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	<title>Rona Maynard - Let's Talk</title>
	<link>http://ronamaynard.com</link>
	<description>Instead of wine or coffee, I&#146;m serving stories&#151;the kind women tell among friends</description>
    <pubDate>Tue, 6 Jan 2015 10:50:54 EST</pubDate>
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	<copyright>Copyright 2007-2013 Rona Maynard</copyright>
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<title>Reserve your free ticket for Rona Maynard's speech at Women &amp;amp; Wellness Niagara!</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 06 Jan 2015 10:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?reserve-your-free-ticket-for-rona-maynards-speech-at-women-and-wellness-niagara</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Book your free ticket now for Women &amp; Wellness Niagara&#039;s Fifth Annual Fundraising Event featuring keynote speaker Rona Maynard.. --]]></description>
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<title>Save the date! Rona Maynard speaks in Kingston March 10</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 23 Dec 2014 03:48:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?save-the-date-rona-maynard-speaks-in-kingston-march-10</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Treatment for depression saved my life, but it was up to me to break self-defeating mental habits and make a life worth living. I&#039;ll tell you how I did it at Women and Wellness Kingston. Laughter and life lessons guaranteed!]]></description>
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<title>Save the date! Rona Maynard to speak in Niagara Falls on Feb. 19</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 23 Dec 2014 03:40:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?save-the-date-rona-maynard-to-speak-in-niagara-falls-on-feb-19</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;m honored to be sharing my journey out of depression at Women and Wellness Niagara&#039;s Fifth Annual Fundraising Event. It&#039;s free, it&#039;s fun and it&#039;s your chance to support a great cause: free walk-in care for anyone who needs help with a mental health problem.]]></description>
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<title>When you miss out on the job, make the most of the contact</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 16 Nov 2014 04:05:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-you-miss-out-on-the-job-make-the-most-of-the-contact</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Years ago Sandra Martin was my second-choice candidate for a job opening at Chatelaine. I passed her resume on to a colleague and watched her career take off. Congratulations, Sandra, on landing the top job at Canadian Living!]]></description>
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<title>How to make a woman feel bad about her neck</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 11 Oct 2014 04:21:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-to-make-a-woman-feel-bad-about-her-neck</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You can learn the most extraordinary things from an infomercial populated by burbling, supposedly middle-aged beauties who look younger than you&#039;ve looked, on a good day, since the Clinton administration.]]></description>
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<title>On the trail of the celebrated Nova Scotia lobster</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2014 04:27:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?on-the-trail-of-the-celebrated-nova-scotia-lobster</link>
<description><![CDATA[ They take their lobster very seriously indeed at Lobster Pound and Moore in North Sydney, N.S. They won&#039;t serve the beast until hard-shell lobsters are in season. But they&#039;ll call you &quot;hon&quot; or &quot;honey bunny&quot; regardless of your age or gender. And they just might offer you a most extraordinary souvenir.]]></description>
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<title>The foie gras follies</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 18 Sep 2014 11:23:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-foie-gras-follies</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I feel amazed and grateful to have slept well last night after a blow-out dinner featuring foie gras, veal with truffled gnocchi and the richest dessert on the menu. The whole evening brought back memories of the Dordogne, where they&#039;re as lavish with foie gras as southern cooks are with sugar. In the Dordogne every farmhouse has a sign promising homemade foie gras for sale, but just try to find a liter of milk.]]></description>
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<title>Mary and Me: What a Nurse Taught a Manager about Mental Illness at Work</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2014 12:31:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?mary-and-me-what-a-nurse-taught-a-manager-about-work</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The toughest challenge of my corporate career was managing a talented staffer with a mental illness. Compassion didn&#039;t cut it: I needed expert coaching that HR couldn&#039;t provide. I wish I&#039;d known there was an expert down the hall--the occupational health nurse.]]></description>
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<title>Urban moments: a sick wife, a loving husband</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 31 Aug 2014 05:01:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?urban-moments-a-sick-wife-a-loving-husband</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I saw them as I passed the hospital--a couple who reminded me of Jane Kenyon&#039;s poem &quot;The Sick Wife.&quot;]]></description>
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<title>Rona Maynard to speak at Engage Speaker Talks Mental Health Panel</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 30 Aug 2014 11:43:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-to-speak-at-engage-speaker-talks-mental-health-panel</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I first told Chatelaine readers about overcoming years of depression, they started bringing me their most secret stories and fears because they didn&#039;t know where else to turn, so entrenched was the stigma surrounding mental illness. Now this once-taboo topic is finally on the public agenda. Kudos to National Speakers Bureau for making it the focus on a panel at the upcoming Engage Speaker Talks. I&#039;m excited to be part of the discussion.]]></description>
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<title>Urban moments: finding the sunshine by motorized wheelchair</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 23 Aug 2014 05:09:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?urban-moments-finding-the-sunshine-by-motorized-wheelchair</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Just because you&#039;re almost prone in a motorized wheelchair doesn&#039;t mean you can&#039;t explore your neighborhood on a sunny afternoon.]]></description>
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<title>Urban moments: the daily gift for a wife with dementia</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jul 2014 05:21:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?urban-moments-the-daily-gift-for-a-wife-with-dementia</link>
<description><![CDATA[ She clings to her husband&#039;s arm while shuffling through a posh part of town. There&#039;s not much she can do anymore, but she can still receive gifts and he wants her to have the best.]]></description>
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<title>Be your best writer! Workshops with Rona are coming up</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 17 Jul 2014 09:45:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?be-your-best-writer-workshops-with-rona-are-coming-up</link>
<description><![CDATA[ All good writing stands on the same foundation: a story that connects with the audience. In a decade at the helm of Chatelaine, I helped countless writers at all levels tap their stories&#039; connective power. Whether the story on your mind is one you&#039;ve lived or the one that drives your business, I&#039;ve got a workshop that will give you the tools you need--and the confidence to apply them, starting now.]]></description>
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<title>Every city has its distinctive local characters</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jul 2014 05:26:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?every-city-has-its-distinctive-local-characters</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve lived in Toronto long enough to remember the stout, middle-aged Valkyrie who used to patrol downtown in blonde braids and a  satin sash emblazoned with the words &quot;King of Sweden Social Democrats.&quot;]]></description>
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<title>Urban moments: two men in love in a checkout line</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2014 05:33:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?urban-moments-two-men-in-love-in-a-checkout-line</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I can&#039;t describe them as proud because the affection between them seemed so utterly natural. It was a beautiful thing to see, all the more so because you couldn&#039;t have seen it a few years ago.]]></description>
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<title>Tenderness comes to the supermarket checkout line</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Apr 2014 06:10:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?tenderness-comes-to-the-supermarket-checkout-line</link>
<description><![CDATA[ While standing in line behind a shopper so old and confused that she could barely count her money, I found myself touched by the cashier&#039;s patience. My younger self would have drummed her fingers on the belt in annoyance, but I&#039;ve learned a thing or two since then.]]></description>
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<title>Found and treasured: kindness at a soulless corporation</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2014 06:21:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?found-and-treasured-kindness-at-a-soulless-corporation</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Once upon a time every magazine I wrote for had a Betty or a Pat in accounts payable who would chase down checks for anxious freelancers and maybe even hand you the envelope herself. I thought the last Betty and Pat had been downsized long ago. But to my overwhelming gratitude, there remains one Keeper of the Courtesies. ]]></description>
