Word-Wednesday for February 23, 2022

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday, February 23, 2022, the eighth Wednesday of the year, the tenth Wednesday of winter, and the 54th day of the year, with 311 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for February 23, 2022

As of yesterday, available information suggests that Wannaska has had about thirty inches of snow so far this winter.

February 23 Nordhem Lunch: Updated daily.



Earth/Moon Almanac for February 23, 2022
Sunrise: 7:18am; Sunset: 5:57pm; 3 minutes, 30 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 1:23am; Moonset: 10:21pm, waning gibbous, 55% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for February 23, 2022
                Average            Record              Today
High             23                     50                     -3
Low              -1                    -37                    -25

 

Photo by Myles Hogberg

February 23 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Banana Bread Day
• National Dog Biscuit Day
• National Tile Day
• Curling is Cool Day
• Single-Tasking Day

February 23 Word Riddle
What’s the best way to a man’s heart?*


February 23 Word Pun
An Irishman, an Englishman, another Irishman, a Scotsman, an Anishinaabe, a Latvian, a Turk, a German, an Indian, an American, an Argentinian, a Dane, an Australian, a Slovakian, an Egyptian, a Japanese, a Moroccan, a Frenchman, a New Zealander, a Spaniard, a Russian, a Guatemalan, a Colombian, a Pakistani, a Malaysian, a Croatian, a Pole, a Lithuanian, a Chinese, a Sri Lankan, a Lebanese, a Cayman Islander, a Ugandan, a Vietnamese, a Korean, a Uruguayan, a Czech, an Icelander, a Mexican, a Finn, a Honduran, a Panamanian, an Andorran, an Israeli, a Sioux, a Venezuelan, a Fijian, a Peruvian, an Estonian, a Brazilian, a Portuguese, a Liechtensteiner, a Mongolian, a Hungarian, a Manitoban, a Moldovan, a Haitian, a Norfolk Islander, a Macedonian, a Bolivian, a Cook Islander, a Tajikistani, a Samoan, an Armenian, an Albanian, a Greenlander, a Micronesian, a Virgin Islander, a Georgian, a Bahamian, a Belarusian, a Cuban, a Tongan, a Cambodian, a Qatari, an Azerbaijani, a Romanian, a Chilean, a Kyrgyzstani, a Jamaican, a Filipino, a Ukrainian, a Dutchman, a Taiwanese, an Ecuadorian, a Costa Rican, a Swede, a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Swiss, a Greek, a Belgian, a Singaporean, an Italian, and a Norwegian all try to walk into a bar, but the bouncer stops them and says, “Sorry, you can’t come in here without a Thai."


February 23 Etymology Word of the Week
envy: /ˈen-vē/ n., a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck, from the late 13c., from Old French envie "envy, jealousy, rivalry" (10c.), from Latin invidia "envy, jealousy" (source also of Spanish envidia, Portuguese inveja), from invidus "envious, having hatred or ill-will," from invidere "to envy, hate," earlier "look at (with malice), cast an evil eye upon," from in- "upon" (from Proto-Indo-European root *en "in") + videre "to see" (from Proto-Indo-European root *weid- "to see").


February 23 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1455 Johannes Gutenberg prints his first Bible.
• 1836 Alamo besieged for 13 days.
• 1886 The Times of London publishes world's first classified ad.
• 1898 In France, Emile Zola is imprisoned for writing his "J'accuse" letter accusing government of anti-Semitism & wrongly jailing Alfred Dreyfus.
• 1910 George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance premieres.

February 23 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1649 John Blow, English composer.
• 1685 George Frideric Handel.
• 1787 Emma Willard, American women's rights activist and educator who founded the first school for women's higher education in the U.S.A.
• 1792 Istvan Ferenczi, Hungarian sculptor.
• 1868 W. E. B. Du Bois.
• 1876 Wadih Sabra, Lebanese composer.
• 1882 Ladislav Vycpálek, Czech composer and violist.
• 1938 Jiří Menzel, Czech film director.
• 1944 John Sandford, American novelist.
• 1964 Dana Katherine Scully, The X-Files.

Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem or pram) from the following words:
alliaceous: /al-ee-EY-shuhs/ adj., having the smell or taste of onions or garlic.
battology: /buh—TOL-uh-jee/ n., wearisome repetition of words in speaking or writing.
clinamen: /klīˈn-ā-mə̇n/ n., the  Latin name  Lucretius  gave to the unpredictable swerve of  atoms , in order to defend the  atomistic  doctrine of  Epicurus, in modern English it has come more generally to mean an inclination or a bias.
dwall: /dwɑːl/ n., a dreamy, dazed, or absent-minded state.
galanty: /gə-ˈlan-tē-/ n., an entertainment consisting of the telling of a story by means of the shadows of miniature figures thrown on a wall or screen.
hadeharia: /HAYD-uh-HAR-ee-yuh/n., overuse or repetition of the word “Hell” in one's speech; from Greek Haidēs, the god of the underworld, son of Kronos and Rhea, brother of Zeus and Poseidon + Italian aria meaning “air.”
illecebrous: /il-LEC-e-brous/ adj., alluring, attractive, enticing.
palmate: /ˈpal-ˌmāt/ adj., resembling a hand with the fingers spread; having the distal portion broad, flat, and lobed.
spuddle: /ˈspʌd-əl/ n., a feeble movement; to work ineffectively; to be extremely busy whilst achieving nothing.
zhruanteli: /hand-shoe-sch-NAY-ball-ver-fer/ n., Georgian (ჟრუანტელი), a beautiful word that gives you goosebumps.


February 23, 2021 Word-Wednesday Feature
place
/ˈplās/ n., a particular position or point in space - and an essential element of context in all good writing. An almanac is a publication containing astronomical and meteorological data for a given year and often including a miscellany of other information for a particular place. As we sit here pondering the navel of our common or uncommon midwinters, Word-Wednesday today explores the importance of place in the context of poetic and narrative specificity. Whether you actually live in Wannaska, or not, how much do you really know about the particular place you call home? If you write, do your readers feel the texture and nuance of the places your characters inhabit? Here are some tasks and questions to examine your awareness of your place as our sun visits us for a little bit longer each day.

1. Point south.
2. Now point directly at the south pole.
3. What time is sunset today?
4. Point to where the sun sets on the equinox, then at sunrise on the summer solstice.
5. How many days until the next full moon?
6. Trace the water you drink all the way from rainfall to your tap.
7. When you flush, where do the solids go, and what happens to the waste water?
8. How many feet above sea level is your land?
9. How far do you have to travel before you reach a different watershed?
10. How many people live in your watershed?
11. What was the total rainfall in your here last year? Snowfall?
12. After the rain/snow runs off your roof, where does it go?
13. Right there, where you are, how deep do you have to drill before you reach water?
14. Is the soil under your feet, more clay, sand, rock, or silt?
15. Before your people lived in your here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves?
16. What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom in your surroundings?
17. Name five native edible plants in your neighborhood and the season(s) they are available.
18. Name five birds that live in your here, naming which are migratory and which stay put.
19. From what direction do the worst storms generally come?
20. Where is your nearest wilderness, and when was the last time a fire burned through it?
21. How many days is the growing season here (from frost to frost)?
22. Where is the final resting place of your garbage?
23. Who uses the paper/plastic you recycle from your neighborhood?
24. Where does the pollution in your air come from?
25. Where does your electric power come from and how is it generated?
26. Name three wild species that were not found in your here five hundred years ago. Name one exotic species that has appeared in the last five years.
27. What species once found here are known to have gone extinct?
28. Where is the nearest earthquake fault? When did it last move?
29. What primary geological processes or events shaped the land in your here?
30. What was the dominant land cover plant in your here ten thousand years ago?
31. What other cities or landscape features on the planet share your latitude?
32. Which (if any) geological features in your watershed are, or were, especially respected by your community, or considered sacred, now or in the past?
33. What's missing from this list?
    

 

From A Year with Rilke, February 23 Entry
What Links Us, from Sonnets to Orpheus, I, 12
 

Bless the spirit that makes connections,
for truly we live in what we imagine.
Clocks move alongside our real life
with steps that are ever the same.

Though we do not know our exact location,
we are held in place by what links us.
Across trackless distances
antennas sense each other.

Pure attention, the essence of the powers!
Distracted by each day’s doing,
how can we hear the signals?

Even as the farmer labors
there where the seed turns into summer,
it is not his work. It is Earth who gives.



Be better than yesterday,
learn something new about your place today,
try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow,
and write when you have the time.



*through the fifth intercostal space at the mid-clavicular line.