Letters from Rona / On my mind / Sort by date

Among the unsung rewards of growing older is the confidence to voice my displeasure--emphatically, insistently and sometimes loudly enough to turn heads---when my legitimate needs go ignored by those whose job it is to serve their customers. [more]

In my only memory of Pamela Mason, we're cooking partners in Mrs. Boynton's eighth-grade Home Ec class. Pam and her girlfriend get busy with the wooden spoons while I stare out the window and wait for the bell to ring. Pam takes a dim view of my indolence. She mutters to her less assertive friend, in a tone calculated to get my attention, "All Rona knows is Shakespeare!" [more]

Do you ever visit open houses just to peer into the private lives of your fellow humans? Me too. That's how I stepped into the graciously proportioned house where Diane Keaton briefly lived with Al Pacino, just around the corner from the modest brick semi where my family was living at the time. [more]

It's been seventeen years since a piece of my prose inspired a week or so of headline-making fury. A Toronto Sun columnist accused me of "pathetic, whining, whacko, feminist claptrap." A radio host denounced my "evil, vile pamphlet dripping with slime." Irate callers lambasted the Ontario Women's Directorate for having the temerity to publish a 35-page booklet on non-sexist language, anonymously written by me. I've never felt more reviled---or less visible. I would read the morning paper in my bathrobe, wondering what new slurs were coming my way from people who had no idea I existed. [more]

There are moments in the life of every married couple when one spouse agrees to accept what the other urgently desires. To stay married is to learn both parts in this dance. But some compromises exact a devastating price. Zooey and Adam, a Canadian movie made for peanuts with a hand-held camera, pulled me inside an extreme marital dilemma and let me watch, squirming, as the anguish unspooled. [more]

When a woman of my acquaintance just happened to mention that she'd soon be boarding a plane for Argentina, I pictured her drinking malbec and learning the tango. "Lucky you!" I said. "You're going to love Buenos Aires!" Turned out she was giving it a miss. She was bound for the wilds of Patagonia, where she and three teammates would tackle a 600 km adventure race known all over the world for its rigour. [more]

There's a door to my soul that I'd prefer you didn't open. Some days I can hardly bear to open it myself. I'd rather not confront my unruly psyche. Fears, obsessions, misbegotten dreams...it's all on display, although exposing the most shameful excesses would take some serious and possibly odiferous digging. But at least I'm not alone. Do you have a fridge, dear reader? Then chances are you're harbouring a few slimy secrets of your own. [more]

I used to think that to experience a totally foreign culture, I would need a phrase book and an intercontinental flight. Turns out all it really takes is a road trip through the far southern reaches of my native land, the U.S.A. [more]