& here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, September 8, 2021, the 36th Wednesday of the year, the twelfth Wednesday of summer, & the 251st day of the year, with 114 days remaining.
Wannaska Nature Update for September 8, 2021
Chanterelles
According to Wikipedia, chanterelle is the common name of several species of fungi in the genera Cantharellus, Craterellus, Gomphus, & Polyozellus. They are among the most popular of wild edible mushrooms. They are orange, yellow or white, meaty & funnel-shaped. On the lower surface, underneath the smooth cap, most species have rounded, forked folds that run almost all the way down the stipe, which tapers down seamlessly from the cap. Many species emit a fruity aroma, reminiscent of apricots, & often have a mildly peppery taste (hence its German name, Pfifferling). The name chanterelle originates from the Greek kantharos meaning "tankard" or "cup", a reference to their general shape.
The chanterelle can be a bit tricky to identify because the jack o’lanterns & the false chanterelle are non-edible lookalikes.
Fortunately, neither lookalike is fatal, nor are either very tasty. Jack o’lanterns have a toxin that may cause painful cramps & diarrhea; false chanterelles are just very bitter. Luckily, the chanterelle’s false gills help mushroom hunters tell the difference, where the underside of the chanterelle cap appears melted. Jack o’lanterns have true gills, grow in large groups, & usually have attached stems. Chanterelle mushrooms grow on their own or in small bunches with separate stems.
Similarly, chanterelles have false gills, & false chanterelles have true gills. False chanterelles are a deeper orange without any yellow coloring.
When in doubt, go without. Remember the old mushroom hunter’s dictum:
There are old mushroom hunters
There are bold mushroom hunters
There are no old, bold mushroom hunters
Nordhem Lunch: Closed until enough employees can be hired.
Earth/Moon Almanac for September 8, 2021
Sunrise: 6:51am; Sunset: 7:52pm; 3 minutes, 31 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 8:34am; Moonset: 8:57pm, waxing gibbous, X% illuminated.
Temperature Almanac for September 8, 2021
Average Record Today
High 70 90 70
Low 47 26 46
September 8 Celebrations from National Day Calendar
- National Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Nurses Day
- National Ampersand Day
September 8 Word Riddle
A reckless explorer from Kansas wandered into a village & got himself captured by logic-loving cannibals. He was taken before the chief & told, “You are now allowed to speak your last words. If what you say is false, we will kill you slowly. If your statement is true, we will kill you quickly.” The man took a moment to think, & then he made his statement. Perplexed, the cannibals realized that they were honor-bound to let him go. What were the explorer’s words?*
September 8 Word Pun
negligent: /ˈneɡ-lə-jənt/ adj.: absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
September 8 Etymology Word of the Week
mushroom: /ˈməSH-ˌro͞om/ n., a fungal growth that typically takes the form of a domed cap on a stalk, with gills on the underside of the cap, from Anglo-French musherun, Old French meisseron (11c., Modern French mousseron), perhaps from Late Latin mussirionem (nominative mussirio), though this might as well be borrowed from French.
Barnhart says "of uncertain origin." Klein calls it "a word of pre-Latin origin, used in the North of France;" OED says it usually is held to be a derivative of French mousse "moss" (from Germanic), & Weekley agrees, saying it is properly "applied to variety which grows in moss," but Klein says they have "nothing in common." For the final -m Weekley refers to grogram, vellum, venom. Modern spelling is from 1560s. Clearly, mushroom has the etymology experts toadstooled.
September 8 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day
- 1504 Michelangelo's statue of David is unveiled in Florence.
- 1915 Association of Negro Life & History founded in the U.S., now the Association for the Study of African American Life & History.
- 1930 First appearance of comic strip Blondie.
- 1952 Ernest Hemingway's novel The Old Man & the Sea published.
- 1966 Star Trek premieres on NBC television.
September 8 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day
- 1207 Sancho II, King of Portugal.
- 1474 Ludovico Ariosto, Italian poet.
- 1718 François-Thomas-Marie de Baculard d'Arnaud, French sentimental writer.
- 1752 Carl Stenborg, Swedish composer.
- 1767 August Wilhelm Schlegel, German poet, translator & critic.
- 1778 Clemens Brentano, German poet & author.
- 1830 Frederic Mistral, French Provencal poet & Nobel laureate.
- 1841 Antonín Dvořák, Czech composer.
- 1920 Jacques Clouseau from The Pink Panther.
September 8, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 45 of 52
O span of youth! ever-push’d elasticity!
O manhood, balanced, florid & full.
My lovers suffocate me,
Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin,
Jostling me through streets & public halls, coming naked to me at night,
Crying by day Ahoy! from the rocks of the river, swinging & chirping over my head,
Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush,
Lighting on every moment of my life,
Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses,
Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts & giving them to be mine.
Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!
Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows after & out of itself,
& the dark hush promulges as much as any.
I open my scuttle at night & see the far-sprinkled systems,
& all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems.
Wider & wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
Outward & outward & forever outward.
My sun has his sun & round him obediently wheels,
He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
& greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
There is no stoppage & never can be stoppage,
If I, you, & the worlds, & all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run,
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
& surely go as much farther, & then farther & farther.
A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span or make it impatient,
They are but parts, any thing is but a part.
See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.
My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,
The Lord will be there & wait till I come on perfect terms,
The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.
Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem) from the following words:
- abecedarian: /ˌā-bē-(ˌ)sē-ˈder-ē-ən/ n., one learning the rudiments of something, such as the alphabet.
- codswallop: /KODZ-wol-uhp/ n., spoken or written words that have no meaning or make no sense; utter nonsense.
