Wannaskan Almanac

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for January 31, 2024, the fifth Wednesday of the year, the sixth Wednesday of winter, and the thirty-first day of the year, with three-hundred thirty-five days remaining.   Wannaska Phenology Update for January 31, 2024 Timber Wolf Activity Timber Wolf, aka, Canis lupus and Gray Wolf, are the largest members of the dog family, growing up to five and one-half feet long (including the tail), and weighing up to one hundred pounds. Eighty percent of the Wannaskan Timber Wolf diet is white-tailed deer, but they also eat beaver, moose, fish, muskrat, and rabbits. Only the lead female (alpha) in a pack breeds every year, and their peak mating activity now. So best keep Fluffy inside for a few weeks. After a gestation period of 64 days, timber wolf pups arrive in Minnesota around mid-April. Our recent pleasant weather has augmented local snacne with sprinkles of snow fleas. January 31 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special : Potato Dumplin

Hi there avid Almanac reader!  By now, if you are like me, you have probably failed in that fad diet and exercise program you started at the beginning of the year.  Stupid resolutions...they never work because they never last.  Maybe you should try to just make friends this year.  Here are some quirky ways to make people like you: Be funny: Being genuinely funny is a hard thing to do, but it’s an important part of getting other people to like you. Act funny and go with the joke the other person says. And don’t constantly joke around or do pranks or the other person will get annoyed, bored, or frustrated with the pranks you are doing. Be interested in them: People are interested in themselves. The first step of getting people to like you is simple. All you have to do is be interested in them. Talk to people about themselves. Lead the conversation, making sure that it stays about them and they believe that they’re the one in charge. Find out what they’re interested in and seek to learn m

  B reakfast time growing up was a relatively simple affair. Mornings mostly found me and my siblings slurping milk and reading a cereal box. Occasionally, Mom would allow us Frosted Flakes. Still, Rice Krispies' mild flavor and famous crackle provided a gateway for the sharper-edged cornflakes, billowy shredded wheat, and the quasi-medicinal raisin bran that followed. Always a maverick, I prided myself that no one else in the family went for my beloved, overly-crunchy Grape Nuts.   It's odd but true, who wanted what became factors that reflected our budding personalities. On more than one occasion, I remember emphatically announcing that I preferred only the white part of the egg and only when hard-boiled. For the love of God, please do not confuse me for a minute with anyone who wants eggs cooked so everything is soft and runny. We were all united in our love of pancakes and equally cherished the rare occasion when we got to feast on warm, golden slices of mapley French toast

  Life grows more complicated. I pushed the microwave one minute button so often it broke. Now I must punch in six plus zero plus go. I've quit saying negative things about people.  But is that an improvement when I still nudge others to say them? Looking for a quiet Irish pub? Try arriving around 2:00 pm when the locals are just returning from the dead. After the coupling each asks, jerk: yes or no To decide their next move: to stay or to go We swim in this sea of consciousness not knowing  Which way to the bottom, which is up going  The universe has been expanding for billions of years It's fair now I think to ask if we're there yet  I like old things. I try to keep them going rather than buy new.  So old age suits me well. My taste level lies in the narrow zone between the incredibly great and the sickeningly awful. There is no poem that makes me sick  Many though are not poetic In olden days, artists needed patrons  Nowadays an artist is wise to partner with someone goo

Hello and welcome to a foggy yet cheerful day here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is January 27th and the LAST DAY of Hockey Day Minnesota 2024! The big news on this side of Wannaskaland is Warroad hosting Hockey Day Minnesota. Taking a page from Canada's Hockey Day playbook, Hockey Day Minnesota started in 2007 and was organized by Minnesota Wild, Fox Sports North (now Bally Sports North), Minnesota Hockey, and a rotating local host community. Baudette, our neighbors to the east in Lake of the Woods County, were the very first hosts in both 2007 and 2008.  "Hockey Day Minnesota was an immediate success from year one, quickly becoming a day for generations of Minnesotans from all corners of The State of Hockey to connect and celebrate the sport that means so much to so many. Wayne Petersen, Director of Community Relations and Hockey Partnerships for the Minnesota Wild, was on the original Hockey Day Minnesota committee and has been one of the key figures in the success of H

