Word-Wednesday for August 11, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, August 11, 2021, the 32nd Wednesday of the year, the eighth Wednesday of summer, and the 223rd day of the year, with 142 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for August 11, 2021
We got 1.5 inches on Monday and more last night!

Nordhem Lunch: An email message from the Wiktel.com Webmaster:

Thank you for your enthusiasm.  Unfortunately, I’m not sure if the new Chef/Operator is using that system for specials; he’s been busy getting the restaurant going.  Maybe in time we’ll be able to put the specials up. In the interim, information can be found on the Nordhem Facebook page.


Earth/Moon Almanac for August 11, 2021
Sunrise: 6:11am; Sunset: 8:47pm; 3 minutes, 7 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 9:33am; Moonset: 10:33pm, waxing crescent, 12% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for August 11, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             78                     93                     78
Low              55                     32                     54


August 11 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Global Kinetic Sand Day
• National Son’s and Daughter’s Day
• National Presidential Joke Day
• National Raspberry Bombe Day

August 11 Word Riddle
What do you call a factory that makes okay products?*


August 11 Pun
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me.
And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.
                                    Sonnet 138, William Shakespeare


August 11 Etymology Word of the Week
invention
/inˈven(t)SH(ə)n/ n., from the early fifteenth century, invencioun, "finding or discovering of something," later from thirteenth century Old French invencion and directly from Latin inventionem (nominative inventio) "faculty of invention," noun of action from past-participle stem of invenire "to come upon, find; find out; invent, discover, devise; ascertain; acquire, get earn," from in- "in, on" + venire "to come".

Invention did not become a thing, e.g., wheel, airplane, iPhone, until the 17th century when the left hemisphere became culturally dominant in western civilizations.


August 11 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 3114 BC The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Mayans, begins.
• 1597 Germany throws out English sales people.
• 1866 World's first roller rink opens in Newport, Rhode Island.
• 1979 28°F in Embarrass, Minnesota.

August 11 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1897 Enid Blyton, English children's writer.
• 1917 Dik Browne, cartoonist.
• 1921 Alex Haley, American writer.

August 11, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 41 of 52
I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,
And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.

I heard what was said of the universe,
Heard it and heard it of several thousand years;
It is middling well as far as it goes—but is that all?

Magnifying and applying come I,
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,
Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,
Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,
In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved,
With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image,
Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more,
Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days,
(They bore mites as for unfledg’d birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves,)
Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see,
Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house,
Putting higher claims for him there with his roll’d-up sleeves driving the mallet and chisel,
Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation,
Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars,
Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,
Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr’d laths, their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames;
By the mechanic’s wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born,
Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagg’d out at their waists,
The snag-tooth’d hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come,
Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery;
What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square rod then,
The bull and the bug never worshipp’d half enough,
Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream’d,
The supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of the supremes,
The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious;
By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator,
Putting myself here and now to the ambush’d womb of the shadows.


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

• apocope: /əˈpɒa-kə-pi/ n., omission of the final sound of a word, as when cup of tea is pronounced as cuppa tea.
• bathos: /ˈbā-THäs/ n., an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous, especially in literature.
• clabber: /ˈkla-bər/ n., milk that has naturally clotted on souring.
• energumen: /ˌe-nərˈ-ɡyo͞o-mən/ n., a person possessed by an evil spirit.
• fluminous: /‘fu̇l-mə-nəs/ adj. of, relating to, or resembling thunder and lightning.
• gurn: /gurn/ v., to make a grotesque face; grimace.
• mooter: /MOO-ter/ n., 1. a lawyer who argues cases in court, a pleader; 2. a law student who discusses moot cases; 3. one who engages in discussion.
• ordal: /ohr-DAWL/ n., an ancient test of guilt or innocence by subjection of the accused to severe pain, survival of which was taken as divine proof of innocence.
• piedmont: /ˈpēd-mänt/ n., a gentle slope leading from the base of mountains to a region of flat land.
• tontine: /ton-TEEN/ n., an investment scheme wherein participants pool funds and receive an annuity. As members die, each person’s share increases until the last survivor receives the remaining money in a lump sum.

August 11, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
stupid and dumb

/ˈst(y)o͞o-pəd/ adj., having or showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense; directly from Latin stupidus "amazed, confounded; dull, foolish," literally "struck senseless".
/dəm/ adj., temporarily unable or unwilling to speak.

