Marion Agnew

Every month, I show the photos I used in my family's calendar for this year. You can find previous photos and a link to the text they illustrate here . I'm not a big fan of scary movies. I am a huge fan of wonder. Also awe. And I found three illustrations of those emotions for this month's calendar page. And by the way, this last one? It's a bear. Playing with a garden hose, right out here on our septic field. She first stopped by the side door to the house, where she left a nose print. The door was locked, or else she might have had a close encounter of the sisterly kind with my own sister, who was working in room just inside the door. Wonder. Awe. And also a little awww. Though not much. That's a bear, after all.

This year, I've been showing the photos I used in the calendar I create every year. You can find previous months and a link to the text they illustrate here . As you can imagine, northwestern Ontario is lovely in September. I always have more photos to choose from than room to show them. This month, I used these. Photos of places so familiar in summer, but now with signs of changing leaves and dying grasses, are extra special, rather like seeing someone you love with new eyes. I don't have kids, but I get the same feeling when I see photos of my parents when they were young -- far younger than I am now. "Oh,  the handsome fellow in his tux, the young girl in overalls posing hands-on-hips -- they are part of who you were, too!" It's no accident that songs about September are often poignant. It's hard not to look at the sun and wish it would hang around on its summer schedule for a few more months -- and it's hard not to feel that sense of summer...

This year, I've been showing photos that I used in the calendar I make for my family every year. You can find the previous months, along with a link to the text that they illustrated this year, here . August is the month I most closely associate with being here. We couldn't vacation before August -- my parents taught summer sessions; the competitive swimming season didn't go on hiatus until the end of July. August gave us a few short weeks of freedom before school started again, for all of us. I try to keep these familial biorhythms in mind as I make this calendar every year. Sure, my siblings and I are all (ostensibly) adults and have been creating our own families and vacation traditions for decades. But I suspect that August  in Thunder Bay is a default setting for them -- it is for me. And here's the view that I most closely associate with August. It's one of my default shots. I take about a bazillion pictures from this beach at all times of the year, ever...

This year, I've been showing images from the 2012 calendar I make for my family for Christmas. A link to previous months (that also includes a link to the text I illustrated) is  here . When I put together a calendar, I start by making a folder in Picasa with candidate images. I try to mix winter and summer shots; I try to find pictures that are different from those available in commercial calendars. And of course, because my audience is my family, who experienced this place in the summer and have warm feelings for particular scenes and views, I include a fair number of those. Sometimes I have text first; sometimes I find it later. I have a couple of candidates for 2013 already, but I'm always on the lookout. After I have the file of images and the text, I set aside uninterrupted time to read the text while looking through the assembled photos -- usually at least double the number that I can possibly use -- to see what speaks. When I got to July, I knew immediately the ...

For the June page of my calendar, I used these three photos. As I write this, the weather is unsettled, with high humidity and temperatures to match. Outside my office window, the grass is tall but too wet to mow -- a far cry from the doe/snow and ice/sunrise shots. I love looking closely at the calendar photos throughout the year, especially when the seasons in the photos don't necessarily match the real world outside.  The pictures remind me that  seasons can change, but beauty remains. 

Here's my 2011 calendar shot for May. It's one of my favo(u)rite scenes -- all mist-erious. Is the shot from May of  last year? No. That's ice in front of that island. It's from sometime in March. But what I like about the shot is the light,* and to me, light speaks of coming into the "yang time" of the year, when things you've been working on in the dark months see the world.  One of those things, for me, is a sort of five-year plan for my creative writing. More about that later. *Or at least that's what I like about it now. I reserve the right to let it tell me something different when I'm at a different point in my life and am listening for a different message. 

So here's the deal. I'm home from vacation in Tucson, which I enjoyed mightily. It was a well-filling experience. But, as an adult with allegiances in two countries, I allocate the entire month of April to income tax. Actually, I pay someone else to do my Canadian taxes, which helps, but there's still a lot of paperwork to assemble.  Plus, I have this "thing" about paying someone else to help me tell the US IRS that I don't, in fact, owe taxes, because I pay up here and the two countries have signed a treaty. Therefore, I do my own US taxes. Which mostly involves whining, since the paperwork is all assembled for the Canadian accountant. But it's still a project.  All of which is a big over-explanation of why today is another picture day. Two pictures, actually -- taken the "Day of Two Sunrises." Sunrises actually aren't straight "up" from a spot on the horizon (a factoid I didn't really understand till I lived ...

The specific day that's like a command: March 4th. Thank you, Peggy of Otowi Station Bookstore . Here are the two shots I used for my family's calendar in March. If you've only been here in the summer, it's hard to imagine scenes like this. Which is why I include so many winter shots.

As I mentioned last week , I'm vacationing. (Strange concept for a writer.) While I'm gone, I'm sharing photos from the calendar I create for my family every year. I should mention that, being a word person, I often include words with these shots. In the past, I've used poems that were meaningful to my mother and grandmother, and excerpts from various other bits of writing that my mother left behind. This year, I used a quote for M. Scott Momaday, which you can read here . I divided the last three statements on the page among the twelve months of the year.

I live in a spot that's near and dear to me and my siblings, so every year their Christmas present from me is a calendar. The old-fashioned, paper kind. It's retro! This month, I'm taking a bit of vacation and thought I'd share some of the calendar photos here in the meantime. (You can share, too -- just link to this, please.) January's sunrise shot, taken in September, 2011.