Marion Agnew

See also: church-goers, grocery-buyers. And car-drivers, joggers, sleepers in beds. This poem, online at the Jellyfish Review. More about Kathy Fish.  

I don't recommend all these things, necessarily. However, I thought they had interesting points to make. The cover of Jose Saramago's The History of the Siege of Lisbon, held in front of our sunny deck and red pines The History of the Siege of Lisbon, Goodreads link Our book club read this. The main character is a proofreader who--from frustration, perhaps, or perhaps from just growing awareness of his own agency--inserts a "not" into a history book and sets in motion a larger change in his life.  I liked the idea of the power of the lesser-celebrated members of a book's production team. I said more about it on Instagram, where I'm (surprisingly) @marionagnew . You're welcome to find me there. How Growing Up in the Digital Age Impacts Young Minds   Salient quote: "A third concern about viewing habits among the very young comes under the heading of the displacement hypothesis: time spent watching video potentially displaces other more age-appropriate a...

So, a lot's happening. Not with me personally, so much, but with (waves arms) everything. Here's what it looks like around here these days. the sun, high in the sky, filters through bare-branched birches  and various types of conifers a birchbark-on-trunk closeup, a shot I take often Well, the bark on the birch trees looks like that all winter, too, except that there's SO MUCH SUN on this trunk. And I love it. Spring has definitely, you know, and it's as glorious as ever. Now I wonder if I was somehow "too hard on" winter. If I complained too much, but beyond that -- if I went from impatient for spring, disappointed ("I'm not mad, just disappointed") with each ensuing cold snap and snowstorm, to actual anger. Of the shaking-fists-at-the-sky ilk. Futile rage. Possibly.  Here's what my toast looked like this morning. (Stay with me for a sec.) slice of multigrain bread with a large baked-in hole  I adore this type of bread. I buy multiple loaves...

Monday I sent my second-born off to college.  No, you didn't miss anything. I still don't have children. It's a metaphor, on which I can't elaborate. Yet. It was an important day. I wanted to celebrate, because this second-born has been with me for more than a decade.  And I wanted to take a quiet moment to ... "mourn"? Not quite the right word. But "celebrate" doesn't capture the full range of emotions around the experience. There's a letting-go of this entity that I've held (lightly, firmly, with despair, with hope) for so long. I wanted to recognize the moment for what it is, yet another change in this time of accelerated change.  So I clung to that mixture of feelings yesterday, in spite of political leaks, in spite of elections and pandemics and campaign promises and lies under oath.  *** I also recognized yesterday as my mother's 105th birthday. She's not alive on earth to celebrate, but I can celebrate: so I did, and I do. ...