Wannaskan Almanac

Monk, Zen Master, Poet – Thich Nhat Hanh, 1926-2022 We pause today to memorialize Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master, activist, author, poet, and much more. He died ten days ago in his beloved Viet Nam. He was 95 years old. His students affectionately called him Thay (teacher). Maybe you’ve never heard of him. Perhaps you have, but who he was and what he did for the world may be harder to articulate because he was a man of many faces including advocacy of “engaged Buddhism,” and also his recognition as “the father of mindfulness.” Maybe you know that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. nominated Thay for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967, but the prize was not awarded to anyone that year. “I do not personally know of anyone more worthy than this gentle monk from Vietnam,” Dr. King wrote to the Nobel Institute in Norway. Thich Nhat Hanh may not have “won” the prize that year, but that didn’t seem to matter to him. He had a more important mission in mind: a world at peace. (See the text of Dr. King’s nomina...

     It's been a busy week here on the south fork of the Roseau River. I say that facetiously. With only nine hours of daylight, it's hard to get anything done. I fight the temptation to hibernate. There's a claim that back in pioneer days, grandma and grandpa used to sleep the winter away in a cold bedroom. It seems like a good idea, but it's probably just a story.    I did have a breakthrough this week in my goal to equal the cinnamon rolls at Nelson's café. For years Teresa and I would meet Teresa's sister Becky and husband Jack at Nelson's café one morning a week before work. It's a clamorous place, filled with many competing conversations, but I put up with it because Larry, one of the owners, made the best cinnamon rolls in the world. I'm serious.    Larry's rolls were big and tightly wound. I never brought a tape measure, but I'm sure that laid out flat they'd measure well over a foot and a half. They were filled with cinnamon and ...

Hello and welcome to the last Saturday of January here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Can you believe it? Today is January 29th. This week, three of our kid crew participated in Festival, the annual judging event where students aim to perfect a piece of music - make a song selection, commit it to memory, and perform it for a private audience of one judge and one assistant judge. A small audience is welcome to witness as long as there is no video. There are moments in a parent's life when you worry if your kid is going to do well. Anything that requires them to get up in front of someone else - a teacher, an audience, a crowd of spectators - is one of those times. In previous posts, I've written about how the Third Grader has handled Festival. Long story short: it's usually rough until she pulls herself together just before walking into the high school. This past year, we've been working on calming strategies, figuring out how to saddle the mustang of her emotions so she can ...

        "It's D-Day!" Everyone knows what that expression means, though some may no longer connect it with the invasion of Normandy in 1945. How about: "A walk to Canossa," meaning humiliating yourself to get something important.     Every now and then I come across the "Walk to Canossa" in my reading. I look it up, then promptly forget what it was about. When I saw that the anniversary of the end of the walk took place on this day in 1077 I decided to refresh my memory. The walk had begun the previous December in Germany and ended outside a castle in Canossa in northern Italy.  I almost hate to delve into the Middle Ages. It's all kings and popes, wars and sieges. You pull one pope out over here and three emperors fall down over there. You carefully put the emperors away and a statue of Charlemagne rolls down.    Speaking of Charlemagne, it was he who turned on the lights to end the Dark Ages. He did that by hobbling the warlords roamin...

  Tilbake ned i hullet du går! Back Down The Hole You go!        “I know a couple guys at work who’d wanna punch you right in the nose, “ Sven said to Mac Furlong, a lending officer at the Uptown Bank, from whom Sven was requesting a short-term loan. Mac had just admitted he had returned an eleven and a half pound walleye he had caught ice fishing that weekend, to the lake.    “You let it go????”, Sven asked incredulously, looking at the thirty one inch chance-of-a-lifetime monster fish in the photograph he held. “Are you nuts??”    “Well, it was sort of an impulsive decision, “Mac started to explain. “The fish couldn’t be out of the water very long or it’d die, and I was thinkin’ of what it would cost to have it mounted versus the trollin’ motor I wanted to buy this summer that I really needed--and I was thinkin’ about how I should set a good example for all my lendin’ customers, such as yourself Sven, and act fiscally responsible and not gi...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday, January 26, 2022, the fourth Wednesday of the year, the sixth Wednesday of winter, and the 26 day of the year, with 339 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for January 26, 2022 Our recent super-sparkly, fluffy snowfall in Wannaska was a classic example of meteorological conditions promoting "snowflake", a term used when single ice crystals in a snowfall achieve sufficient size to amalgamated with others. As Wannaskans know all too well, not all snow is fluffy. The main constituent shapes for  precipitating ice crystals, are needle, column, plate, and rime. Word-Wednesday provides this handy snow guide so that readers can identify future snow fall flakes. January 26 Nordhem Lunch : Oven Fried Chicken Dinner with Mashed Potatoes & Peas Warm Meatloaf Sandwich with Baked Beans French Onion Soup with Egg Salad & Choice of Sandwich Earth/Moon Almanac for January 26, 2021 Sunrise: 8:05am; Sunset: 5:06pm; 2 minutes, 3...

We all know that Chicago (the Windy City) got its nickname due to the “full of hot air” politicians that have made their home there.  But maybe you didn’t know how New York City earned the moniker the “Big Apple”.  You certainly couldn’t have possibly known that centuries before it was called the “Big Apple” that it was known as the “Big Orange”…well, actually not “Big Orange”.  In 1673, the Dutch captured New York from the English and dubbed it “New Orange” in honor of William III of Orange. However, the following year, the city reverted to English control and its former name. So how did New York become the “Big Apple”?  New York state is America’s top apple grower, after the state of Washington, but New York City’s nickname has nothing to do with fruit production. Calling New York the “Big Apple” can be traced back to horse racing around the year 1920.  New York City newspaper reporter John Fitz Gerald heard African-American stable hands in New Orleans say the...

GOOD OR EVIL? YOUR CALL . Goodness is the mind of the beholder. So it is with evil. The first task in determining who or what is good, or evil is to determine the criteria for each. The criteria for good and the criteria for evil aren’t always a simple inverse of one another. For example, much has been written about Grendel. The “evil” is obvious, at least from most human viewpoints. He kills beyond a need for sustenance. His physical appearance wreaks of darkness. Yet, other analysts argue that Grendel is worthy of our pity, that he is a victim of his upbringing and his environment, and that his limited intellectual powers limit his capacity for discerning good and evil. Then there is Beowulf. The apparent good guy, the hero of the story. Right? His upbringing and environment have shaped him as well. Right? He has enough intellectual horsepower to tell good from evil. Right? For Beowulf, things are pretty straightforward. Save the good guys. Maim or kill the bad guys. Have pride in yo...