Word-Wednesday for September 7, 2022

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for September 7, 2022, the thirty-sixth Wednesday of the year, the twelfth Wednesday of summer, and the 250th day of the year, with 115 days remaining.


Wannaska Phenology Update for September 7, 2022
Dog Vomit Slime Mold
Fuligo septica is a plasmodial slime mold manifesting in the wild as an irregular cushion-like mass, a slimy sheet, or a crust-like sheet. Just like its canid namesake, dog vomit slime mold has a worldwide distribution, occurring on every continent except Greenland and Antarctica. Found from May to October growing on the rotten wood of stumps, logs, and wood mulches, or on garden soil enriched with manure, or on living plants, dog vomit slime mold may migrate one meter or more to nearby food sources, feeding on bacteria, spores of fungi and non-flowering plants, protozoa, and nonliving organic matter. Its common name accurately describes its appearance, and it is not edible.

If you’re looking for some good, educational nature programming, Word-Wednesday recommends Fantastic Fungi, available for streaming on Netflix.

September 7 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


September 7 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for September 7, 2022
Sunrise: 6:49am; Sunset: 7:55pm; 3 minutes, 30 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 7:21pm; Moonset: 2:35am, waxing gibbous, 85% illuminated.

Next full moon: September 10


Temperature Almanac for September 7, 2022
                Average            Record              Today
High             70                     93                     81
Low              47                     28                     66


September 7 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Acorn Squash Day
• National Beer Lover’s Day
• National Grandma Moses Day
• National Grateful Patient Day
• National Neither Snow nor Rain Day
• National New Hampshire Day
• National Salami Day
• National Grandparents Day
• Feast Day of Anastasius the Fuller

September 7 Word Riddle
How do you tell the sex of an ant?*


September 7 Word Pun
Last week, Sven took a walk in Roseau’s River View Park after getting a great deal on socks at Bead Gypsy. Along the way, he met a girl who had just opened up a battery kiosk by the playground, where she sells C cells down by the seesaw.


September 7 Walking into a Bar Grammar
A superlative walks into THE BEST BAR EVER!


September 7 Etymology Word of the Week
imagination
/iˌm-a-jə-ˈnā-SH(ə)n/ n., the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses, mid-14c., ymaginacion, from Old French imaginacion "concept, mental picture; hallucination," from Latin imaginationem (nominative imaginatio) "imagination, a fancy," noun of action from past participle stem of imaginari "to form an image of, represent"), from imago "an image, a likeness," from stem of imitari "to copy, imitate" (from Proto-Indo-European root aim- "to copy").


September 7 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1251 BC A solar eclipse on this date might mark the birth of legendary Heracles at Thebes, Greece.
• 1630 City of Boston, Massachusetts, is founded.
• 1813 "Uncle Sam" first used to refer to the US, by Troy Post of New York.
• 1911 French poet Guillaume Apollinaire is arrested and put in jail on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum.
• 1928 Sophie Treadwell's Machinal premieres.

September 7 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1631 Clemens Thieme, German composer.
• 1705 Matthäus Günther, German painter.
• 1731 Elisabetta de Gambarini, English composer.
• 1784 František Max Kníže, Czech composer.
• 1860 Grandma Moses [Anna Mary Robertson], American painter.
• 1887 Edith Sitwell, English poet.
• 1889 Bruce Frederick Cummings, English author.
• 1900 Taylor Caldwell [Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell], Anglo-American novelist.
• 1909 Elia Kazan, Greek-American director.
• 1924 Bridie Gallagher, Irish singer.
• 1927 Eric Hill, British children's books author and illustrator.
• 1930 Sonny Rollins, American jazz saxophonist.
• 1936 Buddy Holly.
• 1962 Jennifer Egan, American novelist.

