Word-Wednesday for March 4, 2026

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for March 4, 2026, the ninth Wednesday of the year, the eleventh Wednesday of winter, the first Wednesday of March, and the sixty-third day of the year, with three-hundred two days remaining.

Wannaska Phenology Update for March 4, 2026
Maple Syrup
Ininaatig in Anishinaabe, Acer is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The genus is placed in the soapberry family Sapindaceae, with approximately 132 species, most of which are native to East Asia, with a number also appearing in Europe, northern Africa, and North America, including Wannaska. The first attested use of the word was in 1260 as "mapole", and it also appears a century later in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, spelled as "mapul". Most maples usually have easily identifiable palmate leaves. Maple syrup is made from the sap of some maple species. Starting about now, when the night-to-day temperatures change from freezing to thawing, maple trees may be tapped for sap to gather maple syrup. The sap is boiled to produce syrup or made into maple sugar or maple taffy. It takes about 40 litres (42 US qt) of sugar maple sap to make 1 litre (1.1 US qt) of syrup.

March 4 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


March 4 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for March 4, 2026
Sunrise: 7:00am; Sunset: 6:11pm; 3minutes, 35 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 7:59pm; Moonset: 7:18am, waning gibbous, 99% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for March 4, 2026
                Average            Record              Today
High             26                     52                     26
Low               6                    -30                     16

February Elegy
by Mary Jo Bang

This bald year, frozen now in February.
This cold day winging over the ugly
Imperfect horizon line,
So often a teeth line of ten buildings.
A red flag flapping
In the wind. An orange curtain is noon.
It all hurts her eyes. This curtain is so bright.
Here is what is noticeably true: sight.
The face that looks back from the side
Of the butter knife.
A torn-bread awkwardness.
The mind makes its daily pilgrimage
Through riff-raff moments. Then,
Back into the caprice case to dream
In a circle, a pony goes round.
The circle's association: There's a center
To almost everything but never
Any certainty. Nothing is
More malleable than a moment. We were
Only yesterday breathing in a sea.
Some summer sun
Asked us over and over we went. The sand was hot.
We were only yesterday tender hearted
Waiting. To be something.
A spring. And then someone says, Sit down,
We have a heart for you to forget. A mind to suffer
With. So, experience. So, the circus tent.
You, over there, you be the girl
In red sequins on the front of a card selling love.
You, over there, you, in black satin.
You be the Maiden's Mister Death.

March 4 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Sons Day
• Marching Music Day
• National Grammar Day
• National Hug a G.I. Day
• National Pound Cake Day
• World Obesity Day

March 4 Word Pun
Sven strictly forbids his children from watching orchestras.
There too much sax and violins.


March 4 Word Riddle
What's the difference between a cat and a comma?*


March 4 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
PORTABLE, adj., Exposed to a mutable ownership through vicissitudes of possession.

    His light estate, if neither he did make it
    Nor yet its former guardian forsake it,
    Is portable improperty, I take it.
                                —Worgum Slupsky


March 4 Etymology Word of the Week
ploy
/ploi/ n., a cunning plan or action designed to turn a situation to one's own advantage, from 1722, "anything with which one amuses oneself, a harmless frolic," Scottish and northern England dialect, possibly a shortened form of employ. Popularized in the sense of "move or gambit made to manipulate others and gain advantage" by British humorist Stephen Potter (1900-1969), who parodied self-help manuals in books such as 1947's The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship: Or the Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating.


March 4 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1774 First sighting of Orion nebula by William Herschel.
• 1830 Vincenzo Bellini's opera I Capuleti e i Montecchi premieres.
• 1841 Dion Boucicault's stage comedy London Assurance opens.
• 1877 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake has its world premiere.
• 1877 Tchaikovski's incomplete ballet Zwanenmeer premieres.
• 1881 Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson begin their first case together in A Study in Scarlet.
• 1895 Gustav Mahler conducts the premiere of his incomplete 2nd Symphony, Resurrection.
• 1905 Gerhart Hauptmann's play Elga premieres.
• 1913 Gabriel Fauré's opera Pénélope, based on Homer's The Odyssey, premieres.
• 1922 First vampire film Nosferatu, an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, premieres.
• 1933 Henderson, DeSylva & Brown's Strike Me Pink premieres.

