Word-Wednesday for June 3, 2020

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, June 3, 2020, the 23rd Wednesday of the year, the 155th day of the year, with 221 days remaining. Palmville Township Nature Update: the deer flies and bull flies are out.

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for June 3, 2020
Sunrise: 5:24am; Sunset: 9:21pm; 1 minutes, 25 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 6:52pm; Moonset: 4:18am, waxing gibbous


Temperature Almanac for June 3, 2020
                Average          Record           Today
High             70                  89                  80
Low              48                  32                  56


June 3 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Egg Day
• National Repeat Day
• National Repeat Day
• National Chocolate Macaroons Day
• National Running Day
• National Doughnut Day
• National Leave the Office Early Day
• Chimborazo Day

June 3 Word Riddle
My first is a color;
My second is an agreeable exercise;
My third is an article of clothing;
My whole is a celebrated literary character.*


June 3 Pun

June 3 The Nordly Headline:
Pencer Hair Salon Opens for Either Hair Cut or Hair Coloring for Each Customer Visit: Owner Describes as Do or Dye Situation


June 3 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1888 Casey at the Bat published in the San Francisco Examiner.
• 1939 Beer Barrel Polka hits #1 on the pop singles.
• 2005 The Knight of Sainte-Hermine by Alexandre Dumas is published in France by Editions Phébus, completed by Claude Schopp, 135 years after the author's death.
• 2017 The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum opens in Springfield, Massachusetts.

June 3 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1801 František Jan Škroup.
• 1828 Jose Inzenga y Castellanos.
• 1887 Emil Axman.
• 1897 Memphis Minnie.
• 1926 Allen Ginsberg.

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

• antelucan: of, belonging to, or occurring in the hours just before dawn.
• doryphore: one who gains pleasure from pointing out minor errors; a nitpicker.
• grimalkin: a domestic house cat.
• imbulbitate: to involuntarily void excrement from the bowels into one’s very own pantaloons; to befilth one’s britches.
• mauvais ton: unacceptable in certain circles or polite society.
• nostrum: a medicine, especially one that is not considered effective, prepared by an unqualified person.
• puzzomous: disgustingly servile or obsequious in behavior.
• quango: a semipublic administrative body outside the civil service but receiving financial support from the government, which makes senior appointments to it.
• ranarian: resembling, related to, or characteristic of frogs.
• sparge: the action of sprinkling or splashing.

June 3, 2020 Word-Wednesday Feature
Proxemics
prɑkˈ-sɛm-mɪks: the study of human use of space and the effects that population density has on behavior, communication, and social interaction. Coined by cultural anthropologist Edward T. Hall in his 1963 book, The Hidden Dimension, the word proxemics is also used to refer to any of several subcategories in the study of nonverbal communication/behaviors, including haptics (touch), kinesics (body movement), vocalics (paralanguage), and chronemics (structure of time).

Proxemics is useful for both evaluating the ways we interact with one another in daily life, as well as the ways our behaviors might differ across "the organization of space" such as in our houses, in public buildings, and in increasingly large sections of the communities in which we live. Hall keenly observed an important dynamic regarding a person's use of interpersonal space in all these domains: most such behaviors are culturally determined. Hall's work in 1963 averaged different layers of interpersonal space for persons of different cultures as follows:

It's fascinating to see that research performed almost 60 years ago is still in use today, where Hall's 12-foot diameter of the average comfortable social distance has become the 6-foot radius to be maintained in our social contacts during the pandemic. Take a moment and reflect on the ways that state and national contact guidelines may have altered the haptics in your intimate relationships, your body movement behaviors at home and in public, any changes in the intonation, pitch, speed of speaking, hesitation noises, gestures, and facial expressions, or the ways that you sense or communicate the passage of time. Now reflect on the ways that proxemics might be used in the poems, stories, essays, or other works that you might write or be reading.


From A Year with Rilke, June 3 Entry
White Roses, from Letter to Madame M-R, January 4, 1923.

Every day, on contemplating these exquisite white roses, I wonder if they are not the perfect image of unity of being and non-being in our lives. That, I would say, constitutes the fundamental equation of our existence.

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.

*Red Riding Hood