Word-Wednesday, May 16, 2018

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, May 16, 2018, brought to you by Yo-Hawn's Bar & Grill in downtown Grygla, where you don't need a reason, you don't need an excuse, and you don't need to know how to spell. Open whenever. Yes, we serve food and beer.

May 16 is the 136th day of the year, with 229 days remaining until the end of the year, and 320 days remaining until April Fools Day.

Earth/Moon Almanac for May 16, 2018
Sunrise: 5:39am; Sunset: 8:59pm
Moonrise: 6:55am Moonset: 10:29pm, waxing crescent

Temperature Almanac for May 16, 2018
       Average    Record Today
High    65           87       72
Low     41           19        46

May 16 Celebrations
Honor Our LGBT Elders Day
National Biographer’s Day
National Coquilles Saint Jacques Day, sponsored by Pepto Bismol
National Love a Tree Day
National Piercing Day
National Sea Monkey Day
National Wear Purple for Peace Day

May 16 Riddle
I never speak, but I impart the secret wishes of the heart.
I deceive, make amends,
Create foes, and make friends.
The harshest anger i can disarm,
Such is the power of my charm.
Who am I*

May 16 Spelling Reminder: I before E, unless you leisurely deceive eight overweight Wannaskan heirs to forfeit their sovereign conceits.

May 16 notable historic events, literary or otherwise
1571 Johannes Kepler, by his own calculations, is conceived at 4:37 AM; [interesting math]
1763 Samuel Johnson first meets his future biographer James Boswell in London [for chips]
1891 George A. Hormel establishes Hormel Foods Corporation in Austin, Minnesota [Dinty Moore]
1964 Verne Gagne beats Mad Dog Vachon in Omaha, to become NWA champ, [Mad Dog was not happy]

May 16 author/artist birthday
1804 Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, educator/founder of kindergarten in the United States; has boy, Sherman
1910 Olga Berggolts, Russian poet
1912 Studs Terkel, American author/host (Stud's Place, Working), born in NYC, New York
1919 Liberace [Wladziu Valentino], American pianist, born in West Allis, Wisconsin

Words I looked up this week: beaux, chthonic, dissimulate, leitmotif, plover, prelapsarian

Today's edition of Wannaskan Almanac Word-Wednesday explores the fascinating world of the collective noun, a noun that denotes a group of individuals, e.g., family. 

 Writers of fiction may wish to select the most appropriate collective noun to add color, innuendo, or other layers of meaning when using animal groupings as metaphor. Yes, elephants gather in a herd, but they also gather in a memory. Duck appear to be more flexible, variously gathering in herds, flocks, badlings [wayward adolescents], braces [intoxicated drakes swimming home together after too much reed wine], safes [females encircling their ducklings], sords [ducks taking flight together], sores [one can only imagine], waddlings [ducks taking a walk], bunches [ducks gather like bananas], paddlings, rafts, skeins, strings, or teams. For a full reference list of collective nouns, visit and bookmark this. It must be fun to get together with other dugongs.

The creative writer will develop her own collective nouns to spice up any variety of human groupings...
Babble: a collection of Guinness drinkers
Scourge: a collection of the wives of a babble

This edition of Word-Wednesday introduces a new Wednesday feature, the calendar day entry from A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated and edited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows:

May 16, If Only for Once
If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why this
could be muted, and the neighbor's laughter,
and the static my senses make -
if all of it didn't keep me from coming awake -

Then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.

I could possess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you
to all that lives,
in gladness.

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

*Your smile.