Word-Wednesday for August 7, 2024

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for August 7, 2024, the thirty-second Wednesday of the year, the seventh Wednesday of summer, the first Wednesday of August, and the two-hundred-twentieth day of the year, with one-hundred forty-six days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for August 7, 2024
Black-eyed Susans
Rudbeckia hirta is now blooming just about everywhere in and around Wannaska. The specific epithet hirta is Latin for “hairy”, which refers to the trichomes [/TRĪ-kōm/ n., a small hair or other outgrowth from the epidermis of a plant, typically unicellular and glandular] occurring on leaves and stems. A North American flowering plant in the family Asteraceae, the Black-eyed Susan is native to Eastern and Central North America but now naturalized in the Western North America, and most recently, in China.

Watch for the Perseid meteor shower in the coming days.

August 7 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


August 7 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Closed today due to chef injury, hoping to be back tomorrow.


Earth/Moon Almanac for August 7, 2024
Sunrise: 6:06am; Sunset: 8:53pm; 3 minutes, 1 second less daylight today
Moonrise: 9:22am; Moonset: 10:13pm, waxing crescent, 10% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for August 7, 2024
                Average            Record              Today
High             77                     98                     68
Low              54                     37                     48

Daisy
by William Carlos Williams

The dayseye hugging the earth
in August, ha! Spring is
gone down in purple,
weeds stand high in the corn,
the rainbeaten furrow
is clotted with sorrel
and crabgrass, the
branch is black under
the heavy mass of the leaves--
The sun is upon a
slender green stem
ribbed lengthwise.
He lies on his back--
it is a woman also--
he regards his former
majesty and
round the yellow center,
split and creviced and done into
minute flowerheads, he sends out
his twenty rays-- a little
and the wind is among them
to grow cool there!

One turns the thing over
in his hand and looks
at it from the rear: brownedged,
green and pointed scales
armor his yellow.

But turn and turn,
the crisp petals remain
brief, translucent, greenfastened,
barely touching at the edges:
blades of limpid seashell.

August 7 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Purple Heart Day
• National Raspberries and Cream Day
• National Sea Serpent Day
• National Lighthouse Day

August 7 Word Pun
Sven sent Ozaawaa to Lee's Hardware Store for cleaning supplies. Ozaawaa asked Bonnie, "What gets rid of grime and stains?"
Bonnie answered, "Ammonia cleaner."
Ozaawaa replied, "Oh, sorry! I thought you worked here."


August 7 Word Riddle

*

August 7 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
BLUE-STOCKING, n. A woman who for their slight of her personal charms revenges herself upon men by caricaturing science, art, letters or learning.

    "They call me a blue-stocking!" madam exclaimed;
    "why, of all ladies, should I, sir, be named
    From the hue of my stockings, which man never spied?"
    "Nor ever desired to," the villain replied


August 7 Etymology Word of the Week

August 7 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1420 Construction begins on the dome of Florence Cathedral.
• 1606 Possible first performance of Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, performed in the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace for King James I.
• 1934 US Court of Appeals uphold lower court ruling striking down government's attempt to ban controversial James Joyce novel Ulysses.
• 2018 China bans release of Winnie the Pooh movie Christopher Robin, after character used to mock Chinese President Xi Jinping.

August 7 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1533 Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, Basque poet.
• 1598 Georg Stiernhielm, Swedish scholar poet.
• 1818 Henry Litolff, French composer.
• 1823 Faustina Hasse Hodges, English-American composer.
• 1826 August Ahlqvist, Finnish poet.
• 1837 Allan James Foley, Irish opera singer.
• 1859 Emily de Burgh Daly, Irish writer.
• 1865 Luděk Marold, Czech illustrator and painter.
• 1868 Granville Bantock, English composer.
• 1903 Saburō Moroi, Japanese composer.
• 1906 Gerhard Frommel, German composer.
• 1907 Albert Kotin, American abstract painter.
• 1918 C. Buddingh', Dutch poet.
• 1921 Karel Husa, Czech-American composer.
• 1925 Julian Orbon De Soto, Cuban composer.
• 1929 Jo Baer [Josephine Kleinberg], American painter.
• 1936 Richard L. Tierney, American science fiction author.
• 1942 Garrison Keillor, American writer.
• 1945 Anthony Glavin, Irish poet.
• 1945 Patrice Mestral, French composer.
• 1953 Anne Fadiman, American writer.
• 1955 Vladimir Sorokin, Russian writer.
• 1957 Martín Espada, American Latino poet.
• 1976 Cathy Park Hong, American Korean poet.

