Word-Wednesday for March 29, 2023

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for March 29, 2023, the thirteenth Wednesday of the year, the second Wednesday of spring, and the eighty-eighth day of the year, with two-hundred seventy-seven days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for March 29, 2023
Night Life 

Should you be the outdoorsy type, there's much to enjoy this time of year in Wannaska after the sun goes down and the Fickle Pickle closes. Sunspot and solar flare activity has been gradually increasing, as our recent aurora borealis sightings demonstrate so beautifully. Uranus has also joined Venus in the sky near the waxing crescent moon.

For your listening pleasure, the Barred Owl, Strix varia, begins nesting in March, and as nocturnally active creatures, you'll now hear them singing after dark. The female lays two or three white eggs, which hatch in 28 to 33 days. The newly hatched young will be covered with fine white down. Young barred owls leave the nest four to five weeks after hatching. If you're not a night person, contact John Carstens for daytime listening opportunities.

March 29 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


March 29 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.
Pork Loin Roast with:
    Roasted Potatoes
    Carrots
    Dinner Roll

Chicken Wild Rice Soup with choice of:
    Hamburger
    Grilled Cheese

Earth/Moon Almanac for March 29, 2023
Sunrise: 7:08am; Sunset: 7:49pm; 3 minutes, 35 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 11:39am; Moonset: 4:15am, waxing gibbous, 50% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for March 29, 2023
                Average            Record              Today
High             39                     72                     23
Low              17                     -19                      5

Weather
by Faith Shearin

There is weather on the day you are born
and weather on the day you die. There is
the year of drought, and the year of floods,
when everything rises and swells,
the year when winter will not stop falling,
and the year when summer lightning
burns the prairie, makes it disappear.
There are the weathervanes, dizzy
on top of farmhouses, hurricanes
curled like cats on a map of sky:
there are cows under the trees outlined
in flies. There is the weather that blows
a stranger into town and the weather
that changes suddenly: an argument,
a sickness, a baby born
too soon. Crops fail and a field becomes
a study in hunger; storm clouds
billow over the sea;
tornadoes appear like the drunk
trunks of elephants. People talking about
weather are people who don’t know what to say
and yet the weather is what happens to all of us:
the blizzard that makes our neighborhoods
strange, the flood that carries away
our plans. We are getting ready for the weather,
or cleaning up after the weather, or enduring
the weather. We are drenched in rain
or sweat: we are looking for an umbrella,
a second mitten; we are gathering
wood to build a fire.

March 29 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Nevada Day
• National Vietnam War Veterans Day
• National Little Red Wagon Day
• National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day
• National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day
• Manatee Appreciation Day

March 29 Word Riddle
How do you tip a marching band?*


March 29 Word Pun
When people do not ignore what they should ignore,
but ignore what they should not ignore,
this is known as ignorance.

                                            Chuang Tzu

March 29 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
LAST, n. A shoemaker’s implement, named by a frowning Providence as opportunity to the maker of puns.

Ah, punster, would my lot were cast,
     Where the cobbler is unknown,
So that I might forget his last
     And hear your own.
                                            Gargo Repsky


March 29 Etymology Word of the Week
person
/ˈpər-s(ə)n/ n., a human being regarded as an individual, from circa 1200, persoun, "an individual, a human being," from Old French persone "human being, anyone, person" (12th century, Modern French personne) and directly from Latin persona "human being, person, personage; a part in a drama, assumed character," originally "a mask, a false face," such as those of wood or clay, covering the whole head, worn by the actors in later Roman theater. OED offers the general 19th century explanation of persona as "related to" Latin personare "to sound through" (i.e. the mask as something spoken through and perhaps amplifying the voice), "but the long o makes a difficulty ...." Klein and Barnhart say it is possibly borrowed from Etruscan phersu "mask." De Vaan has no entry for it. The person, from the Latin persona, was originally the megaphone-mouthed mask used by actors in the open-air theaters of ancient Greece and Rome, the mask through (per) which the sound (sonus) came.

From mid-13th century. as "one of the persons of the Trinity," a theological use in Church Latin of the classical word. Meanings "one's physical being, the living body" and "external appearance" are from late 14th century. In grammar, "one of the relations which a subject may have to a verb," from 1510s. In legal use, "corporate body or corporation other than the state and having rights and duties before the law," 15th century, short for person aggregate (circa 1400), person corporate (mid-15th century). Yet another way that capitalism has risen on the boot heels of religion.


March 29 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1795 Ludwig van Beethoven (then 24 years old) has his debut performance as a pianist in Vienna.
• 1848 Niagara Falls stops flowing for 30 hours due to an ice jam.
• 1867 US Congress first approves building of Lincoln Memorial.
• 1879 Tsjaikovski's opera Jevgeni Onegin premieres.
• 1932 Jack Benny's radio debut, on Ed Sullivan's New York interview program.
• 1973 US troops leave Vietnam.
• 1974 Chinese farmers discover the Terracotta Army near Xi'an, 8,000 clay warrior statues buried to guard the tomb of China's first emperor.
• 1989 I. M. Pei's pyramidal entrance to the Louvre opens in Paris.

