Word-Wednesday for August 21, 2024

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for August 21, 2024, the thirty-fourth Wednesday of the year, the ninth Wednesday of summer, the third Wednesday of August, and the two-hundred-thirty-fourth day of the year, with one-hundred thirty-two days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for August 21, 2024
Chokecherry Harvest
Prunus virginiana is at its prime. One of the most common and ubiquitous trees/shrubs in North America, chokecherry adapts easily to forest lands, prairie margins, and mid-alpine regions. Its fruit contains high concentrations of hydrogen cyanide - mostly in the seed. Some humans are almost as fond of them as birds. If you're one such human, here's a Mennonite recipe for chokecherry syrup:

As a young girl I remember my mother making syrup once the chokecherries were ripe. We called it "supsil". I didn't always enjoy picking the berries but oh my I did love the syrup. My favorite way of eating this is to dip fresh zwiebach in the syrup. A bit messy but so worth it. It is also wonderful on pancakes.
This syrup makes great gifts.
    4 cups chokecherry juice
    3 cups sugar

1. Place whatever amount of chokecherries you have in a pot, cover just barely with water, bring to boil and simmer till the berries are soft.
2. Mash berries, potato masher works well.
3. Strain berries in a large sieve pressing down to get pulp with the juice.
4. Whatever amount of juice you end up with, adjust sugar accordingly.  1 cup less sugar than juice is the ratio.
5. Bring strained juice to boil, add sugar, bring back to boil and boil for 15 minutes stirring occasionally.
6. Pour into sterilized jars or into pretty decorative bottles. Keep refrigerated.
7. Yield: 4 1/2 cups syrup

August 21 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


August 21 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for August 21, 2024
Sunrise: 6:26am; Sunset: 8:28pm; 3 minutes, 20 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 9:27pm; Moonset: 8:46am, waning gibbous, 94% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for August 21, 2024
                Average            Record              Today
High             75                     91                     81
Low              51                     30                    64

August
by Mary Oliver

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

August 21 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Brazilian Blowout Day
• National Senior Citizens Day
• National Spumoni Day
• Feast Day of Our Lady of Knock

August 21 Word Pun
While traveling by air, Ula was in his usual playful mood. Serving refreshments, the flight attendant asked him,
"Would you care for an orange juice?"

Ula replied,
"Yes, and I'll give it a good home, too."


August 21 Word Riddle
What are the four keys to success?*


August 21 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
CONSCIENCE, n. A morbid condition of the stomach, affecting the gray matter of the brain and producing a mental discord.

    His conscience never did afflict him,
    Save when he'd badly dined;
    Then like a creditor it kicked him,
    Behind.

    Vainly the parson he consulted
    How to allay the pain;
    E'en while he prays he's catapulted
    Again.

    Thus failing times without a number,
    He sought a doctor out,
    Who said: "You've eaten a cucumber,
    No doubt."

    "Yes, Doctor, but I didn't steal it;
    Then why this dark distress?"
    "You mean, my friend, you didn't peel it,
    I guess.

    "Woes that defy the world's religions—
    The Spirit's brooding ills—
    We scatter, like a flock of pigeons,
    With pills."


August 21 Etymology Word of the Week
candidate
/KAN-(d)dāt/ n., a person who applies for a job or is nominated for election, from circa 1600, from Latin candidatus "one aspiring to office," originally "white-robed," past participle of candidare "to make white or bright," from candidus, past participle of candere "to shine" (from Proto-Indo-European root kand- "to shine"). White was the usual color of the Roman toga, but office-seekers in ancient Rome wore a gleaming white toga (toga candida), probably whitened with fine powdered chalk, presumably to indicate the purity of their intentions in seeking a role in civic affairs.


August 21 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1680 Pueblo Indians takes possession of Santa Fé in the New Mexican Province, from Spanish.
• 1911 Mona Lisa stolen from the Louvre by Vincenzo Perugia; recovered in 1913.
• 1962 Verne Gagne beats Mister M (Doctor X) in Minneapolis, to become NWA champ.
• 1965 The Crusher beats Mad Dog Vachon in St Paul, to become NWA champ.
• 2022 Masai Graham wins funniest joke at Edinburgh Fringe with "I tried to steal spaghetti from the shop, but the female guard saw me and I couldn't get pasta." He should be happy that he didn't spag.
  

