Word-Wednesday for January 12, 2022

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday, January 12, 2022, the second Wednesday of the year, the fourth Wednesday of winter, the day each week that Kim Hruba starts writing her Saturday post, and the 12th day of the year, with 353 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for January 12, 2021
Winter Wonders

Our winter snow cover provides seasonal opportunities for Wannaskans to study local wildlife movements - as in scat. For most species, the dark droppings make identification easy. Scat aficionados will want to take nature walks with a copy of Animal Tracks by Olaus J. Murie, which depicts paw prints and scat pictures side by side for common Wannaskan wildlife. If you’ve lost your copy, here’s a field guide for convenient printing to put in your overcoat pocket.

January 12 Nordhem Lunch:
Roast Pork Dinner
Mashed Potatoes & Gravy
Stuffing & Peas
Dinner Roll

Hot Pork Sandwich with Mashed Potatoes & Stuffing

Chicken Noodle Soup
Chicken Salad Sandwich
Ham or Egg Salad

Earth/Moon Almanac for January 12, 2021
Sunrise: 8:14am; Sunset: 4:50pm; 1 minutes, 57 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 12:58pm; Moonset: 3:35am, waxing gibbous, 72% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for January 12, 2021
                Average            Record              Today
High             13                     43                     19
Low              -7                    -48                     12


January 12 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Curried Chicken Day
• National Kiss A Ginger Day
• National Marzipan Day
• National Pharmacist Day
• National Hot Tea Day

January 12 Word-Wednesday Teaching Moment
A Harvard linguistics professor was lecturing his class:
“In English, a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But, there isn’t a single language - not one - in which a double positive can express a negative.”

Student from the back of the auditorium:
“Yeah, right.”


January 12 Word Riddle
What name did Björn the Viking decide to call his new rock-and-roll band.*


January 12 Word Pun
The inventor of autocorrect has died. His funnel is tomato.



December 12 Roseau Times-Region Headline:
Pencer Robbery Pinned on Gatzke Seamstress: Police Say She Fabricated Her Story


January 12 Etymology Word of the Week

January 12 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1528 Gustav I of Sweden crowned King of Sweden, rules for 37 years and becomes known as the "father of the nation".
• 1867 Leo Tolstoy's Smert Ioonna Groznogo premieres in St. Petersburg.
• 1939 Timely Comics (later Marvel) founded by American publisher Martin Goodman in New York.
• 1971 All in the Family premieres on CBS featuring first toilet flush on TV.

January 12 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1591 José Ribera/Jusepe de Ribera, Spanish painter and printmaker, nicknamed Lo Spagnoletto.
• 1628 Charles Perrault, French author of Tales of Mother Goose.
• 1783 Erik Gustaf Geijer, Swedish historian/poet.
• 1856 John Singer Sargent, American painter.
• 1870 Karel Burian, Czech operatic tenor.
• 1876 Jack London.
• 1900 Vaino Hannikainen, Finnish composer.
• 1930 Tim Horton, Canadian ice hockey player & co-founder of Tim Horton.
• 1949 Haruki Murakami, Japanese writer.
• 1952 Walter Mosley.

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

• abnormous: /ab-NAWR-muhs/ adj., deformed; irregular or misshapen.
• anathema: /ə-ˈnaTH-ə-mə/ n., a formal curse by a pope or a council of the Church, excommunicating a person or denouncing a doctrine.
• benefice: /ˈben-ə-fəs/ n., a permanent Church appointment, typically that of a rector or vicar, for which property and income are provided in respect of pastoral duties.
• calque: /kalk/ n., in linguistics, a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation.
• croap: /krōp/ n., a toad swear word equivalent to merde in French
• episcopal: /əˈ-pis-kə-pəl/ adj., (of a Church) governed by or having bishops; of a bishop or bishops.
• moil: /moil/ n., hard work; drugery.
• paintrix: /PEYN-triks/ n., an artist, specifically a woman, who paints.
• rondure: /ˈrän-dyu̇r/ n., gracefully rounded curvature.
• simony: /ˈsī-mə-nē/ n., the buying or selling of ecclesiastical privileges, for example pardons or benefices.

*JackPineSavage and I are reading Barbara Tuchman’s The Distant Mirror, which talks a lot about the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages.


January 12, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
Writers on Writing
writer: /ˈrīdər/ n., a person who writes books, stories, or articles as a job or regular occupation. This week, as the writers of Wannaskan Almanac celebrate their fourth anniversary writing together, Word-Wednesday commemorates the event with some words from other writers.

And yes, with perhaps one exception, none of the Wannaskan Almanac contributors fit the dictionary definition of writer, but what would you expect from Wannaska? We sometimes develop our own definitions, where in Wannaska, we define writer as a person who cannot not write. Yeah, write.

Writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers.

Issac Asimov

Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.

Pierre Abelard

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy, then an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then it becomes a tyrant and, in the last stage,
just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

Winston Churchill

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
Writing is like driving at night. You can see only as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

all by E.L. Doctorow

Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.

Blaise Cendrars

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends.
In the end it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

Stephen King

Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating.

Kate Braverman

Writing is just a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to make it come out right. 

John Berryman

Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!

Edna Ferber

Writing is, for most, laborious and slow. The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by.

E.B. White

Writing is very improvisational. It’s like trying to fix a broken sewing machine with safety pins and rubber bands. A lot of tinkering.

Margaret Atwood

Writing is like carrying a fetus.

Edna O'Brien

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.

Jules Renard

Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.

Anne Lamott

Writing is simply one thought after another dying upon the one before.

Mel Brooks

Easy writing makes hard reading.

Ernest Hemingway

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

Alexander Pope

From A Year with Rilke, January 12 Entry
The Panther, from New Poems

His gaze, forever blocked by bars,
is so exhausted it takes in nothing else.
All that exists for him are a thousand bars.
Beyond the thousand bars, no world.

The strong, supple pacing
moves in narrowing circles.
It is a dance at whose center
a great will is imprisoned.

Now and again the veil over his pupils
silently lifts. An image enters,
pierces the numbness,
and dies away in his heart.


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.




*The Pillage People