Word-Wednesday for July 27, 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, July 27, 2022, the thirtieth Wednesday of the year, the sixth Wednesday of summer, and the 208th day of the year, with 157 days remaining.


Wannaska Phenology Update for July 27, 2022
Blueberry Bounty
Back in the day, shepherds “controlled” their sheep by shaking their staffs to indicate where the animals should go. When a shepherd had more sheep that (s)he could control, (s)he had “more sheep than (s)he could shake a stick at.” That’s how it is with this year’s bumper crop of blueberries.

And are they ever tasty! The forest roads are full of cars, and the pickers are driving away with pails full. When it comes to eating your blueberries, Word-Wednesday advises readers enjoy a balanced diet to avoid the outcome of some blueberry-binging animals…

July 27 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


July 27 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for July 27, 2022
Sunrise: 5:51am; Sunset: 9:10pm; 2 minutes, 36 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 4:12am; Moonset: 9:13pm, waning crescent, <1% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for July 27, 2022
                Average            Record              Today
High             78                     97                    68
Low              54                     38                    54


July 27 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Crème Brûlée Day
• National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day
• National Love Is Kind Day
• National New Jersey Day
• National Scotch Day
• Bagpipe Appreciation Day
• Walk on Stilts Day
• Take your Houseplants for a Walk Day

July 27 Word Riddle
I can slash, but I have no knife.
I can dash, but I have no legs.
I can pound, but I have no hammer.
I can star, but I have no stage.

What am I*

July 27 Word Pun
pasteurize: /ˈpas-CHəˌr-īz/ adj., too far to see.


July 27 Walking into a Bar Grammar
To, with, and from walked into a bar. Now, what are they up to? Who were they also with? Where did they come from?


July 27 Etymology Word of the Week
text
/tekst/ n., a book or other written or printed work, regarded in terms of its content rather than its physical form; the main body of a book or other piece of writing, as distinct from other material such as notes, appendices, and illustrations, from late 14th century, "wording of anything written," from Old French texte, Old North French tixte "text, book; Gospels" (12th century), from Medieval Latin textus "the Scriptures, text, treatise," in Late Latin "written account, content, characters used in a document," from Latin textus "style or texture of a work," literally "thing woven," from past participle stem of texere "to weave, to join, fit together, braid, interweave, construct, fabricate, build" (from Proto-Indo-European root teks- "to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework"). To Socrates, a word (the name of a thing) is “an instrument of teaching and of separating reality, as a shuttle is an instrument of separating the web.” The meaning “a digital text message” is by 2005.


July 27 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1377 First example of quarantine in Rugusa (now Dubroknik); city council passes law saying newcomers from plague areas must isolation for thirty days.
• 1880 Battle of Maiwand breaks out, at which Sherlock Holmes' own Dr. Watson is wounded.
• 1890 Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh shoots himself in Auvers-sur-Oise, dies of injuries two days later.
• 1921 Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate insulin at the University of Toronto.
• 1940 Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros. cartoon character created by Tex Avery, Bob Givens (Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series), first debuts in Wild Hare.

July 27 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1502 Francesco Corteccia, Italian composer.
• 1777 Thomas Campbell, Scottish poet.
• 1835 Giosuè Carducci, Italian writer and Nobel Prize Laureate 1906 regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy.
• 1864 František Flos, Czech writer.
• 1906 Jerzy Giedroyc, Polish writer.
• 1910 Julien Gracq [Louis Poirier], French writer.
• 1911 Rayner Heppenstall, English novelist.
• 1912 Hilde Domin [Hilde Palm], German writer and poet.
• 1913 Eva Jones, German poet and novelist.
• 1916 Elizabeth Hardwick, Kentucky novelist.
• 1939 Michael Longley, Irish poet.

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

• autarkic: /ȯ-ˈtär-kik/ adj., economically self-sufficient and independent.
• bierock: /BĒ-raak/ n., a yeast dough pastry pocket sandwich with savory filling, originating in Russia, now known as the favorite weird food of Kansans.
• estrapade: /ES-truh-peyd/ n., a horse’s attempt to throw its rider by rearing, plunging, and kicking.
• falcate: /FAHL-kayt/ adj., curved or crescent shaped; hooked; from Latin “falcatus” from “falx / “falc-” (sickle).
• lepak: /ˈlɛ-pɑk/ v., to loiter amilessly or idly; to loaf, relax, hang out.
• menticulture: /ˈmɛn-(t)ə-ˌkəl-tʃər/ n., the exercise and cultivation of the mind.
• perorate: /ˈper-ə-ˌrāt/ v., speak at length.
• sheg: /ʃɛɡ/ v., to provoke, vex, or annoy a person; to cheat or betray.
• toplofty: /ˈtäpˌ-lôftē/ adj., haughty and arrogant.
• wushu: /ˈwo͞o-SHo͞o/ n., the Chinese martial arts.

