Word-Wednesday for April 22, 2020

And here is the TP Edition of Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, April 22, 2020, the 17th Wednesday of the year, the 40th day of #StayHomeMN, the 113th day of the year, with 253 days remaining. The natives are becoming restless...

https://banksy.co.uk/

Nordhem Lunch: Hot Turkey Plate

Rolls of toilet paper used by Wannaskan Almanac contributors since Governor Walz’s March 20, 2020 Executive Order: 

20.8

Earth/Moon Almanac for April 22, 202
Sunrise: 6:18am; Sunset: 8:266pm; 3 minutes, 20 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 6:36am; Moonset: 8:03pm, waning crescent


Temperature Almanac for April 22, 2020
                Average           Record           Today
High             55                   82                  52
Low              31                    14                  34

April snowfall predictions appear favorable

April 22 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Earth Day
• National Girl Scout Leader’s Day
• National Jelly Bean Day
• National Administrative Professionals’ Day
• National Bookmobile Day

April 22 Word Riddle
How many men does it take to change a roll of toilet paper?*


April 22 Pun
I used to avoid negative people, but now I avoid positive ones.


The Nordly Headline:
Minnesota Man Disappointed that Census Does Not Track Number of Fish Trophies Per Household


April 22 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1876 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky completes his ballet Swan Lake.

April 22 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1707 Henry Fielding.
• 1724 Immanuel Kant.
• 1766 Madame de Staël.
• 1873 Ellen Anderson Glasgow.
• 1916 Yehudi Menuhin.
• 1922 Charles Mingus.
• 1943 Louise Glück.

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

• arbitrium: power or ability to act, decide, or judge; will; authority.
• bellibone: a woman excelling in beauty and goodness; a fair maid.
• Charis: a given name derived from a Greek word meaning “grace, kindness, and life.” In Greek mythology, a Charis is one of the Charites or “Graces”, goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility; and in Homer’s Iliad, Charis is the wife of Hephaestus.
• deliciate: to delight oneself; to indulge in feasting or revels.
• epistemophiliac: one who excessively strives for knowledge, or has a preoccupation with it.
• farctate: stuff to the gills with food; bloated from ingurgitating a large meal.
• groak: stare silently at someone while they eat, in the hope that perhaps they will give you some food.
• leggiadrous: graceful, elegant.
• matutolypea: the state of being in a bad mood or annoyed when first waking up in the morning; waking up on the wrong side of the bed.
• tumid: swollen, bulging; pompous, arrogant, bombastic.

April 22, 2020 Word-Wednesday Feature
Toilet-Paper
tOI-luht pAY-puhr
noun: a soft, lightweight, sanitized paper used in bathrooms for personal cleanliness.
verb: to cover someone's house (and trees and shrubs) with toilet paper or other similar paper product, often as a celebratory event, without the "victim's" knowledge. Otherwise known as buttwipe, wipebreech, a##wipe, arsewisp, bumfodder, tail-napkin, bunghole cleanser, and wipe-breech, the first documented use of toilet paper in human history dates back to early medieval China, when in 589 AD the scholar and dynastic official Yan Zhitui wrote about the use of toilet paper:

"Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the Five Classics or the names of sages, 

I dare not use for toilet purposes."

TP became popular. During the Ming Dynasty 700 years later, in Zhejiang province alone, ten million packages of 1,000 to 10,000 sheets of toilet paper were manufactured annually, where an annual supply of 720,000 sheets of toilet paper (approximately 2 by 3 ft (60 by 90 cm)) were produced for the general use of the imperial court at the capital of Nanjing. Dwarfing usage figures compiled for Wannaskan Almanac contributors, the Hongwu Emperor's imperial family alone used 15,000 sheets of special soft-fabric, perfumed toilet paper.

Much time passed, where the Europeans were slow to catch on.

The modern invention of commercially available TP is credited to Joseph Gayetty, produced, marketed, and sold in the United States of America. First introduced in 1857, Gayetty's Medicated Paper was sold in packages of flat sheets, where original advertisements for the product used the tagline "The greatest necessity of the age! Gayetty's medicated paper for the water-closet." The "medication" incorporated into the TP sheet was aloe.


So that Wannaskan Almanac readers can prepare for post-COVID-19 travels, here's a list of some common European terms for TP, with a global listicle here.

Albanian       letër higjienike    
Basque          komuneko papera    
Czech            toaletní papír    
Danish           toiletpapir
England         loo paper
Finnish          vessapaperi    
French           torchecul or papier toilette    
German         toilettenpapier    
Greek            χαρτί υγείας (chartí ygeías)   
Icelandic       klósett pappír    
Irish              páipéar leithris    
Italian           carta igienica    
Norwegian    toalettpapir    
Polish            papier toaletowy [fun to say]   
Russian         туалетная бумага (tualetnaya bumaga)   
Spanish         papel higienico    
Swedish        toalettpapper    
Welsh           papur toiled    
Yiddish        קלאָזעט פּאַפּיר

Seeking to mitigate any further partisan divisions in Wannaskan Almanac reader families or in our country’s broader populous, issues regarding the proper orientation of the TP roll (over versus under) shall not be addressed in this discussion, but shall be left to personal, familial, or tribal preferences of each gentle reader. Interested readers involved in family disputes regarding this tissue issue are encouraged to explore O’Connor, David, (2 May 2005),  East Quincy Publishing, Henderson’s House Rules: The Official Guide to Replacing the Toilet Paper and Other Domestic Topics of Great Dispute, ISBN 0-9764078-0-9.


From A Year with Rilke, April 22 Entry
With Silence or a Solitary Joy, from Letters to a Young Poet.

Just as bees gather honey, so we collect from all that happens what is sweetest —and we build Him. Even with the littlest, most insignificant thing, when it comes from love, we begin. We begin with effort and the repose that follows effort, with silence or a solitary joy, with everything we do alone without anyone to join or help us, we begin Him whom we will not live to see, any more than our ancestors could experience us. Yet they are in us, those long departed ones, they are in our inclinations, our moral burdens, our pulsing blood, and in gestures that arise from the depths of time.

Anywhere—anywhen—anyone—anywipe.

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.


*Unknown. There is no historical evidence that even a single male has changed the empty roll for a new one.