And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, November 28, 2018, brought to you by the Wannaskan Almanac Logo Contest. Our 1-year anniversary is rapidly approaching, and we will commemorate this auspicious event by featuring the winning submission on our home page. Please submit your original logo art to our Graphic Arts Department at palmvillepublishing@wiktel.com. No more than 50 entries per reader, please.
November 28 is the 332nd day of the year, with 33 days remaining until the end of the year, 124 days remaining until April Fools Day, and 1,182 days until February 22, 2022, a Tuesday.
Nordhem Lunch: Swedish Meatballs
Earth/Moon Almanac for November 28, 2018
Sunrise: 7:52am; Sunset: 4:32pm
Moonrise: 10:37pm; Moonset: 12:45pm, waning gibbous
Temperature Almanac for November 28, 2018
Average Record Today
High 44 69 24
Low 27 -1 22
November 28 is the 332nd day of the year, with 33 days remaining until the end of the year, 124 days remaining until April Fools Day, and 1,182 days until February 22, 2022, a Tuesday.
Nordhem Lunch: Swedish Meatballs
Earth/Moon Almanac for November 28, 2018
Sunrise: 7:52am; Sunset: 4:32pm
Moonrise: 10:37pm; Moonset: 12:45pm, waning gibbous
Temperature Almanac for November 28, 2018
Average Record Today
High 44 69 24
Low 27 -1 22
November 7 Local News Headline
The Roseau Times-Region reported that a truck loaded with thousands of copies of Roget's Thesaurus crashed on Highway 89, just north of Wannaska yesterday, shedding its load across the highway. Witnesses were stunned, startled, aghast, taken aback, stupefied, confused, shocked, rattled, paralyzed, dazed, bewildered, mixed up, surprised, awed, dumbfounded, nonplussed, flabbergasted, astounded, amazed, confounded, astonished, overwhelmed, horrified, numbed, speechless, and perplexed, but few were without words to describe the incident.
November 28 Celebrations from National Day Calendar
- National French Toast Day
- National Package Protection Day
- Red Planet Day
- Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting
November 28 Riddle
What should you do if your nose goes on strike?*
November 28 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day
What should you do if your nose goes on strike?*
November 28 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day
- 1660 The Royal Society forms in London
- 1893 Women vote in a national election for the first time, in the New Zealand general election
- 1932 Groucho Marx performs on radio for the first time
- 1963 Crusher beats Verne Gagne in St Paul, to become NWA champ
November 28 Author/Artist Birthdays, from On This Day
- 1757 William Blake
- 1911 Václav Renč, Czech poet
- 1943 Randy Newman
Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem) from the following words:
Make a single sentence (or poem) from the following words:
- cartouche: a carved tablet or drawing representing a scroll with rolled-up ends, used ornamentally or bearing an inscription.
- facile princeps: a person or thing that is easily first; a person or thing considered to be the best or most notable; the acknowledged leader in a particular subject, field of expertise.
- haptic: relating to the sense of touch, in particular relating to the perception and manipulation of objects using the senses of touch and proprioception.
- leyline: one of various supposed alignments of ancient monuments and prehistoric sites in straight lines, believed by some to indicate paths of positive energy inherent in the Earth.
- neologism: a newly coined word or expression.
- semiotics: the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.
- torc: a neck ornament consisting of a band of twisted metal, worn especially by the ancient Gauls and Britons
- trilithon: a structure consisting of two large vertical stones (posts) supporting a third stone set horizontally across the top (lintel). It is commonly used in the context of megalithic monuments
November 28 Word Wednesday Feature
In the spirit of the coming season, today's Word Wednesday feature is a simple, effective writing technique - chiasmus: a rhetorical or literary figure in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order, in the same or a modified form. The following poem by Maya Angelou makes good use of this technique in the final stanza.
A Brave and Startling Truth
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
Be better than yesterday, learn a new word today, and try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow.
*Picket
In the spirit of the coming season, today's Word Wednesday feature is a simple, effective writing technique - chiasmus: a rhetorical or literary figure in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order, in the same or a modified form. The following poem by Maya Angelou makes good use of this technique in the final stanza.
A Brave and Startling Truth
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
Be better than yesterday, learn a new word today, and try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow.
*Picket
A poem in memory of The Crusher's defeat of Vern Gagne in 1963.
ReplyDeleteDown the leyline ‘neath the arena trilithons I stride.
The semioticers search for neologisms far and wide.
For Great Mister Gagne I just wrecked,
Wrapped a torc round his old turkeyneck.
I hapticly laid him on his face, flat
To the roaring crowd I said, “How ‘bout dat?”
The cartouches all should now read:
“Facile Princeps est Crusher,” indeed!
A fantastic example. Too bad that isn't our world anthem.
ReplyDelete