Letters from Rona / Sort by date

I've never had a mantra or a healing crystal. I bombed at meditation. When someone rhapsodizes about The Secret, I can't keep the disdain off my face. You might think I ought to show some respect for spiritual practices. In fact I do have one. It's called blogging. [more]

I do my best to steer clear of movies so new and hot, you can barely find a seat, but I made an exception for Up in the Air, starring George Clooney as a corporate hit man who flies all over the country firing people with cheerful sang-froid. Although I've never lost a job myself, I'll remember 2009 as the year I lost count of all the notes I sent to friends and colleagues who had just been booted out of theirs. [more]

Soon after the Montreal Massacre, Flare magazine asked me for an essay on its meaning to women. There were many who dismissed the lethal shooting spree as the act of a madman. I saw it as the far extreme of attitudes that threaten women in their own neighbourhoods and bedrooms. Yes, even women like me. I didn't want to think about that, but I've learned that the stories I most resist are the ones I most need to tell. [more]

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without Ebenezer Scrooge and his against-all-odds transformation from money-grubbing curmudgeon to beloved friend of one and all. I grew up with the black-and-white movie starring Alastair Sim. I'll most likely break down and see the razzle-dazzle 3-D version starring Jim Carrey. And last Sunday I put on my most festive red jacket for the annual reading of A Christmas Carol at Toronto's Church of the Redeemer, starring me and four other recruits. I was off to confront my inner Scrooge. [more]

I've been known to save the damnedest things. Extra buttons from shirts that I tossed long ago, pleated pants that never do come back in style, single socks that are well and truly mateless. I've even got a stash of frayed twist ties. But when it comes to wise words, I make no apology. Here, a few recent gleanings I just had to share: [more]

Perhaps I should be flattered that 680 hardware stores bear my name, but I've wearied of convincing baffled guys in trucks that this Rona can't sell them a mitre box (hey, what's a mitre box, anyway?) When it's not a frustrated hobbyist ringing me up, it's a collection agency looking for someone who used to have my number. Or the Yellow Pages trying to sell me an ad. [more]

The hardest thing I've done all year is try to learn Mandarin. I blew a bundle on books, CDs, a handy-dandy visual dictionary and private lessons with an infinitely patient woman for whom I dutifully mimicked the exacting lilt of her native tongue with its five mystifying tones. If only I knew what I was saying and whether it would get me to the subway station in Beijing! [more]

I was steering my cart through Toronto's most twee greengrocer when a stranger looked up from the organic broccoli and exclaimed in a booming voice, "Hey, I know! You're the gal who used to live with that writer!" He meant J.D. Salinger, no ex-lover of mine but in the past much taken with girls of tender years, one of whom was my sister Joyce. [more]

In the December issue of Vogue, a magazine I rarely buy but this month couldn't resist, Hillary Clinton is profiled by Jonathan Van Meter, who closes his eye-opening interview with this question: why is she such an inspiration to women when Margaret Thatcher, who reached greater heights, was rarely described in those terms? [more]

I've come to think the art of living, especially in old age, depends on rewarding the people who can meet your accelerating needs. It's often possible to bully or needle others into helping you out, but at a huge personal cost. Who wants to spend time with a whiner who can't stop lamenting her loneliness? [more]

It's been years since I last thought of Eleanor and Frank Milliken, who taught generations of students at my small-town high school quite a lot about their respective subjects---science in her case, Latin in his---and even more about life. [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]