Word-Wednesday for December 29, 2021

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday, December 29, 2021, the 52nd and Wednesday of the year, the second Wednesday of winter, the 5th day of Christmas [ooooo], the 4th day of Kwanzaa, and the 363rd day of the year, with 2 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for December 29, 2021
Mistletoe

common name for obligate hemiparasitic plants in the order Santalales. They are attached to their host tree or shrub by a structure called the haustorium, through which they extract water and nutrients from the host plant.

Mistletoe is relevant to several cultures. Pagan cultures regarded the white berries as symbols of male fertility, with the seeds resembling semen. The Celts, particularly, saw mistletoe as the semen of Taranis, while the Ancient Greeks referred to mistletoe as "oak sperm". Also in Roman mythology, mistletoe was used by the hero Aeneas to reach the underworld.

In the Christian era, mistletoe in the Western world became associated with Christmas as a decoration under which lovers are expected to kiss, as well as with protection from witches and demons. Mistletoe continued to be associated with fertility and vitality through the Middle Ages, and by the 18th century it had also become incorporated into Christmas celebrations around the world. The custom of kissing under the mistletoe is referred to as popular among servants in late 18th-century England.


Nordhem Lunch: Special.



Earth/Moon Almanac for December 29, 2021
Sunrise: 8:17am; Sunset: 4:36pm; 46 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 3:09am; Moonset: 1:26m, waning crescent, 23% illuminated.
 

Mostly sunny today, but we’ll call it a snow day based on the last few days.

Snow Day
By Billy Collins

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,   
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,   
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost   
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while, I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,   
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,   
and I will shake a laden branch
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,   
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.   
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,   
as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,   
the Ding-Dong School, closed.
the All Aboard Children’s School, closed,   
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with—some will be delighted to hear—

the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School   
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and—clap your hands—the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,   
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,   
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,   
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.


Temperature Almanac for December 29, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             15                     40                     -6
Low             -4                    -47                    -22


December 29 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Pepper Pot Day
• Tick Tock Day

December 29 Word Riddle
Overlooked by most Christmas carolers, there was a tenth reindeer. What is her name?*


December 29  Word Pun
Here’s a little known story about Sherlock Holmes. There was a time when he became tired of his simple mundane entry of 221B Baker Street, so he had the door painted yellow.
Surprised, Watson asked, “Why yellow?”
Holmes replied, “It’s a lemon entry my dear Watson!”


December 29 Etymology Word of the Week
mistletoe: from the older form 'mistle' adding the Old English word tān (twig). 'Mistle' is common Germanic (Old High German mistil, Middle High German mistel, Old English mistel, Old Norse mistil). Further etymology is uncertain, but may be related to the Germanic base for 'mash'.


December 29 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1653 Dutch painter Jan Vermeer becomes a member of the Guild of Saint Luke for painters in Delft.
• 1835 Treaty of New Echota is signed between the US government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction to cede all lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States.
• 1857 Franz Liszt's symphonic poem Die Hunnenschlacht premieres.
• 1862 Bowling ball invented.
• 1890 United States of America 7th Cavalry massacre over 200 captive Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
• 1930 Fred P. Newton completes longest swim ever (1826 miles), when he swam in the Mississippi River from Ford Dam, Minnesota, to New Orleans.
• 1989 Václav Havel is selected to be president of Czechoslovakia by the Federal Assembly shortly after the Velvet Revolution.

December 29 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1813 Karel Sabina, Czech poet, playwright.
• 1876 Pablo Casals [Pau Casals i Defilló], Spanish cellist.
• 1896 David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mexican social realist painter & muralist.
• 1922 William Gaddis, American novelist.
• 1924 Tuomas Haapanen, Finnish violinist.
• 1929 Matt "Guitar" Murphy, American blues guitarist.

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

• bromopnea: /ˈbrəʊ-məʊˌ-n-ə/ n., bad breath.
• cete: /seet/ collective noun, a group of badgers.
  
