Word-Wednesday for July 23, 2025

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for July 23, 2025, the twenty-third Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of summer, the fourth Wednesday of July, and the two-hundred fourth day of the year, with one-hundred sixty-one days remaining. Brought to you by Bead Gypsy Studio & Scandinavian Shoppe, donating 50% of Jewelry Sales to local ALS Fundraiser, July 23-28th.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for July 23, 2025
Indian Pipe
Monotropa uniflora is known as asinii-opwaagan in Anishinaabe, a word also related to the word pipe. Also known as ghost plant, ghost pipe, Indian pipe is now poking through the forest floors of Wannaska — an herbaceous, parasitic, non-photosynthesizing, perennial flowering plant native with waxy white stems and flowers. The name "Monotropa" is Greek for "one turn" and "uniflora" is Latin for "one flowered", as there is one sharply curved stem for each single flower. Asinii-opwaagan is commonly found growing in clumps of two or more, with its fungal source nearby. Unlike most plants, it is white and does not contain chlorophyll. Instead of generating food using the energy from sunlight, it is parasitic. Ghostly, indeed!

The Cherokee of North America feature the "pipe plant" in some of their creation stories. The legend states that the plant was named "Indian pipe" due to a group of chiefs quarreling without resolution, while passing a pipe around during the dispute; the Great Spirit then turned the chiefs into the plant, as they should have smoked the sacred pipe after making peace with each other. The plant is said to grow wherever friends have quarreled.

July 23 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


July 23 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Closed today at 1PM for equipment maintenance. Sorry for any inconvenience. Regular business hours will resume tomorrow.


Earth/Moon Almanac for July 23, 2025
Sunrise: 5:46am; Sunset: 9:15pm; 2 minutes, 25 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 3:46am; Moonset: 9:08pm, waning crescent, 1% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for July 23, 2025
                Average            Record              Today
High             79                     93                     78
Low              57                     35                     57



July 23 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Lemon Day
• Gorgeous Grandma Day
• National Vanilla Ice Cream Day

July 23 Word Pun

July 23 Word Riddle
Why did the picky woodpecker leave the petrified forest?*


July 23 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
WORMS'-MEAT, n. The finished product of which we are the raw material. The contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the Grantarium. Worms'-meat is usually outlasted by the structure that houses it, but "this too must pass away." Probably the silliest work in which a human being can engage is construction of a tomb for himself. The solemn purpose cannot dignify, but only accentuates by contrast the foreknown futility.

    Ambitious fool! so mad to be a show!
    How profitless the labor you bestow
    Upon a dwelling whose magnificence
    The tenant neither can admire nor know.

    Build deep, build high, build massive as you can,
    The wanton grass-roots will defeat the plan
    By shouldering asunder all the stones
    In what to you would be a moment's span.

    Time to the dead so all unreckoned flies
    That when your marble is all dust, arise,
    If wakened, stretch your limbs and yawn—
    You'll think you scarcely can have closed your eyes.

    What though of all man's works your tomb alone
    Should stand till Time himself be overthrown?
    Would it advantage you to dwell therein
    Forever as a stain upon a stone?
                                                    —Joel Huck


July 23 Etymology Word of the Week
archetype
/ÄRK-(ə)-tīp/ n, model, first form, original pattern from which copies are made, from 1540s [Barnhart] or circa 1600 [OED], from Latin archetypum, from Greek arkhetypon "pattern, model, figure on a seal," neuter of adjective arkhetypos "first-moulded," from arkhē "beginning, origin, first place" (verbal noun of arkhein "to be the first;" see archon) + typos "model, type, blow, mark of a blow". The Jungian psychology sense of "pervasive idea or image from the collective unconscious" is from 1919. Jung defined archetypal images as "forms or images of a collective nature which occur practically all over the earth as constituents of myths and at the same time as autochthonous individual products of unconscious origin." [Psychology and Religion 1937]


July 23 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1599 Italian painter Caravaggio gets his first public commission, the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome.
• 1827 First US swimming school opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
• 1829 William Austin Burt patents America's first typewriter, the typographer.
• 1995 Comet Hale-Bopp is discovered and becomes visible to the naked eye nearly a year later.
• 2018 Sabrina by Nick Drnaso becomes the first graphic novel named to the longlist for Man Booker Prize for best fiction written in English.

