Wannaskan Almanac

                                                      Time Time Time Time In time  running out of time give me the time of day is it that time already out of time   in time look at the time don’t have the time take the time watches alarms bells whistles          sun dials            arrivals Time Time Time Time What do we do with it? What would we do without it? Is it real? Is it an artificial construct? In the poem today, two people count time, and one counts time forward and one counts backward. Why the difference?  Why can’t we move around in time the way we do in space? Why do we seem to be stuck on a relentless one-way conveyor belt into the future? Was there a beginning of the universe, and if so, wha...

  Tragic beauty has Ireland, it’s writ in God’s laws.  Her green fields we love, her rain gives us pause.  “How to write a note of condolence.” The art of sounding sincere when you feel dead yourself.  The believer ascending to the Godhead drops off the fears of the body like the booster rocket of a capsule to the stars.  Before your trip, the guidebook has too much information. Once you get there, it has way too little.  If a character dies in the first pages of a novel or movie, we know we won’t see him again. But if he dies at the end, we can expect to see him bouncing back in the sequel.  Much family dysfunction is resolved by putting the despised relative in a nursing home and tearing up the visitor’s pass.  It’s good to be aware of where our food comes from. Someday there will be a code to identify the field, the grain elevator, and the slaughterhouse each bite passed through.  Chairman Joe  

School is over. Finally. After nine long months, the really weird 2020-2021 school year has come to a close with some good and some not-so-good things. Starting off with the good things that came with the end of the school year, is grades. With a distanced learning-free trimester, I can firmly prove my theory right. I do better in school in person rather than online. I can take a few days, like when I was sick in April, but long periods of time like what we had to do during the first and second trimester, I can't deal with. Now the evidence that supports my theory shows that the first trimester (the trimester with the most distance learning) I had the worst grades. In the second trimester (the trimester with less distance learning) I had slightly better grades. And the third trimester (the trimester with no distance learning) I had the best grades. Including speech, which was, for me, the hardest class. Now some unfortunate things also happened. The week before school ended, I was ...

     So much went on in history on this day I decided to pack it all into one post. Why not? First we have the Battle of the Haly's River. I'd never heard of it either, but it's significant because the Greek philosopher Thales predicted that a solar eclipse would occur on this day in 585 BC. The Medes and the Lydians were scheduled to have a battle near the Halys River in northeastern Turkey on that day, but the eclipse frightened them and they quickly signed a truce that ended their six year war. A Lydian princess was married to a Medan prince and the Halys became the boundary between the two kingdoms.    On a personal note I remember as a kid watching movies set in Africa where the explorer and his girlfriend would be about to be burned at the stake. The explorer happened to know a solar eclipse was about to take place and would make signs to the man about to light the pyre that he would extinguish the sun if he or his friend were harmed. Sure enough, the sun ...

    Vi and Guy   Today May 27th is my dad's birthday, born in 1905, he would've been 116 years old. He was forty-six when I was born in 1951. Mom was 42. Dad and I weren't particularly close, owing to our vast age difference I think, but he was a good role model for me, as a person, husband, father, good neighbor, hard worker, public speaker, humorist, and grandfather. As to offering worldly guidance, he simply told me and my three older sisters, "Try to get along with people," in hope of a peaceable resolution to conflict; he never looked down on people different from himself, that I recall. He was compassionate; I remember him weeping at the sight of a photograph of a starving Ethopian child, in the Des Moines Register & Tribune. Birthdays in 1905   January 3 --Anna May Wong, film actress (died 1961 ) January 7 – James Simpson Jr. , race car drive (died 1960 ) January 11 – Dorothy Hale , socialite (suicide 1938 ) February 6 – Merze Tate , African America...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, May 26, 2021, the 21st Wednesday of the year, the tenth Wednesday of spring, and the 146th day of the year, with 219 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for May 26, 2021 The blueberries are flowering up nicely! Dandelion follow up from two weeks ago : Dandelions have to grow tall in the forest to reach the sunlight... Nordhem Lunch : Closed. Earth/Moon Almanac for May 26, 2021 Sunrise: 5:30am; Sunset: 9:13pm; 2 minutes, 0 seconds more daylight today Moonrise: 9:57pm; Moonset: 5:36am, waxing gibbous, 99% illuminated. For early risers, today's lunar eclipse begins at 3:47am, and reaches its maximum by 5:36am. Temperature Almanac for May 26, 2021                 Average            Record              Today High       ...

