Wannaskan Almanac

Today is our second exploration of the Romantic poets who thrived for 100 years ending in the late 18th century. Romantic poets had an amazing impact on poetry and literature during that short time. The main point of today’s discussion - before and after the poems - is a contrast, yet a connection between the cultural period preceding the Romantic Era – the Enlightenment. Romanticism was a reaction to the Enlightenment as a cultural movement, an aesthetic style, and an attitude of mind. Culturally, Romanticism freed people from the limitations and rules of the Enlightenment. The music of the Enlightenment was orderly and restrained, while the music of the Romantic period was emotional. As an aesthetic style, Romanticism was very imaginative while the art of the Enlightenment was realistic and ornate. The Romanticism as an attitude of mind was characterized by transcendental idealism, where experience was obtained through the gathering and processing of information. The idealism of the ...

     Teresa and I made our way down to Richmond, Virginia last weekend to join what's called a staff ride. Military officers used to ride horses around old battlefields to review strategy and tactics. My cousin Tom teaches at a school for strategic studies in Washington and uses these staff rides (without horses) as a teaching tool. A few years ago he started doing these rides for friends and family.   For this most recent tour we joined about 35 participants in Richmond on Friday afternoon. Many of us have been on previous rides to Gettysburg, Antietam, etc. and we got reacquainted at an Irish pub. Saturday morning we drove 20 miles northeast to the Cold Harbor Battlefield Visitor Center. Back in 1864 Grant had been chasing Lee, trying to get around him and capture Richmond. The two armies met a crossroads called Cold Harbor      Cold Harbor was a disaster for Grant and the thousands of Union soldiers who died there in less than an hour. We staff ride...

Hello and welcome to Hallow's Eve Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is October 30th, and, folks, this is the first snow-free October we've had in a long time. Of course, we could get that Halloween snow (totally normal here) but the forecast is, thus far, suggesting otherwise. Aaahhhh.... Halloween! Goblins and ghouls. Scares and spooks. And lots of sweets. Last year, we hosted an  at-home Halloween adventure  of indoor trick-or-treating. Hubby and I taped numbers on the doors of every room in the house that had a door, creating an apartment building feel. Glowing pumpkins and night lights provided a dimly lit ambiance. With candy bags in hand, the kids made their way to each "apartment" and knocked. "Who is it?" came a witchy, saccharine croon from the first room. "Trick or treat!" the kids shouted. (Even the teenagers, because, you know, it's important to humor mom and dad.) The door opened, revealing a mysterious, black-shrouded ...

     I was visiting a friend recently who has taken up genealogy in retirement. The Internet has been a big help in tracing her ancestors, but DNA changed everything. She took the two big saliva tests and made her genes available for all other testers to see. What a surprise when her unknown half-brother sent her an email. It turned out her father had an affair before he met her mother and Bill (not his real name) was the result.     Bill lives in a state that voted overwhelmingly for a politician that my friend despises. She fears Bill is a supporter so they don't talk politics when they chat on the phone. Bill lives in a nursing home a thousand miles distant and my friend does not intend to visit her long-lost brother, though she will continue to exchange Christmas and birthday cards.    I would like to know more about my ancestors, but once I go back a few generations, I have hundreds of great-grandparents. Which line should I focus on? There's...

 'Way Back, A Long Time Ago    It was Saturday, October 23rd, when I received a small brown envelope from friends in Iowa, one of whom I’ve known since 1963. In the envelope was a fine example of his wife’s cursive hand-writing; an execution of penmanship a person doesn’t see anymore unless it’s computer generated.    There were also seven old yellowed photographs, all dated August 1984. Four images were of me, one was of my white German Shepard named Jake, and three were of an eight or nine-year old blonde-haired boy, named Ryan, who had been fishing with us. I looked at those in disbelief, totally confounded about the event, and the fact that these photographs were sent to me by these friends. What? How can this be? ... bare-chested, pre-beer belly me.    Three of my photos were bare-chested, pre-beer belly me at the Lake of the Woods (shirtless: a outdoor phenomenon totally unknown these past years except during a clothes change or in appreciative r...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, October 27, 2021, the 43rd Wednesday of the year, the sixth Wednesday of fall, and the 300th day of the year, with 65 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for October 27, 2021 Pumpkin     Cucurbita pepo , Cucurbita maxima , C. argyrosperma , and C. moschata are some of the cultivars, or round, smooth, slightly ribbed winter squash, otherwise known as a pumpkin in Wannaskaland. Native to northeastern Mexico and the southern United States, pumpkins are one of the oldest domesticated plants , having been used as early as 7,000 to 5,500 BC. If your pumpkin has become a jack-o’-lantern, its name comes from the reported phenomenon of strange lights flickering over peat bogs, called will-o'-the-wisps or jack-o'-lanterns, also tied to the Irish legend of Stingy Jack , a drunkard who bargains with Satan and is doomed to roam the Earth with only a hollowed turnip to light his way, so believe what you will. Nordhem Lunch : C...

