Word-Wednesday for October 26, 2022

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for October 26, 2022, the forty-third Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of fall, and the 299th day of the year, with 66 days remaining.


Wannaska Phenology Update for October 26, 2022
Muskrat Houses are Ready
Building homes from the same plants they eat, muskrats have finished their homes for the coming winter, but these homes seldom last for more than one winter season. Muskrats are almost perfectly suited for their watery Wannaskan way of life. Muskrats grow two layers of fur: long, heavy guard hairs provide the animal’s reddish-brown coloring and protect a thick, soft inner layer of hairs. Their soft underfur traps tiny air bubbles that help the muskrat to float, and underfur also keeps the muskrat’s skin dry and warm.

Since there is currently no collective noun for muskrat, please submit your ideas.


October 26 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


October 26 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for October 26, 2022
Sunrise: 8:01am; Sunset: 6:14pm; 3 minutes, 20 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 9:31am; Moonset: 6:48pm, waxing crescent, 2% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for October 26, 2022
                Average            Record              Today
High             45                     73                     44
Low              27                      6                      30


October 26 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Day of the Deployed
• National Financial Crime Fighter Day
• National Mincemeat Day
• National Mule Day
• National Pumpkin Day
• National Tennessee Day
• Intersex Awareness Day

October 26 Pre-Halloween Word Riddle
Why don’t zombies like to eat ghosts?*


October 26 Word Pun

October 26 Walking into a Bar Grammar
Who ever heard of a rhetorical question walking into a bar?


October 26 Etymology Word of the Week
verse
/vərs/ n., writing arranged with a metrical rhythm, typically having a rhyme, from the late Old English (replacing Old English fers, an early West Germanic borrowing directly from Latin), "line or section of a psalm or canticle," later "line of poetry" (late 14c.), from Anglo-French and Old French vers "line of verse; rhyme, song," from Latin versus "a line, row, line of verse, line of writing," from Proto-Indo-European root wer- "to turn, bend." The metaphor is of plowing, of "turning" from one line to another (vertere = "to turn") as a plowman does.


October 26 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1366 Comet 55P/1366 U1 (Tempel-Tuttle) approaches 0.0229 AUs of Earth.
• 1492 Lead (graphite) pencils first used.
• 1861 Pony Express (Missouri to California) ends after 19 months.
• 1892 Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases first published by African American journalist Ida B. Wells in Memphis, Tennessee.
• 1931 Eugene O'Neill's play cycle Mourning Becomes Electra premieres.
• 1970 Doonesbury comic strip debuts in 28 newspapers.

October 26 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1685 Domenico Scarlatti, Italian composer.
• 1746 Antonio Rosetti, Czech composer and double bass player.
• 1861 Joža Uprka, Czech painter.
• 1871 Guillermo Kahlo, German-Mexican photographer and father of Frida Kahlo.
• 1911 Mahalia Jackson, American gospel singer.
• 1911 Sorley MacLean, Scottish poet.
• 1913 Stuart J. Byrne, American science fiction author.
• 1930 John Arden, English novelist and playwright.
• 1945 Pat Conroy, American writer.
• 1947 Trevor Joyce, Irish poet.
• 1952 Andrew Motion, English poet, British Poet Laureate.
• 1953 Jennifer Roberson, American science fiction author.

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

• anent: /ə-‘nent/ proposition, concerning; about.
• bolide: /ˈbō-līd/ n., a large meteor that explodes in the atmosphere.
• disaffected: /ˌdis-ə-ˈfekt-əd/ adj., dissatisfied with the people in authority and no longer willing to support them.
• eccedentesiast: /ek-si-dən—TĒ-sē-ast/ n., someone who fakes a smile.
• hogreeve: /'hôɡ-ɡrēv/ n., a former New England town officer responsible for the impounding of stray hogs.
• kench: /ˈkench/ v., Old English, to laugh out loud.
• psychrophile: /ˈsī-krō-ˌfīl/ n., an organism that thrives in cold temperatures.
• synesthete: /ˈsi-nəs-ˌthēt/ n., a person who experiences a subjective sensation or image of a sense (as of color) other than the one (as of sound) being stimulated, where the synesthete registers a particular smell as inherently endowed with a particular color, or a number with a sound, or a tactile texture with a smell.
• verbicide: /ˈvər-bə-ˌsīd/ n., deliberate distortion of the sense of a word (as in punning); one who distorts the sense of a word.
• welkin: /ˈwel-kən/ n., the sky or heaven.

October 26, 2022 Word-Wednesday Feature
converse
/kən-ˈvərs/ v., engage in conversation. Those who read Mr. Hot Coco’s post yesterday may have resonated with his message about people coming together despite their differences. Where his the model of competitive sports depends on metaphors of power, conquest, and subjugation, citizens of a democracy truly live, work, and play on the same team for a common purpose and mutual goals with respect to our mutually interdependent personal liberties.

Interestingly, the etymology of the verb converse stems from the etymology of the word verse, where the Proto-Indo-European origin is the root wer, with such widespread linguistic commonalities as:

• Sanskrit vartate "turns round, rolls;"
• Avestan varet- "to turn;" Hittite hurki- "wheel";
• Greek rhatane "stirrer, ladle";
• Latin vertere (frequentative versare) "to turn, turn back, be turned; convert, transform, translate; be changed," versus "turned toward or against";
• Old Church Slavonic vrŭteti "to turn, roll," Russian vreteno "spindle, distaff";
• Lithuanian verčiu, versti "to turn";
• German werden, Old English weorðan "to become";
• Old English -weard "toward," originally "turned toward," weorthan "to befall," wyrd "fate, destiny," literally "what befalls one";
• Welsh gwerthyd "spindle, distaff";
• and of course, Old Irish frith "against."

