Word-Wednesday for October 14, 2020

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, October 14, 2020, the 42nd Wednesday of the year, the fourth Wednesday of fall, and the 288th day of the year, with 78 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for October 14, 2020
Mosses and mushrooms thrive together in the recent rains.

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for October 14, 2020
Sunrise: 87:43am; Sunset: 6:36pm; 3 minutes, 29 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 4:26am; Moonset: 6:08pm, waning crescent


Temperature Almanac for October 14, 2020
                Average            Record              Today
High             53                     82                     45
Low              33                     17                      25


October 14 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Dessert Day
• Be Bald and Be Free Day
• National Curves Day
• National Emergency Nurse’s Day
• National Bring Your Teddy Bear to Work/School Day
• National Stop Bullying Day
• National Fossil Day
• National Take Your Parents To Lunch Day
• International Top Spinning Day

October 14 Word Riddle
What word does the following:
The first two letters signify a male.
The first three letters signify a female.
The first four letters signify a great person.
The entire word signifies a great woman?*


October 14 Pun
Why did the golfer by an extra pair of pants?**


October 14 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1066 The Battle of Hastings, 860 years before the publication of Winnie the Pooh.
  
• 1322 Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland's independence.
• 1586 Mary Queen of Scots goes on trial for conspiracy against Elizabeth.
• 1892 Arthur Conan Doyle publishes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes collection of 12 stories originally published serially in The Strand Magazine.
• 1926 A. A. Milne's book Winnie the Pooh released.
• 1930 George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin's musical Girl Crazy premieres.
• 1964 Martin Luther King Jr. announced as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
• 1979 Wayne Gretzky scores his first NHL goal.
• 1988 Naguib Mahfouz is the first Arabic writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

October 14 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1644 William Penn, English Philosopher, Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania.
• 1861 Bjarni Thorsteinsson, Icelandic composer.
• 1864 Maurice de Plessys, French poet.
• 1880 Vilhelm Ekelund, Swedish poet and writer.
• 1894 E.E.Cummings.
• 1906 Hannah Arendt.

October 14 Word Fact
facetious, abstemious, annelidous, arsenious are english words which contain all five vowels in alphabetical order.


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

• adimplete: to fill; to make complete.
• baulk: a roughly squared timber beam.
• Calvinism: the Protestant theological system of John Calvin and his successors, which develops Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone and emphasizes the grace of God and the doctrine of predestination.
• epideictic: characterized by or designed to display rhetorical or oratorical skill.
• perlage: the aggregation of tiny bubbles which forms on the surface of a glass of sparkling wine, champagne, etc.
• rennet: a complex set of enzymes produced in the stomachs of ruminant mammals.
• schlep: to haul, carry, drag.
• ultracrepidate: to criticize beyond the sphere of one’s knowledge, or venture beyond one’s competence.
• vaniloquence: empty or meaningless chatter, idle talk, blather.
• weltschmerz: a melancholy mood of sentimental sadness and world-weariness.

October 14, 2020 Word-Wednesday Feature
Lost Words
The Word-Wednesday production team is composed of beings who focus more on words than on writing. Words matter to us, and we become concerned when words go lost. Did you know that Oxford University Press, publisher of the OED, maintains a dictionary for children with a 10,000-word entry limit? Did you know that in 2015, Oxford University Press dropped the words fern, starling, and willow from its Children's Dictionary in favor of the words broadband and cut and paste?

In response, a writer — Robert MacFarlane, and an illustrator — Jackie Morris, teamed up to publish a wild dictionary that they called the lost words: a spell book.  Wannaskans know that nature matters — for children of all ages. Each featured lost word in this book is acrostically spread across a page for finding, where hints come from illustrations or begin lines of poetry.

dandelion
Dazzle me, little sun-of-the-grass!
And spin me, tiny time-machine!
   (Tick-tock, sun clock, thistle & dock)
Now no longer known as
Dent-de-lion, Lion’s Tooth or Windblow,
   (Tick-tock, sun clock, nettle & dock)
Evening Glow, Milkwitch, or Parachute, so
Let new names take and root, trhive and grow,
   (Tick-tock, sun clock, rattle & dock)
I would make you some, such as
   Bane of Lawn Pefectionists
Or Fallen Star of the Football Pitch
   or Scatterseed, but
Never would I call you only, merely, simply, ‘wee’.
   (Tick-tock, sun clock, clover & dock)

Not all our children are as lucky as Ozaawaa, and Christmas is coming. Consider this book for the children in your life who might enjoy (or need) greater familiarity with the world of lost words.


From A Year with Rilke, October 14 Entry
The Open, from Eighth Duino Elegy.

With their whole gaze
animals behold the Open.
Only our eyes
are as though reversed
and set like traps around us,
keeping us inside.
That there is something out there
we know only from the creatures’ countenance.

We turn even the young child around,
making her look backward
at the forms we create,
not outward into the Open.



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.

*heroine
**Just in case she got a hole in one.