March 29 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1831 Amelia E. Barr, British-born American writer.
• 1893 Dora Carrington, British Bloomsbury artist.
• 1900 Jiří Wolker, Czech poet.
• 1901 Uuno Kailas, Finnish poet.
• 1902 Marcel Aymé, French novelist and playwright.
• 1909 Aubrey "Moon" Mullican, American hillbilly pianist, songwriter, and singer.
• 1913 R. S. Thomas, Welsh poet.
• 1918 Pearl Bailey, singer.
• 1928 Václav Felix, Czech composer.
• 1943 Eric Idle, comedian with Monty Pythons Flying Circus.
• 1955 Brendan Gleeson, Irish actor.
• 1960 Jo Nesbø, Norwegian writer.
• 1968 Philip Ó Ceallaigh, Irish writer.
• 2336 Deanna Troi from Star Trek.

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

• 'aja'ib: /ˈad͡ʒa-ʲɪp/ ARABIC, n., the literature of astonishment as opposed to adab, writings about civilization and refinement; adj., magical; miraculous, astonishing; weird, unusual.
• brata: /ˈbrɑ-də/ n., an extra amount or small gift added to a purchase by a seller, esp. in a market, to encourage the customer to return.
• catoblepas: /ka-'tō-blə-päz/ n., (pl. catoblepones; from the Greek καταβλέπω (katablépō) "to look downwards") a legendary creature from Ethiopia (Africa), said to resemble a cape buffalo, with its head always pointing downwards due to its great weight, with a stare or breath that could either turn people into stone, or kill them.
• fartshumper: /‘färt-SHəmp-ər/ n., NORWEGIAN, speed bumps.
• jornada: /hȯ(r)-ˈnä-də/ n., an arduous usually one-day journey across a stretch of desert.
• manticore: /ˈman-(t)ə-ˌkôr/ n., a mythical beast typically depicted as having the body of a lion, the face of a man, and the sting of a scorpion.
• mirabilia: /mee-rah—BIL-i-ah/ n., marvels; miracles.
• prister: /'pris-tər/ n., a monstrous whale-like sea creature from medieval times.
• rufescent: /ro͞o-ˈfes-ənt/ adj., tinged with red or rufous.
• schmatte: /ˈSHmäd-ə/ n., a rag; a ragged or shabby garment.

March 29, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature
path
/'päth/ n., a way or track laid down for walking or made by continual treading; the course or direction in which a person or thing is moving; a course of action or conduct, from Old English paþ, pæþ "narrow passageway or route across land, a track worn by the feet of people or animals treading it," from West Germanic patha- (source also of Old Frisian path, Middle Dutch pat, Dutch pad, Old High German pfad, German Pfad "path"), a word of uncertain origin, not attested in Old Norse or Gothic. The original initial -p- in a Germanic word is from Iranian path-," from Proto-Indo-European root pent- "to tread, go, pass" (source of Avestan patha "way;" see find (v.)).

Like Mr. Hot Coco's recent study on the direction of nostalgia, the etymology of path, and the word's radically different definitions, reflect historical movement from an active finding to a passive following. Are you a person following a path or creating a path for your self? Today, Word-Wednesday explores some words of writers who have explored different metaphors about the ways we find our way through life:

Man proceeds in the fog. But when he looks back to judge people of the past, he sees no fog on their path. From his present, which was their faraway future, their path looks perfectly clear to him, good visibility all the way. Looking back, he sees the path, he sees the people proceeding, he sees their mistakes, but not the fog.

Milan Kundera

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

Abraham Lincoln

Every path has its puddle.

English Proverb

The world’s a wood, in which all lose their way
Though by a different path each goes astray.

George Villiers

True morality consists, not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and in fearlessly following it.

Mohandas K. Gandhi

So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.

Friedrich Nietzsche

One recognizes one’s course by discovering the paths that stray from it.

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question . . . Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use.

Carlos Castanada, The Teachings of Don Juan

One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.

Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam

To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.

Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea

All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are.

Pablo Neruda

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Henry David Thoreau

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

Voltaire

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them …

Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

From A Year with Rilke, March 29 Entry
Dread and Bliss, from Letter to Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouy, April 12, 1923

The person who has not, in a moment of firm resolve, accepted—yes, even rejoiced in—what has struck him with terror—he has never taken possession of the full, ineffable power of our existence. He withdraws to the edge; when things play out, he will be neither alive nor dead.

To discover the unity of dread and bliss, these two faces of the same divinity (indeed, they reveal themselves as a single face that presents itself differently according to the way in which we see it): that is the essential meaning and theme of both my books (The Sonnets to Orpheus and The Duino Elegies).

Sorrow
by Auguste Rodin

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.




*with a bowling ball.