Wannaskan Almanac

  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...

  The Palmville Globe Volume 2 Number 4 Man Makes Cost Risk Analysis  Joe McDonnell, 78 and a resident of Palmville Township, Minnesota, recently learned a valuable lesson while traveling with his grandson. "By the time we arrived at our lodging, my grandson had already changed the fifty dollars that his other grandmother had given him into the local currency and was running through it like the prodigal son. He saw a vending machine with a granola bar right on the verge of falling into the pick-up compartment. He decided to put in two coins worth a total of two dollars, thinking to get two granola bars for the price of one. But nothing happened. He pushed the return money button. Nothing. Our subway train pulled into the station and we got on. Then the train stayed in the station with the doors open. Our grandson and his father returned to the machine and started pushing buttons. The rest of us also left the train. Stay with the group is our motto. The equivalent of two dollar...

Hello and welcome to the Girls State Hockey Championship, Saturday, here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is February 21st. Go, Lady Warriors! Catch the stats here.  Game time is at 4pm. Today, on this wonderful morning, I will be talking about how this week went. This was an interesting week, and by this I mean Bob Ross paintings, UNO tables, and fasting. When I say Bob Ross paintings, you may be thinking, Bob Ross, how do you know he exists? My answer is that my teacher is a painter, a really good one too. But anyway, because my teacher likes painting with Bob Ross, she decided that we were going to try to paint with/like Bob Ross too.  We didn't finish out paintings, but it was basically a river in the middle with clouds and trees in the background.  Mine turned out pretty good, but then I looked at my teacher's painting, and it was identical to Bob Ross's painting.  Oh, and by the way, this week we were supposed to have 3 days of gym, but because of President's Da...

     Many people become train wrecks by causing  lots of damage to their circle of acquaintances but are soon forgotten by history. Not so with Henry VIII. Henry dragged England into foolish wars, destroyed an ancient religious culture, and killed friends and family because they got in his way then regretted some of  it on his deathbed.    My initial reaction is to call Henry a bad dude, but who am I to judge? Going deeper into Henry's complicated story causes me to reconsider. Henry had started life as the spare heir to his older brother Arthur, Prince of Wales. When Henry was 10. Arthur died of no one is sure what. At the time it was called "a malign vapor".   Arthur had married Catherine of Aragon shortly before his death. This was an important diplomatic tie with Spain and Henry was expected to take his brother's place as Catherine's husband. Henry was allowed to wait until he was 17 to marry the 23 year old Catherine. Henry's father died soon...

    There is an old J.I. Case steam-driven threshing machine along a fence line northwest of our house. I can remember playing on and in it as a child when my family would drive up from Des Moines to visit family here. A horse-drawn haystacker stands nearby; its parallel chains drooping. I've always felt that there's something unique about this area of northwest Minnesota , where the forests end and the prairie begins, in as much as during my lifetime there was still so many ' farm ruins, ' as my daughter calls ancient horse-drawn and steam-powered farm equipment, to be seen across the landscape here in Roseau County.  [To Be Continued.]  

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for February 18, 2026, the seventh Wednesday of the year, the ninth Wednesday of winter, the third Wednesday of February, and the forty-ninth day of the year, with three-hundred sixteen days remaining. Wannaska Phenology Update for February 18, 2026 Bobcat Lynx rufus , gidagaa-bizhiw in Anishinaabe, also known as the wildcat, bay lynx, or red lynx, is one of four species within the medium-sized wild cat genus Lynx. Native to Wannaska and other parts of North America, it ranges from southern Canada through most of the contiguous United States to Oaxaca in Mexico. An adaptable species, fer sure. It prefers woodlands—deciduous, coniferous, or mixed—but does not depend exclusively on the deep forest. It has distinctive black bars on its forelegs and a black-tipped, stubby (or "bobbed") tail, from which it derives its name. It is an adaptable predator inhabiting wooded areas, semidesert, urban edge, forest edge, and swampland ...