Word-Wednesday for November 8, 2023

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for November 8, 2023, the forty-fifth Wednesday of the year, the seventh Wednesday of fall, and the three-hundred twelfth day of the year, with fifty-three days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for November 8, 2023
Bringing up the Rear
Gone are the humming birds, the robins, the murmurations of grackles, red-winged blackbirds, the Sandhill cranes, and most waterfowl.  Last, but not least are the Canada Goose and the tundra swan, Cygnus columbianus. Smallest of the Holarctic swans, the tundra swans, with entirely white plummage, with black feet, and with a mostly black bill, highlighted with a thin salmon-pink streak running along the mouthline, these beauties are grace-in-motion.

Looking up in the early morning sky:

November 8 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


November 8 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for November 8, 2023
Sunrise: 7:21am; Sunset: 4:54pm; 3 minutes, 1 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 2:00am; Moonset: 3:17pm, waning crescent, 21% illuminated.

Day After Daylight Savings
By Margaret Hasse

Blue numbers on my bedside clock
tell I forgot to change the hour.
This sets routines on haywire.
 
Like a domestic goat staked
to its circle of earth,
I don’t do well untethered.
 
I have no hunger for early dinner,
become confused by the sound
of children who seem out
 
too late for a school night.
They’ve found an extra helping
of daylight to romp on new grass
 
and can’t contain themselves,
strip off jackets, scatter
like a rag of ponies.
 
Whatever time says,
their joy insists
on springing forward.

Temperature Almanac for November 8, 2023
                Average            Record              Today
High            37                     67                      39
Low             21                     -5                      30


November 8 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• World Radiography Day
• World Urbanism Day
• National STEM/STEAM Day
• National Parents as Teachers Day
• National Harvey Wallbanger Day
• National Cappuccino Day

November 8 Word Riddle
What sound does a 747 make on a bouncy landing?*


November 8 Word Pun

Now if mouse in the plural should be, and is, mice
Then house in the plural, of course, should be hice,
And grouse should be grice and spouse should be spice
And by the same token should blouse become blice?
And consider the goose with its plural of geese;
Then a double caboose should be called a cabeese,
And noose should be neese and moose should be meese
And if mama's papoose should be twins, it's papeese.
Then if one thing is that while some more is called those,
Then more than one hat, I assume, would be hose,
And gnat would be gnose and pat would be pose,
And likewise the plural of rat would be rose.
                                                            Author Unknown

November 8 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
WEATHER, n. The climate of an hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned. The setting up of official weather bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle.

    Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
    And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be—
    Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
    With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.
    While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
    From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
    He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
    On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote—
    For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
    "Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."
                                                                        —Halcyon Jones


November 8 Etymology Word of the Week
folly
/ˈfälē/ n., lack of good sense; foolishness, from early 13th century, "mental weakness; foolish behavior or character; unwise conduct" (in Middle English including wickedness, lewdness, madness), from Old French folie "folly, madness, stupidity" (12th century), from fol (see fool (n.)). From circa 1300 as "an example of foolishness;" sense of "costly structure considered to have shown folly in the builder" is attested from 1650s. But used much earlier, since Middle English, in place names, especially country estates, probably as a form of Old French folie in its meaning "delight."


November 8 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1602 The Bodleian Library at Oxford University is opened.
• 1701 William Penn presents Charter of Privileges, guaranteed religious freedom for the colony in Pennsylvania.
• 1731 In Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin opens first library in the north American colonies, the Library Company of Philadelphia.
• 1838 Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas premieres.
• 1889 Montana admitted as 41st state of the Union.
• 1895 German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen produces and detects electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as X-rays.
• 1900 Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie is published.
• 1910 First Washington State election in which women could vote.
• 1926 George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, and P. G. Wodehouse's musical Oh, Kay opens.
• 1946 Jean-Paul Sartre's La Putain Respecteuse premieres.

November 8 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1491 Teofilo Folengo, Italian macaronic poet.
• 1710 Sarah Fielding, English writer.
• 1814 Girolamo de Rada, Albanian poet.
• 1847 Bram Stoker, Irish author.
• 1850 Karel Komzák II, Czech composer.
• 1875 Qiu Jin, Chinese revolutionary, feminist, and writer.
• 1895 Photis Kontoglou, Greek writer.
• 1897 Dorothy Day, American journalist and activist.
• 1900 Mihailo Vukdragović, Serbian composer.
• 1904 Cedric Belfrage, English writer.
• 1908 Martha Gellhorn, American novelist.
• 1932 Ben Bova, American science fiction author.

