Wannaskan Almanac

Ars Poetica - #5: To Each His Own! & Seamus Heaney’s “Digging” Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. Don't use such an expression as 'dim land of peace.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstractions.     Ezra Pound Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Carl Sandburg Our friend, Horace, has far more to say regarding the elegant art of writing. Today, we present the fifth excerpt from his Ars Poetica , Horace’s advice to a friend on the concerns of good writing. As you know, this advice has made its way through many centuries and into thousands of serious writers’ hands. Let’s take a moment to take stock of why all the fuss. It’s about the outcome of the writing. Horace tells us how to write and gives a few examples of what to write about; however, as wi...

  When Google scratches its head and says “That’s a good question,” you know you just hit the wall of the known universe.  Hearts of ice can be thawed on earth. Hearts of iron and stone must be sent to the forge in the sky.  Good hotels don’t have better cleaning staff than mediocre ones. They do have a tweezer person who follows the cleaners removing that hair in the tub that otherwise would end up in the reviews.  Foreign language courses promise to have you understanding 90% of the language before your trip. Nice. But it’s that missing 10% that will send you down to the catacombs rather than up the Eiffel Tower.  We all do stupid things. True stupidity is keeping your eyes closed to the effects.  I tried to find common ground with the people who voted differently, but had to give it up. They didn’t like the facility I had selected for our rehab.  Chairman Joe

Hello, and welcome to the last Saturday of February here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is February 27th. Two things occurred to me this week. One, that tomorrow is the last day of the month which means that's a wrap on the official recognition effort known as "Black History Month." And two, I don't think my kids had one thing to say about it or to report from school. Every day when kids come home from school, they normally greet me with a yell from the front door. "Honey, I'm h-OOOO-me!" (Or maybe they say, mommy. I can't always hear that well.) The Kindergartner bounds downstairs to my office, hot and sweaty, cheeks flush from the bus ride and his enthusiasm. He flings papers from his backpack, showing me all the things he cut, colored, read, and wrote. He reads the little book he made for the letter of the week, and, together, we read his newest library book. I sometimes remember to check his lunch box for any remaining apple slices or carrot sti...

        Why do people, when they're in a tight spot, refuse the deal they’re offered and push on to the full catastrophe? For example, there's Louis XVI. When things started going down the tubes, he was offered the chance to be a constitutional monarch like the king of England. But he said "non" and it wasn't long before he was handed his head in a basket.    And then there's Hitler. He had conquered most of Europe. He needed all his resources to invade Britain. But instead of concentrating on what he had, he decided take a little cruise to Russia. His generals were all: "Mein Führer! With all due respect, remember Napoleon!!"     And Napoleon's another prime example. He too had conquered most of Europe, but Britain was making life difficult. And Russia was secretly supporting Britain. The invasion of Russia did not go well. At this point the rest of Europe was sick of constant warfare and told Napoleon he could remain emperor of France and k...

 Contemporary archaeology, perhaps.    I don’t make it a practice to sift through the after effect of people’s lives; but I have been offered the opportunity to do so a few times, as I wrote about in Wannaskan Almanac’s Thursday blogpost: http://wannaskanalmanac.blogspot.com/2021/02/thursday-february-11-2021.html . The closest definition for what I do, in the most amateurish sense, may be called “contemporary archaeology.”   The first foray I made through someone else’s stuff was in preparation for a eulogy I was asked to do by a local family because they knew me as a writer. I was honored, of course, but intimidated too at the prospect of virtually painting a portrait of a individual whom I didn’t really know, for a group of family and friends who had known him intimately all their lives. In addition, it being a Thursday evening, I had very little time to prepare for the funeral service on the following Saturday morning.   As family and friends talked to me I b...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, February 24, 2021, the 8th Wednesday of the year, the 10th Wednesday of winter, and the 55th day of the year, with 310 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for February 24, 2021 When it’s released later this summer, this new nature stamp from the United States Postal Service will illuminate a piece of Indigenous culture associated with an escape from darkness. Titled “Raven Story,” the history-making postage stamp features the iconic bird rendered by Rico Lanáat’ Worl , who is the first Tlingit and Athabascan artist to be featured by U.S.P.S. An yesterday the first sprinkle of Snow Fleas were sighted in Wannaska for 2021. Nordhem Lunch: Closed Earth/Moon Almanac for February 24, 2021 Sunrise: 7:15am; Sunset: 5:59pm; 3 minutes, 31 seconds more daylight today Moonrise: 2:41pm; Moonset: 6:15am, waxing gibbous, 88% illuminated. Temperature Almanac for February 24, 2021            ...

