Word-Wednesday for October 8, 2025

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for October 8, 2025, the seventeenth Wednesday of the year, the third Wednesday of fall, the second Wednesday of October, and the two-hundred eighty-first day of the year, with eighty-four days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for October 8, 2025
Wild Cranberries
Time to head out to your local Wannaska cranberry bog to enjoy the season. There are two species of wild cranberry: Large Cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) and Small Cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos). The Anishinaabe word for cranberry is mashkiigimin. Best picked when ripe, and they both large and small varieties have about the same excellent flavor. The different common names simply refer to the relative size of the fruit of each species. Most of the berries you’ll find will likely be quite smaller than those you buy in your local grocery store, but the wild berries have a much deeper flavor. Cranberry fruit grow from a short stem that occasionally emerges from the same spot along the plant stem where the leaves also emerge. The fruit seems almost freakishly large when compared to the wiry stem that support them, but the fruit are also incredibly light since they are hollow. One to three berries grow from each woody stem. Cranberry fruit tolerate several frosts, so you should be good to go pick sometime soon.
wild cranberry pic documents

October 8 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


October 8 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for October 8, 2025
Sunrise: 7:34am; Sunset: 6:47pm; 3 minutes, 31 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 7:10pm; Moonset: 9:44am, waning gibbous, 97% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for October 8, 2025
                Average            Record              Today
High             56                     84                     62
Low              35                     10                     46

The Love for October
by W.S. Merwin

A child looking at ruins grows younger
but cold
and wants to wake to a new name
I have been younger in October
than in all the months of spring
walnut and may leaves the color
of shoulders at the end of summer
a month that has been to the mountain
and become light there
the long grass lies pointing uphill
even in death for a reason
that none of us knows
and the wren laughs in the early shade now
come again shining glance in your good time
naked air late morning
my love is for lightness
of touch foot feather
the day is yet one more yellow leaf
and without turning I kiss the light
by an old well on the last of the month
gathering wild rose hips
in the sun

October 8 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• American Touch Tag Day
• National Fluffernutter Day
• National Pierogi Day
• National Hero Day
• National Curves Day
• National Take Your Parents to Lunch Day
• National Bring Your Teddy Bear to Work/School Day
• National Stop Bullying Day
• National Emergency Nurse’s Day
• International Lesbian Day

October 8 Word Pun
Sven once wrote and directed a theatrical performance on puns.

It was a play on words.


October 8 Word Riddle
What did the science teacher say when he found two helium atoms?*


October 8 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
DANGER, n.

    A savage beast which, when it sleeps,
    Man girds at and despises,
    But takes himself away by leaps
    And bounds when it arises.
                —Ambat Delaso


October 8 Etymology Word of the Week
dance
/dan(t)s/ v., move rhythmically to music, typically following a set sequence of steps, from circa 1300, dauncen, "move the body or feet rhythmically to music," from Old French dancier (12th century, Modern French danser), which is of unknown origin, perhaps from Low Frankish dintjan and akin to Old Frisian dintje "tremble, quiver." Through French influence in arts and society, it has become the primary word for this activity from Spain to Russia (Italian danzare, Spanish danzar, Romanian dansa, Swedish dansa, German tanzen, modern Russian tancevat).

In part the loanword from French is used mainly with reference to fashionable dancing while the older native word persists in use with reference to folk-dancing, as definitively Russ. pljasat vs. tancovat [Carl Darling Buck, A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages, 1949]. 

In English it replaced Old English sealtian, itself a borrowing from Latin saltare "to dance," frequentative of salire "to leap" (see salient (adj.); "dance" words frequently are derived from words meaning "jump, leap"). Native words used for the activity in Old English included tumbian (see tumble), hoppian (see hop). Related: Danced; dancing.

Meaning "to leap or spring with regular or irregular steps as an expression of some emotion" is from late 14th century. Of inanimate things, "move nimbly or quickly with irregular motion," 1560s. Transitive sense of "give a dancing motion to" is from circa 1500. To dance attendance "strive to please and gain favor by obsequiousness" is from late 15th century.


