Word-Wednesday for March 1, 2023

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for March 1, 2023, the ninth Wednesday of the year, the eleventh Wednesday of winter, and the 60th day of the year, with 305 days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for March 1, 2023
Black Bear Cubs
Despite one notable recent awakening, black bear cubs are now about a month old, weigh less than three pounds each, and are in dens with their still-sleeping mothers.

Ursus americanus is the only species of bear in Wannaska, or in Minnesota, for that matter. Sows usually produce their first litter at the age of 3 to 5 years. The breeding period usually occurs in the June–July period, though it can extend to August in Canada. The breeding period lasts for two to three months, and Wikipedia experts note that both sexes are promiscuous, where tend to be short-tempered with their mates after copulating, don't you know.

The fertilized eggs undergo a period of delayed development and do not implant in the female's womb until November. The gestation period is 235 days, and litters are usually born in late January to early February, with litter sizes between one and six cubs. At birth, cubs weigh one-half to one pound and measure about 8 inches long, with fine, gray, down-like hair. Cubs typically open their eyes after 28–40 days and begin walking after 5 weeks. Cubs are dependent on their mother's milk for 30 weeks and will reach independence at 16–18 months - sometime in late March or early April. But now, they're still pretty small.

March 1 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


March 1 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch:

Hamburger Gravy over

Mashed potatoes
Green beans
Dinner roll

Soup & Sandwich:
Split Pea & Ham Soup
Plus your choice:

Hamburger
Grilled Cheese

Earth/Moon Almanac for March 1 2023
Sunrise: 7:00am; Sunset: 6:06pm; 3 minutes, 33 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 11:53am; Moonset: 4:34pm, waxing gibbous, 67% illuminated.

Meteorological Spring begins today!


Temperature Almanac for March 1, 2023
                Average            Record              Today
High             26                     48                     15
Low               2                    -42                     -5

ICE
by Marianne Boruch

So the road welcomed the ice. And the ice lay down.
Water the bulk of every
blood cell already. Solidarity, sister!
                                                                  When spring comes
we take notice after
winter’s long fierce sloppy drives through winter.
Spring is a forgiveness,
a forgetfulness. That old saw—60 percent of us soaked
or drunk silly with water?
                                                I mean, water!
friend for life.
At a phone in a public booth once, where
a friend passed out, he who
we rushed to the ER…. They hooked him
to a glistening bottle, hung it high
to fill him back up.
                                    Dehydration, no biggie
but good thing
you brought him here, the one in mint green
with a selfie ID said before there
were selfies. You should flood yourselves too,
she advised—to the brim! I pictured
an ankle’s worth
down there, the drip method,
                                                      a welling up.
Water in the human eye is
this or that percent and I’d blurt out some
insane number. Check Google
if you want.
But I saw ice. Saw through it.
And water recognizes water however little
or a lot floats
the whites of my eyes
                                         to buoy up the meager blue
circling the darker bit
that makes out a car about to crush ice into potholes.
Time flows like water. Or both time
and water ache to stop cold since a cliché is
never what either wants out there
in front of everyone.
                                       You get older.
                                       You freeze in secret.


March 1 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• World Music Therapy Day
• Zero Discrimination Day
• Self-Injury Awareness Day
• National Minnesota Day
• Peace Corp Day
• National Dadgum That's Good Day
• National Fruit Compote Day
• National Pig Day
• National Peanut Butter Lover's Day

March 1 Word Riddle
What kind of music do chiropractors like?*


March 1 Word Pun
Rumors of a food shortage at this year’s spoonerism conference turned out to be a complete lack of pies.


March 1 Walking into a Bar Grammar
A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.


March 1 Etymology Word of the Week
intuition
/ˌin-to͞o-ˈiSH-(ə)n/ n., the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning, from mid-15th century, intuicioun, "insight, direct or immediate cognition, spiritual perception," originally theological, from Late Latin intuitionem (nominative intuitio) "a looking at, consideration," noun of action from past participle stem of Latin intueri "look at, consider," from in- "at, on" (from Proto-Indo-European root en "in") + tueri "to look at, watch over" (see tutor (n.)).

Not to be confused with contuition: /ˌkän-to͞o-ˈiSH-(ə)n/ n., a process whereby the exterior world and the interior self serves as a means by which God or some higher order of being is revealed to our perception.


March 1 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1516 Printing is completed of Erasmus' Novum Instrumentum Omne, the first published version of the New Testament in Greek.
• 1780 Pennsylvania becomes first US state to abolish slavery (for newborns only).
• 1781 Continental Congress officially adopts the Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the United States of America after ratification by the 13th state, Maryland.
• 1872 Yellowstone becomes the world's first national park.
• 1890 First published US edition of Sherlock Holmes' first story A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle.
• 1909 First US university school of nursing established by the University of Minnesota.
• 1940 Richard Wright's novel Native Son is published.

March 1 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1610 Johann B. Schup [Schuppius], German poet.
• 1709 Josef Antonin Gurecky, Czech composer.
• 1810 Frédéric Chopin, Polish pianist and composer.
• 1837 Ion Creanga, Romanian fairy tale author.
• 1837 William Dean Howells, American novelist.
• 1842 Nicholaos Gysis, Greek painter.
• 1892 Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Japanese writer.
• 1904 Glenn Miller, American bandleader.
• 1917 Robert Lowell, American poet.
• 1920 Howard Nemerov, American poet, two-time US Poet Laureate.
• 1921 Richard Wilbur, second US Poet Laureate.
• 1928 Václav Snítil, Czech violinist.
• 1936 Camille E Baly, St. Maartens poet.
• 1938 Michael Joseph Kurland, American science-fiction author.
• 1940 Nuala O'Faolain
• 1952 Steven Barnes, American writer.
• 1980 Ron Weasley from Harry Potter.

