Word-Wednesday for May 4, 2022

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday, May 4, 2022, the eighteenth Wednesday of the year, the seventh Wednesday of spring, and the 124th day of the year, with 241 days remaining.


Wannaska Nature Update for May 4, 2022

April is behind us!

May 4 Nordhem Lunch: Updated daily.



Earth/Moon Almanac for May 4, 2022
Sunrise: 5:58am; Sunset: 8:43pm; 3 minutes, 3 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 7:55am; Moonset: 12:07am, waxing crescent, 9% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for May 4, 2022
                Average            Record              Today
High             58                     89                     62
Low              34                     21                      40
 

Catching up on last the loss of ground water last year:

May 4 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Bird Day
• National Candied Orange Peel Day
• National Orange Juice Day
• National Renewal Day
• National Star Wars Day [May the fourth be with you!]
• National Weather Observers Day
• National Skilled Trades Day
• National Interpreter Appreciation Day
• National Bike to School Day
  

May 4 Word Riddle
What is the difference between a cat and a comma?*


May 4 Word Pun
Sven and Ula walk into a bar, and Sven asks the barman for the WiFi code…
“You’ll have to buy a drink first”, he replies.
“Okay,” says Sven, “I’ll have a Guinness, please - so, what’s the password?”
“You’ll have to buy a drink first” said the barman, “all one word and lower case.”


May 4 Walking into a Bar Grammar
The past, present, and future walked into a bar. They were all tense.


May 4 Roseau Times-Region Headline:
Business-Plan Draft for Wannaska’s Fickle Pickle Leaked by Competitor


May 4 Etymology Word of the Week
obscure
c. 1400, "dark," figuratively "morally unenlightened; gloomy," from Old French obscur, oscur "dark, clouded, gloomy; dim, not clear" (12c.) and directly from Latin obscurus "dark, dusky, shady," figuratively "unknown; unintelligible; hard to discern; from insignificant ancestors," from ob "over" (see ob-) + scurus "covered," from Proto-Indo-European root *(s)keu "to cover, conceal.



May 4 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1780 American Academy of Arts & Science founded in Boston, James Bowdoin, John and Samuel Adams founding members.
• 1818 Netherlands & Britain sign treaty against illegal slave handling.
• 1868 World's largest book, the Kuthodaw Inscription Shrines recording whole of Buddhist scriptures on 729 marble tablets completed and opened to the public in Mandalay, Burma.
• 1896 First edition of London Daily Mail.
• 1933 Pulitzer prize awarded to Archibald Macleish for Conquistador.
• 1936 Pulitzer prize awarded to Harold L Davis for Honey in the Horn.
• 1942 Pulitzer prize awarded to Ellen Glasgow for In This Our Life.
• 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Literature awarded to Ernest Hemingway for The Old Man & The Sea.
• 1959 Pulitzer Prize awarded to Archibald Macleish for J.B.
• 1970 Pulitzer prize awarded to Erik H Erikson for Gandhi's Truth.

May 4 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1655 Bartolomeo Cristofori, Italian instrument maker - considered the inventor of the piano.
• 1715 Richard Graves, English writer.
• 1738 Josef Kohaut, Czech composer,.
• 1796 Horace Mann, American educator, author, and editor who pioneered public schools.
• 1852 Alice Liddell, English schoolgirl model for Alice in Wonderland.
• 1891 J. W. F. Werumeus Buning, Dutch poet .
• 1914 Emmanuel Roblès, Algerian-French novelist and playwright.
• 1920 Elizabeth Shaw, Irish artist, illustrator, and children’s book author.
• 1928 Maynard Ferguson, Canadian jazz trumpeter.
• 1938 Tyrone Davis, American R&B singer.
• 1939 Amos Oz, Israeli author.
• 1956 Steve Barron, Irish film director.

