Wannaskan Almanac

    I’ve been in the northwoods again lately. Not unusual for me since I live there all year around, but it was different in that I was hunting ‘partridges,’ (Ruffed Grouse), the smoke-colored denizen of northern forests and swamps. I was in the company of one of my wife’s three sons, Craig, who had succumbed to the combined allure of beautiful September weather, and partridge season and archery season for deer.     I used to hunt partridge years ago and have eaten many. Ruffed Grouse, aka ‘partridge,’ is an upland game bird that, as my memory serves me, tastes great, whereas its close cousin, the Sharptail grouse doesn’t taste as good, and has forever imprinted that impression on me. Sharptail prefer open fields and thick willow glens, to the Ruffed Grouse hideouts in the woods and under tree boughs. The one thing they have in common is that both birds, suddenly bursting from cover, can scare the living b’jesus out of a unsuspecting person, which is someth...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, September 29, 2021, the 39th Wednesday of the year, the second Wednesday of fall, and the 272nd day of the year, with 93 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for September 29, 2021 Fall colors splash across the forest floor. Nordhem Lunch : Closed . Earth/Moon Almanac for September 29, 2021 Sunrise: 7:21am; Sunset: 7:07pm; 3 minutes, 33 seconds less daylight today Moonrise: --; Moonset: 4:12pm, waning crescent, 44% illuminated. Temperature Almanac for September 29, 2021                 Average            Record              Today High             60                     82       ...

One of the plusses...is plusses a word?  It didn't get underlined in red on my computer, so I can assume that Microsoft thinks it is a word...and if Microsoft thinks it is, then it likely is.  They wouldn't lie...I mean, they aren't Twitter or Facebook!   *Note, Mr. Bill video appears only to make the title make sense Anyway, one of the benefits (I know that is a word, or is it...no, stay on task Mr. HC.  Don't go of on a tangent or you will lose your reader's attention) of the extra time at home during the pandemic is that we have started playing more games.  We play Sorry, Revolution (our own invention), and Uno.  Around our house things really get dicey when we start to play Spicy Uno.  You play with the same cards as regular Uno, but you use some extra rules in order to aggravate each other. Tired of too much conversation?  With Spicy Uno you won't be talking to each other in no time!   Spicy UNO Rules If someone plays a 6, ever...

Only luck and genetics protect us from the “visitation” spoken of in this poem. Some of us “stay sharp” past one hundred years. Some even find good life quality at an advanced age. Consider: Asian American (86 years), White (78), Native (77), African American (75). These stats are quite variable depending on the data source. By this count, I have 7 years left. Shoot! Always thought 80 was my mark. In any case, that final date on the calendar is almost always too close in, although there are tragic exceptions. But I digress. This post’s poem is about mental incapacity – a death before death, perhaps. I ask forgiveness for giving the speaker greater ability than circumstances and faculties allow; however, what other way is there to delve into the impaired mind but to dive in and swim behind their eyes. A Visitation I am not sure now but I think I know my name I am not to blame Furred familiar curled beside me, head on my knee a clawed nameless paw Completely undone the green grass that o...

     Nature made the first glass: black obsidian from volcanoes. It could be chipped into knives and scrapers. It became an object of skill and art. People figured out they could make pots by baking clay; but making their own glass was much harder. Making glass required a permanent settlement. And that required the invention of agriculture.    Not to get too deep into all this, last Spring, Teresa and I were making our way home to Minnesota from visiting the kids in Massachusetts. We were in New York State, out west of Binghamton when we ended up in downtown Corning. We had no intention of going to Corning. I blamed the GPS, but it could have been pilot error.    Corning turned out to be a charming place with lots of brick buildings and intriguing shops. Across the river was a gigantic museum devoted to glass. We needed to get home, but on our most recent trip back to Minnesota, we planned to spend two nights in Corning to give the museum the time it s...

Hello and welcome to just about the best autumn Saturday you could ask for here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is September 25th and the last Saturday of the month. Only three months to go and we can call it a wrap on 2021. Kids are three weeks into the school year. I've been nothing short of amazed that I haven't gotten a quarantine call. I mean, really, with four kids in the public school, the odds are pretty good that one of them, at least, would have to be quarantined.  But it turns out that, while school districts in other parts of the U.S. navigate mask mandates, vaccine requirements, and staff shortages, it appears that schools up here in Wannaskaland are operating relatively smoothly as if everything is normal. I call it the hear-no-evil-see-no-evil-speak-no-evil protocol. I get it. Kids have got bigger problems than Covid. Mental health issues are through the roof. "It's so stressful ," the Kindergartner , excuse me, First Grader, said this past week. ...

