Word-Wednesday for July 3, 2024

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for July 3, 2024, the twenty-seventh Wednesday of the year, the second Wednesday of summer, the first Wednesday of June, and the one-hundred-eighty-fifth day of the year, with one-hundred eighty-one days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for July 3, 2024
Yellow Mushrooms
Amanita chrysoblema, yellow-orange variant, otherwise known as American yellow fly agaric, is happily pushing up from our sodden Wannaskan soils. Growing in solitude or gregariously, this mushroom is mycorrhizal [/mī-kō-RĪ-zəl/ adj., symbiotic in a mutually beneficial fashion] with conifers and deciduous trees. But beware! While squirrels and other rodentia mammals love these shrooms, this species contains ibotenic acid and muscimol, two psychoactive constituents which can cause effects such as hallucinations, synaesthesia, euphoria, dysphoria and retrograde amnesia.

Spot the Space Station:
Time: Wednesday, July 03 at 2:59 AM, Visible: 6 min, Max Height: 68°, Appears: 16° above W, Disappears: 10° above ENE


July 3 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


July 3 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for July 3, 2024
Sunrise: 5:26am; Sunset: 9:30pm;  1 minute, 3 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 2:48am; Moonset: 8:09pm, waning crescent, 5% illuminated.
First Day of the Dog Days of Summer
WW Dogs pic

Temperature Almanac for July 3, 2024
                Average            Record              Today
High             76                     90                     77
Low              54                     54                     56

Dog Days of Summer
by Meena Alexander

In the dog days of summer as muslin curls on its own heat
And crickets cry in the black walnut tree

The wind lifts up my life
And sets it some distance from where it was.

Still Marco Polo Airport wore me out,
I slept in a plastic chair, took the water taxi.

Early, too early the voices of children
Mimicking the clatter in the Internet café

In Campo Santo Stefano in a place of black coffee
Bordellos of verse, bony accolades of joy,

Saint Stephen stooped over a cross,
A dog licking his heel, blood drops from a sign

By the church wall—Anarchia è ordine—
The refugee from Istria gathers up nails.

She will cobble together a gondola with bits of driftwood
Cast off the shores of the hunger-bitten Adriatic.

In wind off the lagoon,
A child hops in numbered squares, back and forth, back and forth,

Cap on his head, rhymes cool as bone in his mouth.
Whose child is he?

No one will answer me.
Voices from the music academy pour into sunlight

That strikes the malarial wealth of empire,
Dreams of an old man in terrible heat,

Hands bound with coarse cloth, tethered to a scaffold,
Still painting waves on the walls of the Palazzo Ducale.

July 3 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• International Plastic Bag Free Day
• National Fried Clam Day
• National Chocolate Wafer Day
• National Eat Your Beans Day
• National Compliment Your Mirror Day

July 3 Word Pun
Sven almost kicked his wayward dog out, but he renegotiated the terms of his leash.


July 3 Word Riddle
Who is the best dog detective?*


July 3 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
CAT, n. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

    This is a dog,
    This is a cat.
    This is a frog,
    This is a rat.
    Run, dog, mew, cat.
    Jump, frog, gnaw, rat.
                    —Elevenson


July 3 Etymology Word of the Week
dog
/dôɡ/ n., a domesticated carnivorous mammal that typically has a long snout, an acute sense of smell, nonretractable claws, and a barking, howling, or whining voice, from Old English docga, a late, rare word, used in at least one Middle English source in reference specifically to a powerful breed of canine; other early Middle English uses tend to be depreciatory or abusive. Its origin remains one of the great mysteries of English etymology.

The word forced out Old English hund (the general Germanic and Indo-European word, from root from Proto-Indo-European root kwon-) by 16th century and subsequently was picked up in many continental languages (French dogue), Danish dogge, German Dogge. The common Spanish word for "dog," perro, also is a mystery word of unknown origin, perhaps from Iberian. A group of Slavic "dog" words (Old Church Slavonic pisu, Polish pies, Serbo-Croatian pas) likewise is of unknown origin.

In reference to persons, by circa 1200 in abuse or contempt as "a mean, worthless fellow, currish, sneaking scoundrel." Playfully abusive sense of "rakish man," especially if young, "a sport, a gallant" is from 1610s. Slang meaning "ugly woman" is from 1930s; that of "sexually aggressive man" is from 1950s.  

Many expressions — a dog's life (circa 1600), go to the dogs (1610s), dog-cheap (1520s), etc. — reflect the earlier hard use of the animals as hunting accessories, not pets. In ancient times, "the dog" was the worst throw in dice (attested in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, where the word for "the lucky player" was literally "the dog-killer"), which plausibly explains the Greek word for "danger," kindynos, which appears to be "play the dog" (but Beekes is against this).

Meaning "something poor or mediocre, a failure" is by 1936 in U.S. slang. From late 14th century as the name for a heavy metal clamp of some kind. Dog's age "a long time" is by 1836. Adjectival phrase dog-eat-dog "ruthlessly competitive" is by 1850s. Phrase put on the dog "get dressed up" (1934) may be from comparison of dog collars to the stiff stand-up shirt collars that in the 1890s were the height of male fashion (and were known as dog-collars from at least 1883).

July 3 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1767 Norway's oldest newspaper still in print, Adresseavisen, is founded, and the first edition published this date.
• 1839 First state normal school in US opens, Lexington, Massachusetts, with three students.
• 1845 Pioneering French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin opens his magic theatre in Paris.
• 1938 President Franklin Roosevelt dedicates the Eternal Light Peace Memorial and lights the eternal flame at Gettysburg Battlefield.

