Todays Thought

The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. 

-William Wordsworth, poet (7 Apr 1770-1850)

Todays Words

 A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Everyone likes going places. One might call it a vacation, another a holiday, and some just call it escaping the inbox. But what if your travel plans were dictated by the _literal_ meaning of the word? Here’s what your itinerary would look like, etymologically speaking:

• journey: A day trip (from French jour: day). About 20 miles max in those days
  
• travel: Torture (Latin trepaliare: to torture). Because travel in those days wasn’t exactly a trip to Disneyland
  
• holiday: Perhaps a pilgrimage, because holiday is, literally, holy day. Well, you could worship the sun
  
• pilgrimage: A foreign trip (Latin peregrinus: foreign)
  
• visit: Go see a place (Latin videre: to see). So if you attend a concert, would that be an audit? (Latin audire: to hear)
  
• trip: Dancing in the backyard (Old French triper: to hop, skip, leap, dance)
  
• vacation: Vacate the home? Also, the wallet? (Latin vacare: to be empty)
  
• tour: Spinning in circles? (Greek tornos: lathe)

Good thing etymology isn’t destiny. A word is not limited to its roots or what it meant originally.

This week we’re taking you on a, well, let’s call it a jaunt (origin unknown). We’ll explore places, far and wide, that have become metaphors in the English language. Such words are also called toponyms, from Greek topo- (place) + -nym (name).

What are your favorite places to visit, whether down the road or across the globe? Do you have a location that you return to again and again? Why? Tell us via our website or email us at words@wordsmith.org. Include your home base (city, state).

And wherever you go, may your journey be less “trepaliare” and more “trip”!

alsatia

PRONUNCIATION:

(al-SAY-shuh)

MEANING:

noun
1. A sanctuary.
2. A lawless place.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Alsatia, an area north of River Thames in London, once out of the reach of law. Earliest documented use: 1676.

NOTES:

Once upon a Thames, Alsatia was a holy hideaway: a monastery-turned-sanctuary (Whitefriars) north of the river in London. But what began as a sacred refuge slowly turned into a safe haven for debtors, criminals, and general ne’er-do-wells.

The name Alsatia is a Latinized nod to Alsace, a border region in France that once had a similarly lawless reputation thanks to the centuries of tug-of-war between France and German states. One might say it was a region that couldn’t decide whether to say bonjour or guten tag, so it said neither and punched you in the face.

By the late 1600s, the term Alsatia had morphed into a metaphor for any unruly place where laws were more like suggestions and sanctuary came with a side of shenanigans.

USAGE:

“‘[The] state has set out to create an Alsatia -- a region of executive action free of judicial oversight,’ said Lord Justice Sedley.”
Paul Lashmar; Law Lords Slam Crime Agency for Freezing UMBS Payments; The Independent on Sunday (London, UK); May 27, 2007.

“Maggie always appeared in the most amiable light at her aunt Moss’s; it was her Alsatia, where she was out of the reach of law.”
George Eliot; The Mill on the Floss; William Blackwood and Sons; 1860.

2 Meteor Showers Happening Simultaneously

 April Will Have 2 Meteor Showers Happening Simultaneously — How to Watch the Rare Spectacle

There's a series of celestial events happening this month, so mark your calendars

By Valerie Mesa 

 

Published on April 5, 2025 09:00AM EDT

Astrophotography Meteor Shower with Milky Way Galaxy and Stars - Scenic mountain views of night sky of the Flat Tops Wilderness area, Colorado USA. PHOTO: 

GETTY

Forget the rain — April has its own set of meteor showers lighting up the heavens!

This month is often synonymous with rain, but stargazers are in for a treat once the skies clear. With meteor showers and other celestial events lighting up the sky throughout the month, astronomers predict an exciting month of skywatching in the northern hemisphere.

Meteor showers occur when we encounter many meteoroids at once. Meteors (or meteoroids) are space rocks entering Earth’s atmosphere. When we see a “shooting star,” it’s actually the glowing hot air of the space rock moving at high speed — as per NASA — the heat stems from the resistance of the air on the rock.

Scattering across the night sky, meteors from the Lyrids and Eta Aquarids will put on a dazzling show this month.

Originating from Comet Thatcher, the Lyrids meteor shower will release around 18 meteors per hour, while the Eta Aquarid meteors, born from Comet Halley, will have up to 50 meteors per hour at their peak.

Along with the meteor showers, cosmic events like the Pleiades star cluster aligning with the moon and a cameo by Jupiter, as noted by EarthSky, add to the action-packed skies.

Calling all stargazers! April is considered the perfect time to try the “Messier Marathon” challenge, which is where skywatchers attempt to view as many as 110 Messier objects, which include nebulae, star clusters and galaxies.

Additionally, the sun is still in its solar maximum, increasing the chances of northern lights displays, which will continue to be more frequent until March 2026, both of which can be viewed with telescopes and the naked eye, according to astronomers.

Here's everything to know about April's meteor showers and how to spot them.

April's First Quarter Moon Stirs Up Emotions — and 1 Zodiac Sign Is Bursting Into Tears

When does the Lyrid meteor shower peak in April 2025?

Meteor Shower. 

GETTY

The Lyrids Meteor shower will be visible mid-April between April 17 and 26, peaking on April 21 and 22, according to NASA. The Lyrids are known for being fast and bright, with about 5 to 6 meteors per hour. At its peak, 10 to 20 Lyrid meteors can be seen every hour.

How to catch a glimpse of the Lyrid meteor shower in April 2025?