   There have been an endless number of dramatizations of the lives of 19th century writers coming out of Britain the past few years. My favorites are about the Brontës, those three sisters writing away in the middle of the Yorkshire moors. They had to assume male pen names, because women were not expected to be writers in the early 1800s.    Always in the background in these videos is their beloved brother Branwell. He aspires to be a painter, but he drinks. He'll burst into the room late in the evening. His shirt is pulled out, his hair's a mess. After he knocks over a table or two, one of the sisters puts him to bed. "Anne, it's your turn."    Branwell was born on June 26, 1817. His mother died when he was four. Two of his three older sisters died four years later. Friends of the family urged Branwell's father to send him to boarding school for a change of scene, but his father, a church curate, decided to educate Branwell at home.    Branwell ...

 No Translation Needed          Spectacular September clouds from 2020; I saw some similar to these last week but I didn’t have my digital camera with me, only my inexpensive cellphone whose images are so reliably poor in quality, that I didn't bother to try. Although I didn’t buy it to take fantastic digital images like Chairman Joe’s iPhone 11 does, I feel unarmed when I carry it and such grandeur presents itself overhead. or leaps out of the woods and stands still, it looking at me, and me looking at it, as in the case of the wild turkey I saw on Sunday. I was slowly driving on one of our field roads when I saw it standing on a trail watching me go by. I’m sure it heard the sound of the truck and felt safe enough, half-hidden, to observe me from that distance. It was the first one I had seen since spring; a pleasant change from seeing deer everyday. (Turkey season starts Oct 2!) My wife and I have noticed how little wildlife there has come to be aro...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, September 22, 2021, the 38th Wednesday of the year, the fall equinox and first Wednesday of fall, and the 265th day of the year, with 100 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for September 22, 2021 Mushrooms are getting very large with the recent rains. Nordhem Lunch : Closed . Earth/Moon Almanac for September 22, 2021 Sunrise: 7:11am; Sunset: 7:22pm; 3 minutes, 33 seconds less daylight today Moonrise: 8:24pm; Moonset: 8:46am, waning gibbous, 98% illuminated. Temperature Almanac for September 22, 2021                 Average            Record              Today High             63                     84 ...

 It just dawned on me that the Wannaskan Almanac Hollywood edition that was published on September 2, 2010 was actually named Beverly Hills 9/02/10.  I think a former TV show owes us some royalties.  I always wondered where they got that name.   As an independently wealthy Almanac writer, I don't really feel the need to pursue this legal action.  Money really doesn't mean anything to me anymore.  My piggy bank is already full of pennies.  Should have gone with the blue whale bank...more room for my brand of common sense! Snapped a pretty neat lightning picture the other day.  What does the lightning look like to you?  Some have said an angel, a tree, and a guy playing a violin.   On the prairies we often have cloudbursts like the one above.  Many times you can see the rain falling off in the distance, often to the chagrin of a farmer in need of moisture.  It is almost like it is that guy 30 miles away who gets all the...

Threa Almonster – A Voice from the Middle East By turns aggressively reckless and fiercely protective, always guided by faith and ancestry, Threa Almontaser’s incendiary debut ( The Wild Fox of Yemen ) asks how mistranslation can be a form of self-knowledge and survival. A love letter to the country and people of Yemen, a portrait of young Muslim womanhood in New York after 9/11, and an extraordinarily composed examination of what it means to carry in the body the echoes of what came before, Almontaser’s polyvocal collection sneaks artifacts to and from worlds, repurposing language and adapting to the space between cultures. Speakers move with the force of what cannot be contained by the limits of the American imagination, and instead invest in troublemaking and trickery, navigate imperial violence across multiple accents and anthems, and apply gang signs in henna, utilizing any means necessary to form a semblance of home. In doing so, The Wild Fox of Yemen – from which the poems belo...

     We love watching the Royals. We envy their lives of splendor and indulge our contempt for their fecklessness. Of course some of them are admirable. I can think of King Alfred the Great (848-899), and in our own day, Queen Elizabeth II. But many of them, such as Queen Isabella II of Spain, cause us to shake our heads in wonder.    A king used to be like a father. He had absolute power over his people. Then parliaments sprang up, which divided power, as in a marriage. America divorced its king in 1776. Any royals that remain today are treated like mildly demented grandparents.    Isabella became Queen of Spain at the age of two after the death of her father. Her uncle was opposed to a female ruler and led a series of civil wars. Little Isabella with her mother's guidance and the support of the army won out. Isabella became effective queen when she turned 13 in 1843. Her supporters, the Liberals, demanded and got a transition from absolute monarchy t...