Word-Wednesday for July 12, 2023

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for July 12, 2023, the twenty-eighth Wednesday of the year, the fourth Wednesday of summer, and the one-hundred ninety-third day of the year, with one-hundred seventy-two days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for July 12, 2023
Shrooming
Chanterelles and Amanitas (beware!) and other forest-variety mushrooms have received enough rainfall this year to build sufficient hydrostatic pressure and breach the ground.

(don't know the common, folklore, or Latin scientific names of this species)

The milkweeds are numerous and healthy this year, and the Monarch butterflies are starting to arrive. Thankfully, the ticks have retired for the year, mostly.

Above the horizon, watch for Jupiter near the moon late tonight and early tomorrow morning. Hopefully the Canadian fire smoke will be low and there won't be too many clouds in the coming nights, because there’s a good chance for aurora borealis activity if you live in Wannaska latitudes.


July 12 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


July 12 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for July 12, 2023
Sunrise: 5:33am; Sunset: 9:25pm; 1 minutes, 43 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 1:32am; Moonset: 5:14pm, waning crescent, 23% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for July 12, 2023
                Average            Record              Today
High             77                     90                     70
Low              55                     40                     51

The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants - (1350)
by Emily Dickinson

At Evening, it is not
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop upon a Spot

As if it tarried always
And yet it’s whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake’s Delay -
And fleeter than a Tare -

’Tis Vegetation’s Juggler -
The Germ of Alibi -
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie -

I feel as if the Grass was pleased
To have it intermit -
This surreptitious Scion
Of Summer’s circumspect.

Had Nature any supple Face
Or could she one contemn -
Had Nature an Apostate -
That Mushroom - it is Him!

July 12 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Malala Day
• Eat Your Jello Day
• Paper Bag Day
• National Different Colored Eye Day
• National Simplicity Day

July 12 Word Riddle
Why was John Milton barred from European casinos?*


July 12 Word Pun
Inga Enarsdottir’s church welcomes all denominations, but it prefers tens and twenties.


July 12 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
HEAT, n.

Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode
     Of motion, but I know now how he’s proving
His point; but this I know — hot words bestowed
     With skill will set the human fist a-moving,
And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.
Crede expertum — I have seen them, child.

                                                                Gorton Swope


July 12 Etymology Word of the Week 

July 12 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1580 Ostrog Bible, the first printed Bible in a Slavic language, is published.
• 1630 New Amsterdam's governor buys Gull Island from Indians for cargo, renames it Oyster Island, later known as Ellis Island.
• 1817 First flower show held in Dannybrook, County Cork, Ireland.
• 2013 Malala Yousafzai addresses the United Nations and calls for worldwide access to education.

July 12 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1817 Henry David Thoreau.
• 1868 Stefan George, German lyric poet.
• 1876 Max Jacob, French poet.
• 1879 Han Yong-woon, Korean poet.
• 1895 Oscar Hammerstein II, American lyricist.
• 1895 R. Buckminster Fuller, American architect.
• 1904 Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet.
• 1911 Johanna Moosdorf, German writer.
• 1917 Andrew Wyeth, American realist painter.
• 1920 Beah Richards, American poet.
• 1920 Pierre Berton, Canadian author.
• 1933 Donald E. Westlake, American author.
• 1934 Van Cliburn, American pianist.
• 1936 Jan Nemec, Czech film director.
• 1942 Pádraig Breathnach, Irish writer.
• 1945 Chuck Daellenbach, American-Canadian tubist.
• 1956 Cathal Ó Searcaigh, Irish poet.
• 1997 Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani activist.

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

• ancipital: /an-SIP-ih-tuhl/ adj., having two heads; having two edges, such as a sword or a blade of grass.
• costermonger: /ˈkä-stər-ˌməŋ-gər/ n., a person who sells goods, especially fruit and vegetables, from a handcart in the street.
• debouch: /di-ˈbau̇ch/ v., to cause to emerge; discharge.
• eftsoons: /eft-ˈsünz/ adv., soon after.
• fulmar: /ˈfu̇l-mər/ n., a seabird (/Fulmarus glacialis/) of colder northern seas closely related to the petrels, not to be confused with grebes or puffins.
  
