Out With the Old, In With the New (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, Keith, 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 this month will again be posted by Elephant's Child and are provided by Charlotte (MotherOwl)        

This week's prompts are:

• Party
• Chance
• Note
• Faucet
• Black
• Idea

And/or

• Jelly
• Leather
• Books
• Root
• Amusement
• Pardon

An additional prompt by Charlotte (MotherOwl)  is to use her colour of the month in your take on the prompts.  In honor of how much we all love to write, this month's color is Writing Pleasure Purple.

Have fun.

I know everyone will PARDON me for going a little over the top in planning this PARTY.  It's not every day you get the CHANCE to celebrate the opening of a new library you've worked hard to make happen and I intend to make the most of it.

Some townsfolk will attend with pride, some with AMUSEMENT, some just to have an excuse to see a chocolate fountain where it looks like the liquid chocolate in dripping out of a FAUCET suspended in midair, but whatever the reason, they will mostly all come and that's a good thing.  Every family has ROOTs in this town and some donated books from their family and family history to this library, thus it really belongs to all of us.

It was my IDEA to use the color theme Writing Pleasure Purple in choosing the decorations.  The head librarian wanted the paper plates (the sturdy kind) to be BLACK and the extra fancy plastic cutlery to be golden so we went with it.  It wouldn't do to offend the head librarian, after all.

All the LEATHER bound classic BOOKS make for a great display at the front.  Food, from fancy canapés for the grown-ups to simple peanut butter and JELLY finger sandwiches for the children, will be in a side room where there are no books (and kept there, with a guard posted), and plenty of fun will be provided with indoor and outdoor games for the children and a big trivia game for the grown-ups.

Everyone gets to go home with a bag of small gifts, a nicely designed NOTE book, a matching pen and pencil with a case, some bookmarks, a simple take-and-make-at-home craft for the children, and of course, everyone will have a chance during the festivities to get their own library card.

We've needed this, and I'm glad it's finally going to happen.

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Today is:

Atomic Bomb Day -- the first experimental bomb was set off today in 1945

Closet Space Appreciation Day -- if you have some, enjoy (we have tiny closets!)

Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel; related observances (many noting her relationship to Carmen, ancient goddess of healing and midwifery)

     Fiesta of the Virgin of Carmen -- Santurtzi, Basque Region, Spain

     Lady of Carmen Day -- Chile

     La Madonna della Carmine -- Naples, Italy (all of Italy, actually, but especially here)

     Virgen Del Carmen -- Cetano, Puerto Rico

Fresh Spinach Day -- yippee!

Ice Cream Cone Day -- this is one of the many days people say the confection was invented, so why not?

LaPaz Day -- Bolivia

Manu'a Cession Day -- American Samoa

National Corn Fritters Day

National Personal Chef Day -- some websites say Feb. 24, but since i'm not going to have one, you may celebrate it whichever you choose

Parking Meter Day -- the first parking meter was installed on this day in 1935 in Oklahoma City, OK

St. Eustathius' Day

Talk to a Telemarketer Day -- only if i can mess with his/her mind in some way!

Anniversary Today:

Michael J. Fox marries Tracy Pollan, 1988

Birthdays Today

Mark Indelicato, 1994

Jayma Mays, 1979

Corey Feldman, 1971

Larry Sanger, 1968

Barry Sanders, 1968

Will Ferrell, 1967

Phoebe Cates, 1963

Michael Flatley, 1958

Stewart Copeland, 1952

Ruben Blades, 1948

Pinchas Zukerman, 1948

Bess Myerson, 1924

Ginger Rogers, 1911

"Miss Frances" Horwich, 1907

Barbara Stanwyck, 1907

Orville Reddenbacker, 1907

Roald Amundsen, 1872

Ida B. Wells, 1862

Mary Baker Eddy, 1821

Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1723

Andrea del Sarto, 1486

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Golden Horseshoe Revue"(Disneyland show), 1955

The Catcher in the Rye(Publication date), 1951

"Das Entfuhrung aus dem Serail"(Opera, Mozart K. 384), 1782

Today in History

The Islamic Calendar begins, 622

East-West Schism between the Eastern and Western Christian churches begin, 1054

The first banknotes in Europe are issued by the Swedish bank Stockholms Banco, 1661

Manchu Qing Dynasty naval forces under traitorous commander Shi Lang defeat the Kingdom of Tungning in the Battle of Penghu near the Pescadores Islands, 1683

Father Junipero Serra founds California's first mission, Mission San Diego de Alcalá. Over the following decades, it evolves into the city of San Diego, 1769

First performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, 1782

The city of La Paz, in what is today Bolivia, declares its independence from the Spanish Crown, 1809

Emily Stowe becomes the first female physician licensed to practice medicine in Canada, 1880

The world's first parking meter is installed in the Oklahoma capital, Oklahoma City, 1935

The world's first nuclear weapon, the "atom bomb," is detonated in New Mexico, 1945

The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, marks the first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane, 1948

J.D. Salinger novel The Catcher in the Rye published by Little, Brown and Company, 1951

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closes its very last "Big Tent" show in Pittsburgh, due to changing economics all subsequent circus shows will be held in arenas, 1956

USS George Washington (SSBN-598) a modified Skipjack class submarine successfully test fires the first Ballistic missile while submerged, 1960

The Mont Blanc Tunnel linking France and Italy opens, 1965

Apollo 11, the first manned space mission to land on the Moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, 1969

Mahathir bin Mohamad becomes Malaysia's 4th Prime Minister; he will be in office 22 years, Asia's longest-serving political leader, 1981

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collides with Jupiter (impacts continue until July 22), 1994

John F. Kennedy, Jr., piloting a Piper Saratoga aircraft, dies in a plane mishap over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, along with his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette, 1999

Chicago's Millennium Park is opened to the public, 2004

The funeral for the final heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Otto von Habsburg, occurs in Vienna, attended by monarchs and members of the political elite, 2011

NASA's Dawn space probe enters orbit around the protoplanet Vesta, 2011

Scientists reveal the first close-up pictures of Pluto, sent by the New Horizons probe, 2015

The BBC announces that the first ever female Doctor Who will be played by Jodie Whittaker, 2017

Scientists at the Carnegie Institute for Science announce the discovery of 12 more moons orbiting Jupiter, bringing the total of Jupiter’s known moons to 79, 2018

The Persian Gulf International Airport on Iran’s southwestern coast registers a record high heat index of 152 degrees Fahrenheit (66.7 C) at 12:30 p.m., 2023