Word-Wednesday for July 28, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, July 28, 2021, the 30th Wednesday of the year, the sixth Wednesday of summer, and the 209th day of the year, with 156 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for July 28, 2021
Thistles!

Scotland’s national flower, now blooming in Wannaska.


Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Earth/Moon Almanac for July 28, 2021
Sunrise: 5:52am; Sunset: 9:08pm; 2 minutes, 39 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 11:40pm; Moonset: 11:01am, waning gibbous, 78% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for July 28, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             79                     95                    86
Low              56                     43                    55


July 28 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Milk Chocolate Day
• Buffalo Soldiers Day
• National Waterpark Day

July 28 Word Riddle
What do you call a catfish wearing a bow tie?*


July 28 Pun
Alaska, Hawaii?
ME? ILL.
WY?
Idaho
IN JER RI?
OH!
WA Utah?
Tennessee.
CA LA MD
OK
(Iowa-pologies for this one.)


July 28 Etymology Words of the Week
pro and con

pro-: /prō/ from Latin pro (adv., prep.) which also was used as a first element in compounds and had a collateral form por-, a word-forming element meaning:
"forward, forth, toward the front" (as in proclaim, proceed);
"beforehand, in advance" (prohibit, provide);
"taking care of" (procure);
"in place of, on behalf of" (proconsul, pronoun);
And from the Greek cognate:
"before, in front of, sooner," (as in problem).

The common modern sense of "in favor of, favoring" (pro-independence, pro-fluoridation, pro-Soviet, etc.) was not in classical Latin or Greek, and was attested in English from early 19th century.

con: /kän/ also in multiple word forms:

n., adv., "negation; in the negative; the arguments, arguers, or voters against a proposal" (mainly in pro and con), 1570s, short for Latin contra "against".

adj., "swindling," 1889 (in con man), American English, from confidence man (1849), from the many scams in which the victim is induced to hand over money as a token of confidence. Confidence with a sense of "assurance based on insufficient grounds" dates from 1590s. Con artist was attested by 1910.

v., "to guide a ship, give orders for the steering of a ship," 1620s, from French conduire "to conduct, lead, guide" (10c.), from Latin conducere  "to lead or bring together, contribute, serve; "to swindle," 1896, from con (adj.); "to study, get to know, peruse carefully," c. 1200, cunnen, "make an attempt, try or seek to do," from Old English cunnian "to know", elated: Conned; conning.

n., a slang or colloquial shortening of various nouns beginning in con-, such as, from the 19th century, confidant, conundrum, conformist, convict, contract, and from the 20th century, conductor, conservative.

July 28 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1586 Sir Thomas Harriot introduces potatoes to Europe on return to England.
• 1790 Henry James Pye appointed as British Poet Laureate by King George III.
• 1866 Metric system becomes a legal measurement system in US.
• 1868 US Secretary of State William H. Seward announces 14th Amendment ratified by states, grants citizenship to ex-slaves.
• 1943 US President FDR announces end of coffee rationing in US.
• 1945 "Elevator Girl" Betty Lou Oliver survives falling 75 stories after fog causes a US bomber plane to crash into the Empire State Building, breaking the cables supporting the elevator she was operating. This remains a world record for the longest survived elevator fall.

July 28 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1844 Gerard Manley Hopkins, English poet.
• 1866 Beatrix Potter, English children's author and illustrator .
• 1887 Marcel Duchamp, French sculptor and painter.
• 1901 Rudy Vallee, American singer .
• 1902 Karl Popper, Austro-British philosopher.
• 1902 Kenneth F. Fearing, American poet.
• 1927 John Ashbery, American poet.
  

July 28, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 39 of 52
The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?

Is he some Southwesterner rais’d out-doors? is he Kanadian?
Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California?
The mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the sea?

Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,
They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them.

Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncomb’d head, laughter, and naiveté,
Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations,
They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,
They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of the glance of his eyes.


