Letters from Rona / Community / Sort by titles

What I learned from giving my cast-off fiction and poetry to Sanctuary, a charity that befriends the the scorned and forgotten. [more]

I didn't remember meeting Lia Grimanis, a spirited advocate for homeless women. But she remembered meeting me at a crowded reception. And when she bought my book, she took a minute to cheer me on. [more]

You never know how an online encounter with a stranger is going to enlarge your life. This morning, an e-mail from a stranger did precisely that. [more]

When kids run wild on safe streets, they stretch their minds and bodies while learning a sense of fair play. Now traditional childhood games are all but forgotten. A Canadian hero aims to turn things around, and she\'s looking for help. [more]

When a stranger Googled "mother daughter," she rekindled a cherished old connection right here in the mother/daughter gallery at ronamaynard.com. [more]

It's been a few decades since I was last accosted on the street by a strange man keen to tell me something. But last week I was hailed by a local shopkeeper who'd been watching me go by every day. I was always smiling, he said. And he just had to thank me. [more]

The city I thought I knew like a friend revealed another side of itself when my husband and I took a long evening walk through urban corners we'd never explored. Right on our own turf, we had a mini-vacation that was full of surprises. [more]

I refuse to spend the next year or five "waiting for the bottom" like a kid on an interminable road trip, pleading to mom and dad, "Are we there yet?" At least mom and dad knew the route to Grandma's house. No one's got a clue when we'll get to the bottom of this economic mess---let alone what it will take to climb out. And meanwhile the prophets of doom keep blowing hot air on the flames of panic, setting the blogosphere ablaze. [more]

Lately I've been thinking of a man who's lying in a hospital bed, incoherent and minus a leg. It's been almost a week now since he was maimed in a stand-off with a taxi driver, and he's still in no condition to tell police exactly what happened late last Friday night on a picturesque downtown corner flanked on one side by a cafe and on the other by a former bread factory, recently converted into lofts. [more]

The big city became a very small small world indeed when I discovered that we'd bought our new home from our grandson's cousin. [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]

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]