Word-Wednesday for September 21, 2022

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for September 21, 2022, the thirty-eighth Wednesday of the year, the fourteenth and last Wednesday of summer, and the 264th day of the year, with 101 days remaining. Brought to you again by Bead Gypsy Studio in downtown Roseau, featuring a 20% off sale for all necklaces with chains, in stock or new orders, for the entire month of September.


Wannaska Phenology Update for September 21, 2022
Sandhill Crane Migration
Early records suggest that sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) were common residents south and west of Minnesota's forested region until the mid-1870's. Ecologically speaking, the Minnesota DNR notes that sandhill cranes employ a "slow" life-history strategy: long-lived, they defer breeding for several years after fledging; they exhibit very low reproductive rates; and they experience high year-to-year survival rates. However, sandhill crane populations are more vulnerable to exploitation than species exhibiting "faster" life histories. So it comes as no surprise that rapid human expansion in the 1880's and settlement of Minnesota's prairie region resulted in the extirpation of cranes in much of their former range. Once common, the sandhill crane was considered rare by 1900 and it has been estimated that only 10-25 pairs were nesting in Minnesota in the mid-1940's. 

The recent distribution of sandhill cranes in the state consists of two separate populations, both of the greater subspecies: cranes in northwest Minnesota belong to the mid-continent population, while those in central and east-central Minnesota belong to the eastern population. Thankfully, the sandhill crane populations have made a steady, if not rapid, recovery since then. Beautiful in song and in flight, we wish them pleasant safe travels until next spring.

 

 

September 21 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


September 21 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for September 21, 2022
Sunrise: 7:09am; Sunset: 7:25pm; 3 minutes, 33 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 1:57am; Moonset: 6:17pm, waning crescent, 16% illuminated.
Fall equinox happens tomorrow at 8:03 pm.

Temperature Almanac for September 21, 2022
                Average            Record              Today
High             64                     87                    55
Low              41                     22                    36


September 21 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Chai Day
• National New York Day
• National Pecan Cookie Day
• World Gratitude Day
• International Day of Peace
• Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos

September 21 Word Riddle
What nine-letter word contains only five different letters?*


September 21 Word Pun
Tea Mill is my favorite anagram of all time!


September 21 Walking into a Bar Grammar
An anthimeria walk barred.


September 21 Etymology Word of the Week
serendipity
serendipity: /ˌser-ən-ˈdip-ə-dē/ n., the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way, a rare word before the 20th century, coined by Horace Walpole in a letter to Horace Mann dated Jan. 28, 1754, but which apparently was not published until 1833.

Walpole said he formed the word from the Persian fairy tale "The Three Princes of Serendip" (an English version was published in 1722) whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of" [Walpole].

Serendip, (also Serendib), attested by 1708 in English, is an old name for Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), from Arabic Sarandib, from Sanskrit Simhaladvipa "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island."

Attention was called to the word in an article in The Saturday Review of June 16, 1877 ["An ungrateful world has probably almost forgotten Horace Walpole's attempt to enrich the English language with the term "Serendipity." etc.]; it begins to turn up in publication 1890s but still is not in Century Dictionary (1902).


September 21 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1187 Saladin finds a new barber.
• 1792 French Revolution: The National Convention passes a proclamation announcing the formal abolition of the French monarchy.
• 1897 New York Sun runs famous "Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus" editorial.
• 1928 My Weekly Reader magazine made its debut.
• 1937 J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is published.
• 1979 Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin publish "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm", introducing the word spandrels into evolutionary biology.
• 1983 David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross premieres.

September 21 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1737 Francis Hopkinson, American author.
• 1809 Sophia Hawthorne, American writer, painter and illustrator,.
• 1833 Josef Richard Rozkošný, Czech composer.
• 1849 Edmund Gosse, English poet and author.
• 1866 H. G. Wells.
• 1869 Henryk Melcer-Szczawiński, Polish pianist, composer, and conductor.
• 1874 Gustav Holst, English composer.
• 1902 Howie Morenz, Canadian Hockey Hall of Fame center.
• 1907 Helen Foster Snow, American journalist.
• 1912 Charles "Chuck" Jones, American animator and cartoonist best known for his work with Warner Bros. (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, Porky Pig).
• 1929 Bernard Williams, English moral philosopher.
• 1934 Leonard Cohen, Canadian poet and singer-songwriter.
• 1947 Stephen King.
• 1947 Marsha Norman, American playwright.
• 1950 Bill Murray.
• 1957 Ethan Coen.
• 1970 Samantha Power, Irish American author and diplomat.
• 1983 Sarah Rees Brennan, Irish children's book author.

