How Does This Even Happen? (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.    

Much thanks again to Charlotte (MotherOwl) for providing the prompts last month. 

This month, yours truly is providing the prompts on my blog.

Please feel free to use some of the prompts, none of them, or all of them as you see fit.  The point is to get the creative juices flowing in whatever manner your muse leads you.

This week's prompts are:

absent

satisfaction

combination

fun

echo

exempt

and/or the following phrases

between a rock and a hard place (in a difficult situation with no easy choices)

knuckle down (applying oneself seriously to a task)

long in the tooth (aging or getting old)

As an additional prompt you may wish to use, Charlotte(MotherOwl) has chosen Straw Yellow as the color of the month.

Jensen realized he was Between a Rock and a Hard Place when it came to Mr. Zabriski.

The man had lived in the apartment complex since before Jensen was manager; a widower, now retired and with no living relatives anyone knew anything about.  Jensen had once asked him about family and he'd said, "My friends are my family."

The man's mind was ABSENT more and more, he was coming up with crazier and crazier reasons to be paranoid or afraid, and to his friends in the apartment complex, the only friends he really seemed to have, there was no SATISFACTION in watching this happen to him.

For Mr. Zabriski, who had been popular with both the residents and staff at the complex, life didn't seem to be much FUN any longer.  He seemed to live in either an ECHO of the past or a fear of present dangers which didn't exist, first swinging toward one, and then the other.

Jensen didn't know if Mr. Zabriski's symptoms were more in line with dementia, a psychiatric problem, or a COMBINATION of both.  He just knew the man was getting Long in the Tooth, a problem all of us would have someday with any luck, and he needed to Knuckle Down and figure out what to do about it before it got any worse, if there was anything he could do.

Jensen knew Mr. Zabriski wasn't really his responsibility beyond as a resident of the complex he managed, but he wasn't EXEMPT from feelings, and he felt responsible.

He'd been raised to believe the answer to, "Am I my brother's keeper?" was, "Yes, to the degree you can help your fellow man in need, you are."

Watching the sunset throw every color of yellow from goldenrod to Straw Yellow and lemon to mustard across the wide sky, he picked up the phone and dialed his brother-in-law, who was a lawyer.  He'd at least start with finding out who he should be contacting to get the ball rolling on making sure if anything happened, Mr. Zabriski would have some kind of plan in place.

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Today is:

Bad Hair Day -- birth anniversary of Don King

Birth of the White Buffalo -- Lakota Native American rituals honoring the birth of the White Buffalo in 1994, signaling the return of the White Buffalo Woman (manifestation of the Star Goddess Wohpe), who gave them the sacred peace pipe

Dial the Phone Day -- the first rotary dial phone patent was applied for by A. E. Keith, John Erickson, and Charles Erickson on this day in 1896

Feast of Asma -- Baha'i

Independence From USSR Day -- Estonia

Lemonade Day

Moon's Birthday -- Aztec Calendar (according to some websites, but i haven't confirmed it; if you want something to celebrate, this is as good as anything else)

National Chocolate Pecan Pie Day

National Medical Dosimetrist's Day -- American Association of Medical Dosimetrists (medical radiation safety experts) 

National Radio Day -- on the day WWJ(AM) radio first signed on in Detroit in 1920, one of the earliest news broadcast stations

Paryushana Parva -- Jain (start of the 8 day festival signifying human emergence into a new world of spiritual and moral refinement and a celebration of the natural qualities of the soul; the final day is Samvatsari, the most important day and focused on forgiveness)

Revolution Day -- Western Sahara

Revolution of the King and People -- Morocco

St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Day (Patron of bees and beekeepers, candle makers, wax refiners; Burgundy, France; Cistercians; Gibraltar; Queens College, Cambridge, England; Speyer Cathedral)

Stop and Smell Your Dog Day -- and, depending on the results, maybe even Give Your Dog a Bath Day

St. Stephen's Festival --  Budapest, Hungary (National Day for all of Hungary)

Thoth orders the healing of the Eye of Horus -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)

Virtual Worlds Day -- internet generated, as well it should be

World Mosquito Day -- commemorates the day Dr. Ronald Ross discovered the link between mosquitoes and malaria in 1897

Birthdays Today:

Amy Adams, 1975

Tara Dakides, 1975

Jan Allen, 1956

Theresa Saldana, 1955

Al Roker, 1954

Robert Plant, 1948

Connie Chung, 1946

Don King, 1931

Jim Reeves, 1924

Jacqueline Susann, 1921

Eero Saarinen, 1910

Edgar Albert Guest, 1881

H.P. Lovecraft, 1880

Eliel Saarinen, 1873

Benjamin Harrison, 1833

Bernardo O'Higgins, 1776

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"1812 Overture"(Tchaikovsky Op. 49), 1882

Today in History:

Hungary is established as a kingdom by Stephen I, 1000

The Dutch bring the first African slaves to the colony of Jamestown, VA, 1619

The Spanish establish the presidio that will be the town of Tuscon, Arizona, 1775

The Lewis and Clark "Corps of Discovery", exploring the Louisiana Purchase, suffers its only death when sergeant Charles Floyd dies, apparently from acute appendicitis 1804

Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" debuts in Moscow, 1882

Rotary Dial telephone is patented, 1896

The Big Blowup, a huge fire in the Northwestern US, burns 3 million acres, 1910

Adolphe Pegoud makes the first parachute jump from an airplane, 1913

Stainless steel is first cast, 1913

WJM,8Mk, Detroit, becomes the first commercial radio station to start daily broadcasting, 1920

UK becomes the first to use radar, 1940

Plutonium's weight determined, 1942

Launch of Voyager 2, 1977

George and Joy Adamson, the Born Free conservationists, are gunned down by poachers, 1989

The Oslo Peace Accords are signed in Norway, 1993

The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Quebec may not secede from Canada without federal government approval, 1998

As part of ongoing political reforms, the government of Myanmar announces it will end media censorship, 2012

Measles cases reach a record high in Europe with 41,000 infected in the first six months of 2018 and 37 deaths according to WHO, 2018

NASA confirms it is planning the Clipper Mission to Jupiter's moon Europa to take off in 2025 to explore the moon's oceans and find out if it can harbor life, 2019 

Misuzulu ka Zwelithini is crowned the new Zulu King at KwaKhangelamankengane Palace in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa, 2022

In a referendum, Ecuador votes against drilling for oil in Yasuni National Park, a world biosphere reserve inhabited by indigenous groups in the Amazon, 2023