Wannaskan Almanac

Hello and Happy Halloween from the Wannaskan Almanac! Today is October 31st. Today is Halloween. If there’s anything worse than a graduation during a pandemic , it would be Halloween during a pandemic. Our family tradition is to trick-or-treat through our little subdivision. We have lived here for almost fifteen years and I’m pretty sure the neighbors know to count on our family to make our rounds. And they are so sweet because our kids might be their only trick-or-treaters and they still turn on their porch light and have a bowl of candy at the ready. I love our neighborhood. I really do. Once my kids asked me how many people live in our neighborhood. I was delighted that I could visualize each household and its respective family members and tally most of them. Halloween is the one time of year we stop by and say hello to our neighbors, and every year it makes me feel so happy. When the kids shout, “Trick or treat!” and the neighbors pull out generous fistfuls of chocolate bars and pl...

  Junkyard, Wannaska, October, 2015 On June 1, 1966 my father-in-law, Enar Karlsson, purchased a brand new half-ton Ford pickup. It was a no-nonsense work vehicle. No radio, no AC, no  power steering. One of the few options was the rear bumper. In fact the truck came without a rear bumper. Enar paid extra for the heavy duty option, meant to last the life of the truck. For the next 24 years, the truck was a workhorse around the Karlsson's 240 acre farm, hauling rocks, seed and fertilizer, bales of hay or straw, freshly butchered cows, or whatever else was asked of it. All the Karlsson children, Cindy, Faith, Becky, Teresa (my favorite), Pete, and Julie, learned to drive it and used it to get to work or school. Pete took it on jaunts to Manitoba where the age of inebriation was only 18. In 1990, Enar got a new pickup and sold the Ford to Teresa and me. We used it to haul firewood or our bikes or canoe on mini-adventures. The first thing to go on the truck was the carburetor. I t...

Ain’t No China Cabinet Finale I admit I’m no high craftsman when it comes to woodworking. I enjoy working with wood for two reasons: It’s a source of great frustration and good humor; and it satisfies my autumnal engineering urge to build crudely-made wood boxes on stilts, 10-feet off the ground, in which deer hunters like myself can freeze their asses off if they choose to do so, or at the very least keep out of the wind and stay dry at the same time. Still I wonder if my mind is wholly there. Although measurements are double-checked before they are cut, and rudimentarily assembled at ground level to check conformity (and some resemblance of accuracy); then often laboriously hoisted sixteen feet onto the top of the walls, they often prove otherwise. This is when I have to acknowledge my serendipitous wisdom of buying several cans of expanding foam sealant and a few tubes of silicone caulk to make up the mysterious differences in fit. One Saturday afternoon, I made an attempt to vi...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, October 28, 2020, the 44th Wednesday of the year, the sixth Wednesday of fall, and the 302nd day of the year, with 64 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for October 28, 2020 It’s been a cold October. [Thanks, Norris Camp !] Nordhem Lunch: Closed. Word-Wednesday October 28, 2020 Fall Recipe Pumpkin Bread Your neighbors will be able to smell this recipe cooking, even in downtown Wannaska. Days without a living Wannaskan Almanac contributing author being nominated to the US Supreme Court: 26,880. Earth/Moon Almanac for October 28, 2020 Sunrise: 8:05am; Sunset: 6:10pm; 3 minutes, 17 seconds less daylight today Moonrise: 5:34pm; Moonset: 4:43am, waxing gibbous Temperature Almanac for October 28, 2020                 Average            Record            ...

  The Little Dust Storm Grit in my teeth From a sudden rushing wind The Kansas sky turns grey The oldest taste the haze Remembering a dusty recipe Dry needles  Pretending to be rain Pounding on the window Still the dust flies Dirt fills up my eyes Tumbleweeds dancing A meeting of the prairie garden club 40-50-60 miles per hour Over too quickly Or not quickly enough

 Let’s throw grammar rules to the snow and have some fun! Fun isn’t a tone that Monday’s poetry posts are known for, but hey, “girls just wanna have fun!” Ha!. This gay mood started when the Jolly Chairman, Wannaskan Almanac ’s favorite contrarian, sent your truly a poem – “o sweet spontaneous” by e e cummings. This burbled up my many years as a high school English teacher – semesters that included mr cummings work in the curricula. mr cummings is known for ignoring capitalization and punctuation, and for unorthodox line breaks, and for radical spacing constructions. Students were mightily attracted to cummings, perhaps because they, too, were bursting out of traditional structures, challenging rules, and fledging straight toward the earth, before winging themselves into the sky.    O’ SWEET ‘SPOT   O’ sweet O‘Spot                         how oft’ h...

  I read once that all eight billion of us could be crammed standing up into a square 17 miles on a side. But how long could we stay there? The sick and the old would be dying quicker. Crime would go up. Sex would go down. Childbirth would get tougher. And it would be surprisingly hard to meet new people. The Native Americans didn't fall to the Europeans because they lacked guns, but because they lacked sharp lawyers. What does Religion give to Science? A soul. And Science to Religion? Common Sense. A home cook will describe his latest recipe in loving detail, even if none of his listeners has the least intention of ever cooking that bad boy. Retirement is like childhood. The days reel off uncounted. But instead of growing up, you're headed for the exit. Conversation is greatly enhanced when you get sick of the sound of your own voice, sooner rather than later. Chairman Joe

Hello and welcome to a certainly snowy Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is October 24th. You guessed it! It’s that time of year again! M E A weekend is/was here! And if you remember what happened last year during this five-day weekend, I went on a FANTASTIC camping trip with my dad and my older brother. Well, obviously we were going to go camping again, but my older brother decided to hype up a lot of his friends to go with us on what we call: Rosta Camping. Camping, but extreme. No heaters, long hikes, freezing cold, snow, etc. This would be camping at the literal minimum. With the exception of a tent. We got those.   So I was thinking: “Why can my older brother invite friends on a camping trip and not me?” I asked my mom that question, and she told me to also invite some friends to go “Rosta Camping." So I did. I invited three friends; one couldn't come, but later my dad said I could only bring two friends, which worked out in the end. Now, I had a problem. I ha...