Word-Wednesday for May 12, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, May 12, 2021, the 19th Wednesday of the year, the eighth Wednesday of spring, and the 132nd day of the year, with 233 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for May 12, 2021
Dandelions are out!
/ˈdandlˌīən/ n., 1. a widely distributed weed of the daisy family, with a rosette of leaves, bright yellow flowers followed by globular heads of seeds with downy tufts, and stems containing a milky latex. The word is derived from the Medieval Latin phrase dens lionis, which refers to the jagged shape of the leaves by calling them a lion’s tooth, which became dent-de-lion in French, and eventually dandelion in Middle English. 

Dandelions

 Welcome children of the Spring,
   In your garbs of green and gold,
Lifting up your sun-crowned heads
   On the verdant plain and wold.

As a bright and joyous troop
   From the breast of earth ye came
Fair and lovely are your cheeks,
   With sun-kisses all aflame.

In the dusty streets and lanes,
   Where the lowly children play,
There as gentle friends ye smile,
   Making brighter life's highway

Dewdrops and the morning sun,
   Weave your garments fair and bright,
And we welcome you to-day
   As the children of the light.

Children of the earth and sun.
   We are slow to understand
All the richness of the gifts
   Flowing from our Father's hand.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper - 1825-1911

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for May 12, 2021
Sunrise: 5:46am; Sunset: 8:55pm; 2 minutes, 45 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 6:19am; Moonset: 10:04pm, new moon, 1% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for May 12, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             63                     88                     72
Low              40                     22                     46


May 12 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Odometer Day
• National Nutty Fudge Day
• National Fibromyalgia Awareness Day
• National Receptionists’ Day
• National Third Shift Workers Day
• National School Nurse Day
• National Limerick Day

May 12 Word Riddle
What are the words for the following mathematical limerick?*

May 12 Pun
A backwards poet rhymes inverse.


May 12 Etymology Word of the Week
Etymology Map of American Country Names

May 12 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1215 English barons serve ultimatum on King John which eventually leads to the creation and signing of the Magna Carta.
• 1908 George Bernard Shaw's play Getting Married premieres in London.
• 1929 Pulitzer prize awarded to Julia Peterkin for Scarlet Sister Mary.
• 1930 Pulitzer prize awarded to Marc Connelly for Green Pastures.

May 12 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1739 Johann Baptist Wanhal [Jan Krtitel], Czech composer.
• 1820 Florence Nightingale.
• 1889 Otto Frank, German born father of Anne Frank who saw her diaries published.
• 1925 Yogi Berra. The future ain't what it used to be.
• 1956 Homer Simpson. Stupidity got us into this mess, and stupidity will get us out.

May 12, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 28 of 52
Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself,
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,
Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist,
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields,
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me,
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger,
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while,
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.

The sentries desert every other part of me,
They have left me helpless to a red marauder,
They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.

I am given up by traitors,
I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the greatest traitor,
I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there.

You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat,
Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.


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

• appoggiatura: /əˌpäjəˈto͝orə/ n., a grace note performed before a note of the melody and falling on the beat.
• cruciverbalist: /kroo-suh-VUR-buh-list/ n., a person skillful in creating or solving crossword puzzles.
• glossogenetic: adj., of or pertaining to the emergence of linguistic forms over time.
• hallux: /HAL-uhks/ n., the innermost and largest digit of the foot; the big toe.
• negaholic: n., a person who has a persistently negative or pessimistic outlook.
• pillion: /ˈpilyən/ n., a seat for a passenger behind a motorcyclist.
• sedens: /SEH-dehnz/ n., a person who remains a resident of the place or region of her/his/their birth.
• truthiness: /ˈtro͞oTHēnis/ n., the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true, spoken by a truthineer.
• vexillology: /vɛksɪˈlɒlədʒi/ n., the study of the history, symbolism, and usage of flags or, by extension, any interest in flags in general.
• wamble: /WAM-buhl/ n., the grumbling sound make by a hungry stomach.

