Letters from Rona / Sort by date

The more I learn about Sarah Palin, the less I trust her. But I'm not here to tell you why I've hardened my heart. I'm actually rushing to Sarah's defense. Remember that dishy story about her thinking Africa is a country? Turns out it's a fiction planted on the blogosphere by a fake policy wonk named Martin Eisenstadt. [more]

Sometimes I look back on my son's teenage years and wonder how we ever got through. It's not that we had a hell-raiser on our hands, just that there are so many ways for a promising, likeable, headstrong kid to fall from the precipice of adolescence. A kid like Brandon Crisp, age 15. His funeral in Barrie, Ontario, is expected to draw 1,000 mourners who loved him, searched high and low for him or simply know in their hearts that what happened to Brandon could happen to their own child. [more]

I could have sworn the place to be on the momentous night of November 4, 2008 was Grant Park in Chicago. But I've only just found out that a joyous crowd of Bob Dylan fans were celebrating change at the University of Minnesota, in a sell-out concert by the man with the big white hat, the sunken cheeks, the ruined growl and the visionary grasp of the tumultuous American story. [more]

Should've, could've, would've...there must be all kinds of ways I fell short this week. Enough guilt-tripping, I say. I can think of three small, good things that I almost didn't bother to do because they seemed so inconsequential. And sometimes it's the little things that people remember. [more]

On Tuesday night along with countless millions all over the world, I held my breath in front of the TV, waiting for the moment I never thought I'd see in my lifetime: a black President-elect, Barack Obama, addressing an exultant crowd where friends wept in each other's arms and exhausted but awe-struck children sat on their parents' shoulders to get a good look at a spectacle that will linger in their minds until they leave this earth. I have always been something of a loner, but yesterday the windows in my head blew open and I saw myself part of that throng. [more]

Although Hallmark doesn't know it yet, April is grandchild month around here: a new grandbaby on the way, another for my sister-in-law Linda, plus an essay of mine in a terrific forthcoming anthology Eye of My Heart: the Hidden Pleasures and Perils of being a Grandmother. [more]

With the Washington rumour machine in pre-election overdrive, we're not hearing much about the sad, sordid tale of John and Elizabeth Edwards: he the philandering senator and former presidential hopeful, she the wronged wife with a deadly cancer. A scant two months ago, the press was busy raking muck and hinting of explosive revelations to come. But that was before Joe the Plumber, Bill Ayers and the Palin family's $150,000 campaign wardrobe. I will never forget the Edwardses, though. [more]

I could tell you that infidelity is not the end of the world. I could add that an apparent tailspin a marriage, which looks to outsiders like certain disaster, just might bring a change for the better. But maxims don't have anywhere near the impact that a good story does. That's why I'm sharing a story from the Globe and Mail's fine obituary of Connie Rooke, the writer and critic who died this month after nearly 40 years of marriage to the writer Leon Rooke. [more]

Around 9 o'clock on Saturday morning, while less obsessive types have barely settled down to their first cup of coffee and favourite section of the paper, I hot-foot it over to St. Lawrence Market for the ritual foraging that, in my book, weekend cooking demands. [more]

I can't say it seems like yesterday that some friends took me out to a 50th birthday lunch. Eighteen months ago, maybe. Three years, absolute tops. The merry throng commandeered two tables at the bistro of the moment, which long ago morphed into something else. [more]

Every life is a story, which is why I'm drawn to biography and memoir. In the dramas that someone actually lived, I find insights I can use in my own helter-skelter life, where the lines of the narrative keeping getting lost. I read with pen in hand, thinking, "Yes, that's it!" Here, a few discoveries from the books on my bedside table. [more]

Scene: my den, yesterday morning, somewhere between breakfast time and flossing time. I'm not exactly sure because I can't find my watch. But I could find the computer blindfolded because it's where i start every day, barefoot in my pink plush bathrobe. Including this day, October 20, 2008. The first day of my 60th year. [more]