Analysis

   

For eight years, eight months and a couple of weeks, a blog post called Word Wednesday has appeared every Wednesday morning on the Wannaskan Almanac blog. That's something between four and five thousand posts, every Wednesday, year in, year out. 

   The Wannaskan Almanac began when The Writers Almanac was taken off the air. Garrison Keillor had gotten into a kerfuffle with MPR. We never learned the details, nor did we need to. At a New Year's Eve party around that time, six writers agreed to fill the gap by writing a post in turn covering the whole week. One writer took two days. At first we all stuck with the format Keillor used, listing events that occurred on this day, literary and historical, and famous birthdays with interesting information about a couple of those events or people, and ending with a poem, always a good poem.

   As we writers got our footing, we started writing about things that interested us and that was fine. But Joe Stenzel, or Woe, Wednesday's Child (his Almanac name) has stuck with his original format, which he calls Word Wednesday. He starts by telling us what day of the year this is and how many are left, followed by some local  phenology. Phenology is the study of seasonal phenomenon in relation to climate and plant and animal life. In early spring he starts tracking the hummingbird migration, He loves hummingbirds and they appear to love him and his nectar. 

   After phenolgy- this week was on pumpkins*, their history and etymology- he gives a shout out to a couple of favorite cafes. Wednesday is always potato dumpling day at the Fickle Pickle. Next, more almanac staples: the times of the sunrise and sunset, same for the moon. I'm always saddened this time of year to see how much daylight we're losing: 3 minutes, 32 seconds, last Wednesday. We're told the average and the record temperatures for Wannaska: 56 & 38 degrees, high of 82 & low of 11.

   There's always a seasonal poem such as And Now It's October, by Barbara Crooker. One of the best things about the Writer's Almanac was hearing Garrison read a poem in his sonorous voice. NPR has not approached us about having the Wannaskan Almanac appear on their network. I think Woe could take the pressure but several of us writers panic at the sight of a deadline, though none has ever failed to produce a post on their assigned day.

   Next we get a list of celebrations from the National Day Calendar. Some days are to raise awareness of health issues such as Tregeminal Neuralgia Day. Others are for fun: National Frappe Day, National Coffee with a Cop Day. Some I have to look up: National Inner Beauty Day, which tells Seniors they're great even if they don't look it anymore. I got inspired by Random Acts of Poetry Day. My poem on FB got 12 likes!

   This is followed by a pun and a riddle. Once those are solved, we move on to the work of literature Woe is serializing. I got to read Leaves of Grass over a couple of years thanks to Word Wednesday. He's currently reprinting a dictionary, but a very amusing dictionary, The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce. There's always a poem to clarify the definition.

   The heart of WW is the Etymology Word of the Day. Woe traces a word back to its roots and gives examples of how its meaning has changed and elaborated over the years. Then comes a list of Historical and literary events from the day. Followed by a long list of people from the world of arts, including fictional characters such as Popeye (Jan. 17, 1929) and Cookie Monster (Nov. 10, 1969). The cornucopia continues with a list of ten words and definitions Woe has looked up during the week. He challenges his readers to write a story or pram (poem) using all ten words. Some readers take this challenge very seriously. To round out Woe's focus on words, there's a short linguistics article. This week it was Demonstrative Determinants and Diexis. I read this article twice and still don't get it. I'm an English, not a Linguistics major. Even Chemistry looks like a more interesting major than Linguistics.

   For the past several years Woe has been giving us a short excerpt from the Austrian poet Rilke. Below the poem or excerpt from a letter is a painting or sculpture. Woe favors Rodin or Chagall or van Gogh. Van Gogh created over 800 paintings but we're only familiar with a handful of them. Woe is trying to remedy that.

   Every Word Wednesday closes with the lines: 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.

* My examples are from Woe's post of October 7, 2026.

In Mexico for the winter. Never a card or a letter.