Word-Wednesday for May 24, 2023

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for May 24, 2023, the twenty-first Wednesday of the year, the tenth Wednesday of spring, and the one-hundred forty-fourth day of the year, with two-hundred twenty-one days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for May 24, 2023
Apple Trees Blossoming

Now all we need is pollinators. Only eight more days left in No Mow May. Check here out for other ways to help bees and other spring pollinators.

Watch for aurora borealis tonight!

And yes, Teresa, the blueberry flowers are looking good.

May 24 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


May 24 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for May 24 2023
Sunrise: 5:32am; Sunset: 9:10pm; 2 minutes, 10 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 9:19am; Moonset: 1:28am, waxing crescent, 18% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for May 24, 2023
                Average            Record              Today
High             66                     88                    60
Low              44                     28                     48

Aurora Borealis
by Herman Melville
Commemorative of the Dissolution of armies at the Peace
May, 1865

What power disbands the Northern Lights
  After their steely play?
The lonely watcher feels an awe
  Of Nature's sway,
    As when appearing,
    He marked their flashed uprearing
  In the cold gloom--
  Retreatings and advancings,
(Like dallyings of doom),
  Transitions and enhancings,
      And bloody ray.

The phantom-host has faded quite,
  Splendor and Terror gone
Portent or promise--and gives way
  To pale, meek Dawn;
    The coming, going,
    Alike in wonder showing--
  Alike the God,
  Decreeing and commanding
The million blades that glowed,
  The muster and disbanding--
      Midnight and Morn.

May 24 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Yucatan Shrimp Day
• World Schizophrenia Day
• National Wyoming Day
• Brother’s Day
• Aviation Maintenance Technician Day
• Emergency Medical Services for Children Day
• National Escargot Day
• National Scavenger Hunt Day
• National Tiara Day

May 24 Word Riddle
What school subject do witches and wizards like best?*


May 24 Word Pun
A möbius strip wonder sobbing into a bar.
The bartender asks, “What’s wrong?”
The möbius strip replies, “Where do I even begin?”


May 24 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram

WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.

Should you ask me whence this laughter,
Whence this audible big-smiling,
With its labial extension,
With its maxillar distortion
And its diaphragmic rhythmus
Like the billowing of an ocean,
Like the shaking of a carpet,
I should answer, I should tell you:
From the great deeps of the spirit,
From the unplummeted abysmus
Of the soul this laughter welleth
As the fountain, the gug-guggle,
Like the river from the canon [sic],
To entoken and give warning
That my present mood is sunny.
Should you ask me further question—
Why the great deeps of the spirit,
Why the unplummeted abysmus
Of the soule extrudes this laughter,
This all audible big-smiling,
I should answer, I should tell you
With a white heart, tumpitumpy,
With a true tongue, honest Injun:
William Bryan, he has Caught It,
Caught the Whangdepootenawah!

Is't the sandhill crane, the shankank,
Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep,
Standing silent in the kneedeep
With his wing-tips crossed behind him
And his neck close-reefed before him,
With his bill, his william, buried
In the down upon his bosom,
With his head retracted inly,
While his shoulders overlook it?
Does the sandhill crane, the shankank,
Shiver grayly in the north wind,
Wishing he had died when little,
As the sparrow, the chipchip, does?
No 'tis not the Shankank standing,
Standing in the gray and dismal
Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep.
No, 'tis peerless William Bryan
Realizing that he's Caught It,
Caught the Whangdepootenawah!

May 24 Etymology Word of the Week
impunity
/im-ˈpyü-nə-tē/ n., exemption from punishment or freedom from the injurious consequences of an action, from 1530s, from French impunité and directly from Latin impunitatem (nominative impunitas) "freedom from punishment, omission of punishment," also "rashness, inconsideration," from impunis "unpunished, without punishment," from assimilated form of in- "not, opposite of" (see in- (1)) + poena "punishment" (see penal).


