Wannaskan Almanac

Temu: What Folks Say, What’s True, and Whether It’s Worth a Try If you’ve spent any time online lately, you’ve probably seen Temu pop up in your feed — sometimes as a deal‑packed shopping app, sometimes as the punchline of a meme. Those “what I ordered vs. what I got” jokes have become their own little genre, poking fun at the gap between enticing looking product photos and the sometimes‑quirky reality that arrives on your doorstep. And sure, some of those memes are funny because they’re rooted in truth. But like most things on the internet, they don’t always tell the whole story. Temu can be hit‑or‑miss, but it’s not the wild west of shopping that some memes make it out to be. Temu is owned by PDD Holdings, a large Chinese e‑commerce company. That’s important to know because it shapes how the business operates. They’re able to offer low prices because they work directly with manufacturers, cutting out middle layers that usually raise costs. The trade‑off is that shipping can take long...

Summer is often such a fling. Quick, casual, fun encounters with loved ones. And if summer is the calendar’s friendship ring, by August’s end the season has slipped off our fingers and dropped to the bottom of the pond. Onward we go into autumn, ready for more serious engagements. But not this August. This year we had a wedding. Last summer around this time, our oldest grandson took the solemn step of proposing, and two weeks ago, after a year of preparation, married his love. I write that line and think, Oh my, such a beguilingly simple statement! It was a year of joyful anticipation—and a lot of work. As parents of the groom, our daughter and son-in-law hosted a sit-down rehearsal dinner and welcome party for out-of-town guests. My role as grandmother was support staff. I tried to be a good sounding board as plans unfolded and, as a fellow shopper, agonized with everyone over les robes justes. Honestly, though, my dominant role during the wedding weekend was Ironer. The wedding was o...

  The Palmville Globe Volume 2 Number 30 Man Extends Life of Bouquet Joe McDonnell, 79 and a resident of Palmville Twp, Minnesota, recently transported a vase of flowers to a location where more people could enjoy it. "We had attended the funeral of the mother of a friend," McDonnell tells the press. "Our friend's daughter was sad that the flowers sent by her coworkers would be thrown away. We volunteered to take the vase filled with white roses and lilies to the nursing home near Palmville Twp. Coincidentally we were volunteering at the nursing home (and attached hospital) employee picnic that evening. We placed the vase on the table where we were giving out ice cream bars, and the flowers received many compliments. The volunteers who took over from us promised to take the flowers to the nursing home after their shift." In a later communication, McDonnell says their friend's daughter was happy that the flowers meant for her grandmother went on to cheer up o...

Hello and welcome to a vacation Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Greetings from the city of brotherly love! Today is August 22nd. The past couple of days, we've been galavanting around Philadelphia with CK 3.0*, aka the original WAKWIR**, enjoying the sights from his perspective. We started with a tour of his college, getting the insider's view of all the music studios we'd hoped to see on his first college tour three years ago. How thrilling as a parent, to see my son stroll confidently around, not only the campus, but the city. We are now SEPTA experts as we hopped back and forth between University City and Old City.  It feels both like we've not done much other than "walk around" and yet, at the end of the night, when I tally the day's events, we've actually done, like, 15 things a day!  We've hit some food-musts such as the Philly Pretzel Factory, Kiwi frozen yogurt, and Sabrina's Cafe. We swapped Philly cheesesteaks (actual) with ch...

   If I want to know the next time August 21 will fall on a Friday I ask AI. AI will tell me quickly that August 21 will fall on a Friday again in 2037. Before AI came along I would have gone to a site like Time and Date , but I would have had to scroll through lots of extraneous matter to find what I wanted. Plus I'd get distracted by other interesting info like which planets I could see that night. AI just tells me right off what I want to know.   AI is good with simple calculations like finding a future date, but can it be trusted with other things? When I heard the Chicago Bears were moving to a new stadium in Indiana, I asked AI where exactly the new stadium would be located. AI said it would be in Hammond, Indiana, just south of Chicago. Even I know that no part of Indiana is south of anywhere in Illinois. Actually, south of Terre Haut, Indiana slumps to the west as it follows the Wabash River, so yah, I can be wrong.  AI does include a disclaimer saying it too...

  Date:   Friday, June 12, 2009 11:49 PM Subject:   Re: Yada yada yada    Q: "When will the next RAVEN come out?    Any progress there?    If you get on a somewhat regular basis I'd like to subscribe. What is your current rate? Still $20 ?"        A: The other night I had a dream, the location of which was the alley behind the yard of the house I grew up in in Des Moines. It was dusk, not dark, not light really. It was about the time when old city neighborhood shadows have a bluish quality about them, as I recall. I stood along the alley opposite the yard where my dog, the one I currently have in real time, was tied up. I couldn't see her plainly as she is a black dog, a medium to large size Labrador/Chesapeake cross. She was wildly barking at something beyond her chain and from where I was, with two fences between us, I couldn't get to her readily nor see what it was she was barking at.    Straining to look betw...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for August 19, 2026, the thirty-third Wednesday of the year, the ninth Wednesday of summer, the third Wednesday of August, and the two-hundred thirty-first day of the year, with one-hundred thirty-four days remaining. Wannaska Phenology Update for August 19, 2026 Ghost Pipe  Monotropa uniflora is pushing its spooky heads up through the floors of Wannaskaland forests. Monotropa is Greek for "one turn" and uniflora is Latin for "one flowered" as there is one sharply curved stem for each single flower. Mipitahmaskihkih in Cree, and tmaqn in Mi'kmaq, there is no word for Ghost Pipe in Anishinaabe. The Cherokee, Cree, Mohegan, and Potawatomi, traditionally used the plant for its medicinal properties, such as easing nerve pain or calming spasms. You'll find Ghost Pipe growing in clumps of two or more, with its fungal source nearby — usually waxy white, but some specimens have been described as having blac...