Word-Wednesday for August 26, 2026

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for August 26, 2026, the thirty-forth Wednesday of the year, the tenth Wednesday of summer, the forth Wednesday of August, and the two-hundred thirty-eighth day of the year, with one-hundred twenty-seven days remaining.


Wannaska Phenology Update for August 26, 2026
Tiger’s Eye
Coltricia perennis can now be found in Wannaskan conifer forests. Tiger’s eye is an inedible fungus, with no known medicinal uses, so the Anishinaabe didn't bother giving it a name. Usually associated with forests containing pine. It can be found throughout the growing season in moist forest, Tiger’s eye is ectomycorrhizal /ek-toh-my-koh-RY-zuhl/, which means it forms a connection with the outside of the roots of a plant or tree. Through this connection, the fungus obtains the carbohydrates in needs from the host plant, and the host plant gets minerals from the fungus.

This particular species of fungus increases its size by growing new fungal filaments called hyphae at the edge of the cap. If it encounters another individual of the same species, it grows around it resulting in fused mushroom caps or plants that appear to have grown through the Tiger's eye cap. The Tiger's eye actually around sticks and other small plants - like grass - that it encounters during growth.

Tiger’s eye has distinct radial growth bands of color on its thick cap. These are particularly bright while the cap is fresh, but fade to darker colors, then gray as the cap ages. If they persist long enough, algae will colonize them and turn them green. The underside of the cap is covered in round to elongate pores, which produce spores.

August 26 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


August 26 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Closed until further notice.


Earth/Moon Almanac for August 26, 2026
Sunrise: 6:32am; Sunset: 8:20pm; 3 minutes, 24 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 7:49pm; Moonset: 4:35am, waxing gibbous, 95% illuminated.

Lunar Eclipse Alert: The maximum phase of the August 2026 partial lunar eclipse in Wannaska, Minnesota, occurs at 11:12 p.m. Central Daylight Time (CDT) on Thursday, August 27, 2026, when about 96% of the moon is covered by Earth's umbral shadow, often glowing a coppery-red.


Temperature Almanac for August 26, 2026
                Average            Record              Today
High             75                     90                     76
Low              52                     29                     48

August Morning
by Albert Garcia

It’s ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect–
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?

August 26 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Dog Day
• National Women’s Equality Day
• National Webmistress Day
• National Cherry Popsicle Day

August 26 Word Pun
Last night someone broke into Sven’s house and took a dozen eggs. They also left a saucepan filled with warm water.

Police believe it was poachers.


August 26 Word Riddle
Where did Ula and Inga Enarsdottir go for ice cream on their recent trip to Spain?*


August 26 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
SCRAP-BOOK, n., A book that is commonly edited by a fool. Many persons of some small distinction compile scrap-books containing whatever they happen to read about themselves or employ others to collect. One of these egotists was addressed in the lines following, by Agamemnon Melancthon Peters:

    Dear Frank, that scrap-book where you boast
    You keep a record true
    Of every kind of peppered roast
    That's made of you;

    Wherein you paste the printed gibes
    That revel round your name,
    Thinking the laughter of the scribes
    Attests your fame;

    Where all the pictures you arrange
    That comic pencils trace—
    Your funny figure and your strange
    Semitic face—

    Pray lend it me. Wit I have not,
    Nor art, but there I'll list
    The daily drubbings you'd have got
    Had God a fist.


August 26 Etymology Word of the Week
coccyx
/KÄK-siks/ n., a small triangular bone at the base of the spinal column in humans and some apes, formed of fused vestigial vertebrae, from "part of the human spinal column consisting of the last four bones," 1610s, from Latin coccyx, from Greek kokkyx "cuckoo" (from kokku, like the bird's English name echoic of its cry), so called by ancient Greek physician Galen because the stunted, coalesced tail-bones in humans supposedly resemble a cuckoo's moderately curved beak.


