Letters from Rona / Sort by date

Martha Graham, the Picasso of dance, was still poor and unknown when the Nazis invited her to appear at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. She had the courage to refuse. Reading this story, as Agnes DeMille tells it in a mesmerizing classic biography, gives me a jolt of courage. [more]

In The Red Leather Diary, first-time author Lily Koppel turns the long-forgotten journal of a spirited Manhattan teenager named Florence Wolfson into a tender-hearted portrait of a woman who longed to be a writer but instead became the proper matron her parents wanted her to be. [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]

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

One way or another, I've spent my whole career sharing stories. I thought I was making a book, an article, a magazine or a web site. All along I was striving to create something bigger: a sense that the ordinary life means something. So I was moved to tears by a quiet little gem of a movie called The Visitor, which captures both the accessibility of meaning to us all and the emotional risk that is the price of admission. [more]

Instead of answering today's e-mail, I've been rereading old messages from my friend Sheela Basrur. It's a question of priorities. the people who are writing today will still be around tomorrow, or next week, come to that. I'll never have another message from Sheela, who died a week ago of cancer at 51, and whose lilting voice I need to fix in my mind. [more]

Not so long ago, I cooked dinner every day from scratch. I basted, I simmered, I marinated and turned at intervals prescribed by my latest glossy cookbook. Enough of all that, I say! Now I mostly just saute and grill whatever looks fresh at the market. But we still eat well thanks to a few ingredients that elevate the humblest meal. A big hand, please, for avocados, bacon, anchovies, pesto and olive oil. [more]

I like to think I know how a life-threatening illness looks. Sunken eyes, pale skin, baldness from chemotherapy. But who am I kidding? Every day in Canada, where health care is the closest thing we have to a national religion, 10 people die of an invisible infliction. They take their own lives. Until the unthinkable happened, they blended right in with the rest of us. If we really value health as much as we claim, why don't we give mental illnesses the attention and resources they deserve? [more]

When I read the grim news about a suspected domestic homicide in a picture-book Calgary family, I immediately thought of Mary Swan's arresting and devastatingly assured first novel, The Boys in the Trees. [more]

Now is the moment for homemade rhubarb pie, and my mother's were transcendent. After she died, I thought no one would ever again bake a rhubarb pie just to delight me. Then one spring at the height of rhubarb season, I went to see a friend who was terminally ill. She had a rhubarb patch. And despite my protests, she insisted on baking me a pie. [more]

There comes a point in even the most special vacation when my thoughts drift homeward to my own bed, my own books and paintings, my own fridge stocked the way I like it, with maple syrup, organic yogurt and hazelnut butter for my morning fruit-and-nut toast. [more]

Argentina reminds me of that gorgeous, prodigiously gifted friend who can´t seem to get her act together. She has infallibly bad taste in men, and a habit of dwelling on her tortured family past. Still, she´s so much fun that you want to be around her. And much of the pleasure unfolds at the table, where fabulous food and wines of distinction can be had for a fraction of what you´d have to pay almost anywhere else. [more]