Letters from Rona / Sort by date

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]