Word-Wednesday for September 11, 2024

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for September 11, 2024, the thirty-seventh Wednesday of the year, the twelfth Wednesday of summer, the second Wednesday of September, and the two-hundred-fifty-fifth day of the year, with one-hundred eleven days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for September 11, 2024
Spotted Touch-Me-Not
Impatiens capensis is one of Wannaska's September bloomers. Growing from two to six feet tall, this erect, hairless forb [/fôrb/ n., a herbaceous flowering plant other than a grass] often grow in colonies. The flowers are ¾″ to 1⅛″ long, with three petal-like sepals and five petals. The petals are orange with reddish-brown spots. One petal forms the upper lip -- short, wide, and curving upward. The four remaining petals are fused in pairs to form two lobed, lateral petals, which spread outwards forming a pair of landing pads for pollinating insects. Don't bother sniffing the Spotted Touch-Me-Nots, because they have no floral scent.

September 11 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


September 11 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for September 11, 2024
Sunrise: 6:56am; Sunset: 7:45pm; 3 minutes, 32 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 4:20pm; Moonset: 11:25pm, waxing gibbous, 57% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for September 11, 2024
                Average            Record              Today
High             68                     88                    76
Low              45                     22                    59

September Poem
by Helen Hunt Jackson

The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.

The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook,

From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes' sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather,
And autumn's best of cheer.

But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.

'T is a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.

September 11 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Hot Cross Buns Day
• National Make Your Bed Day
• Patriot Day
• National Day of Service and Remembrance
• Grandparents Day
• National Hug Your Hound Day
• Emergency Number Day

September 11 Word Pun
Did you hear about the mathematician who’s afraid of negative numbers?
She will stop at nothing to avoid them.


September 11 Word Riddle
What was Henry the Eighth’s theme song?*


September 11 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
TARIFF, n. A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.

    The Enemy of Human Souls
    Sat grieving at the cost of coals;
    For Hell had been annexed of late,
    And was a sovereign Southern State.

    "It were no more than right," said he,
    "That I should get my fuel free.
    The duty, neither just nor wise,
    Compels me to economize—
    Whereby my broilers, every one,
    Are execrably underdone.
    What would they have?—although I yearn
    To do them nicely to a turn,
    I can't afford an honest heat.
    This tariff makes even devils cheat!
    I'm ruined, and my humble trade
    All rascals may at will invade:
    Beneath my nose the public press
    Outdoes me in sulphureousness;
    The bar ingeniously applies
    To my undoing my own lies;
    My medicines the doctors use
    (Albeit vainly) to refuse
    To me my fair and rightful prey
    And keep their own in shape to pay;
    The preachers by example teach
    What, scorning to perform, I preach;
    And statesmen, aping me, all make
    More promises than they can break.
    Against such competition I
    Lift up a disregarded cry.
    Since all ignore my just complaint,
    By Hokey-Pokey! I'll turn saint!"
    Now, the Republicans, who all
    Are saints, began at once to bawl
    Against his competition; so
    There was a devil of a go!
    They locked horns with him, tête-à-tête
    In acrimonious debate,
    Till Democrats, forlorn and lone,
    Had hopes of coming by their own.
    That evil to avert, in haste
    The two belligerents embraced;
    But since 'twere wicked to relax
    A tittle of the Sacred Tax,
    'Twas finally agreed to grant
    The bold Insurgent-protestant
    A bounty on each soul that fell
    Into his ineffectual Hell.
    —Edam Smith


September 11 Etymology Word of the Week
bean
/bēn/ n., an edible seed, typically kidney-shaped, growing in long pods on certain leguminous plants; a leguminous plant that bears beans in pods, from Old English bean "bean, pea, legume," from Proto-Germanic bauno (source also of Old Norse baun, Middle Dutch bone, Dutch boon, Old High German bona, German Bohne), and related to Latin faba "bean;" Greek phakos "lentil;" Albanian bathë "horse-bean;" Old Prussian babo, Russian bob "bean," but the original form is obscure. Watkins suggests a Proto-Indo-European reduplicated root bha-bhā- "broad bean;" de Vaan writes that the Italic, Slavic and Germanic "are probably independent loanwords from a European substratum word of the form bab- (or similar) 'bean'."

