Word-Wednesday for August 31, 2022

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for August 31, 2022, the thirty-fifth Wednesday of the year, the eleventh Wednesday of summer, the last Wednesday of August, and the 243rd day of the year, with 121 days remaining.

Brought to you once again by Bead Gypsy Studio, 101 Main Avenue North, in downtown Roseau, on the very, very, very last day of their August Sock $ale — 10% off the first pair; 20% off the second pair; and 30% off the third pair. Mention Word-Wednesday when you ask about fourth, fifth, and sixth pair rates in-person, and see where that gets you.


Wannaska Phenology Update for August 31, 2022
Time to Gather Rose Hips
The rose hip or rosehip, also called rose haw, rose hep, and hipster rose, is the accessory fruit of the various species of rose plant, where two species are most common: Rosa moyesii and Rosa rugosa. Rosa moyesii have large red flagon-shaped hips, like the ones so common around Wannaska. Rose hips begin to form after pollination of flowers in spring or early summer, and ripen in late summer through autumn. It has been used for osteoarthritis and contains vitamin C.

Here's a recipe for rose hip jelly.

August 31 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling.


August 31 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually, mostly.


Earth/Moon Almanac for August 31, 2022
Sunrise: 6:39am; Sunset: 8:09pm; 3 minutes, 27 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 11:23am; Moonset: 9:56pm, waxing crescent, 20% illuminated.
Today is the last day of meteorological summer.

Temperature Almanac for August 31, 2022
                Average            Record              Today
High             72                     88                    81
Low              49                     32                    62


August 31 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Diatomaceous Earth Day
• National Eat Outside Day
• National Matchmaker Day
• National South Carolina Day
• National Trail Mix Day

August 31 Word Riddle
What do you call a little bird with extremely, very, muchest fast wings who pushes doorbells?*


August 31 Word Pun
Dead parakeet for sale
Not going cheap


August 31 Walking into a Bar Grammar
Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.


August 31 Etymology Word of the Week
cunning
/ˈkəniNG/ n., skill in achieving one’s ends by deceit, from c. 1300, conninge, "knowledge, understanding, information, learning," a sense now obsolete, verbal noun from connen, cunnen "to have ability or capacity," from Old English cunnan. By mid-14c. as "ability to understand, intelligence; wisdom, prudence;" sense of "cleverness, shrewdness, practical skill in a secret or crafty manner" is by late 14c.

adj., having or showing skill in achieving one’s ends by deceit or evasion, from early 14c., conning, "learned, skillful, possessing knowledge," present participle of connen, cunnen "to know," from Old English cunnan, from Proto-Indo-European root gno- "to know." Sense of "skillfully deceitful, characterized by crafty ingenuity" is probably by late 14c.


August 31 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1142 Possible date for establishment of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) League.
• 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson gives his famous "The American Scholar" speech to Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, declares American literary independence from Europe.
• 1902 Split skirt first worn by Mrs Adolph Landeburg (horse rider).
• 1955 First solar-powered automobile demonstrated in Chicago.
• 1968 Verne Gagne beats Dr. X to become NWA champ.
• 1987 The Great Potato Incident: Minor league Williamsport Bills catcher Dave Bresnahan attempts to lure an opposing baserunner off third base using a potato carved to look like a baseball. Umpire calls runner safe, and the catcher is fined $50 and released by the team.
• 2006 Stolen on August 22, 2004, Edvard Munch's famous painting "The Scream" is recovered from a raid by Norwegian police.

August 31 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 12 Caligula.
• 1806 Charles Leghorn Lever, Irish writer.
• 1810  František Foghorn Doucha, Czech poet.
• 1855 Stefan Surzynski, Polish conductor and composer.
• 1870 Maria Montessori.
• 1879 Alma Schindler Mahler, Viennese composer and Gustav's better half.
• 1882 Charles O'Neill, Canadian composer and bandmaster.
• 1885 DuBose Heyward, American novelist.
• 1907 William Shawn, American magazine editor.
• 1908 Conrad Baden, Norwegian composer.
• 1908 William Saroyan, American novelist and playwright.
• 1919 Amrita Preetam, Indian poet and author.
• 1942 Barnyard Dawg.
• 1944 Jos LeDuc, Canadian professional wrestler.
• 1945 (George Ivan)"Van" Morrison, Northern Irish singer-songwriter.
• 1946 Foghorn Leghorn.
• 1964 Raymond P. Hammond, American poet.

