Word-Wednesday for October 7, 2020

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, October 7, 2020, the 41st Wednesday of the year, the third Wednesday of fall, and the 281st day of the year, with 85 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for October 7, 2020
Fall Fungi Flourish in Any Available Niche

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for October 7, 2020
Sunrise: 7:33am; Sunset: 6:50pm; 3 minutes, 32 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 9:48pm; Moonset: 1:22am, waning gibbous


Temperature Almanac for October 7, 2020
                Average            Record              Today
High             56                     82                     59
Low              36                      11                     32


October 7 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Chocolate Covered Pretzel Day
• National LED Light Day
• National Frappe Day
• National Inner Beauty Day
• National Trigeminal Neuralgia Awareness Day
• National Walk to School Day
• National Pumpkin Seed Day
• National Coffee with a Cop Day

October 7 Word Riddle
What is the difference between a person starting to cook a meal and a forgotten chicken on a barbecue spit?*


October 7 Pun

October 7 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1955 Allen Ginsberg reads his poem "Howl" for the first time at a poetry reading in San Francisco.
• 1993 Nobel prize for literature awarded to American writer Toni Morrison.

October 7 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1926 Ivan Jirko, Czech composer.
• 1955 Yo-Yo Ma.

October 7 Word Fact
The shortest sentence in the English language:

I am.

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

• ablutophobia: an irrational and overwhelming fear of bathing, cleaning, or washing.
• dictitate: to speak or say repeatedly.
• garboil: n., confusion, turmoil; disturbance, tumult; discord, controversy. Also: an instance or state of confusion, disturbance, discord, etc.; a disorderly or tumultuous event.
• hore: n., dirt, filth, foulness; also: mucus, phlegm.
• mazarine: a deep, rich shade of blue.
• nutual: adj., expressed merely by a gesture.
• pileus: the umbrella-shaped portion of a mushroom.
• ruderal: adj. and n., of a plant: growing on waste ground or among rubbish; (also) designating a habitat of this type.
• saprostomous: adj., having bad breath.
• ulotrichous: having woolly or crisply curly hair.

October 7, 2020 Word-Wednesday Feature
Funny Old Men (who write)
In tribute to autumnal humorists WannaskaWriter and Chairman Joe, among others — and with a nod to Mr. Hot COCO Wannaskan Almanac's summery, mid-life humorist — today Word-Wednesday features the work of Roy Blount, Jr., who just turned 79. Author of twenty-five books, including Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof: Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory, Roy has made an art of wordplay since the third grade in Ponce De Leon Elementary School. He was editor of his high school newspaper, The Scribbler, before studying journalism at Vanderbilt University and getting his master's degree from Harvard.

Roy grew up in Florida and Georgia, and his writing reflects his southern acculturation. A writer and musician, Roy continues as one of the founding members of the Rock Bottom Remainders, an American rock charity supergroup, consisting of published writers, most of them both amateur musicians and popular English-language book, magazine, and newspaper authors. Band members included Dave Barry, Stephen King, Amy Tan, Cynthia Heimel, Sam Barry, Ridley Pearson, Scott Turow, Joel Selvin, James McBride, Mitch Albom, Barbara Kingsolver, Robert Fulghum, Matt Groening, Tad Bartimus, Greg Iles, Aron Ralston, and honorary member Maya Angelou.

Word-Wednesday staff have combed Roy's work and found the following examples of his writing for your enjoyment:

On Food
I prefer my oysters fried; That way I know my oysters died.

Eaters of Wonder Bread
Must be underbred.
So little to eat.
Where's the wheat?

On Pets
If a cat spoke, it would say things like, "Hey, I don't see the problem here."

When a dog watches you plop food into his bowl the dog thinks, "Everything that's happened in my life so far has led up to this moment."

On Gender Relations
Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo Clinic.

Romance is thinking about the other person when you are supposed to be thinking of something else.

Doctors and lawyers must go to school for years and years, often with little sleep, and at great sacrifice to their first wives.

On the Human Condition
Any given generation gives the next generation advice that the given generation should have been given by the previous one but now it's too late.

Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs.

When mannequins have nipples, it's a cold-hearted world.

People don't necessarily want or need to be done unto as you would have them do unto you. They want to be done unto as they want to be done unto.

On Writing
The last time somebody said, "I find I can write much better with a word processor.", I replied, "They used to say the same thing about drugs."

An author is a person who can never take innocent pleasure in visiting a bookstore again. Say you go in and discover that there are no copies of your book on the shelves. You resent all the other books - I don't care if they are Great Expectations, Life on the Mississippi and the King James Bible that are on the shelves.

Usage ain't always a matter of ought.

What is the difference between an author and a writer? A writer, as we know, writes; an author has written. What does an author do? Auth? Authorize? An author authors. But never in the present tense. No one says, when asked what he or she is doing, “I’m authoring.”

Writers tend to get off into their own heads and not notice the people that they’re living with, or they get irritable with the people that they’re living with when the people insist on being noticed.

To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. I don't remember what I was like before I learned my ABCs, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones.

The more you try to pin a word down, the more you realize that it has its own cape, sword, and a little hat.

I think lots of words have physicality. How about the word "wobble"? You think that's arbitrary? When you say the word "wince", you wince. How about that?

The local groceries are all out of broccoli, loccoli.

Anyone who undertakes the literary grind had better like playing around with words.


From A Year with Rilke, October 7 Entry
Train Yourself to This, from Worpswede, July 16, 1903, Letters to a Young Poet.

You carry within you the capacity to imagine and give shape to your world. It is a pure and blessed way of living. Train yourself to this, but also trust whatever comes. If it comes from your desire, from some inner need, accept that and hate nothing.

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.

*One turns on a burner, and the other burns on a turner.