May 24 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1830 Mary Had A Little Lamb by Sarah Josepha Hale is first published.
• 1844 Samuel Morse taps out "What hath God wrought" [.-- .... .- - / .... .- - .... / --. --- -.. / .-- .-. --- ..- --. .... -]in the world's first telegraph message.
• 1989 Weird Al Yankovic records three tracks for his UHF soundtrack.
• [other notable events on this were pretty much related to war and sports]
  

May 24 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1807 Cornelis Eliza van Koetsveld, Dutch writer.
• 1816 Emanuel Leutze, American painter.
• 1863 George Grey Barnard, American sculptor.
• 1898 Kathleen Hale, British children book writer and illustrator.
• 1899 Henri Michaux, Belgian-born French poet.
• 1903 Hilding Hallnäs, Swedish composer.
• 1905 Zdeněk Blažek, Czech composer.
• 1919 Sid Couchey, American comic book artist.
• 1923 Siobhán McKenna [Cionnaith], Irish stage actress.
• 1928 William Trevor, Irish author of Children of Dynmouth and Fools of Fortune.
• 1940 Joseph Brodsky, Russian-American poet and writer.
• 1941 Bob Dylan.
• 1963 Michael Chabon, American novelist.

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

• antagony: /antˈaɡənɪ/ n., contest; opposition; antagonism.
• bismer: /bi-‘smer/ n., shame, abuse.
• cloot: /ˈklüt/ n., a cloven hoof; one of the divisions of the cloven hoof of the swine, sheep; Cloots. Satan; the devil.
• feechie: /ˈfiki/ adj., SCOTTISH, dirty, filthy; disgusting; also of weather: foul, rainy.
• hawkshaw: /ˈhôk-ˌSHô/ n., a detective.
• linish: /ˈlɪ-nɪʃ/ v., to polish and smooth the surface of a material by grinding or sanding.
• mamihlapinatapei: /‘ma-mih-,lap-in-at-a-pei/ n., a look that without words is shared by two people who want to initiate something, but that neither will start.
• nostomania: /nos-tuh-MEY-nee-uh/ n., intense homesickness; an irresistible compulsion to return home; a passion for nostalgia.
• pervicacious: /pər-və-'kā-shəs/ adj., very obstinate; willful; refractory.
• scaturient: /skə-ˈtu̇-rē-ənt/ adj., gushing forth, overflowing, effusive.

May 24, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature
synecdoche
/sə-ˈnek-də-kē/ n., one of the four master tropes — or figures of speech (the other three being metaphor, metonymy, and irony), in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa, microcosm/macrocosmically speaking, from late 15th century correction of synodoches (late 14th century), from Medieval Latin synodoche, alteration of Late Latin synecdoche, from Greek synekdokhe "the putting of a whole for a part; an understanding one with another," literally "a receiving together or jointly," from synekdekhesthai "supply a thought or word; take with something else, join in receiving," from syn- "with" (see syn-) + ek "out" (see ex-) + dekhesthai "to receive," related to dokein "seem good" (from Proto-Indo-European root dek- "to take, accept").

Literary theorist Kenneth Burke sums the types of synecdoche up as "part of the whole, whole for the part, container for the contained, sign for the thing signified, material for the thing made, cause for the effect, effect for the cause, genus for the species, species for the genus". Simple examples include: "head" for "cattle", "hands" for "workmen", and "wheels" for "automobile".

Find the synecdoche in these examples:

Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father’s life
now wears his crown.

Hamlet, Act I, scene 5 by William Shakespeare

In the second stanza of this particular poem, Dickinson employs synecdoche when she says:
The Eyes around – had wrung them dry-
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room -

I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died by Emily Dickinson

In his famous poem, Coleridge uses synecdoche when he writes:
The western wave was all a-flame
The day was well nigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad, bright Sun”

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge

It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

From A Year with Rilke, May 24 Entry
About Feelings, from Furnborg, Jonsered, Sweden, November 4, 1904, Letters to a Young Poet

All feelings that gather you up and lift you are pure. If they twist and tear at your being, they are not. All tenderness you may feel for your childhood is good. Every emotion that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is good. Every intensification is good, if it seizes you entire and is not an intoxication or delusion, but a joy you can see into, clear to the bottom. Do you understand what I mean?

Double Portrait with Wine Glass
by Marc Chagall

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.


*spelling.