Wannaskan Almanac

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, September 30, 2020, the 40th Wednesday of the year, the second Wednesday of fall, and the 274th day of the year, with 92 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for September 30, 2020 Rabbits Prepare for Winter Nordhem Lunch: Closed. Earth/Moon Almanac for September 30, 2020 Sunrise: 7:23am; Sunset: 7:05pm; 3 minutes, 33 seconds less daylight today Moonrise: 7:10pm; Moonset: 5:46am, waxing gibbous Temperature Almanac for September 30, 2020                 Average            Record              Today High             59                     86             ...

I mm aterial Ba tt le Aa rdvark These are a ll words that I dislike.  It is a total waste of le tt ers.  A ll  those double le tt ers...what a waste of time, space, and ink! While double letters don't seem to need to be brought together, what does need to be brought together is people.  I like to think of myself as one of those people who creates a sense of community.  The following (nearly) true episode demonstrates this. It started on a Saturday.  My dear wife was going to a women's conference at our church.  They wanted everyone to bring a main dish and a dessert, so my wife (I am intentionally leaving her name out to protect the innocent) made up some cherry bars and bean and bacon casserole.  They didn't eat it all at the conference, so she brought some home. Even though I should know better, I succumbed to the desire to eat some of the leftover casserole for supper that night.  I always want to add a little spice to it, so I rooted aro...

How often have you flown? What type of aircraft was it. Two seat? Six? Two Hundred? Propeller driven? Turbo prop? Jet engine? What training and experience did your pilot have? How do you know? How did flight make its way into our ground-dwelling species? Did a primitive ape shade her eyes to look up at a pterodactyl, and then jump off the cliff she was standing on? What were Orville and Wilbur thinking of at Kitty Hawk? How many aviators died in the pursuit of this most unnatural pursuit to float through the Blue?  Flight. It exhilarates. It inspires. Terrifies. Facilitates. Brings delight. Crushing grief. Nothing about flying is simple or simply done. Yet it is taken for granted by most. We aren’t flying as much lately, it’s true; however, most of us will flock (ha!) to the sky again when our health is safer.  Read this poem twice. Read it once as a passenger, and a second time as the pilot. Then blend the two perspectives.   POEM   GHOST FLYERS   Gleaming pair...

  For a quiet life, avoid those fishermen who are always opening cans of worms.  Participating in a seance to contact the dead is like calling the Man in the Moon on a string and tin can telephone.  A friend makes your old stories better each time they’re retold.  Late marriages need a pre-nup not for dollars and cents, but to foreswear all attempts at changing the other.  The truly jolly person is only ever serious about the cure of his own and his society’s discomforts. If you’re smart and ambitious, you’ll make your mark. If you’re ambitious and stupid, you’ll be the mark.                        Chairman Joe

Hello and welcome to another Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is September 26th. Hey. Pssst.   *waves* Hi!  Shhh! Keep your voice down! You see, I’m hiding because I needed a few minutes to myself before I go back out there and cook the guláš and fry the langoš . Folks, I’m exhausted. After only two weeks back at school, our family went into quarantine on Monday. All it took was one sick kid in our household to put the rest of us under house arrest. Hey, no worries. It’s all been good. Sore throats and coughs progressed to just coughs and stuffy noses. No fevers. I’ve been plying the crew with hot soup filled with hearty vegetables and a ton of garlic. A friend gave us a bottle of freshly-made elderberry syrup. Peppermint tea has been the beverage of choice. Symptoms are improving. The kid had a Covid test on Wednesday afternoon - not the brain tickling one, but one to be just discomforting enough that the kid's not likely to forget it anytime soon. I downloaded ...

       Pippi Longstocking is an amazing little girl. Her mother died in childbirth on her husband’s ship. When Pippi was nine her father was washed overboard. Pippi is convinced he made it to a South Seas island and is now king of the cannibals there.       Pippi decides she’s had enough of the sea and, with a suitcase full of gold coins in hand, she heads to the house in a small Swedish town her father had bought for his retirement.       Pippi has always wanted a horse so after arriving in the town she buys a horse with one of her gold coins. She keeps the horse on her front porch.      I forgot to mention that Pippi is incredibly strong. When she want to drink her morning coffee on the porch, she lifts her horse down into the yard.       I bring Pippi up because I am reading about Pippi to my two grandchildren every evening. I am staying a couple of weeks at my son’s house in Massachusetts ...

“I don’t complain much, well, in this forum, but since it offers me the opportunity, I’m going to have to unload on a matter that I’m sure doesn’t affect 99.9% of any one who reads this almanac. I must be that one percent of people who wish there was a “Shut the fook up,” button on Gas Station TV. “Chairman Joe broached the subject on September 22, 2019. Among his other great Sunday Squibs was: Gas pump options: Debit/Credit; Premium/Regular; Car Wash: Y/N; Mute Annoying TV in Pump: Yes! ” “It simply has to happen. There are distractions enough at a busy gas station when a raucous family coming back from the lake pulls in with five various-aged kids leaping from the four-door pickup with various degrees of sunburn, attitude, and limited attire, and all dash toward the convenience store creating traffic hazards for people coming into and leaving the pumps. “As you fill your car, the pump n...

 And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, September 23, 2020, the 39th Wednesday of the year, the first Wednesday of fall, and the 267th day of the year, with 99 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for September 23, 2020 The owls are getting easier to see. Nordhem Lunch: Closed. Earth/Moon Almanac for September 23, 2020 Sunrise: 7:12am; Sunset: 7:20pm; 3 minutes, 33 seconds less daylight today Moonrise: 3:05pm; Moonset: 11:17pm, waxing crescent Temperature Almanac for September 23, 2020                 Average            Record              Today High             62                     87          ...

Today we will look at the number 22.  It has always been one of my top 22 favorite numbers. The number 22 is a palindromic number, meaning it’s the same coming and going, forward and backward. 22 divided by 7 is Pi.  The diameter of a circle times Pi equals the distance around a circle.  Pieman is a character played by Homer Simpson.   22 is (and I quote) “an even composite number composed of two prime numbers multiplied together.” Uh-huh. Twenty-two is a bunch of other arithmetic things I don’t understand and will therefore not subject you to (or twenty-to). The number 22 is double 11 (which symbolizes disorder and chaos) and is therefore representative of double disorganization and quantum chaos. This explains my unusual 22 birthmark.   The length of a cricket pitch is 22 yards. Crickets have never been trained to play cricket.  What a shame. The Titanic was traveling at a speed of 22 knots before it crashed into the iceberg. Iceberg lettuce has...

 Several weeks have passed since the most recent posting of a segment from The One . Endings are difficult, and this ten-segment of the eleventh Song, Dragons True,” is no exception. The next time you see a post featuring The One , a new Song will have opened – number 12. But for now, we remain with EndMaker and the mysterious girl. The main character with Argose have been sliding deeper and more steadily into their world inside the cave. All along, EndMaker doesn’t act like we imagine a Dragon should; the girl deports herself more like a bat than a human. Yet, the two cave dwellers communicate perfectly, and even bring in Argose and his master to the dual mind of Dragon and girl. Just as with Shield Bearer, the main character, and his faithful buddy merge farther into the inner world of Dragons and other startling creatures. What’s to be gained by all these fantastic experiences? Why do we love Dragons, monsters, and Dragon-monsters so much? A few fantasy films include a docile Dr...