Wannaskan Almanac

Posts

Further Down the Road

The goal of this trip is Manchester, Vermont. We could have gotten there in three long days on the Interstates, but we had given ourselves five days of back roads and only used freeways as needed. There were two areas I had always wanted to see but have never been to: the Adirondack Mountains and Lake Champlain. After two days on the road, we had made it to Saginaw, Michigan about 100 miles north of Detroit. We would avoid Detroit and Cleveland by nipping east across southern Ontario and back into the US at Buffalo. As we headed south from Saginaw on the freeway the rain started, heavy at times, at times blinding. The traffic slowed then everyone got off the freeway and onto the detour paralleling the freeway. Flint may be a beautiful city on a sunny day, but it seemed like Detroit had sent all its scrap metal to the great junkyards of Flint. The detour went on for many miles and ended just in time for us to turn east and cross the St. Clair River ...

Thursday July 3rd, 2025 Who Needs Directions?

Do you know what it's like to drive 60 mph on loose gravel? Well, depending on what type of vehicle you're driving it can be uneventful, spine-tingling, -- or hubcap losing. Odds are (I don't know what they'd be, I'm just making this up as I write) that if you were in a full-sized four-wheel drive pickup or a Chevy Suburban (both larger-than-life vehicles), the experience would be markedly different than driving a road-hugging 1998 Subaru All Wheel drive 'station wagon.' (I think they call them SUVs now, but this Legacy-Outback was made 'way before then). Comparing the ride in a L.T.L.V. to a 1998 Legacy Outback on a loose/semi-packed gravel road at sixty-plus miles per hour is like comparing a Volkswagen beetle to a Porsche 911 sitting side-by-side in a car museum. The uninformed think the two are dissimilar like comparing apples to oranges, horses to cows, or mitochondria to Powerhouse, but then be dumbfounded to learn that although Ferdinand Porsch...

Word-Wednesday for July 2, 2025

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for July 2, 2025, the twentieth Wednesday of the year, the second Wednesday of summer, the first Wednesday of July, and the one-hundred eighty-third day of the year, with one-hundred eighty-two days remaining. Wannaska Phenology Update for July 2, 2025 Fireflies! Bugs to love. Lampryris nociluca , also known as glowworms and lightening bugs, ọkụ ọkụ, IGBO, and ホタル (hotaru), JAPANESE. The Japanese set aside special park areas just to enjoy the lightshows of this summertime performer. Synchronization of flashing occurs in several species; it is explained as phase synchronization and spontaneous order. Tropical fireflies routinely synchronize their flashes among large groups, particularly in Southeast Asia. At night along river banks in the Malaysian jungles, fireflies synchronize their light emissions precisely. In the United States, one of the most famous sightings of fireflies blinking in unison occurs annually near Elk...

Wannaskan Almanac for Tuesday, July 1, 2025 I Do Eclair

It is Canada Day, our northern neighbor's version of Indepedence Day. How do they celebrate? With pastries...French ones! So let's talk eclairs, shall we? Those long, golden, vaguely phallic pastries that wink at you from behind the bakery glass. Oh, they seem innocent enough, don't they? A delicate choux pastry, a whisper of creamy filling, and a smooth, elegant glaze. They whisper promises of sophisticated snacking, a refined indulgence for the discerning palate. But don't let their fancy French name and polished appearance fool you. Eclairs are, in reality, mischievous little devils in disguise, plotting the downfall of your perfectly respectable afternoon. First of all, the eating process is a minefield. You think you can just casually bite into one? Think again. That seemingly sturdy pastry shell has a secret, crumbly agenda. One wrong move and you're suddenly wearing half of it as a jaunty lapel decoration. The filling, oh, the glorious filling, which momen...

Summer Do-Bees

Last night, Jim and I went across the lake to visit family members who are also on vacation in Massachusetts. Although they planned to take some day trips to nearby attractions, they lay low, hung around the lake, and did nothing. Years ago, my friend Ellen gave me a quotation ensconced in a small frame that stated, "Doing nothing is a very important part of living. " The gift's timing was odd; we were both in the thick of our teaching careers and as English teachers, we always had a Sisyphean load of essays to read. Having a space of time to fill with nothing was sheer fantasy. I thought about that last night when my niece and nephew were extolling the pleasures of staring into space for two glorious weeks. For sure, both doing and being define the head-tail-sidedness of life. External pressures and goals often dictate much of our time, but how do we slow down to tune in to the subtleties of who we are and explore our inner truths and callings? Shifting gears and sp...

Sunday News

The Palmville Globe Volume 1 Number 22 Man Runs Over Tent Joe McDonnell, 78 and a resident of Palmville Twp, Minnesota, recently ran over a tent that was blowing across the freeway. "The tent wasn't moving when we first saw it." McDonnell tells the press. "We noticed the cars in front of of us moving left and right to avoid the tent which appeared to be a giant green rag. I moved right but just before we got to the tent, a strong wind puffed it up and scooted it into our lane. There was the sound of a tent being rapidly dismantled as we ran over it. Our engine started roaring and we slowed down. I wondered if the tent had disconnected our engine from the transmission. Then I realized that when I had stomped on the brakes, an iPad shot off the center console and knocked the shifter into neutral. No harm done. I saw the truck behind us, possibly the tent’s owner, stop and pick up the tent. Man Enjoys Boat Story Joe McDonnell, 78 and a good listener, recently listene...