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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday 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, i am providing the prompts. You can write your story on your blog and leave a link here, or write your story in the comments, your choice.
Pick words from one list, or both, use them all, or use none. The whole point is to get us writing, so please have fun with it!
The words for this week:
union
holiday
rational
recover
collect
headline
and/or
global
perception
sin
wrong
finance
gaffe
When i am asked to provide the Words for Wednesday prompts, which i found out last year i really enjoy doing, i sometimes turn to an internet random word generator. That’s what i did this week, and the resulting list up there has me wondering just how random it is, but that’s a discussion for another time.
With the word HEADLINE and the others in the mix, this is something i just cannot avoid. It’s a topic i addressed once before, in a different way, and my opinion has not changed.
Racism is, pure and simple, WRONG. It’s not a minor problem, not a social GAFFE, not acceptable in any way, shape or form.
It is, to use an old time word a lot of people do not like any more, a SIN.
Science tells us that every single one of us, when we look at a person for the very first time, make a snap decision about that person based on what we see. The mind does this in less than one second, before RATIONAL thought can kick in. In a case where our lives might be in danger, this can be a good thing.
In a case where we are more than likely not in immediate danger, this PERCEPTION needs to be grabbed and consciously suspended until we can RECOVER our higher thinking selves and actually COLLECT pertinent information about the person.
It is a GLOBAL and universal reaction we can’t help to form a snap judgment based on what we see. It is the right and good and proper thing to realize what this reaction is, a fight or flight programmed brain making sure there is no danger.
Then unless the person is brandishing a weapon at us or threatening in some other way, throw that preprogrammed response out and make the intelligent choice to learn more about the person.
For the sake of this country remaining a UNION, something has to change. We have to learn to nip every thought of discrimination of every kind in the bud and bring our higher thinking selves to the front.
To put it in Bible words, it’s called taking every thought captive to obedience to the law of love.
In a couple of weeks, we will go on HOLIDAY as people used to call going on vacation. Grandpa will FINANCE it, as he does each year for the whole family. We were not sure it would happen at all this year, with the quarantines. For the most part, that is no longer a concern. We will be careful and stay safe distances from others and i go mostly to nap in the ocean breezes anyway, something best done alone.
The pandemic may not stop our vacation, but now i have to worry that the problem that should have been licked a generation or more ago, racism, might.
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Today is:
Broken Dolls Day -- Japan (all broken dolls are taken by their children to monks for burial)
Callynteria -- Ancient Greek Calendar (a service of atonement and cleaning Athena's temple; date approximate)
Chimborazo Day -- to publicize that while Mt. Everest may be the highest, the top of Mt. Chimborazo in Ecuador is the furthest from the center of the earth
Clean Air Day -- Canada
Dr. Charles Drew Day -- honoring the man who made blood transfusions possible
Festival to Bellona -- Ancient Roman Calendar (goddess of war)
Impersonate Authority Day -- at your own risk, i will not bail you out just because i noted an internet holiday and you decided to celebrate it ;)
Jack Jouett Day -- Virginia (the "Paul Revere" of his day and place, rode to warn Governor Thomas Jefferson that the British were coming, 1781)
Mabo Day -- Australia
Martyr's Day -- Uganda
National Chocolate Macaroon Day
National Egg Day
Opium Suppression Movement Day -- Taiwan
Pull Your Pants Up Day -- internet generated, various dates given, and some are trying to make it a national movement; to encourage young men to pull up their pants for 24 hours and see if they enjoy having both hands free
Repeat Day -- i said, "repeat day" (no, i don't know who comes up with this stuff, sometimes; if i do, i try to place the blame appropriately)
St. Clotilde's Day (Patron of adopted children, brides, disappointing children, exiles, parenthood, parents of large families, queens, widows; against the death of children)
St. Kevin of Glendaulough's Day (Patron of blackbirds; Dublin, Ireland; Glendaulough, Ireland; Ireland)
Tailor's Day -- the first Wednesday of June is noted on many sites as the day to thank your tailor
Worst Day in the Fairy Year -- Fairy Calendar (must be nice to know when your worst day will be)
Anniversaries Today:
U.S. Air Force Academy first graduating class, 1959
The Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson, 1937
Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo founded, 17
Birthdays Today:
Lalaine, 1987
Rafael Nadal, 1986
Anderson Cooper, 1967
Charles Hart, 1961
Scott Valentine, 1958
Deniece Williams, 1951
Suzi Quatro, 1950
Curtis Mayfield, 1942
Larry McMurtry, 1936
Norman Brinker, 1931
Raul Castro, 1931
Chuck Barris, 1929
Colleen Dewhurst, 1926
Allen Ginsberg, 1926
Tony Curtis, 1925
Leo Gorcey, 1917
Josephine Baker, 1906
Dr. Charles Drew, 1904
Ransom E. Olds, 1864
Jefferson Davis, 1808
Debuting/Premiering Today:
"Dragnet"(Radio), 1951
“Casey at the Bat”(Publication date), 1888
Today in History:
French scholar Peter Abelard is found guilty of heresy, 1140
Hernando De Soto claims Florida for Spain, 1539
Construction of the oldest stone church in French North America, Notre-Dame-des-Anges, begins at Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, 1620
Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo is founded in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, 1770
President John Adams moves to Washington, D.C., to live in a tavern (the White House wasn't ready), 1800
In Humen, China, Lin Tse-hsü destroys 1.2 million kg of opium confiscated from British merchants, which prompts the First Opium War, 1839
In the last military engagement fought on Canadian soil, Cree leader Big Bear escapes the North West Mounted Police, 1885
The poem "Casey at the Bat", by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, is published in the San Francisco Examiner, 1888
The coast to coast Canadian Pacific Railway is completed, 1889
One thousand unemployed Canadian workers board freight cars in Vancouver, British Columbia, beginning a protest trek to Ottawa, Ontario, 1935
Launch of Gemini 4, the first multi-day space mission by a NASA crew, which included the first space walk by an American, 1965
A blowout at the Ixtoc I oil well in the southern Gulf of Mexico causes at least 3,000,000 barrels of oil to be spilled into the waters, the worst oil spill ever recorded, 1979
SkyDome is officially opened in Toronto, Ontario, 1989
Aboriginal Land Rights are granted in Australia in Mabo v Queensland (1988), a case brought by Eddie Mabo, 1992
USS Carter Hall engages pirates after they board the Danish ship Danica White off the coast of Somalia, 2007
A pageant on London's River Thames marks the highpoint of a series of events celebrating The Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II, 2012
Three of the most extremely well-preserved and most complete triceratops specimens ever found are unearthed in Wyoming, 2013
The Amazing world of Dr Seuss Museum opens in Springfield, Massachusetts, 2017
Guatemala's Fuego volcano erupts, causing widespread death and destruction, 2018