Word-Wednesday for February 17, 2020

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, February 17, 2021, the 7th Wednesday of the year, the 9th Wednesday of winter, and the 48th day of the year, with 317 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for February 17, 2021
Wannaskan robins wintering in Texas are depressed about the bitter cold.

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for February 17, 2021
Sunrise: 7:28am; Sunset: 5:48pm; 3 minutes, 25 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 10:04am; Moonset: 11:12pm, waxing crescent, 24% illuminated


Temperature Almanac for February 17, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             22                     49                      9
Low                0                   -46                   -10


February 17 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National PTA Founders Day
• National Random Acts of Kindness Day
• National Cabbage Day
• Ash Wednesday
• My Way Day

February 17 Word Riddle
What 11-letter English word does everyone pronounce incorrectly?*


February 17 Pun
My neighbor has a horse named Mayo, and sometimes Mayo neighs.

February 17 Definition of the Week

BAGPIPES: Bagpipes are the missing link between music and noise.

                     E. K. Kruger

February 17 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1598 Boris Godunov chosen as Tsar of Russia, moose and squirrel make fun of his name.
• 1776 First volume of Edward Gibbon's seminal work The Decline and Fall of Roman Empire published.    1859 Giuseppe Verdi's opera Un Ballo in Maschera premieres in Napoli.
• 1897 National Organization of Mothers forms (later becomes Parent Teacher Association).
• 1913 New York Armory Show introduces Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp to US public.
• 1933 US Senate accept Blaine Act: ending prohibition.

February 17 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1754 Jan Jachym Kopriva, Czech composer and organist.
• 1796 Giovanni Pacini.
• 1862 Mori Ōgai, Japanese novelist and poet.
• 1912 Alice "Andre" Norton, American science fiction author.
• 1929 Chaim Potok.
• 1955 Mo Yan, Chinese novelist and Nobel laureate.

February 17 Word Fact
The longest word in the English language that has its letters in alphabetical order is almost.


February 17, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 16 of 52
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine,
One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same,
A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable down by the Oconee I live,
A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian,
A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye;
At home on Kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen off Newfoundland,
At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking,
At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch,
Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North-Westerners, (loving their big proportions,)
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink and meat,
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,
A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,
Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

I resist any thing better than my own diversity,
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,
The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)


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

• anserine: [AN-suh-rahyn] adj., of, like, resembling, or pertaining to a goose; goose-like; silly, goofy, or foolish.
• bamstick: a foolish, annoying, or obnoxious person; (also /spec./) a belligerent or disruptive person.
• corrade: to cobble together; to scrape together from various resources; to crumble away through abrasion.
• eidolon: īˈdōlən, n.,  an idealized person or thing.
• froonce: [froonts] v., to go about in an active, bustling manner; to move in an energetic or noisy fashion.
• immiserate: to make miserable.
• nivosity: an abundance of snow; the degree of snowiness.
• prurient: having or encouraging an excessive interest in sexual matters.
• quakebuttock: one lacking the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things.
• sirenize: to act as or use the enticements of a siren; to bewitch, allure, enchant or fascinate.

February 17, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
Chloe Ardelia Wofford
Also known as Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, also known as Toni Morrison, born February 18, 1931 we at Word-Wednesday today celebrate her birthday eve. Chloe was born in Lorain, Ohio, a suburb east of Cleveland on the shores of Lake Erie. Perhaps the view of this big lake gave her a sense of scope and depth found throughout her writing. The second of four children, raised in a working-class, African-American family, her family's landlord set fire to the house in which they were living when she was a 2-year-old - while the family was home - because her parents missed a rent payment. Her family responded to what she later called this "bizarre form of evil" by laughing at the landlord rather than falling into despair. Morrison interpreted her family's response as a demonstration of how to maintain integrity and claim your own life in the face of acts of such "monumental crudeness", responses we see in many of her fictional characters.

An avid reader from an early age, Chloe read Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Leo Tolstoy while her peers preferred comic books, Nancy Drew, and The Hardy Boys. Later in her life, Toni said that she became interested in writing books because, as a young girl, she could find nothing written about young black girls like herself. After graduating with a Bachelors of Arts degree from Howard University in 1953, and with a Masters of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1955, Morrison taught English at Texas Southern University before returning to Howard as a professor of English. She then took a job as an editor at Random House in 1965, where she remained for five years bringing books by African-American authors to the marketplace.

Morrison first novel, The Bluest Eye, a story about an 11-year-old black girl who felt inferior because she did not have blue eyes, was published in 1970. Her second novel, Sula, was nominated for a National Book Award in 1973. Four years later, her third novel, Song of Solomon, became the first Book-of-the-Month Club selection by a black author since Richard Wright's Native Son in 1940. Morrison received the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Beloved, and she received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.


With so many great works, it is difficult to choose words to represent her writing. It seems best to represent Morrison's own words with selections from her fictional characters and from her many lectures. Here are some of our vernacular favorites from her fictional characters:

"Anything dead coming back to life hurts." Beloved

“Love is never any better than the lover. ” The Bluest Eye

"Can't nothing heal without pain, you know." Beloved

“Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.” Sula

"Nothing like other folks' sin for distraction." Paradise

“Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.” Jazz

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” Beloved

"Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down." Song of Solomon

"What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?" Song of Solomon

"You are your best thing." Beloved

 

And here are some memorable Morrison observations that she expressed in her own voice:

"Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined."

"Since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how."

"In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate."

"The loneliest woman in the world is a woman without a close woman friend."

"Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently,
weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly…."

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”

From A Year with Rilke, February 17 Entry
Prayer, from Book of Images

Night, so still,
where things entirely white
and things of red and all colors of the rainbow
are lifted into the one stillness
of one darkness—
bring me as well
to immersion in the Many.

Is my mind too taken with light?
If my face were not visible,
would I still feel separate from other things?

Look at my hands:
Don’t they lie there like tools?
Doesn’t the ring on that finger
look just like itself? Does not the light
lie upon them with such trust—
as if knowing they are the very same
when held in darkness.




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.



*incorrectly.