Word-Wednesday for June 10, 2020

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, June 10, 2020, the 24th Wednesday of the year, the 162nd day of the year, with 204 days remaining.

Palmville Township Nature Update: Fireflies are out.

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for June 10, 2020
Sunrise: 5:21am; Sunset: 9:26pm; 52 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 1:02am; Moonset: 10:11am, waning gibbous


Temperature Almanac for June 10, 2020
                Average            Record           Today
High             72                    93                   63
Low              51                    34                   46


June 10 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Egg Roll Day
• National Ballpoint Pen Day
• National Iced Tea Day
• National Black Cow Day
• National Herbs and Spices Day
• National Yo-Yo Day

June 10 Word Riddle
What pierces yet leaves no hole?*



June 10 World Pun-Run

Wannaskan Almanac writers' retreat dialogue:

WannaskaWriter: "I'm HUNGARY!"
Kim Hruba: "Maybe I can find some food if I Czech the fridge."
WannaskaWriter: "There is Norway you will find something in this fridge!"
Chairman Joe: "Don’t be Russian to get those puns out of the oven, dough."
Kim Hruba: "They can be a real Spain to put up with."
Mr. Hot Coco: "I don’t Bolivia can be too many puns."
Chairman Joe: “Uganda be kidding me!”
WannaskaWriter: “Denmark my words, dere vill be puns galore.”
Jack Pine Savage: “Kenya think of any more puns?”
Kim Hruba: “Nope. Iran out of ideas.”


June 10 The Nordly Headline:
WALZ: Human Sacrifice Altars Can Open if They Have a Plan



June 10 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1194 Major fire at Chartres Cathedral, France, leads to it rebuilt as the high point of French Gothic style.
• 1752 Benjamin Franklin tests the lightning conductor with his kite-flying experiment.

June 10 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1894 Pavel Bořkovec.
• 1915 Saul Bellow.
• Zbyněk Vostřák.
• 1922 Judy Garland.
• 1928 Maurice Sendak.
• 1929 Edward O. Wilson.
• 1932 George Burns.

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

• aporetic: characterized by an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction; in RHETORIC: expressing doubt.
• bodger: a wood-carver or woodturner.
• culaccino: the stain left on a table from a cold glass of water or other beverage.
• dulciloquent: of a person: sweet-spoken. Hence also of an utterance, style, etc.: characterized by pleasing or mellifluous language.
• garderobe: a lavatory in a medieval building.
• incupate: to accuse or blame.
• mundify: to cleanse, purge, or purify.
• nipe: to bow the head; to bow down, bend, droop; to descend, sink low.
• quank: of a bird or animal: to utter a harsh croaking or honking cry.
• uhtceare [OOHT-key-AHR-ahy]: that familiar variety of pre-dawn anxiety, when one is lying awake worrying about things.

June 10, 2020 Word-Wednesday Feature
Loneliness
ˈlōnlēnəs/: noun, sadness because one has no friends or company. In psychology, loneliness is defined as the distressing experience that occurs when one’s social relationships are perceived to be less in quantity, and especially in quality, than desired. While being alone and experiencing loneliness are not the same experience, I know many family members and friends who have made significant efforts to make contact with those who are living alone since March.

Writers in different genres seem to understand or characterize the experience of loneliness from one of five perspectives. Here are some that I've found while doing a survey for this post.


Personal Insight
People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about. Anton Chekhov

Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself. Hermann Hesse

Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible. Carl Jung


Relationships
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community. Dorothy Day

Loneliness

Got a mind of its own

The more people around

The more you feel alone. Bob Dylan

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? George Eliot

A person can be lonely even if he is loved by many people, because he is still not the “One and Only” to anyone. Anne Frank

Loneliness is not simply a matter of being alone. Loneliness is the feeling that nobody else truly cares what happens to you. Sister Pascalina

Loneliness is not a longing for company, it is a longing for kind. And kind means people who can see you who you are, and that means they have enough intelligence and sensitivity and patience to do that. Marilyn French

Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate. Germaine Greer

The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married. Cyril Connolly


Existential Threat
It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is as true of men as of dogs. Eric Hoffer

Man’s loneliness is but his fear of life! Eugene O’Neill

I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick. John Steinbeck

What makes loneliness an anguish

Is not that I have no one to share my burden,

But this:

I have only my own burden to bear. Dag Hammarskjöld

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. Mother Teresa

In a place where so many are lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone. Tennessee Williams

Who knows what true loneliness is—not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Joseph Conrad


Contrast to Solitude
Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self. May Sarton

Alone is a fact, a condition where no one else is around. Lonely is how you feel about that. Twyla Tharp

Loneliness comes about when I am alone without being able to keep myself company. Solitude is that human situation in which I keep myself company. Hannah Arendt

Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man’s being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone. Paul Tillich


In the context of the quotations contrasting loneliness to solitude, it seems correct that the word, oneliness: the state of being one or single, has become obsolete.


From A Year with Rilke, June 10 Entry
You Inherit the Green, from The Book of Hours II, 10.

And you inherit the green
of vanished gardens
and the motionless blue of fallen skies,
dew of a thousand dawns, countless summers
the suns sang, and springtimes to break you heart
like a young woman’s letters.

You inherit the autumns, folded like festive clothing
in the memories of poets; and all the winters,
like abandoned fields, bequeath you their quietness.
You inherit Venice, Kazan, and Rome;

Florence will be yours, and Pisa’s cathedral,
Moscow with bells like memories,
and the Troiska convent, and the monastery
whose maze of tunnels lies swallowed under Kiev’s gardens.

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.

*sound