October 8 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1604 Supernova Kepler's Nova first sighted by Lodovico delle Colombe in Italy.
• 1645 First hospital in Montreal, Quebec, the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal, is founded by nurse Jeanne Mance.
• 1779 English engraver and poet William Blake begins study at the Royal Academy.
• 1840 Ke Kumukānāwai a me nā Kānāwai o ko Hawaiʻi Pae ʻĀina, Honolulu, 1840, the first written Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, is enacted by King Kamehameha III and Kuhina Nui (Prime Minister) Kekāuluohi.
• 1892 Sergei Rachmaninoff first performs his Prelude in C-sharp Minor in Moscow.
• 1903 J.M. Synge's play In the Shadow of the Glen premieres in Dublin.
• 1927 The Second Hundred Years silent short film is released, starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, the first Laurel and Hardy film with them appearing as a team.
• 1938 George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's play The Fabulous Invalid premieres.
• 1945 The microwave oven is patented by US inventor Percy Spencer.
• 1970 Soviet author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• 1992 West Indies' poet Derek Walcott wins the Nobel Prize in literature.
• 1998 José Saramago is the first person from Portugal to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• 2015 Belarusian journalist and author Svetlana Alexievich wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• 2020 American poet Louise Glück is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

October 8 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1551 Giulio Caccini, Italian composer.
• 1619 Philipp von Zesen, German poet.
• 1690 Jaime de Casellas, Spanish compose.
• 1692 Antonio Palella, Italian composer.
• 1696 Cornelis Troost, Dutch portrait painter.
• 1740 Michel-Julien Mathieu, French composer.
• 1785 Arvid August Afzelius, Swedish poet.
• 1790 Waldemar Thrane, Norwegian violinist, composer.
• 1797 Eeltsje Hiddes Halbertsma, Dutch Frisian writer, poet.
• 1813 Carl Ludwig Amand Mangold, German composer.
• 1828 Francisque Sarcey, French writer.
• 1837 Otto Winter-Hjelm, Norwegian musician and composer.
• 1855 Gustav Ehrismann, German author.
• 1864 Ozias Leduc, Canadian painter.
• 1868 Max Slevogt, German painter.
• 1869 Komitas [Soghomon Soghomonian], Armenian composer.
• 1877 Hans Heysen, German-born landscape artist.
• 1879 Chen Duxiu, Chinese author.
• 1882 Geoffrey Molyneux Palmer, Irish composer.
• 1893 Orovida Camille Pissarro, British painter and etcher.
• 1895 Jeanne Gabrielle Willing, Dutch author.
• 1898 Clarence Williams, American composer.
• 1899 Milner Gray, British graphic designer.
• 1900 Serge Chermayeff, Russian-British architect and designer.
• 1900 Zeno Vancea, Romanian composer.
• 1900 Václav Krška, Czech writer.
• 1901 Eivind Groven, Norwegian composer.
• 1903 René Guillou, French organist and composer.
• 1908 Paul Van Buskirk Yoder, American composer.
• 1917 Hans Poser, German composer.
• 1917 Walter Lord, American author.
• 1920 Frank Herbert, American science fiction author.
• 1922 Svend Westergaard, Danish composer.
• 1925 Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky, Russian writer.
• 1930 Faith Ringgold (née Jones), American mixed-media artist, children's literature author and illustrator.
• 1936 Carman Moore, American composer.
• 1938 William Corlett, English children's writer.
• 1939 Andrew William Thomas, American composer.
• 1939 Armando Gentilucci, Italian composer.
• 1943 R.L. Stine, American children's book author.
• 1948 Benjamin Cheever, American author.
• 1962 Michael Abels, American Pulitzer Prize-winning composer.

