Word-Wednesday for October 15, 2025

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for October 15, 2025, the eighteenth Wednesday of the year, the fourth Wednesday of fall, the third Wednesday of October, and the two-hundred eighty-eighth day of the year, with seventy-seven days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for October 15, 2025
Octoberings
Wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, the snowshoe hare, Lepus americanus, waabooz in Anishinaabe, is beginning to turn white for the winter. Black bears, Ursus americanus, makwa in Anishinaabe, are looking for places to winter. Pick out your Halloween pumpkin while the getting is still good.

October 15 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


October 15 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for October 15, 2025
Sunrise: 7:44am; Sunset: 6:35pm; 3 minutes, 28 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 1:02am; Moonset: 4:37pm, waning crescent, 30% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for October 15, 2025
                Average            Record              Today
High             52                     78                     55
Low              32                     16                     44

To Autumn
by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 

October 15 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Fossil Day
• National Shawarma Day
• Bra Day USA
• National Aesthetician Day
• National Cheese Curd Day
• Hagfish Day
• Support Your Local Chamber of Commerce Day
• National LatinX AIDS Awareness Day
• National I Love Lucy Day
• National Pregnancy ad Infant Loss Remembrance Day
• White Cane Safety Day
• National Grouch Day
• Sweetest Day
• World Student’s Day
• Feast Day of Cúan of Ahascragh

October 15 Word Pun
New Cook Book:
Roasting Beef
by Grey V. Browning


October 15 Word Riddle

Four jolly men sat down to play and 
played all night, ’til the break of day.
They played for cash and not for fun, 
with a separate score for everyone. 
When it came time to square accounts, 
they’d all had made quite fair amounts.
Not one had lost and all had gained.
In two words, can you explain?*

October 15 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
BACON, n., The mummy of a pig embalmed in brine. To "save one's bacon" is to narrowly escape some particular woman, or other peril.

    By heaven forsaken,
    By Justice o'ertaken,
    He saved his bacon
    By cutting a single slice of it;
    For 'twas cut from the throat,
    And we venture to quote
    Death, hell, and the grave as the price of it.
                —S. F. Journal of Commerce


October 15 Etymology Word of the Week
squander
/SKWÄN-dər/ v., waste (something, especially money or time) in a reckless and foolish manner, from 1580s (squandering, Nashe), "to spend recklessly or prodigiously, use without judgment or economy," of unknown origin; Shakespeare used it in Merchant of Venice (1593) with a sense of "to be scattered over a wide area." Related: Squandered; squanderer.

Squander-bug, a British symbol of reckless extravagance and waste during war-time shortages, represented as a devilish insect, was introduced 1943. In the U.S., Rep. Louis Ludlow (D.-Indiana) coined squanderlust (1935) for the tendency of government bureaucracies to spend much money. Earlier was squandermania (1920).


October 15 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1581 The first ballet, Ballet Comique de la Reine, commissioned by Catherine de Medici, is staged in Paris.
• 1582 Gregorian calendar is introduced in Spain, Portugal, and the Papal States after skipping 10 days from October 4 to sync the calendar to the solar year and compensate for the drift that has occurred due to the Julian calendar having too many leap days.
• 1764 Edward Gibbon observes a group of friars singing in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome, which inspires him to begin work on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
• 1783 Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier makes the first tethered balloon ascent.
• 1816 Lord Byron views the love letters of Lucrezia Borgia and poet Pietro Bembo in Milan and declares them "the prettiest love letters in the world".
• 1842 Karl Marx is appointed editor-in-chief of the newspaper Rheinische Zeitung.
• 1860 11-year-old Grace Bedell writes to Abraham Lincoln telling him to grow a beard.
• 1881 American Angler, the first American fishing magazine, debuts.
• 1886 Modest Mussorgsky's musical fantasy Night on Bald Mountain premieres.
• 1888 German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche decides to write his autobiography Ecce Homo on his 44th birthday.
• 1889 Margaret Burke Sheridan, Irish opera singer.
• 1903 František R. Kraus, Czech writer.
• 1905 Claude Debussy's symphonic sketch La Mer premiere.
• 1924 André Breton publishes his "Surrealist Manifesto" with Éditions du Sagittaire.
• 1925 Willem Landré's opera Beatrice premieres.
• 1933 Dmitri Shostakovich's First Piano Concerto premieres.
• 1937 Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not is published.
• 1952 Charlotte's Web by E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams is published.
• 1952 Arthur Laurent's Time of the Cuckoo premieres.
• 1953 John Patrick's play Teahouse of the August Moon premieres.
• 1994 Philip Glass' Symphony No. 2, for string orchestra, premieres.
• 2012 Hilary Mantel wins the 2012 Man Booker Prize for her novel Bring Up the Bodies.

