Marion Agnew

I posted a shorter version of these thoughts on Instagram a couple of weeks ago and meant to post here, too, because I do like notebooks. Like these. New Notebook Season may be  my favourite season of all Well, yes, it feels mildly ridiculous to post about notebooks when—oh, you know—all this is happening everywhere. However, every Sunday evening I read what I wrote the previous week and I’m astounded at what happened—a forgotten horror here, a small (or even large) joy there. These notebooks bring me, joy, however varied their contents. The notebooks are from Paperblanks, ordered through our local bookstore, Entershine Bookshop. The planner is Hemlock & Oak. All Canadian companies. The one on the left, with robins, is a five-year notebook in which I'm recording nature observations. I got the idea to use a five-year journal from a UK writer I follow on Substack, Iain Robinson. I've been writing these observations for years, and I try to notice more than the temperature. The...

It's still 2026. Early February. Just in case anyone else wondered how many years long January was. Yep, it's hanging over the wire I've had occasion to learn a couple of things recently, and I'm sharing them in case they're also new to you. First. In Ontario at this moment in this Premier's administration, your license and health card expire on your birthday--not every year; every five years. Unless you're nearing 80 (this is not my personal learning, but adjacent learning), in which case, go to Service Ontario. Yes! They expire! And yet! You no longer receive mail or email reminders that your identification is expiring. Or at least you didn't in the autumn of 2025, which is when my IDs expired. I learned all this from a friendly (he really was) Ontario Provincial Police constable whose plate-reader told him that the owner of my car, which I was driving safely, (roughly) under the speed limit on snowy roads, was an unlicensed driver.  Anyway, the frien...

Already mid-January. It's been eventful, but not so much of the interesting kind. More of the workaday kind in my life (and horrific in the world), and talking about those types of events isn't especially helpful.  twisty snowy branches But one thing that I've understood in a different way, after experiencing of those events, is the need for a foundation. In a literal sense, like a foundation for your home, and a figurative one, like something you really need to make your life possible (or okay, that lets you live your life with the ease to which you have become accustomed).  Side note: here's a brief invisible-to-you pause while I searched a couple of things and got sidetracked learning about foundation garments. Sometimes it's interesting to be alive long enough to see times changing. (In the global sense, not so much, but we aren't talking about those events.) My point is that in rural northwestern Ontario, we need a car that does well in snow and icy conditi...