And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, March 3, 2021, the 9th Wednesday of the year, the 11th Wednesday of winter, and the 62nd day of the year, with 303 days remaining.
Wannaska Nature Update for March 3, 2021
The ravens have finished building their nests and will soon lay their eggs.
Nordhem Lunch: Closed.
Earth/Moon Almanac for March 3, 2021
Sunrise: 7:01am; Sunset: 6:10pm; 3 minutes, 34 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 10:49pm; Moonset: 9:16am, waning gibbous, 79% illuminated.
Temperature Almanac for March 3, 2021
Average Record Today
High 28 53 35
Low 7 -34 20
March 3 Celebrations from National Day Calendar
- National Anthem Day
- National Cold Cuts Day
- National I Want You to Be Happy Day
- National Mulled Wine Day
- Soup It Forward Day
- Peace Corp Day
- What if Cats and Dogs had Opposable Thumbs Day
March 3 Word Riddle
What do you call a work of literature listing all the things you need to do before you die?*
March 3 Pun
Governor Walz says that we can have socially distanced, masked gatherings of up to eight people without issues, but I don’t know eight people without issues.
March 3 The Roseau Times-Region Headline:
Roseau JayCees Plan Biggest St. Patrick’s Easter De Mayo of July Parade in County History
March 3 Definition of the Week
ASKHOLE: a person who constantly asks for advice and then does the opposite of what they were counseled to do.
March 3 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day
- 1634 First tavern in Boston opens.
- 1847 US Post Office Department is authorized to issue postage stamps.
- 1848 American education reformer Horace Mann joins the US Senate, representing Massachusetts.
- 1849 Territory of Minnesota organizes.
- 1863 Abraham Lincoln approves charter for National Academy of Sciences.
- 1875 Georges Bizet's last and greatest opera, Carmen, premieres in Paris.
- 1879 First female lawyer, Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood, heard by US Supreme Court.
- 1887 Anne Sullivan begins teaching 6-year-old blind-deaf Helen Keller.
- 1913 Woman suffrage procession through Washington, D.C. organized by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns and led by Inez Milholland. Ida B. Wells marched with her Illinois delegation despite blacks being told to march in a separate section.
- 1924 Sean O'Casey's Juno & the Paycock premieres in Dublin.
- 1931 Star Spangled Banner officially becomes US national anthem by congressional resolution.
March 3 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day
- 1847 Alexander Graham Bell.
- 1886 Tore Ørjasæter, Norwegian poet.
- 1893 Mississippi John Hurt.
- 1920 James Doohan.
- 1926 James Ingram Merrill.
March 3 Word Fact
The United States of Demonyms
March 3, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 18 of 52
With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums,
I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer’d and slain persons.
Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
I beat and pound for the dead,
I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.
Vivas to those who have fail’d!
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes!
And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!
Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem) from the following words:
- agraffe: the wire cage that holds the cork on a champagne bottle.
- barm: the foam on a beer.
- chunder: n., vomit; v., to vomit.
- ektasis: the state of being beside one’s self or rapt out of one’s self.
- glabella: the space between one’s eyebrows.
- muntin: the strip separating window panes.
- natiform: resembling a butt.
- overmorrow: the day after tomorrow.
- purlicue: the space between the thumb and forefinger.
- steatopygic: having a large bottom.
March 3, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
German Words
My daughter has lived in Berlin, Germany for over ten years, and yes, she is fluent. I've begun to collect interesting words to share with her. I first learned some German in 4th grade at a time when my Mom objected to the "harsh" sound of the language. Even at that young age, I realized that the legacies of the first and second great wars of the twentieth century were long-lived.
Setting aside the sound of German to the ears of foreigners, the German language is musically polyphonic and unusually precise with respect to specific feelings or circumstances experienced by all humans, yet for which few human languages have words. Here are a few of my favorites.
backpfeifengesicht: the face that begs to be slapped.
dreikäsehoch: three cheese high (a measurement).
erklärungsnot: the state of mind when one cannot think of an excuse.
fernweh: distance pain, as in missing someone far away.
fremdschämen: the felling of shame for someone else.
hüftgold: love handles.
kassengesetz: cash register law.
kummerspeck: excess weight gained from emotional overeating.
lebensabschnittpartner: temporary love or partner, literally: the partner I have today.
lebensmüde: life-tired.
lebenswelt: life-world; the world of lived experience.
pantoffelheld: a husband who may act tough when with his friends but cannot stand up for himself when with his wife.
schadenfreude: feeling pleasure when seeing another's misfortune.
schattenparker: an insult to a man who looks for unmanly, soft option, literally: shadow parker.
schnappsidee: an idea you have while intoxicated that you will probably regret in the morning.
sturmfrei: when your parents are away and you have the whole house to yourself.
torschlusspanik: last minute panic.
verschlimmbessern: to make something worse by trying to improve it.
waldeisamkeit: the feeling experienced when alone in the woods.
weltschmerz: depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual to the ideal.
windpinkler: someone who avoids the toilet and likes to relieve her/himself outside.
zugzwang: to be forced to make a decision.
From A Year with Rilke, March 3 Entry
Not Prisoners, from Borgeby gärd, Sweden, August 12, 1904/
Letters to a Young Poet
If we imagine our being as a room of any size, it seems that most of us know only a single corner of that room, a spot by the window, a narrow strip on which we keep walking back and forth. That gives a kind of security. But isn’t insecurity with all its dangers so much more human?
We are not prisoners of that room.
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.
*an oughtobiography.
"Backpfeifengesicht!" It's taken me fifty-eight years to finally learn the meaning of the name my 7th grade teacher, "Mrs. Troupe" frequented on me after any one of our liberal verbal exchanges in which I defended my innocence, as simply a demure lad who knew not the error of his ways, or was otherwise erklärungsnot.
ReplyDeleteOne time I quietly uttered kummerspeck near her desk as I disposed of a bit of waste paper, at the same time looking up and down her stout torso and tsk't, "hüftgold." She so bellered. I knew she and her husband were separated at some physical distance, as if by circumstance, not choice, and mouthed, as I subtly shook my head as I departed, "Fermweh Frau?", not that I schadenfreude, but that in my childlike ignorance I verschlimmbessern, and would in later years repeat again and again owing it to schnappsidee.
Thanks for yet another excellent blog post. Woe. I'm no longer waldeisamkeit.
And here I vas tinkin' yew only had a gift fur Norvejun dialect, boot yur German iss dreikäsehoch!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI’ve been so many things in German and never knew it.
There are so many good words you looked up. If I wasn’t beset by small children, I’d write a poem.
I will have a go at the National Days:
Oh say can you see?
No! Don’t look.
I want you to be happy
I oppose thumbs on our pets
They’d eschew the mulled wine
Knock forward the soup
Pull the corpse all to pieces
Cause the cold cuts are us
Happy birthday Minnesota Territory.
Glad they didn’t call themselves Minnesotites.
That would have been demonic.