Word-Wednesday for August 18, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, August 18, 2021, the 33rd Wednesday of the year, the ninth Wednesday of summer, and the 230th day of the year, with 135 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for August 18, 2021
New England Asters are Blooming

Otherwise known as Michaelmas Daisy and Aster novae-angliae, this delightful bloom lights up the late summer Wannaska landscape with blossoms ranging from rich deep violet to lavender-pink. As a late bloomer, the New England Aster provides fall nectar source for pollinators, especially Monarchs as they stock up for their fall migration to Mexico. Our deer resistant native prefers moist, rich soils, but can still thrive in the thin topsoil of Beltrami Forest.

Nordhem Lunch: Click Here Today's Specials


Earth/Moon Almanac for August 18, 2021
Sunrise: 6:21am; Sunset: 8:34pm; 3 minutes, 17 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 6:34pm; Moonset: 1:24am, waxing gibbous, 76% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for August 18, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             77                     95                     96
Low              53                     37                     71


August 18 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Fajita Day
• National Mail Order Catalog Day
• National Ice Cream Pie Day
• National Pinot Noir Day
• Congressional Startup Day
• Bad Poetry Day

August 18 Word Riddle
What time did Sven go to the dentist?*


August 18 Word Pun
flabbergasted: /ˈfla-bərˌ-gas-ted/ adj., appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.


August 18 The Roseau Times-Region Headline:
Warroad Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers


August 18 Etymology Word of the Week
imagine: /iˈm-aj-ən/ v., mid-14c., “to form a mental image of,” from Old French imaginer “sculpt, carve, paint; decorate, embellish” (13c.), from Latin imaginari “to form a mental picture, picture to oneself, imagine” (also, in Late Latin imaginare “to form an image of, represent”), from imago “an image, a likeness,” from stem of imitari “to copy, imitate”.


August 18 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 293 BC The oldest known Roman temple to Venus is founded, starting the institution of Vinalia Rustica (grape harvest festival).
• 1674 Jean Racine's Iphigénie premieres in Versailles.
• 1686 Giovanni Cassini reports seeing a satellite orbiting Venus.
• 1735 Evening Post begins publishing in Boston, Massachusetts.
• 1737 First public admittance to the Salon de Paris art exhibition at the Louvre in Paris.
• 1919 Anti-Cigarette League of America forms in Chicago, Illinois.
• 1946 Golf Writers Association of America forms.
• 1958 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is published.
• 1958 Verne Gagne beats Edouard Carpentier in Omaha, to become NWA champ.
• 1969 Woodstock Festival closes with Jimi Hendrix.

August 18 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1745 Vaclav Josef Bartolomej Praupner, Bohemian composer.
• 1750 Antonio Salieri, Italian composer.
• 1885 Nettie Palmer, Australian poet and essayist.
• 1902 Julius Kalaš, Czech composer.
• 1903 Åke Olof Sebastian Uddén, Swedish violist, composer.
• 1921 Zdzisław Żygulski, Jr., Polish art historian.
• 1949 John O'Leary, Irish golfer.

August 18, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 42 of 52
A call in the midst of the crowd,
My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.

Come my children,
Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates,
Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass’d his prelude on the reeds within.

Easily written loose-finger’d chords—I feel the thrum of your climax and close.

My head slues round on my neck,
Music rolls, but not from the organ,
Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.

Ever the hard unsunk ground,
Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever the air and the ceaseless tides,
Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real,
Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn’d thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts,
Ever the vexer’s /hoot! hoot!/ till we find where the sly one hides and bring him forth,
Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life,
Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death.

Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking,
To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,
Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going,
Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving,
A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.

This is the city and I am one of the citizens,
Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools,
The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate.

The little plentiful manikins skipping around in collars and tail’d coats,
I am aware who they are, (they are positively not worms or fleas,)
I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest is deathless with me,
What I do and say the same waits for them,
Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them.

I know perfectly well my own egotism,
Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.

Not words of routine this song of mine,
But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring;
This printed and bound book—but the printer and the printing-office boy?
The well-taken photographs—but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms?
The black ship mail’d with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets—but the pluck of the captain and engineers?
In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture—but the host and hostess, and the look out of their eyes?
The sky up there—yet here or next door, or across the way?
The saints and sages in history—but you yourself?
Sermons, creeds, theology—but the fathomless human brain,
And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?