August 26 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1498 Michelangelo is commissioned to carve the Pietà sculpture by French Cardinal Jean de Bilhères.
• 1682 English astronomer Edmond Halley first observes the comet named after him.
• 1691 Charles Perrault's poem The Marquise of Salusses or the Patience of Griselidis is read aloud at the French Academy and later attached to his Tales of Mother Goose.
• 1846 Felix Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah premieres.
• 1873 The first free kindergarten in the United States is started by Susan Blow in Carondelet, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri.

August 26 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1548 Bernardino Poccetti, Italian painter.
• 1627 Thomas Bullis, English composer.
• 1673 Conrad Michael Schneider, German organist, kapellmeister, and composer.
• 1687 Willem de Fesch, Dutch violinist and composer.
• 1726 Karl Kohaut, Austrian composer and lutenist.
• 1745 François Guichard, French guitarist and composer.
• 1749 Johann Ernst Rembt, German organist and composer.
• 1775 William Joseph Behr, German writer.
• 1788 Aloys Schmitt, German pianist, composer.
• 1823 Wilhelm Troszel, Polish operatic bass, composer.
• 1824 Martha Darley Mutrie, British painter.
• 1826 Princess Alexandra of Bavaria, German writer.
• 1828 Erik Anthon Valdemar Siboni, Danish organist and composer.
• 1843 Georg August Lumbye, Danish composer.
• 1867 Viktor Foerster, Czech painter.
• 1870 Aleksandr Kuprin, Russian author.
• 1874 Zona Gale, American novelist and playwright, 1st woman to win Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
• 1877 Harriet Ware (Krumbhaar), American concert pianist, composer.
• 1880 Guillaume Apollinaire [Kostrowicki], French poet.
• 1884 Earl Derr Biggers, American author.
• 1885 Jules Romains, French novelist, playwright and poet.
• 1887 Luis Abraham Delgadillo, Nicaraguan pianist and composer.
• 1891 Emmy van Lokhorst, Dutch writer.
• 1891 Ferdinand Bruckner [Theodor Tagger], Austrian-German playwright.
• 1891 Acharya Chatursen Shastri, Indian author and playwright.
• 1896 Richard Pindle Hammond, American composer.
• 1899 Rufino Tamayo, Mexican painter.
• 1901 Eleanor Dark, Australian author and poet.
• 1903 Caroline Pafford Miller, American author.
• 1904 Christopher Isherwood, English novelist.
• 1910 Mother Teresa, Irish Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin.
• 1914 Julio Cortázar, Argentine writer.
• 1914 Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca, Turkish soldier and poet.
• 1915 Humphrey Searle, British composer.
• 1922 Lazar Nikolov, Bulgarian composer.
• 1925 Gustavo Becerra-Schmidt, Chilean composer.
• 1926 Robert Vickrey, American painter and author.
• 1927 B. V. [Balkrishna] Doshi, Indian architect.
• 1928 Naïm Kattan, Canadian novelist.
• 1931 Dane Škerl, Slovene conductor, composer.
• 1933 Ida Gotkovsky, French pianist, composer.
• 1935 Cornelis Bastiaan Vaandrager, Dutch poet.
• 1941 Barbara Ehrenreich, American author.
• 1946 Ladislav Kubík, Czech composer.
• 1949 Gayle McKinney-Griffith, American ballerina.
• 1949 Leon Redbone [Dickran Gobalian], American blues and jazz musician.
• 1950 Arlene Gottfried, American street photographer.
• 1952 Will Shortz, American crossword editor.
• 1956 Sally Beamish, British violist and composer.
• 1961 Zdeněk Fránek, Czech architect.
• 1963 Patrice Oppliger, American author.
• 1964 Allegra Huston, English-American author.
• 1975 Alan Averill, Irish musician.

