Word-Wednesday for October 27, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, October 27, 2021, the 43rd Wednesday of the year, the sixth Wednesday of fall, and the 300th day of the year, with 65 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for October 27, 2021
Pumpkin   
Cucurbita pepo, Cucurbita maxima, C. argyrosperma, and C. moschata are some of the cultivars, or round, smooth, slightly ribbed winter squash, otherwise known as a pumpkin in Wannaskaland. Native to northeastern Mexico and the southern United States, pumpkins are one of the oldest domesticated plants, having been used as early as 7,000 to 5,500 BC.

If your pumpkin has become a jack-o’-lantern, its name comes from the reported phenomenon of strange lights flickering over peat bogs, called will-o'-the-wisps or jack-o'-lanterns, also tied to the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a drunkard who bargains with Satan and is doomed to roam the Earth with only a hollowed turnip to light his way, so believe what you will.

Nordhem Lunch: Closed.


Days without a pumpkin-related felony by a Wannaskan Almanac contributing authors: 27,245


Earth/Moon Almanac for October 27, 2021
Sunrise: 8:03am; Sunset: 6:12pm; 3 minutes, 19 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 10:50pm; Moonset: 7:58am, waning gibbous, 61% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for October 27, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             45                     70                     47
Low              28                      6                      42


October 27 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Civics Day
• National American Beer Day
• Navy Day
• Cranky Co-workers Day
• National Black Cat Day

October 27 Word Riddle
What do mummies listen to on Halloween?*


October 27 Word Pun
A group of Wannaskan ghosts were arrested last night at the local bar for getting out of line and vocally heckling a performing artist. The arresting officer said it was to be expected because ghosts can’t handle their boos.

October 27 Etymology Word of the Week
ghost
/ɡōst/ n., an apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image, from Old English gast "breath; good or bad spirit, angel, demon; person, man, human being," in Biblical use "soul, spirit, life," from Proto-West Germanic gaistaz (source also of Old Saxon gest, Old Frisian jest, Middle Dutch gheest, Dutch geest, German Geist "spirit, ghost"). This is conjectured to be from a root gheis-, used in forming words involving the notions of excitement, amazement, or fear (source also of Sanskrit hedah "wrath;" Avestan zaesha- "horrible, frightful;" Gothic usgaisjan, Old English gæstan "to frighten").

Ghost is the English representative of the usual West Germanic word for "supernatural being." In Christian writing in Old English it is used to render Latin spiritus (see spirit (n.)), a sense preserved in Holy Ghost. Sense of "disembodied spirit of a dead person," especially imagined as wandering among the living or haunting them, is attested from late 14c. and returns the word toward its likely prehistoric sense.

For more on the etymology of the word spook, see Anatoly Liberman’s post here.


October 27 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1787 Federalist Papers start appearing in New York newspapers under pseudonym "Publius" (written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay).
• 1917 20,000 women march in a suffrage parade in New York.
• 1948 Albert Camus' L'etat de Siege premieres in Paris.
• 1962 Vasili Arkhipov saves the world.

October 27 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1739 Franz Ignaz Kaa, German composer.
• 1744 Mary Moser, English painter.
• 1775 Traugott Maximilian Eberwein, German composer.
• 1782 Niccolo Paganini, Italian composer and violin virtuoso.
• 1845  Josef Václav Sládek, Czech poet, publicist and translator.
• 1868 Annie Patterson, Irish organist, composer, and musicologist.
• 1872 Emily Post.
• 1885 Sigrid Hjertén, Swedish modernist painter,.
• 1889 Enid Bagnold, British novelist.
• 1892 Victor E. van Vriesland, Dutch poet.
• 1912 Conlon Nancarrow, American composer.
• 1914 Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet.
• 1923 Roy Lichtenstein, Pop art painter.
• 1927 Edward Keinholz, American artist and sculptor.
• 1931 Nawal el-Saadawi, Egyptian feminist writer and activist.
• 1932 Sylvia Plath, American poet and novelist.
• 1939 John Cleese.
• 1950 Fran Lebowitz, American author.
• 1975 Zadie Smith.
  

October 27, 2021 Song of Myself
Verse 52 of 52
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

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

• anaphor: /ˈæn-ə-fɔr/ n., a word or phrase which refers to, or is a substitute for, another word or phrase in a text or conversation (e.g. in /Ula said he was leaving/, /he/ is used as an anaphor for /Ula/); (sometimes /spec./) a word or phrase which refers back to a preceding word or phrase.
• barbican: /ˈbär-bə-kən/ n., the outer defense of a castle or walled city, especially a double tower above a gate or drawbridge.
• caruncula: /kuh-RUHNG-kyuh-luh/ n., a small, fleshy protuberance; an outgrowth on a plant or animal such as a fowl’s wattle or a protuberance near the hilum of certain seeds.
• dandle: /ˈdan-dl/ v., move (a baby or young child) up and down in a playful or affectionate way.
• eigne: /ˈān/ adj., eldest; firstborn.
• finnimbrun: /fin-IHM-bruhn/ n., a trifle, trinket or knick-knack.
• gardyloo: /ˌgär-dē-ˈlü/ interjection, in Edinburgh, as a warning cry when it was customary to throw slops from the windows into the streets.
• ipseity: /ip-ˈsē-ə-tē/ n., individual identity; selfhood.
• runcible: /RUN-suh-buhl/ n., a spoonlike utensil with three short tines like a fork.
• subitize: /SOO-bi-tahyz/ v., to make an immediate and accurate reckoning of (the number of items in a group or sample) without needing to pause and actually count them: for an average adult, (the maximum number of such items is generally observed to be six).

