This meme was started by Delores a long time ago. Computer issues led her to bow out for a while. The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast.
Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write. Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image. What we do with those prompts is up to us: a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore... We can use some or all of the prompts, and mixing and matching is encouraged.
Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog. I would really like it if as many people as possible joined into this fun meme, which includes cheering on the other participants. If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.
This month I am going to provide the prompts. Special thanks to Elephant's Child for hosting me for the first two weeks' of May prompts.
This week's prompts are:
withdrawal
pollution
embrace
prosecution
year
represent
cottage
overwhelm
and a picture:
It will be interesting to read. I hope that you will forgive me for not joining. I find it difficult to be very creative nowadays.
ReplyDeleteNo problem Ramana, you tell enough real life stories!
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Here's my take on the words:
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The year had finally come. 2022. After five years of withdrawal from her normal life, embracing the positive outcome of the actual prosecution was now within reach. She had abandoned all her other lucrative cases in favour of representing the cottagers in this class action.
The facts were simple, and overwhelming. She grimaced at the hundred cases of evidence surrounding her in her small office. The leeching of ground water, cancer, unsafe foundations and sickened miners not being compensated were just a small portion of the extensive list of damages and death.
There had to be another word better than pollution for this massive disregard for human life and health and safety. She leaned back in her chair thinking of all the clients she had lost because of this case. And smiled.
Finally, her law degree felt worthwhile. She was armed and ready for this battle against the phalanx of top lawyers hired by Capital Mining.
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Love it - and we have taken opposite view points from the same ugly picture...
DeleteYou are not writing about Capital Mining who "are committed to the highest ethical and governance standards [...] and are vigilant to protecting the environment, and strive to minimize our environmental footprint, eh?
DeleteAnd as I am at it: I remember a whistleblower in the Canadian province of New Brunswick has warned that a progressive neurological illness that has baffled experts for more than two years appears to be affecting a growing number of young people and causing swift cognitive decline among some of the afflicted.
May she win and win big!
DeleteWisewebwoman: I hope there is someone like this lawyer to help people like your story here. Good use of the prompts.
DeleteHave a lovely day.
Ohh, go for it! I did not even notice the words!
DeleteGetting my grits in gear, i'll be back to link up.
ReplyDeleteWhen my post goes live, the story will be over here.
DeleteGood luck Mimi, your takes are always terrific.
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It's been a long day, i didn't mean to be so late linking up. My story is over here.
DeleteWhat kind of pollution are we fancy to embrace this year? Mining? Or the one representing a so-called military special operation the protagonists of which are killing unarmed husbands in humble villages, raping women in front of their children and afterwards killing them for fun?
ReplyDeleteMind you, even in case there began a withdrawal of the aggressors troops, many would call for abondoning prosecution.
Sean Jeating. I sadly fear that we will embrace both forms of pollution. Embrace them and reward them...
DeleteGreat (and frightening) use of the prompts.
You're work is frighteningly accurate, and it makes me so deeply sad and angry it's hard to speak.
DeleteDifferent take on the prompts Sean. Yes pollution takes all forms. Sadly.
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It's so sad and infuriating.
DeleteHe had waited years for this day. Next week the Statute of Limitations would ensure that Rod was safe, and that Eileen would be unable to launch civil prosecution against him. Soooo close now.
ReplyDeleteWell yes, the pollution from that vast open cut mine did affect the ground water. Yes, it was now poisonous and she couldn’t extract it to water the plants in her hippy trippy herb farm. It was also true that the miasma from the pig farm on the other side overwhelmed the senses and embraced her cottage tightly. Tough. She should have done her research better.
Withdrawal from his businesses was simply not an option. Fortunately Eileen’s lack of funds meant that she had to represent herself – which definitely meant that she had a fool as her lawyer.
And if all else failed (and he would have to be careful since murder had NO statute of limitations), it was a very long way down to the bottom of that pit. An unsurviveably long way down…
Ugh. Don't like him, not one bit. Great use of the words.
DeleteOh EC, how absolutely awful this man is and Eileen needs to protect herself from him. A reminder that true evil exists in the world.
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Elephant's Child: What? Murder? I guess some people just want to win badly that they would do just about anything. Good take on the prompts.
DeleteHave a lovely day.
Evil man, but well written!
DeleteWe have visited Winston, Arizona a few years ago. Some miners insisted it was a deep mine.
ReplyDeleteStaring at Arizona Copper Mine, Sam remembered parts of this year.
It was the year of Sam had been overwhelmed by the demands as the CEO of massive stores, Pollution Remove.
Other incoming CEOs were on board for prosecution and overwhelming the lower rung employees to silently take their cheap watches.: Clear out the desks, embrace a new future. Door is over there.
Employees were overwhelmed and they made weeping withdrawal tears.
At the end of that bloody firing day, Sam looked out at the dusty silent room, picturing employees, now gone. He smiled and punched in numbers.
“You got them? Send them back in.”
Over the few hours left, old employees became new employees, with sizable raises. Talented people, they attacked the problems of the mine, scraped it all clean and working..
The exiting losers had been anticipating new riches, but instead were placed, in working positions in the mine.Getting one’s hands dirty and experiencing hard life, gave the whole definition of “WORK”.
I love that your take on the prompts offers hope...
DeleteWell done Susan I love the reversal of the roles of the workers. Some CEOs should be put at stocking shelves and waiting tables and cleaning up their own messes for a year or two.
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How i wish this were the outcome more often in such situations.
DeleteThank you for the words, I'll do what I can with them. I like the mine pit picture, is that from what they call strip mining?
ReplyDeleteYes River, tearing off the tops of mountains to get at the precious metals, etc.
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The stories above are really good.
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ReplyDeleteGot a bit creative, shall we say, with the word prompts, but here it is:
I think she felt both overwhelmed and defeated. Years of drinking led to withdrawals if she had tried to quit on her own. If she’d managed to get over that, then something would always come up leading her to fall off the wagon again and again. It’s over now and she’s out of pain.
I remember in 2015 when I first came home from living abroad and she and I hung out together after not having seen in each in five years. She looked to be in ill health. We embraced and I could smell beer on her breath. It was from the night before. The ‘breakfast beer’ and cigarettes (was that new, too?) were yet to come. She had already been to the doctor and was told to quit. She was polluting her body. We knew it. She knew it, too, but seemingly wasn’t inclined to stop. Things went from bad to worse once she and her husband had to move from the cottage they’d rented for years into a larger place in order to accommodate her ailing mother-in-law. The MIL was, unfortunately, suffering from dementia, had reverted to only speaking her mother tongue, Russian, and needed near round-the-clock care.
Out-patient programs, the only treatment affordable under her health insurance, were not effective. She would often come home after a day of treatment to a drunk husband who would immediately pour her a glass of brown booze saying, ‘I like you better when you’re drinking’.
Given his rotten and enabling ways I find myself sometimes thinking, Could he be prosecuted for manslaughter?
A marvelous take on the words Bea, well done!
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Bea: Wow. This is an incredible take on the prompts - and rings the knell of truth.
DeleteBea: Some people can't escape and it's terribly sad.
DeleteYou use the prompts nicely.
Have a lovely day.
Here's the link to my story: Fiction: St. Felicity's Newest Arrival.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the prompts.
Have a lovely day.
Finally I wrote something. Unfortunately I did not use very many of your good words. Here it is: Words for Wednesday
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