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About eleven o’clock this morning I wandered down the steep steps that descend from our house to the shops of Cerro de Gallo. I needed some veggies for supper and I was going to pick up some chicken from the carniceria—the butcher shop. When I arrived, it was shut tight.…

There are some days you never forget. That’s what I tell myself, anyway—and then two months or two years later, the details have disappeared into a fog. “Oh yes, I was there…let me see…” Monday was one of those days, so I’ll try to capture it here in the hopes…

Yesterday morning I sent out an urgent message on the ex-pat group website here in Guanajuato: Does anyone know where I can buy crutches?? I don’t often venture into the tunnels in Guanajuato. They’re dark and smelly, the traffic is fast, and I never feel really safe. But sometimes that’s…

It does seem like the Christmas season should be over, but events keep popping up. Yesterday we attended a post-holiday gathering of about a doze university students and their sponsors, part of a program called Caminantes Brillantes to provide financial assistance to promising young people who would not otherwise be…

(Apologies in advance for the quality of these photos. I don’t know why they’re all fuzzy. Hope you “get the picture” in spite of it.) It’s hard not to feel like you’re getting enough exercise here in Guanajuato. We walk almost everywhere, and the steep hills make every walk feel…

Regular readers of this blog will know that this jolly season coincides with my season of angst, when I prepare to join the flock of snowbirds and make my annual migration to Guanajuato, Mexico. Before leaving, every year, I agonize over missing winter with its white brightness and its cozy…

I’ve been thinking for awhile now that I should write a blog post about something weighty since the world seems to become weightier by the week. Perhaps I could add something pithy to the discussion of climate change or propose a novel solution to the terrorist threat. I have pretty…

I took my walk after breakfast this morning instead of after lunch as usual. I pretended to myself that I wasn’t actually planning to sit in front of the television all day long, but really, I knew. At 10:30, I tuned into CBC Newsworld and listened to Peter Mansbridge mark…

I’ve been struggling with this concept in the context of our current, endless election campaign. (Endless for Canadians; for my American friends, it’s just a blip on the calendar…) So please indulge me while I share this struggle. I am, frankly, tired of voting strategically. It’s been a long while…

       It’s September, but it hardly feels like it. We’re experiencing much, much warmer temperatures than usual—highs of 29, 30 degrees C the last few days, 24 today–and there’s still no sign of fall colours. I remember—here goes “back in the olden days”—when the start of school was also the…

Ok, the title is misleading. We haven’t made hay for 25 years–or more! But we still think about it. We still live surrounded by the fields we used to make hay on, and we watch the season progress from the first signs of green in the spring to the moment…

Agnes and True is proud to present our fourth story. Read “The Red Kite” by Paula Dunning: http://agnesandtrue.com/the-red-kite/ ———————————————————————— I went back to the “Message from Paula” (at the top of this page) posted more than a year ago to find this reminder of one purpose for this blog: “an…

That’s an estimate. I figure I’ve walked along the Echo River on average twice a week for at least twenty-five years—about the time I decided I needed to incorporate intentional exercise into my life. That estimate takes into account bad weather and, recently, winters away. When I’m home and it’s…

One of my favourite Calvin cartoons shows a confused, cubist Calvin splintered into many overlapping, angled pieces. Gradually, over several panels, he regains his equilibrium and his body parts fall into place as the confusion abates. Several times every year, I experience that disjointed feeling, moving from my “real” home…

Tomorrow—Easter—marks the end of Semana Santa in Mexico. The week is a lively combination of the secular (balloons, cotton candy, vendors of all kinds, street food, bands at night in the plazas) and the sacred (altars outside homes, church services, and a variety of rituals that I don’t understand).  This…

The last time I went to a baseball game was in 1992—the year the Blue Jays won the World Series. It was a time in my life when I found myself in Toronto often, and on this particular afternoon the Blue Jays were playing one of the final play-off games…

As promised/threatened, a photo-essay (sounds better than grandma’s photo album) of the first few days with Galen, Katharina and their 3 little ones—Quentin, 5; Stella, 3; and Nina, who is six months old today. (Some of the pictures are a bit fuzzy–Jack’s the photographer, and he was using a camera…

We’ve just returned to Guanajuato from a 5-day trip to Merida in the Yucatan peninsula where some good friends have rented a house for a couple of months. So this will be a bit of a travel-post with some photos and highlights from the past week. But I need to…

Back in Guanajuato after a five-day writers’ conference in nearby San Miguel d’Allende. This is an annual event that attracts some pretty big names as keynote speakers—last night, Gloria Steinem. I found her address a bit disappointing. She’d been asked to speak about “writing our way to revolution”. Her audience…