Wannaskan Almanac

 "A good neighbor is a found treasure," is an old Chinese proverb. Another classic is "Good fences make good neighbors," from Robert Frost's poem Mending Wall, though it is often used to mean connection rather than isolation.   Today I am looking at the opposite.  What makes a bad neighbor?  I came up with this idea as some youngsters (easily too young for a drivers license) were ripping around on an extremely noisy and cheap side by side next to my house.  Now I am not trying to be cantankerous, but there is certainly a bunch of laws (and silence) being broken by those kids.   The noise sounded like an '80s snowmobile with no muffler.  They raced by, ignoring the traffic laws, and then stopped just a little bit down the road.  Unsure if they had disturbed the peace enough, they revved the motor over and over.  Satisfied, their unhelmeted and undeveloped heads proceeded on down the street.  I guess my house was not the only sto...

We’ve spent much of this past summer wanting rain, worrying about it, or wondering at its power. As we faced each event - our grandson’s outdoor wedding, Jim’s birthday cruise, and a late-season nor’easter - questions loomed: too little, too much, or not at all? No one wanted rain in Connecticut on August 15th. Tent or no tent? As plans unfolded for their wedding outside in a lovely wooded setting, we prayed, danced counterclockwise, chanted, and shook rattles to the sun. While it rained on the 14th and the 16th, for the entire stretch of the wedding day we enjoyed a clear blue cloudless sky and rain-free, starry night.  We had the opposite problem for the river cruise down the Rhine. Drought! Two weeks before we were to depart for Zurich, we received a letter notifying us that water levels in the river would require changes that would alter the itinerary. We met lovely people, ate great food, rode bikes past fields and windmills. However, one of the signature experiences of the jo...

  The Palmville Globe Volume 2 Number 36 Man Fails to Get Audience Joe McDonnell, 79 and residing in Palmville Township, Minnesota, recently attended an Authors Fair. "I've never written a book," McDonnell tells reporters, "though I have written for various publications over the years, most recently the blog that this story appears on. When I applied to appear at the Authors Fair, I was told the Fair was for authors who had published books. When I explained my situation I was given a space at the Fair. I thought there would be a time to read from my writings to the general public, but the general public never appeared. This was the first Authors Fair and I expect there will be a bigger crowd next year." In a later communication, McDonnell reports that reader view stats for his blog have increased. "One of my fellow bloggers had brought a QR code so fellow authors at the Fair could find our blog. "Marketing is not my strength," he writes. Man Modif...

Hello, and welcome to the second consecutive wet Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is October 3rd. This week was a good bucket list week. First off, Othello was in town at Warroad RiverPlace for a one-night-only show featuring a Shakespearean theater company from the United Kingdom . I've seen Shakespearean plays before, but this was the first time I had seen a Shakespearean play performed in the traditional sense, i.e., male-only actors playing both male and female roles. The place was packed, and I had a second-row seat. Shout out to my friend. Nancy, who suggested I sit up close so I could hear everything.  Yowza, that Shakespearean language is quite a linguistic workout. As someone said to me, it was like listening to a foreign language. I'm not gonna lie, that Shakespearean came strong out the gate when the performance started. At one point I looked at my watch, and it was only 7:15pm. Only 15 minutes of Shakespearean had already felt like 90 minutes after a l...

     Fellow Wannaskan Almanac writer Steve’s wife Jackie asked me recently if I had heard about the upcoming Authors Fair at the Roseau Library. I usually hear about these things after they've happened so it was great she clued me in. It sounded intriguing. I pictured local authors sitting at a long table reading in turn from our writings and answering questions from the audience. Teresa asked if I considered myself an author since I hadn’t published any books. I've posted on a blog for eight years. That makes me an author in my mind at least.   When I visited the library to register, Stacy the librarian told me the purpose of the Fair was for local authors to promote and sell their books. When I told her I wanted to promote the Wannaskan Almanac , she said she would have a table ready for us. She knew WannaskaWriter (Steve Reynolds) because she frequently orders hard-to-find books for him. She didn’t know Joe- Wednesdays’s Child (Joe Stenzel). “I've only lived her...

  Memorial for Pete Fugleberg by Steven Reynolds   Addendum "Pete's Auction"  by Joe McDonnell         Pound for pound Pete Fugleberg (1949-2012) was no lightweight when it came to being a good man and friend to many people. Whether he was seen driving his ‘94 blue three-quarter ton Ford 4x4 pickup through Roseau amid a passenger-side pile of stuff, or astride his flat-black 2010 Harley Sportster at a stoplight, or sitting on his favorite stool at RJ’s bar & grill in Roseau, Pete was known to many, even if they didn’t know his name. Some young people in Roseau only knew Pete as the big old man who often fell asleep in a booth late at night at the Cenex Convenience Store in town.       Little do they know, for a big man, Pete’s size (est. 400 lbs) belied the fact that he had been deceivingly quick in his day. I saw him vault off a dogsled many times to untangle a writhing pile of wild, crazed sled dogs and get them back on t...