Word-Wednesday, November 7, 2018

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, November 7, 2018, brought to you by Roseau County Election Administration: 

Yes, our job has just begun; 

No, it's too late for you to turn in your absentee ballot.

November 7 is the 311th day of the year, with 54 days remaining until the end of the year, and 145 days remaining until April Fools Day.

Nordhem Lunch: Hot Turkey Plate

Days without an Olympic doping incident for Wannaska Almanac contributing authors: 26,159

Earth/Moon Almanac for November 7, 2018
Sunrise: 7:20am; Sunset: 4:45pm
Moonrise: 7:00ampm; Moonset: 5:28pm, new moon

Temperature Almanac for November 7, 2018
           Average      Record       Today
High       56               82             27
Low        35               11              17

November 7 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Canine Lymphoma Awareness Day
• National Stress Awareness Day

November 7, post-Halloween Riddle
What do you use to mend a jack-o-lantern?*

November 7 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1512 Medici's discharge Niccolo Machiavelli from Florence
• 1786 The oldest musical organization in the United States is founded as the Stoughton Musical Society
• 1805 Lewis and Clark sight Pacific Ocean
• 1916 Jeannette Rankin (Rep-R-Montana) is elected to Congress as its first woman Representative

November 7 Author/Artist Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1811 Karel Jaromír Erben, Czech poet
• 1867 Marie Curie, Polish-French scientist who discovered radium and the 1st woman to win a Nobel Prize
• 1903 Konrad Lorenz, Austrian zoologist and ethologist
• 1913 Albert Camus
• 1943 Joni Mitchell

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

• fallalery: tawdry finery, gaudy ornament; fripperies, knick-knacks (also in plural in same sense); also: trifling, fooling around
• geomancy: the art of placing or arranging buildings or other sites auspiciously [as in Palmville Township deer stands]; divination from configurations seen in a handful of earth thrown on the ground, or by interpreting lines or textures on the ground;
• idiolect: the speech habits peculiar to a particular person [or particular to a peculiar person]
• kobold: a spirit that haunts houses or lives underground in caves or mines
• moquette: a pink pile fabric used for carpets and upholstery
• plutocracy: a country or society governed by the wealthy
• repine: feel or express discontent; fret
• scryer: one who divines, sees or predicts the future by means of a scrying tool; especially a crystal ball
• wort: to turn up (the ground) with the snout in search of food

November 7 Word-Wednesday Feature 

For post-election day: two forms, one word, toward a better tomorrow.
Guess the word that 2017 Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith saw and tried to capture in the Jonathan Bachman photo and her poem below.

Unrest in Baton Rouge
Tracy K. Smith, 1972, after the photo by Jonathan Bachman

Our bodies run with ink dark blood.
Blood pools in the pavement’s seams.

Is it strange to say love is a language
Few practice, but all, or near all speak?

Even the men in black armor, the ones
Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else

Are they so buffered against, if not love’s blade
Sizing up the heart’s familiar meat?

We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat.
Love: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean.

Love: naked almost in the everlasting street,
Skirt lifted by a different kind of breeze.**

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

*a pumpkin patch
**see first word in lines 10 and 11