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

• ambedo: /am-'bē-dō/ n. a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details—raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee—which leads to a dawning awareness of the haunting fragility of life, a mood whose only known cure is the vuvuzela.
• boodle: /ˈbo͞o-dl/ n., money, especially that gained or spent illegally or improperly.
• coboss: /kə-ˈbɑs/ int. U.S. regional (northern) and Canadian, used as a call to summon or attract the attention of cattle.
• etiolate: /ˈē-tē-ə-ˌlāt/ v., to make pale; to deprive of natural vigor, make feeble.
• flamfoo: /FLAHM-foo/ n., a gaudily dressed woman who thinks she represents the height of fashion.
• gudgeon: /ˈɡəj-ən/ n. a credulous or easily fooled person.
• hippocras: /hip-uh-kras/ n., an old medicinal cordial made of wine mixed with spices.
• nudnik: /ˈno͝o-dnik/ n., a pestering, nagging, or irritating person; a bore.
• recusant: /rə-ˈkyo͞o-z(ə)nt/ n., a person who refuses to submit to an authority or to comply with a regulation.
• vuvuzela: /ˌvo͞o-vəˈ-ze-lə/ n., a long horn blown by fans at soccer matches in South Africa.
• wonder-wench: /WUHN-der-wench/ n., a feminine term of endearment for a sweetheart; an affectionate form of address for someone with whom one is in love.

September 7, 2022 Word-Wednesday Feature
Imagination or Inspiration
The Periodic Table of Writing Elements (PTOWE), discusses several weeks ago, positions Inspiration and Imagination on the farthest right position of the table. This week, we feature the words of writers that endorse Imagination over Inspiration.

Imagination, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.

AMBROSE BIERCE, in The Devil’s Dictionary

The Possible's slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination.

EMILY DICKINSON

When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning.

ALBERT CAMUS

Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun.

GEORGE SCIALABBA

Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute.

FRANKLIN PEARCE ADAMS

The gift of imagination is by no means an exclusive property of the artist; it is a gift we all share; to some degree or other all of us, all of you, are endowed with the powers of fantasy.

LEONARD BERSTEIN

To search for truth, one has to be drunk with imagination.

LEONARD BERSTEIN, yet again

Children are born with imaginations in mint condition, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Then life corrects for grandiosity.

PHYLLIS THEROUX

His writing is sharp, lucid and logical, embodying imagination in the true sense of the word: common sense with wings.

KINGLEY AMIS writing about Arthur C. Clarke

“Imagination” is a word which derives from the making of images in the mind, from what Wordsworth called “the inward eye.”

JACOB BRONOWSKI

Imagination is the highest kite that can fly.

LAUREN BACALL

Man is an imagining being.

GASTON BACHELARD

Imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her cry, and insensate to her struggles?

CHARLOTTE BRONTË

Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.

AGATHA CHRISTIE, Hercule Poirot speaking

He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet.

JOSEPH JOUBERT

Imagination took the reins, and reason, slow-paced, though sure-footed, was unequal to a race with so eccentric and flighty a companion.

FANNY BURNEY

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Only in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

JOSEPH CONRAD

The imagination is far better at inventing tortures than life because the imagination is a demon within us
and it knows where to strike, where it hurts.

ANAÏS NIN

At present we know only that the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.

GEORGE ORWELL

What year is it in your imagination?

LYNDA BARRY

What is now proved was once only imagined.

WILLIAM BLAKE

This world is but canvas to our imaginations.

HENRY DAVID THEROUX

The function of imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.

G.K.CHESTERSON

To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination.

CYNTHIA OZICK

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

From A Year with Rilke, September 7 Entry
Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes (V), from New Prams

Eurydice was no longer the fair beauty
celebrated in Orpheus’ singing,
no longer the fragrance and landscape of the bed,
no more the property of any man.

She was already unbound, like loosened hair,
surrendered like falling rain,
and generously offered to all creation.
She was already root.

And when, suddenly,
the god held her back and with anguish
spoke the words: /he has turned around,/
she was puzzled and softly answered, /Who?/

Up ahead, dark against the brightness of a gateway,
stood someone whose features she did not recognize.
He stood and saw how on the pale ribbon of the meadow path
the messenger god had silently turned
to watch the form of one retracing her steps,
constricted by the winding sheets,
uncertain, meek, without impatience.

Landscape
by  Paul Cézanne

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









*Drop it in water. If it sinks, it’s a girlant; if it floats, it’s …