Letters from Rona / Sort by date

You couldn't go through school in New Hampshire, my home state, without being steeped in Robert Frost. Our teachers cast him as a sage in overalls, a fantasy grandfather opening his pasture and his barn to kids like us. I always sensed there was a whole lot more to the elusive and sardonic Frost, which is why I read him to this day. If "Birches" is read at my funeral and the afterlife turns out to exist, you can bet that I'll be looking down yelling, "Hey, I just had another insight on this poem!" [more]

Just because older women are not seen doesn't mean we can't be heard. That's what I learned at the Norton Simon Museum, a justly renowned treasure house where a less-than-friendly welcome threatened to drain the joy from our visit. [more]

Holding my breath on the hairpin turns of the Mount Washington Auto Road, eating pie at Flora and Ella's, discovering architectural treasures in tiny Spring Green Wisconsin and other unforgettable moments in my life as a late-blooming road tripper. [more]

When it became clear that my husband's bum knee had irreversibly ended our hiking vacations, we began to cast about for alternatives. Now we're planning an art road trip that gives us a shot at 30 museums in five weeks. First stop: the Detroit Institute of Arts, a favourite of ours for the spectacular mural cycle by Diego Rivera. [more]

Have you ever smelled burnt toast when nobody's been anywhere near the toaster? Neither had I until it woke me up in the pre-dawn hours. I told myself that buildings contain many mysteries. Turns out the brain does, too. [more]

On a road trip this past winter, I did something I'd never done before. I went to a Sunday church service. Not just any service, but the two-and-a-half-hour praise fest at the Church of the Full Gospel Tabernacle, where music lovers flock from all over to see the Reverend Al Green in action. With a long drive to Texas ahead and half a day to spend in Memphis, my husband and I had picked Reverend Al's church over Graceland on the theory that a living, rocking, joy-proclaiming icon beats a shrine to one who died of drug abuse. There was just one catch: those hours in a pew. "Let's sit at the back," I suggested. "When we've had enough, we can slip out and no one will notice." [more]

On August 5, 1962, not long before my thirteenth birthday, two women made headlines around the world. Marilyn Monroe was found dead of an overdose. And a working mother from Arizona, Sherri Finkbine, arrived in Sweden for the abortion denied her at home. She had taken thalidomide, the drug responsible for thousands of devastating birth defects. [more]

I'd been meaning to call her for weeks, if not months. Perhaps she'd been meaning to call me, too. It had been more than 35 years since we talked on the phone every day with that craving for connection known only to teenage best friends. In those days I could tie up the family phone for hours--or until my parents finally lost patience--because nothing mattered more than consoling Anne through her latest crisis of the heart. As adult women, we mostly connected through Facebook. Then Facebook informed me that her marriage was over. [more]

I'd been counting on Diana Nyad to prove that you're never too old to score the success of a lifetime. Instead she proved that there's more to success than achieving the vision in her head. She will never swim from Cuba to Key West, but she did her absolute best and I'll remember her grit next time I shy away from a daunting goal. [more]

I have just spent a week exploring Rome, where every ancient ruin got me wondering, "What would Mr. Milliken say about this?" Frank Milliken, who taught me Latin in Durham, N.H., loved all things Roman the way Julia Child loved sweet butter and Keith Richards loves the blues--with the passion of a convert whose delight becomes a calling. What stories he'd have told about the obelisks plundered from Egypt, the ruined theatre where Caesar met his bloody death on the Ides of March. I suspect our local tour guide had a better handle on the facts, which archeologists are still unearthing. But Mr. Milliken would have told more jokes. He favoured groan-worthy puns, delivered deadpan to work the contrast between his grave demeanour--dark suits, horn-rimmed glasses--and his inner scamp. [more]

Back when Elizabeth Taylor was the world's most scandalous woman, I followed her adventures on the pretext of shopping with my mother. Every supermarket sold Photoplay, and every issue exuded the forbidden scent of lust as only home-wrecking, violet-eyed Liz could inspire it. While my mother filled her cart with egg noodles and cream of mushroom soup, I hung out at the newsstand, drinking in the gossip. [more]

Somewhere on the downward slope of my 50s, I wandered into a boutique much beloved by the fashion crowd, and was talked into buying my first halter top. I found it on the bargain rack, where clothes end up that you have to be mad or a model to wear. The plunging neckline said "Cher on a bad night." The fabric, white eyelet, said, "Eight-year-old's birthday party." [more]