Word-Wednesday for January 31, 2024

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for January 31, 2024, the fifth Wednesday of the year, the sixth Wednesday of winter, and the thirty-first day of the year, with three-hundred thirty-five days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for January 31, 2024
Timber Wolf Activity
Timber Wolf, aka, Canis lupus and Gray Wolf, are the largest members of the dog family, growing up to five and one-half feet long (including the tail), and weighing up to one hundred pounds. Eighty percent of the Wannaskan Timber Wolf diet is white-tailed deer, but they also eat beaver, moose, fish, muskrat, and rabbits.

Only the lead female (alpha) in a pack breeds every year, and their peak mating activity now. So best keep Fluffy inside for a few weeks. After a gestation period of 64 days, timber wolf pups arrive in Minnesota around mid-April.

Our recent pleasant weather has augmented local snacne with sprinkles of snow fleas.

January 31 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


January 31 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for January 31, 2024
Sunrise: 7:56am; Sunset: 5:18pm; 2 minutes, 58 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 11:46pm; Moonset: 10:11am, waning gibbous, 73% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for January 31, 2024
                Average            Record              Today
High             14                     45                     41
Low             -9                    -42                     28
 

Wol okiskot: /wool ghisk kid/ Passamaquoddy, “Good weather.”

One Third of the Calendar
by Ogden Nash

In January everything freezes.
We have two children. Both are she'ses.
This is our January rule:
One girl in bed, and one in school.

In February the blizzard whirls.
We own a pair of little girls.
Blessings upon of each the head ----
The one in school and the one in bed.

March is the month of cringe and bluster.
Each of our children has a sister.
They cling together like Hansel and Gretel,
With their noses glued to the benzoin kettle.

April is made of impetuous waters
And doctors looking down throats of daughters.
If we had a son too, and a thoroughbred,
We'd have a horse,
And a boy,
And two girls
In bed.

January 31 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Hot Chocolate Day
• National Inspire Your Heart With Art Day
• National Backward Day
• Feast Day of Máedócs

January 31 Word Riddle
Which word is the odd one out—stun, ton, evil, letter, mood, bad, snap, straw?*


January 31 Word Pun
In what Revolutionary War battle did the Americans dress as Indians and the British wear Roman garb?

Saritoga
                            Contributed by Chairman Joe


January 31 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
FREEDOM, n. Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half dozen of restraint's infinite multitude of methods. A political condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual monopoly. Liberty. The distinction between freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a living specimen of either.

    Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,
    Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;
    On every wind, indeed, that blows
    I hear her yell.

    She screams whenever monarchs meet,
    And parliaments as well,
    To bind the chains about her feet
    And toll her knell.

    And when the sovereign people cast
    The votes they cannot spell,
    Upon the pestilential blast
    Her clamors swell.

    For all to whom the power's given
    To sway or to compel,
    Among themselves apportion Heaven
    And give her Hell.
    —Blary O'Gary


January 31 Etymology Word of the Week
caucus
/ˈkôkəs/ n., (in some US states) a meeting at which local members of a political party register their preference among candidates running for office or select delegates to attend a convention; a conference of members of a legislative body who belong to a particular party or faction, from "private meeting of party leaders or local voters," 1763, American English (New England), perhaps from an Algonquian word caucauasu "counselor, elder, adviser" in the dialect of Virginia, or from the Caucus Club of Boston, a 1760s social and political club whose name possibly derived from Modern Greek kaukos "drinking cup." Another old guess is caulker's (meeting) [Pickering, 1816], but OED and Century Dictionary find this dismissable.


January 31 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1675 Cornelia/Dina Olfaarts found not guilty of witchcraft.
• 1779 French astronomer Charles Messier adds M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra, to his catalog.
• 1901 Anton Chekhov's play Three Sisters premieres.
• 1929 Erich Maria Remarque publishes his anti-war novel Im Westen nichts Neues (Nothing New in the West).
• 1948 J. D. Salinger's short story A Perfect Day for Banana Fish published.

January 31 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1573 Ambrosius Metzger, German composer.
• 1601 Pieter de Bloot, Dutch landscape painter.
• 1614 Nicolas Saboly, French composer and poet.
• 1734 Julien-Amable Mathieu, French composer.
• 1785 Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová, Czech writer.
• 1797 Franz Schubert, Austrian composer.
• 1800 Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Native American poet.
• 1804 Jozsef Bajza, Hungarian poet.
• 1836 Henryk Szulc, Polish composer.
• 1866 Emil Strauss, German writer.
• 1872 Zane Grey, American western novelist.
• 1891 Michael Coleman, Irish fiddler.
• 1901 Blaž Arnič, Slovenian composer.
• 1901 Marie Luise Kaschnitz, German writer,.
• 1902 Jean Picart le Doux, French artist and tapestry designer.
• 1905 Anna Blaman [Johanna P Vrugt], Dutch writer.
• 1905 John O'Hara, American short story writer and novelist.
• 1915 Thomas Merton, French-American Catholic writer.
• 1923 Norman Mailer, American novelist.
• 1928 Robert Clatworthy, English sculptor.
• 1932 [Anna] Ottilie Patterson, Irish blues and jazz singer.
• 1935 Kenzaburo Oe, Japanese novelist.
• 1938 Ajip Rosidi, Indonesian poet/writer.
• 1939 Claude Gauthier, Canadian folk singer-songwriter.
• 1944 Anton Korteweg, Dutch poet.
• 1949 Ken Wilber, American philosopher and writer.
• 1952 Nadya Rusheva, Russian painter.

