Word-Wednesday for April 19, 2023

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for April 19, 2023, the sixteenth Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of spring, the third Wednesday of poetry month, and the one-hundred ninth day of the year, with two-hundred fifty-six days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for April 19, 2023
pussy willow
American pussy willow, Salix discolor, and native Wannaskan has started to barely bear their fuzzy early spring catkins, one of the earliest signs of botanical spring. Appearing long before the plant's leaves, the gray catkin likeness to tiny cats is the origin of the pussy moniker. “pussies”.

For music fans, and depending on your musical preferences, check out Pussy Willow by Duke Ellington, and the Jethro Tull version  from their 1982 album, The Broadsword and the Beast, and Pussy Willows, Cat-Tails by Gordon Lightfoot, and White Braids and Pillow Chair, by Red Hot Chili Peppers, with the line, “I could spend my nights with you, this pussy willow”.

The Lyrid Meteor Shower will peak on April 22.

Hummingbird migration progress map:

Get those feeders out!

April 19 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


April 19 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for April 19, 2023
Sunrise: 6:25am; Sunset: 8:20pm; 3 minutes, 24 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 6:20am; Moonset: 8:03pm, waning crescent, <1% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for April 19, 2023
                Average            Record              Today
High             50                     86                    39
Low              27                      14                     32

6.3 inches of new snow predicted for tomorrow.

Spring Snow
By Linda Gregerson

A kind of counter-
blossoming, diversionary,

doomed, and like
the needle with its drop

of blood a little
too transparently in

love with doom, takes
issue with the season: Not

(the serviceberry bright
with explanation) not

(the redbud unspooling
its silks) I know I’ve read

the book but not (the lilac,
the larch) quite yet, I still

have one more card to
play. Behold

a six-hour wonder: six
new inches bedecking the

railing, the bench, the top
of the circular table like

a risen cake. The saplings
made (who little thought

what beauty weighs) to bow
before their elders.

The moment bears more
than the usual signs of its own

demise, but isn’t that
the bravery? Built

on nothing but the self-
same knots of air

and ice. Already
the lip of it riddled

with flaws, a sort
of vascular lesion that

betokens—what? betokens
the gathering return

to elementals. (She
was frightened

for a minute, who had
planned to be so calm.)

A dripline scoring
the edge of the walk.

The cotton batting blown
against the screen begun

to pill and molt. (Who
clothed them out of

mercy in the skins
of beasts.) And even

as the last of the
lightness continues

to fall, the seepage
underneath has gained

momentum. (So that
there must have been a

death before
the death we call the

first or what became
of them, the ones

whose skins were taken.)
Now the more-

of-casting-backward-than-of-
forward part, which must

have happened while I wasn’t
looking or was looking

at the skinning knives. I think
I’ll call this mercy too.

Days without an Ebola infection for Wannaskan Almanac contributing authors: 27,773


April 19 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Banana Day
• National North Dakota Day
• National Amaretto Day
• National Garlic Day
• National Hanging Out Day

April 19 Word Riddle
What do you call two octopuses that look the same?*


April 19 Word Pun
Wannaskan youth start new revival band: The Defibrillators.


April 19 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
NOSE, n. The extreme outpost of the face. From the circumstance that great conquerors have great noses, Getius, whose writings antedate the age of humor, calls the nose the organ of quell. It has been observed that one’s nose is never so happy as when thrust into the affairs of others, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.

     There’s a man with a Nose,
     And wherever he goes
The people run from him and shout:
     “No cotton have we
     For our ears if so be
He blow that interminous snout!”

     So the lawyers applied
     For injunction. “Denied,”
Said the Judge: “the defendant prefixion,
     Whate’er it portend,
     Appears to transcend
The bounds of this court’s jurisdiction.”
                                                    Arpad Singiny


April 19 Etymology Word of the Week
convivial
/kən-ˈvi-vē-əl/ adj., (of an atmosphere or event) friendly, lively, and enjoyable, (of a person) cheerful and friendly; jovial, from 1660s, "pertaining to or of the nature of a feast," from Late Latin convivialis "pertaining to a feast," from Latin convivium "a feast," from convivere "to carouse together, live together," from assimilated form of com "with, together" (see con-) + vivere "to live" (from Proto-Indo-European root gwei- "to live"). Meaning "sociable" is from the 18th century.


April 19 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 607 Comet 1P/607 H1 (Halley) approaches within 0.0898 AUs of Earth.
• 1852 California Historical Society forms.
• 1911 George Bernard Shaw's play Fanny's First Play premieres.
• 1928 The 125th and final fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary is published.
• 1941 Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage and her Children premieres.

April 19 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1785 Alexandre Pierre François Boëly, French composer.
• 1798 Franz Joseph Glæser, Czech composer.
• 1814 Louis Amédée Achard, French novelist.
• 1832 José Echegaray, Spanish dramatist and Nobel prize winner 1904.
• 1874 Jane Poupelet, French sculptor.
• 1898 Sybil Andrews, English-Canadian painter.
• 1900 Richard Hughes, English writer.
• 1906 Bang Bang, Irish eccentric.
• 1936 Csaba Szabo, Hungarian composer.

