Wannaskan Almanac

Hello and welcome to the last Saturday in February, here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Can I get an "Amen?" I'm thanking the good Lord above that February is a few days short of a regular month, because UFFDA . What started out as a promising month took a sharp left turn into a malaise that hung on and just wouldn't quit.  I've been working on intentional self care for over a year now, so when the sniffles first started, I wasn't concerned. I'm super healthy - or rather, I practice super healthy habits - so I thought that I'd endure a few days of a stuffy nose then be on my merry way. Well, that didn't happen. The stuffy nose lasted about a week. What lingered was an excruciating fatigue and brain fog. Have you ever had to drive even though you were so exhausted that you shouldn't have, but had to, because you needed to get to your final destination? Your eyelids are slamming shut, and you're barely conscious while holding the wheel? When I...

    I wouldn't normally think of going to Paris in winter. But our granddaughter had convinced her father to take her to Paris to celebrate her twelfth birthday. It didn’t take much convincing. Joe had enjoyed his travels in Paris and told his kids stories about his adventures. Isla and her nine year old brother Nash were especially fascinated by the catacombs where Paris had buried her dead for a couple of hundred years when the aboveground cemeteries were full.   Isla's birthday is February 21 so we planned to arrive there February 17 and fly home on Sunday the 22. Joe, Isla and Nash would fly from Boston and we'd meet at an Airbnb apartment near the Bastille monument.    Due to flight delays we ended up missing our first day in Paris. Joe and the kids arrived on time, dropped their bags at the apartment and enjoyed a sunny day walking around the neighborhood and riding the subway or métro as it's called. When we arrived Wednesday morning the apartment had a l...

    In a vain attempt to relieve the boredom of windy, cold & cloudy February-March days I'm reproducing a series of Sven & Ula stories in hopes of generating periodic laughter inside or outside our bodies. I think is important to entertain some silliness once in awhile, in response to what negatively confronts us day by day.                                                                Sven and Ula Do Nebraska     “Vere?” Ula asked, squinting off into the distance.     “Dere!” said Sven, pointing with his left hand while holding his Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18 to his eye with his right.      “Vere?” Ula repe...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for February 25, 2026, the eighth Wednesday of the year, the tenth Wednesday of winter, the fourth Wednesday of February, and the fifty-sixth day of the year, with three-hundred nine days remaining. Wannaska Phenology Update for February 25, 2026 Snow Fleas As a sure sign of the approaching spring in Wannaska, Palmville's own official bug, Hypogastrura nivicola , manidoosh in Anishinaabe, has started to sprinkle snow surfaces on warmer, sunnier afternoons. These tiny, harmless, dark-blue, or black hexapods are not true insects or fleas. Commonly seen jumping on melting snow in late winter, they're classified as a springtail, using their forked, tail-like appendage called a furcula to leap about in the hopes of getting close to one another. They have been endowed with a unique protein that acts as antifreeze, allowing them to survive sub-zero temperatures. February 25 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special : Potato Dumpling F...

I have started a new morning ritual. Before I drink my coffee, before I check the weather, and certainly before I steel myself to enter the petri dish of hormones known as a middle school hallway, I look at a number. Today, that number is 821. That is exactly how many days stand between me and retirement. It sounds like a huge number, I know. But even when you measure time in 6th-grade class periods—which operate on a strange, agonizingly slow relativity scale—821 days feels like a manageable prison sentence. I am currently serving my time on the front lines of puberty, and let me tell you, the troops are restless, highly emotional, and smell vaguely of cheap body spray. What the students think they look like The core issue, and the source of my bone-deep exhaustion, is biological. I spend my days trying to inject knowledge into brains whose prefrontal cortices are currently marked "Under Construction." As any neurologist (or parent of a twelve-year-old) knows, this is the pa...

  If there is such a thing as a textbook cold, I ran through the pages last week and still feel crummy. At first, I was hopeful. The small twinge of sore throat that pinched on day one quickly slidesteped to make way for unique water features that took over my nose. For twelve hours, I felt like a pop-up water park—flowing, spraying, and sneezing jet streams into reams of tissues. When all that excitement died down, I naively thought I was better. I'll skip the details on the unproductive cough that finally blossomed. Viruses are stealthy. And, I can't say I'm sick anymore, but my usual pep has disappeared, and I'm in a funk. It’s like a fog has slipped in through the windows, and I'm stuck in a state of torpor; a slow-motion pace that's forced me to stop and look around. I see rolls of wrapping paper gossiping in a corner. Stacks of folded magazines loiter on the couch with pillows. I'm wondering how it is that scotch tape shares shelf space with the box of...