  It is only seven months till Christmas So get shopping for things on my list If I don't get what I want this year I am surely bound to be ------upset So head out right now to Walmart They have already put up their lights Or start browsing at Amazon On any of your sleepless nights It would certainly be a great tragedy If you ran out of shopping days. So get off your butt and start spending At Target, Lee's, or Ebay I am really not that hard to shop for And I have given you over half a year To save up and buy me a present Something nice, like Canadian beer. This summer don't waste time on vacation Or hunting, gardening, or fishing Just get out and search for my wonderful gift The one for which I've been wishing. So...only 7 months and you will be complaining about how cold it is again.   So...only 7 months until you get the last mosquito out of your house. So...only 7 months until you can wear that Santa suit that used to be too tight but now is comfortable. Thanks for ...

Did you read the three poems for Spring from The Atlantic Daily posted here one week ago today? If so, did you follow directions and put on your cap “with all the frills upon it”? If yes, this post treats you to more – but different – poets writing in the Spring mood. Yep, it’s still Spring for another month. As I write this, we are finally getting those long-delayed April showers. Out here in Beltrami Island Forest, the forest floor is less crunchy, the fiddlehead ferns are finally poppy up, and the dogs come in muddy-wonderful. It’s Spring all right.     Finally. Note on organization – same format as last week: Background: Comments from the Atlantic staff and author bios given after each of the poems. Explorations: None this week. Please appreciate the poetry in your own way. Comments welcome. Praise Song for the Day By Elizabeth Alexander           A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration Each day we go about our business, walking p...

  Our century has the cash to pay seventy-five million for a Van Gogh. Our doctors could have saved him after he shot himself. But it will be awhile before anyone can cure his madness. The future has a thousand paths, the past has only one.  Parents tell their daughters not to bring home a Black, a gay, a Muslim, a Catholic, etc., etc.   The old  folks should  just forbid bigots and learn to love whoever their girl marries.  Passive-aggression is a psychological stab in the back.  I shudder in thinking of our ancestors who dug all day in the earth. They died early of a broken back. On the plus side, they quit when it got dark and had the winter  off.  The introvert will down a bump Which bucks him up, improves his look He'll face the crowd, endure the chump Till back in bed with faithful book Chairman Joe  

Hello and welcome to a cheerful Saturday at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is May 22nd. My happy news for the week is that I renewed my membership at the local fitness center. According to the Kindergartener, truth-teller in all things, I have gotten fat. His siblings agree. And I have to agree. There's no wishful thinking here. My pants still fit - how I don't know - but I am grateful. It's been over a year since I've properly exercised or had an ongoing exercise regime. The pandemic spurred many backyard adventures but none that elevated my heart rate for any significant amount of time to count as cardio. I walked our little neighborhood loop. A LOT. But still. Not the sweaty, satisfied exertion from an honest-to-goodness workout. Pre-pandemic, I reasoned that I no longer needed to go to the gym because everything I might use for a good workout - exercise videos, hand weights, yoga mat - I had at home. And when the weather warms up, why would I walk three miles on a tre...

   I love a good coincidence. Of course I knew that Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo transatlantic  flight on this day in 1927. But I just learned that Amelia Earhart completed the first solo flight acrsoss the Atlantic on the same day in 1932. Amazing.    The dream of crossing the Atlantic by air began with hot air balloons. The first successful balloon flight was in France in 1783 with a sheep, a duck and a rooster as passengers. The dream got more serious with the development of coal gas for buoyancy and the discovery of the Gulf Stream that would carry aeronauts across the ocean from west to east.   The first attempt left New York in 1857, but a windstorm brought the balloon down before it got over the ocean. The next attempt was interrupted by the Civil War. It wasn't till 1978 that someone succeeded in crossing the Atlantic in a balloon.    When a London newspaper offered a prize of £10,000 for the first non-stop flight, no one tho...

"More were coming in on the creek."  Spirit Lifting Idea  by WannaskaWriter It’s been dry here in Roseau County. We haven’t had any rain for ... well, until supposedly Wednesday night, May 19th. But here in Palmville it was still dry at 9:30 pm; 9:49 pm; and 11:00 pm ... as dark clouds and lightning all went north of us. Even Roseau was getting rain so said the on-line weather sources. Everything here was anticipating a good soaking. Geese were in the yard with their goslings, more were coming in on the creek. Redwing blackbirds were noisily welcoming the non-existent rain; however the robins hung back; the skeptics they are. And so it’s been for several weeks; the exact number of days I wasn’t ambitious enough to discover. The fire-conditions sign at Wannaska forestry now indicates EXTREME in big bold black letters against a red background, up from last week’s VERY HIGH danger alert. If they weren’t forecasting rain, they were warning us of immediate fire danger on radio,...