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

• anosognosia: /a-nō-ˌsäg-ˈnō-zh(ē-)ə/ n., an inability or refusal to recognize a defect or disorder that is clinically evident.
• bovarism: /ˈbō-və-ˌrizəm/ n., a conception of oneself as other than one is to the extent that one's general behavior is conditioned or dominated by the conception, especially, domination by such an idealized, glamorized, glorified, or otherwise unreal conception of oneself that it results in dramatic personal conflict (as in tragedy), in markedly unusual behavior (as in paranoia), or in great achievement; conceit.
• cenotaph: /SEN-uh-taf/ n. a sepulchral monument erected in memory of a deceased person whose body is buried elsewhere.
• deliquesce: /ˌdel-ə-ˈkwes/ v., (of organic matter) become liquid, typically during decomposition; (of a solid) become liquid by absorbing moisture from the air.
• interlard: /ˌin-(t)ər-ˈlärd/ v., intersperse or embellish speech or writing with different material.
• labanotation: /ˌlā-bə-nō-ˈtā-shən/ n., a method of recording bodily movement (as in dance) on a staff by means of symbols (as of direction) that can be aligned with musical accompaniment.
• mum: /məm/ v., act in a traditional masked mime or a mummers’ play.
• psionic: /saɪ-ˈɑ-nɪk/ adj., relating to or involving psychic or paranormal phenomena or powers; having psychic ability; /spec./ using dowsing and homeopathy in medical diagnosis and treatment.
• ravelment: /RAV-uhl-muhnt/ n., entanglement; confusion.
• spandrel: /ˈspan-drəl/ n., in evolutionary biology, a phenotypic trait that is a byproduct of the evolution of some other characteristic, rather than a direct product of adaptive selection.

September 21, 2022 Word-Wednesday Feature
anthimeria
/an-THe-'mir-ē-ä/ n., from Greek: ἀντί, antí, "against, opposite", and μέρος, méros, "part", the usage of a word in a new grammatical form. For linguists, like Kim, this is called conversion: when a noun becomes a verb, it is a denominal verb; when a verb becomes a noun, it is a deverbal noun. In English, most anthimerias undergo conversion from noun to verb. "Book the flight to Ireland," Erin told Ula. Or, after the flight, "I could use a good sleep," Ula said to Erin. Other conversion substitutions include an adjective used as a noun, as in "Sven dove into the foaming wet,"; interjection as verb, as in "Don't aha me, Festus Marvinson!"; a verb as a noun, as in "Help! I need some eat!" said Monique after her long trip to Wisconsin.

Like slang, anthimeria sometimes becomes everyday accepted language rather than just a passing trend. While the term "hashtagging" is probably temporary, "texting" has emerged as a permanent fixture of the OED's English language word list, just as "typing" became an accepted anthimeria in the twentieth century.

So, who cares? Several important writers have used anthimeria to good effect. 

Shakespeare used anthimeria:
I'll unhair thy head.

Antony and Cleopatra, Act II, scene v.

When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter, when the thunder would not peace at my bidding—there I found ’em, there I smelt ’em out. Go to, they are not men o’ their words.

King Lear, Act IV, scene vi.

and Jane Austin:
Let me not suppose that she dares go about, Emma Woodhouse-ing me!

Emma

and Ernest Hemingway:
Me, dictionary-ing heavily, "Where was the one they were watching?"

Green Hills of Africa

and Thomas Hardy:
"The parishioners about here,” continued Mrs. Day, not looking at any living being, but snatching up the brown delf tea-things, “are the laziest, gossipest, poachest, jailest set of any ever I came among. And they’ll talk about my teapot and tea-things next, I suppose!"

Under the Greenwood Tree

and Tom Wolfe:
Flaubert me no Flauberts. Bovary me no Bovarys. Zola me no Zolas. And exuberance me no exuberances. Leave this stuff for those who huckster in it and give me, I pray you, the benefits of your fine intelligence and your high creative faculties, all of which I so genuinely and profoundly admire.

in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

and Saul Bellow:
I’ve often got the kid in my mind’s eye. She’s a dolichocephalic Trachtenberg, with her daddy’s narrow face and Jesusy look.

More Die of Heartbreak

and Kate Daniels:

Until then, I’d never liked

petunias, their heavy stems,

the peculiar spittooning sound

of their name. Now I loved

a petunia for all it was worth

—a purplish blue bloom

waving in a red clay pot outside

an office window.

In the Marvelous Dimension

and Nancy Sinatra:

Yeah, you keep lyin’ when you oughta be truthin’

And you keep losing when you oughta not bet

You keep samin’ when you oughta be a changin’

Now, what’s right is right but you ain’t been right yet

These Boots Are Made for Walking

and Bill Watterson:

Calvin: I like to verb words.
Hobbes: What?
Calvin: I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when "access" was a thing? Now it's something you do. It got verbed. Verbing weirds language.
Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.

Calvin and Hobbes

From A Year with Rilke, September 21 Entry
The Portal, from New Poems

So much life can be seen here.
Just as on a painted stage set
the world can be seen; and just as the hero
performs against this backdrop,

so here in the darkness of this portal
unfolds an eternal drama.
It is as endless and everywhere as a Father God
who wondrously transforms himself

into a Son, whose role is divided up
in many little walk-on parts,
all drawn from misery’s repertoire.

For, as we know, it is only from among
the blind, the outcast, the demented,
that, as a single actor, the Savior comes forth.

Through the Stargate
by  Tania Marie

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







*addressee