Word-Wednesday for February 6, 2019

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, February 6, 2019, brought to you by Oslo's own Kongsvinger Church Valentines Banquet, 6:00pm, February 8, 2019, featuring the Popple Ridge Pickers! Free Will Donation to Benefit the Marshall Co Fair Grandstand.

February 6 is the 37th day of the year, with 328 days remaining until the end of the year, 54 days remaining until April Fools Day, and 1,112 days until Twosday, February 22, 2022.

Nordhem Lunch: Hot Ham Sandwich w/Potatoes & Gravy

 

Days without false pregnancy for Wannaska Almanac contributing authors: 26,250

Earth/Moon Almanac for February 6, 2019
Sunrise: 7:47am; Sunset: 5:29pm; 3 minutes, 10 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 8:53am; Moonset: 7:22pm, waxing crescent


Temperature Almanac for February 6, 2019
            Average      Record       Today
High         17               43               8
Low         -5              -49             -3

February 6 Local News Headlines
Northern Watch: Julie Andrews No Longer Endorses Cheap Gaudy Lipstick
"The super color fragile lipstick gives me halitosis."

Wiktel Homepage: Chairman Joe's featured photograph

February 6 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Lame Duck Day
• National Frozen Yogurt Day
• National Girls and Women in Sports Day

February 6 Riddle
What does Jerry Solom throw out when he wants to use it but take in when he doesn't want to use it anymore?*

February 6 Pun

February 6 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1952 Queen Elizabeth II succeeds King George VI to the British throne.

February 6 Author/Artist Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1811 Henry George Liddell, father of the Alice in Alice in Wonderland.

And some words coined by Lewis Carroll:

bandersnatch, borogove, brillig, frabjous, frumious, gimble, guddler, gyre, jabberwocky, jubjub bird, mimsy, outgrabe, rath, slithy, tove, unbirthday, wabe

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

• addulce: to make sweet or pleasant; esp. to soften, soothe; to mollify.
• carillon: a set of bells in a tower, played using a keyboard or by an automatic mechanism similar to a piano roll.
• eyot: small island in a river or lake.
• fleam: a handheld instrument used for bloodletting.
• flivver: a cheap car or aircraft, especially one in bad condition.
• parkour: the activity or sport of moving rapidly through an area, typically in an urban environment, negotiating obstacles by running, jumping, and climbing.
• plastron: a large pad worn by a fencer to protect the chest; or an ornamental front of a woman's bodice or shirt consisting of colorful material with lace or embroidery, fashionable in the late 19th century.
• quiff: a piece of hair, especially on a man, brushed upward and backward from the forehead.
• terroir: the complete natural environment in which a particular wine is produced, including factors such as the soil, topography, and climate.
• widdershins: in a direction contrary to the sun's course, considered as unlucky; counterclockwise.

February 6 Word-Wednesday Feature
The long January days now spent, short February teases the promise of spring. Today's Word-Wednesday features open-source poems inspired by this month. If these aren't right for you, please post your own February poem as a comment.

Afternoon in February
The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red.

The snow recommences;
The buried fences
Mark no longer
The road o'er the plain;

While through the meadows,
Like fearful shadows,
Slowly passes
A funeral train.

The bell is pealing,
And every feeling
Within me responds
To the dismal knell;

Shadows are trailing,
My heart is bewailing
And tolling within
Like a funeral bell.
                                                  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


February
Take ink and weep,
write February as you’re sobbing,
while black Spring burns deep
through the slush and throbbing.

Take a cab. For a clutch of copecks,
through bell-towers’ and wheel noise,
go where the rain-storm’s din breaks,
greater than crying or ink employs.

Where rooks in thousands falling,
like charred pears from the skies,
drop down into puddles, bringing
cold grief to the depths of eyes.

Below, the black shows through,
and the wind’s furrowed with cries:
the more freely, the more truly
then, sobbing verse is realised.

                                                 Boris Pasternak


February Twilight
I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow,
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.

There was no other creature
That saw what I could see--
I stood and watched the evening star
As long as it watched me.

                                                  Sara Teasdale

February
The winter moon has such a quiet car
That all the winter nights are dumb with rest.
She drives the gradual dark with drooping crest,
And dreams go wandering from her drowsy star.
Because the nights are silent, do not wake:
But there shall tremble through the general earth,
And over you, a quickening and a birth.
The sun is near the hill-tops for your sake.

The latest born of all the days shall creep
To kiss the tender eyelids of the year;
And you shall wake, grown young with perfect sleep,
And smile at the new world, and make it dear
With living murmurs more than dreams are deep.
Silence is dead, my Dawn; the morning's here. 

                                                   Hilaire Belloc


February
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It's his
way of telling whether or not I'm dead.
If I'm not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He'll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It's all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we'd do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it's love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You're the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

                                                       Margaret Atwood


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

*Indian Summer's anchor