Word-Wednesday for May 7, 2025

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for May 7, 2025, the twenty-ninth Wednesday of the year, the seventh Wednesday of spring, the first Wednesday of May, and the one-hundred twenty-seventh day of the year, with two-hundred thirty-eight days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for May 7, 2025
Mourning Doves
Zenaida macroura is a member of the dove family, Columbidae, also known as the American mourning dove, the rain dove, the chueybird, colloquially as the turtle dove, and once known as the Carolina pigeon and Carolina turtledove. Wannaska becomes full of Mourning Doves in the spring, as they are one of the most abundant and widespread North American birds, and as our area is in the middle of their breeding ground. Prolific breeders, one pair may raise up to six broods of two young each in a single year. The wings make an unusual whistling sound upon take-off and landing, a form of sonation [/sō-NĀ-shən/ n., a giving forth of sound.]

Their words to one another are just as interesting.  First, there's the distinctive, plaintive cooOOoo-wooo-woo-woooo, uttered by males to attract females, which may be mistaken by children or urbanites for the call of an owl. Other sounds include a nested call (cooOOoo) by paired males to attract their female mates to the nest sites, a greeting call (a soft ork) by males upon rejoining their mates, and an alarm call (a short roo-oo) by either a male or female when threatened.

Other new arrivals this week include the Wood Thrush, the wood tick and the peeper.

May 7, 2025 Hummingbird Migration Update
Any day now…

Spot the Space Station:
Time: Wednesday, May 07, 3:00 AM; Visible: 5 minutes; Maximum Height: 57°; Appears: 24° above WNW; Disappears: 10° above E.

and

Time: Wednesday, May 07, 4:35 AM; Visible: 7 minutes; Maximum Height: 52°; Appears: 10° above WNW; Disappears: 10° above SE.


May 7 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


May 7 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for May 7, 2025
Sunrise: 5:53am; Sunset: 8:48pm; 2 minutes, 57 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 3:52pm; Moonset: 4:04am, waxing gibbous, 74% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for May 7, 2025
                Average            Record              Today
High             59                     85                     66
Low              36                     21                      43

A Prayer in Spring
by Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

May 7 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Tourism Day
• National Interpreter Appreciation Day
• National Skilled Trades Day
• National Packing Design Day
• National Roast Leg of Lamb Day
• National Paste Up Day
• National Bike to School Day
• National Cosmopolitan Day
• National School Nurse Day

May 7 Word Pun
Sven arbortrarily posts tree puns.


May 7 Word Riddle
What do you call a person who cares for chickens?*


May 7 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
ZIGZAG, v.t. To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one carrying the white man's burden. (From zed, z, and jag, an Icelandic word of unknown meaning.)

    He zedjagged so uncomen wyde
    Thet non coude pas on eyder syde;
    So, to com saufly thruh, I been
    Constreynet for to doodge betwene.
                    —Munwele


May 7 Etymology Word of the Week
crazy
/ˈkrāzē/ adj., mentally deranged, especially as manifested in a wild or aggressive way; extremely enthusiastic, from 1570s, "diseased, sickly" (a sense now obsolete); 1580s, "broken, impaired, full of cracks or flaws," from craze + -y. Meaning "deranged, demented, of unsound mind or behaving as so" is from 1610s. Jazz slang sense "cool, exciting" is attested by 1927. Related: Crazily; craziness.

To drive (someone) crazy is attested by 1873. To do something like crazy "with manic vigor or frequency" is by 1905. Phrase crazy like a fox has origins by 1935. Crazy Horse, name of the Teton Lakhota (Siouan) war leader (d. 1877), translates thašuka witko, literally "his horse is crazy." Crazy-quilt (1886) preserves the original "break to pieces" sense of craze (v.). Crazy bone as an alternative to funny bone is recorded by 1853.