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<title>Trust that you can make something happen, and it will</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 09 Apr 2014 06:39:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?trust-that-you-can-make-something-happen-and-it-will</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The day before my speech at the National Healthy Schools Conference in London, I heard from a fan of mine in Toronto. She&#039;d been saving up to hear me speak--not easy when you&#039;re unemployed and struggling with a mental illness. Now the conference was sold out and I was due to speak in little more than 12 hours.]]></description>
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<title>Build your brand with smart storytelling! A workshop with Rona Maynard</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2014 08:20:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?build-your-brand-with-smart-storytelling-a-workshop-with-rona-maynard</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Behind every great brand is a great story. What&#039;s yours? Join former Chatelaine Editor Rona Maynard and learn what it takes to engage your distractible audience. Rona will share the storytelling tool kit she developed at the helm of an icon during the biggest rebranding in its history. Rona&#039;s practical tools will add vitality and relevance to every story you tell about your business while enhancing the ongoing story of your brand.]]></description>
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<title>My favorite vacation disaster</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 03 Mar 2014 08:28:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-favorite-vacation-disaster</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The vacations that make the best stories are the ones that go comically wrong--the ones that make your friends glad they were stuck at the office. Come with me while I relive my favorite vacation disaster.]]></description>
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<title>My life with Holiday Inn</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 24 Feb 2014 04:40:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-life-with-holiday-inn</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I was 20 and knew nothing about customer service, I found a summer job taking reservations for Holiday Inn. I had to keep customers happy while learning a computerized system called Holidex--so vast and powerful, only armies had anything to rival it. The job bored me at the time but what it taught me about building a brand would resonate for years to come.]]></description>
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<title>Facebook friends are my portable community</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 12 Feb 2014 07:03:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?facebook-friends-are-my-portable-community</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The only downside of a month in Florida is missing the places and faces that give me a sense of belonging in Toronto. By the end of week three, I&#039;m usually missing the icy streets of home. This year has been different thanks to the online places and faces I find every day at Facebook..]]></description>
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<title>Not just deathbed selfies: the passion of blogger Lisa Adams</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 15 Jan 2014 03:07:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?not-just-deathbed-selfies-the-passion-of-blogger-lisa-adams</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I sometimes wonder how much I&#039;d share if I were diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. Would I withdraw and reflect, as a friend of mine chose to do in her last months? Or go public with the most painful details, like blogger Lisa Adams? I do know this: the choice should be mine.]]></description>
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<title>There's no day without a special moment--or three</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 13 Jan 2014 07:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?theres-no-day-without-a-special-momentor-three</link>
<description><![CDATA[ While climbing out of the mental chasm known as depression, I started a new nightly ritual: gratitude I thanked whatever gods there be for the best moment of my day. Something wonderful always came to mind--and a couple more after that. To my amazement, there was no such thing as a day without sparks of joy.]]></description>
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<title>A retail icon's death is like a death in the family</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 06 Jan 2014 07:27:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-retail-icons-death-is-like-a-death-in-the-family</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I won&#039;t miss the Sears flagship store in Toronto&#039;s Eaton Centre. Whatever I last bought there, I can buy it faster somewhere else. But Sears is going down where Eaton&#039;s died and I come from a line of Eaton&#039;s loyalists. So I dropped in to check out the liquidation sale as if it were an ancestral grave site.]]></description>
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<title>Taming the Christmas turkey</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 27 Dec 2013 12:20:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?taming-the-christmas-turkey</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I am married to a man who would say of every bird I&#039;d ever roasted, &quot;It&#039;s pretty good, but it&#039;s not as good as your mother&#039;s.&quot; My late mother, bless her baster, was renowned for the crispy golden skin on her birds (when she died, we gave out her roast chicken recipe at the funeral). I thought I&#039;d given up on roast poultry, but guests were coming for Christmas. Time to take another shot at crispy skin!]]></description>
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<title>My pal the produce vendor</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 Nov 2013 12:55:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-pal-the-produce-vendor</link>
<description><![CDATA[ She&#039;s not just someone who sells me stuff. She&#039;ll sell me half a bunch of cilantro, search the back for a fresher bunch of chard. And she always knocks a little off the price. I like to think I&#039;m her favorite customer. But of course if you shop at her stall, you&#039;d be quick to disagree.]]></description>
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<title>Behind every dangerously messed up man there's a vulnerable woman</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 14 Nov 2013 01:06:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?behind-every-dangerously-messed-up-man-theres-a-vulnerable-woman</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Renata Ford has been on my mind lately. I know her face only from a photo in the news, where she looked stunned and scared. She&#039;s not the one who created this never-ending craziness. But she&#039;s the one who bears the brunt of the disaster known as Rob Ford.]]></description>
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<title>Reconnecting with the girl I used to be</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 26 Sep 2013 01:29:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?reconnecting-with-the-girl-i-used-to-be</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I was a 19-year-old virgin, I sold an opinion piece to Seventeen magazine called &quot;Virginity is an Outmoded Ideal.&quot; I quickly forgot all about it, preoccupied with sexual follies. But one young reader saved my essay--and when she grew up, she shared it with her students. Thank you, Cheryl Kreiser, for making the effort to track me down.]]></description>
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<title>Secrets of persuasive business writing: a workshop with Rona Maynard</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 17 Sep 2013 08:34:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?secrets-of-persuasive-business-writing-a-workshop-with-rona-maynard</link>
<description><![CDATA[ If you have a product to sell, a cause to champion or employees to motivate, you need a story to engage your audience. It&#039;s the story, not the facts, that will answer your audience&#039;s ever-present question: &quot;Why should I care?&quot; Rona Maynard can show you how to make your audience care. In a new interactive workshop, she shares the storytelling tool kit she developed at the helm of Chatelaine during the biggest rebranding in its history.]]></description>
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<title>Swept away by the artistic rapture of Patti Smith</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 07 Sep 2013 05:11:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?swept-away-by-the-artistic-rapture-of-patti-smith</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;d known Patti Smith as a visual artist of rare delicacy and as a precise, truth-telling memoirist. Then I lucked into a front-row ticket to her concert at Massey Hall, which she transformed into the First Dionysian Church of the Imagination. Come back soon, Patti. I&#039;m hooked.]]></description>
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<title>Sale shoppers deserve great service too</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 30 Aug 2013 01:42:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?sale-shoppers-deserve-great-service-too</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Just because you stick to the sale racks doesn&#039;t mean your business doesn&#039;t count. Jean gets that. And next time I&#039;m in the market for a splurge at full price, you can bet I&#039;ll be paying her a visit.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Joan Adams Siler</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 28 Aug 2013 02:02:47 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2291-joan-adams-siler</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My mother passed suddenly April 22, 2013 of a heart... Posted by Toni . ]]></description>
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<title>Save the date! Fall and winter memoir workshops coming up</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 23 Jul 2013 04:52:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?save-the-date-fall-and-winter-memoir-workshops-coming-up</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Have you lived a story you&#039;ve been longing to tell? Join former Chatelaine Editor and acclaimed memoirist Rona Maynard for an intimate, one-day workshop that will tap the connective power of your experience. Whether you&#039;re a first-time writer or a pro who has written every kind of story but your own, Rona&#039;s tool kit will move you forward. Hands-on attention guaranteed.]]></description>
