Wannaskan Almanac

  Some novelists only feel safe publishing after their parents have died. Another group, mostly posthumous, worry what the kids will think.  Long-term remembrance: like roots deeply grown. The shorter-term stuff: like leaves quickly blown. A great server, to look good, needs a good chef and, at the least, a not actively evil owner. Compliments and praise bounce off the hard little ball of our pride, while a well-aimed rebuke can smash it to bits. Don’t want 90% of your conversational diet to consist of medicines, treatments, and bodily functions gone terribly wrong? Don’t get old. To save on fuel I dim the lights.  The sun thank God does not economize.                      Chairman Joe

 Hello and welcome to another Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is September 19th, or 9-19-20, which reminds me of a joke. Why was 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 ate 9. Although, I'm not sure how much damage 19 could do to 20 - or vice versa - and would like to think of them as nice, numerical neighbors. “I’m scared,” the Third Grader wailed last Sunday. “Everyone will see me and be watching me.”  Her crocodile tears were fat little plops of wetness on her cheeks. It was all I could do to refrain from rolling my eyes. Normally, this child is fearless – bold to the point of dauntless if not downright daring. Borderline defiant. Heck, who am I kidding? Fully in-your-face defiant.  And what was the Third Grader caterwauling so insistently about? Her First Communion. It was finally here and she was finally going to have to go through with it. This is the same girl who had been asking for months when she would be able to participate in the Eucharist. Begging for permiss...

  Whoever heard of a two-part epilogue? Well it’s necessary in my case. In my first epilogue I described how Steve Reynolds and I drove to a transmission shop in Dubuque to pick up the 1994 Ford Ranger that had broken down there three weeks earlier.   At that time Teresa and I were driving the truck to Massachusetts to give to our son Joe. My friend Alex who had taken very good care of the truck had given it to us. We didn’t need it so we were driving it east. Fourteen hundred miles. No problem. But five hours into the trip, the transmission fluid began coming out.  We couldn’t wait for repairs so we rented a vehicle in Dubuque and finished trip. We flew back to Alex’s place near Minneapolis and drove our own vehicle 350 miles home in northwest Minnesota.      A couple of weeks later Steve Reynolds and I drove to Dubuque, spent the night then drove the 600 miles home. The truck ran great, but we still didn’t need it. I decided to try driving it east again. ...

                        A Fine Trip Up Mikinaak Creek        “Looks like you found some quicksand there Ozaawaa,” I said from the jonboat. “Neighbors always said there was quicksand down here.”       “What’s quicksand?” O asked, with both his rubber knee boots stuck in creek mud up to his ankles. “How do I get out of here?”      “Quicksand is a watery mix of sand and mud that’ll suck you down and drown you, the more you struggle,” I said, laying my paddle against a gunwale.     “It’s sort of like the Chinese handcuffs that you get at the carnival. You know, the kind that you put your trigger finger and your pointer finger into, and when you try to get them out, the way they went in, it won’t let you go. That’s what you got there. Good thing you’re not alone. I’m here to help you should you g...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, September 16, 2020, the 38th Wednesday of the year, the thirteenth and last Wednesday of summer, and the 260th day of the year, with 106 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for September 16, 2020 Porcupines have staked out their dens for the winter. related words: aposematism : characteristics displayed by an animal to potential predators that it is not worth attacking or eating. porcupette : a baby porcupine. prickle : collective noun for a group of porcupines.   Nordhem Lunch : Closed Earth/Moon Almanac for September 16, 2020 Sunrise: 7:03am; Sunset: 7:35pm; 3 minutes, 33 seconds less daylight today Moonrise: 5:35am; Moonset: 7:45pm, waxing crescent Temperature Almanac for September 16, 2020                 Average            Record            ...

Hi, and thanks for joining me for today's Wannaskan Almanac.   Never waste your time trying to explain who you are to people who are committed to misunderstanding you.   Whenever someone says they walked a mile in my shoes, I can't help but hope that they don't have athlete's foot. Of course, even with athlete's foot you can still be a fungi. Whenever someone says that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, I can't help but think that a great invention would be horse grenades. Whenever someone reads that last comment and goes, "huh?" and scrunches up their eyes, I can't help but wonder if I should have said hand shoes instead. Whenever someone says they went camping, I think to myself...that isn't for me.  It seems like it would be intense. Whenever someone says they are whetting their appetite I think to myself...they better not try sleeping in my bed. Whenever I hear the saying, "It's a dog eat dog world," I think......

Life is tenuous – impermanent. We never know. We never know. Imagine the moment when one living creature intentionally kills another, and another, and another, losing count of the lives passing – passing with the whir of arrows, the pop of shotguns, the thud of flesh on bone. Is it ever justifiable? Do beliefs and attitudes matter? Does the kind of life matter? A horse. A dog. A rat. A woman. A child. A virus. When the passing occurs, tears are sometimes shed, but so, too, beer kegs and burgers. Many ethical questions arise from the sight of two geese winging south in the autumn. Can you hear them? Tears   borderlands             crackling cornfields                         bronze rising                    ...