Word-Wednesday for August 27, 2025

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for August 27, 2025, the twenty-eighth Wednesday of the year, the tenth Wednesday of summer, the fourth Wednesday of August, and the two-hundred thirty-ninth day of the year, with one-hundred twenty-six days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for August 27, 2025
Achoo!
/ä-CHÜ/ interj., used to represent the sound of a sneeze, a common sound around Wannaska this time of year as Goldenrod — Solidago nemoralis, and especially Ragweed — Ambrosia psilostachya, reach peak bloom. Ragweed pollen is a common allergen, and a single plant may produce about a billion grains of pollen per season. It causes about half of all cases of pollen-associated allergic rhinitis in Wannaska. Beekeepers are taking honey from their hives, and the geese are already heading south in large numbers. Could be a cold winter.

August 27 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


August 27 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for August 27, 2025
Sunrise: 6:34am; Sunset: 8:17pm; 3 minutes, 25 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 11:30am; Moonset: 9:33pm, waxing crescent, 20% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for August 27, 2025
                Average            Record              Today
High             74                     98                     76
Low              52                     28                     52


 A Summer Ramble
by William Cullen Bryant

The quiet August noon has come,
A slumberous silence fills the sky,
The fields are still, the woods are dumb,
In glassy sleep the waters lie.

And mark yon soft white clouds that rest
Above our vale, a moveless throng;
The cattle on the mountain's breast
Enjoy the grateful shadow long.

Oh, how unlike those merry hours
In early June when Earth laughs out,
When the fresh winds make love to flowers,
And woodlands sing and waters shout.

When in the grass sweet voices talk,
And strains of tiny music swell
From every moss-cup of the rock,
From every nameless blossom's bell.

But now a joy too deep for sound,
A peace no other season knows,
Hushes the heavens and wraps the ground,
The blessing of supreme repose.

Away! I will not be, to-day,
The only slave of toil and care.
Away from desk and dust! away!
I'll be as idle as the air.

Beneath the open sky abroad,
Among the plants and breathing things,
The sinless, peaceful works of God,
I'll share the calm the season brings.

Come, thou, in whose soft eyes I see
The gentle meanings of thy heart,
One day amid the woods with me,
From men and all their cares apart.

And where, upon the meadow's breast,
The shadow of the thicket lies,
The blue wild flowers thou gatherest
Shall glow yet deeper near thine eyes.

Come, and when mid the calm profound,
I turn, those gentle eyes to seek,
They, like the lovely landscape round,
Of innocence and peace shall speak.

Rest here, beneath the unmoving shade,
And on the silent valleys gaze,
Winding and widening, till they fade
In yon soft ring of summer haze.

The village trees their summits rear
Still as its spire, and yonder flock
At rest in those calm fields appear
As chiselled from the lifeless rock.

One tranquil mount the scene o'erlooks--
There the hushed winds their sabbath keep
While a near hum from bees and brooks
Comes faintly like the breath of sleep.

Well may the gazer deem that when,
Worn with the struggle and the strife,
And heart-sick at the wrongs of men,
The good forsakes the scene of life;

Like this deep quiet that, awhile,
Lingers the lovely landscape o'er,
Shall be the peace whose holy smile
Welcomes him to a happier shore.

August 27 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Peach Day
• National Pots De Creme Day
• National Just Because Day
• Feast Day of Máel Ruba (or Rufus)

August 27 Word Pun

August 27 Word Riddle
What’s the name of the Mexican man that loves video conferencing?*


August 27 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
GNU, n., An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state resembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag. In its wild condition it is something like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone.

    A hunter from Kew caught a distant view
    Of a peacefully meditative gnu,
    And he said: "I'll pursue, and my hands imbrue
    In its blood at a closer interview."
    But that beast did ensue and the hunter it threw
    O'er the top of a palm that adjacent grew;
    And he said as he flew: "It is well I withdrew
    Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew
    That really meritorious gnu."
                                —Jarn Leffer


August 27 Etymology Word of the Week
educate
/EJ-ə-kāt/ v., give intellectual, moral, and social instruction to (someone, especially a child), typically at a school or university, from mid-15th century, educaten, "bring up (children), to train," from Latin educatus, past participle of educare "bring up, rear, educate" (source also of Italian educare, Spanish educar, French éduquer), which is a frequentative of or otherwise related to educere "bring out, lead forth," from ex- "out" (see ex-) + ducere "to lead" (from Proto-Indo-European root deuk- "to lead"). The meaning "provide schooling" is attested by 1580s.


August 27 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1665 Ye Bare & Ye Cubb is the first play performed in North America.
• 1900 Gabriel Fauré's grand cantata Prométhée premieres.
• 1955 Guinness Book of World Records is first published.
• 2015 The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett published by Doubleday, 5 months after the author's death, last book in the Discworld series.

