Word-Wednesday for July 31, 2024

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for July 31, 2024, the thirty-first Wednesday of the year, the sixth Wednesday of summer, the fifth Wednesday of July, and the two-hundred-thirteenth day of the year, with one-hundred fifty-three days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for July 31, 2024
Smooth Blue Aster
Symphyotrichum laeve has started to bloom in Wannaska. The flowers open with branching clusters at the top of the plant from upper leaf axils. Usually about one inch in diameter with fifteen to as many as thirty petals fanning out from a yellow center disc, the flowers turn reddish with age. The bracts [/brak(t)/ n., a modified leaf or scale, typically small, with a flower or flower cluster in its axil] surround the base of the flower with four to six layers - narrow, appressed to slightly spreading, light green with a darker green, lance to diamond-shaped tip that may have a dot of red at the apex and few minute hairs around the edge like Ula's navel.

The aurora forecast looks favorable for tonight.


July 31 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


July 31 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Temporarily closed; should be reopening soon.


Earth/Moon Almanac for July 31, 2024
Sunrise: 5:56am; Sunset: 9:04pm; 2 minutes, 47 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 1:27am; Moonset: 7:07pm, waning crescent, 13% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for July 31, 2024
                Average            Record              Today
High             77                     94                     83
Low              54                    39                     62

Perhaps You'd Like to Buy a Flower?
by Emily Dickinson

Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower?
But I could never sell.
If you would like to borrow
Until the daffodil
 
Unties her yellow bonnet
Beneath the village door,
Until the bees, from clover rows
Their hock and sherry draw,
 
Why, I will lend until just then,
But not an hour more!

July 31 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Avocado Day
• National Mutt Day
• National Raspberry Cake Day
• National Talk in an Elevator Day

July 31 Word Pun

July 31 Word Riddle
I am the king of the jungle, high in the sky,
sharing my time with August and July.
Who am I?*


July 31 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
ABRACADABRA.

    By Abracadabra we signify
    An infinite number of things.
    'Tis the answer to What? and How? and Why?
    And Whence? and Whither?—a word whereby
    The Truth (with the comfort it brings)
    Is open to all who grope in night,
    Crying for Wisdom's holy light.

    Whether the word is a verb or a noun
    Is knowledge beyond my reach.
    I only know that 'tis handed down.
    From sage to sage,
    From age to age—
    An immortal part of speech!

    Of an ancient man the tale is told
    That he lived to be ten centuries old,
    In a cave on a mountain side.
    (True, he finally died.)
    The fame of his wisdom filled the land,
    For his head was bald, and you'll understand
    His beard was long and white
    And his eyes uncommonly bright.

    Philosophers gathered from far and near
    To sit at his feet and hear and hear,
    Though he never was heard
    To utter a word
    But "Abracadabra, abracadab,
    Abracada, abracad,
    Abraca, abrac, abra, ab!"
    'Twas all he had,
    'Twas all they wanted to hear, and each
    Made copious notes of the mystical speech,
    Which they published next—
    A trickle of text
    In a meadow of commentary.
    Mighty big books were these,
    In number, as leaves of trees;
    In learning, remarkable—very!

    He's dead,
    As I said,
    And the books of the sages have perished,
    But his wisdom is sacredly cherished.
    In Abracadabra it solemnly rings,
    Like an ancient bell that forever swings.
    O, I love to hear
    That word make clear
    Humanity's General Sense of Things.
                        —Jamrach Holobom

July 31 Etymology Word of the Week
abracadabra
/ab-rə-k-DAB-rə/ exclam., a word said by magicians when performing a magic trick; n., language, typically in the form of gibberish, used to give the impression of arcane knowledge or power, from magical formula, 1690s, from Latin (Q. Serenus Sammonicus, 2c.), from Late Greek Abraxas, cabalistic or gnostic name for the supreme god, and thus a word of power. It was written out in a triangle shape and worn around the neck to ward off sickness, etc. Another magical word, from a mid-15c. writing, was ananizapta.

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

• 1664 Pierre Corneille's play, the tragedy Othon premieres.
• 1703 Daniel Defoe is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet, but is pelted with flowers.
• 1786 Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect by Robert Burns, known also as the Kilmarnock Edition, is published.
• 1893 Gaelic League is founded by Douglas Hyde and Eoin MacNeill in order to encourage Irish people to speak the language and take a greater interest in their culture.
• 1922 18-year-old Ralph Samuelson of Minnesota rides world's first water skis.
• 1970 Black Tot Day: the last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy.
• 1985 Indian writer R.K. Narayan publishes his short story collection Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories.

