Word-Wednesday for July 29, 2026

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for July 29, 2026, the thirtieth Wednesday of the year, the sixth Wednesday of summer, the fifth Wednesday of July, and the two-hundred tenth day of the year, with one-hundred fifty-five days remaining.


Wannaska Phenology Update for July 29, 2026
Mullein Blooming
Verbascum thapsus, the great mullein, greater mullein or common mullein — nookaadiziiganzh, in Anishinaabe — is a species of mullein native to Europe, northern Africa, and Asia, and introduced in the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. Mullein derives from the French word for soft, moelleux. A hairy biennial plant, nookaadiziiganzh that can grow more than six feet tall. Its small, yellow flowers are densely grouped on a tall stem, which grows from a large rosette of leaves. Nookaadiziiganzh grows in a wide variety of habitats, but prefers well-lit, disturbed soils, where it can appear soon after the ground receives light, from long-lived seeds that persist in the soil seed bank.

Due to its tall, flowered, fuzzy-leafed features, nookaadiziiganzh had well over 40 different common names in English alone in the nineteenth century. Some of the more whimsical ones included "hig candlewick", "Indian rag weed", "bullicks lungwort", "Adams-rod", "hare's-beard", and "ice-leaf",“lamb’s ear”, "woolly mullein", "velvet mullein", "blanket mullein", "beggar's blanket", "Moses' blanket", "poor man's blanket", "Our Lady's blanket", "old man's blanket", and "feltwort".

Although long used in herbal medicine, no drugs are manufactured from its components. Dioscorides first recommended the plant 2000 years ago, considering it useful as a folk medicine for pulmonary diseases. Leaves were smoked to attempt to treat lung ailments, a tradition that in America was rapidly transmitted to Native American peoples. All preparations meant to be drunk have to be finely filtered to eliminate the irritating hairs. 

Oil from the flowers was used against catarrhs, colics, earaches, frostbite, eczema, and other external conditions. Topical application of various nookaadiziiganzh-based preparations was recommended for the treatment of warts, boils, carbuncles, hemorrhoids, and chilblains, amongst others. Please consult with your primary physician before consuming our applying nookaadiziiganzh.

July 29 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


July 29 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for July 29, 2026
Sunrise: 5:53am; Sunset: 9:07pm; 2 minutes, 41 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 9:25pm; Moonset: 5:37am, Full Moon, 99% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for July 29, 2026
                Average            Record              Today
High             79                     97                     91
Low              56                    34                     70

A Night Poem
by Amy Lowell

The wind is singing through the trees to-night,
A deep-voiced song of rushing cadences
And crashing intervals. No summer breeze
Is this, though hot July is at its height,
Gone is her gentler music; with delight
She listens to this booming like the seas,
These elemental, loud necessities
Which call to her to answer their swift might.
Above the tossing trees shines down a star,
Quietly bright; this wild, tumultuous joy
Quickens nor dims its splendour. And my mind,
O Star! is filled with your white light, from far,
So suffer me this one night to enjoy
The freedom of the onward sweeping wind.

July 29 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Chicken Wing Day
• National Lipstick Day
• National Lasagna Day
• International Tiger Day

July 29 Word Pun
Sven svitched all the labels on Monique’s spice rack. He’s not in trouble yet, but the thyme is cumin…


July 29 Word Riddle
What does Gwenyth Paltrow drive?*

a Chairman Joe original

July 29 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
OLYMPIAN, adj., Relating to a mountain in Thessaly, once inhabited by gods, now a repository of yellowing newspapers, beer bottles, and mutilated sardine cans, attesting the presence of the tourist and his appetite.

    His name the smirking tourist scrawls
    Upon Minerva's temple walls,
    Where thundered once Olympian Zeus,
    And marks his appetite's abuse.
                                    —Averil Joop


July 29 Etymology Word of the Week
avocado
/av-ə-KÄ-dō/ n., a pear-shaped fruit with a rough leathery skin, smooth oily edible flesh, and a large stone, from edible, oily fruit of a tree common in the American tropics, 1763, from Spanish avocado, altered (by folk etymology influence of earlier Spanish avocado "lawyer," from same Latin source as advocate (n.)) from earlier aguacate, from Nahuatl (Aztecan) ahuakatl "avocado" (with a secondary meaning "testicle" probably based on resemblance), from proto-Nahuan pawa "avocado." As a color-name, it is attested by 1945. The English corruption alligator (pear) is 1763, from Mexican Spanish alvacata, alligato.

