Wannaskan Almanac

Hello and welcome to a vacation Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Greetings from the city of brotherly love! Today is August 22nd. The past couple of days, we've been galavanting around Philadelphia with CK 3.0*, aka the original WAKWIR**, enjoying the sights from his perspective. We started with a tour of his college, getting the insider's view of all the music studios we'd hoped to see on his first college tour three years ago. How thrilling as a parent, to see my son stroll confidently around, not only the campus, but the city. We are now SEPTA experts as we hopped back and forth between University City and Old City.  It feels both like we've not done much other than "walk around" and yet, at the end of the night, when I tally the day's events, we've actually done, like, 15 things a day!  We've hit some food-musts such as the Philly Pretzel Factory, Kiwi frozen yogurt, and Sabrina's Cafe. We swapped Philly cheesesteaks (actual) with ch...

   If I want to know the next time August 21 will fall on a Friday I ask AI. AI will tell me quickly that August 21 will fall on a Friday again in 2037. Before AI came along I would have gone to a site like Time and Date , but I would have had to scroll through lots of extraneous matter to find what I wanted. Plus I'd get distracted by other interesting info like which planets I could see that night. AI just tells me right off what I want to know.   AI is good with simple calculations like finding a future date, but can it be trusted with other things? When I heard the Chicago Bears were moving to a new stadium in Indiana, I asked AI where exactly the new stadium would be located. AI said it would be in Hammond, Indiana, just south of Chicago. Even I know that no part of Indiana is south of anywhere in Illinois. Actually, south of Terre Haut, Indiana slumps to the west as it follows the Wabash River, so yah, I can be wrong.  AI does include a disclaimer saying it too...

  Date:   Friday, June 12, 2009 11:49 PM Subject:   Re: Yada yada yada    Q: "When will the next RAVEN come out?    Any progress there?    If you get on a somewhat regular basis I'd like to subscribe. What is your current rate? Still $20 ?"        A: The other night I had a dream, the location of which was the alley behind the yard of the house I grew up in in Des Moines. It was dusk, not dark, not light really. It was about the time when old city neighborhood shadows have a bluish quality about them, as I recall. I stood along the alley opposite the yard where my dog, the one I currently have in real time, was tied up. I couldn't see her plainly as she is a black dog, a medium to large size Labrador/Chesapeake cross. She was wildly barking at something beyond her chain and from where I was, with two fences between us, I couldn't get to her readily nor see what it was she was barking at.    Straining to look betw...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for August 19, 2026, the thirty-third Wednesday of the year, the ninth Wednesday of summer, the third Wednesday of August, and the two-hundred thirty-first day of the year, with one-hundred thirty-four days remaining. Wannaska Phenology Update for August 19, 2026 Ghost Pipe  Monotropa uniflora is pushing its spooky heads up through the floors of Wannaskaland forests. Monotropa is Greek for "one turn" and uniflora is Latin for "one flowered" as there is one sharply curved stem for each single flower. Mipitahmaskihkih in Cree, and tmaqn in Mi'kmaq, there is no word for Ghost Pipe in Anishinaabe. The Cherokee, Cree, Mohegan, and Potawatomi, traditionally used the plant for its medicinal properties, such as easing nerve pain or calming spasms. You'll find Ghost Pipe growing in clumps of two or more, with its fungal source nearby — usually waxy white, but some specimens have been described as having blac...

The summer of Hot Honey BBQ has come and mostly passed, and honestly, it feels like we all collectively decided that regular barbecue sauce just wasn’t dramatic enough anymore. Somewhere between the first backyard cookout and the fifteenth “Hey, we’re grilling tonight, you coming?” text, hot honey took over America like a sweet, spicy little ninja. One minute it was just a trendy drizzle on fancy pizza, and the next it was the Beyoncé of condiments—everywhere, beloved, and slightly dangerous if you’re not ready for the heat. Hot honey, in case you’ve somehow avoided the internet, is exactly what it sounds like: honey with a kick. It’s sweet, sticky, and then—bam—a warm, slow-building heat that taps you on the shoulder like, “Hey buddy, I’m here too.” It’s not the kind of heat that sends you running for a gallon of milk. It’s more like the kind that makes you nod thoughtfully and say, “Okay, I see you.” It’s the perfect balance of comfort and chaos, which is probably why it’s become the...

  THIRD MOVEMENT REMEMBERING   SONG SEVENTEEN BURNING GROUND   I   “You are what you seem             a lightning bolt dreamed through a hollow tree You’re back on the ground now Eeeeei! What a flight! Good work child! Good work in the dream!”   I am dumbstruck from two sides             by the old man taken for lost             by the red-black spiral of my fall.   “Can you speak?!” he squints an eye at me Behind him, brilliant sun makes a halo of his thick white hair His glow and the sun so entwined I can’t be sure he is there   “Yes. I can speak – at least enough to say – again             it is wondrous strange to find you really here.”   “Still the same and not strange at all   You are in the Drea...