July 27, 2022 Word-Wednesday Feature
textuality
/ˌteks-CHo͞o-ˈal-ə-dē/ n., the quality or use of language characteristic of written works as opposed to spoken usage. Today we explore meaning of the meaning in text. From the perspective of literary theory, a text is any object that can be "read", which includes works of literature, a street sign, an arrangement of paths through a forest, or styles of hunting gear. In short, a text is a coherent set of signs that transmits some kind of informative message, where informative meaning carries the day, not the physical form by which it is presented.

Yes, persons interested in literary theory talk about text in terms of the original information content of a particular piece of writing: the arrangements of the letters of the words of the sentences or stanzas of the paragraphs or stanzas of the chapters or other collective arrangements of text-bits that compose the final publication.

Interested readers can explore transtextuality, intertextuality, paratextuality, architextuality, metatextuality, intersectionality, and sexting. The academic world of literary theory: our tax dollars hard at work. In our post-modern, Internet-saturated, multimedia conspicuous consumption of the meaningful world, where the medium is all to often the message, what do you really want your words to mean to your reader?

Shirley Hardie Jackson was one of the masters of playing with her words to create meaning. Other than WannaskaWriter's Sven and Ula Sagas, Wannaskan Almanac rarely features the art of the short story. Here's Shirley Jackson's short story, Call Me Ishmael for your textual appreciation:

“Yes,” she said. “It’s incredible.”

It was quite stupid of people, she thought, to make everything, even conversation, so interrelated and dependent that she could not say merely that it was incredible but must be referring to something preceding or obvious; nothing exists, she thought, unless it depends upon something previous; people are incapable of realizing anything that does not bear upon that interrelation. In this case, it was the number of warm days that was incredible (warm days being a factor in anyone’s understanding), instead of anything more important, and there seem to be so few important things, she thought desperately, besides the weather.

“I like it, though,” said her mother.

There. Her mother liked it. In the pattern which existed around and in and was a part of her mother, there was a place for liking the weather.

“Look,” said her mother. “She’s there again.”

Thus, something outside the pattern was only a subject for comment, never as real as the weather, never as permanent. Only a subject for “Look. She’s there again.”

“I thought she had moved.”

“And a good thing, too,” said her mother. “No better than she should be. Decent people expected to live with a woman who . . . with a woman like that. More than a person should be expected to put up with. I suggested to the landlord that he put her out.”

Again, it was not the concreteness of the act of forcing a woman out of a house that was important; it was the fact of mentioning it to the landlord.

“What a queer interpretation you put on things, Mother.”

“Queer?” said her mother. “Queer to refuse to live in the same house with that woman? And now she comes and stands on the corner. On the corner!”

The corner was important, more important than the woman; the woman derived her actuality from the place where she lived, her landlord, the people she lived with, the corner she stood on; there was no woman, there was a corner, and a corner was no place for a woman to stand, any more than a decent house was any place for her to live.

“She seems to be drunk. . . .”

“There,” said her mother, “don’t blame the poor creature; you don’t really know, and, anyway, she’s to be forgiven.”

The woman, then, existed to be forgiven, not blamed; not understood, forgiven.

“She’s probably tired,” said her mother. “But I can’t understand why she comes back here; the landlord says she lives so far away now.” She paused. “And not in the nicest part of town,” she added reflectively.

“I believe I’ll speak to her.”

“We should,” said her mother, making the decision, by the use of the “should,” one of nothing; thus, the woman lost the momentary personality and became again the object of a verb.

“My good woman,” said her mother (and again the woman regained personality for a moment, by the confusion resulting from the use of “good”), “aren’t you lost?”

The woman, gathering reality from the people in the house, from the corner, from being the object of a verb and the subject of an adjective, raised her eyes and looked levelly.

“Yes, thank you,” she said flatly. “Very well lost, thank you.”

And there was the confusion of a non-related thought scattering for a moment all of the pattern; her mother stared, the corner vanished; and then the pattern was reëstablished.

“I’m sure I don’t know what to make of it,” said her mother. “I’m sure I don’t understand it at all.”


From A Year with Rilke, July 27 Entry
To What Can We Turn, from First Duino Elegy

Oh, to what, then, can we turn
in our need?
Not to an angel. Not to a person.
Animals, perceptive as they are,
notice that we are not really at home
in this world of ours. Perhaps there is
a particular tree we see every day on the hillside,
or a street we have walked,
or the warped loyalty of habit
that does not abandon us.

Oh, and night, the night, when wind
hurls the universe at our faces.
For whom is night not there?




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.






*a qwerty keyboard.