Word-Wednesday for February 26, 2020

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, February 26, 2020, the 9th Wednesday of the year,  the 57 day of the year, with 309 days remaining, and only 35 days until April 1st.


Nordhem Lunch: Hot Ham Sandwich w/Potatoes & Gravy


Earth/Moon Almanac for February 26, 2020
Sunrise: 7:13am; Sunset: 6:01pm; 3 minutes, 32 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 8:48am; Moonset: 9:11pm, waxing crescent


Temperature Almanac for February 26, 2020
                Average           Record          Today
High             26                   47                  17
Low                4                 -40                  10


February 26 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Pistachio Day
• National Tell a Fairy Tale Day
• Ash Wednesday
• For Pete's Sake Day

February 26 Word Riddle
Another way of saying:
Merely an arboreal nucivore endeavoring to acquire a nux gallica.*


February 26 Pun
The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability. 

Edgar Allan Poe

"Well, I’ve got good gnus, and I’ve got bad gnus."
Gary Larson, The Far Side Comic Strip

February 26 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1616 Roman Inquisition delivers injunction to Galileo demanding he abandon his belief in heliocentrism, which states the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun.
• 1891 Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler premieres in Oslo.
• 1919 Congress forms Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.
• 1929 US President Calvin Coolidge establishes Grand Teton National Park.
• 1960 Verne Gagne beats Doctor X in Omaha, to become NWA wrestling champ.
• 1967 Verne Gagne beats Mad Dog Vachon in St Paul, to become NWA champ.
• 1984 Robert Penn Warren, Pulitzer Prize winner, named first U.S.A. poet laureate.

February 26 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1564 Christopher Marlowe.
• 1802 Victor Hugo.
• 1928 Antione "Fats" Domino.
• 1932 Johnny Cash.
• 1986 SpongeBob Squarepants.

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

• aligerous: winged.
• beef-witted: having an inactive or poorly functioning brain.
• borborygmus: a rumbling or gurgling noise made by the movement of fluid and gas in the intestines.
• calcine: reduce, oxidize, or desiccate by roasting or strong heat.
• hadal: relating to the zone of the sea greater than approximately 20,000 feet (6,000 m) in depth (chiefly oceanic trenches).
• missment: a mistake, an error.
• quaintrelle: a woman who emphasizes a life of passion, expressed through personal style, leisurely pastimes, charm, and cultivation of life’s pleasures.
• snoutfair: a person with a pleasing outward appearance, but who is lacking in character or scruples.
• shtup: to push.
• swoopstake: in an indiscriminate manner.

February 26, 2020 Word-Wednesday Feature
Grammarian
grammarian /ɡrəˈmerēən/: a person who studies and writes about the whole system and structure of a language or of languages in general, usually taken as consisting of syntax and morphology (including inflections) and sometimes also phonology and semantics.

Having previously examined grammar words, today's Word-Wednesday feature examines that grammarian. Variously referring to themselves as The Militant Grammarian, Guardians of Language, or Conan the Grammarian, we're clearly working with a peculiar personality type, here.

The Myers-Briggs personality inventory suggests that grammarians and linguists fall quite naturally into  the Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving, or INTP category. These pensive, analytical word-mavens venture so deeply into word-thought as to seem detached, often becoming oblivious to the world around them - until someone becomes imprecise with their language. So precise about their descriptive thinking, INTPs feel compelled to correct others (or be sorely tempted to do so) if even the barest shade of meaning is a bit off. While annoying to the less concise, their pinpoint word discrimination abilities give INTPs a natural advantage as grammarians and linguists, but not so much for toilet training toddlers. Kim Hruba, Wannaskan Almanac's Queen of Woo, can probably provide us with a Clifton Strength profile of a typical grammarian.

Poet Paul Violi captures the plaintive, penetrating thoughts of the grammarian about others less informed in this Poetry Foundation poem:

Appeal to the Grammarians

We, the naturally hopeful,
Need a simple sign
For the myriad ways we’re capsized.
We who love precise language
Need a finer way to convey
Disappointment and perplexity.
For speechlessness and all its inflections,
For up-ended expectations,
For every time we’re ambushed
By trivial or stupefying irony,
For pure incredulity, we need
The inverted exclamation point.
For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,
For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift
Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,
Or felt love or pond ice
Give way underfoot, we deserve it.
We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,
The child whose ball doesn’t bounce back,
The flat tire at journey’s outset,
The odyssey that ends up in Wannaska.
But mainly because I need it – here and now
As I sit outside the Caffe Roseau
Staring at my espresso and cannoli
After this middle-aged couple
Came strolling by and he suddenly
Veered and sneezed all over my table
And she said to him, “See, that’s why
I don’t like to eat outside.”

From A Year with Rilke, February 26 Entry
What You Cannot Hold, from Sonnets to Orpheus I, 4.

You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing
that is more than your own.
Let it brush your cheeks
as it divides and rejoins behind you.

Blessed ones, whole ones,
you where the heart begins:
You are the bow that shoots the arrows
and you are the target.

Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heave are the mountains, heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.



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.


*Just a squirrel trying to get a nut.