Wannaskan Almanac

How many questions does a student need to answer to master a skill?  I used to teach math and there were many times where I assigned homework.  Students would all get the same worksheet with usually ten to thirty questions.  I have to be honest...no student ever seemed to be excited to get my math homework assignment.   After a while I started to think about it.  Why was I giving students the number of questions I was?  What if they demonstrated the ability to do the skill in class?  Wasn't giving them homework for skills that they already seemed to have mastered really just a waste of their time?  These questions started to change my ideas as a teacher.   I decided that I only would give homework if it accomplished the goal of having students learn a specific skill.  Of course, this led me to really ponder how much of what I was teaching was actually a skill that they would use and benefit from in life.  Like the pythagor...

Originally published August 19, 2019... Every time a new player appears on the stage of a story, curiosity and speculation rise up, as is true in actual human relationships. In the case of the next part of this narrative, we have an unusual character, indeed. Just as we attempt to unravel new people in our lives, so are we tempted to predict the actions and temperaments of fictional characters. In a reciprocal manner, the actual speech and actions of a new person inform one of his/her actual profile. And so, it goes: back and forth; to and fro – the familiar patterns we may expect mirrored in reverse those components that do not fit the mold. The expected. The unexpected. The familiar. The strange. Comfort mixed with distress. The new character introduced in this segment provides material for all these conflicting aspects.   I turn slowly in the direction he             stares, stunned, because watching near the hut skulks         ...

  Those who refuse to suffer fools tend to be insufferable themselves.  God is like the mighty stream  That pours out of a hydrant  I want to rise to upper realms But splatter on the pavement  God is like a carousel  To ride I start to run  But then I see the carny stands And stop to have some fun  I complain even when nothing is wrong.  It’s easier to be amusing about my troubles than about my happiness.  Once I read books. Then just book reviews, and now I let friends describe the books they’re reading to me.  In exchange, I preach to them my take on salvation.  A proper gander raised in town  Meets a goose out in the wild There is no way it can be known If gosling is his child We do our best in comfort zone Let us stay on the well-trod road Forced to change we piss and moan And end in panic mode The preacher gives to the flock  Food that's fit for their station To the child- pie in the sky  To the mature- cruc...

Hello and welcome to a first-day-of-February Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is February 1st. Rejoice! Rejoice! We made it through January! February is three days shorter than January and the days are getting longer. Those feel like wins to me, and let me tell you, after the last couple of weeks we've had, we could use some wins. Last week's blog post, A Sick Week , ended on an ominous note with the Seventh Grader kicking off the weekend with a red, sore, puffy, crusty eye the morning of the Lego League qualifier in Grand Forks. You know it's been a severe sick season when you text the coaches that your daughter has pink eye and they reply, "Let us know what you decide to do." Maybe my memory is fuzzy, but I recall a different response in a far lesser sick season when you let coaches know you're kid is potentially contagious, and the response is: Get your kid as far away from the team as possible .  But desperate times call for desperate measures...

    Tomorrow my brother Mark turns seventy. He's the first of my brothers whose arrival I remember. I was about to turn eight. Brother Bill, my nemesis, had arrived when I was two, and Steve slipped in a couple of years later. In another six or seven years Mary-Jo would arrive.   When I got a few years older I liked taking the subway downtown to explore and Mark was amenable to riding along. He remembers me taking him to restaurants and as soon as the water was poured and the waitress left us to peruse the menu, I would make him get up so we could sneak out of the place I had discovered was beyond my means. I only remember this happening once, or twice. I made three dollars a week from my paper route and had to watch the pennies. I've since learned to judge a place from the outside, but I recently forced Teresa to slip out of a restaurant in Venice on our most recent trip abroad.   As our family grew I was moved to the attic. I had a finished room in which my father ...

  Dear Joe,    Here I am at the toy factory, stealing from the company again near shift's end. It's the stroke of 11:00 p.m. and I'm sitting on a cushioned stool, my legs propped up on a work bench straight out from me, my ankles padded by one of those long-sleeved painters coats that you and I wore when we mopped out the Roseau County Courthouse basement during Roseau's great flood of June 2002.  Joe and I, among others, helped clean flood water debris from the basement of the then-new Roseau County Courthouse in June of 2002. I donated this digital image and it now hangs in the courthouse foyer.    His crew having all departed for home a half hour earlier, a foreman walking through the doorway near where I sat was shocked as hell to suddenly see me. His eyes locked on mine like a cat on a rat.     "You sleepin?" he asked me.    " Nope," I said in reply, "Just catchin' up on my evenin's notes. I ain't sleepin' yet. "  ...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for January 29, 2025, the fifth Wednesday of the year, the sixth Wednesday of winter, the fifth Wednesday of January, and the twenty-ninth day of the year, with three-hundred thirty-six days remaining.   Wannaska Phenology Update for January 29, 2025 Northern Cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis is a non-migratory species that is generally monogamous. If you see one in Wannaska, it's probably been here for its lifetime, which averages three years, but has been documented up to fifteen years in the wild and twenty-eight years in captivity. Romantic birds, Cardinals participate in a bonding behavior where the male collects seed and brings it to the female, feeding her beak-to-beak . In terms of words, the Cardinal sings many a cheery tune : cheeeer-a-dote, cheeer-a-dote-dote-dote purdy, purdy, purdy...whoit, whoit, whoit, whoit "what-cheer, what-cheer... wheet, wheet, wheet, wheet, and cheer, cheer, cheer, what, what, what, what ...

A brief history of television. September 7, 1927:  Philo Taylor Farnsworth first demonstrated the electronic television.  1930:  First commercial aired on Charles Jenkins’s television program, BBC begins regular TV transmissions. 1937:  CBS is formed in the United States.  This enables people to see BS.   1948:  Cable tv is introduced in rural America. 1950's:  First two color television standards approved by FCC. 1962:  First television sattelite launched by AT and T.   1967:  Color TV's become commonplace in households.  First Superbowl is shown live on TV. 1975:  American overweight crisis attributed to rise in television watching and easy access to McDonald's.  1988:  Stereo TV signals broadcasted for first time.   1993:  Closed captioning is introduced.  Opened captioning is not yet available.   2018:  Wannaskan Woe Be On Days is introduced to literally dozens of ...

  If my garage were a kangaroo, it would be unable to jump. That's a ridiculous comparison since garages are stationary buildings, and no garage is ever known to have sprouted legs. And yet, when I first met my garage 48 years ago, I immediately regarded it as a sentient being.  Ours is a detached brick two-story number with two bays and a separate windowed area downstairs with shelves for tools and stuff. The second floor's pitched roof generously allows anybody to stand tall, and its spacious dimensions are welcoming. The first thing anyone says when they see it is someone could live there. I was thirty when we moved in, and when I saw the wide-board pine plank flooring upstairs, I immediately pictured them gleamingly refinished one day. I was a homebody enthralled with the fiber arts and could easily imagine a future studio. From the start, the garage was a place of possibilities. A gracious host, it was as if it said,  You can turn this space into anything you want....