Word-Wednesday for March 20, 2024

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for March 20, 2024, the twelfth Wednesday of the year, the first Wednesday of spring and the eightieth day of the year, with two-hundred eighty-six days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for March 20, 2024
Phenology Week
March 18-22 is Phenology Week in the United States, and what better way to celebrate the spring fever and Phenology Week here on Word-Wednesday’s Wannaska Phenology Update than with the progress of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird migration?

March 20 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


March 20 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for March 20, 2024
Sunrise: 7:26am; Sunset: 7:37pm; 3 minutes, 37 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 2:45pm; Moonset: 6:11am, waxing gibbous, 78% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for March 20, 2024
                Average            Record              Today
High            35                     77                     21
Low             12                    -23                     8


Spring
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         
   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         
   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         
   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         
   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         
   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         
   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

March 20 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Small Business Development Center Day
• National Proposal Day
• National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day
• National Ravioli Day
• Great American Meatout
• International Day of Happiness
• World Sparrow Day
• Feast Day of Clement of Ireland

March 20 Word Pun

March 20 Word Riddle
What do you call a man who uses the tides to read minds?*


March 20 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
SYMBOLIC, adj., Pertaining to symbols and the use and interpretation of symbols.

    They say 'tis conscience feels compunction;
    I hold that that's the stomach's function,
    For of the sinner I have noted
    That when he's sinned he's somewhat bloated,
    Or ill some other ghastly fashion
    Within that bowel of compassion.
    True, I believe the only sinner
    Is he that eats a shabby dinner.
    You know how Adam with good reason,
    For eating apples out of season,
    Was "cursed." But that is all symbolic:
    The truth is, Adam had the colic.
    —G.J.


March 20 Etymology Word of the Week
emotion
/əˈmōSH(ə)n/, n., a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others; instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge, from 1570s, "a (social) moving, stirring, agitation," from French émotion (16th century), from Old French emouvoir "stir up" (12th century), from Latin emovere "move out, remove, agitate," from assimilated form of ex "out" (see ex-) + movere "to move" (from Proto-Indo-European root meue- "to push away"). The sense of "strong feeling" is recorded by 1650s; extended to any feeling by 1808.


March 20 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 141 Sixth recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet.
• 1800 Alessandro Volta reports his discovery of the electric battery in a letter to Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society of London.
• 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin published.
• 1854 Boston Public Library opens in Boston, Massachusetts as the first large free municipal library in the US.
• 1888 The premiere of the very first Romani language operetta staged in Moscow.
• 1906 George Bernard Shaw's play Captain Brassbound's Conversion premieres.
• 1965 Civil and Women's Rights Activist Dorothy Height has her first column published in the weekly African-American newspaper called the New York Amsterdam News.
• 1985 Libby Riddles is first woman to win Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race.
• 2019 A woman who can smell Parkinson's disease has helped researchers identify molecules on the skin of people with the disease in Manchester, England.

March 20 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 43 BC Ovid [Publius Ovidius Naso], Roman poet.
• 1741 Jean Antoine Houdon, French sculptor.
• 1770 Friedrich Hölderlin, German writer.
• 1799 Karl August Nicander, Swedish poet.
• 1811 George Caleb Bingham, American painter.
• 1813 Ned Buntline [nêe, Edward Zane Carroll Judson] American dime novelist.
• 1826 Carel Vosmaer, Dutch poet.
• 1828 Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian playwright.
• 1836 Edward Poynter, British painter.
• 1847 Gavriil Musicescu, Romainian composer.
• 1856 Sir John Lavery, Irish artist.
• 1868 Jan Kříženecký, Czech architect.
• 1872 Karin Michaelis, Danish writer.
• 1873 Sergei Rachmaninoff, Russian composer.
• 1874 Börries von Münchhausen, German poet.
• 1902 Kathryn Forbes, American short story writer.
• 1904 B F Skinner, American psychologist.
• 1905 Vera Panova, Russian author.
• 1921 Primož Ramovš, Slovenian avant-garde composer.
• 1922 Carl Reiner, American comedian.
• 1922 Larry Elgart, American big band jazz alto saxophonist, and bandleader.
• 1923 Shaukat Siddiqui, Pakistani author.
• 1928 Fred Rogers, American children's TV host and Presbyterian minister.
• 1934 David Malouf, Australian author.
• 1937 Elizabeth Gille, French writer.
• 1943 Gerard Malanga, American poet.
• 1948 Pamela Sargent, American science fiction author.
• 1954 Louis Sachar, American Newberry Medal winning young-adult author.
• 1957 Spike Lee, American film director.
• 1963 Big Bird, Sesame Street Muppet.
• 1974 Andrzej Pilipiuk, Polish writer.
• 1979 Amy Huberman, Irish writer.