August 21 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1642 Johann Friedrich Treiber, German composer.
• 1689 José Pradas Gallén, Spanish composer.
• 1721 Lucretia Wilhelmina van Merken, Dutch poet.
• 1806 Johannes Frederik Fröhlich, Danish violinist and composer.
• 1825 Kate Loder, British composer and pianist.
• 1842 Albert Bruce-Joy, Irish sculptor.
• 1852 Benedetto Junck, Italian composer.
• 1871 Leonid Andreyev, Russian writer.
• 1872 Aubrey Beardsley, English illustrator and author.
• 1882 Rik Wouters, Belgian painter.
• 1893 (Marie-Juliette) "Lili" Boulanger, French composer.
• 1896 Raymond Herreman, Belgian poet.
• 1896 Roark Bradford, American writer.
• 1900 Eileen Percy, Irish silent film actress.
• 1903 Kostas Giannidis [Yannis Constantinidis], Greek composer.
• 1904 Count Basie, jazz pianist, organist, and bandleader.
• 1906 Joachim Homs, Spanish composer.
• 1908 M. M. Kaye, British writer.
• 1920 Christopher Robin Milne, friend of Winnie the Pooh.
• 1924 David Marcus, Irish writer.
• 1926 Ben-Zion Orgad, Israeli composer.
• 1928 Mário Pinto de Andrade, Angolan poet.
• 1928 Zdeněk Lukáš, Czech composer.
• 1929 X. J. Kennedy, American poet.
• 1936 Mart Crowley, American playwright.
• 1937 Robert Stone, American novelist.
• 1951 Margo Kane, Canadian playwright.

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

• goniff: /GÄN-əf/ n., a disreputable or dishonest person (often used as a general term of abuse).
• guilloch: /ɡə-LŌSH/ n., architectural ornamentation resembling braided or interlaced ribbons.
• hemeralopia: /hem-ə-rə-LŌ-pē-ə/ n., a defect of vision characterized by reduced visual capacity in bright lights.
• hortation: /hȯ(r)-TÄ-shən/ n., an act or instance of exhorting.
• lychgate: /LICH-ɡāt/ n., a roofed gateway to a churchyard, formerly used during burials for sheltering a coffin until the clergyman's arrival.
• milder: /MIGHL-duhr/ v., to moulder, to decay; to crumble away.
• mufti: /MəF-tē/ n., a Muslim legal expert who is empowered to give rulings on religious matters.
• ocarina: /äk-ə-RĒ-nə/ n., a small egg-shaped wind instrument with a mouthpiece and holes for the fingers.
• ramgunshoch: /ram-GUN-shuhck/ adj., IRISH, harsh, ill-tempered; rude, surly, boorish.
• thew: /THo͞o/ n., muscular strength.

August 21, 2024 Word-Wednesday Feature
Musical Style Words
With the prominence of Metallica recently, Word-Wednesday today explores a few choices from the world of terms for musical styles/genres. Turns out that Wikipedia lists thousands of terms under the major headings: classical, popular, regional, religious, traditional, and other. Here are a few words for some musical styles with which Wannaskan listeners may have some familiarity:

blues
/blo͞oz/ n., melancholic music of African American folk origin, typically in a twelve-bar sequence. It developed in the rural southern US toward the end of the 19th century, finding a wider audience in the 1940s, as Black people migrated to the cities. This urban blues gave rise to rhythm and blues and rock and roll. Interesting examples include:

• Canadian (ask Mr. Hot Coco),
• Hokum (which uses extended analogies or euphemistic terms to make humorous, sexual innuendos), and
• Piedmont (characterized by a fingerpicking approach in which a regular, alternating thumb bass string rhythmic pattern and syncopated melody treble string generally picked with the fore-finger, comparable in sound to ragtime or stride piano styles).

