Word-Wednesday for November 22, 2023

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for November 22, 2023, the forty-seventh Wednesday of the year, the ninth Wednesday of fall, and the three-hundred twenty-sixth day of the year, with thirty-nine days remaining. Sponsored by Bead Gypsy Studio, and the November 24 Trunk Show, 10:00am to 3:00pm.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for November 22, 2023
Minnesota's wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is an upland game bird native to North America. Males are also called toms, jakes, if you're a juvenile, and gobblers of any age, but unless you're a juvenile female, called a jennie, you're only known as a hen.

Once extirpated from Minnesota, wild turkey restoration has been a phenomenal success. Today's turkey population descended from a successful release of turkeys that occurred between 1971 and 1973 when 29 adult wild turkeys were trapped in Missouri and transplanted to Houston County in extreme southeastern Minnesota. Since this modest beginning over 30 years ago, Minnesota's population has grown to more than 70,000 wild turkeys.

The Minnesota DNR cautions residents that a flock (or rafter) of turkeys has the same sort of pecking order arrangement as Sven's house, where habituated birds may respond to you as they do to another turkey. The best defense against aggressive or persistent turkeys is to prevent the birds from becoming habituated in the first place by being bold to them.

Wild Turkey Bourbon gets its name after a distillery executive shares his bourbon with friends on an annual hunting trip — of course, they were after wild turkey.

Looking up at night:

Spot the Space Station: 

6:13 PM, Visible: 4 min, Max Height: 76°, Appears: 10° above WSW, Disappears: 42° above ENE

November 22 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


November 22 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for November 22, 2023
Sunrise: 7:43am; Sunset: 4:37pm; 2 minutes, 23 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 2:32pm; Moonset: 1:40am, waxing gibbous, 68% illuminated.

Hymn to the Belly
by Ben Jonson

ROOM! room! make room for the bouncing Belly,
First father of sauce and deviser of jelly;
Prime master of arts and the giver of wit,
That found out the excellent engine, the spit,
The plough and the flail, the mill and the hopper,
The hutch and the boulter, the furnace and copper,
The oven, the bavin, the mawkin, the peel,
The hearth and the range, the dog and the wheel.
He, he first invented the hogshead and tun,
The gimlet and vice too, and taught 'em to run;
And since, with the funnel and hippocras bag,
He's made of himself that now he cries swag;
Which shows, though the pleasure be but of four inches,
Yet he is a weasel, the gullet that pinches
Of any delight, and not spares from his back
Whatever to make of the belly a sack.
Hail, hail, plump paunch! O the founder of taste,
For fresh meats or powdered, or pickle or paste!
Devourer of broiled, baked, roasted or sod!
And emptier of cups, be they even or odd!
All which have now made thee so wide i' the waist,
As scarce with no pudding thou art to be laced;
But eating and drinking until thou dost nod,
Thou break'st all thy girdles and break'st forth a god.

Temperature Almanac for November 22, 2023
                Average            Record              Today
High             29                     55                    36
Low              13                    -24                     14

November 22 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Tie One On Day
• National Jukebox Day
• National Cranberry Relish Day

November 22 Word Riddle
What’s red and smells like blue paint?*


November 22 Word Pun
I told my doctor I heard buzzing, but he said it’s just a bug going around.


November 22 The Devil’s Dictionary  Word-Pram
TABLE D'HÔTE, n. A caterer's thrifty concession to the universal passion for irresponsibility.

    Old Paunchinello, freshly wed,
    Took Madam P. to table,
    And there deliriously fed
    As fast as he was able.

    "I dote upon good grub," he cried,
    Intent upon its throatage.
    "Ah, yes," said the neglected bride,
    "You're in your table d'hôtage."
                —Associated Poets


November 22 Etymology Word of the Week
liberal
/ˈlib-(ə)-rəl/ adj., willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas, from mid-14th century, "generous," also "nobly born, noble, free;" from late 14th century as "selfless, magnanimous, admirable;" from early 15th century in a bad sense, "extravagant, unrestrained," from Old French liberal "befitting free people; noble, generous; willing, zealous" (12th century), and directly from Latin liberalis "noble, gracious, munificent, generous," literally "of freedom, pertaining to or befitting a free person," from liber "free, unrestricted, unimpeded; unbridled, unchecked, licentious."

