***********************************
Linking up with Wordless Wednesday 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.
This month, the prompts are being provided by WiseWebWoman.
- Battery
Remain
Age
Bite
Produce
Workshop
Forest
Critic
A whole BATTERY of studies have shown that if you get the Love-of-Reading Bug to BITE a child at an early AGE, you'll get a person who will REMAIN a reader and learner when s/he grows up.
That's where the Laundromat Library League program comes in. You don't have to PRODUCE a fancy WORKSHOP to teach parents to induce that love of reading, just get parents to read to their kids.
The LLL puts small libraries of donated children's books in laundromats, to encourage parents to read to their children while waiting for the laundry to be done instead of handing them a screen to play on.
It's also been shown that children love to be read to by people they know and love best, it encourages them to want to read for themselves.
When we first put up the one at the laundromat we use, it was fabulous. People would even take books home and leave others, which is encouraged. Adults started their own section of books in one of the boxes without us saying a word. It was a joy.
Then Covid made us put it away, wrapped in plastic on a shelf at the top of the laundromat office.
Now it's back and if you want to be a CRITIC of my excitement or rain on my parade, then you simply don't see the FOREST as you're looking at too many individual trees.
Encourage your laundromats to put in such libraries, encourage the parents who come in to use them, and let's raise up a generation of readers.
***********************************
Today is:
Africa Day / African Liberation Day -- African Union; related observance
Heroes' Day -- Lesotho
President Yajya Jammeh's Birthday -- Gambia
First Patriotic Government / National Day -- Argentina (Dia de la Revolucion de Mayo)
Flitting Day -- parts of England; Scotland (traditional day on which leases were up for the year and people moved)
Geek Pride Day / Nerd Pride Day -- celebrate the geek / nerd in you! Geek culture is the obvious choice to laud when it's Glorious 25 May, Star Wars Day, and Towel Day at the same time; began in Spain as "Día del Orgullo Friki"
Glorious 25 May -- in Terry Pratchett's Discworld
Independence Day -- Jordan(1946)
Liberation Day -- Lebanon
National Brown-Bag-It Day
National Missing Children's Day -- US (promoting awareness of the problem of missing children)
National Senior Health and Fitness Day -- US (don't let age get in the way of staying healthy!)
National Tap Dance Day -- US, birth anniversary of Mr. Bojangles
National Wine Day
Offering to Demeter -- Ancient Greek Calendar (date approximate)
Poetry Day -- Florida, US (since 1947, the state legislature declared this for all public schools in the state; if you don't live in Florida, enjoy a poem today, anyway)
Procession of the Statue of Artemis -- Ancient Greek and Roman Calendars, at Ephesus (date approximate, but always near the Thargelia)
Self-Reliance Day -- an internet originated holiday, based on the idea that we should all become more self-reliant in this day when it is a dying art.
Star Wars Day -- Part IV, A New Hope was released this date in 1977
St. Bede the Venerable's Day (Patron of lectors; Father of English History)
St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi's Day (Patron of the ill; against illness and sexual temptation)
Towel Day -- Douglas Adams fans, unite! Always know where your towel is.
Week of Solidarity with the People of Non-Self-Governing Territories begins -- United Nations
Anniversary Today:
Lord Guildford Dudley marries Lady Jane Grey, 1553
Birthdays Today:
Brian Urlacher, 1978
Ethan Suplee, 1976
Lauryn Hill, 1975
Justin Henry, 1971
Jamie Kennedy, 1970
Anne Heche, 1969
Stacy London, 1969
Mike Myers, 1963
Connie Sellecca, 1955
Jessi Colter, 1947
Karen Valentine, 1947
Frank Oz, 1944
Leslie Uggams, 1943
Ian McKellen, 1939
Raymond Carver, 1938
Tom T. Hall, 1936
K.C. Jones, 1932
Beverly Sills, 1929
Robert Ludlum, 1927
Miles Davis, 1926
Jeanne Crain, 1925
Claude Akins, 1918
James Joseph "Gene" Tunney, 1898
Igor Sikorsky, 1889
Philip Murray, 1886
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, 1878
John Alexander Dowie, 1847
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803
Debuting/Premiering Today:
Wonder Woman(Film), 2017
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi(Film), 1983
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope(Film), 1977
"The Subject Was Roses"(Play), 1964
"H.M.S. Pinafore"(Comic Opera), 1878
Today in History:
First recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet, BC240
Alfonso VI of Castile takes Toledo, Spain back from the Moors, 1085
Henry the Navigator is appointed governor of the Order of Christ, 1420
The Diet of Worms ends when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw, 1521
Richard Cromwell resigns as Lord Protector of England following the restoration of the Long Parliament, beginning a second brief period of the republican government called the Commonwealth of England, 1659
Jews are expelled from Warsaw by Marshall Mniszek, 1784
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates convene a Constitutional Convention to write a new Constitution for the United States, 1787
In the May Revolution, citizens of Buenos Aires expel the Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros during the Semana de Mayo, 1810
The Patriots of Lower Canada (Quebec) rebel against the British for freedom, 1837
The first telegraphed news dispatch is published in Baltimore Patriot, 1844
Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore opens at the Opera Comique in London, 1878
The Republic of Formosa is formed, with Tang Ching-sung as the president, 1895
John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in Tennessee, 1925
Henry Ford stops production of the Model T to begin the Model A, 1927
Jesse Owens of Ohio State University breaks five world records and ties a sixth at the Big Ten Conference Track and Field Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1935
The first ascent of Kangchenjunga (8,586 m.), the third highest mountain in the world, by a British expedition, 1955
In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Organisation of African Unity is established, 1963
Star Wars (retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in 1981) is released in theaters, inspiring the Jediism religion and Geek Pride Day holiday, 1977
Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge, which kills approximately 10,000 people, 1985
Israel withdraws its army from most of the Lebanese territory after 22 years of its first invasion, 2000
32-year-old Erik Weihenmayer, of Boulder, Colorado, becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, 2001
Oprah Winfrey airs her last show, 2011
The first commercial spacecraft, SpaceX Dragon, docks with the International Space Station, completing the maneuver at 12:02pm EDT, 2012
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg receives an honorary degree from Harvard University, after dropping out in 2004, 2017
Mia Mottley, of the Barbados Labour Party, becomes the first female Prime Minister of Barbados, 2018
China’s Wolong National Nature Reserve releases the first footage of an albino panda ever taken in the wild, 2019
