Word-Wednesday for January 23, 2019

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, January 23, 2019, brought to you by the Wannaska Touristy Board. From grand vistas to big adventures, explore the many reasons Wannaska is the perfect setting for your next great winter getaway.

January 23 is the 23rd day of the year, with 342 days remaining until the end of the year, 68 days remaining until April Fools Day, and 1,126 days until Twosday, February 22, 2022.

Nordhem Lunch: Hot Turkey Plate

Earth/Moon Almanac for January 23, 2019
Sunrise: 8:05am; Sunset: 5:06pm; 2 minutes, 37 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 8:35pm; Moonset: 9:50am, waxing gibbous


Temperature Almanac for January 23, 2019
           Average      Record     Today
High       13               40            19
Low        -7             -46           -13


January 23 Factoid
For the record, a person born in 33 was 45 in 78.

 January 23 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Pie Day – Click here to find FREE and DISCOUNTED PIE Offers
• National Handwriting Day
• Library Shelfie Day

January 23 Riddle
We hurt without moving. We poison without touching. We bear the truth and the lies. We are not to be judged by our size. What are we?*

January 23 Pun
People who cannot distinguish between etymology and entomology bug me in ways that I cannot put into words.

January 23 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 909 John of Rila aka Saint Ivan and the fable of two pies.
• 1546 Having published nothing for eleven years, Francois Rabelais publishes the Tiers Livre, his sequel to Gargantua and Pantagruel.
• 1552 2nd version of Book of Common Prayer becomes mandatory in England.
• 1656 French philosopher and theologian Blaise Pascal publishes the first of his Lettres Provinciales.
• 1855 The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in what is now Minneapolis, Minnesota, a crossing made today by the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge.

January 23 Author/Artist Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1783 Stendhal, [Marie Henri Beyle], French writer
• 1832 Edouard Manet
• 1904 Theodor Schaefer, Czech composer

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.
• Maginot Line: a line of defensive fortifications built before World War II to protect the eastern border of France but easily outflanked by German invaders.
• nimbyism: opposition by residents to a proposed development in their local area (not in my back yard).
• Pluviose: the fifth month of the French revolutionary calendar (introduced in 1793), beginning on 20, 21, or 22 January and ending on 18, 19, or 20 February (depending on the year).
• querulist: a person who complains, a complainer.
• quiddity: The inherent nature or essence of a person or thing; what makes a thing what it is.
• shambolic: chaotic, disorganized, or mismanaged.

January 23 Word-Wednesday Feature
Today Word-Wednesday investigates one of the most common human word disorders, lexdysia. Dyslexia is a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words (decoding). Dyslexia affects areas of the brain that process language, where children with dyslexia read so slowly that it would typically take a dyslexic child a half a year to read the same number of words that other children might read in a day. Persons with dyslexia demonstrate several dozen symptoms involving their vision, reading, spelling, hearing, speech, writing and other motor skills, math and time management, memory and cognition, behavior, health, development, and personality.

While the prevalence of dyslexia in the general population is about 20%, the prevalence of dyslexia in prisoners is more than twice that - 48% according to a study by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice [one wonders if they might not come up with a different name for their agency].

Other studies have discovered that dyslexic persons have unusual gifts. Psychologists at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire discovered that dyslexic persons were adept at quickly identifying geometrically impossible figures [think Escher] from similarly drawn illustrations that did not violate causality. 

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found that most dyslexic persons have a high sensitivity for causal perception [things out of place], which may explain why people like Carole Greider and Baruj Benacerraf have been able to perform Nobel prize-winning science despite lifelong challenges with dyslexia.

These studies raise the possibility that dyslexia is a form of visual attention deficit, presenting at a very early age. If true, it would also suggest that the observed advantages are not an incidental byproduct of experience with reading, but are instead the result of differences in the brain that were likely present from birth.

The advantages appear to manifest in tasks where seeing the forest is more important than seeing the trees, like the effects that black holes have on surrounding space, or when you need a person alert to small changes in normal circumstances, such as a security guard.

Be better than yesterday, learn a new word today, try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow, and write when you have the time.

*words