Marion Agnew

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...

I don't really think of the year in terms of quarters, since I am not living squarely in the world of business and revenue targets and all that. So this is really a fancier way of saying, "How can March be over already? And we're in April?" which I have said many many a time before. Part of my feeling that it must still be February or March is the relentless nature of this winter's snowfall. Luckily my husband recently was setting out on a not-really-necessary tidy of the driveway with the snowblower and discovered a malfunction involving spark plugs, which we got fixed. I mean, the fixing was the lucky part--because the temperatures are stubbornly stuck just below freezing and the storms keep swooping across the continent. And now we're prepped. Part of my feeling of "when is it again?" is from being ill. I caught the flu and an infection and had a dental procedure and my body has said, "Just one thing a day." Now that I'm on the mend,...

I’m incredibly proud that Shawn Mooney, of the BookTube channel Shawn Breathes Books, included Making Up the Gods in several categories as he shared his reading highlights for 2025. His Most Unforgettable Main Character was a tie between Simone and Chen. And Shawn’s comments helped me see how their interactions help illuminate their best and worst qualities. Making Up the Gods appears again in the “most touching passage category,” and in Shawn’s best books of the year. What a humbling honour! ( Here's a link to the episode .) It’s so lovely to keep hearing from people who are getting to know Simone. The book world pays a lot of attention to book launches and that early flush of “latest greatest” publicity. But (I’m learning), books are meant to keep living beyond that short timeframe. I’m very grateful to readers who keep discovering and enjoying my books and recommending them to others. Shawn’s an avid reader, and his channel is a wealth of information about title from many eras. ...

I've mentioned UK writer Iain Robinson before ( here, in relation to notebooks ). I subscribe to his Substack, "This Party's Over," where he keeps a country diary far more extensive than the few observations I write in the morning. He's an activist and teacher besides being writing, and his posts are always thought provoking. It's interesting to see differences and similarities in nature-minded people writing nonfiction elsewhere in the world. Recently (meaning the past few months), of course, global relationships among countries are shifting. In his Country Diary #51, he laments being able to create big changes. Instead: “Going out into nature and responding to its truth feels like the only thing I can do in this troubled, broken age.” drifts Below is a version of the comment I left. I read this six weeks after he wrote it, right around the turn of the year, and I still feel this way. Sometimes I have to force myself to the page, but I need to write. It's...

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...

For  several months, I've been keeping track of five things  I'd like to remember from that month. Here's what came up in December.   One. Eat the heart of the lettuce first. My wise sister taught me this when she was here this summer. As a person living alone who loves to cook and eat, she often buys produce that has a shorter shelflife than her ability to eat it. So she has learned to take apart the lettuce head and eat the inner leaves, which are her favourites, first. If she ate her way into the centre, the inner leaves might be past their prime and unpleasant--and meanwhile, she’s spent days eating her less-favourite part before getting to the good stuff. It’s taking me time to think about this practice, but it’s fun.  Sometimes changing perspective is as easy as taking a photo from the upstairs window instead of the "usual" one downstairs  Two. Delay gratification. This thought seems the opposite of the previous one. It’s also something our parents insis...

Consilience, a UK literary journal (but also everywhere because it's online), has a tagline: "exploring the spaces where the sciences and the arts meet."   A frozen river winding through a forest?  It publishes art and poetry in themed issues. If you submit a poem to an issue, you also submit a science statement that explains the science behind your submission. The theme for Issue 23 was Tension , and I have a poem in it! That is correct: in spite of my greater comfort with prose, I wrote and submitted a poem, and it was accepted (after revisions).  You can read "Questions of Cohesion" here.  It's about my husband, me, marriage, holding us together, keeping things out.  Future themes include "infinity," "pollution," and "birds."  It's so interesting to see how people make connections to the themes. Scope out some of the previous issues (all free to read) at the website!.

In October I mentioned that sometimes I don’t have answers for some of the things I think about; I only have questions. It’s a failing of mine, especially when I write essays. (Or so I’m told.) I’m supposed to write an answer. But sometimes really all I have are questions. I feel so seen. In the context of writing an essay, I understand what the person means when I receive this feedback. I need to come to rest at some point late in the essay, even if it’s not a full stop or a final destination. It’s at least a pause, a “so far, here’s what I think“ moment. Basically, it’s an answer to the reader’s question, “So what?“ Not a “lesson” for them to learn. Just a breath. A “Thanks for spending time with me! See you later!“ In life (the part that isn’t writing, or perhaps writing for publication), I may always have questions. And I really want to ask (myself) the right questions. Good questions—useful to me, and therefore perhaps to others, though that’s not required. Meanwhile the writing a...