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

• begorra: /bi-ˈgȯr-ə/ exclam., IRISH, an expression of surprise or emphasis.
• bodhran: /BÓ-rän/ n., a shallow handheld Irish drum.
• eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher: /ˈaɪ̯ɐˌʃa-lən-zɔl-bʁʊχ-ʃtɛ-lən-fɛɐ̯-ʊɐ̯ˌ-ʃaχɐ/ n., GERMAN, egg shell break causer.
• elapid: /Ē-lə-pəd/ n., any of a family (Elapidae) of venomous snakes (such as the cobras and coral snakes) with hollow fangs.
• figurant: /FIG-yuhr-uhnt/n., a ballet dancer who is part of the ensemble rather than a soloist or principal.
• haji: /HA-jē/ n., a Muslim who has been to Mecca as a pilgrim.
• hwyl: /ˈhüil/ n., fervor, excitement.
• pelisse: /pə-LĒS/ n., a woman's cloak with armholes or sleeves, reaching to the ankles.
• puffkin: /PəF-kin/ n., a flighty or capricious person.
• sídh: /shee/ n., a mound or hill in which fairies live; a fairy.

March 20, 2024 Word-Wednesday Feature
Irish Slang
Another St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone, and today Word-Wednesday celebrates the Irish immigrant threads of our grand American tapestry with a few words of Ireland’s colorful slang. At approximately  84,421 square kilometers, depending on the tides, Ireland is just slightly larger than Japan's largest island, Hokkaido, which is approximately 83,456 square kilometers. Close quarters seem to expand a peoples' words to describe one another. Whether it be geography or genetics or some other factor, the Irish have a significant subpopulation of fools, not to mention the drink…

• banjaxed: /BAN-jakst/ adj., broke or in a bad way.
• bogger: /BÄG-ər/ n., a person from rural Ireland.
• bollow: /BÄ-lō/ n., a unliked person.
• chancer: /CHAN(t)-sər/ n., a person of dubious or dishonest character.
• craic: /krak/ adj., fun; n., news, gossip, happenings, as in "What's the craic?"
• culchie: /KUHL-chee/ n., a person from rural Ireland.
• dander: /DAN-dər/ n., an easy-paced walk.
• deadly: /DED-lē/ adj., good or great.
• dose: /dōs/ n., an annoying person who is a pain in one's backside.
• dosser: /TÄs-ər/ n., a person who's doing anything other than what he/she/they should be doing.
• dryshite: /DRĪ-shīt/ n., a  boring person.
• eejit: /EE-jit/ n., a foolish person.
• feck: /fek/ expletive replacement as exclamation, noun, or verb forms.
• flutered: /FLə-tərd/ adj., inebriated.
• geebag: /GEE-bag/ adj., annoying (female specific).
• giving out: /GIV-iNG out/ v., to scold or to complain.
• gobdaw: /GAWB-daw/ n., a foolish or stupid person.
• gobshite: /GAWB-shīt/ n., a foolish person.
• gowl: /goul/ n., a foreigner; an irritating person.
• gombeen: /GUM-been/ n., a dodgy character.
• hallion: /HAL-ee-uhn/ n., a useless person or one who is clowning around.
• in bits: /in bitz/ adj., inebriated, drunk.
• kip: /kip/ n., a cheap inn, hotel, or dive.
• langer: /LANG-ər/ n., a man's nether regions.
• lob the gob: /läb T͟Hə gäb/ v., to kiss someone.
• manky: /MANG-kē/ adj., dirty. "That kitchen is manky; you'd be better off eating in the jacks."
• melter: /MELT-ər/ n., an annoying person.
• mot: /mät/ n., the girl or woman with whom one is relationship.
• mullered: /MUHL-ərd/ adj., inebriated.
• peeler: /PĒl-ər/ n., a police officer.
• pox: /päks/ n., a foolish or annoying person.
• savage: /SAV-ij/ adj., good.
• scut: /skuht/ n., manual labor.
• shook: /SHo͝ok/ adj., hung over.
• slagging: /SLA-ɡiNG/ int. v., to insult a person in a manner so as not to hurt the person's feelings.
• the jacks: /T͟Hə jaks/ n., the toilet.
• tool: /to͞ol/ n., a clown or idiot.
• yoke: /yōk/ n., word for an unpleasant object or person.

Sober Song
by Barton Sutter

Farewell to the starlight in whiskey,
So long to the sunshine in beer.
The booze made me cocky and frisky
But worried the man in the mirror.
Goodnight to the moonlight in brandy,
Adieu to the warmth of the wine.
I think I can finally stand me
Without a glass or a stein.
Bye-bye to the balm in the vodka,
Ta-ta to the menthol in gin.
I'm trying to do what I ought to,
Rejecting that snake medicine.
I won't miss the blackouts and vomit,
The accidents and regret.
If I can stay off the rotgut,
There might be a chance for me yet.
So so long to God in a bottle,
To the lies of rum and vermouth.
Let me slake my thirst with water
And the sweet, transparent truth.

From A Year with Rilke, March 20 Entry
Coming to Be, from Book of Images

From infinite longings
finite deeds arise...

But in these dancing tears,
what is often withheld can be found:
our strength.

Nude Study
by 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.




*A Bay of Fundy Mentalist.