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

• calligram: /ˈkal-ə-ɡram/ n., a word or piece of text in which the design and layout of the letters creates a visual image related to the meaning of the words themselves.
• dobro: /ˈdō-brō/ n., a type of acoustic guitar with steel resonating disks inside the body under the bridge.
• epiphonema: /ˌep-ə-fō-ˈnēm-ə/ n., an exclamatory sentence or striking especially summary comment concluding a discourse.
• exurb: /ˈeks-ərb/ n., a district outside a city, especially a prosperous area beyond the suburbs.
• lardy-dardy: /lar-dee-DAR-dee/ adj., very or excessively refined in an upper-class way; affected, mannered, posh.
• mawworm: /MAW-wuhrm/ n., a hypocritical pretender to sanctity.
• noodgy: /NUUJ-ee/ adj., fussy, nagging, fretful.
• Passamaquoddy: /ˌpas-ə-mə-ˈkwäd-ē/ n., a member of a North American people inhabiting parts of southeastern Maine and southwestern New Brunswick; adj., the Algonquian language of the Passamaquoddy.
• sectator: /seck-TAY-duhr/ n., a follower, a disciple, an adherent; esp. one who follows a particular teacher or school of thought.
• werifesteria: /wer-ə-fes-'te-rē-ə/ v., to wander in the forest in search of mystery.

January 31, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature
Dreams
/drēmz/ n., a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep; a cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal, from "sequence of sensations or images passing through the mind of a sleeping person," mid-13c., probably related to Old Norse draumr, Danish drøm, Swedish dröm, Old Saxon drom "merriment, noise," Old Frisian dram "dream," Dutch droom, Old High German troum, German Traum "dream." These all are perhaps from a Proto-Germanic draugmas "deception, illusion, phantasm" (source also of Old Saxon bidriogan, Old High German triogan, German trügen "to deceive, delude," Old Norse draugr "ghost, apparition").

Old English dream meant "joy, mirth, noisy merriment," also "music", rather than "sleeping vision". Dream in the sense of "that which is presented to the mind by the imaginative faculty, though not in sleep" is from 1580s. The meaning "ideal or aspiration" is from 1931, from the earlier sense of "something of dream-like beauty or charm" (1888). The notion of "ideal" is behind dream girl (1850), etc.

Nowadays, people who make resolutions or carry hopes in their minds for a better future know the clear distinction between nocturnal dreams and aspirational dreams. But sometimes nocturnal dreaming is a metaphor for aspiration, where darkness often lurks as part of the inspiration. Today, Word-Wednesday presents inspirational words about aspirational dreams:

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
that cannot fly.

from Dreams by Langston Hughes

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

T. E. Lawrence

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Edgar Allan Poe in Eleonora: A Fable

When you cease to dream you cease to live.

Malcolm Forbes

Never dream with thy hand on the helm.

Herman Melville

There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves.

Zora Neale Hurston

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.

Kahlil Gibran

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blue-prints of your ultimate achievements.

Napoleon Hill

I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.

Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights

I believe that dreams—day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing—are likely to lead to the betterment of the world.

L. Frank Baum, in Introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz

There were many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts being broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream—whatever the dream might be.

Pearl S. Buck

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

William Faulkner

When your life becomes dull, it’s time to get a bigger dream.

William A. Cummins

A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.

Jean Genet

Sometimes we have the dream but we are not ourselves ready for the dream. We have to grow to meet it.

Louis L’Amour

Happy talk, keep talking happy talk,
Talk about things you’d like to do,
You gotta have a dream, if you don’t have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?

Oscar Hammerstein II

People need dreams, there’s as much nourishment in ’em as food.

Charlotte Gilman

Dreams nourish the soul just as food nourishes the body.

Paulo Coelho

Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.

Elie Wiesel

You must find your dream, then the way becomes easy. But there is no dream that lasts forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any particular one.

Herman Hesse

I knew I wanted to write. I had dreamed about it for years. I wasn’t going to be one of those people who die wondering, “What if?” I would keep putting my dream to the test—even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the Shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.

Alex Haley

A dreamer—you know—it’s a mind that looks over the edges of things.

from My Friend Flicka, by Mary O’Hara

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up/like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore —
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over —
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

from Harlem, by Langston Hughes

Throw your dream into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, or a new country.

Anaïs Nin

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Henry David Thoreau

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.

Gabriel García Márquez

From A Year with Rilke, January 31 Entry
The One Who is Coming, from Letters to a Young Poet

Why not think of God as the one who is coming, who is moving toward us from all eternity, the Future One, culminating fruit of the tree whose leaves we are? What stops you from projecting his birth on times to come and living your life as a painful and beautiful day in the history of an immense pregnancy? Do you not see how all that is happening is ever again a new beginning? And could it not be His Beginning, for to commence is ever in itself a beautiful thing. If he is to be fulfillment, then all that is lesser must precede him, so that he can fashion himself from out of the greatest abundance. Must he not be last, in order to include everything within himself? And what meaning would be ours, if he, for whom we yearn, had already existed?

Fruit Garden in Pontoise

by Paul Cézanne

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.





*Letter. If you read each word backward, letter is the only one that does not make another valid word.