For  several months, I've been keeping track of five things  I'd like to remember from that month. Here's what came up in November.  As I post this, it's November 32nd. Is too. One. Sunny days. Literal ones. November is normally a grey and dreary month up here. The leaves are long-off the trees, and the temperature bobs around zero/freezing. This year we’ve had many sunny mornings, which helps my overall mood considerably. And the sun’s always there, even when I can’t see it. A random assortment of driftglass-- rather like these Five Things posts Two. Surprises. A publication that accepted one of my pieces years ago, The Walleye, recently produced a gorgeous anthology. It showcases both the original illustrations and the selected regional creative writing published over ten years. And I did nothing but answer my email! A real reason for deep gratitude. Three. Lunch. Because it’s my birthday month, I’ve had the pleasure of sharing noonish lunch meals with several peo...

Last month, Making Up the Gods and I received an Arts and Heritage Award from the City of Thunder Bay. You can read more about it here.   A frozen river? Nah, just light snow on a rock surface between moss clumps. The awardees in the two categories ahead of me chose not to make comments, so when my time came, I opted to follow their "less is more" approach and start near the end of what I thought I might say. (Though of course I didn't give up the chance for a microphone, when invited.) But I've been thinking since of ways I wish I'd spoken more into that evening as part of an ongoing conversation about art. So anyway, here's a mildly revised version of what I might have said a month ago. Thank you so much, I’m surprised and grateful. We all know how funders and government people talk about arts and artists, right? “The arts contributes X million to the economy. Our ticket sales are up by blah blah percent. Eleventy thousand people participated in the arts in ...

For  several months, I've been keeping track of five things  I'd like to remember from that month. Here's what came up in October. The award was created especially for the 2025 ceremony by artists Callen Retter and Robin Gathercole, drawing inspiration from Thunder Bay’s unique cultural and natural landscape, blending contemporary style with a strong sense of place. The layers are amazing.  One. It takes a village. Not very original, I know. Earlier this year, a local writing buddy nominated me for an award, based on MAKING UP THE GODS. The award wasn’t even on my radar, and her gesture was so kind. In those occasional 3 AMs when sleep is elusive and your writing projects all seem stupid, I remembered the kind act of this nomination.   Two. I can do my part. The awards program let me know how to proceed if I wanted to. And I decided I wanted to. Sometimes my mother was right when she’d say, “you have to put yourself out there.” There’s room between being passive an...

People enjoy feeling wistful—at least that’s what I’ve come to think. Especially in the autumn. Yes it’s beautiful, but rhapsodizing about “the red maples, the yellow birches, all against the evergreen backdrop!” feels to me to be more about grasping the last of summer than a way to welcome a new season. messing about in a rowboat Admittedly, autumn as a season on the calendar stretches far longer than the leaves stay on the trees, and it is difficult to find beauty of the traditional “eye catching flame in the trees” sort come late October early November. In my ongoing series of thoughts about obituaries and saying goodbye and wrapping up a person‘s life, I’m also thinking just in general about endings and beginnings and changing. Possibly it’s a way to deal with things (waves hands at “the world today"), but possibly it’s because I’m approaching a birthday ending in five. This birthday requires me to sign up for things—or not. To make choices that will affect my long-term future...

For several months, I've been keeping track of five things I'd like to remember from that month. Here's what came up in September. One. This year, I’m scratching that September “back to school“ itch by signing up for a couple of classes: weight training and drawing with coloured pencils. So far, they’re amazing. I've enjoyed the chance to review the anatomy of abdominal muscles. And I've made two colour wheels!! For example.  Two. All the “at the end of the summer I’ll handle x” things were staring me in the face but I got a reprieve when the weather finally turned warmer (August was chilly and damp). And of course I went back to “do this summer” to-dos (paint, tidying) along with going out in the boat. It was fabulous to have that second chance at summer. Three. I’m in several different types of book clubs at the moment. One is a club where writers read and discuss writing advice books. That’s fun! I’m also in a long-standing book club that tackles difficult boo...