Word-Wednesday for February 10, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, February 10, 2021, the 6th Wednesday of the year, the 8th Wednesday of winter, and the 41st day of the year, with 324 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for February 10, 2021
Lest we feel sorry for ourselves in the coming weekend temperatures, things could be worse:
Minnesota's Coldest Temps Ever Recorded

Roseau (February 2, 1996):  -52˚
Mora (December 18, 1983):  -52˚
Itasca (February 2, 1996):  -52˚
Baudette (February 19, 1966):  -52˚
Pine River Dam (February 12, 1912):  -53˚
Moose Lake (January 15, 1972):  -53˚
Fosston (February 1, 1996):  -53˚
Brainerd (February 2, 1996):  -54˚
Embarrass (January 20, 1996):  -57˚
Tower (February 2, 1996):  -60˚

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for February 10, 2021
Sunrise: 7:40am; Sunset: 5:36pm; 3 minutes, 17 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 7:34am; Moonset: 4:13pm, waning crescent, 1% illuminated


Temperature Almanac for February 10, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             20                     47                     -8
Low              -3                    -51                    -28


February 10 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Cream Cheese Brownie Day
• National Home Warranty Day
• National Umbrella Day

February 10 Word Riddle
What did Spock’s cat say to other cats in greeting?*


February 10 Pun
Mallard farts are always silent but deadly - their tail feathers cover their butt quacks.


February 10 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1535 Twelve nude anabaptists run through Amsterdam streets.
• 1794 Joseph Haydn's 99th Symphony in E premieres.
• 1837 Russian poet Alexander Pushkin is fatally injured in a duel with French officer Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès.
• 1897 The New York Times begins using slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print".
• 1942 Glenn Miller awarded 1st ever gold record for selling 1 million copies of Chattanooga Choo Choo.
• 1949 Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman premieres.

February 10 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1824 Samuel Plimsoll, inventor (Plimsoll line for ships).
• 1890 Boris Pasternak.
• 1893 Jimmy Durante.
• 1898 Bertolt Brecht.

February 10 Word Fact
The longest word in every European language:

February 10, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 15 of 52
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready,

The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
The deacons are ordain’d with cross’d hands at the altar,
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and looks at the oats and rye,
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm’d case,
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s bed-room;)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
The malform’d limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove,
The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat, the gate-keeper marks who pass,
The young fellow drives the express-wagon, (I love him, though I do not know him;)
The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle,
The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other,
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof’d garret and harks to the musical rain,
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm’d cloth is offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale,
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent sideways,
As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for the shore-going passengers,
The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots,
The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago borne her first child,
The clean-hair’d Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the factory or mill,
The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter’s lead flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign-painter is lettering with blue and gold,
The canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at his desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread,
The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him,
The child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions,
The regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun, (how the white sails sparkle!)
The drover watching his drove sings out to them that would stray,
The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling about the odd cent;)
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly,
The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open’d lips,
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck,
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other,
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you;)
The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the great Secretaries,
On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms,
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,
The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle,
As the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice by the jingling of loose change,
The floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning the roof, the masons are calling for mortar,
In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers;
Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gather’d, it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!)
Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in the ground;
Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface,
The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe,
Flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton-wood or pecan-trees,
Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river or through those drain’d by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,
Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw,

Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around them,
In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day’s sport,
The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,
The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife;
And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,
And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.


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

• abschattungen: German, shadows.
• cloffice: closet office used by stay-at-home parents to help balance work and parenting responsibilities.
• eesome: [EE-suhm] adj., pleasing to the eye; attractive.
• flummery: [FLUM-ur-ee] n., a sweet dish made with beaten eggs, milk, sugar, and flavorings; empty compliments; nonsense.
• incompossible: mutually exclusive; Ambrose Bierce’s definition and example from The Devil’s Dictionary cannot be bettered: “Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both—as Walt Whitman’s poetry and God’s mercy to man.”
• misodoctakleidist: [MEEZ-oh-dok-tah-KLAHYD-ist] n., one who hates practicing on the piano.
• punding: a stereotyped behavior characterized by an intense fascination with a complex, excessive, nongoal oriented, repetitive activity.
• quadroon: a person who is one-quarter black by descent.
• sprattle: n., a scramble or struggle; an eager, uncontrolled, or undignified struggle to obtain or achieve something. v., to awkwardly flail about in a clumsy struggle.
• tittynope: [TIT-ee-nohp] n., a small quantity of something left over such as uneaten food; a residual morsel or a crumb.

February 10, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
Definition or Meaning?
Might there be more to words than definitions can capture? Writers believe this to be true; accountants and scientists are not so sure. Dictionary definitions appeal to our left hemispheres, the place of certainty, partitions, specifications, and flatness.

On the other hemisphere, life itself offers the richest, roundest word meanings where meaning invites further personal exploration, and which appeal to the fullness of our right hemisphere capacities. As a personal reading experiment in word meanings that bring our world to life in the remaining days of winter reading, look for stanzas and sentences by great authors that go beyond the containment of "definition" and unfold the richness of the living world around us. Here are a few examples...

alcoholism:
"Alcoholism isn't a spectator sport. Eventually the whole family gets to play."

Joyce Rebeta-Burditt

appreciation: "The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated."

William James

book:
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”

Franz Kafka

“Books read us back to ourselves.”

Jeanette Winterson

committee:
"A cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured, and then quietly strangled."

Barnett Cocks

compliment:
"I can live for two months on a good compliment."

Mark Twain

daring:
"A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible."

Graham Greene

eloquence:
"Eloquence is the poetry of prose."

William Cullen Bryant

gaffe:
"A 'gaffe' is the opposite of a 'lie': it is when a politician inadvertently tells the truth."

Michael Kinsley

leader:
"A leader is a dealer in hope."

Napoleon I

mob:
"The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

pain:
"In the country of pain we are each alone."

May Sarton

rudeness:
"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."

Eric Hoffer

technology:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Arthur C. Clarke

voting:
"Voting is a civic sacrament."

Theodore Hesburgh

From A Year with Rilke, February 10 Entry
The Space Within Us, from Uncollected Poems

The space within us reaches out, translates each thing.
For the essence of a tree to be real for you,
cast inner space around it, out of the space
that exists in you. Encircle it with restraint.
It has no borders. Only in the realm
of your renouncing can it, as tree, be known.



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



*Live long as pawsper.