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

• bung: /bəNG/ v., close with a stopper.
• cantrip: /ˈkan-ˌtrip/ n., a mischievous or playful act; a magic spell; trick by sorcery.
• diglot: /ˈdīˌ-glät/ adj., bilingual; n., a bilingual publication or speaker.
• fetor: /ˈfē-dər/ n., a strong, foul smell.
• hault: /hạlt/ adj., lofty, haughty.
• lexeme: /ˈlek-ˌsēm/ n., a basic lexical unit of a language, consisting of one word or several words, considered as an abstract unit, and applied to a family of words related by form or meaning.
• muffuletta: / [ˌmə-fə-ˈle-tə/ n., a sandwich made with round Italian bread and filled usually with cold cuts, cheese, and olive salad.
• osmian: /ˈäz-mē-ən/ adj., dense, from osmium, a chemical element with the symbol Os and atomic number 76, which is the densest naturally occurring element.
• prepone: /,pre-ˈpōn/ v., to move to an earlier time.
• zimarra: /zə̇-ˈmär-ə/ n., a black cassock with attached cape and purple sash, buttons, and piping worn especially in the house by Roman Catholic prelates.

March 1, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature

time
/tīm/ n., the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole; a point of time as measured in hours and minutes past midnight or noon, from Old English tima "limited space of time," from Proto-Germanic timon- "time" (source also of Old Norse timi "time, proper time," Swedish timme "an hour"), from Proto-Indo-European di-mon-, suffixed form of root da- "to divide."

The abstract sense of "time as an indefinite continuous duration" is recorded from late 14th century, personified at least since 1509 as an aged bald man (but with a forelock) carrying a scythe and an hour-glass. In English, a single word encompasses time as "extent" and "point" (French temps/fois, German zeit/mal) as well as "hour" (as in "what time is it?" compare French heure, German Uhr). Extended senses such as "occasion," "the right time," "leisure," or times (v.) "multiplied by" developed in Old and Middle English, probably as a natural outgrowth of such phrases as "He commends her a hundred times to God" (Old French La comande a Deu cent foiz). Time is not a very old word.

Water clocks came first, around 4000 B.C. in China, and around 1600 B.C. in Egypt. The Egyptians later developed the sundial around 1500 B.C. The first mechanical clock appeared around 1300 A.D. in Europe, but did not begin to flourish in Western culture until Christiaan Huygens invented the reasonably accurate pendulum clock in 1656. As timekeeping became more important, we adopted time into our languages and into our thinking.

Living and developing in a period that straddled humanity's ongoing dependence on timekeeping, the Greeks had two distinct words for time. There's the version of time familiar to us — chronos (χρόνος) — which they defined as the passage of time. Very much historical, chronos emphasizes the sequence events from the earlier to later following the order in which they occurred. Then there's the understanding of time one would more naturally associate with Herodotus or Socrates — kairos (καιρός) — meaning "the right, critical, or opportune moment". More consistent with the Eastern understanding of the importance of living in the present moment, perhaps the best English equivalent is the notion of "timing". Here are some interesting words from writers who have thought about the differences between these two notions of time:

Time, like money, is measured by our needs.

George Eliot, the narrator speaking, in Middlemarch

But that’ s where I am, there's no escaping it. Time’s a trap, I’m caught in it.

Margaret Atwood, the protagonist Offred speaking, in The Handmaid's Tale

Time is the reef upon which all of our frail mystic ships are wrecked.

Noël Coward, Madame Arcati speaking, in Blithe Spirit

Time, the subtle thief of youth.

John Milton, in “Sonnet VII”

The surest poison is time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Time is the devourer of all things.

Ovid, in Metamorphoses

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

William Shakespeare, the title character speaking, in Richard II

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in “A Psalm of Life”

The innocent and the beautiful
Have no enemy but time.

William Butler Yeats

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.

Faith Baldwin, “Four Seasons, Three Tenses,” in Face Toward the Spring

Near the point of impact, time accelerates to the speed of light.

Joyce Carol Oates, the voice of the narrator, in Black Water

Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.

Delmore Schwartz

Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals.

H. L. Mencken

Time is the only critic without ambition.

John Steinbeck

If the way ahead is not clear, time is often the best editor of one’s intentions.

Jacqueline Winspear

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

Henry David Thoreau, in Walden

Time is anonymous; when we give it a face, it’s the same face the world over.

Eudora Welty

It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.

Thornton Wilder

Time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters; but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop.

Edith Wharton, in The House of Mirth

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

Sara Teasdale

Time will explain it all. He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks.

Euripides, in Aeolus

Time heals what reason cannot.

Seneca, in Agamemnon

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.

Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard’s Almanack

 

You don't have to swing hard to hit a home run. If you got the timing, it'll go.

Yogi Berra

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.

Octavia E. Butler

Observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor.

Hesiod

How big is the little thing that was given at the right time.

Menander

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.

Chinese proverb

What is true, is true only for one time and only for one place.

T. S. Eliot

by Elias Chasiotis

From A Year with Rilke, March 1 Entry
On the Edge of Night, from Book of Images

My room and the vastness around it,
awake in the oncoming night,
are one. I am a string
stretched taut
across resonating distances.

All things are the body of the violin,
filled with murmuring darkness.
There, grieving women lie down to dream.
There the resentments of generations
surrender to sleep…
A silver thread,
I reverberate:
then all that’s underneath me
comes to life.

And what has lost its way
will, by my vibrant sounds,
be at last brought home
and allowed to fall endlessly
into the depthless source…

Northern Lights
by  Sidney Mortimer Lawrence

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.





*Hip pop.