Word-Wednesday for December 16, 2020

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, December 16, 2020, the 51st Wednesday of the year, the thirteenth and last Wednesday of fall, and the 351st day of the year, with 15 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for December 16, 2020
Snowy Owls are happy for the recent snow.

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for December 16, 2020
Sunrise: 8:12am; Sunset: 4:28pm; 25 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 10:22am; Moonset: 6:32pm, waxing crescent


Temperature Almanac for December 16, 2020
                Average            Record              Today
High             18                     41                     28
Low                1                   -32                     22


December 16 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Chocolate-covered Anything Day
• Barbie and Barney Backlash Day

December 16 Word Riddle
What do you call a dog magician?*


December 16 Pun
My niece in second grade told me that the word “icy” is easy to spell. I see why.


December 16 The Roseau Times-Region Headline:
Vicks Vapo-Rub Tanker Overturns In Halma: No Congestion Noted


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

• 1659 General Monck demands free parliamentary election in Scotland.
• 1877 Anton Bruckner's 3rd Symphony in D, premieres.
• 1893 Anton Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 New World Symphony premieres at Carnegie Hall.
• 1913 Charlie Chaplin begins his film career at Keystone.
• 1924 Noël Coward's Vortex premieres in London.
• 1950 Shirley Temple announces her retirement from films aged 22.

 

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

• 1717 Elizabeth Carter, English poet, bluestocking, and translator.
• 1734 Georg Peter Weimar, composer.
• 1770 Ludwig van Beethoven.
• 1775 Jane Austen.
• 1787 Mary Russell Mitford.
• 1863 George Santayana.
• 1882 Zoltán Kodály.
• 1899 Noël Coward.
• 1917 Arthur C. Clarke.
• 1944 Yosemite Sam.

December 16 Word Fact
The shortest complete sentence in the English language: “No.”


December 16, 2020 Song of Myself, Verse 7 of 52
7
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not contain’d between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
For me those that have been boys and that love women,
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the mothers of mothers,
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children.

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.


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

• anemious: exposed to wind; windswept.
• benison: a blessing.
• curmurring: a low, rumbling sound in the bowels; an ominous harbinger of flatulence; borborygmus.
• fizgig: a lightheartedly frivolous, silly, or flirtatious woman.
• iatrophobia: an irrational fear of doctors.
• lares: guardian the spirits who, if propitiated, watched over the house or community to which they belonged.
• ostrobogulous: slightly risqué or indecent; bizarre, interesting, or unusual.
• poniard: a small, slim dagger.
• rhonchisonant: producing or resembling a snorting or snoring noise.
• sprunny: a sweetheart, a lover.

December 16, 2020 Word-Wednesday Feature

Noël Coward
With so many word-worthy authors born on this day, it was difficult to choose who would make the best Word-Wednesday feature. We went with Noël Coward because his name was most Christmasy. Born 1899 in Teddington, Middlesex (a south-western suburb of London), to a piano salesman and daughter of a captain and surveyor of the Royal Navy, Noël Peirce Coward, Sir, was the second of three sons, the eldest of whom had died at the age of six. Coward's father lacked ambition and industry, and family finances were often poor. Never one to wait for a handout, Coward first performed in amateur concerts at age seven, and though he attended the Chapel Royal Choir School, he had little formal schooling but was a voracious reader.

Sir Noël began acting professionally at age twelve, and he continued acting for the rest of his career. But it was as a playwright and composer that he made his greatest contributions, where many of his stage triumphs, including Private Lives (1930), Cavalcade (1931), and Blithe Spirit (1941), were later made into popular films. Many younger Wannaskan Almanac readers probably know of Coward by his more than 300 songs, including "Mad About the Boy" (1932) and "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" (1932), but he also wrote three autobiographies with characteristically word-conscious titles: Present Indicative (1937), Future Indefinite (1954), and Past Conditional (unfinished at his 1973 death; published in 1986). Present Indicative begins with this memorable opening line:

I was photographed naked on a cushion very early in life, an insane, toothless smile slitting my face and pleats of fat overlapping me like an ill-fitting overcoat.

The epitome of a sophisticated, urbane English gentleman, Coward was admired on both sides of the Pond for his great flair for expressing thoughts and observations with words of wit:

Work is much more fun than fun.

The higher the building the lower the morals.

It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it about like marmalade.

Television is for appearing on - not for looking at.

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

Never trust a man with short legs – his brain's too near his bottom.

We have no reliable guarantee that the afterlife will be any less exasperating than this one, have we?

Never mind, dear, we're all made the same, though some more than others.

And on the arts...
People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosophy, he must be a good enough craftsman to do it with so much spice of entertainment in it that the public get the message without being aware of it.

The theatre should be treated with respect. The theatre is a wonderful place, a house of strange enchantment, a temple of illusion. What it most emphatically is not and never will be is a scruffy, ill-lit, fumed-oak drill hall serving as a temporary soap box for political propaganda.

Writing is more important than acting, for one very good reason: it lasts. Stage acting only lives in people’s memories as long as they live. Writing is creative; acting is interpretative.

There’s no more to say about love,
The poets have said it for ages,
They rhyme it with ‘dove’ and ‘above’
And praise it for pages and pages,
There isn’t one passionate phrase that they miss,
Yet lovers find new ones each time that they kiss.
So what’s a love poet to do
When lovers are all poets too?


From A Year with Rilke, December 16 Entry

The Ancient One, from Sonnets to Orpheus I, 17

At the bottom,
the ancient one,
tangled root of all that has been,
forgotten fountain left unseen.

Helmets and hunters’ horns,
old men muttering,
brothers betrayed,
women played upon.

Branch thrusts upon branch,
nowhere a free one.
yes, up there! Keep climbing!

See if they’ll hold you.
That high one bends already
to become a lyre.

Be better than yesterday,
learn a new word today,
try to stay out of trouble - at least until Christmas,
and write when you have the time.



*Labracadabrador