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

• 1253 Flemish friar William of Rubruck sets off to convert the Mongols to Christianity, a mission ordered by French king Louis IX - one of the most famous travel accounts in the Medieval world.
• 1429 English siege of Orleans broken by Joan of Arc (and the French army).
• 1649 First English translation of the Qur'an, Alcoran of Mahomet, is published in London by Alexander Ross, based on a French translation.
• 1660 Isaack B. Fubine of Savoy, in The Hague, patents macaroni.
• 1663 Theatre Royal opens in Drury Lane, London.
• 1697 Stockholm's medieval royal castle is destroyed by fire, the Codex Gigas (world's largest extant medieval illuminated manuscript) survives by being thrown out a window.
• 1700 William Penn begins monthly meetings for blacks advocating emancipation.
• 1794 Influential Gothic romance The Mysteries of Udolpho is published by Ann Ratcliffe.
• 1824 Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th (Choral) Symphony, premieres.
• 1846 First printed copies of Poems by Emily, Charlotte, and Anne Brontë received, published under pseudonyms of Acton, Currer, and Ellis Bell.
• 1877 Cincinnati Enquirer first uses term "bullpen" to indicate baseball field foul territory where late-coming spectators were herded like cattle.
• 1888 Édouard Lalo's opera Le roi d'Ys premieres.
• 1912 Columbia University approves plans to award the Pulitzer Prize in several categories, after establishment by Joseph Pulitzer.
• 1925 First projection planetarium opens at Deutsche Museum in Munich, Germany.
• 1928 Pulitzer prize awarded to Thornton Wilder for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
• 1934 Pulitzer prize awarded to Sidney Kingsley for his play Men in White.
• 1941 Glenn Miller records Chattanooga Choo Choo for RCA, it becomes first record to be designated "gold".
• 1945 Pulitzer Prize for a Novel awarded to John Hersey for Bell for Adano.
• 1951 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction awarded to Conrad Richter, for his novel The Town.
• 1956 Pulitzer Prize for Drama awarded to Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett for their play The Diary of Anne Frank.
• 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction awarded to Eudora Welty for Optimist's Daughter.
• 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry awarded to Robert Lowell for Dolphin.
• 1994 Edvard Munch's painting The Scream is recovered three months after it was stolen.

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

• 1711 David Hume, Scottish philosopher and historian.
• 1748 Olympe de Gouges, French playwright.
• 1769 Giuseppe Farinelli, Italian composer.
• 1803 Johan Peter Cronhamm, Swedish composer.
• 1812 Robert Browning, English poet.
• 1833 Johannes Brahms, German composer.
• 1840 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer.
• 1861 Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet.
• 1868 Władysław Reymont [Rejment], Polish novelist.
• 1873 Clarence Dickinson, American composer.
• 1882 Willem Elsschot [Alfons Josephus de Ridder], Flemish writer.
• 1883 Gino Roncaglia, Italian composer.
• 1887 Henri Pourrat, French writer.
• 1892 Archibald MacLeish, American poet.
• 1893  Břetislav Bartoš, Czech painter.
• 1907 Jef van Durme, Belgian composer.
• 1908 Wouter Paap, Dutch composer.
• 1918 Argeliers León, Cuban composer.
• 1922 Joe O'Donnell, American documentary photographer.
• 1930 Horst Bienek, German writer.
• 1931 Gene Wolfe, American science fiction author.
• 1934 Heinz Marti, Swiss composer.
• 1935 Isobel Warren, Canadian author.
• 1939 Volker Braun, German writer.
• 1940 Angela Carter, English novelist.
• 1943 Peter Carey, Australian author.
• 1944 Alison Bauld, Australian composer.
• 1945 Christy Moore, Irish folk singer.
• 1946 Michael Rosen, English author.
• 1960 Almudena Grandes, Spanish novelist.
• 1970 Jenny Saville, English painter.
• 1971 Thomas Piketty, French author.