In the northern hemisphere, the Lyrids are best viewed after dark and before dawn. It’s crucial to find an area away from city lights, but after about half an hour in the dark, the naked eye will adapt, and you will begin to see the meteors.

The dazzling spectacle lasts until dawn, so there’s more than enough time to watch!

When does the Eta Aquarids meteor shower peak in April 2025?

Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower, Babcock Wildlife Refuge, Florida. 

GETTY

Known for their speed, the Eta Aquarids peak every year in May. This year, showers will be most active between April 20 and May 21, reaching their peak on May 3 and 4 with up to 50 meteors an hour per NASA.

Traveling at approximately 40 miles per second, these speedy meteors leave glowing streams of light that can last several seconds up to minutes.

How to catch a glimpse of the Eta Aquarids meteor shower in April 2025?

Visible in the northern and southern hemispheres before dawn, the Eta Aquarids are best seen in the southern hemisphere due to the viewing location, as they are higher up in the sky in the southern hemisphere than in the northern. Still, the Aquarids have up to 10 meteors per hour in the northern hemisphere, skimming on the surface of the Earth — hence, known as “Earthgrazers.”

As always, patience is key, but you’ll want to steer clear of city or street lights so your eyes can adapt — this takes about 30 minutes in the dark. The light show lasts until dawn.

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Todays Thought

How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself. 

-Kenneth Tynan, theater critic and author (2 Apr 1927-1980)

Astronomical ceiling of Senenmut's Tomb

 Astronomical ceiling of Senenmut's Tomb

Astronomical ceiling decoration in its earliest form can be traced to the tomb of Senenmut (Theban tomb no. 353), located at the site of Deir el-Bahri, discovered in Thebes, Upper Egypt. The tomb and the ceiling decorations date back to the XVIII Dynasty of ancient Egypt (circa 1479–1458 BCE). It is closed to the public.^[2]

Discovery

[edit]

The tomb of Senemut was discovered during the 1925–1927 excavations directed by Herbert Winlock for the Egyptian Expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.^[3]

The unfinished tomb is entered via a steep descending stairway starting in a quarry. This is 90m long and gives access to three successive chambers under the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. Whether this was done to deliberately place his tomb in the precincts of Hatshepsut's temple or to reach better quality sandstone is not known.^[4] The unearthing of the 10x12 ft. chamber known as Chamber A yielded the two panels of what is now referred to as the Egyptian Celestial Diagram.^[5] The ceiling and wall carvings are particularly well preserved as due to the Tarawan chalk into which they were carved.^[6]

Celestial Diagram

[edit]

The Celestial Diagram consisted of a northern and a southern panel which depicted circumpolar constellations in the form of discs; each divided into 24 sections suggesting a 24-hour time period, lunar cycles, and sacred deities of Egypt. Of the constellations present on the diagram, the only certainly identifiable was Meskhetyu with the Big Dipper because of the difficulty that arises when an attempt is made to match modern day constellations with the depictions made thousands of years ago by the ancient Egyptians.^[7]

• Some of the main figures and stars seen in the diagram are Sirius, Orion, Ursa Major, Draco (may be depicted as hippopotamus with crocodile on its back),
• The four circles on the top right refer to the four months of Akhet (inundation) between July and October
• The two circles at the top left and the two below them refer to the season of Peret (planting season) between November and February
• The four circles on the right refer to the season of Shomu (harvesting season) between March and June

The map on the southern panel could well reflect a specific conjunction of planets in 1534 BCE around the longitude of Sirius. The four planets Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury and Venus are relatively easily recognizable. The planet Mars is not included in the actual grouping and at first sight seems to be missing in the map. However, one explanation is that Mars is represented in the Senenmut map as an empty boat in the west. This may refer to the fact that Mars was retrograde and was not with the other planets (indeed, being in the west in the 1534 BCE conjunction). The reason for the boat being empty is perhaps in this backward movement (a well known phenomenon to the Egyptians) the position of Mars was not considered to be ”concrete”.^[8]

An alternative explanation for the missing Mars is proposed by Belmonte,

″...the astronomical ceiling of the tomb of Senenmut is a gigantic copy of a papyrus draft of a celestial diagram that would have existed and used to be represented in clepsydrae (water clocks, as that of Karnak). Because of the lack of space, when moving the design from a conical to a flat surface, part of the decoration was lost.″^[9]

Significance

[edit]

Constellations on the astronomical ceiling of Senemut Tomb

Although the tomb had been unfinished and had sustained damage throughout the centuries, the ceiling yielded new information about astronomy, chronology, mythology, and religion in Egypt because of the incorporation of all these elements as a means of connecting the divine to the mortal world.

Egyptian astronomy consisted of the identification of the heavenly bodies in the sky and their connection with the deities that were believed to play a role in religious mythology and practice.^[10]

Astronomical ceilings bore significant symbolism for the Egyptians as they combined divine religion with more earthly aspects of daily life such as agriculture and labor. The detailed depiction of astronomy and deities illustrates the Egyptians desire to understand the heavens and the attempt to apply that understanding to the gods that they believed influenced all aspects of life.

The assimilation of these elements ensured that the Egyptian calendar would differ from the ancient calendars of the Sumerians and the Babylonians. Otto Neugebauer suggests that the complexity of Egyptian calendars:

represents the peaceful coexistence of different methods of defining time moments and time intervals in different ways on different occasions.^[11]

The use of astronomical calendars was not limited to ceiling tombs as they appeared on coffin boards, water boards, temples, and various other surfaces and objects.^[7]

Todays Thought

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it. 

-Milan Kundera, novelist, playwright, and poet (1 Apr 1929-2023)