Word-Wednesday for January 24, 2023

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for January 24, 2024, the fourth Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of winter, and the twenty-fourth day of the year, with three-hundred forty-two days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for January 24, 2024
Boreal Chickadees
Year-round, always-active neighbors, the boreal chickadee, Poecile hudsonicus, is a holarctic [/häl-ˈärk-tik/ adj., relating to or denoting a zoogeographical region comprising the Nearctic and Palearctic regions combined. The two continents have been linked intermittently by the Bering land bridge, and the faunas are closely related] bird, otherwise known as tits in various parts of the English-speaking world. The chickadee vocabulary consists primarily of "fee-bee" and "chick-a-dee-dee-dee" where the number of "dees" depends on the size of the predator. Chickadees are food-caching birds, capable of hiding and remember the location of 80,000 individual seeds.

Spot the Space Station

Wednesday, January 24, 6:01 PM, Visible: 6 min, Max Height: 55°, 

Appears: 10° above W, 

Disappears: 14° above ENE

January 24 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


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


Earth/Moon Almanac for January 24, 2024
Sunrise: 8:05am; Sunset: 5:06pm; 2 minutes, 37 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 8:35pm; Moonset: 9:50am, waxing gibbous, 98% illuminated.

Wolf Moon
by Mary Oliver

Now is the season

of hungry mice,

cold rabbits,

lean owls

hunkering with their lamp-eyes

in the leafless lanes

in the needled dark;

now is the season

when the kittle fox

comes to town

in the blue valley

of early morning;

now is the season

of iron rivers,

bloody crossings,

flaring winds,

birds frozen

in their tents of weeds,

their music spent

Temperature Almanac for January 24, 2024
                Average            Record              Today
High             13                     43                     32
Low              -7                   -43                     26


January 24 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Library Shelfie Day
• National Peanut Butter Day
• Beer Can Appreciation Day
• National Compliment Day
• Global Belly Laugh Day

January 24 Word Riddle
Sven vas valking down a road and came to a fork. Von path leads to certain deat; da odder von leads to eternal happiness. Sven doesn’t know vhich von is vhich. In da middle of da fork, Sven sees tew brodders who know vhich road is vhich. Von brodder alvays tells the trut, and da odder von alvays lies. Sven can only ask dem von question. How vould Sven determine vhich road to take?


January 24 Word Pun
Sven voke up dis mornin’, and his whole body had turned into corn.

If anyone has any ideas about a cure, he's all ears!


January 24 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
URBANITY, n., The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York. Its commonest expression is heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not inconsistent with disregard of the rights of others.

    The owner of a powder mill
    Was musing on a distant hill—
    Something his mind foreboded—
    When from the cloudless sky there fell
    A deviled human kidney! Well,
    The man's mill had exploded.
    His hat he lifted from his head;
    "I beg your pardon, sir," he said;
    "I didn't know 'twas loaded."
                            —Swatkin


January 24 Etymology Word of the Week
lunar
/ˈlo͞o-nər/ adj., of, determined by, or resembling the moon, from early 15th century, "crescent-shaped;" 1620s, "pertaining to the moon," from Old French lunaire (15th century), from Latin lunaris "of the moon," from luna "moon" (see luna).

luna: n., late 14th century "the moon," especially as personified in a Roman goddess answering to Greek Selene; also an alchemical name for "silver;" from Latin luna "moon, goddess of the moon," from Proto-Indo-European leuksna- (source also of Old Church Slavonic luna "moon," Old Prussian lauxnos "stars," Middle Irish luan "light, moon"), suffixed form of root leuk- "light, brightness." The luna moth (1841, American English) so called for the crescent-shaped eye-spots on its wings.


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

• 1659 Pierre Corneille's play Oedipe premieres.
• 1874 Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov premieres.
• 1875 Camille Saint-Saëns' orchestral tone poem Danse Macabre premieres.
• 1890 World's oldest wooden sculpture the Shigir Idol - radiocarbon dated to 12,500 years old, is discovered in a peat bog near Kalata, Middle Urals.
• 1913 Franz Kafka stops working on Amerika; it will never be finished.
• 1933 Noël Coward's stage comedy Design for Living premieres.
• 1961 Edward Albee's one-act play American Dream premieres.

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

• 1638 Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset, English poet.
• 1664 John Vanbrugh, Dutch-English playwright.
• 1670 William Congreve, English dramatist.
• 1724 Frances Brooke, English writer.
• 1774 Karl Moser, German composer.
• 1806 Anna Caroline Oury (née De Belleville), German concert pianist and composer.
• 1862 Edith Wharton, American author.
• 1872 Ethel Turner, Australian author.
• 1879 Stanislaw Lyudkevich, Ukranian composer.
• 1895 Albin Zollinger, Swiss poet.
• 1911 C. L. Moore, American science fiction & fantasy writer.
• 1915 Robert Motherwell, American painter.
• 1915 Vitezslava Kapralova, Czech composer.
• 1919 Nora Beloff, English author.
• 1921 Patrick Scott, Irish artist.
• 1925 Maria Tallchief, American prima ballerina.
• 1926 Clyde Adler, American writer.
• 1934 Stanisław Grochowiak, Polish poet.
• 1961 Vince Russo, American writer.

