Word-Wednesday for April 10, 2019

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, April 10, 2019, the 15th Wednesday of the year,  the 100th day of the year, with 265 days remaining until the end of the year.


Nordhem Lunch: Hot Pork Sandwich


Earth/Moon Almanac for April 10, 2019
Sunrise: 6:43am; Sunset: 8:07pm; 3 minutes, 30 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 9:57am; Moonset: 12:57am, waxing crescent


Temperature Almanac for April 10, 2019
                Average         Record        Today
High            48                   76             39
Low             26                  -3              23


April 10 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Encourage a Young Writer Day
• National Siblings Day
• National Cinnamon Crescent Day
• National Farm Animals Day
• National Bookmobile Day

April 10 Riddle
My first is female; my second the same; my whole is much dreaded; pray what is my name?*


April 10 Pun
English is Hard
They were too close to the door to close it.
The bandage was wound around the wound.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
We must polish the Polish furniture.
I did not object to the object.
He could lead if he would get the lead out.
When host at, the dove dove into the bushes.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
A bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.
Since there is no time like the present, he though it was time to present the present.
The buck does funny things when the does are present.
A seamstress and a sewer fell down the sewer line.
To help with the planting, the farmer taught his sow how to sow.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
After a number of injections, my jaw got number.


April 10 Punctuation Point
Gender and Punctuation
An author’s gender preferences and biases can significantly affect punctuation. For example, please punctuate the following sentence:
A woman without her man is nothing

Options include:
A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.


April 10 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1815 Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies experiences a cataclysmic eruption, one of the most powerful in history, killing around 71,000 people, causes global volcanic winter.
• 1816 Samuel Taylor Coleridge recites his poem Kubla Khan to fellow poet Lord Byron, who persuades him to publish it.
• 1877 First human cannonball act performed in London.
• 1925 Scribners publishes The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
• 1953 NBA Championship Finals, Minneapolis Auditorium, Minnesota, MN: Minneapolis Lakers beat NY Knicks, 91-84 for a 4-1 series victory; Lakers' 5th title in 6 years.

April 10 Author/Artist Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1847 Joseph Pulitzer.
• 1941 Paul Theroux.
• 1954 Anne Lamott, Hard Laughter, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

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

• bollard: a short, thick post on the deck of a ship or on a wharf, to which a ship’s rope may be secured; a short post used to divert traffic from an area or road.
• columbarium: a room or building with niches for funeral urns to be stored.
• diapason: 1. an organ stop sounding a main register of flue pipes, typically of eight-foot pitch; or 2. a grand swelling burst of harmony.
• dovecote: a shelter with nest holes for domesticated pigeons.
• dowfart: a dull, stupid, or foolish person; (also) a person lacking in spirit or courage.
• herm: a squared stone pillar with a carved head on top, used in ancient Greece as a boundary marker or a signpost.
• kohl: a black powder, usually antimony sulfide or lead sulfide, used as eye makeup especially in Eastern countries.
• scarper: runaway.
• trepan: a trephine (hole saw) used by surgeons for perforating the skull.
• winkle: extract or obtain something with difficulty.

April 10 Word-Wednesday Feature

Chairman Joe sent me a link this last week about his book collection that inspired this Word-Wednesday post. Can one have too many books? What does one call that growing - sometimes mountainous - collection of unread books? According to The Chairman's article, an English speaker might call it an antilibrary; a Japanese speaker would call it tsundoku: a stack of books that you have purchased but not yet read. Some artists have found creative ways to repurpose their tsundoku rather than read them.

Keeping with recent Word-Wednesday post practices, here are a few quotations about fictional literature of booklovers with reputations of owning more books than they can read.


Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien.
"Well, I've made up my mind, anyway. I want to see mountains again, Gandalf – mountains; and then find somewhere where I can rest. In peace and quiet, without a lot of relatives prying around, and a string of confounded visitors hanging on the bell. I might find somewhere where I can finish my book. I have thought of a nice ending for it: and he lived happily ever after to the end of his days."

Bastian Balthazar Bux, The Neverending Story, Michael Ende.
"If you have never spent whole afternoons with burning ears and rumpled hair, forgetting the world around you over a book, forgetting cold and hunger—

If you have never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well-meaning person has switched off the lamp on the plausible ground that it was time to sleep because you had to get up so early—

If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless—

If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next."

Klaus Baudelaire, A Series of Unfortunate Events No. 1, The Bad Beginning or. Orphans!, Lemony Snicket.
"Being only twelve, Klaus of course had not read all the books in the Baudelaire library, but he had read a great many of them and had retained a lot of the information from his readings. He knew how to tell an alligator from a crocodile. He knew who killed Julius Caesar. And he knew much about the tiny, slimy animals found at Briny Beach, which he was examining now."

Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen.
"'Miss Eliza Bennet,' said Miss Bingley, 'despises cards. She is a great reader, and has no pleasure in anything else.'"

Theo Caffrey, Awakening and Dreaming, Kit Pearson.
"Choosing a new book was like looking for treasure."

Hermione Granger, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling.
"She was dashing back, an enormous old book in her arms. 'I never thought to look in here!' she whispered excitedly. 'I got this out of the library weeks ago for a bit of light reading.' 'Light?' said Ron."

Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin.
"My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer and I have my mind...and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone if it is to keep its edge. That's why I read so much, Jon Snow."

Jo March, Little Women, Louise May Allcott.
"I like good strong words that mean something."

Francie Nolan, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith.
"From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived."

Lucien, Sandman, Neil Gaiman.
"Most people don't realize how important librarians are. I ran across a book recently which suggested that the peace and prosperity of a culture was solely related to how many librarians it contained. Possibly a slight overstatement. But a culture that doesn't value its librarians doesn't value ideas and without ideas, well, where are we?"

Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery.
"It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?"

Matilda Wormwood, Matilda, Roald Dahl.
"So Matilda's strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone."

What book sits in your antilibrary or tsundoku calling loudest to be read next?

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

Ma-lady.*