July 29 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 362 Emperor Julianus of Constantinople's School Edict prohibit Christian teachers from using pagan literature, which was standard text for classical education at the time.
• 1773 First schoolhouse west of the Allegheny Mountains is completed in Schoenbrunn, Ohio.
• 1786 The Pittsburgh Gazette, the first newspaper west of the Alleghenies, is published.
• 1851 Annibale de Gasparis discovers asteroid 15 Eunomia.
• 1884 Society of Independent Artists is founded in Paris by Albert Dubois-Pillet, Odilon Redon, Georges Seurat, and Paul Signac.
• 1914 First transcontinental phone link made between New York City and San Francisco.
• 1954 Publication of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.

July 29 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1580 Francesco Mochi, Italian sculptor.
• 1590 Gilles Hayne, Flemish composer.
• 1605 Simon Dach, Prussian-German poet.
• 1646 Johann Theile, German composer.
• 1723 Christleib Siegmund Binder, German organist and composer.
• 1739 Johannes Ritschel, German composer.
• 1755 Franz Gotz, Bohemian composer.
• 1778 Carl Borromaus Neuner, German composer.
• 1805 Alexis de Tocqueville, French writer.
• 1846 Sophie Menter, German pianist and composer.
• 1849 Max Nordau, Austrian author.
• 1853 Henry Morton Dunham, American organist, composer.
• 1857 Iacob Mureșianu, Romanian composer.
• 1865 Nicola Spinelli, Italian opera composer.
• 1869 Booth Tarkington, American novelist.
• 1874 August Stramm, German poet and playwright.
• 1878 Don Marquis, Ill, American journalist, poet and playwright.
• 1883 Manuel Infante, Spanish composer.
• 1883 Porfirio Barba-Jacob [Miguel Ángel Osorio], Colombian poet and writer.
• 1884 Henri Liebrecht, Belgian playwright.
• 1887 Rudi Stephan, German composer.
• 1887 Sigmund Romberg, Hungarian-American operetta composer.
• 1889 Karl Otten, German Expressionist writer.
• 1900 Eyvind Johnson, Swedish novelist.
• 1905 Stanley Kunitz, American poet.
• 1909 Georgy Mushel, Uzbek pianist and composer.
• 1909 Samm Sinclair Baker, American author.
• 1911 Ján Cikker, Slovak composer.
• 1914 Abram Games, British graphic artist.
• 1917 George Campbell, Irish painter and writer.
• 1918 Vladimir Dudintsev, Soviet writer.
• 1919 Miltos Sachtouris, Greek poet.
• 1923 Vivian Ayers Allen, American cultural activist, novelist and poet.
• 1927 Harry Mulisch, Dutch writer.
• 1928 Bidzina Alexandrovich Kvernadze, Georgian composer.
• 1928 Konstantin Orbelyan, Armenian pianist, jazz and classical composer.
• 1930 Paul Taylor, American dancer and choreographer.
• 1936 Lionel Dahmer, American author.
• 1940 Alphie McCourt, Irish writer.
• 1941 Goenawan Mohamad, Indonesian poet and playwright.
• 1949 Marilyn Tucker Quayle, American novelist.
• 1953 Frank McGuinness, Irish poet and playwright.
• 1959 Ruud Janssen, Dutch writer.
• 1960 Didier Van Cauwelaert, French author.
• 1965 Chang-Rae Lee, Korean-born American author.
• 1965 Xavier Waterkeyn, Australian author.
• 1970 Adele Griffin, American author.

