Word-Wednesday for June 8, 2022

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of new words... the trill of frippary... and the apogee of offbeat... the human drama of semantic explication...here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday, June 8, 2022, the twenty-second Wednesday of the year, the eleventh Wednesday of spring, and the 159th day of the year, with 206 days remaining.


Wannaska Phenology Update for June 8, 2022
Scattered Flurries

Populus is a genus of 25–30 species of deciduous flowering plants in the family Salicaceae, native to most of the Northern Hemisphere. The name Populus refers to the fact that the trees were often planted around public meeting places in Roman times. English names variously applied to different species include poplar (/ˈpɒplər/), aspen, and cottonwood. This species is a source of many excellent words:

The poplar lenticel /ˈlen-(t)ə-sel/ (not to be confused with lenticel /ˈlen-tə̇-kəl/) is the one of many raised pores in the stem of a woody plant that allows gas exchange between the atmosphere and the internal tissues.

The poplar /ˈped-ē-ōl/ is the the stalk that joins a leaf to a stem; leafstalk.

The poplar anther /ˈan-THər/ is the part of a stamen that contains the pollen.

The poplar catkin /ˈkat-kən/ is the flowering spike composed of downy, pendulous, composed of flowers of a single sex, and wind-pollinated.

The fluff flying around lately are the poplar seeds, which do not have a specific scientific name, so you are encouraged to make up your own Meaning of Liff word for them.


June 8 Fickle Pickle Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


June 8 Nordhem Lunch:
Baked Ham Dinner
    Mashed potatoes & gravy
    Green beans
    Dinner roll
Hot Ham Sandwich
    Mashed potatoes & gravey
BBQ Meatball Sub
    with Sweet potato fries
Wisconsin Cheese Soup
    with choice of sandwich:
    Ham  or  Turkey  or  Burger

Earth/Moon Almanac for June 8, 2022
Sunrise: 5:21am; Sunset: 9:25pm; 1 minutes, 4 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 2:16pm; Moonset: 2:33am, waxing gibbous, 54% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for June 8, 2022
                Average            Record              Today
High             70                     92                     72
Low              49                     30                     47


June 8 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Worlds Oceans Day
• National Best Friends Day
• National Name Your Poison Day
• National Upsy Daisy Day

June 8 Word Riddle
Where does one weigh a pie?*


June 8 Word Pun
Young Chairman Joe bet his sister that if he entered a chili cook-off competition, he would surely win. She took the bet. As it turned out, Chairman Joe’s chili finished close second behind the winning chili made by Sister Eubestrabius. The young Chairman wasn’t sure how he was going to tell his sister, so when he got home and she asked, he said, “Great! The judges said my chili was second to nun.”


June 8 Walking into a Bar Grammar
A horse walks into a bar and orders a pint.
The publican says, “You’re in here pretty often. Do you think you might be an alcoholic?”
The horse replies, “I don’t think I am.” And the horse vanishes from existence.
The joke is about Descartes’ famous philosophy, “I think, therefore, I am.”
But to explain that part before the rest of the joke would be putting Descartes before the horse.


June 8 Etymology Word of the Week
radical
/ˈrad-ə-k(ə)l/ adj., late 14c., "originating in the root or ground;" of body parts or fluids, "vital to life," from Latin radicalis "of or having roots," from Latin radix (genitive radicis) "root" (from Proto-Indo-European root wrād- "branch, root"). The basic sense of the word in all meanings is "pertaining or relating to a root or roots," hence "thoroughgoing, extreme."


June 8 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 452 Italy invaded by Attila the Hun.
• 1824 Washing machine patented by Noah Cushing of Quebec.
• 1880 Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky delivers an emotional speech at the unveiling of a monument to Pushkin in Moscow.
• 1892 Homer A Plessy refuses to go to segregated railroad car (Plessy v Ferguson).
• 1918 Nova Aquila, brightest nova since Kepler's nova of 1604, discovered.
• 1949 George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four published.

