Word-Wednesday for July 31, 2019

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, for July 31, 2019, the 31st Wednesday of the year,  the 212th day of the year, with 153 days remaining.


Nordhem Lunch: Hot Beef


Earth/Moon Almanac for July 31, 2019
Sunrise: 5:56am; Sunset: 9:05pm; 2 minutes, 45 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 5:03am; Moonset: 9:07pm, waning crescent


Temperature Almanac for July 31, 2019
                Average           Record         Today
High             79                   94                80
Low              56                   39                63


July 31 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Avocado Day
• National Raspberry Cake Day
• National Mutt Day

July 31 Riddle
What’s the difference between a piano, a tuna, and a pot of glue?*

July 31 Pun
A few puns
make me numb
but math puns
make me number.


July 31 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1703 Daniel Defoe is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet, but is pelted with flowers.
• 1786 Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, by Robert Burns is published by John Wilson in Kilmarnock, Scotland.
• 1922 18-year-old Ralph Samuelson rides world's first water skis in Minnesota.

July 31 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1830 František Zdeněk Skuherský, Czech composer.
• 1919 Primo Levi.
• 1965 J. K. Rowling.
• 1969 David Cash [David Tyler Cash], American professional wrestle.
• 1980 Harry Potter.

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

• borstal: a custodial institution for youthful offenders.
• brujo: a sorcerer, wizard, or witch doctor; a man who practices magic.
• caltrop: a spiked metal device thrown on the ground to impede wheeled vehicles or (formerly) cavalry horses.
• inhume: bury.
• kif: a general term of approval: admirable, excellent, cool.
• maze: stupefied, dazed; crazy, berserk; bewildered, confused.
• oubliette: a secret dungeon with access only through a trapdoor in its ceiling.
• petrichor: a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather.
• piffle: nonsense.
• sitzfleisch: the ability to persist in an activity which requires sitting for a long period of time; endurance, persistence.

July 31 Word-Wednesday Feature
Summer Words
Mid-summer has its own speed. Here are some words I see in people as we move away from the fair frenzy and enter the lazy, hazy days of August:
amble
dabble
dally
dawdle
delay
diddle
dillydally
drag
flag
fritter
halt
hover
idle
lag
linger
loaf
loiter
loll
lollygag
lounge
laze
meander
mosey
pause
poke
procrastinate
putter
ramble
saunter
shamble
shuffle
slacken
slough
tarry
trail
traipse
wait


From A Year with Rilke, July 31 Entry
Summer Fruit, from Sonnets to Orpheus I, 13.

Full round apple, peach, pear blackberry.
Each speaks life and death
into the mouth. Look
at the face of a child eating them.

The tastes come from afar
and slowly grow nameless on the tongue.
Where there were words, discoveries flow,
released from within the fruit.

What we call apple - dare to say what it is,
this sweetness which first condensed itself
so that, in the tasting, it may burst forth

and be known in all its meanings
of sun and earth and here.
How immense, the act of the pleasure of it.


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

*You can tuna piano but you can’t piano a tuna.