Word-Wednesday for June 14, 2023

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for June 14, 2023, the twenty-fourth Wednesday of the year, the thirteenth Wednesday of spring, and the one-hundred sixty-fifth day of the year, with two-hundred days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for June 14, 2023
Red Columbine are Flowering
Also known as Aquilegia canadensis, the Canadian or Canada columbine, eastern red columbine, or wild columbine, this lovely buttercup is now gracing our forest floors. Native American tribes used various parts of red columbine in herbal remedies for ailments such as headache, sore throat, fever, rash caused by poison ivy, stomatitis, kidney and urinary problems, and heart problems. Native American and some Palmville Township men also rubbed crushed seeds on their hands as a love charm. Why just the seeds, Sven? Canada columbine contains a cyanogenic glycoside, which releases poisonous hydrogen cyanide when the plant is damaged.

For your nighttime viewing pleasure:

We have small green berries on the blueberry plants.

THIS COMPOST!
by Walt Whitman

SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was
safest;
I withdraw from the still woods I loved;
I will not go now on the pastures to walk;
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my
lover the sea;
I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other
flesh, to renew me.
O how can the ground not sicken?
How can you be alive, you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs,
roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses
in you?
Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour
dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many genera-
tions;
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and
meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day—or perhaps I
am deceiv'd;
I will run a furrow with my plough—I will press my
spade through the sod, and turn it up under-
neath;
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick
person—Yet behold!
The grass covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the
garden,

The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage
out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mul-
berry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the
she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
The new-born of animals appear—the calf is dropt
from the cow, the colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark
green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk;
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above
all those strata of sour dead.

What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of
the sea, which is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all
over with its tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that
have deposited themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever,
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the
orange-orchard—that melons, grapes, peaches,
plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any
disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of
what was once a catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the earth! it is that calm and
patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such
endless successions of diseas'd corpses,
It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused
fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal,
annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts
such leavings from them at last.

June 14 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


June 14 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for June 14, 2023
Sunrise: 5:20am; Sunset: 9:28pm; 35 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 3:06am; Moonset: 6:07pm, waning crescent, 12% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for June 14, 2023
                Average            Record              Today
High             72                     88                     74
Low              51                      31                     50


June 14 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Cucumber Day
• World Blood Donor Day
• National New Mexico Day
• Army Birthday
• National Bourbon Day
• National Strawberry Shortcake Day
• National Pop Goes the Weasel Day
• National Flag Day
• Feast Day of Caomhán of Inisheer

June 14 Word Riddle
Vhy couldn’t Sven and Monique get married in the library?*


June 14 Word Pun

June 14 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
RIGHT, n. Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right to be a king, the right to do one’s neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like. The first of these rights was once universally believed to be derived directly from the will of God; and this is still sometimes affirmed /in partibus infidelium/ outside the enlightened realms of Democracy; as the well known lines of Sir Abednego Bink, following:

     By what right, then, do royal rulers rule?
          Whose is the sanction of their state and pow’r?
     He surely were as stubborn as a mule
          Who, God unwilling, could maintain an hour
His uninvited session on the throne, or air
His pride securely in the Presidential chair.

     Whatever is is so by Right Divine;
          Whate’er occurs, God wills it so. Good land!
     It were a wondrous thing if His design
          A fool could baffle or a rogue withstand!
If so, then God, I say (intending no offence)
Is guilty of contributory negligence.

June 14 Etymology Word of the Week
infantry
/ˈin-fən-trē/ n., soldiers trained, armed, and equipped to fight on foot; a branch of an army composed of these soldiers, from 1570s, from French infantrie, infanterie (16th century), from older Italian or Spanish infanteria "foot soldiers, force composed of those too inexperienced or low in rank to be cavalry," a collective noun from infante "foot soldier," originally "a youth," from Latin infantem (see infant). Meaning "infants collectively" is recorded from 1610s. A Middle English (circa 1200) word for "foot-soldiers" was going-folc, literally "going-folk."


June 14 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1623 First breach-of-promise lawsuit: Rev. Gerville Pooley, Virginia files against Cicely Jordan, and he loses.
• 1642 First compulsory education law in America passed by Massachusetts.
• 1850 Third great fire of early San Francisco, starts in a bakery chimney.
• 1938 Dorothy Lathrop wins first Caldecott Medal.
• 1942 Anne Frank begins her diary.
• 1946 Canadian Library Association established.
• 1953 Eisenhower condemns McCarthy's book burning proposal.
• 1965 John Lennon's second book A Spaniard in the Works is published.
• 1973 Forty-sixth National Spelling Bee: Barrie Trinkle wins spelling vouchsafe.