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

• ablaut: /ˈa-blout/ n., a change of vowel in related words or forms.
• beccles: n., small bone buttons placed in bacon sandwiches by unemployed guerrilla dentists.
• caul: /ˈkȯl/ n., the large fatty omentum covering the intestines (as of a cow, sheep, or pig; the inner fetal membrane of higher vertebrates especially when covering the head at birth.
• inspissate: /IN-spis-eyt/ v. to thicken, as by evaporation; make or become dense.
• oikouménê: /οἰ-κου-μένη/ n., the inhabited world.
• polrumptious: /pohl-RUMP-shus/ adj., restive, rude, obstreperous, uproarious; raucous, disruptive, unruly; overconfident.
• rhyparography: /RAHY-puh-ROG-ruh-fee/ n., the painting or literary depiction of mean, unworthy, or sordid subjects; painting or printing dirty pictures.
• surplice: /ˈsər-pləs/ n., a loose white linen vestment varying from hip-length to calf-length, worn over a cassock by clergy, acolytes, and choristers at Christian church services.
• trouserdom: /ˈtraʊ-zər-dəm/ n., the world or domain of those who wear trousers; (more generally) men collectively, male society; also: the fact of wearing trousers.
• volant: /VOH-luhnt/ adj., engaged in or having the power of flight.

May 4, 2022 Word-Wednesday Feature
Obscure Emotions
Having lived through April 2022, on the tail end of a pandemic, Wannaskans find themselves searching for the right word to describe the novel emotional states that come with ill winds and turbulent times.  As Hamlet once noted:

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Act 3, Scene 1

Or as Chairman Joe once lamentably squibbed about the writer’s plight:

Before starting to write your book consider that one future day your book will sit in an ancient library which on another day will be burned by barbarians.

Me thinks that Hamlet and Ophelia and Chairman Joe were at a loss for words as to the obscurity of their feelings for getting from there to a better elsewhere.  We must all be on our toes against the onset of Nichtlachen-Keinwortz Syndrome. Lest such a fate befall anyone in Wannaska, Word-Wednesday offers some emotion-words from John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. If your exulansis leaves you wishing for chrysalism, call your mom, Sven, or Ula for a good anecdoche, and enjoy your jouska without even an opia!

adronitis: /a-dron-Ī-təs/ n., frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone.

altschmerz: /'AL-ˌshmerts/ n., weariness with the same old issues that you've always had - the same boring flaws and anxieties that you've been gnawing on for years.

anecdoche: /a-NEK-də-kē/ n., a conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening.

chrysalism: /KRI-sə-ləm/ n., the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.

énouement: /ā-NÜ-ˌmä/ n., the bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.

ellipsism: /ə-LIP-sis-izəm/ n., sadness that you'll never be able to know how history will turn out.

exulansis: /ˈek-s(y)ü-LAN-səs/ n., the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.

jouska: /JOUS-ka/ n., a hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.

kenopsia: /ken-OHP-si-ah/ n., the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.

kuebiko: /(久延毘古)/ n., a state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence.

lachesism: /LÄK-əs-izəm/ the desire to be struck by disaster - to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire.

liberosis: /ˈlib-ə-RŌ-səs/ n., the desire to care less about things.

mauerbauertraurigkeit: /MAAU-er-BOW-er-TRO-ri-kai/ n., the inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.

monachopsis: /ˈmän-ə-CHÄP-səs/ n., the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.

nodus tollens: /ˈnōdəs ˈtälenz/ n., the realization that the plot of your life doesn't make sense to you anymore.

occhiolism: /OC-chi-əl-izəm/ n., the awareness of the smallness of your perspective.

onism: /WəN-izəm/ n., the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.

opia: /Ō-pē-ə/ n., the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

rubatosis: /rü-ˈbä-TŌ-səs/ n.,the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.

rückkehrunruhe: /REK-ə-rən-ro͞o/ n., the feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness.

sonder: /SəN-dər/n., the realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

vellichor: /VEL-ə-kôr/ n., the strange wistfulness of used bookshops.

vemödalen: /və-MŌ-də-lən/ n., the frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist.


From A Year with Rilke, May 4 Entry
Drugery, from Rome, December 23, 1903, Letters to a Young Poet

I know that your profession is difficult and contrary to your nature. I cannot remove your distress; I can only urge you to consider whether all occupations are not challenging and hostile in some measure to one’s individuality, and saturated with the resentments of those who grimly and sullenly pursue them from duty only. The situation in which you must live now is not more burdened with conventions, prejudices and errors than any other—and even if some occupation appears to offer greater freedom, it is a rare person who is able to stay open to the great matters that shape authentic living. Only the person who accepts solitude can place himself under the deep laws of the universe. When he steps into the fresh morning or out into the event-filled evening, all that is not him falls away, as if he had died, although he stands in the teeming midst of life.



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.

*One has claws at the end of paws; the other is a pause at the end of a clause.