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

• 1595 Alessandro Algardi, Italian sculptor and architect.
• 1748 Isaac Ouwater, Amsterdam painter and cartoonist.
• 1767 Amelie Julia Candielle, French composer.
• 1796 Jean-Gaspard Deburau, Czech mime.
• 1830 František Zdeněk Skuherský, Czech composer.
• 1843 Peter Rosegger, Austrian poet and Nobel Prize laureate.
• 1846  Joseph Ignatius Constantine Clarke, Irish author.
• 1847 Ignatio Cervantes, Cuban pianist and composer.
• 1860 Mary Vaux Walcott, American artist and naturalist.
• 1875 Harry Northrup [Henri N.], French-born American poet.
• 1880 Munshi Premchand [Dhanpat Rai], Indian author.
• 1882 Grete Gulbransson, Austrian writer and poet.
• 1894 Helena Bochořáková-Dittrichová, Czech artist.
• 1901 Jean Dubuffet, French painter and sculptor.
• 1904 Brett Halliday, American writer.
• 1920 Rudolf Halaczinsky, German composer.
• 1927 Dermot Troy, Irish opera singer.
• 1929 Lynne Reid Banks, British author.
• 1933 Cees Nooteboom, Dutch writer.
• 1947 Ian Beck, British children's illustrator and author.
• 1952 João Barreiros, Portuguese writer.
• 1964 Jim Corr, Irish singer and musician.
• 1965 J.K. Rowling, English writer.
• 1967 Elizabeth Wurtzel, American author.
• 1970 Ahmad Akbarpour, Iranian writer.
• 1980 Harry Potter.

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

• axil: /AK-səl/ n., the angle between a branch or leaf and the axis from which it arises.
• bandolier: /ban-də-LIR/ n., a shoulder-belt with loops or pockets for cartridges.
• copula: /KŌP-yə-lə/ n., a connecting word, in particular a form of the verb be connecting a subject and complement.
• hypodescent: /hahy-poh-di-SENT/ n., the classifying or identifying of a biracial or multiracial individual as a member of the lower or lowest socially ranking racial group from which that person has ancestry.
• lemniscate: /lem-NIS-kət/ n., a figure-eight shaped curve whose equation in polar coordinates is ρ2=a2 cos 2θ or ρ2=a2 sin 2θ.
• orthian: /Ö(R)-thē-ən/ adj., characterized by high pitch - used of a style of singing or a tune.
• raith: /rāth/ n., a quarter of a year.
• riposte: /rə-PŌST/ n., a quick, clever reply to an insult or criticism.
• tallboy: /TÔL-boi/ n., a tall chest of drawers, typically one mounted on legs and in two sections, one standing on the other; a large can in which beer or another drink is sold, typically holding 16 or 25 fluid ounces.
• wankle: /WAŋ-kəl/ adj., unsteady, unstable; fickle; sickly, feeble.

July 31, 2024 Word-Wednesday Feature
flower
/FLOU-ər/ n., the seed-bearing part of a plant, consisting of reproductive organs (stamens and carpels) that are typically surrounded by a brightly colored corolla (petals) and a green calyx (sepals), from circa 1200, flour, also flur, flor, floer, floyer, flowre, "the blossom of a plant; a flowering plant," from Old French flor "flower, blossom; heyday, prime; fine flour; elite; innocence, virginity" (12th century, Modern French fleur), from Latin florem (nominative flos) "flower" (source of Italian fiore, Spanish flor), from Proto-Indo-European root bhel- "to thrive, bloom."

Late July and early August is a time of blooming and thriving in this wet summer of 2024, where we appreciate flowers for their beauty and for their meanings as poetic metaphors and through personification. Given their biological function, flowers are all about attraction and connection and exchange.

A flower is a plant’s way of making love.

Barbara Kingsolver

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.

Iris Murdoch

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more hopeful; they are sunshine, food, and medicine to the soul.

Luther Burbank

Colors are the smiles of nature. When they are extremely smiling, and break forth into other beauty besides, they are her laughs, as in the flowers.

Leigh Hunt

Flowers and plants are silence presences; they nourish every sense except the ear.

May Sarton

Flowers are the music of the ground
From earth’s lips spoken without sound.

Edwin Curran

Flowers grow
out of the dark
moments.

Corita Kent

Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day—like writing a poem, or saying a prayer.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Earth laughs in flowers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Flowers in a city are like lipstick on a woman—it just makes you look better to have a little color.

Lady Bird Johnson

Can flowers but droop in absence of the sun,
Which waked their sweets?

John Dryden

All flowers are flirtatious—particularly if they carry hyphenated names. The more hyphens in the name, the flirtier the flower.

Willard R. Espy

A root is a flower that disdains fame.

Kahlil Gibran

He is happiest who hath power
to gather wisdom from a flower.

Mary Howitt

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.

Jean Giraudoux

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.

Heinrich Heine

Flowers speak to us if we listen. Appreciating the blossom in hand or pausing in the garden to admire the beauty quiets our outer selves till we hear something new, something we did not hear before—the still, small voice of Nature herself.

Jean Hersey

People often have no idea how fair the flower is to the touch, nor do they appreciate its fragrance, which is the soul of the flower.

Helen Keller

Despairing of human relationships (people were so difficult), she often went into her garden and got from her flowers a peace which men and women never gave her.

Virginia Woolf

The Amen! of Nature is always a flower.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

From A Year with Rilke, July 31 Entry
Summer Fruit, from Sonnets to Orpheus I, 13

Full round apple, peach, pear, blackberry.
Each speaks life and death
into the mouth. Look
at the face of a child eating them.

The tastes come from afar
and slowly grow nameless on the tongue.
Where there were words, discoveries flow,
released from within the fruit.

What we call apple—dare to say what it is,
this sweetness which first condensed itself
so that, in the tasting, it may burst forth

and be known in all its meanings
of sun and earth and here.
How immense, the act and the pleasure of it.

Still Life with Apples, Grapes, Pears and Peaches
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.






*Leo.