Word-Wednesday for April 26, 2023

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for April 26, 2023, the seventeenth Wednesday of the year, the sixth Wednesday of spring, the fourth Wednesday of poetry month, and the one-hundred sixteenth day of the year, with two-hundred forty-nine days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for April 26, 2023
Tamaracks Budding
Larix laricina, like other deciduous trees, looses their needley leaves each autumn, but as another herald of spring, they’re beginning to emerge from buds, soon to become tufts of glossy needles.

We had northern lights again on a cloudy Monday. Here’s the best place to get up-to-date predictions for Wannaska or wherever you might be traveling in the northern or southern hemisphere.

Hummingbird migration progress map: 

Be the first in Roseau County to report a sighting.


April 26 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


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


Earth/Moon Almanac for April 26, 2023
Sunrise: 6:12am; Sunset: 8:31pm; 3 minutes, 16 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 10:27am; Moonset: 2:54pm, waxing crescent, 33% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for April 26, 2023
                Average            Record              Today
High             53                     85                     51
Low              30                     12                     35

Today
By Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

April 26 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Stop Food Wasted Day
• Denim Day
• National South Dakota Day
• National Dissertation Day
• National Help A Horse Day
• National Library Outreach Day
• National Pretzel Day
• National Kids and Pets Day
• National Richter Scale Day
• National Audubon Day
• National Administrative Professionals Day
• Hug An Australian Day

April 26 Word Riddle
What’s the proper unit for weighing a millennial?*


April 26 Word Pun
Next week is Diarrhea Awareness Week; runs through Tuesday.


April 26 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
CRITIC, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

There is a land of pure delight,
     Beyond the Jordan’s flood,
Where saints, apparelled all in white,
     Fling back the critic’s mud.

And as he legs it through the skies,
     His pelt a sable hue,
He sorrows sore to recognize
     The missiles that he threw.

                                            Orrin Goof


April 26 Etymology Word of the Week
Earth
/ˈərth/ n., the planet on which we live; the world; the substance of the land surface; soil, from Old English eorþe "ground, soil, dirt, dry land; country, district," also used (along with middangeard) for "the (material) world, the abode of man" (as opposed to the heavens or the underworld), from Proto-Germanic ertho (source also of Old Frisian erthe "earth," Old Saxon ertha, Old Norse jörð, Middle Dutch eerde, Dutch aarde, Old High German erda, German Erde, Gothic airþa), perhaps from an extended form of Proto-Indo-European root er- (2) "earth, ground."

April 26 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1336 Italian Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarch famously climbs Mont Ventoux.
• 1514 Copernicus makes his first observations of Saturn.
• 1564 William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England.
• 1835 Frédéric Chopin's Grand Polonaise Brillante premieres.
• 1925 Artist Diego Rivera resigns from the Mexican Communist Party.
• 1925 Pulitzer prize awarded to Edna Ferber for So Big.
• 1954 Mass trials of Jonas Salk's anti-polio vaccine begin.

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

• 121 Marcus Aurelius.
• 570 Muhammad, founder of Islam.
• 1538 Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Italian painter and poet.
• 1711 David Hume, Scottish philosopher.
• 1785 John James Audubon.
• 1798 Eugène Delacroix, French painter.
• 1808 Martha Finley, American children's book author.
• 1820 Alice Cary, American poet.
• 1865 Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Finnish painter.
• 1872 William Desmond Taylor [Deane-Tanner], Irish director.
• 1886 Ğabdulla Tuqay, Tatar poet.
• 1886 Ma Rainey [Gertrude Pridgett], American singer.
• 1889 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian English philosopher.
• 1898 Vicente Aleixandre, Spanish writer, Nobel prize winner 1977.
• 1907 Theun de Vries, Dutch writer.
• 1912 A. E. van Vogt, Canadian science fiction author.
• 1914 Bernard Malamud, American novelist.
• 1917 I. M. Pei, Chinese-American architect.
• 1926 Oldřich František Korte, Czech composer.

