Letters from Rona / Sort by date

Now is the moment for homemade rhubarb pie, and my mother's were transcendent. After she died, I thought no one would ever again bake a rhubarb pie just to delight me. Then one spring at the height of rhubarb season, I went to see a friend who was terminally ill. She had a rhubarb patch. And despite my protests, she insisted on baking me a pie. [more]

There comes a point in even the most special vacation when my thoughts drift homeward to my own bed, my own books and paintings, my own fridge stocked the way I like it, with maple syrup, organic yogurt and hazelnut butter for my morning fruit-and-nut toast. [more]

Argentina reminds me of that gorgeous, prodigiously gifted friend who can?t seem to get her act together. She has infallibly bad taste in men, and a habit of dwelling on her tortured family past. Still, she?s so much fun that you want to be around her. And much of the pleasure unfolds at the table, where fabulous food and wines of distinction can be had for a fraction of what you?d have to pay almost anywhere else. [more]

Some say Buenos Aires is the city of tango. Others call it the city of soccer. Let me be the one to tell you Buenos Aires is a a city of independent bookstores, including the most extraordinary shrine to the printed word I have yet seen anywhere. [more]

Mind if I brag for a minute? After all, it?s not every traveler who follows in the footsteps of the world?s greatest climbers, drawn by the forbidding power of Mount Aconcagua, the tallest peak outside the Himalays. [more]

This brilliant fall day in Argentine wine country, I?ve done nothing at all except absorb the sights and sounds of a new place. Knowing it?s spring back home makes the whole experience more refreshing. [more]

A trip is like a breakfast buffet. I want to taste everything because it looks so tempting, and because at home I can?t start my day with scrambled eggs unless I?m going to scramble them myself. So of course I overdo it. The reality is, I?ll never taste it all. [more]

You'll be hearing from me less often these next several weeks. As I write this, I'm packing for our trip to South America. Correction: I should be packing. [more]

Remember the good old days of air travel? You got a free pillow in a cardboard-y cover, you could take your biggest tube of hand cream on board and you didn't get dinged for an extra bag. Ah, luxury! Now the airlines have left us just one tiny indulgence: we can carry all the books we can stow beneath our seats. Thank goodness, because I'm bracing myself for a 12-hour flight to Buenos Aires. [more]

I used to think I'd return to all the travel destinations that have stirred my soul. Now I've had to face reality: too many enticing places to see, not enough years of healthy wandering. And if I go back to the Alhambra, I might miss the Great Wall of China. [more]

I've never had any truck with pompous types who claim that there are two kinds of people in the world, except when I'm the one making the pronouncement. So I am here to tell you that among those who own worldly goods, a spiritual and moral divide separates the tossers from the hoarders. We tossers get a self-righteous charge from purging every corner of stuff we deem to have served its purpose. As you've doubtless observed from all those articles and web sites that exalt the "conquering" of clutter, our camp has the upper hand these days. [more]

All my life I have laboured to write well. But perhaps I've been trying too hard. I've just realized I may never craft a sentence as memorable as a whole flight of exuberantly bad sentences that appeared in my home-town paper back in 1972 and have resonated in my mind ever since. Trust me, to write this badly takes nerve, swagger and a kind of reckless brilliance. [more]