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<title>My 50 years with Robert Frost</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:38:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-50-years-with-robert-frost</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You couldn&#039;t go through school in New Hampshire, my home state, without being steeped in Robert Frost. Our teachers cast him as a sage in overalls, a fantasy grandfather opening his pasture and his barn to kids like us. I always sensed there was a whole lot more to the elusive and sardonic Frost, which is why I read him to this day. If &quot;Birches&quot; is read at my funeral and the afterlife turns out to exist, you can bet that I&#039;ll be looking down yelling, &quot;Hey, I just had another insight on this poem!&quot;]]></description>
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<title>Raising a ruckus at the Norton Simon Museum</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 05 Apr 2013 01:38:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?raising-a-ruckus-at-the-norton-simon-museum</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Just because older women are not seen doesn&#039;t mean we can&#039;t be heard. That&#039;s what I learned at the Norton Simon Museum, a justly renowned treasure house where a less-than-friendly welcome threatened to drain the joy from our visit.]]></description>
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<title>American road trips I have known and loved</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 03 Feb 2013 06:36:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?american-road-trips-i-have-known-and-loved</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Holding my breath on the hairpin turns of the Mount Washington Auto Road, eating pie at Flora and Ella&#039;s, discovering architectural treasures in tiny Spring Green Wisconsin and other unforgettable moments in my life as a late-blooming road tripper.]]></description>
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<title>Enroll now! Memoir workshops with Rona Maynard coming up</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jan 2013 03:12:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?enroll-now-memoir-workshops-with-rona-maynard-coming-up</link>
<description><![CDATA[ How do you comb your own life for a story that will resonate with readers? What&#039;s the burning question every reader asks about memoir? And this authorial mystery known as a voice: how do you connect with yours? Rona Maynard, memoirist and former Editor of Chatelaine, covers all the essentials in an intimate, one-day workshop that suits all levels.]]></description>
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<title>Coming up: the great American art road trip</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 05 Jan 2013 12:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?coming-up-the-great-american-art-road-trip</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When it became clear that my husband&#039;s bum knee had irreversibly ended our hiking vacations, we began to cast about for alternatives. Now we&#039;re planning an art road trip that gives us a shot at 30 museums in five weeks. First stop: the Detroit Institute of Arts, a favourite of ours for the spectacular mural cycle by Diego Rivera.]]></description>
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<title>When employees break down: Rona Maynard to speak at HRPA 2013</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2013 01:05:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-employees-break-down-rona-maynard-to-speak-at-hrpa-2013</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The most challenging threat to any work force is the one nobody sees. It doesn&#039;t put people in wheelchairs or cause hacking coughs. Because it strikes the mind and not the body, it&#039;s easily mistaken for a bad attitude. When mental illness struck one of my most gifted staffers, I was slow to recognize the signs. Hear the story--and the lessons for your organization--at the HRPA 2013 conference in Toronto on January 24.]]></description>
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<title>The fight of her life: Jan Wong against workplace depression</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 01 Jan 2013 12:42:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-fight-of-her-life-jan-wong-against-workplace-depression</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I felt like cheering when the Globe and Mail launched a 28-part series on mental illness, produced by a team of reporters. As a survivor of depression, I&#039;d been waiting for the day when diseases of the mind would command that kind of attention. I didn&#039;t stop to notice that one of the Globe&#039;s biggest names, Jan Wong, was missing from the team. And I couldn&#039;t have guessed that she&#039;d been laid low by depression.]]></description>
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<title>The mystery of the burnt-toast smell</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 31 Dec 2012 05:53:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-mystery-of-the-burnttoast-smell</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Have you ever smelled burnt toast when nobody&#039;s been anywhere near the toaster? Neither had I until it woke me up in the pre-dawn hours. I told myself that buildings contain many mysteries. Turns out the brain does, too.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Patricia Lily Connors</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 16 Jun 2012 10:10:51 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2251-patricia-lily-connors</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My mum only left me 4 days ago so it&#039;s... Posted by Sue. ]]></description>
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<title>Rona Maynard to speak on overcoming depression at Cobourg fundraiser</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:15:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-to-speak-on-overcoming-depression-at-cobourg-fundraiser</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;s been more than 25 years since I felt so unworthy of life that my fantasies involved a bathtub and a razor blade. But I&#039;ll never forget the soul-crushing despair that touches one in five of us at some point in our lives. That&#039;s why I&#039;m so honoured to be sharing my story across the country. Next date: May 10 at a fundraiser for Northumberland Hills Hospital in Cobourg, Ontario. Tickets are selling briskly, so don&#039;t miss out--order yours today.]]></description>
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<title>Rona Maynard is keynote speaker for Positive Fabulous Women on May 4</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 11 Apr 2012 04:06:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-is-keynote-speaker-for-positive-fabulous-women-on-may-4</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Save the date, Toronto friends: on May 4 I&#039;m the opening keynote speaker at Ignite &#039;n&#039; Connect, and I&#039;d love to see you there. If 2012 is your year to start living your dream instead of consigning it to the bottom of your &quot;someday&quot; list, this conference is for you.]]></description>
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<title>Godless but grateful with the Reverend Al Green</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 09 Apr 2012 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?godless-but-grateful-with-the-reverend-al-green</link>
<description><![CDATA[ On a road trip this past winter, I did something I&#039;d never done before. I went to a Sunday church service. Not just any service, but the two-and-a-half-hour praise fest at the Church of the Full Gospel Tabernacle, where music lovers flock from all over to see the Reverend Al Green in action. With a long drive to Texas ahead and half a day to spend in Memphis, my husband and I had picked Reverend Al&#039;s church over Graceland on the theory that a living, rocking, joy-proclaiming icon beats a shrine to one who died of drug abuse. There was just one catch: those hours in a pew. &quot;Let&#039;s sit at the back,&quot; I suggested. &quot;When we&#039;ve had enough, we can slip out and no one will notice.&quot;]]></description>
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<title>Join Rona Maynard at Breathe Now on April 14</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 08 Apr 2012 10:22:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?join-rona-maynard-at-breathe-now-on-april-14</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Do you ever find you&#039;ve got so many demands on your time, your to-do list could paper every room in your home? I know the feeling. That&#039;s why I&#039;m excited to be the opening keynote speaker for Breathe Now, a one-of-a-kind conference in Victoria April 14-15. It&#039;s still not too late to order your ticket.]]></description>
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<title>The day Sherri Finkbine changed history</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 06 Apr 2012 03:10:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-day-sherri-finkbine-changed-history</link>
<description><![CDATA[ On August 5, 1962, not long before my thirteenth birthday, two women made headlines around the world. Marilyn Monroe was found dead of an overdose. And a working mother from Arizona, Sherri Finkbine, arrived in Sweden for the abortion denied her at home. She had taken thalidomide, the drug responsible for thousands of devastating birth defects.  ]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Anne Goodman</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:45:19 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2250-anne-goodman</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My mum passed away January 9th 2012... She lived in... Posted by Clare. ]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Anne Goodman</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:45:11 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2249-anne-goodman</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My mum passed away January 9th 2012... She lived in... Posted by Clare. ]]></description>
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<title>By phone or Facebook, an unforgettable friendship</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 05 Feb 2012 02:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?by-phone-or-facebook-an-unforgettable-friendship</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;d been meaning to call her for weeks, if not months. Perhaps she&#039;d been meaning to call me, too. It had been more than 35 years since we talked on the phone every day with that craving for connection known only to teenage best friends. In those days I could tie up the family phone for hours--or until my parents finally lost patience--because nothing mattered more than consoling Anne through her latest crisis of the heart. As adult women, we mostly connected through Facebook. Then Facebook informed me that her marriage was over.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Patricia Gail Lewellen</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:35:14 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2242-patricia-gail-lewellen</link>
<description><![CDATA[ For My Beautiful Mom....
