Wannaskan Almanac

 An anagram is a word, phrase, or name formed by rearranging the letters of another.  An example is when you take the letters from cinema and form iceman. Anagrams are even better when they somehow are related to the word they are rearranging.  Here are some examples: Frito Lay -- Oily Fart William Shakespeare -- I'll make a wise phrase The eyes -- They see Geologist -- Go get oils Elvis -- lives A Gentleman -- Elegant man Nurse Florence Nightingale -- Heroine curing fallen gents The Morse Code -- Here come dots Astronomer -- Moon Starer Christmas -- Trims cash Bean there, done that What anagrams tickle your fancy?  Share them below.  Goodbye, and be goody.

Bewildered: perplexed, confused, thoroughly lead astray (English origin, 17th c). Familiar? Or not? Denied? Frightened? Trying hard, but not getting anywhere? Bewildered – a state that’s uncomfortable, to say the least, for any species with a sensory nervous system. It’s hard to say which sentient beings have the capacity to think; we humans mostly equate thinking with words; however, thinking goes beyond words into richer realms. Not to say that accessing these realms is easy – not at all.  Stay with me for this next paragraph. You’ll see where I’m going shortly. Think of hunters that use instinct, knowledge of environment, and getting inside the mind of their prey – how the prey may be thinking and feeling. Feeling is easy to understand – we all share both tactile and emotional sensory arrays that emerge from our brains and CNSs. But what does it mean to “get inside the mind of . . ."? Since there are no “words” (with rare exceptions that rely on imitation and pattern recognitio...

     Today is the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven. Some Catholics consider Mary the unofficial fourth person of the Holy Trinity. Perhaps hostess would be a better description. Or go-between. She's the humaniser of the Holy Trinity.    God the Father has gotten a bad rep thanks to the Old Testament which in places pictures him as a vindictive boss liable to smite you with the jawbone of an ass if you get out of line. But this god is a tribal god. He was created to keep an unruly people in line.     To rectify this image, God came to earth as his own son. He went on to die for our sins and through his resurrection provide us with a path to Heaven. Jesus spoke of love. He healed the sick and cast out demons. He said we must be like children. Have faith. But he had some hard sayings. Sell all your goods and give to the poor. Take up your cross. Be the servant of everyone else. Turn the other cheek. The Holy Spirit w...

Five-Seven-Five: Return of the Haiku Hello! Jack Pine Savage standing in for Kim Hruba who remains busy on the road with her two oldest offspring. She has just returned from the West Coast where she and her son explored several schools. In a day or two, she and her daughter (Tereza) head for the East Coast where Tereza returns for her sophomore year. With that itinerary, is it any wonder I’m writing for you today?  If you follow my Monday posts, you will know that Monday is Poetry Day! So, I can’t help myself; you are getting a double dose of poetry this week. Some time has passed since I shared the art of the haiku, so that’s our form of the day for this post. Five-Seven-Five Five – seven – five. The number of syllables in the three lines of a haiku. Looks simple, right? Just three little lines. But just try to pack form, purpose, meaning, a season, a punchy third line – all preferably written in the present tense. And that’s just a few of the “rules” of haiku, a poetic form court...

     Rivers give me a cozy feeling. I have confidence that if dropped into the middle of even the widest river I could eventually make it to shore. Once when I was 15, I swam across a mile wide river to see if I could do it. I could. I had a friend following in a rowboat just in case, but I didn't need him. When I got home, I didn't tell my mother what I had done but she knew something was up. "You look like a prune," she said.    I don't feel the same way about the ocean. I've flown over the Atlantic and the Pacific and I always pull the shade and watch movies. I know if we go down, that's it. Even if we get the rafts launched, there will be storms, sharks and only salt water to drink.    I like studying the courses of rivers and their many tributaries on the map. Rivers are a country's arteries and veins. I like going to the sources of rivers. I'm lucky to live so close to the source of the Mississippi. I've been there many times and if anyon...

                                        Palmville Jungle Land     It’d been a while since I crossed the lattice-work of an old beaver dam. I was looking for a convenient, dry crossing, of Mikinaak Creek, so my two friends and I could get east of it on our way to the confluence of the Mikinaak and the South Fork of the Roseau River without getting too wet and muddy. I called the adjoining landowner for permission to cross his property, should our mugs get captured on one of his trail cameras somewhere without it.     The beaver dam, where beaver-chewed logs and sticks were deeply anchored in high banks of clay, sediment, and reed grass sod years-deep, was likely atop several other old dams built up and fallen down in that location for hundreds of years; and where muskrats, mi...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, August 11, 2021, the 32nd Wednesday of the year, the eighth Wednesday of summer, and the 223rd day of the year, with 142 days remaining. Wannaska Nature Update for August 11, 2021 We got 1.5 inches on Monday and more last night! Nordhem Lunch : An email message from the Wiktel.com Webmaster: Thank you for your enthusiasm.  Unfortunately, I’m not sure if the new Chef/Operator is using that system for specials; he’s been busy getting the restaurant going.  Maybe in time we’ll be able to put the specials up. In the interim, information can be found on the Nordhem Facebook page . Earth/Moon Almanac for August 11, 2021 Sunrise: 6:11am; Sunset: 8:47pm; 3 minutes, 7 seconds less daylight today Moonrise: 9:33am; Moonset: 10:33pm, waxing crescent, 12% illuminated. Temperature Almanac for August 11, 2021                 Average       ...