March 4 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1492 Francesco de Layolle, Italian Renaissance composer.
• 1602 Kanō Tan'yū [Kanō Morinobu], Japanese painter.
• 1610 William Dobson, English portraitist and painter.
• 1678 Antonio Vivaldi, Italian composer.
• 1706 Lauritz de Thurah, Danish architect and architectural writer.
• 1710 Aert Schouman, Dutch painter and glass engraver.
• 1740 Giovanni Meli, Siclian poet.
• 1742 Johann Heinrich Egli, Swiss composer.
• 1754 Dieudonne-Pascal Pieltain, Flemish composer.
• 1756 Henry Raeburn, Scottish painter.
• 1757 Ignaz Malzat, Austrian composer.
• 1765 Charles Dibdin, British composer, author.
• 1782 Johann Rudolf Wyss, Swiss folklorist and writer.
• 1813 Wijnand Nuijen, Dutch romantic and water color painter.
• 1815 Mykhailo Verbytsky, Ukrainian Greek composer.
• 1819 Charles Oberthur, German composer.
• 1834 (Peter) Nicolai von Wilm, German-Baltic pianist and composer.
• 1838 Paul Lacôme, French composer.
• 1841 Kristian Elster, Norwegian author.
• 1844 Josip Jurčič, Slovene writer.
• 1849 John Wallace Crawford, Irish poet.
• 1856 Alfred William Rich, English watercolour painter.
• 1856 Toru Dutt, Indian first published woman poet.
• 1870 Thomas Sturge Moore, English poet and playwright.
• 1875 Enrique Larreta [E R Maza], Argentined writer.
• 1876 Léon-Paul Fargue, French poet.
• 1877 Alexander Fyodorovich Gedike, Russian composer.
• 1879 Bernhard Kellermann, German writer.
• 1880 Channing Pollock, American playwright.
• 1886 Paul Bazelaire, French cellist, composer, and poet.
• 1888 Grace Gifford, Irish artist.
• 1894 František Kubka, Czech writer.
• 1895 Bjarne Brustad, Norwegian composer.
• 1895 Milt Gross, American comic book illustrator.
• 1899 Emilio Prados, Spanish poet.
• 1901 Jean Joseph Rabearivelo, Malagasy-French poet.
• 1906 Meindert DeJong Dutch-born American children's author.
• 1912 Afro Basaldella, Italian painter.
• 1913 Taos Amrouche, Algerian writer.
• 1915 Carlos Surinach, Spanish-American composer.
• 1916 Giorgio Bassani, Italian writer.  
• 1928 Alan Sillitoe, English writer.
• 1928 Samuel Adler, German-American composer.
• 1929 Josep Mestres-Quadreny, Spanish composer.
• 1930 Blanka Bohdanová, Czech painter.
• 1932 Guido Baggiani, Italian composer.
• 1933 John Mills, British sculptor.
• 1934 Janez Strnad, Slovenian author.
• 1934 John Duffey, American bluegrass guitarist, dobro, and mandolin player.
• 1942 Lynn Sherr, American author.
• 1943 Zoltán Jeney, Hungarian composer.
• 1948 James Ellroy, American crime writer.
• 1954 Mark Chorvinsky, American author.
• 1965 Khaled Hosseini, Afghan author.
• 1966 Dav Pilkey, American author.

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

• brickly: /BRICK-lee/ adj., brittle, crisp; frail, fragile.
• compeer: /kuhm-PEER/ n., a peer, an equal, an associate; a close friend or companion.
• fice: /fīs/ n., a small dog.
• haw: /hä/ n., the red fruit of a hawthorn.
• mallifuff: /MAL-li-fuff/ adj., feeble, silly, paltry, or entirely devoid of the energy needed to get things done.
• nonnock: /NON-nok/ v., to idle away one's time with trifles; a whim; a childhood fantasy.
• plackless: /PLACK-luhss/ adj., penniless.
• rathskeller: /RATS-kel-ər/ n., a beer hall or restaurant in a basement.
• sillograph: /SIL-uh-graff/ n., a writer of satires or lampoons.
• tittupy: /TID-uh-pee/ adj., characterized by bouncing movement; unsteady, shaky, rickety.

March 4, 2026 Word-Wednesday Feature
polyptoton
/pä-LIP-tō-tän/ n., the rhetorical repetition of a word in a different case, inflection, or voice in the same sentence, via Latin, from Ancient Greek πολύπτωτον (polúptōton), neuter of πολύπτωτος (polúptōtos, “having many cases”), from πολύς (polús, “many”) + πίπτω (píptō, “I fall”). Want to be ridiculously clear about what you or your fictional characters mean? Recycle the same word in the same sentence. Subtle changes in repeated words can also provide thematic contrast or establish connections between ideas. Some of the world's best writers have done so. Here are but a few...

Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

The Greeks are strong and skillful to their strength,
Fierce to their skill and to their fierceness valiant;

Troilus in Troilus and Cressida, by William Shakespeare

With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder.

from Richard II, by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.

Sonnet 116, by William Shakespeare

Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell.
My bride to be, my evermore delight,
My own heart’s heart, my ownest own, farewell;

from Maud, by Alfred Lord Tennysball

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lord Acton

By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming idiotic oneself.

Gustave Flaubert

What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do! They think me mad – Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and – Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer.

from Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone’s prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation.

from The Dry Salvages, by T.S. Eliot

Not as a call to battle, though embattled we are.

John F. Kennedy

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. 

Robert Frost

I have no sharp taste for acquiring things, but it is not necessary to desire things in order to acquire them.
From Goodbye to Forty-Eighth Street, by E.B. White

Choosy Mothers Choose Jif

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

Dr. Seuss

From A Year with Rilke, March 4 Entry
To Love, from Rome, May 14, 1904, Letters to a Young Poet

To love does not mean to surrender, dissolve and merge with another person. It is the noble opportunity for an individual to ripen, to become something in and of himself. To become a world in response to another is a great immodest challenge that has sought him out and called him forth.

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 cat has claws at the end of its paws; a comma has a pause at the end of its clause.