Word-Wednesday for September 14, 2022

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for September 14, 2022, the thirty-seventh Wednesday of the year, the thirteenth Wednesday of summer, and the 257th day of the year, with 108 days remaining.


Wannaska Phenology Update for September 14, 2022
Sora 

Sora (Porzana carolina) is a small waterbird of the rail family Rallidae, sometimes also referred to as the sora rail or sora crake, that occurs throughout much of North America. Adult soras are 7.5–11.8 in long, with dark-marked brown upperparts, a blue-grey face and underparts, and black and white barring on the flanks. They have a short thick yellow bill, with black markings on the face at the base of the bill and on the throat. Sexes are similar, but young soras lack the black facial markings and have a whitish face and buff breast.

A migratory bird once ubiquitous in our fair state, numbers have declined precipitously since the first Minnesota Breeding Bird Distribution was conducted in 1892. Thankfully, Roseau County remains one of the few Minnesota counties with confirmed siting since the 2013 count.

September 14 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


September 14 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for September 14, 2022
Sunrise: 6:59am; Sunset: 7:40pm; 3 minutes, 32 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 9:31pm; Moonset: 12:01pm, waning gibbous, 81% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for September 14, 2022
                Average            Record              Today
High             67                     87                    70
Low              44                     26                    55


September 14 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Cream Filled Donut Day
• National Eat a Hoagie Day
• National Live Creative Day
• National Parents Day Off
• National Sober Day
• National Virginia Day
• Feast Day of Cormac mac Cuilennáin (or of Cashel)

September 14 Word Riddle
What do you call a rodent without a name?*


September 14 Word Pun
The antelope and the cantaloupe were thinking of getting hitched in Vegas. But one was against it and the other was unable to.


September 14 Walking into a Bar Grammar
Alliteration and Consonance walked across an arch before being barred from the bar.


September 14 Etymology Word of the Week
muse
/myo͞oz/ n., a person or personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist, from late 14c., "one of the nine Muses of classical mythology," daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, protectors of the arts; from Old French Muse and directly from Latin Musa, from Greek Mousa, "the Muse," also "music, song," ultimately from Proto-Indo-European root men- (1) "to think." Meaning "inspiring goddess of a particular poet" (with a lower-case m-) is from late 14c.

The nine muses of the Greek pantheon are:

Calliope was the muse of epic poetry.
Clio was the muse of history.
Erato was the muse of lyric poetry and love poetry.
Euterpe was the muse of music.
Melpomene was the muse of tragedy.
Polyhymnia was the muse of sacred poetry.
Terpsichore was the muse of dance.
Thalia was the muse of comedy.
Urania was the muse of astronomy.

Is it any wonder that inspiration can be so ephemeral?


September 14 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1607 Flight of the Earls from Lough Swilly, Donegal, Ireland.
• 1716 First lighthouse in American colonies lit at Boston Harbor.
• 1741 George Frideric Handel finishes his Messiah oratorio after working on it non-stop for 23 days.
• 1752 Britain and the British Empire (including the American colonies) adopt the Gregorian Calendar (no Sept 3 - Sept 13).
• 1814 Francis Scott Key pens the poem "Defence of Fort M'Henry", later known as "The Star-Spangled Banner" while witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry from a ship in Baltimore harbor.
• 1867 Karl Marx publishes Das Kapital Volume 1, his theory of the Capitalist system and how it is doomed to destroy itself.

September 14 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1580 Francisco Gómez de Quevedo, Spanish poet and writer.
• 1724 Ignaz Vitzthumb, Austrian musician.
• 1761 Pavel Lambert Mašek, Czech composer.
• 1769 Alexander von Humboldt, German naturalist and explorer.
• 1860 Hamlin Garland, American writer.
• 1879 Margaret Sanger, American nurse.
• 1882 Harald Fryklöf, Swedish composer.
• 1907  Janet McNeill, Irish novelist and playwright
• 1914 Robert McCloskey, American children's book writer and illustrator.
• 1924 Jitka Snížková, Czech composer.
• 1929 Larry Collins, American writer.
• 1929 Maurice Vachon, Canadian professional wrestler.
• 1930 Allan Bloom, American philosopher and author.
• 1936 Walter Koenig, aka Checkov from Star Trek.
• 1942 Bernard MacLaverty, Irish author.
• 1951 Volodymyr Melnykov, Ukrainian poet.
• 1983 Amy Winehouse, British singer-songwriter.

