Word-Wednesday for August 4, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, August 4, 2021, the 31st Wednesday of the year, the seventh Wednesday of summer, and the 216th day of the year, with 149 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for August 4, 2021
Bluebead Lily
Otherwise known as Clintonia borealis or yellow clintonia, is a perennial member of the lily family. Residing in the cool acidic forests like Beltrami, it ranges from as far south as the mountains of North Carolina.  The common Bluebead name is a reference to the porcelain blue berries produced in mid to late summer.

Bluebeads colonize patches of the forest floor with medium green, glossy, basal leaves that can reach twelve inches in length, but are more commonly six to eight inches long. A close look at the leaves shows parallel veins typical of all monocots, the group to which lilies belong. Further inspection of the flower reveals a miniaturized version of a Canada lily flower: six yellow petals with flaring petals hanging in clusters of three to eight from atop the flower stalk.

Transitioning from green to white, and ultimately to a deep porcelain blue, the berries of bluebead lily are perhaps its most striking feature. Standing on stalks ranging from 4 to 16 inches in height, the berries stand out in sharp contrast to greens and browns of the forest floor. These “blue berries” may look appetizing, but they are not blueberries. Although they are not poisonous, they are quite foul tasting and should be avoided. The appreciation of this plant should be in its viewing, not its flavor.

Nordhem Lunch: Reopening soon!


Earth/Moon Almanac for August 4, 2021
Sunrise: 6:02am; Sunset: 8:58pm; 2 minutes, 55 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 1:55am; Moonset: 6:44pm, waning crescent, 13% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for August 4, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             79                     93                     88
Low              56                     34                     62


August 4 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day
• National Coast Guard Day
• Single Working Women’s Day

August 4 Word Riddle
What do you call an impudent bratwurst?*


August 4 Pun
A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse.
“But why?” they asked, as they moved off.
“Because,” he said, “I can’t stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.”


August 4 Etymology Word of the Week
busy
/ˈbizē/ adj., Old English bisig “careful, anxious,” later “continually employed or occupied, in constant or energetic action” cognate with Old Dutch bezich, Low German besig, but having no known connection with any other Germanic or Indo-European language. Still pronounced as in Middle English, but for some unclear reason the spelling shifted to -u- in the 15th century.

The notion of “anxiousness” has drained from the word since Middle English. Often in a bad sense in early Modern English, “prying, meddlesome, active in that which does not concern one” (preserved in  busybody). The word was a euphemism for “sexually active” in the 17th century. Of telephone lines, 1884. Of display work, “excessively detailed, visually cluttered,” 1903.

Now we are proud of showing how busy we are.


August 4 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1181 Supernova SN 1181 in the constellation Cassiopeia observed by Chinese and Japanese astronomers, lasting until August 6.
• 1558 First printing of Zohar (Jewish Kabbalah).
• 1772 English poet and artist William Blake, aged 14, is first apprenticed to engraver James Basire in London.
• 1855 John Bartlett publishes Familiar Quotations.
• 1892 Sunday school teacher Lizzie Borden's father and stepmother are murdered with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts; Borden is later arrested, tried and acquitted.

August 4 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1604 François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac, French writer.
• 1705 Václav Matyáš Gurecký, Bohemian composer, born in Přerov, Czech Republic.
• 1755 Nicolas-Jacque Conte, French painter and inventor of the modern pencil.
• 1792 Percy Bysshe Shelley, English romantic poet.
• 1859 Knut Hamsun, Norwegian writer, 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature.
• 1901 Louis Armstrong.
• 1913 Robert Hayden, African-American poet.
• 1940 Karel Vachek, Czech director.
• 1952 Moya Brennan [Máire Ní Bhraonáin], Irish folksinger and harpist.

August 4, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 40 of 52
Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask—lie over!
You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.

Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,
Say, old top-knot, what do you want?

Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days.

Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,
When I give I give myself.

You there, impotent, loose in the knees,
Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit within you,
Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,
I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare,
And any thing I have I bestow.

I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,
You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.

To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean,
On his right cheek I put the family kiss,
And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.

On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes.
(This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.)

To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door.
Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed,
Let the physician and the priest go home.

I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,
O despairer, here is my neck,
By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.