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

• beddy: /BED-ee/ adj., of stone: having natural planes of cleavage, easily split.
• begale: /bih-GAYL/ v., to enchant or bewitch.
• cagoule: /kə-Go͞oL/ n., a lightweight, hooded, thigh-length waterproof jacket.
• collop: /KAH-luhp/ v., IRISH, to cut (something, esp. a piece of flesh) from a larger whole; to cut (food, esp. meat) into collops or thick slices; more generally: to cut, slice, or slash (a thing).
• drupe: /dro͞op/ n., a fleshy fruit with thin skin and a central stone containing the seed, e.g., a plum, cherry, almond, or olive.
• hare: /her/ v., run with great speed.
• philocalist: /fuh-LAH-kuh-luhst/ n., a lover of beautiful things.
• retrouvaille: /reh-troo-VAHY-uh/ n., the joy that comes from seeing someone again after a very long time; a reunion or rediscovery.
  
• rissole: /rə-SŌL/ n., a compressed mixture of meat and spices, coated in breadcrumbs and fried.
• selkie: /SEL-kē/ n., SCOTTISH, a mythical creature that resembles a seal in the water but assumes human form on land.

May 7, 2025 Word-Wednesday Feature
symploce
/SIM-ploh-see/ n., RHETORIC, the repetition of words or phrases at both the beginning and end of successive clauses or verses: a combination of anaphora and epistrophe, from 1570–80, New Latin symplocē, derived from Greek symplokḗ: intertwining, combination, equivalent to sym- sym- + plokḗ, noun derivative of plékein to plait, twine; akin to Latin plectere (-plex). According to Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric,

Symploce is useful for highlighting the contrast between correct and incorrect claims. The speaker changes the word choice in the smallest way that will suffice to separate the two possibilities; the result is a conspicuous contrast between the small tweak in wording and the large change in substance. 

Examples of sympoce include:

Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they of the seed of Abraham? So am I.

Paul, 2 Corinthians 11:22

Most strange, but yet most truly, will I speak:
That Angelo's forsworn; is it not strange?
That Angelo's a murderer; is't not strange?
That Angelo is an adulterous thief,
An hypocrite, a virgin-violator;
Is it not strange and strange?

Isabella in William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Act 5, scene 1

Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him I have offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended.

Brutus in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 2

Most true that I must fair Fidessa love.
Most true that I fair Fidessa cannot love.
Most true that I do feel the pains of love.
Most true that I am captive unto love.
Most true that I deluded am with love.
Most true that I do find the sleights of love.
Most true that nothing can procure her love.
Most true that I must perish in my love.
Most true that She contemns the God of love.
Most true that he is snarèd with her love.
Most true that She would have me cease to love.
Most true that She herself alone is Love.
Most true that though She hated, I would love!
Most true that dearest life shall end with love.

Bartholomew Griffin, Sonnet LXII, Fidessa, More Chaste Than Kinde

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

Benjamin Franklin

Alfred Doolittle: I'll tell you, Governor, if you'll only let me get a word in. I'm willing to tell you. I'm wanting to tell you. I'm waiting to tell you.
Henry Higgins: Pickering, this chap has a certain natural gift of rhetoric. Observe the rhythm of his native woodnotes wild. 'I'm willing to tell you. I'm wanting to tell you. I'm waiting to tell you.' Sentimental rhetoric! That's the Welsh strain in him. It also accounts for his mendacity and dishonesty.

George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes . . .

T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Prufrock and Other Observations

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

In the years after World War I my mother had put pennies for Grace [Cathedral] in her mite box but Grace would never be finished. In the years after World War II I would put pennies for Grace in my mite box but Grace would never be finished.

Joan Didion, "California Republic." The White Album

From A Year with Rilke, May 7 Entry
Lovers, from Second Duino Elegy

Lovers, you who are for a while
sufficient to each other,
help me understand who we are.
You hold each other. Have you proof?
See, my hands hold each other too.
I put my used-up face in them.
It helps me feel known.
Just from that, can we believe we endure?
You however, who increase
through each other's delight,
you who ripen in each other's hands
like grapes in a vintage year:
I'm asking you
who we are.

You touch one another so reverently;
as though your caresses
could keep each place they cover
from disappearing. As though, underneath, you could sense
that which will always exist.
So, as you embrace, you promise each other eternity.

Lovers' Hands
by Auguste Rodin

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.







*A chicken tender.