Word-Wednesday for March 11, 2020

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, March 11, 2020, the 11th Wednesday of the year,  the 71st day of the year, with 295 days remaining, but only 21 days until April 1st.


Nordhem Lunch: Tator Tot Hotdish


Earth/Moon Almanac for March 11, 2020
Sunrise: 7:45am; Sunset: 7:23pm; 3 minutes, 36 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 10:12pm; Moonset: 9:05am, waning gibbous


Temperature Almanac for March 11, 2020
                Average           Record          Today
High             31                   60                 40
Low              11                  -20                 26



March 11 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National 311 Day
• National Funeral Director and Mortician Recognition Day
• National Johnny Appleseed Day
• National Oatmeal Nut Waffles Day
• National Promposal Day
• National Worship of Tools Day
• National Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Day

March 11 Word Riddle
Form a single word from: spare him not.*


March 11 Pun
Homonyms can bee a big waist of thyme.


March 11 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1744 English auction house Sotheby's holds its first ever auction in London - it auctioned books.
• 1823 First normal school, Concord Academy, in US opens, Concord, Vermont.
• 1851 Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto, premieres in Venice.
• 1867 Giuseppe Verdi's opera, Don Carlos, premieres in Paris.
• 1941 Bronko Nagurski beats Ray Steele in Minnesota to become wrestling champ.
• 1997 Ashes of Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, are launched into space.

March 11 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1903 Lawrence Welk.
• 1926 Ralph Abernathy.
• 1952 Douglas Adams.
• 1962 Neo from The Matrix.

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

abseil: descend a rock face or other near-vertical surface by using a doubled rope coiled round the body and fixed at a higher point; rappel.

bandoneon: a type of concertina particularly popular in Argentina and Uruguay.

crofter: a person who farms a croft, a small rented farm, especially one in Scotland, comprising a plot of arable land attached to a house and with a right of pasturage held in common with other such farms.

dirndl: a full, wide skirt with a tight waistband; a woman’s dress in the style of Alpine peasant costume, with a full skirt and a close-fitting bodice.

eburnean: similar to, made of, or resembling ivory.

forwunke: exhausted, knackered.

gallus: bold; daring; reckless.

psithurism: the sound of wind in the trees and rustling of leaves.

shilpit: pinched or starved in appearance; sickly, puny, feeble; (of liquor) weak, watery.

yepsen: a unit of measurement denoting the amount that can be held in two hands cupped together.


March 11, 2020 Word-Wednesday Feature
Famous Last Words
The recorded last words of several writers, artists, and notable historical figures appear below - some predictable, some fascinating. Every writer is encouraged to give this some thought, lest one's caught of guard. 

Nostradamus: “Tomorrow, I shall no longer be.”

Archimedes: “Don’t disturb my circles!”

Cicero: “There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly.”

Cleopatra: “So here it is!”

Skule Bårdsson: “Don’t cut my face.”

Marco Polo: “I have not told half of what I saw.”

Martin Luther: “We are beggars, this is true.”

François Rabelais: “Bring down the curtain, the farce is played out.”

Michelangelo: “I’m still learning.”

Cotton Mather: “Is this dying? Is this all? Is this what I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear this!”

Madame de Pompadour: “Wait a second.”

Voltaire: “Now is not the time for making new enemies.”

James Cook: “Take me to the boats.”

Marie Antoinette: “Pardon me sir. I meant not to do it.”

Ethan Allen: “Waiting, are they? Well - let ‘em wait.”

Benjamin Franklin: “A dying man can do nothing easy.”

William Pitt The Younger: “I think I could eat one of Bellamy’s veal pies.”

Jane Austin: “I want nothing but death.”

Lord Byron: “Let not my body be sent to England. Here let my bones molder. Lay me in the first corner without pomp or nonsense.”

Thomas Jefferson: “Is it the Fourth?”

Beethoven: “Friends applaud, the comedy is finished. Pity, pity. Too late.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “My mind is quite unclouded. I could even be witty.”

Emily Brontë: "If you send for the doctor I will see him now."

Edgar Allan Poe: “Lord, help my poor soul.”

Frédéric Chopin: "Not yet."

Auguste Comte: “What an irreparable loss!”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “It is beautiful.”

Karl Marx: “Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!”

Victor Hugo: “This is the fight of day and night. I see black light.”

P.T Barnum: “How were the circus receipts today at Madison Square Garden?”

Lewis Carroll: “Take away these pillows, I won’t need them any longer.”

Oscar Wilde: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”

Mark Twain: “Give me my glasses.”

O. Henry: “Pull up the shades; I don’t want to go home in the dark.”

Gustav Mahler: “Mozart!”

Jack Daniel: “One last drink, please.”

Harriet Tubman: “Swing low, sweet chariot.”

Saki: “Put that bloody cigarette out!”

Vladimir Lenin: “Good dog.”

Franz Kafka: “Kill me, or else you are a murderer!”

Douglas Fairbanks: “Never felt better.”

James Joyce: “Does somebody understand?”

Theodore Dreiser: “Shakespeare, I come.”

Gertrude Stein: “What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?”

H.G. Wells: “Go away. I’m all right.”

Joseph Stalin: “I’m finished. I don’t even trust myself.”

John Barrymore: “Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.”

Humphrey Bogart: “I should have never switched from Scotch to Martinis.”

Chico Marx: “Remember, honey, don’t forget what I told you. Put in my coffin a deck of cards, a  mashie niblick, and a pretty blonde.”

Winston Churchill: “I’m bored with it all.”

W. Sumerset Maugham: “Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.”

Martin Luther King Jr.: "Ben, make sure you play Take My Hand, Precious Lord in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."

Groucho Marx: “This is no way to live.”

Timothy Leary: “Why? Why not?

Bob Hope: “Surprise me.”

Steve Jobs: “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”

Legendary grammarian, Dominique Bouhours: “I am about to - or I am going to - die: either expression is correct.”


From A Year with Rilke, March 11 Entry
Loneliness, from Book of Images.

Loneliness is like the rain.
It rises from the sea toward evening
and from distant plains moves into sky
where it ever belongs.
And from the sky it falls upon us in the city.

It rains here below in the twilight hours
when alleyways wind toward morning
and when lovers, finding nothing,
leave the failure of each other’s arms,
and when two who loath each other
must share the same bed:

Then loneliness flows with the rivers…

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.

*misanthrope.