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

• cathexis: /kə-THESK-əs/ n., the concentration of mental energy on one particular person, idea, or object (especially to an unhealthy degree).
• chichi: /SHEE-shee/ adj., stylish, fashionable, or pretentiously elegant, especially in a way that suggests sophistication or social refinement.
• demit: /də-MIT/ v., resign from (an office or position).
• douce: /do͞os/ adj., sober, gentle, and sedate.
• hodden: /HÄD-(ə)n/ n., coarse woolen cloth of a kind formerly made in Scotland.
• hollier: /HAH-lee-uhr/ n., IRISH, a holiday.
• miasma: /mē-AZ-mə/ n., a highly unpeasant or unhealthy smell of vapor.
• minify: / MIN-uh-figh/ v., to diminish in significance or importance; to regard or represent (something) as less significant than it really is; to depreciate, belittle.
• panduit: /PAN-doo-it/ n., plastic cable ties, mounts, and slotted wiring ducts used to organize wires.
• shappy: adj., affected by a bittersweet emotional state of feeling incredibly joyful and deeply sorrowful at the exact same time, portmanteau word from sad and happy.

August 26, 2026 Word-Wednesday Feature
slang
/slaNG/ n., a type of language that consists of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people, from 1756, "special vocabulary of tramps or thieves" or any set of persons of low character, later "jargon of a particular profession" (1801). The sense of "very informal language characterized by vividness and novelty" is by 1818. Anatoly Liberman writes here an extensive account of the established origin of the word from the Northern England noun slang "a narrow piece of land running up between other and larger divisions of ground", and the verb slanger "linger, go slowly," which is of Scandinavian origin (compare Norwegian slenge "hang loose, sling, sway, dangle," Danish slænge "to throw, sling"). "Their common denominator seems to be 'to move freely in any direction' " [Liberman]. Noun derivatives of these (Danish slænget, Norwegian slenget) mean "a gang, a band," and Liberman compares Old Norse slangi "tramp" and slangr "going astray" (used of sheep). He writes:

It is not uncommon to associate the place designated for a certain group and those who live there with that group’s language. John Fielding and the early writers who knew the noun slang used the phrase slang patter, as though that patter were a kind of talk belonging to some territory. The point of slang is to stand apart—creatively.

The English Cockney dialect is notorious for slang, including rhyming slang: a type of slang that replaces words with rhyming words or phrases, typically with the rhyming element omitted. For example butcher's, short for butcher's hook, means “look” in Cockney rhyming slang. Readers of Finnegan's Wake must accept slang as part of the unnatural disorder of the book. Here are a few other takes on slang from a wide range of authors:

SLANG, n. The grunt of the human hog (Pignoramus intolerabilis) with an audible memory. The speech of one who utters with his tongue what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in accomplishing the feat of a parrot. A means (under Providence) of setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Slang is a poor-man’s poetry.

John C. Moore, in You English Words 

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor poetry. 

G. K. Chesterton, “Defense of Slang,” in The Defendant

Some people worry that slang will somehow “corrupt” the language. We should be so lucky.

Steven Pinker

The word “slang” is vague and its etymology obscure. It suggests the slinging of odd stones or dollops of mud at the windows of the stately home of linguistic decorum.

Anthony Burgess

Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their way to the dumps.

Ambrose Bierce, “Epigrams of a Cynic,” in A Cynic Looks at Life 

Correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets. 

George Eliot, the character Fred Vincy speaking, in Middlemarch

What is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist in the next.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich in Ponkapog Papers

If you use a colloquialism or a slang word or phrase, simply use it; do not draw attention to it by enclosing it in quotation marks. To do so is to put on airs, as though you were inviting the reader to join you in a select society of those who know better.

William Strunk, Jr. & E. B White, in The Elements of Style

Slang is vigorous and apt. Probably most of our vital words were once slang.

John Galsworthy

Slang, the acme and quintessence of spoken and informal language.

Eric Partridge

Slang in a woman’s mouth is not obscene, it only sounds so.

Mark Twain

Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes to work.

Carl Sandburg

From A Year with Rilke, August 26 Entry
Like a Holy Face, from Sixth Duino Elegy

Only as a child am I awake
and able to trust
that in every fear and every night
I will behold you again.

However often I get lost,
however far my thinking strays,
I know you will be here, right here,
untouched by time.

To me it is as if I were at once
infant, boy, man and more.
I feel that only as it circles
is abundance found.

I thank you, deep power
that works me ever more lightly
in ways I can't make out.
The day's labor grows simple now,
and like a holy face
held in my dark hands.

The Sower
by Vincent van Gogh

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.






*Basque-n-Robbins.