There are many bean metaphors, some certified; some not. As a metaphor for "something of small value" it is attested from circa 1300 (hill of beans as something not much to amount to is from 1863). The meaning "head" is U.S. baseball slang 1905 (in bean-ball "a pitch thrown at the head"); thus slang verb bean meaning "to hit on the head," attested from 1910. Bean-shooter as a child's weapon for mischief, a sort of small sling-shot to fire beans, is attested from 1876. Derisive slang bean-counter "accountant" is recorded by 1971.

To not know beans "be ignorant" is attested by 1842 in American English, often said to be a New England phrase; it is perhaps from the "object of little worth" sense. Some of the earliest citations give it in a fuller form, but they do not agree: "why, I sometimes think they don't know beans when the bag is open" ["The History of the Saints," 1842]; "This feller don't know beans from porridge, no how." ["Etchings of a Whaling Cruise," 1850]. It might have a connection to the English colloquial expression know how many beans make five "be a clever fellow" (1824).

Interestingly, "spilling the beans" is an ongoing source of deep speculation. For full details, read Anatoly Liberman's report here.


September 11 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1503 Michelangelo begins sculpting the 12 Apostles for the Cathedral of Florence.
• 1783 Benjamin Franklin writes, "There never was a good war or bad peace".
• 1847 First singing of Stephen Foster's Oh! Susanna.
• 1885 Ambrose Bierce finishes as editor of The Wasp.
• 1893 Svoboda, oldest existing Ukrainian newspaper founded as a weekly publication by Father Hryhorii Hrushka, in Jersey City, New Jersey.
• 1906 Mahatma Gandhi coins the term "Satyagraha" to characterize the Non-Violence movement in South Africa.
• 1942 Enid Blyton publishes Five on a Treasure Island first of her Famous Five children's novels.
• 1951 Igor Stravinsky's opera The Rake's Progress, with libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, premieres.
• 1959 Composer and jazz orchestra leader Duke Ellington wins NAACP's Springarn Medal for his musical achievements.

September 11 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1458 Bernardo Accolti [Unico Aretino], Italian writer.
• 1523 Pierre de Ronsard, French poet.
• 1614 Philipp Buchner, German composer.
• 1679  Thomas Parnell, Irish poet.
• 1700 James Thomson, Scottish poet.
• 1711 William Boyce, English organist/composer.
• 1741 Johann Jakob Engel, German author.
• 1762 Joanna Baillie, Scottish poet and playwright.
• 1804 Aleksandr Polezhayev, Russian poet.
• 1836 Fitz Hugh Ludlow, American author.
• 1844 George Martin, English composer.
• 1859 Vjenceslav Novak, Croatian Realist writer.
• 1861 Juhani Aho, Finnish writer.
• 1862, O. Henry, American writer.
• 1865 Alfred Hollins, British composer.
• 1865 Rainis [Jānis Pliekšāns], Latvian poet and playwright.
• 1876 Alfonso Broqua, Uruguayan composer.
• 1885 D.H. Lawrence, English poet and writer.
• 1890 Marius Ulfrstad, Norwegian composer.
• 1891 Noel Gallon, French composer.
• 1891 William Thomas Walsh, American author.
• 1901 Katri Vala, Finnish poet.
• 1911 Bola de Nieve [Ignacio Jacinto Villa Fernández], Cuban pianist, singer and songwriter.
• 1917 Jessica "Decca" Mitford, English author.
• 1922 Freddie Anderson, Irish writer.
• 1925 Ashley Heenan, New Zealand composer.
• 1925 Harry Somers, Canadian composer.
• 1926 Alfred Slote, American children's books author.
• 1933 William Luther Pierce, American author.
• 1934 Oliver Jones, Canadian jazz pianist and composer.
• 1935 Arvo Pärt, Estonian composer.
• 1936 Pavel Landovský, Czech playwright.
• 1942 Gerome Ragni, American playwright.
• 1957 James McBride, American writer.
• 1975 Sinead O'Donnell, Irish artist.