July 23 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1735 Johannes Herbst, German-American musician, composer
• 1769 Alexey Titov, Russian composer.
• 1773 Karl Ludwig Hellwig, German composer.
• 1777 Philipp Otto Runge, German Romantic painter.
• 1793 Joseph Hartmann Stuntz, Swiss composer.
• 1796 Franz Berwald, Swedish composer.
• 1806 Eduard Marxsen, German pianist and composer.
• 1823 Coventry Patmore, English poet.
• 1825 Richard Hol, Dutch composer.
• 1838 Édouard Colonne, French composer and violinist.
• 1841 Edmund John Armstrong, Irish poet.
• 1849 Géza Zichy, Hungarian composer and one-armed pianist.
• 1856 Arthur H. Bird, American composer.
• 1866 Francesco Cilea, Italian orchestral and opera composer.
• 1876 William Gillies Whittaker, English composer.
• 1884 Apolinary Szeluto, Polish pianist and composer.
• 1886 Jan Poortenaar, Dutch painter, etcher, and cartoonist.
• 1886 Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo, Spanish writer.
• 1888 Gluyas Williams, American cartoonist.
• 1888 Raymond Chandler, American-British mystery novelist.
• 1892 Petros John Petridis, Greek composer.
• 1902 Walter Burle Marx, Brazilian pianist and composer.
• 1904 Adone Zecchi, Italian composer.
• 1905 Erich Itor Kahn, German composer.
• 1907 Elspeth Huxley, English author.
• 1913 Ernest van der Eyken, Belgian violist, composer.
• 1916 (William Jennings Bryan) "Ben" Weber, American composer.
• 1920 Amália Rodrigues, Portuguese fado singer.
• 1920 Marcel Maeyer, Belgian sculptor and graphic artist.
• 1921 Jerome Rosen, American composer.
• 1922 Stefans Grové, South African composer.
• 1923 Cyril M. Kornbluth, American science fiction writer.
• 1926 Ludvik Vaculik, Czech writer.
• 1928 Bill Lee, American session double-bassist.
• 1928 Hubert Selby Jr., American author.
• 1931 Arata Isozaki, Japanese architect.
• 1931 Guy Fournier, French Canadian author.
• 1935 Hein Heinsen, Danish artist.
• 1937 Karel Zlín, Czech poet.
• 1945 Edward Gregson, British composer.
• 1946 Keith Ferguson, American blues-rock bassist.
• 1949 Sławomir Czarnecki, Polish composer.
• 1952 Michal Horáček, Czech poet.
• 1959 Carl Phillips, American poet.
• 1961 Seán Moncrieff, Irish writer.
• 1970 Thea Dorn, German author and playwright.
• 1978 Lauren Groff, American writer.

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

• apothem: /AP-ə-THem/ n., a line from the center of a regular polygon at right angles to any of its sides.
• cremello: /krə-MEL-oh/ n., a horse with a cream-coloured coat due to the presence of two copies of the cream genes.
• inglenook: /ING-guhl-nook/ n., a cozy little seating area adjoining a fireplace.
• janded: /JAN-duhd/ adj., Nigerian English. colloquial. Designating a person who has travelled overseas; of, relating to, or characteristic of such a person. Also: characteristic of or coming from a country other than one's own; foreign.
• pediluvium: /ped-uh-LOO-vee-um/ n., a therapeutic bath for the feet.
• quaggy: /KWAG-ee/ adj., marshy or boggy.
• skooshy: /SKOO-shee/ adj., that skooshes, in various senses of skoosh v.; esp. that squirts or can be squirted.
• sprunt: /sprənt/  v., SCOTTISH, to pay romantic or amorous attention to a person; (also, with 'after') to seek to gain the affections of a person.
• titulado: /tee-too-LAH-do/ v., to confer on (a person) a title which is bogus or grandiose, or exists in name only.
• zafty: /ZAF-tee/ n., a person very easily imposed upon; a kind-hearted softy.

July 23, 2025 Word-Wednesday Feature
Stories
A recent Saturday morning coffee-gathering at Word-Wednesday headquarters included an interesting discussion of the dynamics of sibling characters in large families, which lead to a discussion of mythologies and personality archetypes. Questions buzzed the room like a swarm of bees: How would you be characterized by your siblings? How will you be remembered? What is your relationship superpower, and how do you exercise that superpower? We were examining the many forms of narrative that we use to characterize our selves, our relationships, and our social groups: fairy-tale, adventure, folktale, myth, archetypes, religious tales, magical tales, to name but a few. In case it hasn’t already become evident, you ARE a character in as many stories as people who know you beyond a passing acquaintance — and sometimes even then.

