Wannaskan Almanac

 It is the final day of August.  Time to finally look at all the parodies and melodies that can be associated with that word.   Caesar Augustus (23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor, reigning from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is considered to be one of the most effective leaders in human history. A gust of cool air is most welcome in the month of August...and July...but not January. August is a song by Taylor Swift. At August.com you can buy smart door locks.  We do not receive much...I mean any...money from August door locks here at the Wannaskan Almanac.   August is an elderly anime character.  Some say he looks like ZZ Top.   The month of August is often referred to as the "dog days of summer" but not because of pet pooches. It has to do with the star Sirius, also known as the dog star, which rose at the same time as sunrise during the month of August in ancient Roman times...

Remember a ways back this year when The Chairman and I posted a series of “ Echo Poems ,” wherein we took turns writing a brief poem, followed by the other’s response in the form of a poem that “echoed” elements of the first in mood, wording, and style? Well, today’s poem, “Bracken Forest,” has a different twist on the echo method. It started with Wednesday’s Child sending me a poem by Dylan Thomas titled “ Fern Hill .” I was immediately so impressed by the poem that I couldn’t help but write an echo poem in honor of Thomas’ most excellent poetic creation. An homage if you will.  I definitely do not compare myself with this master; however, if he were still alive, I think he might fight me for copyright infringement, or a happier response would be his finding my piece amusing, if not worthy of a comparative analysis by some doctoral student - a response that would receive no attention at all, which may be the fate of “Bracken Forest,” as well. Surprise! My poem is the first of 2 or...

     Please don't be offended by the title of my post. When it comes to the Roman Empire, I consider myself both an idiot and a dummy. But I had a request from a reader to explain Rome in a Friday post. It's a big job and I wasn't able to finish it until today.     In a nutshell, Rome was founded on April 21, 753 B.C. by the twins Romulus and Remus who had been abandoned as infants, but had been saved by a she-wolf. The reason Rome isn't called Remus is because Romulus killed his brother in a dispute over which hill to build the city on.    Romulus became Rome's first king, followed by a couple of centuries of more kings. Then the aristocrats took over. The Romans put all their efforts into conquering their neighbors and by the second century  B.C. Rome controlled the whole Mediterranean plus the Balkans. Their biggest rivals had been the Greeks and the Carthaginians. It was touch and go for Rome for a while when Hannibal brought his army of ...

Hello and welcome to the last Saturday of summer vacation here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is August 28th. Actually, we do get one more Saturday in September before the yellow buses resume their routes, but August reaching its end is reason enough for pause and reflection. Summer started out optimistically enough. Half of our family made the usual trek to the Czech Republic. Life marched on with plenty of milestone moments for the kids: the WAKWIR* learning how to drive, the Second Oldest finally a high school senior, and the Oldest successfully completing her first year of college and returning home to do her first summer internship. The Second Youngest learned how to wash dishes and take out the garbage. The Youngest learned how to ride a bike. Both littles spent the summer practicing Czech cursive. Duolingo was a winner at our house. If I had to sum up summer in a word, it would have to be "friends." Thanks to the pandemic, friendships blossomed right in our neighborh...

     Lincoln is the most lovable president, but Washington is the one most deserving of our respect. He got us through the Revolutionary War, he oversaw the hammering out of the Constitution, and, as president, he established the precedents for managing the new country. He spent most of his adult life away from his beloved Mount Vernon. When he finally did retire, his well-meaning doctors bled him to death.    Washington had his faults. He was a slave owner, though he did free his slaves on his death, the only founding father to do so. As a general, he was not considered a brilliant strategist. What he had was steadiness in the face of disaster. He needed all the gravitas he could muster on this day in 1776 in Brooklyn, New York as the British Army prepared to capture or wipe out his Continental Army.    After the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill the previous spring, Washington was given command of the Continental Army which had laid si...

                                           Wednesday Night Regret      I saw the fawn through the window overlooking Mikinaak Creek; it acted lost and bewildered, alone there on the point in the shoulder-high grass. It hesitated at the waters edge, then quickly backed away, almost in a panic; its eyes and ears in over-drive; it could not cross the creek to safety.        Not seeing another deer with it, I went upstairs, phone receiver in hand as I was talking to a friend just then; to alert my wife to the goings-on below our upstairs window. We have a large window in our living room where, with a pair of binoculars and a camera always at hand, we’ve recorded years of comings and goings of wildlife populations both big and small; winged, walking, ...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, August 25, 2021, the 34th Wednesday of the year, the tenth Wednesday of summer, and the 237th day of the year, with 128 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for August 25, 2021 Spore Sports The big ones are still waiting for water to build enough hydrostatic pressure to break through the surface. These small ones made it with the last rainfall. Nordhem Lunch : Closed August 24-30. Earth/Moon Almanac for August 25, 2021 Sunrise: 6:31am; Sunset: 8:21pm; 3 minutes, 23 seconds less daylight today Moonrise: 10:00pm; Moonset: 9:53am, waning gibbous, 90% illuminated. Temperature Almanac for August 25, 2021                 Average            Record              Today High             75    ...