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

• bedlamite: /ˈbed-lə-ˌmīt/ n., lunatic, madman.
• charcuterie: /SHär-ˈko͞o-də-rē/ n., cold cooked meats collectively; a store selling cold cooked meats.
• fagin: /‘fā-gən/ n., an adult who instructs others in crime.
• giaour: /ˈjou(ə)r/ n., a non-Muslim, especially a Christian.
• knell: /nel/ n., the sound of a bell, especially when rung solemnly for a death or funeral.
• natak: /NAH-tuhck/ n., a play or other dramatic work. Also as a mass noun: drama or dramatic art.
• quant: /ˈkwänt/ n., an expert an analyzing and managing quantitative data.
• ripicolous: /ruh-PICK-uh-luhss/ adj., living or growing on the banks of rivers and streams; relating to or characteristic of the transitional zone between dry land and running water.
• Scandinoir: /skan-də-'nwär/ n., a genre of crime fiction usually written from a police point of view and set in Scandinavia or Nordic countries.
• snacne: /SNAK-nee/ n., complexion of the snow after deer, dogs, and chunks of snow blow out of trees has pocked it.

January 24, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature
More Words from Satanic Verses
As the angel/demon pair of of main characters in Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses traverse the earth, history, and dreamscapes beyond most peoples’ imaginations, a reader can only keep pace with the richness of narrative detail by having a dictionary handy. Now just over the halfway point of this wonderful novel, here are some new words since our last installment, with many good ones for Sven and Monique’s ScrabbleTM play:

• anna: /ˈän-ə/ n., a former monetary unit of India and Pakistan, equal to one sixteenth of a rupee.
• barmy: /ˈbärm-ē/ adj., British, mad, crazy.
• bhai: /ˈbä-ē/ n., Indian, brother, friend.
• bhenchod: /बहनचोद/ n., one who is amorous with one's sister.
• chappel: /tʃæ-'pəl/ n., a printers guild.
• dhoti: /ˈdō-dē/ n., a garment worn by male Hindus, consisting of a piece of material tied around the waist and extending to cover most of the legs.
• divagate: /ˈdī-və-ˌgāt/ v., to wander or stray from a course or subject.
• edulcorate: /əˈ-dəl-kə-rāt/ v., make (something) more acceptable or palatable.
• estancia: /e-ˈstän(t)s-(ˌ)yä/ n., a South American cattle ranch or stock farm.
• gori: /ˈɡɔ-ri/ n., Hinglish, a white or fair-skinned girl or woman.
• henotheist: /ˈhen-ō-THē-ist/ n., Hindi, one who adheres to one particular god out of several, especially by a family, tribe, or other group.
• hubshee: /ˈhʌb-ʃiː/ n., an Ethiopian; a negro; a descendant of Abyssinians; a Himalayan pony having short curly hair.
• kâhin: /ca-hin/ n., clairvoyant, seer, soothsayer.
• manticore: /ˈman-(t)ə-kôr/ n.,     a mythical beast typically depicted as having the body of a lion, the face of a man, and the sting of a scorpion.
• nadge: /naj/ v., British, to bugger.
• obeah: /ˈō-bē-ə/ n., a kind of sorcery practiced especially in the Caribbean.
• paan: /pän/ n., betel leaves prepared and used as a stimulant.
• pice: /pīs/ n., a former unit of India and Pakistan, equal to one quarter of an anna.
• Pierrot: /ˈpēəˌrō/ n., a stock male character in French pantomime, with a sad white-painted face, a loose white costume, and a pointed hat.
• pir: /pir/ n., a Muslim saint or holy man.
• pong: /pôNG/ British, n., a strong, unpleasant smell; v., smell strongly and unpleasantly.
• purdah: /ˈpər-də/ n., the practice among women in certain Muslim and Hindu societies of living in a separate room or behind a curtain, or of dressing in all-enveloping clothes, in order to stay out of the sight of men or strangers.
• pulviscular: /puhl-VISS-kew-lurr/ adj., dusty; resembling fine powder.
• quetsch: /kwe(t)SH/ n., a dark-skinned variety of plum; a liqueur made from fruit.
• quiff: /kwif/ n., British, a piece of hair, especially on a man, brushed upward and backward from the forehead.
• rishi: /ˈriSH-ē/ n., a Hindu sage or saint.
• sempiternal: /sem-pə-ˈtərnl/ adj., eternal and unchanging; everlasting.
• simurgh: /sē-'mu̇(ə)rg/ n., Persian, a huge ancient bird of Persian legend credited with possessing great wisdom.
• tannoy: /tæn-ɔɪ/ n., a sound-amplifying apparatus used as a public-address system esp in a large building, such as a university.
• telluric: / tə-ˈlu̇r-ik/ adj., of or relating to the earth; being or relating to a usually natural electric current flowing near the earth's surface.
• trilby: /ˈtril-bē/ n., British, a soft felt hat with a narrow brim and indented crown.
• wadi: /ˈwä-dē/ n., (in certain Arabic-speaking countries) a valley, ravine, or channel that is dry except in the rainy season.
• zamindar: /zə-ˈmēn-där/ n., Indian, a landowner, especially one who leases his land to tenant farmers.

From A Year with Rilke, January 24 Entry
A Deeper Reality, from Letter to Witold Hulewicz, November 13, 1925

All the worlds of the universe plunge into the Invisible as into a yet deeper reality. Certain stars increase in intensity and extinguish themselves in the angels' endless awareness. Others move toward transformation slowly and with great effort, and their next self-realization occurs in fear and terror.

We are the transformers of Earth. Our whole being, and the flights and falls of our love, enable us to undertake this task.

The Meditation
Auguste Rodin

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.





*Ask each brodder, “If yew vere yer brodder, vhich road vould yew say leads to eternal happiness?” Bot brodders should give Sven da same answer. Sven vould take da opposite vay.