Word-Wednesday for April 21, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, April 21, 2021, the 16th Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of spring, and the 111th day of the year, with 254 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for April 21, 2021
The sound of spring has arrived.

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for April 21, 2021
Sunrise: 6:21am; Sunset: 8:24pm; 3 minutes, 21 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 1:22pm; Moonset: 4:20am, waxing gibbous, 59% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for April 21, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             54                     84                     50
Low               31                     14                     33


April 21 Celebrations from National Day Calendar
National Chocolate Covered Cashews Day
National Kindergarten Day
National Yellow Bat Day
Grounation Day
National Tea Day
National Administrative Professionals’ Day


April 21 Word Riddle
Two cats have a swimming race. 

One is called ONETWOTHREE, and the other is called UNDEUXTROIS. 

Which cat won?*


April 21 Pun

April 21 Etymology Word of the Week
In a new feature for Word-Wednesday, today we begin a weekly exploration of an interesting word etymology. As summer approaches and we might actually wish to linger outside under the night sky, the word desire has an interesting etymology. Our modern definitions — to wish or long for, express a wish to obtain (verb) and, a craving or yearning; an emotion directed toward attainment or possession of an object — are very left-hemisphere grasps for small things. The Latin desiderare — to long for, wish for — is based on the the Latin phrase, de sidere, from the stars, is further rooted in the Latin sidus, heavenly body. May this coming week bring you your heart’s desire.


April 21 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1820 Danish scientist Hans Christian Ørsted is the first to identify electromagnetism, when he observes a compass needle.
• 1862 Ellen Price Wood's East Lynne premieres in Boston.
• 1894 George Bernard Shaw's Arms & the Man premieres in London.

April 21 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1816 Charlotte Brontë.
• 1838 John Muir.
• 1871 Vojtěch Říhovský, Czech composer.
• 1891 František Suchý, Czech composer.
• 1892 Jaroslav Kvapil, Czech composer.
• 1926 Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, Elizabeth II.
• 1947 Iggy Pop [James Osterberg].

April 21, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 25 of 52
Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.

We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,
We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak.

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.

Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself,
It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically,
Walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out then?

Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation,
Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded?
Waiting in gloom, protected by frost,
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,
I underlying causes to balance them at last,
My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things,
Happiness, (which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of this day.)

My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am,
Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me,
I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.

Writing and talk do not prove me,
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.


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

• aposematism: the use of a signal and especially a visual signal of conspicuous markings or bright colors by an animal to warn predators that it is toxic or distasteful.
• chanking: /ˈchaŋkə̇nz/ n., spat-out food.
• fanfaronade: bold bragging accompanied by blustering behavior.
• knacker: /ˈnækər/ also, knackerman or knacker man, is a job title used for the centuries-old trade of persons responsible in a certain district for the removal and clearing of animal carcasses (dead, dying, injured) from private farms or public highways and rendering the collected carcasses into by-products such as fats, tallow (yellow grease), glue, gelatin, bone meal, bone char, sal ammoniac, soap, bleach and animal feed.
• omniana: thoughts or scraps of information about all or many kinds of things, especially (a collection of) notes, jottings, or short pieces of writing on all or many kinds of subjects.
• pertinacious: persistently, unrelentingly stubborn, cling fanatically to a cause or belief, adamantly refusing to surrender.
• rantipole: /RAHN-tih-pohl/ adj., characterized by a wild unruly manner or attitude; rakish; n., a wild, reckless, sometimes quarrelsome person.
• sardanapalian /sahr-dn-uh-PEY-lee-uhn/ adj., decadently luxurious or sensual; characterized by the luxuriously sensual nature attributed to the Assyrian king Sardanapalus, and in more recent times, WannaskaWriter.
• tittle: ˈtidl n., the dot over the letters i or j.
• vocables: the la and na syllables without meaning used in song lyrics.

April 21, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
Hangovers
Since this is etymology week at Word-Wednesday, let’s look at the very different and apparently unrelated beginnings of one commonly used word — hangover. The word first appeared in the Victorian period of England. Charles Dickens was the first author to talk about the hangover in The Pickwick Papers, where he writes the following dialogue about lodging options:

“And pray, Sam, what is the twopenny rope?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
"The twopenny rope, sir," replied Mr. Weller, "is just a cheap lodgin' house, where the beds is twopence a night."
"What do they call a bed a rope for?" said Mr. Pickwick.
"They has two ropes, ’bout six foot apart, and three from the floor, which goes right down the room; and the beds are made of slips of coarse sacking, stretched across ’em."
"Well," said Mr. Pickwick.
"Well," said Mr. Weller, "the adwantage o’ the plan’s hobvious. At six o’clock every mornin’ they let’s go the ropes at one end, and down falls the lodgers.”

George Orwell fleshes out these lodging arrangements in his first full-length work, Down and Out in London and Paris:

The Twopenny Hangover. This comes a little higher than the Embankment. At the Twopenny Hangover, the lodgers sit in a row on a bench; there is a rope in front of them, and they lean on this as though leaning over a fence. A man, humorously called the valet, cuts the rope at five in the morning.
two-penny hangover picture
In short, the two-penny hangover is a place you could go to sleep if you were one of the thousands of homeless and destitute living in the country’s main cities at the time. As characterized in so many of Dickens’ novels, industrialization and urbanization brought prosperity to a few, but the misery and degradation of poverty to over six million persons in London, alone.

“The after-affect of excessive drinking” emerged as a definition for hangover on this side of the pond in 1902. With the back and forth between England and the U.S. of A., it would come as no surprise if the two entirely different meanings didn’t belong to the same family tree.


From A Year with Rilke, April 21 Entry
We, When We Feel, Evaporate, from Second Duino Elegy

We, when we feel, evaporate.
We breathe ourselves out and gone.
Like the glow of an ember,
the fragrance we give off grows weaker.
One could well say to us,
“You have entered my blood,
this room, this springtime is full of you ….”
What use is that when he cannot hold us
and we disappear into him and around him?

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.



*ONETWOTHREE, because UNDEUXTROIS cat sank.