Wannaskan Almanac

Hello and welcome to a summer camp Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is June 27th. Camps are a summer hallmark and staple. We have 4-H camps, church camps, sports camp, and the camp of all camps - LAKETRAILS - slotted in our summer schedule. Camps conjure images of singing around bonfires, capture the flag, bracelet braiding, KP duty, group activities in the lodge on a rainy afternoon, cannonballs and canoes, and chatting with your camp BFFs well past lights out. Good times that fuel adult nostalgia. Except when it doesn't quite go that way. Sometimes, instead of temporary unconditional love, bonding, and memories, kids get outcasted and labeled as awkward, quirky, or a misfit. This was my fear as I dropped my kid off last Sunday. "Everyone looks older than me," she observed, as we stood in line to check in. I assured her it was a camp just for 9th and 10th graders. After check-in with several cheerful volunteers, we were escorted to her dorm room - and that...

     For the Roman, all roads lead to Rome. For me, all roads lead to Boston, my natal home, and now the home of our three sons. The Roman could travel by foot or horse or by boat on the sea road. I have more choices. My civilization has built tools to carry me swiftly over smooth roads or through the air. I can still walk if I want. Another tool quickly calculates it would take 24 days to walk from our home in Wannaska to our son Ned's home in Marshfield, Massachusetts. We'll probably never take the walking route, nor the bike option even though a bike would cut our travel time to six days.    The tool making these calculators seems to harness the very spirits in the air. It provides pictures and maps of where we're going, tells where we can find food and lodging, and lets us communicate instantly with our hosts along the way. The internet has only become useful for travel in the last twenty years. We somehow made our way around the country without it, but I wo...

   Presumably I'll live to see my birthday on Saturday, June 27th. But I’ve never been this old before, well, that I know of anyway for I’m ignorant of such things. Yes, yes, yes, you read it here; I don’t know it all, and it’s never bothered me.        Well there’s so much importance made about ‘knowing it all’. On the other hand, i.e., oppositely, people who act like they ‘know it all’ are very often despised. So what’s a person to do? I don’t like to be ignorant of things in most cases; but equally don’t care to know it all because it involves so much of your life; I’m just not ambitious that way. Never have been. I like what I like and that’s it. Interests come to me from experiences with other people, through books, and through stories on the radio.       I have an ear and eye for details and subconsciously remember excerpts of conversation in which either I or others are participating. It seems a natural ability. M...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for June 24, 2026, the twenty-fifth Wednesday of the year, the first Wednesday of summer, the fourth Wednesday of June, and the one-hundred seventy-fifth day of the year, with one-hundred ninety days remaining. Wannaska Phenology Update for June 24, 2026 Columbine Aquilegia canadensis — misudidjiibik, in Anishinaabe — now blooming throughout Wannaska, s a genus of perennial flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae (buttercups). Beloved by hummingbirds, columbines sport colorful flowers with five sepals and five petals, where the petals generally feature nectar spurs which differ in length between species. The first-century AD Greek writer Dioscorides referred to columbine plants as Isopyrum, a name that is now applied to another genus, Isopyrum. In the 12th century, the abbess and polymath Hildegard of Bingen referred to the plants as agleya – from which the genus's name in German, Akelei , derives. The first use of aqu...

It is that time again.  That special day when facts are thrown to the wind and my brain sinks to the depths of my bowels.  Here you are with another edition of fractured history. 1305 French-Flemish peace treaty signed at Athis-sur-Orge.  The French entourage showed up with a box of condoms after mis-translating as "at this sure orgy".  Their faces were indeed sacred blue. 1713 The French residents of Acadia are given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia, Canada.  Nova Scotians were outraged at the possiblity of having to live without French Toast.   Nova Scotia...known for a lack of French Toast but a lot of Sidney Crosby 1724 Russia and Turkey sign Treaty of Constantinople.  If it had happened in October, the ringers of the signing would have been constant in opal.   A constant in opal ring 1757 Battle of Plassey: British East India Company led by Robert Clive defeats the army of the Nawab of Bengal, wining co...

  THIRD MOVEMENT REMEMBERING   SONG FIFTEEN BONES               A singular journey          A journey of One             Three thousand years of sailing away             far from the shores – sailing the waves             writing the story on the sea’s blank face                 I re-member a place of light and heat             where every step was lucent and free             much like this fluid space under stars             much like this g...