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

• ascesis: /əˈ-skē-səs/ n., the practice of severe self-discipline, typically for religious reasons.
• bikeshedding: /‘bīk-SHe-diNG/ adj., computer technology idiom, devoting way too much time and energy working on and optimizing trivial issues — that are often hypothetical future problems that don’t exist yet — instead of focusing on what’s actually important right now.
• costive: /ˈkä-stiv/ adj., constipated; slow or reluctant in speech or action; unforthcoming.
• ekphrasis: /ˈek-frə-səs/ n., the use of detailed description of a work of visual art as a literary device.
• irony: /ˈī-rə-nē/ adj., the opposite of wrinkly.
• matratzengruft: /ma-TRA-zen-grūft/ adj., German, bedridden; literally: mattress-grave.
• oleaginous: /ˌō-lē-ˈaj-ə-nəs/ adj. exaggeratedly and distastefully complimentary; obsequious; rich in, covered with, or producing oil, oily or greasy.
• pollard: /ˈpä-lərd/ v., cut off the top ad branches of a tree to encourage growth.
• serried: /ˈse-rēd/ adj., (of rows of people or things) standing close together.
• vespertine: /ˈvespərtēn/ adj., relating to, occurring, or active in the evening.

August 18, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
Golden Rule
While the term "Golden Rule" began to be used widely in the early 17th century in Britain by Anglican theologians and preachers, the earliest known English usage is that of Anglicans Charles Gibbon and Thomas Jackson in 1604. Most widely understood as an ethic of reciprocity, the idea dates at least to 2040 BCE in the Egyptian story of The Eloquent Peasant: "Now this is the command: Do to the doer to make him do". Ancient Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity eventually followed in their own fashion.

Different cultures treat the ethic of reciprocity in one of three general patterns.

Some are positive: 

Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.

Wendell Berry

Some are negative: 

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

Confucius

Some are empathetic: 

So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.

Jesus, in Matthew 7:12

Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.

JPS

Word-Wednesday staff has spanned the globe searching for examples, and here are a few of our favorites - classics and otherwise:

What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary."
Hillel, in The Talmud, Shabbat 31A

We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends to behave to us.
Aristotle

Nothing in the Golden Rule says that others will treat us as we have treated them. It only says that we must treat others in a way that we would want to be treated.
Rosa Parks

Do unto others twenty percent better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error.
Linus Pauling

The Golden Rule of Parenting is: Do unto your children as you wish your parents had done unto you!
Louise Hart

The good, which each follower of virtue seeks for himself, he will desire also for others.
Baruch Spinoza

I’ll be damned if I want most folk out there to do unto me what they do unto themselves.
Toni Cade Bambara

If one gives way to fear, even truth will have to be suppressed. The golden rule is to act fearlessly upon what one believes to be right.
Mohandas Gandhi

The golden rule of friendship is to listen to others as you would have them listen to you.
David W. Augsberger

The need to treat ourselves as well as we treat others. It’s women’s version of the Golden Rule.
Gloria Steinem

Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.
Alan Alda

In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbor as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.
John Stuart Mill

Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your betters.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is a nice sentiment but an unreliable rule. People don’t necessarily want or need to be done unto as you would have them do unto you. They want to be done unto as they want to be done unto.
Roy Blount, Jr.

My golden rule for business and life is: We should all enjoy what we do and do what we enjoy.
Richard Branson

Restraint is the golden rule of enjoyment.
L. E. Landon

If you contemplate the Golden Rule, it turns out to be an injunction to live by grace rather than by what you think other people deserve.
Deepak Chopra

Undo others before they undo you.
Author Unknown

If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you
do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
William Morris

The Golden Rule in reverse: Whatsoever you would laugh at in others, laugh at in yourself.
Harry Emerson Fosdick

If we don’t manage to implement the Golden Rule globally, so that we treat all peoples, wherever and whoever they may be, as though they were as important as ourselves, I doubt that we’ll have a viable world to hand on to the next generation.
Karen Armstrong

There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn’t give a damn what goes on in between.
Thomas Beecham

Do unto others better than you can ever expect that they will do unto you.
Alice Bundy

Don’t fall for that superstitious nonsense about treating people the way you would like to be treated. It is a transparently narcissistic approach, and may be the sign of a weak mind.
George Carlin

Do unto others as they would want, but with imagination.
Marcel Duchamp

From A Year with Rilke, August 18 Entry
Dread and Mystery, from Letter to Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouy, April 12, 1923

More than once I have mentioned to you how my life and work have been guided by the effort to overcome the old pressures that rob us of mystery, the mystery essential to our capacity to love from fullness. Humanity has been terrified and beset by dread; but is there anything noble and gracious that has not, from time to time, worn the mask of dread?

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.




*tooth hurty.