Word-Wednesday for December 30, 2020

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, December 30, 2020, the 53rd Wednesday of the year, the second Wednesday of winter, and the 365th day of the year, with 1 day remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for December 30, 2020
This is how Ruff Grouse stay warm.

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for December 30, 2020
Sunrise: 8:17am; Sunset: 4:36pm; 53 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 5:03pm; Moonset: 8:58am, waning gibbous


Temperature Almanac for December 30, 2020
                Average            Record              Today
High             15                     35                     21
Low              -4                   -40                     14


December 30 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Bicarbonate of Soda Day
• Falling Needles Family Fest Day
• Bacon Day

December 30 Word Riddle
What is a Christmas wreath mad with $100 bills?*


December 30 Pun
JackPineSavage keeps telling me, “Cheer up! It could be worse. You would be stuck underground in a hole full of water.”
I know she means well.


December 30 The Roseau Times-Region Headline:
Gatzke Locksmith Finds Key To Success


December 30 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1809 Wearing masks at balls forbidden in Boston.
• 1877 Johannes Brahms' Second Symphony in D, premieres in Vienna.
• 1879 Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance premieres.
• 1924 Astronomer Edwin Hubble formally announces existence of other galactic systems at meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
• 1964 Edward Albee's Tiny Alice premieres in New York City.

December 30 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1859 Josef Bohuslav Foerster, Czech composer.
• 1865 Rudyard Kipling.
• 1892 Jaromír Fiala, Czech composer.
• 1928 Bo Diddley [Ellas Bates McDaniels].
• 1946 Patti Smith.

December 30 Word Fact
An abecedism is a word created from the initials of words in a phrase.


December 30, 2020 Song of Myself

Verse 9 of 52

The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow.

I am there, I help, I came stretch’d atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.


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

• acapnotic: one who has quit smoking or who has never smoked; a nonsmoker.
• bridewell: a prison or reform school for petty offenders.
• cryptid: an animal (such as Leprechaun, Sasquatch, or the Loch Ness Monster) that has been claimed to exist but never proven to exist.
• flense: slice the skin or fat from a carcass.
• moiety: a half of something, especially when it is divided into two equal parts.
• pauciloquy: economical speech, laconism.
• quaaltagh: first person to enter a house on New Year’s Day, [first foot]. Also: the first person one meets after leaving home, especially on a special occasion.
• smatchet: a small, nasty, contemptible, and unmannerly person.
• tweeny: a maid who assits both cook and housemaid; an auxiliary maid.
• Yule Hole: the last hole to which one is able to stretch ones’ belt after the 12 days of Christmas.

December 30, 2020 Word-Wednesday Feature
Famous Last Words
Endings. On this second-to-the-last day of the year, on this last Wednesday of the year, we may just be over the hump for 2020. As the traditional rhyme says, “Wednesday’s child is full of woe”, and 2020 was birthed on a Wednesday, so it wasn’t like we had no warning.

Word-Wednesday looked at classic poetic and prose beginnings earlier this year, and today we look at endings. How do you want to leave your reader? Do the last words your story or poem capture the essence of all the words that preceded your last sentence or stanza? Here are some of the best. While many seem fitting for a summary of the feeling of the ending of 2020, let's start a little more brightly.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.
Charlotte's Web, E.B. White

One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, 'Poo-tee-weet?'
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.
Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Curley and Carlson looked after them. And Carlson said, 'Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?'
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

He now has more patients than the devil himself could handle; the authorities treat him with deference and public opinion supports him. He has just been awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

But I don't think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt.
The Color Purple, Alice Walker

or never was a story of more woe,
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
The Tempest by William Shakespeare

In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.
The Road, Cormac McCarthy

I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

The eyes and faces all turned themselves towards me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room.
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Animal Farm, George Orwell

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

This stone is entirely blank. The only thought in cutting it was of the essentials of the grave, and there was no other care than to make this stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man. No name can be read there.
Les Miserables, Victor Hugo

She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously.
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it.
Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx

But that is the beginning of a new story - the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald    [Thank you, JPS!]

All that nonsense," said Don Quixote, "that until now has been a reality to my hurt, my death will, with heaven's help, turn to my good.
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes

The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the utmost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky — seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

They were only a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.
Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust

Now I understand that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.
My Ántonia, Willa Cather

After all, tomorrow is another day.
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him—and it was still hot.
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak

Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Dubliners, James Joyce

A way a lone a last a loved a long the  
Finnegans Wake, James Joyce

SPOILER ALERT FOR THE ULYSSES READING GROUP!

I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could
feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Ulysses, James Joyce

"Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley, 1818.

And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.
East of Eden, John Steinbeck

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Origin of Species, Charles Darwin

Are there any questions?
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

THE END

 

If you were to write the final sentence or stanza for a story or poem about 2020, leave it as a comment, and let us know if we forgot to list your favorite.


From A Year with Rilke December 30 Entry
Last Thing, the last entry in Rilke’s last notebook,
included among his uncollected poems.


Come, you last thing. I recognize you,
unholy agony in the body's weave.
Just as I burned in my mind, now I burn in you.
The wood has long resisted, holding back
from the flames you ignite—
now I feed you and blaze in you.
In the grip of your rage my natural mildness
becomes a raging hell, unlike anything.
Quite pure, free of all thoughts,
I climb the twisted pyre of future suffering,
knowing now that there is nothing I can purchase
for the comfort of this heart. All its learnings now are silent.
Is it still I who burn beyond recognition?
I will not drag memories inside.
Oh Life, Life: to be outside.
I am in flames. No one who knows me.



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.

*Aretha Franklins