Marion Agnew

Folks in our household have been ill recently--a cold or a very mild flu, something like that.  It happens. Not often, luckily. We're also usually diligent about vaccinations, especially as we get older. We missed one this summer and the others weren't on offer yet.  All in all, illness wasn't entirely unanticipated and certainly not abnormal. So here we are. With some kind of crud that's improving, on its own timeframe. Also not entirely anticipated: pep talks from my cough drops. Far more welcome than the illness that required the cough drops, though!   After I was sick, I noticed that I returned to about 80% healthy in a few days. That last bit--where I don't feel ill at all anymore--has been slower to come. My energy flows and lags. I'm content to stay home, and since my focus has returned, I read. We've watched leaves change colour and drift to the ground. We anticipate the fishing boat in the dark mornings and watch for its return near noon. And yes, a...

This summer, I've had the chance to host two author events, one in August and one in September, at Entershine Bookshop, our local independent bookseller.  In other years, other authors have also had events at a library or at Entershine--I've even hosted one. But this was the first time I haven't been distracted by time pressures on large projects of my own, and it was the first time I've had two close together.  Surprise, hosting has turned out to be very fun! It helps that in this summer's events, the Entershine staff and the visiting authors took care of the publicity (all I had to do was share what they created).  One of my events from this summer This Q/A happened in August Here are a few things I've learned.  Talking with other writers is GREAT. Hosting an event is therefore both fun and challenging. You're actually asking questions on behalf of the audience, which might be mostly readers (not writers interested in esoteric questions about structure, bu...

I mean, the answer to that question is obvious to me: yes AND no. As this whole post demonstrates! A couple of months ago, back in June, I drafted what's below. I was in the middle of many life events that required attention, and I noticed something that helped me.  CAVEAT: The below advice is not for everyone. Lots of people struggle with the particular things I mention. But what I was doing helped me, and EVEN THOUGH it's not for everyone and EVEN THOUGH it's not groundbreaking or earthshattering or especially original, I decided to offer it in case a reminder helped someone else.  And then I didn't post it.  Which, course...par for, at that time.  In any case, here's what I said at the time.   maybe someday I'll draw this Life advice: do the thing We’ve had an eventful 2026 so far—nothing major or interesting, nothing out of the ordinary for anyone but us. I’ve had a very minor medical procedure and got some bug after that, and recuperating has been slower t...

Hello, it's September. I will miss Wendell Berry (poems at The Poetry Foundation) .   Love me a leaf that's turning It's not autumn yet, but we can see it from here.  In the past six weeks, I have actually landed the plane on one of the projects that made me feel stupid (in four different ways). Luckily, it's a project I have never regretted, not once since I thought of it and dawdled over implementing it and eventually got in gear to get 'er done because of Events .  Could I draw this? Maybe? I love when my family visits up here. It makes the other eleven months of the year, the worrying about water and trees and paths and taxes and hydro lines and invaders (ant and mice), worth it. I wish this year my niece and her friends hadn't coincided with the smoky weather and I'm very grateful for their resilience and good humour. I'm proud that this year my sister and I had art sessions several times, some in town and some just out here, at camp. One day in my ...

Last month I mentioned that I have had a bunch of things to take care of and doing so would require me to learn and make mistakes and generally feel like a fool. Air quality 8 Yup, still happening. And also, summer has arrived (mostly with June 21 on the calendar), and with it, fires. We've had air quality of 11 (giving me a ghoulish giggle in a Spinal Tap "the dial goes all the way to 11" way), which is not optimal.  Worse, we were experiencing a heat dome, with temperatures above 40C (which is a lot in Fahrenheit), with humidity. Homes and other buildings (and most people) here aren't prepared for those temperatures.  Add in the smoke, and we've had some stifling days. The kinds of days when you watch the grass growing and you're antsy to take out the trees (more and different ones!) that are blocking paths, but that type of outdoor work is definitely not advisable.  As I travel to and from town working on those "boy I feel ridiculous" projects, I...

Oh, May. What a month.  This is what luck looks like. Many things happened. Mostly spring-related. In spring, our driveway becomes a viscous (and also vicious but mostly viscous) mixture of mud and snow. To keep the driveway from developing deep ruts (and to ensure that my Corolla can get out safely), I park near the end, where it joins the asphalt street. A neighbour suggested (correctly) that I shouldn't park directly IN the driveway in the (unlikely) event that emergency vehicles need to come in. Fair enough. So I didn't. I found a grassy spot and parked in the grass, under a tall spruce. When my husband and I ran errands one Monday, we noted that the driveway was fairly firm under our boots, and we chatted about the huge woodpecker holes in the trunk of the spruce. I looked up: "Yeah, but it's hanging in there--cones at the top, and the needles are green." He agreed it would probably hang in there until an autumn storm.  You can see where this is going, probab...

As I said earlier this month, spring feels especially reluctant to show up this year .  And yet, when I look, I can see the signs around me! We're feeding birds again (in spite of the mess they make on the deck) because there's nothing more tragic than a wistful junco on the deck in the morning. They're moving through on their way north, and we want to give them the wherewithal to get there.  Speaking of morning, the sun is coming up to the left of the Pass Lake Gap. We're one month into the season, and the sun will continue to move left until the summer solstice. It's so fun to be able to watch it, even though the sunrises still reflect on lake ice instead of a liquid version of Lake Superior. This morning I heard my first white-throated sparrow! It's also "park the car at the end of the driveway" season. Our driveway is unpaved, so lakes appear as the snow melts, and as I have whined before, this year there's PLENTY OF SNOW TO MELT. A cause for c...