- encraty: /ˈɛn-krə-tē/ n., self-control.
- fardel: /ˈfär-dl/ n., a bundle.
- gambrinous: /GAHM-brih-nuhs/ or /gam-BRYE-nuhs/ adj., happily full of beer; sufficiently suffonsified swilling stout; from Gambrinus - a legendary Flemish king who was said to have invented beer.
- impavid: /ihm-PAH-vid/ adj., fearless, courageous, wholly undaunted; mettlesome; fearlessly intrepid.
- latibule: /LAT-ih-byoo-uhl/ n., a small, concealed hiding place; a burrow, lair, or hole; from Latin latibulum (plural latibula) from latare (to be hidden).
- psittacistic: /SIT-uh-SIS-tik/ adj., pertaining to automatic, mechanical, repetitive, and meaningless speech with no thought given to the meaning of the words spoken; from New Latin “psittacismus” from classical Latin “psittacus” (parrot) + “-ismus” “-ism” after French “psittacisme”.
- spall: /spôl/ v., break (ore, rock, stone, or concrete) into smaller pieces, especially in preparation for sorting; n., a splinter or chip, especially of rock.
- thyrsus: /ˈθɜːrsəs/ or thyrsos /ˈθɜːrˌsɒs/ (Ancient Greek: θύρσος) a wand or staff of giant fennel (Ferula communis) covered with ivy vines and leaves, sometimes wound with taeniae and topped with a pine cone or by a bunch of vine-leaves and grapes or ivy-leaves and berries, carried by Bacchus and his followers.
September 8, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
satire
/ˈsaˌtī(ə)r/ n., the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose & criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics & other topical issues; a literary work holding up human vices & follies to ridicule or scorn. The word satire comes from the Latin word satur & the subsequent phrase lanx satura. Satur meant "full" but the juxtaposition with lanx shifted the meaning to "miscellany or medley": the expression lanx satura literally means "a full dish of various kinds of fruits".
In honor of tomorrow's announcement of The 31st First Annual Ig Nobel Ceremony & this year’s Ig Nobel prize winners, Word-Wednesday explores satire, & its many forms - irony, parody, buffoonery, burlesque, caricature, lampoons, mockery, ridicule - where its central purpose may be best expressed this by the Ig Nobel Prize itself: "To first make people laugh, & then make them think."
As a genre of the visual arts (cartoons, movies, plays, paintings, & illustrations), literary arts (books, essays, newspapers, pamphlets, & blogs), & performing arts (skits, comedic sketches, songs, & poems), satire appears in the form of fiction, & less frequently non-fiction, where vices, follies, abuses, & shortcomings are held up to ridicule with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government, &/or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular & wider issues in society.
Satire almost always has a sharp & biting edginess to it, often leading its targets to dismiss it as unbalanced & unfair. According to Garry Trudeau, "Satire is supposed to be unbalanced. It’s supposed to be unfair. Criticizing a political satirist for being unfair is like criticizing a nose guard for being physical."
Satire first emerged in the classical age of Greece around 400 BC in the form of parody & philosophical cynicism, even thought the Greeks had not yet developed a word for satire. Satire was refined & expanded during the Roman Empire, when the first century writer known as Juvenal, author of Satires, famously noted that with so much folly in the world, "It is hard not to write satire." Since Juvenal, the right hemisphere has exploited the rule-obsessed certainty & fussiness of the left hemisphere by turning satire into an ever-evolving art form, where history's greatest wits - Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Gilbert & Sullivan's operas, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Voltaire's Candide, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Fran Lebowitz's photography, Tom Wolfe's new journalism, & Chairman Joe's writings - are but a few examples of artists who adapt their works to the foibles of the stuffy currently in power. Happily, satire shows no signs of letting up.
This week, to stimulate your own inner satirist, Word-Wednesday offers a few observations on the subjects by other thoughtful authors:
A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Satire should, like a polish'd razor keen,
Wound with a touch, that's scarcely felt or seen.
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, & on strong beliefs wounded.
ANITA BROOKNER
Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, & so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth.
E. L. DOCTOROW
A satirist is a man whose flesh creeps so at the ugly & the savage & the incongruous aspects of society that he has to express them as brutally & nakedly as possible to get relief.
JOHN DOS PASSOS
The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
The difference between satire & humor is that the satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive—often to release him again for another chance.
PETER DE VRIES
Satire is exaggeration & distortion to make a point.
OLIVER STONE
Satire is a sort of glass [mirror], wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
JONATHAN SWIFT
The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little — or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
Satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.
BARBARA TUCHMAN
Satire’s my weapon, but I’m too discreet
To run amuck, & tilt at all I meet.
ALEXANDER POPE
Satire is tragedy plus time.
LENNY BRUCE
How important are free speech & satire? Important enough that people will murder others to silence the kind of speech they don’t like.
NEIL GAIMAN
Prepare for rhyme—I’ll publish right or wrong:
Fools are my theme, let Satire be my song.
GEORGE GORDON (Lord Byron)
Satire is alive & well & living in the White House.
ROBIN WILLIAMS
From A Year with Rilke, September 8 Entry
To Be Patient with Sadness, from Borgeby gärd, Sweden, August 12, 1904, Letters to a Young Poet
The quieter we are, the more patient & open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply & unerringly a new revelation can enter us, & the more we can make it our own. Later on when it “happens” —when it manifests in our response to another person—we will feel it as belonging to our innermost being.
Be better than yesterday,
learn a new word today,
try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow,
& write when you have the time.
*You are going to kill me slowly.
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