Word-Wednesday, November 14, 2018

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, November 14, 2018, brought to you by  the 3rd Annual Indoor Christmas Tree Walk at the Roseau County Museum. View trees decorated by area groups, organizations, and others. Nov 18, 2:00-4:30 pm; Nov 23, 9:30-5pm; Dec 1, 10-3 pm; Dec 2, 12-4 pm: Dec 8, 11-3pm; Dec 15, 11-3pm; Dec 22, 11-3 pm; Dec 24, 9:30-3 pm; Dec 25, Closed

November 14 is the 318th day of the year, with 47 days remaining until the end of the year, 138 days remaining until April Fools Day, and 1,196 days until February 22, 2022.

Nordhem Lunch: Southern Fried Chicken

Earth/Moon Almanac for November 14, 2018
Sunrise: 7:31am; Sunset: 4:45pm
Moonrise: 1:22pm; Moonset: 10:48pm, waxing crescent

Temperature Almanac for November 14, 2018
         Average      Record     Today
High       52            82           38
Low        33            17            26

November 14 Local News Headline
Roseau Woman Confesses: I Shot My Husband with a Paintball Gun Just to Watch Him Dye

November 14 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Red Planet Day
• National Pickle Day
• National Spicy Guacamole Day
• National Educational Support Professionals Day

November 14 Riddle
Why where there originally only 25 letters in the alphabet?*

November 14 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1732 First professional librarian in north America, Louis Timothee, hired in Philadelphia
• 1851 "Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville first published by Harper and Brothers in the US
• 1883 "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson is first published as a book
• 1889 New York World reporter Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) begins her attempt to surpass fictitious journey of Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg by traveling around the world in under 80 days. She succeeds, finishing the trip in 72 days, 6 hours
• 1915 Tomáš Masaryk demands independence for Czechoslovakia
• 1918 Republic of Czechoslovakia created with Tomáš Masaryk as its 1st president

November 14 Author/Artist Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1511 Janus Secundus, neo-latin poet
• 1719 Johann Georg Leopold Mozart
• 1740 Johann van Beethoven, Ludwig van Beethoven's father
• 1840 Claude Monet
• 1900 Aaron Copland
• 1947 P. J. O'Rourke

Words I Looked Up This Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem) from the following words:

• argot: the jargon or slang of a particular group or class
• dehortation: dissuasion; advice against something
• endonym: the name for a place, site or location in the language of the people who live there, e.g., Česká Republika
• pataphysics: A notional branch of knowledge dealing with that which eludes scientific or metaphysical understanding; the philosophy of the absurd
• propugnaculum: a bulwark, a rampart
• skijoring: the action of being pulled over snow or ice on skis by a horse or dog or a motor vehicle, as a sport or recreation activity
• tink: To undo a row of knitting one stitch at a time using the needles, in order to correct a mistake

November 14 Word Wednesday Feature
Oxymoron /ˌäksəˈmôrˌän/ noun: a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms or words that do not agree appear in conjunction to express a paradox.
Government ethics
Friendly fire
Pretty ugly
United Nations
Hamburger
Urban Dictionary
Holy war
Microsoft Works
United Nations
Political Correctness
Artificial Reality

A remarkable use of the oxymoron appears in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act I, in which Romeo, declaring that his is out of favor with Rosalind, jests about the nature of love:

Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing! of nothing first create.
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this!

Be better than yesterday, learn a new word today, and try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow.

*Nobody knew Y