October 27, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
Ghost Perspectives 

Look to this week’s Etymology Word of the Week for the Word-Wednesday perspective on the word, ghost. Perspectives from other Wannanskan Almanac writers appear below.

According to Chairman Joe, where there is history, there is haunting. Like history, haunting is a universal human condition, and ghosts are everywhere - whether we attend to them or not - if one only knows one's history. This means that ghosts also belong to all times. Although one of the great promises of the Enlightenment project was the “disenchantment of the world”, including the banishment of ghosts to the realm of “tradition”, Enlightenment authors only added new spaces in the world for novel kinds of haunting to emerge https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2019/10/enlightenment-era-ghosts-and-history-of.html. Chairman Joe reminds us that ghosts dwell at the heart (or in the machines) of modern nation-states, capitalism, and scientific materiality. Still in doubt? "Read up on recent history", says the Chairman. A recent New York Times article notes an epidemic of hauntings during the pandemic.

The ghost of Caesar hath appear'd to me
Two several times by night : at Sardis, once;
And, this last night, here in Philippi fields.
I know, my hour is come.
(Julius Caesar, 5.5)

Then there's WannaskaWriter, who insists that there's no such thing as a universal ghost: "Anyvon who's spent any time in Palmville knows dat ghosts are singular and unique. 'istorical? Yes, I'll grant yew dat, Mr. Chairman, but ghosts can only be understood from da context ov da culture ov da people dat tought dem up." From WannaskaWriter's perspective, ghosts are both object and subjects that depend on the native culture from which they haunt. Just ask another Minnesotan, Avery Gordon. In his book, Ghostly Matters https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/ghostly-matters, he characterizes the ghost as a "social figure" rooted to a specific location and tradition. Each ghost haunts according to its culturally specific unknowns and evils, so WannakaWriter insists that we should be responding to Mikinaak Crick ghosts according to Palmvillian traditions.

O, answer me:
Let me not burst in ignorance! but tell,
Why thy canoniz'd bones, hears'd in death,
Have burst their cerements! why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd.
Hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again.
(Hamlet, 1.4)

From her family-based perspective, Kim Hruba uses every ounce of her Woo to help us see that our relationships with ghosts depends on our relationships with the dead - especially family, friends, neighbors, and other important community dearly-departed. And yes, this may include enemies or perfect strangers, as the case may be. Our ghostly encounters with family members who have gone to the great beyond help us repair a torn relationship or remember something that should not have been forgotten. Whether the ghost be family, friend, or Wannaskan, the haunting often serves to demand some form of acknowledgement from the departed as an act of listening and making space for fate - theirs and ours. As such, the haunting is a matter of justice and paying forward, where our past passed reanimate our futures.

I have heard (but not believ'd) the spirits of the dead
May walk again: if such thing be, thy mother
Appeared to me last night; for ne'er was dream
So like a waking.
The Winter's Tale, 3.3

Mr. Hot Coco wants us to know that ghosts continuously invite us to think outside our everyday modes of seeing the world. He teaches us that ghosts are endlessly elusive, flashing up for brief moments as a pun, a tap on the opposite shoulder, a Simpson's episode, an Internet meme, a yoga fart, or any other uncanny, fleeting experience - only to disappear in the next instant. In Kansas classrooms and other contexts of everyday life, ghostly encounters unfold with both indefinable certainty and nagging doubt. The universal student in us all feels the unsettling reality of what it feels like to be haunted, but we are left without a lasting image, a fixed meaning, or a cohesive narrative. We cannot reckon with ghosts unless we abandon our day-to-day desires for evidence and logic. To think with and through Mr. Hot Coco's ghosts, we must see beyond the black and white oppositions of seen/unseen, here/there, me/you, now/then, Homer/Bart, so that we can exist in the boundry-less excess of no-rule humor floating between each of our rigid selves and our shiftless ghosts.

Glendower. - I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur. - Why, so can I; or so can any man:
But will they come when you do call for them ?
(1 Henry IV, 3.1)

Last, but not least, JackPineSavage wants us to know that engaging ghosts exercises our creative memory. Especially for writer and readers, ghost help us rework our past and establish a new relationship to it. Our ghosts help us make claims new claims on the past that implicate us in profound and enduring future selves, if we can only find our new ways. Engaging with our  ghost is transformative - for pasts, for presents, for futures, and for our writing. JackPineSavage disdains glasses half-full or half-empty. Glasses are always entirely full and entirely empty. As such, engaging creative memory through our ghosts is simultaneously an act of deep imagination, an interpretive labor, and a moral practice. We yearn for creative energy from our ghosts to engage the world within and beyond ourselves: our presents and our futures connect through their pasts.

For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,
That in crossways and floods have burial,
Already to their wormy beds are gone.
(A Midsummer Night's Dream, 3.2)


From A Year with Rilke, October 27 Entry
Too Vast to Be Contained, from Second Duino Elegy

We may yearn to come to rest
in some small piece of pure humanity,
a strip of orchard between river and rock.
But our heart is too vast to be contained there.
We can no longer seek it in a place
or even in the image of a god or an angel.

 

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.



*Wrap Music.