Wannaskan Almanac

And now for more deep thoughts, with Mr. Hot Coco. I used to be a people person, but people ruined that for me. As the week drags on past Monday and Tuesday, even the calendar says WTF. I do all my own stunts, just never intentionally. When people say they are cooler than me, I assume they mean I am hotter than them. My first day as a crime scene investigator: Detective:  How did this man drown? Me:  He couldn't breathe underwater. Saying "Have a nice day" to someone sounds friendly, but saying "Enjoy your next 24 hours" to someone is often considered ominous and threatening. Enjoy your day!  I am off fishing.  Unless it is raining.  Then I will be fishing in the rain.

Wider Perspectives from Hafez Though Hafez is well known for his poetry, he is less commonly recognized for his intellectual and political contributions. A defining feature of Hafez' poetry is its ironic tone and the theme of hypocrisy, widely believed to be a critique of the religious and ruling establishments of the time.  Persian satire developed during the 14th century, within the courts of the Mongol Empire. In this period, Hafez and other notable early satirists, produced a body of work that has since become a template for the use of satire as a political device. Many of his critiques thought to be aimed at the disintegration of important public and private institutions.  His work, particularly his imaginative references to monasteries, convents, and other cultural organizations. Hafez’s tendency was to ignore the period’s prevailing religious taboos. He countered his societal critiques with a good dose of humor as a way of commenting on the time’s religious dogmas. Empl...

  The best teachers are able to enter into the ignorance of their students. If you don’t have a Plan B, you may be forced to accept a plan you would have considered Plan Z.  When cancer is cured our descendants will view chemo and radiation the way we now view cupping and bloodletting.  Gossip wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so hateful. But drained of its lifeblood it would no longer be gossip.  Beware the person who can’t say no His passive aggression soon will blow The perfect crime is the one left undone.  The foolproof plan is the one just for fun.  The neurotic’s curse is to not recognize his comfort zone even when he’s in the middle of it. That our faces should reveal our souls would be too drastic.  Therefore the devil is the patron saint of surgeons plastic.

Hello and welcome to a graduation Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is May 28th. Last night, Senior 2.0 graduated from high school, all ready for his launch into Life 2.0. But I'm writing this blog post ahead of time - to reflect and gather a few final thoughts before all the busyness kicks into high gear and the soda starts flowing at all the grad parties sandwiched into the 48-hour window between commencement and Memorial Day. "What are you going to do with 40% of your kids out of the house?" the Oldest asked me a few weeks ago. What came to mind was more elbow room and fewer decibels of sound reverberating through the house. I thought about home renovation projects - how I might reconfigure our living space and convert the little people's bedroom into my new office. (I've got my eye on a particular IKEA desk.) It's been a fast-paced year from my vantage point. A year ago, he was dreading the 2021 graduation ceremony (most of his closest friends ...

     On a recent Sunday my brother-in-law Pete was driving from his home in Moorhead to the family farm southwest of Roseau when he received a disturbing photo from the neighbor. Dennis rents the land at the farm and keeps his equipment in the big shed there. He had noticed that one of the old oaks in the yard had blown down in the recent wind storm and landed on Pete's new trailer. Could be worse   Pete likes to drive the three hours to the farm on a regular basis. It gives him a chance to visit his father in his assisted living apartment, see a friend or two, and maybe join us for pizza night. What he really likes is to load his ATV onto his trailer and take it out to the trails in Beltrami Forest for a little wheelin'.   Having a massive oak land on his trailer was not part of his plan. If Pete had known there was a tree on his trailer before he left home he would have brought his chain saw along. But Pete had options. He called his sister. Teresa and I are a...

    Sven went to the barbershop to get his beard trimmed before his surgery because he wanted to look his best in public, if only should the funeral home have to show up.     When he opened the barbershop door, there stood the barber and a white-haired, freshly buzzed-cut customer opposite him at the counter, sharing a joke. The barber’s eyes and smile grew wide when he saw Sven, and said, ”Haven’t seen you forever, Sven! You're needin’ a beard trim, eh?”     Although his barber chair was empty, Sven remembered that the younger barber hadn’t been there that day back in 2020, and despite his assurances he would do him right the old barber had snagged Sven's turkey neck with his hair clipper. Nodding toward the younger barber working behind him, Sven said, “Yep, an’ I’m lookin’ at that man to do it.” The older barber laughed.     So feeling a little trepidation below the various post-Trump "Miss Me Yet?" posters on the ceiling,...

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of new words... the frill of trippary... and the almond tree of Papeete... the human drama of semantic explication...here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday, May 25, 2022, the twentieth Wednesday of the year, the ninth Wednesday of spring, and the 145th day of the year, with 220 days remaining. Wannaska Phenology Update for May 25, 2022 The ferns are unfurling and the hummers are whirling! Also, the mosquitos are out...and in... May 25 Nordhem Lunch : Updated daily by 11:00am, usually. Baked Ham Dinner     Mashed Potatoes & Gravy     Green Beans     Dinner Roll Hot Ham Sandwich     Mashed Potatoes & Gravy "Bowl" Roasted Beef & Vegetable Soup with Your Choice     Turkey     Ham     Grilled Cheese Sandwich Earth/Moon Almanac for May 25, 2022 Sunrise: 5:31am; Sunset: 9:11pm; 2 minutes, 5 seconds more daylight to...

