Wannaskan Almanac

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for April 23, 2025, the twenty-seventh Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of spring, the fourth Wednesday of April, and the one-hundred thirteenth day of the year, with two-hundred fifty-two days remaining.   Wannaska Phenology Update for April 23, 2025 Our State Bird Has Arrived Gavia immer has returned to Hayes Lake and other Wannaskan bodies of water. The Irish and British call them divers , which comes from the bird's habit of catching fish by swimming calmly along the surface and then abruptly plunging into the water. The North American name loon likely comes from either the Old English word lumme , meaning lummox or awkward person, or the Scandinavian word lum meaning lame or clumsy. Either way, the name refers to the loon's poor ability to walk on land. Definitely more at home in the water than on land, loon legs are set far back on its body, giving it an awkward gait on land. The collective noun for loons...

This post was written on March 19.   Yesterday was March 18.  This marks the observation of the monthly anniversary of the marriage of my wife and I.  We have now been married for 375 months!  I know...she must be a saint!  Every month I buy her a gift as a small token of my appreciation for all that she has to put up with.  This month I bought her a trellis and socks.  Her old trellis was falling apart and her old socks were worthy of a saint...holy...I mean holey!  What can I say...I am consistent, boring, and practical.   It's your anniversary gift! While that is all very fascinating, it is not what this post is about.  The reason that I remember the 18th and 19th of March is that it was such a beautiful day on the 18th.  It was hot...the high temperature was officially 87 degrees Farhenheit.  Wow!  I spelled that word correctly without looking.  I believe that the only reason people write Farhenheit like...

    If you were Catholic in the fifties, there's a good chance you attended a Catholic School and have stories to tell about the experience. Lucky me, I do. Kindergarten didn't exist for us, so first grade was a mixed bag for me. I cherished Sister Michael Marie's stories about Jesus, his sweet mother, and his kind carpenter father. I adored hearing that God loved me no matter what. Yet, I wanted my mother, and most days, I'd cry like it was the end of the world. Sister would send upstairs for my sister, Beth, who would scoot down the wavy wooden staircase to pat my shoulder and say sweet things to settle me down (she has a knack for doing that to this day). A contributing factor could have been that I already knew how to read. Beth was a born teacher, and I was her first star student. We were a family of book lovers, and a favorite pastime was peeking into my Mom's big chapter books to see what words I could decipher. Given my mother's taste for all things spi...

  The Palmville Globe Volume 1 Number 12 Man Opens Salon Joe McDonnell, 78 and a resident of Palmville Twp, recently opened a salon in his guesthouse, the Shêdeau. "It's not a hairdresser or beautician's salon." McDonnell tells the press. "It's more a literary salon where literature, books, and works-in-progress are discussed, along with politics, the cinema, and philosophy. The salon used to be a book club in which the three members read difficult books like  Ulysses  and  Moby Dick  in hopes of understanding them. Two of the members are retired and the other is a former stay-at-home mom who now has a full time job and no longer has the time to do the classics justice. However she enjoyed the salon-like atmosphere of the book club so the focus has changed from reading books written by others to our own free flow of ideas." Man Attends Resurrection Joe McDonnell, 78 and a fit retiree, recently attended a meeting of a political nature at a local bar-resta...

Hello and welcome to an Easter Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac by way of Brainerd, Minnesota, and yes, I was just in Winnipeg last weekend. This bunny does quite a bit of hopping. Today is April 19th. Easter is upon us and tonight Christ will be risen, if you’re of the Christian faith and path. Honestly, I’ve been pretty bummed this Lenten season. I haven’t done a great job preparing my heart so I don’t feel really deserving of the impending celebration of Christ’s resurrection. But beyond my spiritually, I’m finding the world to be a pretty crummy place. Next Thursday, for example, there are people across Wannaskaland who may be forced into deportation despite following  protocols, procedures, and every rule of the law. There are folks working doggedly and quietly behind the scene to put a human face on these very real, law-abiding people, but there’s been no communal rallying cry insisting that these neighbors not slip through the cracks of the blanket immigration reform c...

     "The Cabinet." AI named it. Victoria texted "cabin" and her phone corrected cabin to cabinet. It's a small cabin, 8' x 12', so cabinet is good. Victoria is our son Ned's wife. They helped build the cabin over a nine day period in early April. Matt and his wife Heather helped build it. Young Joe helped build it. His kids Isla and Nash and girlfriend Ellen lent moral support. Friends John Carstens and Joe Stenzel helped and provided voices of experience. John brought a generator and an ATV. Joe sent ladders and sawhorses via Steve Reynolds. Steve offered to help. I'll take him up on his offer in Phase Two. And of course there was Teresa, helping on the site, cooking, and running to town for stuff.   The cabin floor and walls were built in the garage and carried .14 miles (347 steps) to the site through two gullies, across a meadow, and through a stretch of woods. Teresa, Matt and Joe. Flooring mostly by Joe     Walls up. Teresa, Joe, Matt, He...

        "So when I tell these children, this is not learning A, B, Cs, this is a spiritual expression of yourself. How do you feel; what do see when you play this? Breathe and let this thing come to life because these will sing the song you want to sing. If you listen, all you are doing is breathing, your fingers are moving and it plays you." - - Keith Bear, Native American Flute Traditions   Perhaps shadows from tallow candles darted against lodge walls and smoke hole peaks like does the  candle flame on this table flickers in time to the accentuated breaths of  the flute player ...   Perhaps these Hidatsa-Mandan strains  have been heard upon this very land 300 hundred years ago, perhaps a thousand.   And, perhaps,  the land  needs to hear it again.       - - by Steven G. Reynolds     

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for April 16, 2025, the twenty-sixth Wednesday of the year, the fourth Wednesday of spring, the third Wednesday of April, and the one-hundred sixth day of the year, with two-hundred fifty-nine days remaining.   Wannaska Phenology Update for April 16, 2025 Now, we can start . Turdus migratorius has arrived in Wannaska (along with JPS's friend, Karon Leach), so spring has finally arrived in song. Our mutual friend, the robin, is a migratory bird of the true thrush genus. This species was first described in 1766 by Carl Linnaeus in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae as Turdus Migratorius . Robin's binomial derives from two Latin words: turdus , "thrush", and migratorius from migrare "to migrate". The term robin is from common small European songbird, 1540s, a shortening of Robin Redbreast (mid-15th century), from masc. personal name Robin (diminutive of Robert), also (in reference to the bird)...