Patricia Gail Born April 7th 1951- Passed... Posted by Shelley Brown Fulton. ]]></description>
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<title>Sign up now for spring memoir workshops</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:13:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?sign-up-now-for-spring-memoir-workshops</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In the closing moments of my memoir workshop, someone always exclaims, &quot;Five o&#039;clock already? The hours flew by!&quot; Or words to that effect. No one can believe it&#039;s so much fun to focus hard for a whole day on pulling a vivid, forward-driving tale from the raggedness of real life. Now&#039;s your chance to find out what you&#039;ve been missing. I&#039;ve just scheduled spring sessions for March 24 and April 21.]]></description>
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<title>A gift any woman will love: my mother-daughter memoir at a special price</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:02:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-gift-any-woman-will-love-my-motherdaughter-memoir-at-a-special-price</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Is there a woman on your Christmas gift list who already has plenty of sweaters but can&#039;t resist a book to sink into? I have just the book for the occasion--my memoir, My Mother&#039;s Daughter, which Alice Munro called &quot;wonderfully honest and enthralling.&quot; Buy your personally inscribed copy directly from me at a special price including postage.]]></description>
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<title>Making peace with my hometown</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:44:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?making-peace-with-my-hometown</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I grew up wishing I could grow up anywhere but Durham, New Hampshire, where I never fitted in at school, where the few friends I had were other weirdos like me. But for one extraordinary August weekend, Durham was where I most wanted to be. I&#039;d been chosen to speak at my school&#039;s first all-class reunion, to people who had juggled their schedules to be there. And suddenly it no longer mattered that no Durham boy had ever asked me out. I had to be there.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Maria Griffith</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 11 Nov 2011 08:11:35 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2240-maria-griffith</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My beloved mother,wife,grandmother, and friend passed away July 18, 2011.... Posted by Emilia Rogers. ]]></description>
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<title>Rona Maynard to speak on working as a tonic for depression</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 02 Sep 2011 09:13:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-to-speak-on-working-as-a-tonic-for-depression</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I landed a career-shaping job as Editor of Chatelaine, I brought a history of chronic depression dating all the way back to childhood. Every day I was cajoled, challenged and chewed out by people with all manner of agendas. I didn&#039;t relapse. I thrived. In fact, my job did a lot to keep me well. That&#039;s why I&#039;m excited to be the keynote speaker at Business Takes Action&#039;s upcoming conference on October 19 in Mississauga.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Cath</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 27 Aug 2011 09:02:56 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2238-cath</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;s coming up to a year since my mother passed.... Posted by Tracie. ]]></description>
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<title>The prime of Diana Nyad</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 10 Aug 2011 12:41:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-prime-of-diana-nyad</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;d been counting on Diana Nyad to prove that you&#039;re never too old to score the success of a lifetime. Instead she proved that there&#039;s more to success than achieving the vision in her head. She will never swim from Cuba to Key West, but she did her absolute best and I&#039;ll remember her grit next time I shy away from a daunting goal.]]></description>
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<title>Rona Maynard is keynote speaker for Making It Work in Windsor</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 08 Aug 2011 08:35:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-is-keynote-speaker-for-making-it-work-in-windsor</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve been a woebegone kid in a family ravaged by addiction, a new mother flattened by post-partum depression and an outwardly competent young professional who fantasized about bathtubs and razor blades. None of it stopped me from reaching the top of my profession and the most rewarding job I could imagine. On October 5 I&#039;ll share my story as keynote speaker for CMHA Windsor&#039;s second annual Making It Work conference. ]]></description>
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<title>In memory of Frank Milliken, 1924-2011</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 31 Jul 2011 07:03:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?in-memory-of-frank-milliken-19242011</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I have just spent a week exploring Rome, where every ancient ruin got me wondering, &quot;What would Mr. Milliken say about this?&quot; Frank Milliken, who taught me Latin in Durham, N.H., loved all things Roman the way Julia Child loved sweet butter and Keith Richards loves the blues--with the passion of a convert whose delight becomes a calling. What stories he&#039;d have told about the obelisks plundered from Egypt, the ruined theatre where Caesar met his bloody death on the Ides of March. I suspect our local tour guide had a better handle on the facts, which archeologists are still unearthing. But Mr. Milliken would have told more jokes. He favoured groan-worthy puns, delivered deadpan to work the contrast between his grave demeanour--dark suits, horn-rimmed glasses--and his inner scamp. ]]></description>
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<title>Save the date! My memoir workshop returns this fall</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:29:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?save-the-date-my-memoir-workshop-returns-this-fall</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In the closing moments of my memoir workshop, someone always exclaims, &quot;Five o&#039;clock already? The hours flew by!&quot; Or words to that effect. No one can believe it&#039;s so much fun to focus hard for a whole day on pulling a vivid, forward-driving tale from the raggedness of real life. Now&#039;s your chance to find out what you&#039;ve been missing. I&#039;ve just scheduled fall sessions for October 24 and November 12. ]]></description>
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<title>Kicking my estrogen habit</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:37:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?kicking-my-estrogen-habit</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I never planned to be an estrogen lifer but I seem to be headed that way. I&#039;ve made two attempts to quit; both times broken sleep and sour moods drove me back to my little blue pills. I&#039;ve been on estrogen 15 years--three times as long as the maximum that even the most hormone-tolerant doctors recommend. What am I doing to myself?]]></description>
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<title>Join keynote speaker Rona Maynard at Breathe Now on October 1</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 24 Jul 2011 09:29:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?join-keynote-speaker-rona-maynard-at-breathe-now-on-october-1</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Ever since I signed on to speak at the Breathe Now conference, I knew it would attract my kind of women--loving, loyal, supremely competent types who in the course of one action-packed day do pretty much everything except...well, slow down and breathe. Sound like you or someone you know? Then Breathe Now is your perfect girlfriends&#039; outing. So mark your calendars for September 30 - October 1 in Victoria, one of my favourite places for spending a getaway weekend. ]]></description>
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<title>Photoplay, Liz Taylor and me</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 24 Jul 2011 06:40:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?photoplay-liz-taylor-and-me</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Back when Elizabeth Taylor was the world&#039;s most scandalous woman, I followed her adventures on the pretext of shopping with my mother. Every supermarket sold Photoplay, and every issue exuded the forbidden scent of lust as only home-wrecking, violet-eyed Liz could inspire it. While my mother filled her cart with egg noodles and cream of mushroom soup, I hung out at the newsstand, drinking in the gossip. ]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Ursula</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 13 Jul 2011 09:26:20 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2236-ursula</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My mother passed away almost nine years ago now. When... Posted by Susan. ]]></description>