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

• bombinate: /ˈbäm-bə-nāt/ v., buzz; hum.
• chapo: /tʃæ-ˈpoʊ/ n., East African, a thin pancake of unleavened wholemeal bread cooked on a griddle.
• drogulus: /DRAWG-yuh-luhs/ n., an entity whose presence is unverifiable, because it has no physical effects; a ghost.
• gabelle: /gə-ˈbel/ n., a tax or excise.
• loonie: / LOO-nee/ n., the Canadian one-dollar coin introduced in 1987.
• mousle: /ˈmaʊz-(ə)l/ v., to pull about roughly; to dishevel.
• neep: /nēp/ n., Scottish, a turnip (commonly enjoyed with haggis).
• sciamachy: /sī-ˈam-ə-kē/ n., sham fighting for exercise or practice; argument or conflict with an imaginary opponent.
• tootle: /ˈto͞o-d(ə)l/ v., casually make a series of sounds on a horn, trumpet, or similar instrument; go or travel in a leisurely way; n., an act or sound of casual playing on an instrument such as a horn or trumpet; a leisurely journey.
• yealing: /YEE-lin/: n., a person of the same age as oneself.

November 8, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature
Post-Equinox, Pre-holiday Emotional Landscape
We’ve got snow here in Wannaska, he birds have mostly left, and we’ve turned the clocks back as daylight continues to retreat into growing darkness. Acknowledging that each season bring its own emotional spectrum, Word-Wednesday provides you with some words to identify the landscape of feelings that often arise in this time before the holidays:

• alemurity: /al-ə-MəR-ə-dē/ n., one’s desire for reconnecting with their childhood self while still somehow holding onto the idea of what it is to be a responsible adult.
• aviothic: /ā-vē-Ō-THik/ n., the strong desire to be up in the air or to fly.
• desiderium: /de-sə-DIR-ē-əm/ n., a passionate longing for something lost.
• drizzlosis: /driz-əl-Ō-sis/ n., the distinctive calmness one feels when listening to rainfall’s ambiance.
• eramnesia: /e-ram-NĒZH-ə/ n., the realization of being born in the wrong time period and wishing to live in another.
• erlebnisse: /er-léb-NĒS/ n., German, the positive and negative experiences we go through that truly define how we feel and live.
• forelsket: /FÔR-əl-sket/ n., Norwegian, the feeling of euphoria and infatuation when first falling in love.
• hyompora: /hī-ÀM-pō-ra/ n., the sense of serene connectedness experienced while listening to the flowing of water.
• livilence: /LIV-i-ləns/ n., the mix of eerie calmness and nostalgia experienced when returning to the home one grew up in long after moving away.
• novalunosis: /ˈnō-və-loo-NŌ-səs/ n., the state of relaxation and wonderment experienced while gazing upon the stars.
• pulchritudinous: /puhl-kri-TYOOD-n-uhs/ adj., possessing beauty that is breathtaking or heartbreaking.
• seatherny: /SĒ-T͟Hər-nē/ n., the serenity one feels when listening to the chirping of birds.
• sundreesoro: /sən-DRĒ-sō-rō/  n., the disappointment felt after waking up from a pleasant dream and realizing it wasn’t real.
• vorfreude: /VÔR-froid/ n., German, the joyful anticipation that results from imagining future pleasures.
• witnessoja: /wit-ness-OH-juh/ n., the feeling of accomplishment following a long period of habitual procrastination or failure.
• wundervei: /VəN-dər-vā/ n., German, the deep introspection experienced in moments of isolated silence during a solo nature walk.
• zirgwè: /ZəRG-wā/ n., the feeling of hopelessness one feels after trying multiple, different life and career paths and still not knowing what to do with one’s life.

From A Year with Rilke, November 8 Entry
Night, from Uncollected Prams

Night. You with your depth-dissolving face
pressed against my face.
You, counterbalance
to my awestruck gaze.

Night, shuddering in my regard,
but in yourself so steady;
inexhaustible creation, enduring beyond
the fate of earth;

brimming with new stars, who fling
fire from their birth
into the soundless adventure
of galactic spaces:

your sheer existence,
you transcender of all things, makes me so small.
Yet, one with the darkening earth,
I dare to be in you.

The Street Performers in the Night
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.





*Boeing, Boeing, Boeing.