Word-Wednesday for May 25, 2022

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of new words... the frill of trippary... and the almond tree of Papeete... the human drama of semantic explication...here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday, May 25, 2022, the twentieth Wednesday of the year, the ninth Wednesday of spring, and the 145th day of the year, with 220 days remaining.


Wannaska Phenology Update for May 25, 2022
The ferns are unfurling and the hummers are whirling!

Also, the mosquitos are out...and in...

May 25 Nordhem Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.
Baked Ham Dinner
    Mashed Potatoes & Gravy
    Green Beans
    Dinner Roll
Hot Ham Sandwich
    Mashed Potatoes & Gravy
"Bowl" Roasted Beef & Vegetable Soup with Your Choice
    Turkey
    Ham
    Grilled Cheese Sandwich


Earth/Moon Almanac for May 25, 2022
Sunrise: 5:31am; Sunset: 9:11pm; 2 minutes, 5 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 3:46am; Moonset: 4:08pm, waning crescent, 21% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for May 25, 2022
                Average            Record              Today
High             66                     88                     67
Low              44                     27                      43


May 25 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Brown-Bag It Day
• National Missing Children’s Day
• National Tap Dance Day
• Towel Day
• Geek Pride Day
• National Senior Health & Fitness Day
• National Wine Day

May 25 Word Riddle
What to you call a support group for people who talk too much?*


May 25 Word Limerick Pun
There once was a nun from Purdue
Who kept a young cat in a pew
She taught it to speak
Alphabetical Greek
But it never got farther than μ


May 25 Walking into a Bar Grammar
A preposition walked into a bar and required itself at the middle of a bar, a demand up with which the bartender would not put.


May 25 Etymology Word of the Week
teach
/tēCH/ v., show or explain to (someone) how to do something, from the Old English tæcan (past tense tæhte, past participle tæht) "to show, point out, declare, demonstrate," also "to give instruction, train, assign, direct; warn; persuade," from Proto-Germanic taikijan "to show" (source also of Old High German zihan, German zeihen "to accuse," Gothic ga-teihan "to announce"), from Proto-Indo-European root deik- "to show, point out." Related to Old English tacen, tacn "sign, mark" (see token).



May 25 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

•  240 BCE Earliest recorded sighting of Haley's Comet.
  
• 1521 Edict of Worms outlaws Martin Luther and his followers.
• 1787 Constitutional convention opens at Philadelphia, George Washington presiding.
• 1816 Collection of poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge published by John Murray in London, including Kubla Khan and Christabel.
• 1878 W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan's comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore premieres in London, their first international success.
• 1895 Oscar Wilde sentenced to 2 years imprisonment for gross indecency.

May 25 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1803 Ralph Waldo Emerson.
• 1830 Jules de Geyter, Belgian poet.
• 1878 Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, American actor and tap dancer.
• 1883 Elsa Maxwell, American writer.
• 1889 Sverre Jordan, Norwegian composer.
• 1889 Hugo Sonnenschein, Czech writer.
• 1898 Bennett Cerf, American publisher.
• 1900 Alain Grandbois, French Canadian poet.
• 1908 Theodore Roethke, American poet.
• 1925 Rosario Castellanos, Mexican poet.
• 1927 Robert Ludlum, American spy novelist.
• 1938 Raymond Carver, American poet and short story writer.
• 1944 Frank Oz, American muppetteer.
• 1946 Janet Morris, American sci-fi author.
• 1949 Jamaica Kincaid [Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson], Antiguan-American writer.
• 1953 Eve Ensler, American playwright.
• 1958 Dorothy Straight, American 4-year-old author.
• 1966 Denise Deegan, Irish screenwriter and author.

