Wannaskan Almanac

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for April 2, 2025, the twenty-fourth Wednesday of the year, the second Wednesday of spring, the first Wednesday of April, and the ninety-second day of the year, with two-hundred seventy-three days remaining.   Wannaska Phenology Update for April 2, 2025 April Immigrants The trumpeter swans ( Cygnus buccinator ) have returned! Wannaska-area waters remain iced in, but it's worth the trip down the road to Gully, where hundreds of bevies and gaggles (collective nouns) of trumpeter swans and Canada geese fill the peat bog waters. Males trumpeter swans average over twenty-six pounds, making them North America’s heaviest flying bird. To get that much mass aloft the swans need at least a 100 meter-long runway of open water, running hard across the surface like galloping horses as they generate speed for take off. The Gully-road peat bogs are just long enough for these impressive take-offs. Trumpeter swans feed while swimming, sometimes...

Yup, I pinched myself.  Now I am considering suing myself for sexual harassment.  I am finally writing a blog post for April Fool's Day.   Do you know what a pirates favorite holiday is? Aye'pril Fools Day! You know I have waited for this moment all of my life.   And now that this moment has arrived...and the literally dozens of almanac readers are waiting in anticipation...I find myself at a loss for words.  Oh well, when the words don't come you have to turn to history.   Luckily we live in what would be the Old Wild West if we were a century and a half earlier.  It is pretty tame now, but there was a time when southwest Kansas was famous for  outlaws and lawmen...like Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, and Mysterious Dave Mather.  These famous gunslingers are featured quite prominently in the Boot Hill Museum located in Dodge City.  But, if you are brave enough, go a little deeper into the Long Branch Saloon and y...

Originally published September 30, 2019... Song 8 falls under the second movement, “Becoming,” a word that can be interpreted as either positive or negative. Becoming cynical. Becoming ruthless. Becoming kind. Becoming generous. Read this segment asking whether the Song falls to one side or the other or partially in both. The title of the Song, “Endings and Transitions,” also merits consideration. What has ended? What do the transitions look like? On a journey such as this one, “endings” call to mind a dead-end road, and transitions serving as bridges between what has disappeared and what is yet to come. SECOND MOVEMENT BECOMING SONG 8 ENDINGS AND TRANSITIONS I clasp my legs to my heaving, hot chest             and pillow my muddled head on my knees                         sobbing into my dark nauseous center                         hollow...

The Palmville Globe Volume 1 Number 8 Man Transports Concrete Pads to Remote Site Joe McDonnell, 78 and residing in Palmville Twp, Minnesota recently moved nine 30 lb. concrete pads to a remote building site. "I don't know how remote it is," McDonnell, 78, tells the press. "The building site is only .14 miles south of the house. But everything must be carried in by hand during the wet and muddy season, plus there are two ice filled ravines on the route." McDonnell repaired a long-term slow leak in his wheelbarrow tire and also made use of a heavy duty plastic snowmobile sled to transport the pads in groups of three. "In the sportier sections in the ravines there was some hand-carrying the pads in groups of one," McDonnell tells reporters.          Man Celebrates Irish Sign Joe McDonnell, 78 and a fit retiree, told reporters that while taking down his  Sláinte!  sign, he realized this was the 25th time he had put the sign up and then taken it down again...

Hello and welcome to a crafty Saturday, here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is March 29th and I'm coming to you live from Bangor, WI. No, not Bangor, Maine, nor Bangor, Pennsylvania, but the Bangor in Wisconsin, just east of LaCrosse, on a craft retreat at the Dragonfly Retreat house . How does a girl from Wannaska land at a crafting retreat in southern Wisconsin? She makes a promise. "When you said you would go, I didn't really believe you would," my friend admitted when I got to her house Thursday evening. I didn't take offense, after all, it was this time a year ago when I declared that I'd road trip with her to her annual craft retreat in 2025. Craft Retreat is sacred, according to my friend Carol. "What happens at craft retreat, stays at craft retreat." But there are a few details I can share with the general public before diving back into my creative endeavors for the weekend. "Craft Retreat started over 20 years ago," Trudy (Carol...

   “Only a paleface would think he could make a blanket longer by cutting a foot off the bottom and sewing it on the top.” This quote appears every year at the start of Daylight Saving Time. It’s attributed to an “old Indian chief”. It should really be attributed to an annoyed white man, who dislikes having to go around the house setting all the clocks ahead an hour.     Everyone dislikes losing an hour of sleep. There is less complaining about returning to Standard Time when we get our lost hour back. Farmers are blamed for DST but farmers say it wasn’t us. We don’t care what time the sun comes up.     It was just getting to be light around six a.m. before DST went into effect. We lost that early light and I started setting my alarm to seven. Over the past two weeks I’ve worked my way back to my usual six a.m. The extra hour of daylight in the evening is fine, but I’ve been mildly disoriented by this one hour jet lag.     The logic...