June 14 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1479 Giglio Gregorio Giraldi, Italian poet.
• 1804 František Sušil, Czech poet.
• 1811 Harriet Beecher Stowe, American author of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
• 1820 John Bartlett, American writer and publisher who compiled Familiar Quotations.
• 1835 Nikolay Rubinstein, Russian composer and pianist.
• 1884 John McCormack, Irish-American operatic and popular tenor.
• 1907 Nicolas Bentley, British writer and illustrator.
• 1907 René Char, French poet and painter.
• 1914 Winifred Milius Lubell, American illustrator and writer.
• 1922 Kevin Roche, Irish architect, Pritzker Prize winner, 1982.
• 1923 Judith Kerr, British children's writer and illustrator.
• 1929 Eamonn McGrath, Irish writer.
• 1933 Jerzy Kosiński, Polish-American novelist.
• 1936 Irmelin Sandman Lilius, Swedish-Finnish writer.
• 1944 Laurie Colwin, American author.
• 1949 Harry Turtledove, American author.
• 1952 Leon Wieseltier, American writer.
• 1955 Larry Burrows, fictional character in Mr Destiny.
• 1978 Diablo Cody, American screenwriter.
• 1982 Lang Lang, Chinese concert pianist.

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

• andragogy: /ˈan-drə-ˌgä-jē/ n., the art or science of teaching adults.
• bight: /ˈbīt/ n., a bend in a coast forming an open bay, a bay formed by such a bend; a slack part or loop in a rope.
• chopsing: /ˈtʃɑp-sɪŋ/ n., the action of chopse v., (in either sense), engagement in critical or angry abuse; (also) chattering, gossiping, idle talk.
• forficiform: /fȯr-ˈfis-ə-ˌfȯrm/ adj., shaped like a scissors, one of the words from the 2023 Scripps Spelling Bee.
• owl-light: /ˈaʊ(l)-ˌlaɪt/ n., twilight, dusk; dim or poor light; n early use sometimes: the cover of night, the dark.
• prosody: /ˈpräs-ə-dē/ n., the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry; the patterns of stress and intonation in a language.
• rommack: /ˈräm-ək/ intrans. v., to romp or play boisterously.
• sclavin: /ˈsklæ- vɪn/ n., pilgrim's cloak.
• tendu: /täⁿ-dᵫ̅/ adj., extended in a taut manner, used of a leg in ballet.
• withershins: /ˈwi-t͟hər-shənz/ adv., in a left-handed, wrong, or contrary direction : counterclockwise.

June 14, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature
good
/ˈgu̇d/ adj., to be desired or approved of; having the qualities required for a particular role, from Old English gōd (with a long "o") "excellent, fine; valuable; desirable, favorable, beneficial; full, entire, complete;" of abstractions, actions, etc., "beneficial, effective; righteous, pious;" of persons or souls, "righteous, pious, virtuous;" probably originally "having the right or desirable quality," from Proto-Germanic gōda- "fitting, suitable" (source also of Old Frisian god, Old Saxon gōd, Old Norse goðr, Middle Dutch goed, Dutch goed, Old High German guot, German gut, Gothic goþs). A word of uncertain etymology, perhaps originally "fit, adequate, belonging together," from Proto-Indo-European root ghedh- "to unite, be associated, suitable" (source also of Sanskrit gadh- "seize (booty)," Old Church Slavonic godu "favorable time," Russian godnyi "fit, suitable," Lithuanian goda "honor," Old English gædrian "to gather, to take up together").

An old almanacker named Benjamin Franklin tried to keep his mind focused on the idea of doing good by asking himself one question when he woke up each morning and another at the end of the day: "What good shall I do today?" and "What good have I done today?" Thinking of good's comparative and superlative forms, we each have the best opportunity each day to make the world a better place. Here are some words to help us along in that direction:

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics

There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.

Michel de Montaigne

To be good, we must do good; and by doing good we take a sure means of being good, as the use and exercise of the muscles increase their power.

Tryon Edwards, in A Dictionary of Thoughts

An act is not good because we feel obliged to do it, it is rather that we feel obliged to do it because it is good.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, in Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion

All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.

Anna Quindlen

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Thomas Paine

The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.

Charles Lamb

Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate.

Karen Armstrong

By doing good we become good.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I believe . . . that every human mind feels pleasure
in doing good to another.

Thomas Jefferson

Do not run after happiness, but seek to do good, and you will find that happiness will run after you.

James Freeman Clarke

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as you ever can.

John Wesley

Employ whatever God has entrusted you with, in doing good, all possible good, in every possible kind and degree, to the household of faith, to all men.

Martin Luther

What greater bliss than to look back on days spent in usefulness, in doing good to those around us.

Dorothea Dix

       
Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man. In spite of yourself.

Lois Auchicloss

GOOD, adj. Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer. Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

 

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.

Voltaire

That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love.

William Wordsworth

It must be a good thing to be good or ivrybody wudden’t be pretending he was.

Finley Peter Dunne, “Hypocrisy,” in Observations by Mr. Dooley

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.

Marcus Aurelius, in Meditations

From A Year with Rilke, June 14 Entry
Bowl of Roses (II) from New Prams

Soundless existence ever opening,
filling space while taking it from no one,
diminishing nothing, defined by nothing outside itself,
all coming from within, clothed in softness
and radiant in its own light, even to its outermost edge.
When have we known a thing like this,

like the tender and delicate way
that rose petal touches rose petal?
Or like this: that each petal is an eyelid,
and under it lie other eyelids
closed, as if letting all vision be cradled
in deepening sleep.

Bowl with Peonies and Roses
by  Vincent van Gogh

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.



*It vas all booked up on dere vedding day.