Wannaskan Almanac

Hello and welcome to a crafty Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac by way of the Dragonfly Retreat in Bangor, Wisconsin. Today is April 18th.  This is my second craft retreat at this location. Last year, I blogged about the Craft Retreat experience. This year, I'd like to share a study of textiles as art. The Dragon Retreat proprietor, Gerlyn Basic , has elevated technique and imagination to create art pieces that transcend. Instead of waxing poetic - or using AI to pontificate (see last week's post for context) - I'll let the pieces speak for themselves. The house is spacious and fabulous. The people I'm with radiate copious amounts of joie de vivre . And I am so very happy.

     The ashes of Teresa's Uncle Vern were being interred in a military cemetery just south of San Francisco on April 10. He had died at his home in Mesa, AZ the previous April and we planned to join the family at the interment. We had grown close to Vern and his daughter Kelly during several visits to their home in the past few years. After the interment ceremony we planned to spend three days up in San Francisco doing some hiking on the trails around the city.    That was the plan anyway. We had reservations for two nights at a hotel near the airport where Vern's family would be staying. A few days before the interment ceremony as we were looking for a hotel in San Francisco's tourist district we got a call from our son Joe. Joe works as first mate on a tug and barge, two weeks on the boat and two weeks at home. When he's home he has his two kids and when he goes back to work, their mother has them.    He had called to say the company wanted him to w...

    I got a phone call from a musician the other day that quite surprised me. He had gotten my name from Virgil Benoit, an old friend from Red Lake Falls, Minnesota. Virgil offered me his help writing art grants. Our paths have crossed many times in the interim, especially at Old Crossing Treaty Park  He had asked the musician to write a song for the upcoming 2026  Chautauqua and, for some reason given him my name as a reference to ox cart trails and whatever else I could provide history wise, I guess. How I came to meet Virgil came up in our conversation; me being in one of my more rare babbling moods in various subjects that I know a little about, and this tomb, albeit greatly reduced in size, was one of them.           In the spring of 2008, Virgil invited me to Univ. of Minnesota / Crookston to participate in his Minnesota Sesquicentennial project:   Treaty at Old Crossing Reflections, Writings, and Responses to the 18...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for April 15, 2026, the fifteenth Wednesday of the year, the fourth Wednesday of spring, the third Wednesday of April, and the one-hundred-fifth day of the year, with two-hundred sixty days remaining. Wannaska Phenology Update for April 15, 2026 Purple Martins Just back from Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, Progne subis — zhaashaawanibiisens in Anishinaabe — is a passerine bird in the swallow family Hirundinidae . It is the largest swallow in Wannaska or anywhere else in North America. Despite its name, the purple martin is not truly purple. The dark blackish-blue feathers have an iridescent sheen caused by the diffraction of incident light giving them a bright blue to navy blue or deep purple appearance, which may even appear green in color. Purple martins are considered synanthropic, meaning they have developed an association with humans over time and benefit from living in close proximity to them, where some purple martins have made ...

I have to confess...I have not been rocking or twanging or hip-hopping out to the sounds The Rusty Neon Philharmonic.  It was my week late attempt at playing an April Fool's joke on you readers.  I apologize to the hundreds and thousands of you who went to Spotify looking for their music.  In retrospect, it was a little mean, but isn't that what you have come to expect from Tuesday's almanac posts? Like Wet Paint signs in the wild, so are the days of The Rusty Neon Philharmonic Whilst I did enjoy pranking you all, I know that it was now juvenile and uninspired.  Not my words mind you, those came straight from the Wannaskan Almanac emergency stockholders meeting.  Even with all my legal troubles for continuously attempting to prank our readers, I still hold a 1/7th minority stake in the Wannaskan Almanac.  This enables me to spread the vicious lies and conspiracies that I so enjoy with only negligible negativity.   How about a 1/7 pound steak?...

THIRD MOVEMENT REMEMBERING SONG TWELVE MEMORIAL DAY III   Today, unlike other days, the sun is for its brief hours             uncommon warm upon the whiteness I open my heavy coat to be near the air             and the silent rush of biting sweetness             arrests my passage and I stand still                   here   Suddenly, today, unlike all other days, I hunger for simple stillness             to stop the motion that has driven me  To stop right here, right now, the endless searching             not one more step before I discover        ...