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

• abibliophobia: /ə-bib-lē-ə-‘fō-bē-ə/ n., the fear of running out of things to read.
• bewusstseinsschwelle: n., threshold of consciousness.
• deuterostome: /ˈdü-tə-rō-ˌstōm/ n., any of a major division (Deuterostomia) of the animal kingdom that includes the bilaterally symmetrical animals (such as the chordates) with indeterminate cleavage and a mouth that does not arise from the blastopore, where the anus comes first, e.g., homo sapiens.
• foozle: /FOO-zuhl/ v., to bungle; to execute a task incompetently; to play (a game or sport) poorly, esp. golf; n., a bad golf-stroke.
• inosculate: /in-ˈäs-kyə-ˌlāt/ v., join by intertwining or fitting closely together.
• matriot: /ˈmā-trē-ət/ n., a person who vigorously supports her/his personal values and is prepared to defend those values against oppositional values or detractors, as distinct from a patriot: a person who vigorously supports her/his country in like manner.
• peradventure: /per-əd-ˈven-CHər/ adv., it may be; maybe; possibly; perhaps.
• ristra: /ˈri-strə/ n., a string or garland of dried chilies or other produce, often used as a decoration.
• sibsomeness: /ˈsib-səm-nəs/ n., peacefulness; amity, concord.
• turophile: /TYOOR-oh-fahyl/ n., a cheese connoisseur; a cheese fancier; someone who loves cheese.

September 14, 2022 Word-Wednesday Feature
Inspiration
/ˌin-spə-ˈrā-SH(ə)n/ n., the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative; a sudden brilliant, creative, or timely idea. Once again, we consider the farthest-right regions of the Periodic Table of Word Elements (PTOWE), co-occupied — for now — by Imagination and Inspiration.

Last week’s exploration of imagination led Chairman Joe to share his preference for Inspiration. One wonders to what extend his experiences with growing up Catholic under the benevolent tutelage of Sister Eubestrabius may have influenced his preference…

Extensive research into famous words about the topic of Inspiration yielded four categories of experience: Positive, Conflicted, Dark, and Memory-bound. Word-Wednesday invites you to review the following words from each category, that you might be inspired to place your own personal muse within (or beyond) the pantheon described by others.

Positive Insights
Beauty arises out of human inspiration.

Richard Dawkins

Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say…that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.

George Eliot

To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this manner for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.

Arnold Bennett

Thought is a form of love, if it be inspired.

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.

Brenda Ueland

Inspiration is the greatest gift because it opens your life to many new possibilities. Each day becomes more meaningful and your life is enhanced when your actions are guided by what inspires you.

Dr. Bernie S. Siegel

Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is fine.

Democritus

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion who cannot write well under other circumstances.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Conflicted Perspectives
Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn't know; but I am sure that it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

Aaron Copland

It’s lack that gives us inspiration. It’s not fullness.

Ray Bradbury

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

Winston Churchill

When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it.

Sigmund Freud

If you wait for inspiration or that thing to hit you, you’re dead. Action breeds inspiration more than inspiration breeds action.

Willem Dafoe

Inspiration cannot be willed, although it can be wooed.

Anthony Storr

I could never tell where inspiration begins and impulse leaves off. I suppose the answer is in the outcome. If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse.

Beryl Markham

Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.

Jack London

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

We may give advice, but we cannot inspire conduct.

François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.

Peter De Vries

Ninety-eight per cent of genius is hard work. As for genius being inspired, inspiration is in most cases another word for perspiration.

Thomas Edison

Inspiration comes during work, not before it.

Madeleine L’Engle

I don’t believe in writer’s block or waiting for inspiration. If you’re a writer, you sit down and write.

Elmore Leonard

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.

Igor Stravinsky

Darker Side
Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance.

Jean Anouilh

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it’s better than no inspiration at all.

Rita Mae Brown

The ultimate inspiration is the deadline. That’s when you have to do what needs to be done.

Steve Karmen

Inspiration always comes when a man really wants it to, but it doesn't always go when he wants.

Charles Baudelaire

Memory
Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

Henry David Thoreau

Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.

Ned Rorem

Inspiration impels us to experience what has not yet occurred, but is already known.

Jim DeKornfeld

Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.

Friedrich von Schlegel

My greatest inspiration…is memory.

Paul Theroux

From A Year with Rilke, September 14 Entry
Go Forth, from The Book of Hours I, 53

And God said to me, Go forth:

For I am king of time.
But to you I am only the shadowy one
who knows with you your loneliness
and sees through your eyes.

He sees through my eyes
in all the ages.

Autumn Landscape at Dusk
by  Vincent van Gogh

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.








*Anony Mouse