 What an adventure I have been on... Okay, so maybe most people don't equivalate food poisoning and a trip to the Emergency Room an adventure.  There are so many different aspects of it.  Like the logistics of having violent diarrhea and vomiting at the same time.  Talk about your tough decisions! Those two words are very hard to spell.  I always seem to make a mess out of diarrhea (no pun intended) while vomiting seems like it should have a double t in it.  Vomitting.  No wonder people switched over to saying puke.   It is good to be back home though.  It was a rough road there for a couple of days.  I also owe Joe S. a thank you.  After Google changed their settings for my old email account he got me back in to the Wannaskan Almanac writer circle.  Without him doing that, you would never have gotten those first couple of paragraphs!  I am sure you will want to email him with your thank yous! We had summer right up u...

As I’ve said occasionally before: “And now for something completely different!”  Subject: The Romantic Poets And no, “romantic” does not mean shmuzzling, rub-a-rubba in the bath-a-tubba. Not to discount the natural (and even the unnatural) forms of love, lust, devotion and other forms of the romantic. Plenty has been written on those themes. The Romantic era (about 1800 to 1850) and its poetry are an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe It involved a reaction against prevailing Enlightenment ideas of the 18th century. The Romantic poets used specific poetic forms: odes, lyrical ballads, and sonnets were popular among the Romantics. When reference is made to Romantic verse, the poets who generally spring to mind are William Blake (1757-1827), William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), George Gordon, 6th Lord Byron (1788-1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) and John Keats (1795-1821). Importantly for our explora...

     I am not a beach person. I burn easily and it's hard to read a book on the beach. What I really like is to sit in a comfortable chair and read a book. So it would make no sense for me to fly to a place like the Virgin Islands. But Teresa and I did fly to the Virgin Islands a few years ago to visit our son Ned who was working there on a boat.     Back in those days, Ned worked summers on a boat that took tourists from Boston to Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod. The boats normally went into storage for the winter, but one winter the owner decided to send the boats to the Virgin Islands to shuttle passengers between the islands.    The boat owner rented a house and a couple of vehicles for the crew on one of the islands for the season and Teresa and I decided to take a jaunt down there to look around. We flew in to Saint Thomas, one of the three American Virgin Islands, then met up with Ned and rode his boat over to Tortola one of the British Virg...

Hello and welcome to an absolutely gorgeous, sunny Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is October 23rd, and, boy, have we lucked out with the fall weather, or what? I am exhausted, folks. Aside from driving all over the state this week, the Senior 2.0 and I just did a double double header of college tours, which, if I understand my baseball terms correctly, means that we toured four schools in two days. Plus one today. Even the Senior needs a nap. Between the Oldest and Senior 2.0, I have visited 25 unique universities and colleges. Touring colleges is kind of like going on a vacation. You pull out the map and make a plan. You star your stops and gather information. You hopefully click on the ubiquitous scheduling calendar and hope against hope you can get a day and time slot that will work in your master plan. Once you have the itinerary established, you start scouting lodging options - and let me tell you, the prices of Airbnbs have gone up so they really aren't that mu...

     On this day in 1707 four Royal Navy warships sank on the rocks of the Scilly Isles off Cornwall, England. There were many causes for the accident in which almost 2,000 sailers lost their lives: inaccurate  charts, errors in compasses, and bad weather.    The lost ships were part of a fleet of of twenty-one ships returning to England from a battle in the Mediterranean. Looking at the map, it seems like it would be hard to miss the entrance to the English Channel and stray far north to the Scillies,  but out on the ocean, in the dark, it's hard to know exactly where you are.     Finding latitude, your north-south position is not so hard if you can get a sighting of the North Star. Longitude is more difficult and also more crucial as you approach land. If you you know exactly what time it is, you can determine your longitude, but no clock that existed in 1707 could survive life at sea.   As a result of the Scillies disaster, ...

  One Summer's Short Story    Ever try to boil frozen lobster on a barbecue grill in your backyard? And I don’t mean on your metro paver-brick patio with its Spanish flourishes of arched adobe doorways, taco-shaped swimming pool and free-standing fireplace; nor am I talking about a sixteen-hundred dollar grill with a stainless steel hood and five burners.    I mean using a 50 btu propane grill that you can buy at Wal-Mart for less than $150. My utilitarian-model barbecue grill is right out my backdoor and used several times a week, but I have never attempted boiling lobster on it until just the other day.    The frozen lobsters laid in a dish on top of the outside central air conditioner awaiting rescue by a fox or large rodent bent on a seafood dinner. They had been in our freezer for almost three months amid an unchanging landscape of frozen bread, venison sausage links, three various sized pizzas, and some old freezer-burnt ice cream.    ...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, October 20, 2021, the 42nd Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of fall, and the 293rd day of the year, with 72 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for October 20, 2021 2021 Mosquito Season Over The recent frost should pretty much end this miserable summer infestation. Nordhem Lunch: Closed . Earth/Moon Almanac for October 20, 2021 Sunrise: 7:52; Sunset: 6:25pm; 3 minutes, 25 seconds less daylight today Moonrise: 6:43pm; Moonset: 7:46am, full moon, 99% illuminated. Temperature Almanac for October 20, 2021                 Average            Record              Today High             49                   ...