 Okay, 2020 was rough.  It sucked.  There were things to be thankful for but there were reasons to stick the memories of that year in a box and drop them in the ocean.  It would even be better if you chained a 2020 ton rock to that box.  We don't want that box washing up on the shore again and unleashing more Jumanji on us.   Do not open that box! So today I decided to try and win a little battle.  Let me explain.  I am a computer teacher.  I had my computer room arranged in the way that made it most convenient for me and the students.  Thanks to 2020 and her angry child named Covid 19, my room was rearranged.  I didn't like it.  I used to have a good sized area for my desk and chair.  To my horror I found that I had lost about a foot of space.  This is a big deal, as I am sure that I managed to gain a foot of stomach thanks to six months of lounging on my couch.   We can debate whether or not the class...

Robert Frost – Recalled in Winter I know that winter death has never tried the earth but it has failed . . .  Robert Frost (1874-1963), U.S. poet. The Onset (l. 13-14). . .  The Poetry of Robert Fros t. Edward Connery Lathem, ed. (1979) Henry Holt. A poem ... begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.... It finds the thought and the thought finds the words. Robert Frost (1874-1963), U.S. poet. letter, Jan. 1, 1916, to poet and anthologist Louis Untermeyer.  The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer (1963). We’ve just come through a patch of real Minnesota winter, here in the far northwestern corner of the state. Temperatures tumbled to minus 48 at Norris Camp in the approximate middle of Beltrami Island State Forest where we live. Outside the log cabin where we live, the air was a balmy minus 34. All this with out windchill added. Winter – it’s who we Minnesotans are. The morning I wrote this post it was minus 15 at about 7:00...

  She was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, nor the pointiest fork. But she was the roundest spoon which compensated all the rest. Young couples should watch family kitchen contests for lessons on how to stand the heat. Aristocracy would be the best form of government if it wasn't for all the doofuses who are born as aristocrats. Don't let that stack of dirty dishes get you down. It's a reminder you're not starving. Whenever I throw out some long held dusty thing, I immediately need it back. And when I shop for a replacement, it's only available in a two-pack. Are you able to tolerate a few lumps in the pudding, or are you going to spend your life stirring? Chairman Joe

 Yup. Back. Better than ever. So what’s happened over the last month? Well, not many major things have happened, but many minor things have occurred. For instance, at the time of writing the last blog post, I was in distance learning, struggling to keep up with my grades. (They're back up now). I went back to in-person learning in January. There have been only two times ever that I was happy to go back to school. The first time was when I came back from my personal quarantine last fall. The second time was that Thursday in January when we returned after our ski trip. To me, there is something about learning in person that just feels so much more effective than learning from home by myself. Immediately, once I got back into regular school, I was again the once-known “smart person” who had all the answers to the homework. In January, I also played piano for Festival (a judged music event) for which I received a Superior rating. (The highest rating you can get.) Another thing tha...

   Political trials, by their nature and their name, are not about justice, but about politics. Take the trial for treason of our third vice-president, Aaron Burr. On this day in 1807, Burr was arrested in present day Alabama and held for trial which took place in Richmond, VA later that year.   We know Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. Later, he supposedly formed a conspiracy with Spain to form a new country out of part of the southwestern United States. That was what his trial was about. Burr had been Thomas Jefferson's vice-president, but the two did not get along at all.     When Burr realized Jefferson would be dropping him from the ticket in 1804, he ran for governor of New York. Burr blamed his loss in that race on Hamilton's behind the scenes efforts. That's what led to the duel. Dueling was illegal in New York. The punishment, if you weren't killed in the duel, was death. Dueling was illegal in New Jersey too but the punishment was ...

 She Ain't No Max Backing up through the snow near the shed, I opened the trunk lid, then the door of my car, and to my black Labrador/Chesapeake dog I said, “ Cubby, get the outboard out of the trunk.”   She looked at me, then looked east, then west, her tail arched with enthusiasm. She had an eager look in her eyes, but an expression of bewilderment that said, “Say whut?”   So I calmly repeated,”Get the outboard out of the trunk. Go get it.”   Feigning an incoming scent on the wind, she followed her nose away from the car until I called her back excitedly, thinking that, possibly, she didn’t  understand the command,  “Cubby! C’mon! Get the outboard outa the trunk, girl! C’mon!”   Eagerly she bounded back, then leaped high into the air as some black labs are known to do, obviously lookin’ into the trunk at the same time and thinkin’, “Oh, that outboard.” Yet she doesn’t make any attempt to retrieve it from the trunk. I can see its hopeless. This dog ...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, February 17, 2021, the 7th Wednesday of the year, the 9th Wednesday of winter, and the 48th day of the year, with 317 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for February 17, 2021 Wannaskan robins wintering in Texas are depressed about the bitter cold. Nordhem Lunch: Closed. Earth/Moon Almanac for February 17, 2021 Sunrise: 7:28am; Sunset: 5:48pm; 3 minutes, 25 seconds more daylight today Moonrise: 10:04am; Moonset: 11:12pm, waxing crescent, 24% illuminated Temperature Almanac for February 17, 2021                 Average            Record              Today High             22                     49  ...