Letters from Rona / Sort by date

I've come to think the art of living, especially in old age, depends on rewarding the people who can meet your accelerating needs. It's often possible to bully or needle others into helping you out, but at a huge personal cost. Who wants to spend time with a whiner who can't stop lamenting her loneliness? [more]

It's been years since I last thought of Eleanor and Frank Milliken, who taught generations of students at my small-town high school quite a lot about their respective subjects---science in her case, Latin in his---and even more about life. [more]

I've just joined a highly addictive website that keeps pulling me away from whatever I intended to be doing instead. No, not Twitter; that was yesterday's time suck. My new online obsession is a far more exclusive affair, strictly for those of us who went to school in the acutely class-conscious town of Durham, New Hampshire. [more]

Have you heard the buzz about A Christmas Carol? No, not Disney's fancy-schmancy animated version starring some guy named Carrey as Scrooge---the reading at Church of the Redeemer on December 6, in which Toronto stalwarts of the stage and page will bring Dickens' classic to life with nothing but our voices and our affection for the ultimate Christmas yarn. I'm honoured to be among them. [more]

You know the old saw "Never go to bed angry?" Don't believe it. I learned in the first few years that there's just no hurrying a truce when we both need some breathing room. Here's why we're still together, and what I'm still trying to learn. [more]

In 1976, when we still believed in "having it all" and "glass ceiling" was a skylight with pretensions, I landed my first magazine job. Career gurus told me I should learn to act more like men. These days it's career-minded men who are being told to emulate women. So says Men's Health, the modern guy's mentor on every aspect of manhood from getting laid to getting ahead. [more]

I have this odd little habit that amuses my husband. To be honest, I'm told I have many odd habits. They involve bits of crumpled Kleenex, loose bottle caps, single socks emerging from the laundry...oh, enough of that stuff! Let's talk about a happier subject, books and pens. The two go together, as far as I'm concerned. [more]

There's a depth of desire---fierce, wholehearted and relentless---that can seize the heart of a teenage girl and carry her away, perhaps forever. Some girls are so determined to be thin that they'll starve for their notion of beauty. Others have staked their sense of self on joining violent gangs where rape is the price of admission. Laura Dekker, 14, is raising teen obsession to a loftier plane. She intends to become the youngest person to sail around the world solo. [more]

I guess the time has finally come to give the birthday festivities a rest. Who knew that turning 60 is like eating dessert in a Burgundian shrine to gastronomy---first the buttery, beautiful avant dessert, compliments of the chef; then the impossibly exquisite confection you ordered; then the apres-dessert, petits-fours borne on a platter that would not be out of place at Versailles? [more]

Early on in my friendship with Sarah, she advised me not to phone her. I was perfectly welcome to ring; I just shouldn't expect a voice-to-voice conversation. Susannah doesn't like to be caught off guard. She wants to know what's on someone's mind before she frames her reply. She loves the freedom e-mail gives her to be funny and warm when she's in the mood connection. No one writes a more expressive e-mail message than Sarah. But as she told me at our first girlfriends' dinner, she is simply "not a phone person." [more]

Although I'm still one of the die-hards for whom morning and the daily paper go together like coffee and toast, I can't seem to get out of my bathrobe without an online tour of newspapers hither and yon, with detours to a blog or two. I keep meaning to share the wealth, only to get distracted (must have been following a link). Here's an eclectic roundup of online gleanings that inspire me, challenge me, amaze me, move me or crack me up. [more]

I marvel that I once saw shopping as balm for my spirit. All it offered was distraction and the fleeting promise of care by a bevy of minions better groomed than I would ever be. Yet I remain a firm believer in the power of clothes to express both who I am and who I might become. So when a longtime reader e-mailed me the story of her "happy hat," I recognized a kindred spirit. [more]