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<title>Farewell to my halter-top years</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:01:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?farewell-to-my-haltertop-years</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Somewhere on the downward slope of my 50s, I wandered into a boutique much beloved by the fashion crowd, and was talked into buying my first halter top. I found it on the bargain rack, where clothes end up that you have to be mad or a model to wear. The plunging neckline said &quot;Cher on a bad night.&quot; The fabric, white eyelet, said, &quot;Eight-year-old&#039;s birthday party.&quot; ]]></description>
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<title>How Betty Ford changed the world</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 09 Jul 2011 01:35:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-betty-ford-changed-the-world</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I was growing up in the days of crinolines and penny loafers, every girl learned three things about breasts. They were not a fitting subject for polite conversation. They drove men wild with desire (hence their prominent display in the kind of magazine not found on anyone&#039;s coffee table). They made you a woman, which meant that if you lost a breast to a certain unmentionable disease, you were not a woman anymore. We all heard stories about women who would not show a breast lump to their doctor until cancer had them in a death grip. One woman changed that--former First Lady Betty Ford, who died yesterday at 93.]]></description>
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<title>The first boy who loved me</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 05 Jul 2011 04:23:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-first-boy-who-loved-me</link>
<description><![CDATA[ He was black, I was white. It was 1965 and more than half the states in the union still had laws on the books against inter-racial marriage. Not quite 16, I thought I could rise above the temper of those times. ]]></description>
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<title>My first mentor</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 27 Jun 2011 11:02:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-first-mentor</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Every child needs a wise adult friend who knows how to listen--and when to speak up. I learned that a lifetime ago, hanging out in the pokiest of basement apartments with my mother&#039;s straight-talking tenant.]]></description>
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<title>Special offer on a gift for every mother: my mother-daughter memoir</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:41:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?special-offer-on-a-gift-for-every-mother-my-motherdaughter-memoir</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Chocolates: you&#039;ve given them a time or two. Ditto roses and perfume. Your local gift shop offers the same old scented candles. Doesn&#039;t Mom have enough of those? Be the first to give her a personally inscribed copy of my beloved memoir, My Mother&#039;s Daughter, in which women of all ages, all over this continent, have seen themselves reflected. ]]></description>
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<title>Celebrate the resilience of women with Rona Maynard</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Mar 2011 06:42:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?celebrate-the-resilience-of-women-with-rona-maynard</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;m celebrating International Women&#039;s Day with a keynote speech for Nova Vita Domestic Violence Prevention Services---and I&#039;d love to have you join me for a night of inspiration. I&#039;ll be sharing stories that illustrate one of my favourite themes: the resilience of women.]]></description>
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<title>Writing machines I have known and loved</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 25 Jan 2011 07:43:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?writing-machines-i-have-known-and-loved</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The only interactive exhibit at Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta has no touch screen, flashing lights or sound effects. It sits atop a humble wooden desk, as chunky as my grandmother&#039;s lace-up oxfords and as solid as her corseted bosom. Its button-size keys demand a firm touch, and its ribbon could use a change. On a manual typewriter like this one, Atlanta&#039;s most celebrated daughter composed the 1000-plus pages of Gone With the Wind. When I stopped by one recent Friday morning, the machine had captivated two teenage girls who were pondering the mysteries of this thing called a carriage. A sign on the wall explained how to push it. ]]></description>
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<title>Rona Maynard to deliver keynote speech at Bottom Line Conference in Vancouver</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 11 Jan 2011 04:40:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-to-deliver-keynote-speech-at-bottom-line-conference-in-vancouver</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I was chosen to lead the editorial staff at Chatelaine, I vowed to be the most compassionate, inspiring boss that anyone on my team had ever known. Turned out I had a lot to learn about this leadership business. Overcoming my own depression had in no way prepared me for a star employee&#039;s paralyzing mood disorder. And in my commitment to delegate, I lost touch with my team when they most needed hands-on guidance. I&#039;ll be sharing these hard-won lessons in a March 2 keynote at the Bottom Line Conference in Vancouver.]]></description>
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<title>A mother, a daughter and a bargain basement</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 08 Jan 2011 02:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-mother-a-daughter-and-a-bargain-basement</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My mother never managed to teach me how to roll out pie crust or sew in a zipper, but thanks to her I can spot the bargains at a post-Christmas sale and beat the crowd to the only 80-percent-off sweater in a certain shade of pink---one that shows up in stores about as often as a cockatoo lands in your back yard. She knew just the right place to train me---Filene&#039;s legendary basement.]]></description>
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<title>My bed bug war</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 06 Jan 2011 01:42:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-bed-bug-war</link>
<description><![CDATA[ For more than a year I&#039;d been reading news stories on the so-called &quot;bed bug crisis&quot; that had Torontonians pitching their mattresses, bagging their clothes, avoiding their friends and scratching an omnipresent, crazy-making itch. I&#039;d dismissed those reports as hysterical distractions from real urban crises. Then, one week before moving day, my cleaning lady squished a tiny brown bug that had been lurking in our sheets. Out spurted blood. Ours.]]></description>
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<title>How I learned that I can finally dance</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 18 Dec 2010 09:56:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-i-learned-that-i-can-finally-dance</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I joined a dance class at my gym, I worried about messing up. At least no one could see me tripping over my feet---no one, that is, except my sisters in klutziness (not a Ginger Rogers in the bunch). Then the other day we attracted an audience: three cleaning ladies who had downed their squeegee bottles to watch us strut our stuff.]]></description>
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<title>Special holiday offer on my beloved mother/daughter memoir</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Nov 2010 12:17:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?special-holiday-offer-on-my-beloved-motherdaughter-memoir</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Is there a woman on your gift list who already has plenty of sweaters but can&#039;t resist a book to sink into? How about a personally inscribed copy of my memoir My Mother&#039;s Daughter? I&#039;m offering a very special price from now until Christmas.]]></description>
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<title>Adventures in customer disservice</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 25 Nov 2010 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?adventures-in-customer-disservice</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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.
