Word-Wednesday for January 29, 2020

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, January 29, 2020, the 5th Wednesday of the year,  the 29th day of the year, with 337 days remaining, but only 63 days until April 1st.


Nordhem Lunch: Swedish Meatballs


Earth/Moon Almanac for January 29, 2020
Sunrise: 7:58am; Sunset: 5:15pm; 2 minutes, 53 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 10:24am; Moonset: 10:17pm, waxing crescent


Temperature Almanac for January 29, 2020
                Average           Record          Today
High             16                   39                 21
Low              -6                 -45                 15


January 29 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Corn Chip Day
• National Puzzle Day
• Curmudgeons Day

January 29 Word Riddle
My first is syllable is company;
My second syllable shuns company;
My third syllable assembles company;
All my syllables amuse company.*


January 29 Pun
So Heisenberg is driving Schrödinger and Ohm when he gets pulled over.
The cop asks him, "Do you know how fast you were going?"
Heisenberg answers, "No, but I know exactly where I am."
The cop replies, "You were doing 55 in a 35 zone."
Heisenberg moans, "Great! Now I'm lost!"
Suspicious of the circumstances, the cop orders Heisenberg to pop open the trunk. He checks it out and says, "Did you know that you have a dead cat back here?"
Schrödinger shouts, "We do now!"
The cop moves to arrest them all, but Ohm resists.


January 29 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1595 William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet is thought to have been first performed. Officially published early 1597.
• 1781 Mozart's opera Idomeneo premieres in Munich.
• 1845 Edgar Allan Poe's poem Raven first published.

January 29 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1689 Hubert K Poot, Dutch poet.
• 1737 Thomas Paine.
• 1860 Anton Chekhov.
• 1880 W C Fields.
• 1944 Hans Plomp, Dutch writer/poet.
• 1963 Bob Holly, American professional wrestler.

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

• apaugasma: something that shines with or reflects a brilliant light; radiance, splendid brightness.
• dysania: the state of finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning.
• fudgel: pretending to work when you are not actually doing anything at all.
• gelogenic: productive or provocative of laughter; tending to produce laughter.
• gobslotch: a greedy, clownish person apt to gobble his food; an untidy voracious eater.
• Hogs-Norton: any clownish fellow, unacquainted with the rules of good society.
• maquillage: makeup or cosmetics.
• rodomontade: vainglorious boasting or bragging; pretentious or blustering talk.
• rupicolous: living among, inhabiting, or growing on rocks.
• scumble: a thin, opaque coat of paint or layer of shading applied to give a softer or duller effect.

January 29, 2020 Word-Wednesday Feature
Truth

Le Vérité (Truth) by Jules Joseph Lefebvre

tro͞oTH, the quality or state of being true; that which is in accordance with fact or reality. Contrary to intuition, and the ways that we teach morality to our children, humans bow to many forms of truth: universal, empirical, absolute, relative, convenient, inconvenient, scientific, philosophical, objective, subjective, spiritual, mathematical, moral, proverbial, historical. There's also the type of truth so often observed but seldom welcomed: the bitter variety. Here's a collection of ways to understand unpalatable, hard facts and cold, grim realities, varnished or otherwise:

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.
Flannery O’Connor

To the scientific mind, truth comes first. Truth, however bitter can be accepted, and woven into a design for living.
Agatha Christie

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth.
John Locke

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
Denis Diderot

The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.
Herbert Agar

Truth is a rough, honest, helter-skelter, terrier, that none like to see brought into their drawing rooms.
Ouida (Maria Louise Ramé)

Humanity cries out against this vast enormity, but not one man knows a prudent remedy.
Herman Melville

Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.
Edward Abbey

The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.
George Santayana

Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.
Winston Churchill

A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.
Albert Einstein

The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.
Robert M. Pirsig

There is no treachery in the truth. There may be pain, but to face honestly all possible conclusions formed by a set of facts is the noblest route possible for a human being.
Laurie R. King

If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.
Confucius

No one knows better than I the bitter denials of life. But I have made my limitations tools of learning and true joy.
Helen Keller


From A Year with Rilke, January 29 Entry
You Come and Go, from The Book of Hours I, 45.

you come and go. The doors swing closed
ever more gently, almost without a shudder.
Of all who move through the quiet houses,
you are the quietest.

We become so accustomed to you,
we no longer look up
when your shadow falls over the book we are reading
and makes it glow.


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.


*conundrum