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

• appestat: /AP-uh-stat/ n., the physiological mechanism or region of the brain to which the control of appetite is attributed.
• auratic: /ô-RA-tic/ adj., characterized by or relating to an aura; of or relating to the distinctive quality or essence of a person, work of art, or object.
• cernuous: /SəR-nyəw-əs/ adj., inclining or nodding; pendulous, drooping.
• coeval: /kō-ĒV-(ə)l/ adj., having the same age or date of origin; contemporary; n., a person of roughly the same age as oneself; a contemporary.
• geoid: /JĒ-oid/ n., the hypothetical shape of the earth, coinciding with mean sea level and its imagined extension under (or over) land areas.
• izzat: /IZ-ət/ n., honor, reputation, or prestige.
• knaidel: /kə-NĀD-(ə)l/ n., a type of dumpling eaten in Jewish households during Passover.
• peenge: /pēnzh/ v., complain with a whining tone.
• pulvinate: /PəL-və-nāt/ adj., curved convexly or swelled; cushion-shaped.
• wasm: /WaZ-əm/ n., an outdated policy, doctrine, belief, or theory.

September 11, 2024 Word-Wednesday Feature
weird
/wird/ adj., suggesting something supernatural; uncanny; strange or odd; n., a person's destiny; v., induce a sense of disbelief or alienation in someone, from circa 1400, "having power to control fate," from wierd (n.), from Old English wyrd "fate, chance, fortune; destiny; the Fates," literally "that which comes," from Proto-Germanic wurthiz (source also of Old Saxon wurd, Old High German wurt "fate," Old Norse urðr "fate, one of the three Norns"), from Proto-Indo-European wert- "to turn, to wind," (source also of German werden, Old English weorðan "to become"), from root wer- (2) "to turn, bend." For the sense development from "turning" to "becoming," compare phrase turn into "become."

The sense of "uncanny, supernatural" developed from Middle English use of weird sisters for the three Fates or Norns (in Germanic mythology), the goddesses who controlled human destiny. They were portrayed as odd or frightening in appearance, as in Macbeth (and especially in 18th and 19th century productions of it), which led to the adjectival meaning "odd-looking, uncanny" (1815); "odd, strange, disturbingly different" (1820). Also see Macbeth. Related: Weirdly; weirdness.

The Urban Dictionary has numerous definitions of weird, including:

• A word used by basic, insecure, boring, cookie-cutter ass bitches to describe someone better than them.
• Someone who isnt [sic] afraid to be themselfs [sic]. A person who likes to be humorous and make people laugh. People who like to have a good time. Sometimes weird people are the BEST kinda people.
• Someone who is excessively amazing.
• Some people use this word to bully, or hurt somebody's feelings in a negative way. I take it a different way, I say, "weird is different. different is unique, and unique is amazing." 
• Overall, weird is unique in so many ways:

1. A synonym for "Not boring".
2. A synonym for "Awesome".
3. A synonym for "Amazing".
4. A synonym for "Outgoing".
5. Basically just a compliment.
6. If you're weird, then you're everything above.

From literary perspective, in addition to the Fates — Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, ancient witch sagas, the Grim Reaper, and Shakespeare's Macbeth, we must include Weird Fiction, a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose more notable authors include Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, H.P. Lovecraft, and then there’s the New Weird represented by Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, and some of the darker writings of WannaskaWriter.

Of course, weird has recently become an increasingly popular word in the language of U.S. politics — a melting pot where this word has become indispensable as a definition for both the candidates' characters and their narrative plots regarding the opposing party in what may be the greatest of all human fictions. By definition and by mathematical proportionality, the more polarized a populace becomes, the more strangely, incomprehensibly weirder the persons of the party on one pole become to members of persons in the party on the other pole. Consequently, it becomes almost vacuous to describe an opponent as weird without characterizing that opponent’s specific, precise, detailed weirdness features.

There is, of course, a centrist option to weirdness: several of the definitions cited above are positive in terms of appreciating weirdness. Isn’t it weird that the family, care for our veterans, support for farmers, access to affordable healthcare, freedoms of speech, and the rights of white males to determine their own reproductive agency remain central values for both of these polarized parties? Embrace your weirdness and come together.

Sometimes the thing that’s weird about you is the thing that’s cool about you.

Maureen Dowd

Sometimes...

From A Year with Rilke, September 11 Entry
Dear Darkening Ground, from Book of Hours I, 61

Dear darkening ground,
you've endured so patiently the walls we've built,
perhaps you'll give the cities one more hour

and grant the churches and cloisters two.
And those that labor—let their work
grip them another five hours, or seven,

before you become forest again, and water, and widening wilderness
in that hour of inconceivable terror
when you take back your name
from all things.

Just give me a little more time!
I want to love the things
as no one has thought to love them,
until they're worthy of you and real.

Poet's Garden
by Vincent van Gogh

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.





Dance Tudor Music.

A Chairman Joe Original.