Word-Wednesday for October 30, 2019

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, October 30, 2019, the 44th Wednesday of the year,  the 304th day of the year, with 62 days remaining.


Nordhem Lunch: Tator Tot Hotdish

WannaskaWriter has a photograph featured on today's Wiktel homepage.

Earth/Moon Almanac for October 30, 2019
Sunrise: 8:07am; Sunset: 6:08pm; 3 minutes, 16 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 11:02am; Moonset: 8:03am, waxing crescent


Temperature Almanac for October 30, 2019
                Average           Record           Today
High             43                   71                   29
Low              27                    5                   20


October 30 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Speak Up For Service Day
• National Publicist Day
• National Candy Corn Day
• Create a Great Funeral Day

October 30 Riddle
What is the beginning of all eternities, the end of time and space, the beginning of every end, and the end of every race?*


October 30 Pun
Went to the local corn maze, but it was very earie. It felt like I was being stalked.


October 30 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1938 A radio broadcast of H. G. Wells The War of the Worlds, narrated by Orson Welles.
• 1944 Aaron Copland's ballet score Appalachian Spring premieres in Washington, D.C.
• 1957 Dmitri Shostakovitch's 11th Symphony premieres in Moscow.

October 30 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1735 John Adams, 2nd US President.
• 1845 Gustav Weber.
• 1885 Ezra Loomis Pound.
• 1939 Grace Slick.
• 1973 Adam "Edge" Copeland, Canadian wrestler.

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

• bumptious: self-assertive or proud to an irritating degree.
• clabbydoo: a large dark mussel; esp. the northern horse mussel, Modiolus modiolus.
• hoick: lift or pull abruptly or with effort.
• cometesimal: a small icy body in a planetary or protosolar system which is capable of growing by accretion into a comet; a small comet.
• contemnible: deserving of contempt; contemptible; despicable.
• lamasery: a monastery of lamas.
• parapluie: umbrella.
• prodonose: to pry; to be inquisitive.
• prosopagnosia: a neurological condition characterized by the inability to recognize the faces of familiar people.
• spitz: a dog of a small breed with a pointed muzzle, especially a Pomeranian.

October 30, 2019 Word-Wednesday Feature
Halloween Words and Phrases
Just in time for writing your scary Halloween stories, our crack team of researchers here at the Wannaska Almanac Word-Wednesday Research Team discovered a new writer's resource: Dictionary of American Regional English. Here are some words and phrases from different regions of the USA about October's favorite holiday.

Beggar's Night
Children from Iowa to Ohio go from door to door on October 31 saying, “Beggars’ Night, how ’bout a bite?”

Cabbage Night
In some northern parts of the United States, October 30 is known as cabbage night, when young people throw cabbages and refuse on people’s porches as pranks. Cabbages? DARE suggest that the tradition might have originate from an old Scottish tradition in which young women would pull up cabbages to inspect their stalks, where the thickness of the stalks predict whether their future husbands will be thin or portly. Then they would inexplicably hurl the vegetables at neighbors' homes. It gets pretty lonely in Scotland.

Clothesline Night
In Vermont, children see clotheslines as a perfect place to hang toilet paper. Best to give them the treat.

Corn Night

In the late 1030s Ohio, children apparently thought that corn was the projectile of choice, where said corn was the dried and shucked variety, often removed from the ear and hurled by the handful.

Devil's Night
In Michigan, children are known to vandalize and set fire to abandoned buildings. Detroit rechristened devil's night as Angel's Night in 1995, when, according to DARE, more than ten-thousand of volunteers went out to "help patrol and surveil the streets during the days leading up to Halloween."

False Face
DARE cites a 1911 ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Halloween Masks — We have that false face you want for Tuesday night, grotesque and funny”, where the term became popular in the 1940s and 1950s from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Mississippi, Kentucky, Indiana, and Texas.

Holly Eve
From 1930-1950 in Arkansas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia, children often referred to Halloween as Holly Eve. DARE states that a Holly Eve-er is “one who goes out on Halloween.”

Light Night
New York mischief makers would “fling rocks at bare street lights,” so citizens of affected boroughs called Halloween light night.

Mischief Night
To New Jersey children, Halloween has always been mischief night featuring toilet paper, eggs, spray paint, run-away-doorbell-ringing, gate removal, car window soaping, pumpkin stealing, and porch furniture moving.

Moving Night
Not far away in Baltimore, one might wake up on November 1 and find gates, flower pots, and porch furniture moved to a neighboring yard, down the block, or even on the next block.

Penny Night
Another trick or treat alternative in southwest Ohio, DARE could not establish what what pennies have to do with the renaming of Halloween except perhaps as an alternative for candy by the Ohio Board of Dentistry.

Poke of Moonshine
Children in 1930s Connecticut used this as another term for jack o' lantern. DARE notes that the term might derive from the Algonquin Indian words pohqui, meaning "broken," and moosie, meaning "smooth," perhaps referring to "the level summit and stunning east-facing cliffs” of a peak in the Adirondacks that shares this name. In South Carolina, to move like a poke of moonshine is to move slowly and lazily.

Soap or Eats
Children in parts of California, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio substitute "Soap or eats!" for "Trick or treats!"

Ticktack Night
This is the cabbage night equivalent in Iowa, Ohio, Maryland, New Jersey, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, where DARE explains that ticktack are various “homemade noisemakers used to make rapping or other annoying sounds against a window or door as a prank.”


From A Year with Rilke, October 30 Entry
Our Invisible Property, from Letter to Witold Hulewicz, November 13, 1925

The experience and inclination and affection we put into familiar things cannot be replaced. We are perhaps the last who still will have known such things. On us is the responsibility not only to remember them, but to know their value.

The earth has no other recourse but to become invisible in us, who belong in part to what is invisible; and our own invisible property can increase during our span here.


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.


*the letter E.