June 8 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1722 Jakob Friedrich Kleinknecht, German composer.
• 1810 Robert Schumann, German pianist, composer.
• 1812 Spyridon Xyndas, Greek composer.
• 1814 Charles Reade, English novelist.
• 1856 Natalia Janotha, Polish pianist.
• 1867 Frank Lloyd Wright.
• 1894 Erwin Schulhoff, Czech composer and pianist.
• 1903 Marguerite Yourcenar, French-American novelist.
• 1905 Brian Coffey, Irish poet.
• 1910 John W. Campbell, American science fiction writer.
• 1920 Gwen Harwood, Australian poet.
• 1921 LeRoy Neiman, American painter.
• 1928 Kate Wilhelm, American author.
• 1946 Elizabeth A. Lynn, American science fiction author.
• 1949 Emanuel Ax, Polish-American classical pianist, born in Lviv, Ukraine.
• 1957 Scott Raymond Adams, Dilbert cartoonist.
• 1977 Frøy Aagre, Norwegian jazz tenor and soprano saxophonist.

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

• bogan: /ˈbō-ɡ(ə)n/ n., a quiet tributary or backwater.
• Cthulhu: /kuh-THOO-loo/ proper name, the name of a fictional monster created by author H.P. Lovecraft described as a combination of an octopus, a dragon, and a human being, where just looking upon it will drive the viewer insane.
• glister: /ˈɡlis-tər/ v., sparkle; glitter.
• illeist: /IL-ee-ist/ n., one who constantly refers to oneself in the third person.
• kilju: /ˈkil-ju/ n., FINNISH, a type of homemade alcoholic drink, made with sugar and yeast.
• mnahn’: /m-NAHN-k/ adj., R’YLEHIAN, worthless.
• publican: /ˈpəb-lə-kən/ n., a person who owns or manages a pub.
• ragrowtering: /rag-ROU-ter-ing/ n., playing at romps, and thereby rumpling, roughening and tearing the clothes to rags; playing the rogue in a wanton frolic.
• sozzled: /SOZ-uhld/ adj., under the influence of alcohol, in a delirious state of intoxication.
• Wänñäsky: /wä-NYA-skē/ proper name, proposed by Mayor of Palm Lake Township as new rebranding name for Wannaska.

June 8, 2022 Word-Wednesday Feature
simplicity
/sim-ˈpli-sə-dē/ n., the quality or condition of being easy to understand or do from the late 14th century "singleness of nature, unity, indivisibility; immutability," from Old French simplicite (12c., Modern French simplicité), from Latin simplicitatem (nominative simplicitas) "state of being simple, frankness, openness, artlessness, candor, directness. In a world where so many people seem to want to make things complicated, Word-Wednesday today features the words of persons who try to characterize simplicity with grace and art. Using word-play, Robert Browning's oxymoron captures the essence of simplicity in three simple words: "Less is more."

A woman smells best when she hath no perfume at all.

ROBERT BURTON

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Promise is most given when the least is said.

GEORGE CHAPMAN

No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.

JOHN RUSKIN

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Good things, when short, are twice as good.

BALTASAR GRACIAN

Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.

ROBERT GREENLEAF

I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short.

BLAISE PASCAL

Loveliness
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
But is when unadorned adorned the most.

JAMES THOMSON

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

MARK TWAIN

From A Year with Rilke, June 8 Entry
The Apple Orchard (II) from New Poems

The trees, like those of Dürer,
bear the weight of a hundred days of labor
in their heavy, ripening fruit.
They serve with endless patience to teach

how even that which exceeds all measure
must be taken up and given away,
as we, through long years,
quietly grow toward the one thing we can be.

Orchard in Blossom 2 by Vincent Van Gogh

Be better than yesterday,
use simple words today,
try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow,
and write when you have the time.





*somewhere over the rainbow.