Wannaskan Almanac

The woman stretches on the couch in the family room. Her husband is out playing tennis, and as she sits alone, savoring the silence, she sips tea and studies the big backyard oak as it drops its yellow leaves. "Before canvas and pigments and frames and wives asking husbands to help hang pictures," she muses, "there was all this beauty that inspired people to find ways to capture it." It's barely 10 in the morning, and with nothing on the calendar prodding her, she leans back into the pillows. Her eyes soften, and her breaths slow. Spent leaves continue to flutter and land on the lawn, and she fills with tenderness towards the forces of nature. "Fall leaves in Massachusetts were always abundant, too," she recalls with the warmth of nostalgia. As she continues to sit and watch Autumn taking over in Virginia, she flashes back to the crackly piles she shuffled through as a kid on her way back and forth to school. On Saturday mornings, bundled in her red sw

  I tried following someone else’s path to salvation but they kept blocking the way.  So I cut cross country till I found a path of my own.  I have this deal with God.    I don’t put Him to the test and He doesn’t lead me into temptation.  This woman and that man may not be naturally nice people, but courtship gives them the chance to show they at least have the potential for being so.  Floridians who refuse to evacuate must keep their saber saw charged up in case they need to cut a hole in the roof when their attic floods. The hair shirt was designed to grow more irritating with age. For some, the world itself is their hair shirt. For many, Plan B is to take their ball and go home. We see through a glass darkly.  We hear through a wall badly .  We trip on a rug clumsily.  The kitchen counters of the elderly are cluttered with the things they used to keep on the shelves. 

Hello and welcome to the first Saturday in November here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is November 2nd. Folks, we made it through Halloween without snow which is always a big win for the trick-or-treating scene. On Thursday night, the kids kicked off the race for sweets at the high school, zipping through the hallways and taking a quick spin through the student council's haunted house before taking to the streets through the in-town neighborhoods. Kids sprinted, swerving past the darkened homes to the ones with the porch lights lit, beckoning the costumed children like moths. Parents tagged along, slowly making their way in their vehicles, monitoring traffic as the kids happily zigzagged back and forth down the street. I was impressed with their energy as swarms of kids made their way down the blocks. I thought for sure they would peter out to a walk, like bright stars burning out, but no, they kept the steady sprint-trot pace all the way to the Hampton Inn, where they ran out of

  Last Friday I reposted a post from five years ago. Two leap years had brought up a piece on my father on my assigned day to write so I reposted it. We’re on the road this week and my post from five years ago was about the saints. It’s hard for me to write when I’m focusing on my driving and searching for motels with at least an eight out of ten rating. Thanks for reading.  From the Wannaskan Almanac of Nov. 1, 2019: Today is All Saints Day, when the church honors all the saints, known and unknown. The Catholic Church especially, makes use of the strong spiritual bonds between the saints and us down here in the church militant. All my schooling was in Catholic schools until I joined the Navy, so I got a thorough indoctrination in the benefits of knowing the saints.    Even the Navy, by no means a religious organization, has a patron saint in Michael the Archangel, best known for kicking Satan out of Heaven. The Navy's job is to resist evil, even if it means killing people. Saints