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

• chhi-chhi: /ˈtʃiˌtʃi/ int., used to indicate reproach or disapproval, or to express disgust or disdain.
• dismorrowed: /dis-ˈmô-rōd/ v. to lose the will or motivation for planning the next day’s activities.
• iham: /Ī-hām/ n., in Persian, Kurdish and Arabic poetry is a literary device in which an author uses a word, or an arrangement of words, that can be read in several ways, where each of the meanings may be logically sound, equally true and intended.
• murlimews: /MUR-lih-myooz/ n.pl., foolish gestures and antics.
• nepenthes: /nə-ˈPEN-THēz/ n., a drug described in Homer’s /Odyssey/ as banishing grief or trouble from a person’s mind.
• pwundosi: /pwən- DŌ-sē/ n., Hawaiian, loin cloth.
• soju: /ˈsōˌ-jo͞o/ n., a Korean alcoholic drink typically made from rice or sweet potatoes.
• ushabti: /(y)üˈsh-ab-tē/ 𓅱𓈙𓃀𓏏𓏭𓀾 n., a small figure deposited in an ancient Egyptian tomb with the mummy generally bearing inscriptions from the Book of the Dead and representing servants expected to do certain agricultural labors required of the deceased in the land of the dead.
• wanigan: /WON-i-guhn/ n., a shelter (as for sleeping, eating, or storage) often mounted on wheels or tracks and towed by tractor or mounted on a raft or boat; a lumberjack’s tool box.
• zerk: /zɜrk/ n., a small metal fitting through which grease can be inserted into a mechanical joint.

May 25, 2022 Word-Wednesday Feature
teacher
/ˈtēCH-ər/ n., a person who teaches, especially in a school.
It's K-12 graduation week - or just about - for most of the schools serving Wannaskan students, so today Word-Wednesday honors our teachers. This includes Wannaskan Almanac contributor Mr. Hot Coco! As dictionary definitions go, the entry for teacher is just about as weak as they come. When it comes to teaching excellence, it's all about the HOW and the WHO - not the what, when, where, or why. The what, when, where, and why are pretty much predetermined for the teacher and the student. While neither the K-12 teachers nor their students have much say about the WHO, the WHO matters because each class in a collection of individual students, each with different capacities to learn. The art of teaching is in the HOW - sizing up the unique intellectual, emotional, social readiness profile of each student - and in a classroom setting, helping each student become ready to absorb the new learning.

Here are some statements of persons who have tried to find words for the empathy and scope of this artistic endeavor:

The finest teaching touches in a student a spring neither teacher nor student could possibly have preconceived.

ANNE TRUITT

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest. We must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.

HENRI-FRÉDÉDERIC AMIEL

A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil
with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.

HORACE MANN

Have you ever really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but precious thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a proud shine?

MITCH ALBOM

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

HENRY BROOKS ADAMS

The educator must believe in the potential power of his pupil, and he must employ all his art in seeking to bring his pupil to experience this power.

ALFRED ADLER

Not just part of us becomes a teacher. It engages the whole self—the woman or man, wife or husband, mother or father, the lover, scholar or artist in you as well as the teacher earning money.

SYLVIA ASHTON-WARNER

The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another."

MARVA COLLINS

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.

GAIL GODWIN

Throughout history the exemplary teacher has never been just an instructor in a subject; he is nearly always its living advertisement.

MICHAEL DIRDA

He knows the Truest Way to Teach
Who puts Great Thoughts in Simple Speech.

ARTHUR GUITERMAN

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.

ANATOLE FRANCE

Man’s most human characteristic is not his ability to learn, which he shares with many other species, but his ability to teach and store what others have developed and taught him.

MARGARET MEAD

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.

CARL G. JUNG

Teaching: one of the few professions that permit love.

THEODORE ROETHKE

We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master.

MARIA MONTESSORI

True teaching cannot be learned from text-books any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery.

HELEN KELLER

I touch the future. I teach.

CHRISTA MCAULIFFE

Once, while I was subbing for a first grade class, I had the privilege of having the teacher's son in my class.  We were talking about how the world spins.  I let the class know that earth spins approximately 1000 miles per hour.  Since that is true, if we were able to stand in one place while the earth spun underneath us, the whole world would pass beneath our feet in 24 hours and we would be right back where we started.  The teacher's son piped up..."finally we are learning something we can use."

MR. HOT COCO

The Stolen Child
W. B. Yeats

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes

From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.

 

From A Year with Rilke, May 25 Entry
The Beggars, from New Poems

The shapeless heaps turn out to be beggars.
They reveal themselves as you pass by.
They are selling the nothing
their hands hold out.



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.



*On And On Anon.