nylon Stockings Day -- they went on sale at stores around the US this date in 1940

Over the Rainbow Day -- birth anniversary of Lyman Frank Baum

Pithi Chrat Preah Neanng Korl -- Cambodia (Royal Ploughing Ceremony, to mark the beginning of the rice growing season)

Police Officer/Peace Officer Memorial Day -- US (National Association of Chiefs of Police sponsor the main memorial event at the American Police Hall of Fame and Museum in Titusville, FL, but there may be services where you are also)

St. Dymphna's Day (Patron of epileptics, family happiness, incest victims, martyrs, mental asylums/hospitals, mental health caregivers and professionals/psychiatrists/therapists, mentally ill people, nervous disorders, neurological disorders, possessed people, princesses, rape victims, runaways, sleepwalkers, those who have lost parents; against sleepwalking, epilepsy, insanity, mental disorders, mental illness)

St. Hallvard's Day (Patron of Oslo; protector of innocence and virtue)

St. Isidore of Madrid's Day (a/k/a Isidore the Farmer; Patron of agricultural workers/farm workers/farmers/field hands/husbandmen/ranchers, day laborers, livestock, rural communities; Angono, Philippines; Asturias, Cebu, Philippines; Bukidnon, Mindanao, Philippines; Carampa, Peru; Castalla, Spain; Cuz Cuz, Chile; Digos, Philippines; Estepona, Spain; La Celba, Honduras; Leon, Spain; Lima, Peru; Lucban, Philippines; Madrid, Spain; Malaybalay, Philippines, diocese of; Morong, Philippines; Nabas, Philippines; Orotava, Spain; Pulilan, Philippines; Pulupandan, Philippines; Sabana Grande, Puerto Rico; San Isidro, Argentina; Saragossa, Spain; Sariaya, Philippines; Seville, Spain; Tavalera, Philippines; Tayabas, Philippines; United States National Rural Life Conference; against the death of children)

     Carabao Festival -- San Isidro, Pulilan, and Angono, Philippines (second day and main festival; on St. Isidore of Madrid's Day; the farming communities celebrate their beasts of burden and have them blessed)

     Municipal Holiday -- Madrid

     San Isidro Day -- Mexico

St. Sophia of Rome's Day (considered by some to be among the Ice Saints, and invoked for protection against frost)

Straw Hat Day -- just as you don't wear white after Labor Day, you don't wear straw hats before today, the unofficial start of summer and the official start of straw hat season    

Teacher's Day -- Mexico; South Korea

Tuberous Sclerosis Global Awareness Day  

Anniversaries Today:

Mary, Queen of Scots, marries James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, 1567

Airmail service begins between NYC, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, 1918

Birthdays Today:

Jamie-Lynn Sigler, 1981

David Krumholtz, 1978

David Charvet, 1972

Sam Trammell, 1971

Emmit Smith, 1969

Giselle Fernandez, 1961

Dan Patrick, 1956

Lee Horsley, 1955

George Brett, 1953

Chazz Palminteri, 1951

Brian Eno, 1948

David Cronenberg, 1943

Lainie Kazan, 1942

Madeleine Albright, 1937

Trini Lopez, 1937

Anna Maria Alberghetti, 1936

Jasper Johns, 1930

Richard Avedon, 1923

Eddy Arnold, 1918

Max Frisch, 1911

James Mason, 1909

Joseph Cotten, 1905

Abraham Zapruder, 1905

Katherine Anne Porter, 1890

Arthur Schnitzler, 1862

Ellen Louise Axson Wilson, 1860

Pierre Curie, 1859

L. Frank Baum, 1856

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Esclarmonde"(Opera), 1889

Today in History:

Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, is sentenced to death, 1536

Bartholomew Gosnold becomes the first European to see Cape Cod, 1602

Johannes Kepler confirms his discovery of the third law of planetary motion, 1618

James Puckle, a London lawyer, patents the world's first machine gun, 1718

The Seven Years' War begins when Great Britain declares war on France, 1756

Diego Marín Aguilera flies a glider for "about 360 meters", at a height of 5-6 meters, during one of the first attempted flights, 1793

George III survives two assassination attempts in one day, 1800

Opening of the first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1817

Francis Baily observes "Baily's beads" during an annular eclipse, 1836

Rama IV is crowned King of Thailand (The King and I), 1851

Opening of the present Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, 1858

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman's Suffrage Association, 1869

Las Vegas, Nevada, is founded, 1905

The United States Supreme Court  declares Standard Oil to be an "unreasonable" monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up, 1911

The Winnipeg General Strike begins; by 11:00 a.m., almost the whole working population of Winnipeg, Manitoba had walked off the job, 1919

In an attempted Coup d'état, the Prime Minister of Japan Inukai Tsuyoshi is killed, 1932

The Moscow Metro is opened to public, 1935

The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 3, 1958

Mercury-Atlas 9 astronaut L. Gordon Cooper becomes the first American to spend more than a day in space, 1963

President Richard Nixon appoints Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington the first female United States Army Generals, 1970

Portrait of Doctor Gachet by Vincent van Gogh is sold for a record $82.5 million, the most expensive painting at the time, 1990

Edith Cresson becomes France's first female prime minister, 1991

California becomes the second U.S. state after Massachusetts in 2004 to legalize same-sex marriage, 2008

Jessica Watson, age 17, becomes the youngest person to sail, non-stop and unassisted around the world solo, 2010

U.S. scientists develop a device that can generate electricity from genetically-engineered viruses; these piezoelectric materials are a step toward the development of personal power generators, 2012

The UN Security Council condemns North Korea's missile tests, 2017

The US birth rate hits a 32 year low, including a record low level of teens giving birth, 2019

The journal Nature publishes the results of a study from China’s Chang’e-4 Moon rover that suggests the asteroid impact that created the giant crater on the Moon’s far side was so great as to crack the crust and reach the mantle below, 2019

China lands its Zhurong rover on Utopia Planitia, Mars, as part of the Tianwen-1 mission, 2021

Finland's government says it intends to apply to join NATO, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, ending decades of neutrality, 2022

Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington becomes the most valuable British-born  female artist at auction when her painting "Les Distractions de Dagobert" sells for $28.5million in New York, 2024