My tenth Button Flash evolved in an interesting way. The reader who sent it in told me that it is a brass button from a Reichs railroad uniform right before Nazi Germany. I’ve been waiting for the right inspiration because I know it’s a special button. On Ash Wednesday it occurred to me to weave the button into a piece about Lent. After that, the story pretty much wrote itself as a mood piece suggesting impending disaster. And I was stoked to find out that Ash Wednesday in 1930 was on the same date as Ash Wednesday this year–March 5. And, if that’s not enough, I sensed hints of T.S. Eliot’s poem Ash Wednesday 1930, as well as the famous opening from The Wasteland.

Literary nerds, rejoice!

So here it is, Button Flash 10, 250 words written in one hour, all about a reader’s button. Thanks, Barbara B, for the historic button!

http://elizabethjennings.com/2014/03/...