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

• anthophile: /AN-thuh-fīl/ n., a lover of flowers.
• bain-marie: /ban mah-REE/ n., a vessel of hot or simmering water used to gently heat, cook, or keep food warm by surrounding a smaller container, thereby preventing direct exposure to heat.
• couchant: /KOUCH-ənt/ adj., (of an animal) lying with the body resting on the legs and the head raised.
• erotema: /air-uh-TEE-muh/ n., a rhetorical device in which a question is asked without expectation of an answer, denial or affirmation being obvious or implied.
• mackle: /MAK-əl/ n., a blurred or double impression caused by shifting paper or type.
• pootle: /POO-tuhl/ v., to move somewhere slowly and with no real purpose.
• randle: /RAN-dul/ n., a nonsensical poem recited by Irish schoolboys as an apology for farting at a friend.
• skewiff: /SKYOO-wif/ n., something is crooked, lopsided, or not straight.
• squicky: /SKWIK-ē/ adj., disgusting or disturbing; very unpleasant.
• viaticum: /vī-AD-ə-kəm/ n., the Eucharist as given to a person near or in danger of death; ARCHAIC, a supply of provisions or an official allowance of money.

July 29, 2026 Word-Wednesday Feature
mosquito
/mə-SKĒ-dō/ n., a slender long-legged fly with aquatic larvae. The bite of the bloodsucking female can transmit a number of serious diseases including malaria and encephalitis, from name given to gnat-like insects the females of which bite animals and draw blood through a piercing and sucking proboscis, 1580s, from Spanish mosquito "little gnat," diminutive of mosca "fly," from Latin musca "fly," from Proto-Indo-European root mu- "gnat, fly" (compare Sanskrit maksa-, Greek myia, Old English mycg, Modern English midge, Old Church Slavonic mucha), perhaps imitative of the sound of humming insects. Word-Wednesday staff would edit the word humming to the word whining.

A storied creature, Ancient Greek beast fables, including The Elephant and the Mosquito and The Bull and the Mosquito, feature the general moral that the large beast does not even notice the small one. In terms of origin myths, one Siberian Ostiak myth tells of a man-eating giant, Punegusse, who is killed by a hero but will not stay dead. The hero eventually burns the giant, but the ashes of the fire become mosquitoes that continue to plague mankind. Other myths from the Yakuts, Goldes, and Samoyed have the insect arising from the ashes or fragments of some giant creature or demon. Similar tales found in Native North American myth, with the mosquito arising from the ashes of a man-eater, suggest a common mythic origin.

Names for the mosquito differ across the U.S. of A. and other countries, including sketter across the fifty states, maringouin in Louisiana; swamp angel across the south; nipper, gallinipper, and katynipper in south Atlantic regions; gurnipper in Boston; snow mosquito in California, Alaska, and Wyoming; nighthawk in North Carolina; brasshead in Florida; drill bug in Illinois; mitsy in Ohio; mossie in Australia, cousin in Virginia, and snipe in Philadelphia.

Mosquitoes also feature in literature, such as Virgil's Culex, a classical minor pastoral epic poem where a tiny mosquito sacrifices its life to sting and wake a sleeping shepherd, saving him from a deadly snake attack — a rare story of the good mosquito. Then we have William Faulkner's second published novel, Mosquito, a satirical work where a wealthy socialite takes artists and intellectuals on a yacht cruise, where the buzzing insect represents both the oppressive Louisiana climate and the annoying, trivial chatter of the guests. If you count motion pictures, the mosquito features prominently in Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park where a fossilized prehistoric mosquito trapped in amber provides the preserved dinosaur blood used to clone the park's extinct animals. More recently, Samwali Serpell published The Old Drift in 2019, an epic novel of Zambian history featuring a literal Greek-style chorus composed of mosquitoes that narrate chunks of the story and highlight nonhuman agency.

So, if you're suffering the heat and humidity of this mosquito-ee summer, take a cue from teapoetry and curl up with a favorite book in the shade and avoid all whining — insect or otherwise.


From A Year with Rilke, July 29 Entry
The Gazelle (Gazella Dorcas), from New Prams

Enchanted one: how can the harmony of two
Latin words ever attain the rhythm
that ripples through you like a promise.
From your brow rise leaf and lyre.

And all that is you turns to metaphor
in love poems whose phrases light
as rose petals remain in the expression
of one who, after reading, closes her eyes

to see you: almost in flight,
borne away in leaps that cease their springing
only when you stand stock still to listen;

as when a woman bathing in a woodland stream
pauses suddenly, and the water
mirrors her quick-turned face.

Song of Songs
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.






*A Mini Gooper.