Wannaskan Almanac

Hayes Lake State Park Saturday September 10th, 1983  Excerpt From "Hot Coffee & Cold Beer: a Journal."      I mentioned last week’s ( Sept 3rd ) camping trip to Mark, another friend of mine at the toy factory. He’s an amateur photographer; having a Canon 35mm camera and some great lenses. At the mention of seeing the otters, he became interested in getting some pictures of them and asked if I’d be  willing to show him where they might be this weekend. And of course, I was, as friends were far and in between for me about that time. Having learned we had similar interests, I thought I should make the attempt.     Over the course of the week we discussed various ideas of what to bring and where we would camp at Hayes the night of the ninth and look for the otters early in the morning on the tenth. I’d provide the food, the canoe, and camper. Mark would buy the beer and camping fee. Good enough. As it turned out, even though I took the grocery lis...

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for September 9, 2026, the thirty-sixth Wednesday of the year, the twelfth Wednesday of summer, the second Wednesday of September, and the two-hundred fifty-second day of the year, with one-hundred thirteen days remaining. Wannaska Phenology Update for September 9, 2026 Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus — memengwaa, in Anishinaabe — can still be seen around Wannaska, but they will soon be heading south. In 1874, entomologist Samuel Hubbard Scudder suggested naming the butterfly "The Monarch", citing its large size and the notion that it "rules a vast domain" as the basis for the name, which he preferred to William D'Urban's "Storm Fritillary" and Philip Henry Gosse's "Archippus." Danaus (Ancient Greek Δαναός), was a great-grandson of Zeus and a mythical king in Egypt or Libya, who founded Argos. Plexippus (Πλήξιππος) was one of the fifty sons of Aegyptus , the twin brother of ...

I miss my dog.  I miss that little hate filled, angry, and always ready to annoy everyone little chihuahua.   I miss my ability to read without glasses.  I can't even look at my computer anymore without experiencing letter blindness. I miss my grandmas...both of them.  They were full of wit and vinegar...usually more vinegar than wit. I miss skinny jeans.  I don't even think they make skinny jeans in my sive.  They would be called fat jeans. I miss excitement...now I just wake up one day closer to the grave with something new hurting every morning.   I miss typewriters.  Not computers, or electric typewriters, but real manual typewriters.  The click of the keys, the little bell letting you know it is time to get ready to  hit that silver return handle.   I miss gardens.  I hate to hoe.  I hate to weed.  I hate to wait while plants grow so slowly.  But still, I miss gardens. I miss the river that I ...

The other day, a friend of mine, who has stuff on her mind, said she would go by herself to a whale watch on Sunday. It will revive my connection to the universe, she texted. I can relate. My ideal summer includes slow mornings, swims, walks, talks and reads. To that slate of activities, this year I added two weddings. Lots of fun, but. The labor intensive getting ready tasks can be a lot: shopping, packing, traveling - all the emotional intensity. There are limits to how long I can remain saturated by scintillation - I become a toddler again needing quiet time. Thankfully, the fog of overactivity has begun to lift and I’ve lately returned to woods walking - a favorite way for me to get myself back. Whenever I begin again after a lapse of days, the body complains. I start slowly, one heavy foot in front of the other. The route I chose the other day led to abandoned cranberry bogs. Gone are the years when I’d see the old box rakes and wooden crates once used to harvest berries. Now the...

The Palmville Globe Volume 2 Number 32 Man Assists Surveyors Joe McDonnell, 79 and a resident of Palmville Twp, Minnesota recently helped a surveyor meet his quota. "My wife and I were trying to decide if we were going to wait in a long line for an expensive egg roll on a stick," McDonnell tells reporters. "The egg roll was supposed to be one of the hot new items at the state fair, but we were discouraged by the price of the egg roll and the length of the line. Meanwhile a young man asked if we would take a short survey on why prices were high and lines were long at the fair. By the time we finished the survey, we were at the head of the line and almost automatically ordered two egg rolls." In a later report McDonnell says the egg rolls were "pretty good”. He said he had to keep pushing the egg roll up as he ate so he didn't gag on the stick.  Man Tries New Umami Taste Joe McDonnell, 79 and not at all a foodie, recently tried a new "essence of deliciou...

Hello and welcome to the first Saturday in September. Today is September 5th and Labor Day weekend. Hurrah! This week, the younger kids headed back to the classroom, College Kid 3.0 finished up his final exams, and College Kid 2.0 set up his desk to work remotely at his new job as a college graduate. But the real story this week was about fishing. With his older brother's fishing gear at his disposal, plus a river and fishing buddies right in the neighborhood, fishing has been the Youngest's top priority. Hello! This is the kid writer-in-training and I was the one who caught the Pike on a stick.  Well, I didn't actually catch the pike on a stick. I caught it the normal way with a rod and reel. I was using a little blue lure. I caught three fish with that lure. We didn't bring the other two home because they only got the lure slightly in their mouths, making it pretty easy to take it out. We threw those ones back in. However, with the third and final fish that I caught, ...

     The Minnesota State Fair runs for ten days in late August up to Labor Day. The gates open at 7:00 am and close at 11:00 pm except on Labor Day when they close at 9:00 pm. A true Fair rat could potentially spend a total of 158 hours on the fairgrounds. Such a person could work a six hour daily shift for one of the hundreds of vendors, which would get him or her free admission to the Fair (a $20 per day value) plus cash for buying treats and gimcracks.    Teresa and I might have done that in our younger days, but that window has closed. We now content ourselves with a single day at the Fair. We used to arrive early and stay late. Even that window is slowly closing. A few years back we would park directly on the fairgrounds. The rate was reasonable and at the end of the day, our car was right there. But the Fair wants to expand into its parking lot and has been raising the fee to discourage people from parking there. It's discouraged us.    The Fair ...