August 27 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1562 Hans Leo Hassler, German composer.
• 1583 Simon Besler, German composer.
• 1630 Maria van Oosterwijck, Dutch flower painter.
• 1650 Johann Samuel Welter, German composer.
• 1752 Herman Muntinghe, Dutch writer.
• 1770 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher.
• 1835 Albijn van de Abeele, Flemish author and painter.
• 1837 Heinrich Urban, German violinist, composer.
• 1849 Manuel Acuña, Mexican poet.
• 1856 Iwan Franko, Ukrainian writer.
• 1870 Amado Nervo [Juan Crisóstomo Ruiz de Nervo], Mexican writer and poet.
• 1871 Theodore Dreiser, American novelist.
• 1877 Lloyd C. Douglas, American novelist.
• 1878 Joseph John Richards, American composer.
• 1882 Jaroslav Křička, Czech composer.
• 1886 Eric Coates, English viola player and composer.
• 1886 Rebecca Clarke, British-American violist and classical composer.
• 1890 Man Ray, American artist and photographer.
• 1899 C. S. Forester, English historical novelist.
• 1900 Shalva Mikhailovich Taktakishvili, Russian composer.
• 1902 Herbert Menges, English composer.
• 1903 Xavier Villaurrutia, Mexican poet.
• 1904 Norah Lofts, British author.
• 1908 Kurt Wegner, German artist.
• 1909 Lester Young, American jazz saxophonist.
• 1914 Catherine Marshall, American writer.
• 1919 Jan Cox, Belgian-American Expressionist painter.
• 1924 David Rowbotham, Australian poet.
• 1928 Peter Richard Tahourdin, English-Australian composer.
• 1929 Ir Levin, American author.
• 1932 Antonia Fraser, British author.
• 1932 François Glorieux, Flemish pianist and composer.
• 1933 Joke Smit, Dutch writer.
• 1937 J.D. Crowe, American bluegrass banjo player and bandleader.
• 1944 Barry Conyngham, Australian composer.
• 1949 Ann Murray, Irish operatic soprano.
• 1954 Mike Kelley, American artist.
• 1979 Sarah Neufeld, Canadian violinist.

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

• bovver: /BOV-vuhr/ v., to concern, worry, or interest (someone); to bother - often in negative constructions - usually in passive.
• britzka: /BRITS-kə/ n., an open carriage with calash top and space for reclining.
• de minimis: / dā-MIN-i-mis/ adj., lacking significance or importance; so minor as to merit disregard.
• flechette: /fle-SHET/ n., a a type of ammunition resembling a small dart, shot from a gun.
• gatvol: /GUT-vawl/ adj., SOUTH AFRICAN, having had enough of a person or situation; extremely annoyed, unhappy, or bored, esp. with a state of affairs that has persisted for a long time; completely fed up. Also: very tired. Frequently with of or with.
• hazzle: /HAZ-uhl/ v., to dry on the surface; to dry incompletely; to dry in the open air.
• huggle: /HUG-uhl/ n., a hug while snuggling: gesture of tender non-sexual affection.
• lardon: /LÄRD-(ə)n/ n., a piece of bacon used to lard meat.
• madid: /MAD-id/ adj., wet; moist.
• swart: /swôrt/ adj., swarthy.

August 27, 2025 Word-Wednesday Feature
Words on Writing
We here at Wannaskan Almanac can't really think of living without writing, and in so doing we write our own epitaphs — day in, and day out. Interestingly, what writing feels like or means to each author is unique as a fingerprint, and metaphors abound when authors put their pens to paper describing their personal insights. Here are a few of our favorites:

Writing is simply one thought after another dying upon the one before.

Mel Brooks

Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not.

Julie Burchill

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyze yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it.

Octavia Butler

Writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers.

Isaac Asimov

Writing is like driving at night. You can see only as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E.L. Doctorow

Writing is very improvisational. It’s like trying to fix a broken sewing machine with safety pins and rubber bands. A lot of tinkering.

Margaret Atwood

Writing is just a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to make it come out right.

John Berryman

Writing is like pulling the trigger of a gun; if you are not loaded, nothing happens.

Henry Seidel Canby

Writing is an artificial activity. It is a lonely and private substitute for conversation.

Brooks Atkinson

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream. 

Jorge Luis Borges

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment.

Joseph Brodsky

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand—a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods—or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is not market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

Willa Cather

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy, then an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then it becomes a tyrant and, in the last stage, just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

Winston Churchill

Writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act.

Joan Didion

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Norman Mailer

The author’s main purpose in this book is to teach precision in writing; and of good writing (which, essentially, is clear thinking made visible) precision is the point of capital concern.

Ambrose Bierce, the opening line of Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults

It is easy to write a check if you have enough money in the bank, and writing comes more easily if you have something to say.

Sholem Asch

Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.

Pierre Abelard

Writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated deep down, by a fear or and fascination with mortality–by a desire to make the risky trip to the underworld and to bring something or someone back from the dead.

Margaret Atwood

Writing is a birth driven by passion, a slide down the canal of awakening, happily attended by the muse—unless she fails to show up. In that case there is still a birth, but the labor is laced with continuous pain and the baby is ugly.

Jack Altschuler

It is in the hard rockpile labor of seeking to win, hold, or deserve a reader’s interest that the pleasant agony of writing comes in.

John Mason Brown

Easy writing makes hard reading.

Ernest Hemingway

Among all kinds of writing, there is none in which authors are more apt to miscarry than in works of humor, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

Joseph Addison

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Truman Capote

Teaching writing, unlike most other kinds of teaching, is an intervention, closer to therapy than to any transmissible instruction.

Sven Birkets

Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating.

Kate Braverman

Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.

Blaise Cendrars

Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.

Catherine Drinker Bowen

Writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance. A way to light a candle in a gale wind.

Alice Childress

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

Alexander Pope

From A Year with Rilke, August 27 Entry
Fig Tree, from the Sixth Duino Elegy

Fig tree, for how long now have I found meaning
in the way you almost forget to bloom
and drive without drama your pure mystery
into the young determined fruit.
Like a fountain's channel your curving branches
force the sap downward and up again; look, it springs
straight from sleep into its sweetest achievement—
like the god entering a swan. . . .

Trees
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.






*Monty Zoomer.