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

• aglu: /AG-loo/ n., a breathing-hole in the ice, made by a seal.
• blini: /BLIN-ē/ n., pancakes made from buckwheat flour and served with sour cream.
• brank: /braŋk/ n., an instrument consisting of an iron frame surrounding the head and a sharp metal bit or gag entering the mouth formerly used to punish scolds.
• citharize: /SITH-uh-righz/ v., to play the harp.
• kass-kass: /KASS-kass/ n., JAMAICAN, a dispute, a quarrel; conflict, disagreement. Also: name-calling.
• megstie: /MEG-stee/ interjection, SCOTTISH, an exclamation expressing surprise, distress, or disapproval; usually in megstie me!
• ngangkari: /ngahn-GAH-ree/ n., PITJANTJATJARA, practitioner of bush medicine.
• swivet: /SWIV-it/ n., a fluster or panic.
• thanatoid: /THAN-ə-tȯid/ adj., resembling death; deathly.
• verst: /vərst/ n., a Russian measure of length, about 0.66 mile (1.1 km).

August 7, 2024 Word-Wednesday Feature
What Makes a Word Important?
One might argue that usage indicates word importance, but the frequencies of the words I, me, and mine, on social media and in political speeches argues otherwise. The same holds true for most forms of profanity. Does size matter?

The longest word in any of the major English language dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters), a word that refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles, specifically from a volcano. Medically, it is the same as silicosis. Meh. The record for longest German word in common usage, or that made it into the dictionary, stands at 63 characters: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, the name of a food safety law that was in effect until 2013, but Germans are famous for making compound words out of many simple ones: Rindfleisch (beef) + etikettierung (labeling) + überwachung (supervision) + aufgaben (tasks) + übertragung (transfer) + gesetz (law) + a few Ss to help the pieces flow together. We here at Word-Wednesday are not impressed.

It has been convincingly argued that the colonizing cultures of the Global North have developed languages that emphasize cognitive, legal, and economic words — generated by our brain's left hemisphere — at the expense of the poetic, emotional, and sensory words that spring from our right hemisphere. In support of this argument, Word-Wednesday headquarters were recently blessed by a visit from WannaskaWriter's family, which included his grandson, Ozaawaa, and his friend, Auna, who both happen to be members of the Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe, Red Cliff Reservation. After meeting the Word-Wednesday dogs, Ozaawaa told us about his German Shepherd, Mooz, and his Pit Bull, Too Small, so named because “he was too small to eat”.

Naturally, the Word-Wednesday staff asked the young guests for an interesting word, and we weren't disappointed. Ozaawaa and Auna gave us a perfect August word from Ojibwe: miini-baashkiminasigani-biitoosijigani-bakwezhigan: /mee-NEE-bahsh-kee-mee-nah-see-gah-nee BEE-toh-see-jee-gah-nee-BAH-kway-zhee-GAHN/ n., a blueberry pie. This wonderful, muscular word sings the sensual praises of one of summer’s most delicious, aromatic treats.

Ozaawaa and Auna’s word is so very close to the Ojibwe word for an apple pie: mishiimini-baashkiminasigani-biitoosijigani-bakwezhigan, which brings up another interesting point about the right hemisphere: that’s where the listening area of our brains is located. So, this Native language with the large words for important experiences naturally builds listening skills as part of it’s culture. You’ve probably already guessed it: the speech production area so overdeveloped in politicians and pundits is located in the left hemisphere. Given the choice between living in a culture of listeners versus a culture of talkers, as Ozaawaa would say, “Wenipanendaagod dibishkoo go mishiimini-baashkiminasigani-biitoosijigani-bakwezhigan” (It's easy as apple pie).

Miigwech ᒦᑴᒡ Ozaawaa and Auna. It takes people to make words important.

From A Year with Rilke, August 7 Entry
Fearful of the New, from Borgeby gärd, Sweden, August 12, 1904, Letters to a Young Poet

The tendency of people to be fearful of those experiences they call apparitions or assign to the "spirit world", including death, has done infinite harm to life. All these things so naturally related to us have been driven away through our daily resistance to them, to the point where our capacity to sense them has atrophied. To say nothing of God. Fear of the unexplainable has not only impoverished our inner lives, but also diminished relations between people; these have been dragged, so to speak, from the river of infinite possibilities and stuck on the dry bank where nothing happens. For it is not only sluggishness that makes human relations so unspeakably monotonous, it is the aversion to any new, unforeseen experience we are not sure we can handle.

Young Man with a Skull
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.






*D in G; D on G.