October 15 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 70BC Virgil, Roman poet.
• 522 Colmán of Cloyne, Irish poet.
• 1686 Allan Ramsay, Scottish poet.
• 1723 Johann Andreas Joseph Giulini, German composer.
• 1761 Peter Grønland, Danish composer.
• 1762 Samuel Adams Holyoke, American composer.
• 1775 Bernhard Henrik Crusell, Swedish-Finnish composer.
• 1784 Thomas Hastings, American composer.
• 1799 August Ferdinand Haeser, German composer.
• 1818 Johann Gungl, Austrian composer.
• 1822 Alfred Meissner, Austrian poet.
• 1831 Helen Hunt Jackson, American author.
• 1836 James Tissot, French artist.
• 1844 Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher.
• 1852 Wilhelm Posse, German composer.
• 1858 Frank Valentine der Stucken, American-Belgian composer.
• 1859 Jaime de Magalhães Lima, Portuguese author and poet.
• 1874 Olallo Morales, Spanish-Swedish pianist, composer.
• 1881 P.G. Wodehouse, British-American writer.
• 1885 Dirk Filarski, Dutch painter and lithographer.
• 1885 Frank Hurley, Australian photographer.
• 1890 Arcady Dubensky, Russian composer.
• 1895 Alfred Neumann, German playwright.
• 1901 Bernard von Brentano, German writer.
• 1905 Alexey Fedorovich Kozlovsky, Russian composer.
• 1905 Charles P. Snow, English novelist.
• 1905 Dag Wirén, Swedish composer.
• 1905 Edna Deane (née Sewell) British dancer, choreographer.
• 1907 Wolfgang Weyrauch, German writer.
• 1908 Herman "Ivory" Chittison, American jazz pianist.
• 1911 James H. Schmitz, American science fiction author.
• 1912 Nellie Lutcher, American jazz and R&B singer, pianist, and songwriter.
• 1919 Edwin Charles Tubb, British science fiction writer.
• 1920 Henri Verneuil, French-Armenian playwright.
• 1920 Mario Puzo, American novelist.
• 1922 Agustina Bessa-Luís, Portuguese writer.
• 1923 Italo Calvino, Italian autho.
• 1924 Marguerite Andersen, German-Canadian francophone writer.
• 1926 Ed McBain [Evan Hunter], American write.
• 1926 Karl Richter, German composer.
• 1930 FM-2030 [Fereidoun M. Esfandiary], Iranian-American author.
• 1932 Riekus Waskowsky, Dutch poet.
• 1936 Kari Rydman, Finnish composer.
• 1938 Brice Marden, American painter.
• 1938 Rafael Aponte-Ledeé, Puerto Rican composer.
• 1940 Fanny Howe, American novelist and poet.

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

• agomphious: /uh-GAHM-fee-uhss/ adj., laking teeth; toothless.
• banns: /banz/ plural n., public announcement especially in church of a proposed marriage.
• gymkhana: /jim-KÄ-nə/ n., a day event comprising of races and other competitions between horse riders or car drivers.
• lovage: /LəV-ij/ n., a large edible white-flowered plant of the parsley family.
• marronage: n., the process of extricating oneself from slavery, relating to groups of runaway slaves who became “maroons” in the swamps of the southern states of the U.S.A. or other places, such as Palmeres, Brazil.
• periscian: /puh-RISS-kee-uhn/ adj., having shadow revolving all about one, as happens during the course of a summer day in the polar regions.
• ponceau: /pahn-SOH/ adj., of the bright red colour of the corn poppy.
• pungled: /PUNG-guhld/ adj., shrivelled, shrunken.
• skarn: /skärn/ n., lime-bearing siliceous rock produced by the metamorphic alteration of limestone or dolomite.
• tisane: /tə-ZAN/ n., an herbal tea; a medicinal drink or infusion, originally one made with barley.

October 15 2025 Word-Wednesday Feature
time
/tīm/ n., the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole, from Old English tima "temporal duration, limited space of time," from Proto-Germanic tima- "time" (source also of Old Norse timi "time, proper time," Swedish timme "an hour"), reconstructed to be from Proto-Indo-European di-mon-, suffixed form of root da- "to divide" (compare tide). The abstract sense of "time as an indefinite continuous duration" is recorded from late 14th century. Personified as an aged bald man (but with a forelock) carrying a scythe and an hour-glass. In English, a single word encompasses time as "extent" and "point" (French temps/fois, German zeit/mal) as well as "hour" (as in what time is it?; compare French heure, German Uhr). It is attested from mid-14th century as "one of a number of repeated instances" (how many times?). Extended senses such as "occasion," "the right time," "leisure," or times (v.) "multiplied by" developed in Old and Middle English, probably as a natural outgrowth of such phrases as "He commends her a hundred times to God" (Old French La comande a Deu cent foiz).

Time and attention — our two most precious resources — both of which we so often squander. A management craze since the 1970s, the management of time has much older, deeper roots, such as:

Time waxing old can many a lesson teach.

Aeschylus

As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.

Horace

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.

Seneca

Our costliest expenditure is time.

Theophrastus

Time, the subtle thief of youth.

John Milton

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

William Shakespeare

Time is what we want most, but what, alas! we use worst.

William Penn

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.

Jean de La Bruyère

The surest poison is time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

Charles Darwin

The number of people who stand ready to consume one’s time, to no purpose, is almost countless.

Booker T. Washington

He who finds he has wasted a shilling may by diligence hope to fetch it up again; but no repentance or industry can ever bring back one wasted hour.

Hannah More

Time is the reef upon which all of our frail mystic ships are wrecked.

Noël Coward

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.

Benjamin Franklin

From A Year with Rilke, October 15 Entry
Leaving Paradise, from The Book of Hours I, 44

Be our refuge from the wrath
that drove us out of Paradise.

Be our shepherd, but never call us—
we can't bear to know what's ahead.

Winding Road in Provence
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.






*A band.