Letters from Rona / Places I love / Sort by date

If I could be buried in P?re Lachaise Cemetery, where my husband and I once spent a drizzly afternoon communing with the famous dead of Paris, then I might find a certain allure in the prospect of my own demise. P?re Lachaise isn't one of those groomed cemeteries, every flower bed primped like a model for the runway. It's a wild, romantic place that cries out to be explored while listening to a nocturne by Chopin. [more]

My first locker room, in the basement of Oyster River Junior High School, had beige cinderblock walls and open showers that exposed your cringing, naked pre-teen body for the whole class to see. Oh, the horror! I never guessed that I would come to rely on locker rooms for solace, renewal and that special camaraderie found only where women gather naked---all ages, all sizes---with no expectation but a fleeting escape from the rigors of the day. [more]

My brain goes into spasm at the thought of living in China's biggest, bursting-at-the-seams metropolis, with its omnipresent cranes and pollution haze. Still, I have to admire the city's heritage of openness and the scope of its current ambitions. Here, a few memories I'll be sharing with friends back home. Shanghailights, you might say. [more]

Shanghai, where we've spent six brain-jangling days, is a city of 19 million in one hell of a hurry. You could argue that we've picked a bad time to come, with a World Expo set to open in less than a year and construction hoardings on every block. But it seems to me we've arrived just in time to see vanishing downtown neighbourhoods that have scarcely changed since the Communists came to power. [more]

In the small cheerless hours of the morning, when there's nothing I want in the world except another few hours of sleep, I close my eyes and revisit our first house. I find it soothing to contemplate the rooms where, for 14 years, I read and wrote and cooked and raised my son. [more]