]]></description>
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<title>My name is Rona and I am an estrogen addict</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 21 Nov 2010 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-name-is-rona-and-i-am-an-estrogen-addict</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I just ran into a 50-something colleague, normally a take-charge sort, who confessed to soul-destroying frazzlement: emotional meltdowns, scrambled thoughts, night sweats that ravaged her sleep. She was tempted to start taking hormones, but had been spooked by another onslaught of scare-mongering headlines. This woman has vanquished severe depression that might come galloping back if she lets herself get run down. &quot;Take the pills!&quot; I said. &quot;I&#039;ve been on them for 15 years and when I&#039;m not on them, you wouldn&#039;t want to know me.&quot;]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Patricia</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:54:48 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2198-patricia</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I lost my mom after complications following surgery; not due... Posted by Susan. ]]></description>
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<title>The old and the restless: on the move again</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 17 Nov 2010 06:11:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-old-and-the-restless-on-the-move-again</link>
<description><![CDATA[ &quot;I just read your article on downsizing,&quot; said my friend Karen. &quot;Are you loving that funky loft?&quot; Funny she should ask. Because you see, we&#039;re upsizing now. Or, as my husband prefers to put it, &quot;semi-re-upsizing.&quot;]]></description>
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<title>Stuff happens</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 16 Nov 2010 12:45:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?stuff-happens</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I was packing for a trip to Argentina with my husband, and we deserved every mind-clearing minute of our escape to the land of tango. We&#039;d just moved from a house-size condo with three walk-in closets and endless built-ins to the compact loft that now held just a fraction of our former possessions. We had jettisoned carloads of belongs---some of them nearly new---that used to seem essential but suddenly felt like excess baggage. The more bags and boxes we filled with cast-ffs, the more useless things we uncovered that we didn&#039;t even know we had, from Annie Hall pants last worn in 1980 to a 25-year-old Encyclopedia Britannica from our son&#039;s school days.]]></description>
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<title>Mastectomy in 1811: an unforgettable breast cancer memoir</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 03 Nov 2010 07:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?mastectomy-in-1811-an-unforgettable-breast-cancer-memoir</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;s been 199 years since a now-obscure English novelist, Fanny Burney, endured a harrowing mastectomy, performed in her own bedroom with nothing but a wine cordial to blunt the pain. Nine months passed before she could speak of the surgery to anyone; the thought of it made her ill. Then she summoned the courage to describe---and relive---the whole ordeal in a letter to her sister that captures not only the forgotten suffering of countless generations of women but the power of memoir to console even as it terrifies. What Fanny had to face has more in common with slasher movies than with modern surgery, yet through it all she remained absolutely, unshakeably herself. ]]></description>
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<title>What it really takes to empty the nest</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 29 Oct 2010 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-it-really-takes-to-empty-the-nest</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My son was in his mid-20s, with a desirable job and a couple of direct reports, when he packed his briefcase for his first business trip and realized as the limo pulled up at our door that something essential might be missing. If he&#039;d been living in his own place and not in the bedroom to ours, I would not have heard the signs of trouble: first much pacing and slamming of drawers, then the sheepish question &quot;Mom, do I need a passport to fly to the U.S.?&quot; ]]></description>
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<title>When depression comes to work</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 Oct 2010 12:01:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-depression-comes-to-work</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Perhaps it&#039;s partly because I never had a daughter that the greatest joy I found in corporate life was mentoring gifted young women who today are leaders in their field. Then there&#039;s the protegee I will call Ellen. Her blazing intellect, zest for challenge and seemingly unquenchable energy made her the go-to person for the toughest projects---until the light went out of her smile. What looked at first like a bad day became a sour week and then a spiritless month in which Ellen rarely emerged from her office. She kept the door closed and the window covered with paper. When she started missing her deadlines, I had no choice but to confront her. She admitted that while we all thought she was working, she&#039;d been staring at her computer screen, unable to write or even read. Depression had paralyzed my star employee.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-depression-comes-to-work</guid>
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<title>The most important thing my mother never told me</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 10 Oct 2010 03:52:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-most-important-thing-my-mother-never-told-me</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Twenty-one years ago almost to the day, my mother died without telling me the one thing I most longed to hear. Her silence on a painful subject continued to trouble me, like a bum knee that aches in cold weather. When a wise stranger proposed that I write her a letter, I pooh-poohed the idea (nothing new about letters to the dead). It turned out that I spoke too soon.]]></description>
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<title>The lost girl on my mind</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:09:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-lost-girl-on-my-mind</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In my only memory of Pamela Mason, we&#039;re cooking partners in Mrs. Boynton&#039;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, &quot;All Rona knows is Shakespeare!&quot;]]></description>
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<title>Rona Maynard launches new workshop on self-discovery through storytelling</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 24 Sep 2010 01:56:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-launches-new-workshop-on-selfdiscovery-through-storytelling</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Your life is a story as rich as any novel. It has a plot: the delights and disasters that may seem random at the time but reflect the choices you&#039;ve made. It has conflict: the crazy-making people or situations that keep tripping you up. It brims with characters: friends, family, lovers, adversaries. It involves a quest for whatever most rewards and inspires you. It has a heroine: you. It holds the wisdom and the power to move you forward on your best path. That&#039;s why my friend Marla Goldstone and I are launching a unique new workshop, Women&#039;s Wisdom: Tapping the Power of Your Life Story.]]></description>
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<title>As old habits die, new projects bloom</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 24 Sep 2010 09:43:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?as-old-habits-die-new-projects-bloom</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve always thought of myself as a creature of habit. Every summer, a new pair of vaguely Roman-looking sandals from Mephisto (perferably silver). Every Christmas morning, fruit salad and frittata while the boys&#039; choir at King&#039;s College, Cambridge sings &quot;O Little Town of Bethlehem&quot; (North American choirs won&#039;t do; I must have English accents and a seventeenth-century organ). Up by seven, in bed by 10:30, two Pilates classes every week plus a workout with a merciless trainer. I never set my iPod to shuffle; I don&#039;t want surprises from a trove of thousands of songs. I want to hear &quot;Torn and Frayed&quot; one more time.]]></description>
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<title>Rona Maynard to deliver keynote speech at CMHA conference in London</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 Sep 2010 07:49:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-to-deliver-keynote-speech-at-cmha-conference-in-london</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I recovered quickly from depression because I knew where to find help and how to describe my anguish. Adenir De Oliveira wasn&#039;t so lucky. Ignored and forgotten by the gatekeepers of health care, he&#039;s facing criminal charges for pushing two youths into the path of an onrushing subway train. He&#039;ll be on my mind when I deliver a keynote speech at the Canadian Mental Health Association&#039;s annual conference, Surviving in 2010.]]></description>
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<title>Beauty in motion</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:02:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?beauty-in-motion</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I once thought I wanted to be a ballerina. What I really craved was the beauty of every woman who moves with assurance and grace, never mind a less-than-perfect body. An eccentric, small-town ballet teacher pointed the way.]]></description>
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<title>One car, two girlfriends, a weekend of memories</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?one-car-two-girlfriends-a-weekend-of-memories</link>
<description><![CDATA[ If you do not drive and haven&#039;t hitchhiked since Jim Morrison was singing &quot;Light My Fire,&quot; a trip to Durham, New Hampshire presents a logistical conundrum. When my school held a reunion in Durham, two of us had to ask, &quot;Who will drive me there?&quot; The other one is blind. Me, I&#039;m just phobic. I may not have the best excuse for breaking into a sweat at the thought of driving, but I do have the best, wittiest and most altogether delightful chauffeur any vehicularly challenged person could hope for: my friend Anne, the confidante of my mostly bleak adolescence.]]></description>