Hi, and welcome to another issue of blundering through history with your favorite Tuesday writer.  Let's see...where to begin: On this day in the year... 1755 Smuggler Louis Mandrin, considered the French Robin Hood, is sentenced to be broken on the wheel. This was a medieval form of torture and execution that breaks the bones of the subject.  This is not to be confused with Juggler Lewis Mandarin, a medieval clown who specialized in juggling oranges. 1775 John Hancock is unanimously elected President of the Continental Congress.  He improperly filled out his election forms by signing his name too big and was never considered for President of the United States.   A signature that is larger than life 1818 General Andrew Jackson captures Pensacola, Florida.  He tried desperately, but was never able to capture Pepsicola, North Carolina.  Pensacola never really caught on and was discontinued.   1830 First regular passenger rail service on the Bal...

If Life Remains, I Shall Go Back to the Tavern Half of my genetic heritage is Middle Eastern, so it is time that I posted an excellent Middle Eastern poet – Hāfez. (The other half of my gene pool is Irish – the mix is a long and amusing story: A genie and a leprechaun walked into a bar...) Khwāje Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shirazi (Persian: خواجه شمس‌‌الدین محمّد حافظ شیرازی), known by his pen-name Hāfez (حافظ, Hāfez, "the memorizer; the (safe) keeper"; 1325–1390) was a Persian lyric poet whose collected works are regarded by many Iranians as a pinnacle of Persian literature. His works are often found in the homes of people in the Persian-speaking world, who learn his poems by heart and use them as everyday proverbs and sayings. His poetry and his life have become the subjects of much analysis, commentary, and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other Persian author.  Themes of his ghazals (lyric poetry; see below for further definit...

    Netflixia: the black mood that settles in the soul when all the good series have been watched and the new ones all stink.   Agape love looks to God, who we cannot see. Philos love looks to the world, which we see all too plainly. And Eros blinds us to everything but the beloved.   One condition for a long marriage is a willingness to go on each other’s wild goose chases.   The old memories are the last to go, like initials that were carved into a young tree. Nothing new can be carved onto dementia's rough bark.   Talk politics to neither foe nor friend. The first can get you killed. The second will waste your time.   Only seven deadly sins? The scold can think of many more. 

Hello and welcome to a pensive Saturday at the Wanaskan Almanac. Today is May 21st. This past week I took my first trip to Canada since the pandemic. The last time I was there, I visited a cheese factory in New Bothwell and a warming huts exhibit at the Forks in Winnipeg . I remember squash soup for lunch at Stella's . It was snowing and I slid-skittered on one of those cloverleaf on-ramps to the main highway, but held steady and made it home safely. What a thrill to enter the necessary data on the ArriveCAN app for my first trip in two years. I double and triple checked my passport's validation and headed north on HWY 89 with another friend for an adventure on Lake Winnipeg. Driving north on HWY 89, felt like we were already at Lake Winnipeg, with flooded fields on either side of the road; whitecaps licking muddied waters, lapping the dirt shoulders of the road. My friend and I stopped at a gas station in Steinbach. We cheered at the sight of treats like CoffeeCrisp, Wunderba...

     Who is this Jesus, anyway? By the early fourth century A.D, almost all the bishops in the Christian Church believed Jesus was God, that is, God's equal. And that the Holy Spirit was God present in the world today. These three persons were God in one person. "It's a mystery," the nuns used to tell us. "You'll understand when you get to heaven," they said.    Just because the bishops had the Trinity figured out didn't mean the masses understood it rightly. Indeed there was a popular preacher in Egypt named Arius who taught that yes, Jesus was God, but that Jesus had been created and was therefore on a slightly lower level than the Father. The difference may seem slight to us, but back then people were ready to slit each other's throats over semantics     What's interesting is that no one had worried about these fine points a few years earlier when Christians were being fed to the lions. In 313 A.D., the Roman emperor Constantine declared t...

    Off the beaten path, this blog post is, it’s not everyone’s cup o’tea, but here are three subjects that have concerned a good many of my rural and not so rural readers over their lifetimes and that reignited memories for me. After I moved up here to northwestern Minnesota 43 years ago, I used grease guns, spindles, and old tractors on the varied jobs I had. Also living here on an old farm and owning old farm equipment that I bought old because as I could never afford buying new , as did so many other farmers. The common grease gun    But one common favorable thing about old farm equipment is that it seems to live forever, whereas new farm equipment, especially tractors and combines, have technology that the world has never known except on high-end automobiles, trucks, and ships. These aren’t vehicles that the average farmer operator can work on/ or repair in their own shops anymore. Something breaks on them and off they go back to the dealer or custom repair...