• FOMO: /ˈfōmō/ n., acronym, [fear of missing out] anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, often aroused by posts seen on social media.
• gleek: /ˈglēk/ v., gibe, joke.
• jackpudding: /JAK-PUH-ding/ n., a merry-andrew; a clown; one who acts foolishly to amuse and entertain; a buffoon appearing in stage and street performances.
• julgrisen: /YOOL-gree-suhn/  n., the little Christmas pig that is always trotting around the world so fast that he never gets fat and never grows old; Swedish, meaning “Christmas Pig”.
• monitory: /ˈmän-ə-ˌtô-rē/ adj., giving or serving as a warning.
• spirtle: /‘spərt-əl/ v.trans., splatter, splash.
• ubuntu: /ù-ɓún-tʼù/ n., a Nguni Bantu term meaning humanity; adj., sometimes translated as "I am because we are", also "I am because you are".
• waits: /weyts/ n.pl., a band of musicians who go around the streets at Christmas, singing and playing carols; official bands of musicians maintained by a city or town; street singers of Christmas carols.
• wassail: /wah-SEYL/ n., a spiced ale or mulled wine drunk during celebrations for Twelfth Night and Christmas Eve; a hot drink that is made with wine, beer, or cider, spices, sugar, and usually baked apples and is traditionally served in a large bowl especially at Christmastime; lively and noisy festivities involving the drinking of plentiful amounts of alcohol; revelry; v., to drink plentiful amounts of alcohol and enjoy oneself with others in a noisy, lively way; to go from house to house at Christmas singing carols.

December 29, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
time
/tīm/ n., the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole; a point of time as measured in hours and minutes past midnight or noon. Now is an interesting time in Wannaska. While we continue to have our usual dailies: bed time, supper time, clock time, we also have seasonal, calendar year, and astrological times to mark on either sided of the darkest daytime of the year.

As the year advances and we all look forward to a new birthday, one might think of time in terms of one's own mortality. If so, Word-Wednesday recommends a new book by Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, where the title is based on the disappointingly low number of weeks that comprise the average lifespan of our species. Burke notes:

This strange moment in history, when time feels so unmoored, might in fact provide the ideal opportunity to reconsider our relationship with it. Older thinkers have faced these challenges before us, and when their wisdom is applied to the present day, certain truths grow more clearly apparent. Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved “work-life balance,” whatever that might be, and you certainly won’t get there by copying the “six things successful people do before 7:00 a.m.” The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control — when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer; when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be about.

Unless you're thinking like Mr. Hot Coco, you may be considering resolutions for the coming year. Here are some words of inspiration as you contemplate better times.

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice. 

T. S. Eliot

At the Solstice of Summer I go into denial
Pretending the days are not shorter.
At the Solstice of Winter I start checking for signs
That each day is now longer and longer.

Chairman Joe

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.

Brooks Atkinson

New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.

James Agate

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year, it is that we should have a new soul.

G.K. Chesterton

A new year is a clean slate, a chance to suck in your breath, decide all is not lost and give yourself another chance.

Sarah Overstreet

May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions!

Joey Adams

And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done.

Rainer Maria Rilke

No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left.

Charles Lamb

Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn’t it, of a long line of proven criminals?

Ogden Nash

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

Benjamin Franklin

A new year is a gift, a small piece of infinity, to do with as we will.

Jean Hersey

 
Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page.

Henry Ward Beecher

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are
making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.

Neil Gaiman

Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one.

Brad Paisley

New Year's Day. Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

Mark Twain

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Alfred, Lord Tennysball

From A Year with Rilke, December 29
Poet’s Epitaph, from Uncollected Poems

Rose, oh pure paradox, desire
to be no one’s sleep beneath
the many eyelids of your petals.



Be better than last year,
learn a new word today,
try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow,
and write when you have the time.

Hugs and kisses of love from Word-Wednesday to 2021 and all Wannaskan Almanac readers in the coming year!

Mistletoe
Walter de la Mare

Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.

Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen—and kissed me there.

*Olive.