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<title>Back to the house that used to be mine</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?back-to-the-house-that-used-to-be-mine</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Every storied house deserves a name. Think Astor Court, scene of Chelsea Clinton&#039;s wedding. Or Sissinghurst Castle, home of one of Britain&#039;s most celebrated gardens. Or Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright&#039;s cantilevered masterpiece in the leafy depths of a nature reserve. Then there&#039;s Maynard Hall, a name unheard-of even by the people who own it---a cheerful, 30-something couple who answered my knock at their door one recent weekend, just as they were rallying four kids to head off somewhere. ]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Laura Grinke Hermonat</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 20 Aug 2010 06:17:42 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2197-laura-grinke-hermonat</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My mother left her home in Winnipeg at 18, after... Posted by June Keleher. ]]></description>
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<title>My ballerina dream fulfilled</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 19 Aug 2010 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-ballerina-dream-fulfilled</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Almost 50 years after I hung up my one and only pair of pointe shoes, I seized my chance to wear a real Russian tutu---a gloriously frothy creation with more layers of silk tulle than there are petals in a bouquet of peonies. &quot;Hey, I can dance!&quot; I exclaimed. I hadn&#039;t bargained on the curtsey. Real ballerinas drop to the floor and I&#039;m a real sexagenarian.]]></description>
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<title>Rejoining my hometown tribe</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 15 Aug 2010 05:51:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rejoining-my-hometown-tribe</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I didn&#039;t admit to an attack of nerves the week before my school reunion. But there had to be a reason why I lay awake night after night, my brain on high alert. ]]></description>
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<title>What's in a nickname</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 05 Aug 2010 01:10:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?whats-in-a-nickname</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Once upon a time, when Expo 67 was welcoming the world and Sergeant Pepper topped the charts, I willingly answered to a nickname. This would amaze everyone who&#039;s been met with a frosty stare for addressing me as anything other than Rona. To be honest, I&#039;m amazed myself, but only because I&#039;d forgotten that a high school friend used to call me...oh, do I dare tell you?]]></description>
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<title>Missing John Callahan, warts and all</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:14:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?missing-john-callahan-warts-and-all</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;s been years since I discovered the black, ruthless wit of quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan. I admired him for savaging the myth of disability as both pitiful and ennobling. His death had me combing the Internet for stories of his life and forgotten snippets of his gleefully outrageous art. That&#039;s when I discovered just how far this man would go to reveal his broken places in print. As a woman, I shuddered. But I&#039;m still a fan. Here&#039;s why.]]></description>
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<title>Love, death and a blueberry patch</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:04:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?love-death-and-a-blueberry-patch</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In Henniker, N. H. (population less than 5,000), you can&#039;t order sushi, watch Toy Story 3  or buy gladiator sandals with platform heels. But this time of the year, if you know where to look, you can pick enough unsprayed, explosively flavourful blueberries to fill any number of pies, and you won&#039;t pay a cent for the privilege. Whoever owns the berry patch can no longer be bothered to charge the pickers who tramp through a tangle of weeds to claim a share of the bounty. My niece Audrey, who lives nearby, is a picker so keen, she drives around with her gear at the ready.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Rosemary Murphy</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:11:16 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2196-rosemary-murphy</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Six Words - How My Mother Taught Me One Last... Posted by Mary Wallace. ]]></description>
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<title>Special early-bird offer! New sessions of my memoir workshop</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:57:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?special-earlybird-offer-new-sessions-of-my-memoir-workshop</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Bring a group of women together---any age, any background, any outlook on the world---and chances are they&#039;ll start telling stories, even if no two of them have ever met before. It happens in the hot tub at my favourite spa and it will happen in Memoir That Tells Your Truth, the intimate one-day workshop I&#039;m launching this fall at Verity Women&#039;s Club in Toronto. The first session, scheduled for September 18, filled up within days of its announcement last month. Not to worry: I&#039;ve just added four more.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Darinka Protich</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:50:05 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2195-darinka-protich</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Yesteray, July 19th, was my mother&#039;s birthday.  She would... Posted by Milena Protich. ]]></description>
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<title>Losing it</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 20 Jul 2010 01:13:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?losing-it</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I once owned a man&#039;s silk paisley scarf in burgundy, cream and navy blue. It was the kind of thing that looks expected on a silver-haired guy in pin-stripes, but playful on a 30-something woman in jeans and a T-shirt. I wore that scarf so often that it smelled of my favourite scent and felt like an extension of my skin. One day I wore it to a movie. Halfway home, I realized that I&#039;d left it on the seat. I rushed back but no one had seen a paisley scarf. Something plummeted inside when I knew for sure that I had lost it.]]></description>
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<title>I lost it on the road</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:10:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?i-lost-it-on-the-road</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I had just put in my request for a table at the Penny Cluse Cafe, which serves the best breakfast in Burlington, Vt. and among the best we&#039;ve enjoyed in more than 30 years of travel, when I looked at my right wrist and saw that my bracelet was missing. Not just any bracelet but a gift from my husband---a wide yet nearly weightless band of linked chrome beads that draped like silk on my skin. ]]></description>
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<title>Please read to me</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?please-read-to-me</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The last time anyone read to me, I might have been leaning on my elbows at a scratched wooden desk, waiting for Mrs. Sawyer to begin another chapter of Beezus and Ramona. A  hush descended on 30-odd fractious kids like a snowfall worthy of a Christmas card. At story time Kevin Donahue forgot to call me &quot;Doughnut.&quot; I forgot about my struggle with long division. The whole class forgot about who&#039;d been invited to the birthday party of the hour and who&#039;d been left off the list. One question united us all: what sort of mischief would those Quimby sisters make next?]]></description>
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<title>When Ben and Jerry still had their screen door</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:20:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-ben-and-jerry-still-had-their-screen-door</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The last time I tasted Ben &amp; Jerry&#039;s, it came in a tub from my local supermarket and tasted of a corporate freezer. But once upon a time it was dessert nirvana. And the only place you could buy it was a converted gas station in Burlington, Vermont, where my husband and I launched an ice cream odyssey that continues to this day.]]></description>
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<title>For love of ice cream: a personal history</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 04 Jul 2010 09:03:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?for-love-of-ice-cream-a-personal-history</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Back in the prime of Father Knows Best, when Betty Crocker ruled the kitchen book shelf and TV ads extolled the health-giving properties of Wonder Bread, I thought the last word in ice cream could be had at Howard Johnson&#039;s in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. HoJo&#039;s was a thriving chain then, renowned both for the orange roofs of its faux colonial restaurants and for 28 flavours of ice cream served with a special scoop, so that your treat perched precariously atop its cone like an outsize tutu on a pear-shaped ballerina.]]></description>
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<title>Sometimes you have to answer a call from your past</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?sometimes-you-have-to-answer-a-call-from-your-past</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I hadn&#039;t planned on returning this August to the home town I couldn&#039;t wait to leave. It seemed I had more urgent things to do than schlep by plane and bus to Durham, New Hampshire, where a gaggle of far-flung alumni from my high school---many of them strangers to each other and just about all them strangers to me---were convening to honour Eleanor and Frank Milliken, two wise and generous-hearted teachers who gave the best part of their careers to our collective intellectual development.]]></description>
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<title>Memoir that tells your truth: a workshop with Rona Maynard</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:22:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?memoir-that-tells-your-truth-a-workshop-with-rona-maynard</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Have you lived a story you&#039;re longing to write? Do you wonder what it takes to strike a universal chord with your own hard-won experience? Join me on Saturday, September 18, at Verity Women&#039;s Club for an intimate, hands-on story fest in which we&#039;ll work together as a group to refine your own writing.]]></description>
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<title>God the poet</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?god-the-poet</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Once upon a time, in the grip of a fever, I dreamed God spoke to me. Man, what a way with words! Imagine Shakespeare, Donne and all the other great poets from a bygone age, piped through an organ the size of Mount Everest. I awoke in a rapture, groping for a pen. But all I could remember was this: whatever God had said, he said it in iambic pentameter. Yes, the God of my dream was male---a mighty patriarch with a flowing white beard and the poetic chops to get the heavens, the earth and the oceans doing the boogaloo.
