Wannaskan Almanac

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for May 31, 2023, the twenty-second Wednesday of the year, the eleventh Wednesday of spring, and the one-hundred fifty-first day of the year, with two-hundred days fourteen remaining.   Wannaska Phenology Update for May 31, 2023 Fuzzy Forests The Diamond Willow ( Salix bebbiana ), poplar, and other cottony seed-bearing trees have begun to fluff our forests. The blueberry blossoms continue to thrive thanks to Monday and Tuesday rains, the conifers have painted the forest yellow with their pollen, and the biting flies have emerged. May 31 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special : Potato Dumpling May 31 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch : Updated daily by 11:00am, usually. Earth/Moon Almanac for May 31 2023 Sunrise: 5:26am; Sunset: 9:17pm; 1 minutes, 42 seconds more daylight today Moonrise: 5:28pm; Moonset: 3:36am, waxing gibbous, 81% illuminated. Temperature Almanac for May 31, 2023           ...

I have an old friend.  Everybody needs an old friend.  For instance, if you are 90 years old find yourself an old friend who is a hundred.  That way you will feel younger while you are hanging out together.  It is kind of how I feel when I get together with the staff of the Wannaskan Almanac.  My old friend is about 25 years older than me.  His name is Bob.  He likes fishing and talking about how bad my old truck is...in that order.  I enjoy fishing with Bob.  The other day we went to a little lake (there are no big lakes in Kansas...at least not around where I live) and started catching crappie.  We were down the shore a bit from a Vietnamese family that was also fishing for crappie.  We were catching them pretty much regularly, but the family down the shore wasn't catching any.  We were practicing catch and release, which seemed to frustrate the family down the shore.   They eventually sent a little girl over with a...

The Soldier Beyond Time Today is Memorial Day. This post is the first under the theme of “War,” perhaps an appropriate theme considering the previous theme was “Heroes.” War and Heroes are intimately linked in the archetypal human psyche. Celebrating “heroes” in wartime is both beneficial and harmful. Some come home to jeers and demeaning displays of disapproval. Any time nations and tribes go to war, the only result is horror, desecration, and defilement of our species. No matter the so-called purpose of any war, be it saving making a nation and its citizens “safe,” (e.g., “make the world safe for democracy,” or conflicts between large personalities (e.g., Hitler, Putin) the machines of war always end up with thousands to millions dead, and often no one any safer at all. Wealth is destroyed except for those who are “smart” enough to profit from conflicts, e.g., arms dealers. Yet, within wars, noble acts occur: the soldier who charges into an impossible battle to save his/her fellow wa...

  The four faces of the homeless: those who want to live on the street; those working to maintain them; those who want to understand them; and those who want a final solution for them now.  Check the weather forecast for a manufactured surprise. Or instead, wait until the morning for a home-made one. It’s hard for me to believe this, but my next comfort zone will eventually be even cushier than the one I’m being rousted out of right now.  Fear of a common enemy could glue America together again.  Better to weld it together with love.   That God is my copilot sounds comforting till I realize he's also my navigator. The less one has to reveal, the more elaborate must be the tease.  Is the quantitative imbalance in art that celebrates the female form versus the male, better explained by male desire or by female modesty? My secret power is to generate new heads to be cut off so I can continue to run around like the proverbial chicken.  God destroyed S...

Hello and welcome to a grad-parties-all-day Saturday here at the Wannasakan Almanac. Today is May 27th. Congratulations to the Warroad High School Class of 2023 and to all of our graduates across Wannaskaland! Today's blog post is another submission from the All Roads Lead to Wannaska Writing Contest-Opportunity-Celebration!  Home is Where the Heart Is by Carol Cafferty Home.  I never really thought too much about my sense of home until it was gone.  It was when my mom passed away in 1993 that I lost my sense of home.  I felt lost and without an anchor.  My mom had been the anchor of the family.  I didn’t know what to do or where to go to get that feeling back.  I wasn’t sure I would ever have that sense again.  I just knew that Madison, Wisconsin where I had grown up and spent the majority of my life up until then no longer felt like home. I was a mama’s girl, so was absolutely devastated when my mom passed away at a relatively young age because ...

    I like telling long-winded stories that grow more and more ridiculous until someone says, "Really?" That's my signal to stop and return to the discussion of Aunt Margaret's gall bladder surgery. I feel a little bad stringing people along. I understand it's a trait of Irish people. I used to blame the devil. Now I blame my DNA.    I thought the Liars Club might offer me a guilt-free venue for my stories, but when I looked into the club, the stories were one liners. Like the 12 year old girl who won the contest by saying her sister was so thin she used a cheerio for a hula hoop.  Or another winner who said his grandfather clock was so old the shadow of the pendulum wore a hole in the back of the clock.  Those are great stories, but they lack legs.   If the Club ever comes up with a long-form category, I'll submit this story: I was commissioned an ensign in 1966 and after officers training school I made my way to San Francisco to board my ship bound f...