   
The various forms of this common root form all or part of many words including, adverse; anniversary; avert; awry; controversy; converge; converse (adj.) "exact opposite;" convert; diverge; divert; evert; extroversion; extrovert; gaiter; introrse; introvert; invert; inward; malversation; obverse; peevish; pervert; prose; raphe; reverberate; revert; rhabdomancy; rhapsody; rhombus; ribald; sinistrorse; stalwart; subvert; tergiversate; transverse; universe; verbena; verge (v.1) "tend, incline;" vermeil; vermicelli; vermicular; vermiform; vermin; versatile; verse (n.) "poetry;" version; verst; versus; vertebra; vertex; vertigo; vervain; vortex; -ward; warp; weird; worm; worry; worth (adj.) "significant, valuable, of value;" worth (v.) "to come to be;" wrangle; wrap; wrath; wreath; wrench; wrest; wrestle; wriggle; wring; wrinkle; wrist; writhe; wrong; wroth; wry.

Careful readers will note two consistent themes in this word-group: opposition and dynamic engagement. Mr. Hot Coco rightly attributed significant responsibility for bringing a team together on the shoulders of the coach metaphor, which is often a disappointing fact of civic life in the realm of politics. However, when it comes to the individual citizens of a democracy, we are each responsible for practicing and refining the art of our own effective conversation. If each of us embraces the listening side of our conversational responsibilities — not formulating our next argumentative response, but seeking to see/feel/understand our interlocutor's personal experiences as she/he/they speak — we engage in the mutual turning one another, like the many blades of a disc plow, lifting and aerating soil on the field of our democratic opportunity.

Here are the words of some writer's who have given thought to the arts and craft of productive and unproductive conversation:

At its scintillating best, conversation is a social game in which all can join, and at which all can score. It is a game that requires neither courts, links, nor other equipment. It is always in season, and will be popular as long as civilization itself endures.

Lillian Eichler

The art of conversation, or the qualifications for a good companion, is a certain self-control, which now holds the subject, now lets it go, with a respect for the emergencies of the moment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In conversation and prayer, say less and listen more.

Leonard Roy Frank

A good conversationalist is not one who remembers what was said, but says what someone wants to remember.

John Mason Brown

Conversation is like a dance, taking turns, following and leading.

Loren Ekroth

The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself; he who goes away pleased with himself and his own wit is also greatly pleased with you.

Jean De La Bruyere

It is almost axiomatic that the best conversationalist is really the best listener.

Arlene Francis

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but, far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

Dorothy Nevill

Love and the union of love is impossible without conversation.

Mortimer J. Adler

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.

Emily Post

Someone has said that conversation is sex for the soul.

Isabel Allende

The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man’s observation, not overturning it.

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

Conversation is the music of the mind, an intellectual orchestra, where all the instruments should bear a part, but where none should play together.

Charles Caleb Colton

Debate is masculine; conversation is feminine.

A. Bronson Alcott

One is always wrong to open a conversation with the devil, for, however he goes about it, he always insists upon having the last word.

André Gide

The conversational overachiever is someone whose grasp exceeds his reach.

Fran Lebowitz

The conversational overachiever is someone whose grasp exceeds his reach.

and

It is all right to hold a conversation but you should let go of it now and then.

Richard Armour

A self-taught conversationalist, his style with new acquaintances had the immediate warmth of an investigative journalist tracking down discrepancies in a municipal budget.

Mary Kay Blakely

There is no arena in which vanity displays itself under such a variety of forms as in conversation.

Germaine de Staël

How time flies when you’s doin’ all the talking.

Harvey Fierstein

Have you ever noticed that most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness?
Margaret Millar

Conversation: n., a fair for the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary entry

Ah, good conversation—there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

Edith Wharton

For a context far deeper and richer than etymology, Lewis Thomas looks at our place in the context of the whole shebang, in his book, The Fragile Species:   

We are different, to be sure, but not so much because of our brains as because of our discomfiture, mostly with each other. All the other parts of the earth’s life seem to get along, to fit in with each other, to accommodate, even to concede when the stakes are high. They live off each other, devour each other, scramble for ecological niches, but always within set limits, with something like restraint. It is a rough world, by some of our standards, but not the winner-take-all game that it seemed to us awhile back. If we look over our shoulders as far as we can see, all the way past trillions of other species to those fossil stromatolites built by enormous communities of collaborating microorganisms, we can see no evidence of meanness or vandalism in nature. It is, on balance, an equable, generally amiable place, good-natured as we say.

We are the anomalies for the moment, the self-conscious children at the edge of the crowd, unsure of our place, tending to grabbiness. But we are not as bad a lot as some of us say. At our worst, we may be going through the early stages of a species’ adolescence, and everyone remembers what that is like. Growing up is hard times for an individual but sustained torment for a whole species, especially as brainy and nervous as ours. If we can last it out, get through the phase, we might find ourselves off and running again.

We are more compulsively social, more interdependent and more inextricably attached to each other than any of the celebrated social insects. One human trait, urging us on by our nature, is the drive to be useful, perhaps the most fundamental of all our biological necessities. We make mistakes with it, get it wrong, confuse it with self-regard, even try to fake it, but it is there in our genes, needing only a better set of definitions for usefulness than we have yet agreed on.

From A Year with Rilke, October 26 Entry
Bell, from Uncollected Poems

Sound, no longer defined
by our hearing. As though the tone
that encircles us
were space itself expanding.

Forest 

by Paul Cézanne

Be better than yesterday,
be part of a good conversation today,
try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow,
and write when you have the time.







*Because ghosts taste like sheet.