disco
/DIS-kō/ n., a style of popular music in the dance music genre from a subculture that emerged in the late 1960s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated bass lines, string sections, brass and horns, electric piano, synthesizers, and electric rhythm guitars. Disco started as a mixture of music from venues popular among African-Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, gay Americans, and Italian Americans in New York City (especially Brooklyn) and Philadelphia during the late 1960s to the mid-to-late 1970s. Disco was eventually popularized for all audiences (and white males) by the movie Saturday Night Fever. The Bee Gees are the disco legends, and the tempo of their song, Stayin Alive, is recommended for use to pace the rate of chest compressions during CPR.

funk
/fəNGk/ n., a style of popular dance music of African American origin, based on elements of blues and soul and having a strong rhythm that typically accentuates the first beat in the bar, originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African-Americans in the mid-20th century. It deemphasizes melody and chord progressions and focuses on a strong rhythmic groove of a bass line played by an electric bassist and a drum part played by a percussionist, often at slower tempos than other popular music. Sly and the Family Stone were funk artists familiar to many elder Wannaskans.

hip hop
/HIP häp/ n., also known as rap, and formerly as disco rap, is a genre of popular music with twenty-four substyles that originated in the early 1970s from the African American community. Originating as an anti-drug and anti-violence genre, hip hop consists of stylized rhythmic music (usually built around drum beats) that often accompanies rapping - a rhythmic delivery of poetic speech. By the 21st century, the field of rappers had diversified by both race and gender. The music developed as part of the broader hip-hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching with turntables, breakdancing (now an sport at the Summer Olympics), and graffiti art. Hip hop will soon become the most popular form of music with preadolescents in Wannaska.

metal
/MED-l/ n., a type of highly amplified harsh-sounding rock music with a strong beat, characteristically using violent or fantastic imagery. Also known as heavy metal, this genre of rock music developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and United States, with roots in blues rock, psychedelic rock and acid rock. Metal bands developed a thick, monumental sound characterized by distorted guitars, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats and loudness, spawning dozens of different subgenres. The New York Times critic Jon Pareles wrote, "In the taxonomy of popular music, heavy metal is a major subspecies of hard-rock—the breed with less syncopation, less blues, more showmanship and more brute force." The typical band lineup includes a drummer, a bassist, a rhythm guitarist, a lead guitarist and a singer, who may or may not be an instrumentalist. Any departure from the norm constitutes a new form of metal. For the record, Metallica falls into the Speed Metal subgenre, where bassist Cliff Burton's lead and his bass solos characterize the band's style.

punk
/pəNGk/ n., a loud, fast-moving, and aggressive form of rock music that emerged in the mid-1970s, rooted in 1950s rock and roll and 1960s garage rock. Punk bands reject the corporate nature of mainstream 1970s rock music and typically produced short, fast-paced songs with hard-edged melodies and singing styles with stripped-down instrumentation. Lyricism in punk typically revolves around anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian themes. Popularized by Patti Smith, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and the Clash, punk became a major cultural phenomenon in the UK and the US. The music gave rise to a punk subculture that expressed youthful rebellion through distinctive styles of clothing, such as T-shirts with deliberately offensive graphics, leather jackets, studded or spiked bands, and jewelry, safety pins, and bondage and S&M clothes. The spiky, colored mohawk later emerged as a characteristic style. Etymologically, punk was a common, coarse synonym for prostitute between the late 16th and the 18th centuries, used by William Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Measure for Measure. The term eventually came to describe "a young male hustler, a gangster, a hoodlum, or a ruffian".


From A Year with Rilke, August 21 Entry
The Carousel (II), from New Prams

It goes on and hurries to some end,
just circling and turning without a goal.
Flashes of red, of green, of grey whirl past,
solid shapes barely glimpsed.

Sometimes a smile comes toward us,
and, like a blessing, shines and is gone
in this dizzying parade with no destination.

Le Carrousel au Jardin du Luxembourg
by Jean Latour

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.






*c, e, s, u.