A noun is a person, place, or thing.  It is usually what you are talking about in a sentence.  For example in the sentence, "Steve drank an Extra Stout Guinness Beer," the nouns are Steve (the subject) and Beer (the object).  On a particularly rough day, the sentence "Steve drank twelve Extra Stout Guinness Beers," would end up with some incoherent slurring and general lack of caring about parts of speech. The word noun is thought to have two origins.  It is either from the French no-une, which means no one or nobody.  This would have meant that no one or nobody should write a sentence without a no-une.  That, of course, is ridiculous and cannot be proven.  The other, more accepted origin, is from the Italian noun-er.  A noun-er is when you get together with friends in the middle of the day and engage in relation...ship building by talking through your problems.  I tell you, many people leave a good noun-er with a smile on their face! Well, t...

And Now for Something Completely Different – Three-Thirds and a Cube! Time for another challenge and an invitation to dip your quill into poetic ink.  Today’s post features a relatively new poetry form – the Tricube Poem. This form can have a profound or serious meaning, but its main purpose is fun, fun, fun – and a bit of mental gymnastics to strengthen those. The form is easy to describe, but not so simple to write. Instructions for writing a Tricube poem are near the bottom of this entry. INVITATION – FIND YOUR CUBE – after you’ve read this post, please consider writing your own Tricube Poem. You have two options for sending it to us. The first is to post the poem as a comment below today’s post for all the Wannaska World to see. If you would rather keep it less public, we would still enjoy seeing the results of your effort; so, if you’re willing send it, fire away to catherineastenzel@gmail.com .  Here are two examples of the Tricube. Both are mine. The first one I wrote ...

     The War of the Roses. It sounds like fun. A bunch of knights whipping each other with roses. Whoever had the most petals left at the end was the winner. The worst wounds were only scratches. But it wasn't like that at all. Back in 15th century England, the only permanent way to get your way was at the point of a sword.    When I started my career as an English Major back in 1965. The professor gave us a list of the English monarchs. "Memorize this," he said. "It will help you keep things organized." The list started with William the Conqueror (1066-1087), not that there was an English language at that time any of us students would have understood. The list ended with Elizabeth II (1952-    ). And all these years later, Elizabeth still has that hypen hanging.    Along with the list of monarchs were several pages of family trees. A dynasty would go along for a couple of hundred years, then there'd be a cut in the line. You knew that's when...

Hello and welcome to another Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac by way of Worcester, Massachusetts via Washington State. Today is August 21st. Whoowee, it's been a whirlwind of a few weeks as I've traveled to the West Coast with the Second Oldest, and then to the East Coast with the Oldest. I recently remarked to a friend that it feels like children are little forever (as in, it takes a long time for them to grow up), but then suddenly *poof* they are grown up. Which pretty much sums up how I have been feeling while traveling with my two oldest children on their respective journeys both physically and figuratively. The Second Oldest is now what colleges call a "rising senior" and with the new title comes the college search. I love the college search. I tell the kids that it's my job to ask the questions to help them do the due diligence of selecting a college environment where they will thrive and be intellectually curious and stimulated. With the Oldest's...

     The country and the world have been plagued by fire this summer. Are things getting worse? It seems that way, but there have been some doozies of fire in the past. Take the Miramichi Fire of 1825 that destroyed three million acres of forest in New Brunswick and Maine and killed 160 people. Those fortunate enough to live along a river, could wait in the water along with the livestock and wildlife till the flames passed by.    The Great Chicago Fire in 1871 was part of a huge fire that spread from Wisconsin to Michigan, killing 1,200. It remains the deadliest fire in U.S. history. Some scientists blamed the widespread nature of the fire on a shower of meteorites. Then there's the Thumb Fire of 1881 that burned a million acres in the region of Michigan that sticks like a thumb into Lake Huron.     The day after the Thumb Fire the eastern seaboard was covered in yellow smoke, which got the attention of legislators in Washington. The federal gover...

                                                                These Days     Under the box titled, “Usual Occupation,” on my birth certificate, my dad “Father of Child” is listed as being a “Warehouse Foreman’ --Des Moines Co-op.” Perhaps the fact I worked at the toy factory, many of them in the warehouse for over thirty years, was preordained. Hmmm, if only he had been a physician ... alas.     I remember having to work in the toy factory warehouse with two other men, twenty-some years ago; I think it was in August, when temperatures approached 100 degrees, an extreme rarity for this part of Minnesota. The rest of the plant was shutdown (another extr...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, August 18, 2021, the 33rd Wednesday of the year, the ninth Wednesday of summer, and the 230th day of the year, with 135 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for August 18, 2021 New England Asters are Blooming Otherwise known as Michaelmas Daisy and Aster novae-angliae, this delightful bloom lights up the late summer Wannaska landscape with blossoms ranging from rich deep violet to lavender-pink. As a late bloomer, the New England Aster provides fall nectar source for pollinators, especially Monarchs as they stock up for their fall migration to Mexico. Our deer resistant native prefers moist, rich soils, but can still thrive in the thin topsoil of Beltrami Forest. Nordhem Lunch : Click Here Today's Specials Earth/Moon Almanac for August 18, 2021 Sunrise: 6:21am; Sunset: 8:34pm; 3 minutes, 17 seconds less daylight today Moonrise: 6:34pm; Moonset: 1:24am, waxing gibbous, 76% illuminated. Temperature Almanac for August 18, 2021 ...