Interestingly, back in 1910 the Finnish scholar Antti Aarne published the first iteration of the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index (ATUI), a scholarly classification of folk narrative motifs. The ATUI directly influenced Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale, which focuses not on motif, as Aarne did, but on function — the purpose of telling the tale. Propp’s work in turn informed Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss, among others, working on mythology and folklore in the mid-twentieth century, where the classification focus turned to archetype labeling.

Definitions abound in such studies. For example, the ATUI defines folktale as: "A type is a traditional tale that has an independent existence. It may be told as a complete narrative and does not depend for its meaning on any other tale. It may indeed happen to be told with another tale, but the fact that it may be told alone attests its independence. It may consist of only one motif or of many." Being scholars, systems also abound. The ATUI divides tales used in different countries and cultures into sections with an AT number for each entry, where the tale types are named and similar tale types are numbered by its central motif or by one of the variant folktales of that type. The name does not have to be strictly literal for every folktale. Here's the entry for Cinderella, where the bracketed AT numbers cross-reference to other motifs in the ATUI:

510A Cinderella. (Cenerentola, Cendrillon, Aschenputtel.) A young woman is mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters [S31, L55] and has to live in the ashes as a servant. When the sisters and the stepmother go to a ball (church), they give Cinderella an impossible task (e.g. sorting peas from ashes), which she accomplishes with the help of birds [B450]. She obtains beautiful clothing from a supernatural being [D1050.1, N815] or a tree that grows on the grave of her deceased mother [D815.1, D842.1, E323.2] and goes unknown to the ball. A prince falls in love with her [N711.6, N711.4], but she has to leave the ball early [C761.3]. The same thing happens on the next evening, but on the third evening, she loses one of her shoes [R221, F823.2].

The prince will marry only the woman whom the shoe fits [H36.1]. The stepsisters cut pieces off their feet in order to make them fit into the shoe [K1911.3.3.1], but a bird calls attention to this deceit. Cinderella, who had first been hidden from the prince, tries on the shoe and it fits her. The prince marries her.

Combinations: This type is usually combined with episodes of one or more other types, esp. 327A, 403, 480, 510B, and also 408, 409, 431, 450, 511, 511A, 707, and 923.

Remarks: Documented by Basile, Pentamerone (I,6) in the 17th century.

Other examples of motif categories include:

ATU 328 The Boy Steals Ogre's Treasure (Jack and the Beanstalk and Thirteen)
ATU 330 The Smith and the Devil
ATU 402 The Animal Bride (The Three Feathers, The Poor Miller's Boy, The Cat)
ATU 554 The Grateful Animals (The White Snake and The Queen Bee)
ATU 311 Rescue by Sister (Fitcher's Bird)
ATU 332 Godfather Death
ATU 425C Beauty and the Beast
ATU 470 Friends in Life and Death
ATU 500 The Name of the Supernatural Helper (Rumpelstiltskin)
ATU 505 The Grateful Dead
ATU 531 The Clever Horse (Ferdinand the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful)
ATU 592 The Dance Among Thorns
ATU 650A Strong John
ATU 675 The Lazy Boy

It's amazing the stories we see fit to tell our children. It should be noted that the ATUI omitted categories involving folktales addressing homosexuality, sexual body parts, obscene material, or excessive prudery. Farts and poo were fair game, of course.

So when writing your own mytho-genealogy, you might consider your spouse and siblings as archetypes, each with a single superpower he/she/they wield in benign, helpful, or ruthless fashions as you characterize the family dynamics of your relationships together. Who knows? It could be the making of an epic pram, passed along and updated, generation by generation...


From A Year with Rilke, July 23 Entry
The Lies We Tell, from Collected French Prams

The lies we tell are like toys,
easy to break. Like gardens
where we play hide and seek,
and, in our excitement, make a sound
so people will know where to look.

You are the wind that catches our voice,
our own shadow grown longer.
You collection of lovely holes
in the sponge that we are.

Flowering Garden with Path
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.







*She found it impeccable.