July 3 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1683 Edward Young, English poet.
• 1687 Arnold Hoogvliet, Dutch poet.
• 1738 John Singleton Copley, American painter.
• 1796 Nikolai Poveloy, Russian write.
• 1802 Joseph Labitzky, Czech composer.
• 1819 Louis Théodore Gouvy, German-French composer.
• 1853 Aloysius O'Kelly, Irish artist.
• 1854 Leoš Janáček, Czech composer.
• 1860 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, American feminist, writer.
• 1860 William Wallace, Scottish composer.
• 1871 William Henry Davies, Welsh poet.
• 1883 Franz Kafka, Czech author.
• 1895 Oles' Semyonovich Chishko, Russian-Ukrainian composer.
• 1901 Ruth Crawford Seeger, American modernist classical and folk music composer.
• 1908 Thomas Narcejac, French writer.
• 1921  Francis G. Neylon, Irish traditional flautist.
• 1928 Evelyn Anthony, English historical writer.
• 1928 Günter Bruno Fuchs, German writer, poet.
• 1930 Pete Fountain, American jazz clarinetist.
• 1937 Tom Stoppard, Czech-born British playwright.
• 1946 Michael Shea, American science fiction author.
• 1947 Dave Barry, American humorist and author.
• 1963 Tracey Emin, English artist.
• 1964 Joanne Harris, British author.
• 1972 Darren Shan, Irish writer of English-language fiction under pen name, real name Darren O'Shaughnessy.
• 1976 Shane Lynch, Irish singer.

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

• abapical: /ab-AP-i-kal/ adj., away from or opposite the apex.
• chirpse: /churrps/ v., to flirt with (a person); to make sexual advances towards.
• daddocky: /DAD-uh-kee/ adj., decayed, rotten; soft or weak with decay; (sometimes more generally) spoiled with moisture, moldy.
• engastrimythic: /ə̇n-gas-trə-MI-thik/ adj., relating to or like ventriloquism.
• exsufflation: /ek-sə-FLĀ-shən/ n., the action of breathing forth or blowing; forcible breathing or blowing out (as in clearing the respiratory tract) : forcible expiration.
• iotacism: /ī-ŌT-ə-ˌsiz-əm/ n., a speech defect marked by use of the sound \ē\ in place of other vowel sounds; a speech defect marked by inability to correctly pronounce the sound \ē\.
• neume: /no͞om/ n.,  (in plainsong) a note or group of notes to be sung to a single syllable.
• otto: /Ä-tō/ n., a fragrant essential oil (as from rose petals).
• shawm: /SHôm/ n., a medieval and Renaissance wind instrument, forerunner of the oboe, with a double reed enclosed in a wooden mouthpiece, and having a penetrating tone.
• shonky: /ˈʃɒŋ-ki/ adj., of dubious integrity or legality; unreliable; unsound.

July 3, 2024 Word-Wednesday Feature
Tongue-Twisters
/TəNG-twi-stər/ n., a sequence of words or sounds, typically of an alliterative kind, that are difficult to pronounce quickly and correctly, as, for example, tie twine to three tree twigs, from 1875, in reference to an awkward sentence, 1892 of a phrase arranged phonetically to be difficult to pronounce, from tongue (n.) + agent noun from twist (v.). The first called by the name in print might be "Miss Smith's fish-sauce shop."

Time for some summer fun, both for you and those you might live with. H

Foregoing the usual examples (Sven sells sea shells by da sea shore), how long since you've read, Oh Say Can You Say, by Dr. Seuss? Lost your copy? Never read it? Here are a few of the choice tongue twisters to practice in front of your dog, or cat with a hat, or parrot before you move on to your favorite human:

Said a book-reading parrot named Hooey,
"The words in this book are all phooey.
When you say them, your lips
will make slips and back flips
and your tongue may end up in Saint Looey!"

Fresh, Fresher, Freshest

Dinn’s Shin

Bed Spreader, Bread Spreader

Ape Cakes, Grape Cakes

Are you having trouble
in saying this stuff?
It’s really quite easy for me.
I just look in my mirror
and see what I say,
and then I just say what I see.

Eat at Skipper Zipp’s

And if your tongue
is getting queasy
don’t give up.
The next one is EASY.

The Fuddnuddlers

Quack Quack! SchnacksSchnacks!

West Beast, East Beast

Pete Pats Pigs

Sven's sphinx shtinks

Fritz Food, Fred Food

How to tell a Klotz from a Glotz

More about Blinn, the man from Dinn’s Shin, and his sister, Gretchen von Schwinn

Rope Soap, Hoop Soap

Merry Christmas Mush

I wish to wash my Irish wristwatch.

Slim Jim Swim Finn and the Dinn's Shin

Bright Dwight Bird-Flight Night-Sight Light (Ula has one).

And that’s almost enough
of such stuff for one day
One more and you’re finished
Oh say can you say?…

The storm starts
when the drops start dropping.
When the drops stop dropping
then the storm starts stopping.

From A Year with Rilke, July 3 Entry
The Gift of Exploration, from Uncollected Prams

Dove that stayed in the open, outside the dovecote,
brought back and housed again
where neither night nor day poses danger—
she knows what protection is. . . .

The other doves not exposed to peril
do not know this tenderness.
The heart that has been fetched back can feel most at home.
Vitality is freed through what it has renounced.

Over Nothingness the universe bends.
Ah, the bell we dared to throw
fills the bands differently on its return:
it brings back the reality of its journey.

Lion and Dove
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.






*Sherlock Bones.