Word-Wednesday for January 20, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, January 20, 2021, the 3rd Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of winter, and the 20th day of the year, with 345 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for January 20, 2021

Snowy Owl Facts

• Their wingspan averaging 4.5 feet help them silently sneak up on or accelerate after prey.
• Facial feathers covering their beaks help them sense nearby objects.
• Needing plenty of insulation for temperatures, snowy owls have so many of feathers that they are the heaviest owl species in North America.
• Their feet are covered with feathers, like fluffy slippers. This provides ample insulation for the cold Arctic climate.
• They swallow small prey whole. Snowy owls will eat a variety of food including lemmings, rabbits, mice, and ducks.

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for January 20, 2021
Sunrise: 8:07am; Sunset: 5:02pm; 2 minutes, 28 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 11:43am; Moonset: 12:21am, waxing crescent, 41% illuminated.

Temperature Almanac for January 20, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             14                     45                     34
Low             -6                    -46                      9


January 20 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Inauguration Day
• National Buttercrunch Day
• National Cheese Lover’s Day
• National Disc Jockey Day
• Rid the World of Fad Diets and Gimmicks Day
• Penguin Awareness Day
  

January 20 Word Riddle
Why has the shoemaker wonderful powers of endurance?*


January 20 Pun

Murder and a Bike Theft

January 20 The Roseau Times-Region Headline:
Mr. Hot Coco Gets Last Minute Pardon for Flan Puns


January 20 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1941 Bela Bartok's 6th String Quartet premieres.
• 1954 Dmitri Shostakovich's Concertino opus 94 premieres.
• 1956 Buddy Holly records Blue Days Black Night.
• 1961 Robert Frost recites The Gift Outright at JFK's inauguration.

The Gift Outright
By Robert Frost
The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.


January 20 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1622 Susanna van Baerle, Dutch poet/wife of Geeraert Burns.
• 1761 Giovanni Domenico Perotti, Italian composer.
• 1804 Eugène Sue, French novelist, boy named Sue.
• 1806 Nathaniel Parker Willis, American writer, editor and founder of the American Monthly.
• 1888 Lead Belly [Huddie William Ledbetter].
• 1896 George Burns [Nathan Birnbaum].
• 1920 Thorleif Schjelderup, Norwegian author & ski jumper.
• 1933 Hannibal Lecter.
• 1987 Bonny Reynolds.
  

January 20 Word Fact
 The average English speaker only knows between 20,000 and 30,000 words.


January 20, 2021 Song of Myself 
Verse 12 of 52
The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market,
I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down.

Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat in the fire.

From the cinder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements,
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,
Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure,
They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.


Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem) from the following words:
alalia: a complete inability to speak; mutism.
boffola: a joke that’s met with extremely loud laughter.
crepuscular: of, resembling, or relating to twilight.
humicubation: the act or practice of lying on the ground.
kuchinisabishii: Japanese, when you’re not hungry, but you eat because your mouth is lonely.
last: a shoemaker’s model for shaping or repairing a shoe or boot.
minatory: expressing or conveying a threat.
nautch: a traditional dance performed by professional dancing girls.
ochlocracy: government by the mob. From Greek ochlokratia, from ochlos, mob, and kratia, -cracy.
putsch: a clandestinely plotted attempt to overthrow a government.


January 20, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
Inauguration
inauguration, iˌnôɡ(y)əˈrāSH(ə)n, noun, the beginning or introduction of a system, policy, or period, from French inauguration "installation, consecration," and directly from Late Latin inaugurationem (nominative inauguratio) "consecration," presumably originally "installment under good omens;" noun of action from past-participle stem of inaugurare "take omens from the flight of birds; consecrate or install when omens are favorable," from in- "on, in" (from PIE root *en "in") + augurare "to act as an augur, predict" (see augur). And so we have a word consecrating new leadership based on the flight patterns of birds. What could go wrong?

Under the United States Constitution, the old president continues to hold full power through 11:59:59, and then power shifts at noon. The 20th Amendment, passed by Congress March 2, 1932, ratified January 23, 1933, moves the date of inauguration from March to "noon on the 20th day of January." Article. II., Section. 1. of the United States Constitution reads:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

In celebration of Inauguration Day, Word-Wednesday features some famous words by various authors and persons with first-hand experience about the Presidency:

The office of President has ever been stuck with thorns. It daily becomes a more difficult one to wield. A wise Man would find it a Herculean Task.
Abigail Adams

Who knows? Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow my footsteps and preside over the White House as the president’s spouse. (Pause) And I wish him well.
Barbara Bush

The President is the people’s lobbyist.
Hubert H. Humphrey

The President must be greater than anyone else, but not better than anyone else.
John Steinbeck

People don’t alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.
Terry Pratchett

As democracy is perfected, the office [of U. S. President] represents more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
H. L. Mencken

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
Theodore Roosevelt

The President is expected to personify our betterness in an inspiring way, to express in what he does and is (not just what he says) a moral idealism which, in much of the public mind, is the very opposite of “politics.”
David Barber

The president we get is the country we get. With each new president the nation is conformed spiritually.
E. L. Doctorow

Presidency, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics.                                                Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary

President, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom— and of whom only—it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.
Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary

To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client.
John Updike

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. I’m beginning to believe it.
Clarence Darrow

All presidents start out to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running something less heroic and much more intractable: namely the presidency.
Alistair Cooke

The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of clichés the first prize.
Saul Bellow

The president of the United States bears about as much relationship to the real business of running America as does Colonel Sanders to the business of frying chicken.
J. G. Ballard

The second office of this government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.
Thomas Jefferson

Once a President gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.
Doris Kearns Goodwin


From A Year with Rilke, January 20 Entry
God Speaks, from The Book of Hours I, 19, Letters to a Young Poet

I am, you anxious one.
Don’t you sense me, ready to break
into being at your touch?
My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.
Can’t you see me standing before you
cloaked in stillness?
Hasn’t my longing ripened in you
from the beginning
as fruit ripens on a branch?

I am the dream you are dreaming.
When you want to awaken, I am waiting.
I grow strong in the beauty you behold.
And with the silence of stars I enfold
your cities made by time.



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.





*Because he holds on to the last.