Wannaskan Almanac

My youngest sister turned a half century old last month.  She lives just north of Toronto, Ontario,  We had some time available and were planning to drive up there and visit her over her birthday, but decided to fly instead.  It just seemed like the drive would be too long and at my age probably too painful.  My hip and ankle gett quite painful after about two hours of driving.  This would have been close to twenty hours of driving each way and that seemed to much for me to handle.   So we flew.  We had to drive up to Winnipeg and took a flight to Toronto.  My sister's partner picked us up there.  All the way back to her place we enjoyed looking at some beautiful old country Ontario scenery.  We drove through Amish country and got a taste of what makes southern Ontario beautiful.  We went through what seemed like hundreds of little towns and each one seemed to have its own theme.  One had statues and images of bears. ...

  Originally published January 20, 2020... The hero/heroine of this epic poem has come a very long way from birth through childhood, on through adolescence, into the early stages of adulthood. A careful study of the timeline may make the clock seem to move ahead faster than it might; however, a hero/heroine’s journey does not obey temporal laws. Sometimes, the events seem to be set in a future period; at others, the incidents appear to be in the in the realm of childhood. Another aspect that runs through this epic is the variety of other characters encountered. This alone is enough to make James Joyce sit up and pay attention. Speaking of Joyce, it may be of interest to some readers that three of the  Wannaskan Almanac  writers have formed a  Ulysses  study group: Chairman Joe, Kim Red Shoes, and Jack Pine Savage. So, if you need an annotation “dictionary” to get through some of our posts, just feel very, very scholarly. Our story now picks up speed as our trave...

  The Palmville Globe Volume 1 Number 25 Man Has Near Miss with Kimchi  Joe McDonnell, 78 and residing in Palmville Twp, Minnesota, recently had to juggle restaurants to keep his party of seven together. "We had just introduced my nephew and his wife to my wife’s niece and her two sons,” McDonnell tells the press. "After a tour of my nephew's boat, we drove to a nearby town for lunch. The nephew suggested a bbq place he had heard was good. The niece said her boys would want burgers. When we arrived I saw that the bbq place ran a burger place across the street. It would be a shame for the boys to have to eat their burgers alone. All the tables for seven or even five in the bbq place were taken so we all had burgers in the burger place except me. I ordered a hot dog because it came with kimchi which I'd never had before. But my hot dog arrived bare. The waitress said kimchi was available ’on request’. Later she brought a small container of kimchi, but I had already cove...

Hello and welcome to a *yawn* sleepy Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is July 19th. While my family has been away, I have become a cat lady. The first thing I do in the morning when I come into the kitchen, even before I make my luxurious Mocha pot coffee, is let in the cats.  Good morning!,  I greet them as all three pad in and head straight to the food and water bowls. After they munch and I've got my fresh, hot brew, we all settle in the living room. Scrawny curls up on one end of the couch. She's the matriarch and doesn't like to be bothered. Little Kitty, who's not the matriarch but is bossy as all get out, takes my usual spot, the BAC (Big Ass Chair). And Fuzzy, our damaged-goods cat, who is mostly rehabilitated and accepts pats on the head and scratches behind the ear, finally accepts that I won't let him remove the Elsa & Anna blanket spread out on one of my two gold and maroon striped easy chairs, stops tugging on said blanket, and settles ...

     We went to a wedding in Vermont last month and when it was over we drove four hours to Marshfield, MA where our son Ned lives. Ned was off on his tugboat so his wife Victoria was our host. They had just discovered that a woodchuck had dug a hole by their house foundation. Ned had put a large rock over the hole, but by the time we returned from the wedding, the woodchuck had dug a new hole next to the rock.    Despite the 90+ degree temperatures, Teresa and I filled in the hole and covered the area with several pavers left over from another project. There were no further signs of the woodchuck during our watch and we assume the woodchuck decided he was dealing with pros and moved on.    There's an excellent state park near Ned's but it was way too hot for any hiking. We could have slipped into the cold Atlantic but our beach days are over. Most thrift stores are closed on Monday but Teresa found one above a library and I napped in the car with the ...

     Looking outdoors the early morning of July 12, 2025, I saw what I would normally recognize as morning mist as in the image above from 30-years ago along Mikinaak Creek, then remember, "No, it's Manitoba wildfire smoke, the new normal of our lives in Palmville Township Minnesota."       According to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center , as of July 9th, 2025 fires had charred 4.8 million hectares (11, 861,058.31 acres). Manitoba accounted for about 247,1053.81 acres of burned area, about 20-times more than at the same point in 2024 and 13-times more than the 25-year average.        Several communities and more than 10,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders, according to officials. Among them were Snow Lake, Garden Hill, Lynn Lake, Leaf Rapids, Split Lake, and Pukatawagan. According to news reports , several homes were destroyed in Split Lake, also called Tataskweyak, a Cree Nation community in northern Manit...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for July 16, 2025, the twenty-second Wednesday of the year, the fourth Wednesday of summer, the third Wednesday of July, and the one-hundred ninety-seventh day of the year, with one-hundred sixty-eight days remaining. Brought to you by Bead Gypsy Studio & Scandinavian Shoppe , donating 50% of Jewelry Sales to local ALS Fundraiser, July 23-28th.   Wannaska Phenology Update for July 16, 2025 Fly Agaric With all the flies buzzing around now, it's also time for Amanita muscaria var. guessowii , otherwise known as American Yellow Fly Agaric (AYFA) to push up and shine. AYFA is a large, conspicuous, yellow variety of one of the most recognizable Alice in Wonderland mushrooms in the world. It occurs in the United States from Maine to Maryland, west to Minnesota and Indiana, and south along the Appalachian Mountains to North Carolina. It also occurs across southern Canada from Nova Scotia to Alberta. It occurs in coniferous, decid...