    I asked a man once what part of Michigan he was from. He held up his hand and pointed to a spot on the thumb and named a town I'd never heard of. At least now I knew about where that town was. "Michigan is shaped like a mitten," he said. That didn't take account of the Upper Peninsula, or UP, as residents call it. The UP appears to be a part of Wisconsin or even Ontario rather than Michigan. How come Michigan ended up with it?   It goes back to the Toledo War (1835-6) fought between the militias of the state of Ohio and the territory of Michigan over a strip of land known as the Toledo Strip. Ohio had become a state in 1803. Ohio assumed its northern boundary included the city of Toledo and several miles of the Maumee River at the west end of Lake Erie. Due to a poor understanding of the geography of the Great Lakes at the time, Ohio was in danger of losing Toledo and four hundred square miles of fertile farmland if Michigan's boundary claims were accepted by

An Excerpt From Fifty-four Years of Writing     Published in The Roseau Times-Region, Roseau, MN, in 1990; Duane Mattson, Editor. I wrote this column for only a year and a half before I quit due to health issues. Initiated by my then-employer to be strictly about manufacturing, I gradually altered its outline to be about its employees instead who, as real people and not just robots, had lives well beyond the factory floor. I discovered a wealth of material beyond my expectations; the late Ron Stauffer, friend, neighbor, and co-worker being but one. --WW

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for January 24, 2024, the fourth Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of winter, and the twenty-fourth day of the year, with three-hundred forty-two days remaining.   Wannaska Phenology Update for January 24, 2024 Boreal Chickadee s Year-round, always-active neighbors, the boreal chickadee, Poecile hudsonicus , is a holarctic [/häl-ˈärk-tik/ adj., relating to or denoting a zoogeographical region comprising the Nearctic and Palearctic regions combined. The two continents have been linked intermittently by the Bering land bridge, and the faunas are closely related] bird, otherwise known as tits in various parts of the English-speaking world. The chickadee vocabulary consists primarily of "fee-bee" and "chick-a-dee-dee-dee" where the number of "dees" depends on the size of the predator. Chickadees are food-caching birds, capable of hiding and remember the location of 80,000 individual seeds. Spot th

It is sure easy to order things on Amazon.  This year I ordered many items for my family and friends.  Then, as items started to show up on my doorstep, I realized that I had made a mistake.  Shopping on Amazon had not made Christmas shopping easier.  It had actually ruined Christmas! I suppose, as Paul Harvey says, you want to know the rest of the story.  Well, here it goes.  It is very handy and quick to do your Christmas shopping on Amazon.  There are problems though.  For instance, if you order a pair of shoes or pants or any other item of clothing you don't get to try it on first. But that isn't what ruined Christmas for me.  It is my dwindling ability to remember things.   I went to Amazon and ordered some things.  I got some delicious chocolates for my mom.  I found some really cool lures for my fishing buddy.  I ordered some jeans for my wife.  Then I sat back, satisfied, and announced that I was finished shopping. At my age, I quickly forget that I have ordered from

A Shape Poem by any other name smells of breaking poetic rules . Our 8 January 24 post introduced a rare variety of poetry – the Shape Poem, variously called visual poetry, calligram, and pattern poetry. In that post, we looked at animal butt poems, a badly drawn candle poem, a love poem with heart shapes, plus some examples of poetry that create meaning and effects by taking a traditional text (no picture shapes) and twisting the words in all directions: up-down, right-left, repetitive, side to side, top to bottom, upside down, and other words and shapes as far as imagination and courage takes the poet. It doesn’t hurt if the poet has a smaller than average ego to withstand the naysayers that lift their noses into the air, and haughtily proclaim, “That ain’t poetry!”  To review from 8 January, the Shape Poem is an arrangement of words on a page into forms, figures, silhouettes and/or patterns that reveal an image that of necessity partners with the meaning of nonlinear text which is