May 12, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
Limerick
/ˈlɪmərɪk/ a form of verse - usually humorous and frequently rude - in five-line, anapestic trimeter with a strict rhyme scheme of AABBA, where the first, second and fifth line rhyme, and where the third and fourth lines are shorter and share a different rhyme. The origin of the name limerick is uncertain, but is generally taken to be a reference to the City or County of Limerick in Ireland.

Although an interesting and highly esoteric verse in limerick form was found in the diary of the Rev. John Thomlinson with his September 17, 1717 entry, popularization of the form is generally credited to Edward Lear, an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, now known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose - not unlike Wannaskan Almanac's own Chairman Joe and his squibs. Limerick Day is observed annually on Lear's birthday, whose 1846 A Book of Nonsense helped bring the lyrical form to popularity.

The first line of a limerick traditionally introduces a person, like Sven, and a place, like Nantucket. Within the limerick genre, ordinary prosody is often distorted in the first line as a feature of the limericks's form: "There once was a girl from Wannaska…" "There was a school teacher in Kansas..." The best limericks incorporate a linguistic or plot twist, which may be revealed in the final line or lie in the way that rhymes are often intentionally tortured - or both.

Lest the  quick limerick you do slight or poo poo,
Please read some great authors before you PU.
It’s all up to you;
Here's just a few.
So write your own limerick, yes indeedy, please do. 

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, "let us flee!"
"Let us fly!" said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

Ogden Nash

A man hired by John Smith and Co.
Loudly declared that he’d tho.
Men that he saw
Dumping dirt near his door
The drivers, therefore, didn’t do.

Mark Twain

And let me the canakin clink, clink; (canakin = drinking can)
And let me the canakin clink
A soldier's a man;
A life's but a span;
Why, then, let a soldier drink.

William Shakespeare, from Othello

There was a small boy of Quebec,
Who was buried in snow to his neck;
When they said. "Are you friz?"
He replied, "Yes, I is—
But we don't call this cold in Quebec."

Rudyard Kipling

My firm belief is, that Pizarro
Received education at Harrow -
This alone would suffice,
To account for his vice,
And his views superstitiously narrow.

Aldous Huxley

Our novels get longa and longa
Their language gets stronga and stronga
There’s much to be said
For a life that is led
In illiterate places like Bonga!

H. G. Wells

Langford Reed saved the limerick verse,
From being taken away in a hearse.
He made it so clean
Now it's fit for a queen,
Re-established for better or worse.

George Bernard Shaw

There was an old poop from Poughkeepsie,
Who tended, at night, to be tipsy.
Said he, ''My last steps
Aren't propelled by just Schweppes! '' -
That peppy old poop from Poughkeepsie.

John Updike

There was a sweet girl of Decatur
who went to sea on a freighter.
She was screwed by the master
—an utter disaster—
but the crew all made up for it later.

Isaac Asimov

T. S. Eliot is quite at a loss
When clubwomen bustle across
At literary teas
Crying, "What, if you please,
Did you mean by The Mill On the Floss?"

W. H. Auden

There was a young lady of station
"I love man" was her sole exclamation
But when men cried, "You flatter"
She replied, "Oh! no matter!
Isle of Man is the true explanation."

Lewis Carroll

The marriage of poor Kim Kardashian
Was krushed like a kar in a krashian.
Her Kris kried, 'Not fair!
Why kan't I keep my share?'
But Kardashian fell klean outa fashian.

Salman Rushdie

There's a ponderous pundit MacHugh
Who wears goggles of ebony hue.
As he mostly sees double
To wear them why trouble?
I can't see the Joe Miller. Can you?

James Joyce, from Ulysses, of coice.

From A Year with Rilke, May 12 Entry
Being Ephemeral, from Sonnets to Orpheus II, 27

Does Time, as it passes, really destroy?
It may rip the fortress from its rock;
but can this heart, that belongs to God,
be torn from Him by circumstances?

Are we as fearfully fragile
as Fate would have us believe?
Can we ever be severed
from childhood’s deep promise?

Ah, the knowledge of impermanence
that haunts our days
is their very fragrance.

We in our striving think we should last forever,
but could we be used by the Divine
if we were not ephemeral?



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.


*A dozen, a gross, plus a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Is nine squared (and not a bit more).