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

• adynaton: /ˌæ-dɪ-ˈnɑ-tɒn/ n., a figure of speech in the form of hyperbole taken to such extreme lengths as to insinuate a complete impossibility, e.g., pull one up by one’s own bootstraps.
• bethel: /ˈbeTH-əl/ n., a holy place; a chapel for seamen.
• coverslut: /KUH-ver-slut/ n., an outer garment worn to conceal untidy clothes; a long apron used to hide an untidy dress; any clothing slipped on to hide untidiness beneath.
• grufeling: /gro͞o-fe-liNG/: v., to lie wrapped up and in a comfortable manner.
• medick: /ˈmed-ik/ n., a plant of the pea family related to alfalfa, some kinds of which are grown for fodder or green manure and some kinds of which are troublesome weeds.
• nonesuch: /ˈnən-ˌsəCH/ n., a person or thing that is regarded as perfect or excellent.
• rhyparography: /rɪp-ə-ˈrɑ-ɡrə-fi/ n., the painting of distasteful or sordid subjects. Also: writing about distasteful or sordid subjects.
• stygian: /ˈstij-ē-ən/ adj., relating to the Styx River; very dark.
• thrawn: /THrôn/ adj., twisted; crooked; perverse; ill-tempered.
• wabi-sabi: /ˌwɑ-biˈsɑ-bi/ adj., relating to or designating a Japanese aesthetic or world view characterized by finding beauty in imperfection, impermanence, or simplicity; also: designating a style, appearance, etc., reflecting this aesthetic.

August 31, 2022 Word-Wednesday Feature
determiners
/di-ˈtər-mə-nər/ n., a word that makes specific the denotation of a noun phrase. Several Wannaskan Almanac contributors are self-described grammarians, but for the rest of us, Word-Wednesday explores an odd, but important bit of grammar. Of the eleven (and counting) varieties of grammar — Comparative, Generative, Mental, Pedagogical, Theoretical, Traditional, Transformational, Universal, and Wannaskan — determiners fall best under the reference or traditional headings.

Grammarians have classified nine categories of determiners:

• definite article: the
• indefinite articles : a, an
• demonstratives: this, that, these, those
• pronouns and possessive determiners: my, your, his, her, its, our, their
• quantifiers: a few, a little, much, many, a lot of, most, some, any, enough
• numbers: one, ten, thirty
• distributives: all, both, half, either, neither, each, every
• difference words: other, another
• pre-determiners: such, what, rather, quite

Writers seem to have the most fun with playing with some of the quantifiers and pre-determiners as stand-alone words, or using a various words from several different categories of determiners to jar our left hemisphere rationality. For example, in Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter notifies Alice, “You’ve lost your muchness.” Then there's J.D. Salinger's use of the word suchness in Franny and Zooey:

Abruptly, then, and very quickly, she went into the farthest and most anonymous-looking of the seven or eight enclosures — which, by luck, didn't require a coin for entrance — closed the door behind her, and, with some little difficulty, manipulated the bolt to a locked position. Without any apparent regard to the suchness of her environment, she sat down. She brought her knees together very firmly, as if to make herself a smaller, more compact unit. Then she placed her hands, vertically, over her eyes and pressed the heels hard, as though to paralyze the optic nerve and drown all images into a voidlike black. Her extended fingers, though trembling, or because they were trembling, looked oddly graceful and pretty. She held that tense, almost fetal position for a suspensory moment — then broke down. She cried for fully five minutes.

Humorists love to play with the quantifiers. Garrison Keillor is fond of modifying the certainty of his Lake Wobegon characters with the determiner mostly. The animal staff at Word-Wednesday are very, very, very, very, very, fond of creative determiners with regard to treats or food portions, suchly as mucher and muchest, not to mention all, both, many, a lot of, most, either, another, quite, any, and every — in various, often long and repetitive combinations.

From A Year with Rilke, August 31 Entry
The Innerness of All Things, from Book of Hours II, 22

The Innerness of All Things
You create yourself in ever-changing shapes
that rise from the stuff of our days—
unsung, unmourned, undescribed,
like a forest we never knew.

You are the deep innerness of all things,
the last word that can never be spoken.
To each of us you reveal yourself differently:
to the ship as a coastline, to the shore as a ship.

Beach with Figures and Sea with Ship
by  Vincent van Gogh

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







*a humdinger