Word-Wednesday for April 15, 2020

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, April 15, 2020, the 16th Wednesday of the year, the 106th day of the year, with 260 days remaining.

Nordhem Lunch: Hot Ham Sandwich w/Potatoes & Gravy

Days without a COVID-19 infection for Wannaska Almanac contributing authors: 26,683

Earth/Moon Almanac for April 15, 2020
Sunrise: 6:32am; Sunset: 8:15pm; 3 minutes, 26 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 3:55am; Moonset: 12:29pm, waning crescent


Temperature Almanac for April 15, 2020
                Average           Record           Today
High             51                   78                   34
Low              28                   13                   19


April 15 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Glazed Spiral Ham Day
• National Rubber Eraser Day
• National Take a Wild Guess Day
• National Tax Day
• National Titanic Remembrance Day
• National That Sucks Day

April 15 Word Riddle
Where did the Terminator find toilet paper?*


April 15 Pun
√666 = 25.8069758011, the root of all evil.   


The Nordly Headline:
Study: 9 in 10 Minnesota Tattoos Forget Northwest Angle


April 15 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1755 Samuel Johnson's, A Dictionary of the English Language, published in London.
• 1923 First sound on film public performance shown at Rialto Theater, New York City.
• 1924 WHO-AM in Des Moines Iowa begins radio transmissions.

April 15 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1452 Leonardo da Vinci.
• 1741 Charles Willson Peale.
• 1843 Henry James.
• 1894 Bessie Smith.
• 1931 Tomas Tranströmer.

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

• aflunters: in a messy or disordered state.
• bogo: a way of encouraging more sales of a product by offering customers another item of the same type, free or for a reduced price.
• carceral: of, relating to, or suggesting a jail or prison.
• deictic: relating to or denoting a word or expression whose meaning is dependent on the context in which it is used.
• euneirophrenia: the feeling of contentment that comes from waking up feeling rested and refreshed, or wanting to go back to sleep to finish that dream you were having.
• fainéant: an idle or ineffective person.
• locuplete: ample; richly supplied.
• ochlophobist: one who fears or has an aversion to large crowds.
• podsnappery: an attitude toward life marked by complacency and a refusal to recognize unpleasant facts; smug self-satisfaction and a lack of interest in the affairs of others.
• scatches: stilts worn in the early sixteenth century when walking in filthy places.

April 15, 2020 Word-Wednesday Feature
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
Born out of wedlock to a wealthy notary and a peasant woman in Vinci, a Tuscan hill town in the territory of the Medici-ruled Republic of Florence, Italy,  Leonardo enjoyed no formal education - only an informal education in Latin, geometry and mathematics. A natural-born writer, he kept detailed notebooks on all his interests, with separate sections for inventions, drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, paleontology, and cartography, to name but a few.

Many Wannaskan’s consider Leonardo to be the greatest painter of all time, but only 15 of his paintings have survived, including one of his most famous: St. John the Proctologist.

Artist, inventor, and all around genius [mostly], Leonardo also had a notebook for humor. Nobody’s perfect, and as we can see in the translation of entry 1284 from his notebook, III Jests and Tales, below, Leonardo might have benefitted from some time with WannaskaWriter:

Franciscan begging Friars are wont, at certain times, to keep fasts, when they do not eat meat in their convents. But on journeys, as they live on charity, they have license to eat whatever is set before them. Now a couple of these friars on their travels, stopped at an inn, in company with a certain merchant, and sat down with him at the same table, where, from the poverty of the inn, nothing was served to them but a small roast chicken.

The merchant, seeing this to be but little even for himself, turned to the friars and said: “If my memory serves me, you do not eat any kind of flesh in your convents at this season.” At these words the friars were compelled by their rule to admit, without cavil, that this was the truth; so the merchant had his wish, and eat the chicken and the friars did the best they could.

After dinner the messmates departed, all three together, and after traveling some distance they came to a river of some width and depth. All three being on foot—the friars by reason of their poverty, and the other from avarice—it was necessary by the custom of company that one of the friars, being barefoot, should carry the merchant on his shoulders: so having given his wooden shoes into his keeping, he took up his man.

But it so happened that when the friar had got to the middle of the river, he again remembered a rule of his order, and stopping short, he looked up, like Saint Christopher, to the burden on his back and said: “Tell me, have you any money about you?”—“You know I have”, answered the other, “How do you suppose that a Merchant like me should go about otherwise?” “Alack!” cried the friar, “our rules forbid as to carry any money on our persons,” and forthwith he dropped him into the water, which the merchant perceived was a facetious way of being revenged on the indignity he had done them; so, with a smiling face, and blushing somewhat with shame, he peaceably endured the revenge.


From A Year with Rilke, April 15 Entry
Survival of the Soul, from Letter to Karl and Elisabeth von der Heydt, November 6, 1914.

What more can we accomplish now than the survival of the soul. Harm and decay are not more present than before, perhaps, only more apparent, more visible and measurable. For the harm which humanity has lived daily since the beggining cannot be increased. But there is increasing insight into humanity’s capacity for unspeakable harm, and perhaps where it leads. So much in collapse, so much seeking new ways out. Room for what new can happen.

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.


*Aisle B, back.