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

• balk: /ˈbȯk/ n., a ridge of land left unplowed as a dividing line or through carelessness.
• cline: /ˈklīn/ n., a gradient of morphological or physiological change in a group of related organisms usually along a line of environmental or geographic transition.
• jim crow: /ˈjim-ˈkrō/ n., an implement for straightening steel bars or bending rails by screw pressure.
• kern: /ˈkərn / n., yokel; a light-armed foot soldier of medieval Ireland or Scotland; a part of a typeset letter that projects beyond its side bearings.
• novaturient: /nō-va-TUR-ē-ent/ adj., desirous of changes or alterations.
• plámás: /ˈplɔ-ˌmɔs/ v., Irish English, tTo flatter (a person); to praise in an insincere or exaggerated way, esp. in order to cajole or persuade.
• qubit: /ˈkyü-bət/ n., a unit of computing information that is represented by a state of an atom or elementary particle (such as the spin) and can store multiple values at once due to the principles of quantum mechanics.
• rort: /ˈrȯ(ə)rt/ n., a fraudulent scheme; a wild party.
• titfer: /TIT-fer/ n., a covering worn upon the head for warmth, a fashion statement, or both; a hat.
• whinge: /ˈ(h)winj/ v., complain persistently and in a peevish or irritating way.

April 26, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature
dissent
/di-ˈsent/ n., the expression or holding of opinions at variance with those previously, commonly, or officially held from mid-15th century, dissenten, "express a different or contrary opinion or feeling, withhold approval or consent," from Old French dissentir (15th century) and directly from Latin dissentire "differ in sentiments, disagree, be at odds, contradict, quarrel," from dis- "differently" (see dis-) + sentire "to feel, think" (see sense (n.)).  This week, Word-Wednesday explores the opportunities and pitfalls of thinking differently.

It doesn’t seem to matter why, what, when, where, or how; it’s about who’s in power. If those in power value loyalty, dissenters must be silenced. This hasn’t worked particularly well for the Catholic church, either of the King Georges, or the U.S.A. presidents since the late 1950s. Dissenters share their different thinking as a matter of personal conscience, so efforts to silence Copernicus, Galileo, Martin Luther, U.S.A. founders, Emmeline Pankhurst, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mohandas Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, Jr., to name but a few, were doomed to failure.

Traitors or visionaries? Here are a few words you help sort out any doubts:

Unlike lions and dogs, we are a dissenting animal.

Carol Bly

I like the sayers of No better than the sayers of Yes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.

Alan Barth

To dissent from others’ views is regarded as an insult because it is their condemnation.

Baltasar Gracián

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.

Edward R. Murrow

Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only a unanimity of the graveyard.

Robert H. Jackson

Dissent is what rescues the democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.

Lewis Lapham

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

Archibald Macleish

Dissent is not only your right, it’s your duty.

Susan Sarandon

Mere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing mores is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness in our society.

Earl Warren

Dissent is to democracy what discipline is to rearing children: proof that someone cares enough about an outcome to put effort into effecting a change. 

Nancy C. Gates Meyer

Discussion in America means dissent.

James Thurber

Dissent is essential to an effective judiciary in a democratic society.

Felix Frankfurter

Here in America we are descended in spirit from revolutionists and rebels—men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste,
but its effects.

J. William Fulbright

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

Barbara Ehrenreich

If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function, it must have dissent.

Henry Steele Commager

While some people think that dissent is unpatriotic, I would argue that dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

Howard Zinn

Dissent and dissenters have no monopoly on freedom. They must tolerate opposition. They must accept dissent from their dissent. And they must give it the respect and the latitude which they claim for themselves.

Abe Fortis

In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.

Learned Hand

From A Year with Rilke, April 26 Entry
Your First Word Was Light, from Book of Hours I, 44

Your first word of all was /light/,
and time began. Then for long you were silent.

Your second word was /man/, and fear began,
which grips us still.

Are you about to speak again?
I don’t want your third word.

Sketch
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.




*Instagrams.