Word-Wednesday for September 16, 2020

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, September 16, 2020, the 38th Wednesday of the year, the thirteenth and last Wednesday of summer, and the 260th day of the year, with 106 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for September 16, 2020
Porcupines have staked out their dens for the winter.

related words:

aposematism: characteristics displayed by an animal to potential predators that it is not worth attacking or eating.
porcupette: a baby porcupine.
prickle: collective noun for a group of porcupines.

 

Nordhem Lunch: Closed

Earth/Moon Almanac for September 16, 2020
Sunrise: 7:03am; Sunset: 7:35pm; 3 minutes, 33 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 5:35am; Moonset: 7:45pm, waxing crescent

Temperature Almanac for September 16, 2020
                Average            Record              Today
High             66                     84                     66
Low              44                     25                     46


September 16 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Play-Doh Day
• National Cinnamon Raisin Bread Day
• National Guacamole Day
• National Step Family Day
• National Working Parents Day
• Mayflower Day
• Anne Bradstreet Day

September 16 Word Riddle
What were the most common baby names for boys and for girls in Minnesota and in Kansas for the year 2019?*


September 16 Pun
What is B.B. King’s favorite dairy product?**


September 16 Roseau Times-Region Headline:
World Class Equine Mating Attempt Fails: Crackerjack Veterinarian Takes Over


September 16 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1630 Massachusetts village of Shawmut changes its name to Boston.
• 1830 Oliver Wendell Holmes writes poem Old Ironsides.
• 1848 Slavery abolished in all French territories.
• 1901 Paul Gauguin settles in Atuona in the Marquesas Islands.
• 1913 Thousands of women demonstrate for Dutch female suffrage.
• Happy wedding anniversary Kim Hrubá.

September 16 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1547 Abu al-Faiz ibn Mubarak Faizi, Persian-Dutch East Indies poet.
• 1800 Józef Nowakowski, Polish pianist and composer.
• 1898 H. A. Rey, American children's author and creator of Curious George.
• 1905 Vladimír Holan, Czech poet.
• 1919 Milan Harašta, Czech composer.
• 1925 [Riley B.] B.B. King.

September 16 Word Fact
quarantine, from the Italian words quarantina giorni, literally translates to "space of 40 days." According to the OED, that's how long ships were kept in isolation when potentially be harboring sick passengers in the fourteenth century.


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

• artotyrite: a member of a sect originating in Galatia in the 2nd cent. a.d. who celebrate the Eucharist with bread and cheese.
• chicken-pecked: designating an adult (esp. a parent) who is ordered about by a child.
• lugubrious: looking or sounding sad and dismal.
• omnilegent: characterized by a voracious appetite for reading.
• rozzle: to warm or heat (something), esp. before a fire.
• sumpter: a person employed to drive a pack horse.
• tegular: relating to, resembling, made of, or arranged like tiles.
• uxorious: having or showing an excessive or submissive fondness for one’s wife.
• yever: greedy; gluttonous; covetous.
• zoilist: a harsh or unfair critic; After Zoilus, whose fierce antipathy to the author of the Odyssey led him to take the name Homeromastix (“Homer whipper”).

September 16, 2020 Word-Wednesday Feature
Double Entendre
'do͞obl änˈtändrə,ˌdəbl änˈtändrə, noun, a figure of speech or a particular way of wording devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially awkward, sexually suggestive, or offensive to state directly. Always the exemplar, Shakespeare penned this example:

HAMLET: My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern?
Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do you both?
ROSENCRANTZ: As the indifferent children of the earth.
GUILDENSTERN: Happy, in that we are not overhappy.
On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.
HAMLET: Nor the soles of her shoes?
ROSENCRANTZ: Neither, my lord.
HAMLET: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favors?
GUILDENSTERN: Faith, her privates we.
HAMLET: In the secret parts of Fortune? Oh, most true. She is a strumpet. What news?
ROSENCRANTZ: None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest.

A more contemporaneously strumpety author who uses modern idioms —Mae West — stands as one of masters of this figure of speech. Born Mary Jane West on August 17, 1893, in Bushwick, New York City, West was the eldest child of "Battlin' Jack West" who worked as a "special policeman" before starting his own private investigations agency, and Mathilde "Tillie" Doelger, a corset and fashion model. West started entertaining crowds as a five-year-old at church socials, moving on to amateur shows by age seven, and performing professionally by age fourteen. Before long, West began writing her own risqué plays with the pen name Jane Mast. Her first starring role was in 1926 on Broadway in a play she titled Sex —a play she wrote, produced, and directed. Conservative critics panned the show, but ticket sales were strong. As a sign of the times, the production did not go over well with city officials or religious groups, the theater was raided, and West was arrested along with the cast. Undeterred, West wrote on. When her 1928 play about a racy, easygoing, and very smart lady of the 1890s called Diamond Lil became a Broadway hit, Hollywood wanted a piece of her action.

Paramount Pictures offered West a contract in 1932 when she was close to 40 years old. By 1933, West was one of the largest box office draws in the United States, and by 1935, West was the highest paid woman and the second-highest paid person in the United States (after William Randolph Hearst). From 1932 through 1978, West was the author of the dialogue and/or the screenplays for such hits as Night After Night, She Done Him Wrong, I’m No Angel, Belle of the Nineties, Goin’ to Town, Klondike Annie, Go West, Young Man, Every Day’s a Holiday, My Little Chickadee, and Sextette.

Here are a few of her choice double entendres:
It’s not the men in my life that count, it’s the life in my men.

Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution.

I’m no model lady. A model’s just an imitation of the real thing.

When I’m good, I’m very good. But when I’m bad I’m better.

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.

I feel like a million tonight—but only one at a time.

Good sex is like good bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.

A dame that knows the ropes isn’t likely to get tied up.

I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it.

Women like a man with a past, but they prefer a man with a present.

Love thy neighbor — and if he happens to be tall, debonair and devastating, it will be that much easier.

Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

She’s the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong.

The score never interested me, only the game.

Women with pasts interest men because they hope history will repeat itself.

Love is like a booger, you pick and pick at it. Then when you get it you wonder how to get rid of it.

I’ve been in more laps than a napkin.

I didn’t discover curves; I only uncovered them.

A good man is hard to find. A hard man is good to find.

Men are like linoleum floors. Lay ’em right and you can walk all over them for years.

You can do what you want, but saving love doesn’t bring any interest.

I wrote the story myself. It’s about a girl who lost her reputation and never missed it.

From A Year with Rilke, September 16 Entry
Afternoon, Before Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, from Early Journals.

Let yourself not be misled by the notes
that fall to you from the generous wind.

Wait watchfully. Hands that are eternal
may com to play upon your strings.


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.


*Minnesota: Henry and Olivia; Kansas: Liam and Olivia.

**Blues Cheese.