Writers and poets tell stories: selecting words, compiling sentences, building themes, which eventually forming a unified narrative. Historians like Chairman Joe realize that readers want to probe deeply behind the prose or poetry into the backstories inside the heads of authors. Biographies and memoirs seek to reveal the stories behind the stories - the conscious and/or unconscious workings of the author's mind.

In a brief return to the importance of understanding the differences between our right and left hemispheres as authors and readers, and as a follow up to nothing, today Word-Wednesday explores stupidity, which is much more clever than dumbness. World experts Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne would be the first to clarify that dumbness is a simple deficiency in processing capacity. A dumb person may learn new things - albeit, slowly - but the dumb person cannot become substantially smarter or more clever.

But as Austrian author Robert Musil noted in his 1937 article, On Stupidity, stupidity is very different and more dangerous that dumbness, where some of the smartest people (the least dumb) are the most stupid. Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing where one lacks the proper conceptual approach to address a specific problem. Lacking the proper approach, the stupid person uses all available intellectual alternatives otherwise at hand to force the facts into distorted pigeonholes.

Iain McGilchrist puts it this way in terms of the contributions of our right and left hemispheres:
If the two hemispheres produce two worlds, which should we trust if we are after the truth about the world? Do we simply accept that there are two versions of the world that are equally valid, and go away shrugging our shoulders? I believe that the relationship between the hemispheres is not equal, and that while both contribute to our knowledge of the world, which therefore needs to be synthesised, one hemisphere, the right hemisphere, has precedence, in that it underwrites the knowledge that the other comes to have, and is alone able to synthesise what both know into a usable whole.

The origins of language in music and the body could be seen as part of a bigger picture, part of a primacy of the implicit. Metaphor (subserved by the right hemisphere) comes before denotation (subserved by the left). This is both a historical and an epistemological truth. Metaphorical meaning is in every sense prior to abstraction and explicitness. The very words tell one this: one cannot draw something away (Latin, abs- away, trahere pull), unless there is something to draw it away from. One cannot unfold something and make it explicit (Latin, ex- out, plicare fold), unless it is already folded. The roots of explicitness lie in the implicit. As Lichtenberg said, ‘Most of our expressions are metaphorical – the philosophy of our forefathers lies hidden in them.’

The biggest problem of explicitness, however, is that it returns us to what we already know. It reduces a unique experience, person or thing to a bunch of abstracted, therefore central, concepts that we could have found already anywhere else – and indeed had already. Knowing, in the sense of seeing clearly, is always seeing ‘as’ a something already known, and therefore not present but represented. Fruitful ambiguity is forced into being one thing or another.

In summary, the left hemisphere prefers to work alone and impose its perspective on both the right hemisphere and the rest of the world.

Two features make left hemisphere stupidity particularly dangerous when compared with other vices of thought. First, stupidity is a moral failing - primarily of groups or traditions, not individuals. Stupid authors get most of their concepts and mental tools from the societies in which they are raised. Think of the WW1 generals schooled in mobile operations and fluid battle lines having dealing with trench warfare. In the undying words of Officer Ronnie Peterson, "This isn't gonna end well."

Second, stupidity makes use only of the left hemisphere, propagating and begetting more stupidity due to a profound lack of insight into the bigger picture: context and complexity and ambiguity. Take the divided, two-dimensional, micro-worlds of human political views, where stupidity is particularly contagious. A stupid meme or slogan resonates with a stupid voter - a house of mirrors world view of the author and the reader. Stupidity seeks explicit simplicity and loyal certainty, regardless of fact, where stupid authors are not dumb - they are simply clever. Even the dumb use both hemispheres, albeit with less capacity.

In conclusion, unless you write nonfiction or propaganda for a living, lose the mechanistic, left-hemisphere toolbox mindset as you write your prose or poetry. Stupidity for creative writers is a lack of necessary means - a lack of the necessary intellectual resources. Combating stupid writing typically requires not brute willpower but a different way of seeing our world in terms of the implicit, the metaphorical, the whole context, living interrelationships, and both hemispheres.

Knowledge is high in the head, but the salmon of wisdom swims deep.
— Neil M. Gunn


From A Year with Rilke, August 11 Entry
For the Sake of the Whole, from Letter to Marianne von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, December 5, 1914

Are there relations of the heart that embrace what is most cruel for the sake of wholeness? For the world is only world when everything is included.

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 satisfactory.