Word-Wednesday for December 4, 2019

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, December 4, 2019, the 49th Wednesday of the year,  the 338th day of the year, with 27 days remaining.


Nordhem Lunch: Hot Ham Sandwich w/Potatoes & Gravy


Earth/Moon Almanac for December 4, 2019
Sunrise: 7:59am; Sunset: 4:29pm; 1 minute, 33 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 1:35pm; Moonset: not today, waxing crescent


Temperature Almanac for December 4, 2019
                Average           Record          Today
High             23                   44                31
Low                7                  -26               22


December 4 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Cookie Day
• National Dice Day
• National Sock Day
• National Package Protection Day

December 4 Word Riddle
From a word of five letters, take two and leave one.*


December 4 Pun
Cheese Factory Explodes in France: da brie is everywhere.


December 4 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1791 Britain's Observer, oldest Sunday newspaper in the world, first published.
• 1867 Former Minnesota farmer Oliver Hudson Kelley founds the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (better known today as the Grange).
• 1961 Museum of Modern Art hangs Matisse's Le Bateau upside down for 47 days.

December 4 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1795 Thomas Carlyle.
• 1825 Hynek Vojáček, Czech composer.
• 1835 Samuel Butler.
• 1840 Crazy Horse, Tashunka Witko, Oglala Sioux chief.
• 1866 Wassily Kandinsky.
• 1875 Rainer Maria Rilke.

Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem) from the following words:
agora: (in ancient Greece) a public open space used for assemblies and markets.
canoodle: kiss and cuddle amorously.
carboy: a large globular plastic bottle with a narrow neck, typically protected by a frame and used for holding acids or other corrosive liquids.
catarrh: excessive discharge or buildup of mucus in the nose or throat, associated with inflammation of the mucous membrane.
cooty: a louse, especially one affecting humans, as the body louse, head louse, or pubic louse; a child's term for an imaginary germ or disease that one can catch by touching a person who is disliked or socially avoided.
foley: in film, television, etc.: sound effects created to mimic ambient noises, typically using a variety of objects and practical methods; (also) the process of creating such effects.
gramadoelas: a remote rural region; the backwoods, the "sticks".
invigilator: one who keeps watch over students during an examination.
ostler: one who takes care of horses or mules.
wood butcher: a carpenter.


December 4, 2019 Word-Wednesday Feature
Bdelygmia
Picking up on last week's Word-Wednesday treatment of characterization words, this week's word is bdelygmia, from the ancient Greek, βδελυγμία/bdelugmía, “nastiness”, is a rhetorical technique used in storytelling and other forms of persuasion to express litany of invective criticism, closely related to synathroesmus. Bdelygmia is also a great crossword puzzle word. As with almost any literary technique, one can find an example in Shakespeare.

I do hate a proud man, as I do hate the
engend'ring of toads.
Troilus and Cressida 2.3.158-159

Interestingly, the Christmas holiday also seems to bring out some of the finest examples of bdelygmia, so you better watch out!

"I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, ****less, hopeless, heartless, fat-***, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey **** he is. Hallelujah. Holy sh**. Where's the Tylenol?"
Clark Griswold from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

♫♪"You're a foul one, Mr. Grinch,
♫♪ You're a nasty wasty skunk,
♫♪Your heart is full of unwashed socks, ♫♪ your soul is full of gunk, Mr. Grinch.
♫♪The three words that best describe you are as follows, and I quote, "Stink, stank, stunk!"
How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Did You Know?

• Each year humanity produces 1,000 times more transistors than grains of rice and wheat combined.
   
• Placebos are so effective that placebo placebos work: A pain cream with no active ingredients worked even when not used by the patient. Just owning the cream was enough to reduce pain.
   
• Between 1880 and 1916, Ireland had its own timezone, which was 25m 21s behind Greenwich Mean Time. After the Easter Rising, the House of Commons in London introduced GMT in Ireland and abolished Dublin Mean Time.
   
• Black women in the United States die in childbirth at roughly the same rate as women in Mongolia.
   
• No babies born in Britain in 2016 were named Nigel.
  28% of people like the smell of (their own) urine after eating asparagus.
   
• Some blind people can understand speech that is almost three times faster than the fastest speech sighted people can understand. They can use speech synthesisers set at at 800 words per minute (conversational speech is 120–150 wpm). Research suggests that a section of the brain that normally responds to light is re-mapped in blind people to process sound.
   
• SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory) is a rare syndrome where otherwise healthy, high-functioning people are unable to remember events from their own life. There is also an exhausting syndrome called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, where people can remember precise details about every single day of their life.

From A Year with Rilke, December 4 Entry
Two Solitudes Protecting Each Other, from Letters to a Young Poet.

The experience of loving, that now disappoints so many, can actually change and be transformed from the ground up into the building of a relationship between two human beings, not just a man and a woman. And this more authentic love will be evident in the utterly considerate, gentle, and clear manner of its binding and releasing. It will resemble what we now struggle to prepare: the love that consists of two solitudes which border, protect, and greet each other.


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.

*stone, clone, drone, or prone.