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

• ambeer: /ˈam-ˌbir/ n., saliva containing tobacco juice.
• clade: /ˈklād/ n., a group of organisms believed to have evolved from a common ancestor, according to the principles of cladistics.
• euxinia: /yook—SIN-ee-uh/ n., anoxia, or depletion of oxygen, in a body of water, along with a high level of hydrogen sulfide.
• futtock: /ˈfə-dək/ n., each of the curved timber pieces forming the lower part of a ship’s frame.
• gallinipper: /ˈga-lə-ˌni-pər/ n., any of various insects that sting or bite, especially a large American mosquito.
• hypokhâgne: /i-pō-kaɲ/ n., first year of preparatory course for arts section of the École normale supérieure.
• mawkin: /ˈmȯˌkin/ n., a slovenly woman; a scarecrow.
• prosopopoeia: /prä-sə-pə-ˈpē-ə/ n., a figure of speech in which an abstract thing is personified; a figure of speech in which an imagined or absent person or thing is represented as speaking.
• schwarmerei: /shver-muh-RAHY/ n., excessive and unbridled enthusiasm or sentiment.
• temenos: /ˈtem-ə-ˌnäs/ n., a temple enclosure or court in ancient Greece; a sacred precinct.

April 19, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature
epistrophe
/i-ˈpi-strə-(ˌ)fē/ n., repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially for rhetorical or poetic effect, a word coined by Plato — ἐπιστροφή, return — as a goal of philosophical education later coopted by early Christians to describe a religious conversion 1640s, from Late Latin epistrophe, from Greek epistrophe "a turning about, twisting, a turning (of affairs), a moving up and down," from epi "upon" (see epi-) + strophe "a turning" (from Proto-Indo-European root streb(h)- "to wind, turn"). In rhetoric, a figure in which successive phrases are followed by the same word of affirmation; also used in music.

In our screen-dominated, rapidly cycling era of short attention spans, epistrophe is a time-honored writing tool. Regularly found throughout literature, in drama, prose, and poetry, epistrophe communicates different ideas and feelings, through the emphasis on the author's simplest tool: repetition. In the right hands, there's an element of lyricism to epistophe. Epistrophes can flit about poetry and prose, providing an easy-to-follow rhyme and/or reason, as in these examples:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

The Apostle Paul, in the Bible, 1 Cor 13:11 (King James Translation)

Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,
Long continuance, and increasing,
Hourly joys be still upon you!
Juno sings her blessings on you.
Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,
Hourly joys be still upon you!
Juno sings her blessings on you.
Hourly joys be still upon you!
Juno sings her blessings on you.

Juno speaking in The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1, by William Shakespeare

If you had known the virtue of the ring,
Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,
If you did know for whom I gave the ring
And would conceive for what I gave the ring
And how unwillingly I left the ring
When nought would be accepted but the ring
You would abate the strength of your displeasure.

Bassanio speaking in The Merchant of Venice, Act 5 Scene 1, by William Shakespeare

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny compared to what lies within us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I resist any thing better than my own diversity,
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,
The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)

Song of Myself, Song 16, by Walt Whitman

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.
and
The big sycamore by the creek was gone. The willow tangle was gone. The little enclave of untrodden bluegrass was gone. The clump of dogwood on the little rise across the creek-now that, too, was gone.

Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

Where affections bear rule, their reason is subdued, honesty is subdued, good will is subdued, and all things else that withstand evil, for ever are subdued.

Flood: A Romance of Our Time, by Robert Penn Warren

There is a Smile of Love
And there is a Smile of Deceit
And there is a Smile of Smiles
In which these two Smiles meet
And there is a Frown of Hate
And there is a Frown of disdain
And there is a Frown of Frowns
Which you strive to forget in vain
For it sticks in the Hearts deep Core
And it sticks in the deep Back bone
And no Smile that ever was smild
But only one Smile alone
That betwixt the Cradle & Grave
It only once Smild can be
But when it once is Smild
Theres an end to all Misery

The Smile, by William Blake

I Like To Move It Move It, by King Julian

From A Year with Rilke, April 19 Entry
Leda, from New Poems

When the god in his urgency assumed its form,
he was startled by the beauty of the swan,
so swiftly did he disappear within it.
But his deception drove him to act

before he could feel
what this unknown body was like.
The woman recognized who was upon her
and already knew what he demanded,

and what she, confused in her resistance,
could no longer withhold. His weight bearing down,
his long neck thrusting her hand aside,

the god released himself into his beloved.
Only then did he delight in his feathers
and, in that moment, become truly a swan.

Leda and the Swan
by Paul Cézanne

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.




*itenticle.