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

• attest: /əˈ-TEST/ v., provide or serve as clear evidence of.
• bonailie: /BUHN-ey-lee/ n., a farewell drink with a departing guest with blessings for a safe and prosperous journey.
• cabotin: /ka-boo-TAHN/ n., an over dramatic, second-rate actor; a stage ham. A practitioner of medical quackery; a quack doctor. A charlatan, or snake oil salesman.
• diapason: /ˌdī-ə-ˈ’pāz-ən/ n., an organ stop sounding a main register of flue pipes, typically of eight-foot pitch; a grand swelling burst of harmony.
• ebriety: /ē-ˈbrī-ə-tē/ n., the state of intoxication.
• facture: /ˈfak(t)SHər/ n., the quality of the execution of a painting; an artist’s characteristic handling of the paint.
• mogigraphia: /moh-jee-GRAF-ee-uh/ n., a painful spasm of the muscles involved in writing or typing; writer’s cramp; graphospasm.
• scopperloit: /SKOP-er-loit/ n., a time of idleness; playtime which may or may not include rowdy, uproarious behavior (think recess); v.,to engage in rowdy playfulness; to roughhouse.
• tiffin: [TIF-in] n., any light meal, especially lunch; v., to eat, serve, or provide lunch or any light meal or snack.
• zoilism: /zo´i`lism/ n., nagging or carping criticism.

July 28, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
New Words
Given the rich etymology of pro- and con, its a shame that these two multiplex single syllables have so often been reduced to a good/bad, right/wrong, either/or simplicity. A few examples demonstrate how pro- is not always positive, nor con always negative.

professor/confessor
/prəˈ-‘fe-sər/ n., one who talks about and teaches or professes special knowledge; a talker.
/kənˈ-‘fe-sər/n., a priest who hears confessions and gives absolution and spiritual counsel; a listener.

proscript/conscript
/ˈ’prō-skript/ n., an outlaw.
/ˈ’känˌ-skript/ n., a person enlisted compulsorily.

Or consider how close the definitions of profound and confound come to touching one another.

As a remedy, the Word-Wednesday staff has developed a series of new words based on these roots to broaden the creative thinking and writing or Wannaskan Almanac readers. The definitions below are merely suggestions. Please feel free to embellish or to redefine and to add to this list as you see fit.

prospiracy: n., /prō-'spir-ə-sē/ a secret plan by a group to do something beneficial.

confit: /ˈkänˌ-fət/v., obtain a financial disadvantage or loss, especially from doing a good deed.

prosent: /prō-'sent/ n., permission for something to not happen or agreement to do nothing.

contect: /känˌ-ˈtekt/ v., to put someone or something in harm’s way.

protroversy: /ˈprō-trəˌ-vər-sē/ n., an agreement, typically when short, private, and cordial.

conficiency: /känˌ-'fi-SHən-sē/ n., a low degree of competence or skill; inexperience.

proverse: /prə-'vərs/ v., withdraw from conversation.

congram: /ˈkän-gram/ n., a set of unrelated measures or activities without a particular long-term aim.

profidential: /ˌprō-fə-'den(t)-shəl/ adj., intended to be made public.

conpaganda: /ˌkänˌ-pə-'gan-də/ n., information, especially of an open-source or factual nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

proservative: /prō-‘sərv-ə-div/ adj., open to change or innovation and holding nontraditional values.

condigious: /känˌ-ˈdi-jəs/ adj., remarkably or impressively tiny in extent, size, or degree.

 

Red Dress
Sarah Arvio

It’s wrong to live wrong    I was thinking this
and wringing my hands    I wrung my hands

Wasn’t it right to live right    and to write
about the right life    rather than living wrong

and writing about the wrong life    Which is
righter which is wronger    The thing is

if you have the wrong life you don’t want
to tell    thinking always that somehow you

will right it    Righting and writing it’s a kind
of redress    a new dress I’ll put on when I

rewrite my life    I’ll run out and get it now
while there’s still time    a red dress for joy

a red dress for redress    and I’ll dress you
down as I walk out the door    You’ll ring

and ring but I won’t rush back    I won’t
write back    You’ll be right and I’ll be

wronged    and that’s what I’ll tell if I get
the time    but not to you    you won’t be told

You can read my redress in the papers
I’ll be out on the town in my red dress

From A Year with Rilke, July 28 Entry
In My Glad Hours, from Early Journals

In my glad hours, I will make a city of your smile, a distant city that shines and lives. I will take one word of yours to be an island on which birches stand, or fir trees, quite still and ceremonial. I will receive your glance as a fountain in which things can disappear and above which the sky trembles, both eager and afraid to fall in.

I will know that all of this exists, that one can enter this city, that I have glimpsed this island and know exactly when there is no one else beside that fountain. But if I appear to hesitate, it is because I am not sure whether it is the forest through which we are walking or my own mood that is shaded and dark.

Who knows: maybe Venice, too, is just a feeling.

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.



*sofishticated.