• mizzler: /ˈmɪz-(ə)lər/ n., a person who complains; a moaner; a grumbler.
• ocnophil: /ˈɑk-nə-ˌfɪl/ n., a person who seeks to avoid dangerous or unfamiliar situations, relying on external objects and (especially) other people for security, and tending to clutch or hold on to them when threatened.
• psi: /‘psī/ n., parapsychological psychic phenomena or powers.
• rampike: /ˈræm-paɪk/ adj., of a tree or bough: partially decayed or dead; bare of leaves or twigs.
• scilicet: /ˈskē-li-ˌket/ adv., that is to say; namely; to wit.

July 12, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature
Myconymy: Shroom Naming
Just glance through the index of any Minnesota mushroom guide, and you'll find dozens of “official” names that sound of folklore: Angel's Death, Bare-toothed Russula, Common Eyelash Cup, Dead-man's Fingers Asco, Elf Cup (Curly-haired variety), Fairy Ring Marasmius, Gemmed Agaric, Hedgehog Puffball, Inky Cap (Magpie variety), Jack O'Lantern, King Bolete, Layered Tooth, Meadow Coral, Onion-bagel Pholiota, Phlebia (Trembling variety), Rigid Leather Bracket, Satan's Bolete, Tiger Lentinus, Umbrella Inky Cap, Veiled Hebeloma, White-egg Bird's Nest, Yellow Brain Jelly, and Zebra-spored Latarius, to name an alphabetical sampling.

Folk names can be even more colorful. Most are simple incongruous juxtapositions, which often include body parts, such as Shaggy Parasol, Imperial Cat, Big Laughing Gym, Northern Tooth, Spongy-Footed Tooth, Bearded Tooth, Spreading Yellow Tooth, and Hairy Parchment. Others cleave more to names that suggest comparisons, such as Black Jelly Roll, Blue Cheese Polypore, Chicken Mushroom, Fried-Chicken Mushroom, Moose Ears, Old Man of the Woods, Pig's Ear Gomphus, Pretzel Slime, Rooting Cauliflower Mushroom, and Scrambled Egg Slime.

As classic metaphors for death and decay, the single largest category of mushroom folk names refers to evil and death, along with the beings who bode and/or bring these malefactions: Corpse Finder, Death Cap, Devil's Urn, Goat's Foot, Lead Poisoner, Poison Pie, Sven’s Svitch, Ula’s Lala, Witches' Butter, Witch's Hat.

And let's not forget the authors who have featured mushrooms prominently in their poetry or fiction: Ray Bradbury, Arthur Conan Doyle, Emily Dickinson, Keats, D.H. Lawrence, J. K. Rowling, Shelley, Spenser, Alfred Lord Tennysball, Jules Verne, and John Wyndham. Here's just a sample of some Word-Wednesday favorites.

In a minute or two the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth and yawned once or twice, and shook itself. Then it got down off the mushroom, and crawled away in the grass, merely remarking as it went, "One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter."

"One side of what? The other side of what?" thought Alice to herself.

"Of the mushroom," said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight.

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty. There seem to be two sides of this world, presented us at different times, as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death. and seen with the eye of the poet, as god sees them, all things are alive and beautiful.

birthday boy, Henry David Thoreau

Mushrooms were the roses in the garden of that unseen world, because the real mushroom plant was underground. the parts you could see - what most people called a mushroom - was just a brief apparition. A cloud flower.

Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

Sylvia Plath

Use your creative imagination and name the mushrooms depicted in the phenology section of today's post.


From A Year with Rilke, July 12 Entry
Continuities, from Letter to Countess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, July 9, 1915

Some of us have long felt continuities that have little in common with the course of history. We understand what is most distinctive in this fateful moment and what future it holds. But we, squeezed between yesterday and tomorrow, will we be mindful and receptive enough to participate in the unfolding of the larger movement?

David and Bathsheba
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.



*There was a pair of dice lost whenever he was around.