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

• anodyne: /ˈAN-ə-dīn/ adj., not likely to provoke dissent or offense; inoffensive, often deliberately so.
• biota: /bī-Ō-də/ n., the animal and plant life of a particular region, habitat, or geological period.
• blaa: /blah/ n., a soft white bread roll dusted with flour, particularly associated with Waterford, Ireland.
• clerisy: /KLAIR-uh-see/ n., scholars, intellectuals, or learned people, considered as a social group or class. Also occasionally (more narrowly): the clergy.
• devilade: n., a social gathering or entertainment regarded as improper or immoral.
• doula: /Do͞o-lə/ n., a woman, typically without formal obstetric training, who is employed to provide guidance and support to a pregnant woman during labor.
• neeb: /nēb/ v., to nod from drowsiness, to doze.
• onomatomania: /on-uh-mat-oh-MAY-nee-uh/ n., vexation at having difficulty in finding the right word.
• peccavi: /pek-AH-vee/ int., & n., a word used as a confession or acknowledgement of one's guilt or responsibility for a mistake or wrongdoing – e.g. “My bad!”.
• tod: /täd/ n., a bushy mass of foliage, especially ivy.

October 8 2025 Word-Wednesday Feature
Irish Chair of Poetry
Since Wannaskan Almanac has a chairman, and since he happens to be Irish, today Word Wednesday reports on The Ireland Chair of Poetry, established in 1998 after Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1995. The ICOP is jointly held between Queen’s University Belfast, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. The current ICOP is Paul Muldoon, but past chairpersons include John Montague, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Paul Durcan, Michael Longley, Harry Clifton, Paula Meehan, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, and Frank Ormsby.

History
There was a widespread feeling that Seamus Heaney's prize should be marked in a permanent way. What are the odds that a small island such as Ireland with a population of but five million people should have produced three previous Nobel Prize winners: W.B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, and Samuel Beckett, alongside James Joyce and Oscar Wilde? 

After much discussion and many meetings as only the Irish can prolong, the Ireland Chair of Poetry was set up in partnership between the main Arts Councils in Ireland: Trinity College Dublin, Queen’s University Belfast, and University College Dublin. The Board sought suggestions from the public for the first holder of the post by way of newspaper advertisements and each of the five sponsoring institutions carefully considered suggestions and prepared a short list of nominees, from which John Montague was chosen as the first holder of the Chair. And here's one of his prams:

Herbert Street Revisited
by John Montague

for Madeleine

I

A light is burning late
in this Georgian Dublin street:
someone is leading our old lives!

And our black cat scampers again
through the wet grass of the convent garden
upon his masculine errands.

The pubs shut: a released bull,
Behan shoulders up the street,
topples into our basement, roaring ‘John!’

A pony and donkey cropped flank
by flank under the trees opposite;
short neck up, long neck down,

as Nurse Mullen knelt by her bedside
to pray for her lost Mayo hills,
the bruised bodies of Easter Volunteers.

Animals, neighbours, treading the pattern
of one time and place into history,
like our early marriage, while

tall windows looked down upon us
from walls flushed light pink or salmon
watching and enduring succession.

II

As I leave, you whisper,
‘Don’t betray our truth,’
and like a ghost dancer,
invoking a lost tribal strength,
I halt in tree-fed darkness

to summon back our past,
and celebrate a love that eased
so kindly, the dying bone,
enabling the spirit to sing
of old happiness, when alone.

III

So put the leaves back on the tree,
put the tree back in the ground,
let Brendan trundle his corpse down
the street singing, like Molly Malone.

Let the black cat, tiny emissary
of our happiness, streak again
through the darkness, to fall soft
clawed into a landlord’s dustbin.

Let Nurse Mullen take the last
train to Westport, and die upright
in her chair, facing a window
warm with the blue slopes of Nephin.

And let the poney and donkey come –
look, someone has left the gate open –
like hobbyhorses linked in
the slow motion of a dream

parading side by side, down
the length of Herbert Street,
rising and falling, lifting
their hooves through the moonlight.

From A Year with Rilke, October 8 Entry
As If God Had Been Lost, from Rome, December 23, 1903, Letters to a Young Poet

Ask yourself, dear Mr. Kappus, if you really have lost God. Is it not rather the case that you have never yet possessed him? When would that have taken place? ...Do you imagine that someone who really had him could lose him like a little stone, or that one who possessed him could ever be lost by him? And if you are terrified that he does not exist, at this very moment we speak of him, what reason do you, if he never existed, for missing him and seeking him as if he had been lost?

The Creation of Man
by Marc Chagall

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.






*HeHe.