I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up,
Every room of the house do I fill with an arm’d force,
Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.

Sleep—I and they keep guard all night,
Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,
I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,
And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so.


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

• aporia: /ə-‘pô-rē-ə/ n., an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument, or theory, e.g., The Wannaskan claimed that all Wannaskan’s are liars.
• bodhrán: /ˈbô-rən/ n., a shallow one-sided Irish drum typically played with a short two-headed drumstick.
• cockatrice: /ˈkäk-ə-trəs/ n., a mythical animal depicted as a two-legged dragon (or wyvern) with a cock’s head.
• enantiodromia: /əˌn-an-(t)ē-ə-ˈdrō-mē-ə/ n., the tendency of things to change into their opposites.
• henatrice: /ˈhən-ə-trəs/ n., female cockatrice.
• monocot: /ˈmän-əˌ-kät/ n., short for monocotyledon, a flowering plant with an embryo that bears a single cotyledon (seed leaf).
• parafango: /ˌpar-ə-ˈfaŋ-ɡəʊ/ n., a medicinal bath made with volcanic mud and paraffin wax.
• shooler: /SHOO-luhr/ n., one who intrudes upon his neighbors, and forces an invitation to dinner.
• tantivy: /tanˈ-ti-vē/ n., a rapid gallop or ride.
• undine: /ˈən-dēn/ n., a female nymph inhabiting water.

August 4, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
English Orthography
/ôr-ˈTHäɡ-rə-fē/, n., the conventional spelling of a language.
Count your blessings if you learned English as a child. No other language presents more exceptions to the rule than English for non-native speakers learning to read, write, or speak our tongue. Take the simple example of the ea vowel. Usually pronounced ē (tweak, please, seam, beast), ea can also be pronounced eh (dread, spread, stealth, feather). Those two options cover most ea pronunciations – except for ā (break, steak, great) – or ər (earth) – or ä (hearth).

I'm not sure about Czech, but becoming familiar with the pronunciation rules of German, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Swedish, Spanish, and many others generally takes the better part of a long morning. In that amount of time most people become capable of reading text in those languages, even without understanding these languages. Yes, those new readers will demonstrate horrible pronunciation, stress, pace, and rhythm, but they will know the pronunciation and spelling rules. While French is notorious for the spelling challenges (ask the Chairman), even French pronunciation rules can be covered in one sitting. Oui, la langue française a beaucoup de lettres muettes, but those silent letters fall in predictable places. Yes, French has plenty of pronunciation and spelling rules and exceptions to those rules, but those rules can all be listed on an unintimidating number of pages.

To review the rules for English, the non-native speaker must consult the 450 page Dictionary of the British English Spelling System, by Greg Brooks, to find a comprehensive enumeration of all the ways particular sounds can be represented by letters or combinations of letters, and to find all the ways particular letters or letter combinations can be pronounced.

Why is English so complicated? While most European languages adopted and adapted the Latin alphabet, the English language started with the runes of the Anglo-Saxon tribes bringing Old English in the fifth century, then became subject to the Viking invasions and Old Norse runes beginning in the eighth century, then endured the labors of French form Norman Conquest the eleventh century. 

People increasingly moved and mixed as London and its merchant class grew in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. And let's not forget the Celtic language and cultural forces.

In all this time, England had no language Academy and no authority for oversight or intervention in the direction or rule development of its written form. James Nicoll put it this way: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

While English wasn’t the only language to pick the pockets of others for useful words, one of the most important reasons for the unwieldiness of English spelling and pronunciation can be traced to technology. Remember, our good friend Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440. With the lack of authoritative standards, anyone could print anything any way she pleased, and Bob's your uncle.


From A Year with Rilke, August 4 Entry
Once Here, from the Ninth Duino Elegy

Why, then, do we have to be human
and keep running from the fate
we long for?

Oh, not because of such a thing as happiness—
that fleeting gift before loss begins.
Not from curiosity, or to exercise the heart…
But because simply to be here is so much
and because what is here seems to need us,
this vanishing world that concerns us strangely—
us, the most vanishing of all. Once
for each, only once. Once and no more.
And we too: just once. Never again. But
to have lived even once,
to have been of Earth—that cannot be taken from us.

 

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 sassage.