Wannaskan Almanac

     I can claim to volunteer regularly at the Roseau Food Shelf, but I do way less than Teresa who co-manages the place with Vickie Wilson. Every Tuesday afternoon Teresa, Vickie, and several faithful volunteers assist thirty to forty families to pick out needed food items from the grocery store-style shelves at the Food Shelf in the old Law Enforcement Center.     I help every third Thursday when a semi from the North Country Food Bank distribution center in East Grand Forks delivers several pallets loaded with frozen meat, canned goods and other non-perishables, and sometimes fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, butter, you name it. Again, another group of volunteers shows up on food truck day and puts everything away.    Teresa and Vickie can order from a list of  items available at the Food Bank but don't always get everything they ask for and sometimes get things they didn't ask for. Sometimes they get an abundance of unique things. But i...

     A RAVEN subscriber named Tom M., lived in Beltrami Island State Forest many years ago. Tom had contributed story ideas to me that he thought would fit our human-interest story format, one or two of which we published. One day, he encouraged me to talk to Joe Stenzel, his neighbor, because Joe and his wife Catherine had moved there from Minneapolis and were quite the characters; the difficulty being the only way to Joe was by permission of 'Catherine' who vetted any interaction with, what Tom described as, severity. Then warned me, "You might not make the grade."     I immediately imagined a tall Nordic woman with piercing blue eyes, broad shoulders; no-nonsense white-blonde hair, and a winter-biathalon physique honed from Olympic cross-country skiing & shooting competitions carrying a seven-pound rifle plus ammunition. During their move to The Big Woods I figured, she alternated her rigorous skiing regimen with AM/Enduro Bicyle racing during t...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for April 1, 2026, the thirteenth Wednesday of the year, the second Wednesday of spring, the first Wednesday of April, and the ninety-first day of the year, with two-hundred seventy-four days remaining. Wannaska Phenology Update for April 1, 2026 Eastern Meadowlark Sturnella magna is a medium-sized icterid bird, very similar in appearance to its sister species, the western meadowlark, inhabiting from eastern North America to northern South America, including Wannaska, to which they now return. Mayaagi bineshiinh, in Anishinaabe, translates to "strange bird" or "migrant bird". Adults have yellow underparts with a black "V" on the breast and white flanks with black streaks. The upperparts are mainly brown with black streaks. They have a long pointed bill; the head is striped with light brown and black.  The song of this bird is of pure, melancholy whistles, and thus simpler than the jumbled and flutey s...

The "Creek Path" wasn't a path in the way people in Millersville would understand it. It wasn't groomed or paved, and if you followed it for more than twenty yards, you’d likely end up with a boot full of mud and a face full of spiderwebs. It was a winding, stubborn trail that hugged the water where the willow trees leaned so low they looked like they were trying to drink the creek dry. Folks said the Creek Path was the original "Main Street" of Walnut Bend, back before the gravel road was cut and before Earl’s grandfather built the store. It was where the women did the washing and the men traded pelts. Now, it was just a place where the kids went to hide from their chores and where the shadows seemed to stay a little longer than they did anywhere else. One humid Tuesday, when the air felt like a wet wool blanket, I found myself in the back of Earl’s store. Earl had asked me to help him move some of those heavy bread crates because his "bad hip was acti...

THIRD MOVEMENT REMEMBERING SONG TWELVE MEMORIAL DAY II Walking farther North, leaving even trees behind no arching limbs against this white-empty sky the sun rises above the horizon but a few hours then sinks into night again into deep cold that rakes the flesh like fire Here’s a long night to be sure – an endless night with no time yet for sleep I watch shards of ice rise to the dark surface of a winter lake fed by an underground river that flows below mountain peaks crushed silver under moon Walking by myself, I listen to the stories I have left behind good stories that I tell myself – the ones I’ve never told another – not even once – good stories that I am re-membering about the One who has always been here, the un-named One -- now  named Here, walking in this longest night, I cannot tell if the stars are lights above me or fires below I am ice-cracking splinters into shards and I am jubilant in the breaking Mapping to the center dead-reckoning...

  The Palmville Globe Volume 2 Number 9 Man Expands Compost Storage Joe McDonnell. 79 and a resident of Palmville Twp, Minnesota, recently discovered a method to get more food scraps into his kitchen counter compost bin. "Once the bin is full," McDonnell tells reporters, "my wife or I carry the bin to the big compost bins near the garden. I noticed recently that if I happened to leave fruit or vegetable skins on the counter overnight, they shriveled up by morning. One morning I weighed a fresh banana skin: 75 grams. Twenty four hours later the skin weighed 52 grams. That's a 27.8% weight loss. I theorized that I could get a lot more in my bin if I let everything dry out for a day before putting it into the covered bin." McDonnell thinks he probably won’t do that. "The purpose of the bin is to keep the counter tidy," he says. In a follow up communication McDonnell says he calculated that the inedible skin of the test banana made up 37.6% of the banana...