This is conjectured to be from Proto-Indo-European leudh-ero-, which probably originally meant "belonging to the people," though the precise semantic development is obscure; but compare frank (adj.). This was a suffixed form of the base leudh- "people" (source also of Old Church Slavonic ljudu, Lithuanian liaudis, Old English leod, German Leute "nation, people;" Old High German liut "person, people").

    Who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain,

    Confess'd the vile encounters they have had

    A thousand times in secret.

    ["Much Ado," IV.1.93]

Liberal was used 16th-17th century as a term of reproach with the meaning "free from restraint in speech or action." The Enlightenment revived it in a positive sense "free from prejudice, tolerant, not bigoted or narrow," which emerged 1776-88. In 19th century often theological rather than political, opposed to orthodox, used of Unitarians, Universalists, etc. For educational use, see liberal arts.

Purely in reference to political opinion, "tending in favor of freedom and democracy," it dates from circa 1801, from French libéral. In English the label at first was applied by opponents (often in the French form and with suggestions of foreign lawlessness) to the party more favorable to individual political freedoms. But also (especially in U.S. politics) tending to mean "favorable to government action to effect social change," which seems at times to draw more from the religious sense of "free from prejudice in favor of traditional opinions and established institutions" (and thus open to new ideas and plans of reform), which dates from 1823.


November 22 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1621 English Poet and preacher John Donne is made Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral.
• 1683 Purcell's Welcome to All the Pleasures premieres.
• 1842 Mount St Helens in Washington erupts.
• 1862 Opera La Forza del Destino by Giuseppe Verdi debuts.
• 1878 Aleksandr Ostrovsky's classic play Without a Dowry (Bespridannitsa) premieres.
• 1927 First snowmobile patent granted to Carl Eliason in Sayner, Wisconsin.
• 1928 Bolero by Maurice Ravel first performed publicly.
• 1957 Miles Davis Quintet debuts a jazz concert at Carnegie Hall.

November 22 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1458 Jacob Obrecht, Flemish-Dutch composer of motets and masses.
• 1690 François Colin de Blamont, French composer.
• 1709 František Benda, Czech violinist and composer.
• 1710 Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, German composer and son of J.S. Bach.
• 1780 Conradin Kreutzer, German composer.
• 1819 Mary Ann Evans, aka George Eliot, British author of Middlemarch and Silas Marner.
• 1842 José Maria de Heredia, Cuban-French sonnet poet.
• 1849 Fritz Mauthner, Czech novelist.
• 1857 George Gissing, British novelist.
• 1869, André Gide, French writer, 1947 Nobel prize winner.
• 1877 Endre Ady, Hungarian lyric poet.
• 1882 Charles Vildrac, French author, poet and playwright.
• 1888 Tarzan of the Apes.
• 1899 (Hoagland) "Hoagy" Carmichael, American composer, singer.
• 1907 Bernard Naylor, Canadian composer.
• 1907 Dora Maar [Markovitch], French painter, poet.
• 1909 Moses Josiah Madiba, South African author.
• 1913 Benjamin Britten, English composer.
• 1917 Bridget Bate Tichenor (born Bridget Pamela Arkwright Bate), Mexican surrealist painter.
• 1918 Claiborne Pell, American writer.
• 1921 Brian Cleeve, Irish author and playwright
• 1940 Terry Gilliam, comedy author-animator (Monty Python), born in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
• 1945  Christie Hennessy, Irish singer-songwriter.
• 1945 Ivan Pařík, Czech opera conductor.
• 1969 Marjane Satrapi, Iranian graphic novelist.
• 1970 Ger FitzGerald, Irish musician.
• 1982 Alasdair Duncan, Australian novelist.

Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Write a story or pram from the following words:

• bumbass: /BUM-bayss/ n., a bass fiddle consisting of a string stretched on a pole and over a bladder and bowed with a notched stick.
• clocky: /‘kläk-ē/ adj., someone who doesn’t pass as their chosen gender.
• definiendum: /di-ˌfi-nē-ˈen-dəm/ n., and expression that is being defined.
• edgelord: /ˈej-lôrd/ n., a person who affects a provocative or extreme persona, especially online (typically used of a man).
• flagitious: /fləˈ-ji-SHəs/ adj., criminal; villainous.
• gammon: / GAM-uhn/ v., to help, assist.
• monergy: / MU-nuhr-jee/ n., expenditure on energy, spec. expenditure which can be reduced by means of energy-saving measures.
• pottage: /ˈpäd-ij/ n., soup or stew.
• sinsyne: /ˈsin-ˌsīn/ adv., since that time.
• triolet: /ˈtrē-ə-lət/ n., a poem of eight lines, typically of eight syllables each, rhyming *abaaabab* and so structured that the first line recurs as the fourth and seventh and the second as the eighth.

November 22, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature
grace
/ɡrās/ n., simple elegance or refinement of movement; courteous goodwill; a short prayer of thanks said before or after a meal, from late 12th century, "God's unmerited favor, love, or help," from Old French grace "pardon, divine grace, mercy; favor, thanks; elegance, virtue" (12th century, Modern French grâce), from Latin gratia "favor, esteem, regard; pleasing quality, good will, gratitude" (source of Italian grazia, Spanish gracia; in Church use translating Greek kharisma), from gratus "pleasing, agreeable" (from Proto-Indo-European gwreto-, suffixed form of root gwere- "to favor").

Sense of "virtue" is early 14th century, that of "beauty of form or movement, pleasing quality" is mid-14th century In classical sense, "one of the three sister goddesses (Latin Gratiæ, Greek Kharites), bestowers of beauty and charm," it is first recorded in English 1579 in Spenser. In music, "an embellishment not essential to the melody or harmony," 1650s. As the name of the short prayer that is said before or after a meal (early 13th century; until the 16th century usually graces) it has a sense of "gratitude."

On that note of gratitude, Word-Wednesday today explores words about grace in the hopes that each reader will be a vehicle of grace during tomorrow's gatherings:

Grace is something you can never get but only be given.

Frederick Buechner

Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.

William Hazlitt

Grace is a kind of movable beauty.

Johann Friedrich von Schiller

Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.

Simone Weil

No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace,
As I have seen in one autumnal face.

John Donne

Courage and grace is a formidable mixture. The only place to see it is the bullring.

Marlene Dietrich

Beauty without grace, is a hook without bait.

Ninon de Lenclos

That word—grace,
In an ungracious mouth, is but profane.

William Shakespeare

Since we must eat to live, we might as well do it with both grace and gusto.

M. F. K. Fisher

I don’t think being an athlete is unfeminine. I think of it as a kind of grace.

Florence Griffith Joyner

A good grace is to the body what good sense is to the mind.

François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Imagine being born with Gene Kelly’s grace and Grace Kelly’s genes.

Andy Lee

Gardening is an instrument of grace.

May Sarton

Humor helps us get through life with a modicum of grace. It offers one of the few benign ways of coping with the absurdity of it all.

Diane Keaton

Grace under pressure.

Ernest Hemingway, his definition of guts, quoted by Dorothy Parker, in “The Artist’s Reward,” The New Yorker magazine (Nov. 30, 1929)

GRACES, n. Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne, who attended upon Venus, serving without salary. They were at no expense for board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of and dressed according to the weather, wearing whatever breeze happened to be blowing.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.

Tennessee Williams

When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.

Victor Hugo

You can have the other words—chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I’ll take grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ll take it.

Mary Oliver

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

Anne Lamott

You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and the pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
And grace before sketching, painting,
Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

G. K. Chesterton

From A Year with Rilke, November 22 Entry
Pont du Carousel, from Book of Images

The blind man who stands on the bridge
is a milestone marking the edge of the nameless.
He is the unchanging thing
around which the heavens turn,
the motionless midpoint of the stars.
All else is hurry and display.

He is the upright and unmoving one
set down amidst entangled paths.
In a heedless generation
he is a dark doorway to the underworld.

Pont du Carrousel, Afternoon
by Camille Pissaro

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.






*Red paint.