]]></description>
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<title>The subject was English, the lesson was all about life</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 17 Jun 2010 08:43:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-subject-was-english-the-lesson-was-all-about-life</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Among the kids in my high school it was generally agreed that a certain English teacher made a fitting target for the casual cruelty that so often passes for teenage humour. We made fun of her hair, a frizzy cloud of indeterminate colour. We rolled our eyes at her makeup, a clownish blob of rouge on each thickly powdered cheek and a slash of too-bright lipstick that she seemed to have applied in the dark. We wondered where on earth she got those tubular knit dresses she favoured---and was known to put on backwards, as if she&#039;d been distracted mid-toilette by an insight into Hamlet that she couldn&#039;t wait to share with her equally distractible students, dreaming of love, sex and beer. What defied mockery was our teacher&#039;s love for her subject and for us. ]]></description>
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<title>Bracing thoughts from smart people</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:03:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?bracing-thoughts-from-smart-people</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Once upon a time, many haircuts and compacts ago, I wanted nothing more than beauty. These days what I&#039;m after is wisdom. I don&#039;t know of any blow dry for the mind, any light-reflecting product to cover blemishes of the soul. But illuminating thoughts are out there for the taking---as you&#039;ll see from these gems I found while reading. While I can&#039;t claim they&#039;ve made me any wiser, they&#039;ve affirmed my faith in the existence of wisdom. And that&#039;s a pretty good start.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?bracing-thoughts-from-smart-people</guid>
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<title>My Mother - My Mom</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:48:54 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2194-my-mom</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My Mother&#039;s Earrings

Decided to wear my mother?s earrings while visiting... Posted by Cup of Tea. ]]></description>
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<title>Even icons have to know when to quit</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 07 Jun 2010 11:03:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?even-icons-have-to-know-when-to-quit</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I expected to remember Helen Thomas, the legendary White House correspondent who retired this week at 89 after holding presidents to account for close to half a century, as a model for my own old age---scrappy, tenacious and relentlessly committed to her craft. &quot;I think I&#039;ll work all my life,&quot; she once said. &quot;When you&#039;re having fun, why stop having fun?&quot; Why, indeed. ]]></description>
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<title>Twitter reminds me of high school. And yet...</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:47:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?twitter-reminds-me-of-high-school-and-yet</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I first ventured onto Twitter at the urging of more cyber-savvy friends, I thought I&#039;d died and gone to that accursed nether region of hell that is politely known as high school. Then I found some good reasons to stick around.]]></description>
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<title>Her shoes were made for walking</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 28 May 2010 09:28:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?her-shoes-were-made-for-walking</link>
<description><![CDATA[ After my mother died, I found at the bottom of a closet the scuffed, leather walking shoes in which, just the previous summer, she had walked six miles a day. They lay where she had kicked them after an ordinary ramble that turned out to be her last. Dusty laces trailing, they curled against each other like sleeping puppies that might wake at any minute and hurl themselves at the door in an ecstasy of eagerness. They still held the shape of her toes.

]]></description>
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<title>So this is what 60 feels like</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 12:22:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?so-this-is-what-60-feels-like</link>
<description><![CDATA[ For the better part of three decades, I&#039;ve been shrugging off milestone birthdays. Forty: eclipsed by my mother&#039;s death two weeks earlier. Fifty: an excuse to squeeze a girlfriends&#039; lunch between meetings. Then I turned 60---the boundary between thinking I have forever to do my growing up and accepting the fact that I don&#039;t.]]></description>
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<title>Why Pilates reminds me of writing</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 23 May 2010 06:43:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?why-pilates-reminds-me-of-writing</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Less than two hours from now I will be lying on an instrument of exquisite torture with my quivering legs upraised in a crude approximation of straightness, my arms beating like the wings of a mangled bird and my lower abs screaming for mercy. At the very thought of this posture I can feel the sweat between my thighs (which strain for tightness but never achieve it) and a wicked cramp in my right foot (which is supposed to point but instead flops about like a flag of surrender). I sometimes doubt if I&#039;ll ever get the hang of Pilates. But so help me, I persist. ]]></description>
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<title>Outsider at a gabfest for the deaf</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 18 May 2010 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?outsider-at-a-gabfest-for-the-deaf</link>
<description><![CDATA[ On my way to buy yogurt and cold cuts at Metro, I happened on a celebration of the human urge to connect---several hundred deaf people of all ages, ethnicities and style sensibilities, engaged in a gabfest so consumingly joyous, I couldn&#039;t quite suppress a stab of envy. They were investing not just flying fingers but all four limbs in the art of conversation. They punctuated anecdotes with a repertoire of expressions that captured every note on the emotional scale. Each one of these people seemed fully absorbed in the exchange at hand---no looking over a companion&#039;s shoulder to check out more promising social options. So I felt free to amble among them and stare in an invisible, contemplative way that felt more respectful than rude.]]></description>
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<title>Women, get ready. The modern urban husband is a furniture maven</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 07:23:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?women-get-ready-the-modern-urban-husband-is-a-furniture-maven</link>
<description><![CDATA[ &quot;I&#039;m so over your desk,&quot; my son said with a faintly dismissive look at the desk where I&#039;m sitting right now. And a fine desk it is: keyboard tray, two drawers, made right here in Canada, not in some Third World sweatshop. He had planned to buy one just like it for the house he and my daughter-in-law have bought. Now he covets a designer desk with neither keyboard tray nor drawers. Oh, well. These days no self-respecting husband takes decor direction from his mother---or his wife, for that matter. There&#039;s something about owning a marital home that transforms the modern male from a schlepper with a TV and a plywood futon to a furniture maven whose domestic visions feature Barcelona chairs and dish racks that double as countertop sculptures]]></description>
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<title>Into any healthy life a cane can tap</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 11 May 2010 05:46:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?into-any-healthy-life-a-cane-can-tap</link>
<description><![CDATA[ While scanning a dark movie theatre in search of my husband&#039;s face, I spotted the bright chrome glint of the cane that he was waving in my direction like a banner. A cane, we have lately discovered, has uses undreamed-of by those who have no call for one. It can flick light switches, press elevator buttons and open California shutters. In saucy hands it can tickle a spouse&#039;s bum. ]]></description>
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<title>Readers honour their mothers with a bouquet of memories</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 05 May 2010 08:46:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?readers-honour-their-mothers-with-a-bouquet-of-memories</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My mother taught me to love the stories at the heart of every life. Now that she&#039;s no longer around to meet me for a Mother&#039;s Day lunch, her stand-in is the stories we lived together. It&#039;s partly in tribute to her that I&#039;ve created a forum on this website, the mother/daughter gallery, where readers can post defining memories of the women who formed them and the girls they are guiding into adulthood. If you haven&#039;t toured the gallery, what better time than Mother&#039;s Day? Read on for a preview of the preview of the colourful, unforgettable and sometimes maddeningly complicated characters you&#039;ll meet. But don&#039;t stop there. You too have a mother/daughter story, and this is the place to share it.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?readers-honour-their-mothers-with-a-bouquet-of-memories</guid>
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<title>When Keaton and Pacino were my neighbours and in love</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 05 May 2010 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-keaton-and-pacino-were-my-neighbours-and-in-love</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Do you ever visit open houses just to peer into the private lives of your fellow humans? Me too. That&#039;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. ]]></description>
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<title>Making peace with my aging body: my latest story for Best Health</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 04 May 2010 12:41:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?making-peace-with-my-aging-body-my-latest-story-for-best-health</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My husband, bless his heart, thinks I&#039;d look pretty good in a bikini. I haven&#039;t worn one of those since my pre-stretch mark days, and even then I dared expose just the merest ribbon of tummy. Should I go for the gusto while I can still do a full set of ab-busting hundreds in Pilates class? Let me mull that over for a bit. I may have reached the farther shores of middle age, but in some respects that&#039;s just as well. After half a century of meeting other people&#039;s expectations, I&#039;ve earned the right to focus on what pleases me---and prepares me for an active, vital future.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?making-peace-with-my-aging-body-my-latest-story-for-best-health</guid>
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<title>Join me at the Journey to Success conference in Oakville</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 04 May 2010 12:05:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?join-me-at-the-journey-to-success-conference-in-oakville</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Admit it: don&#039;t you like to be admired, obeyed and supported? Don&#039;t you find yourself gritting your teeth when certain wildly irritating people choose to diss you, undercut you and wage passive/aggressive campaigns that keep you up at night? I&#039;ve been there. And believe it or not, I&#039;m better off for it. The difficult people in my life have been my best teachers, challenging me to broaden my skills and confront my own difficult side. I&#039;ll share the no-holds-barred story in a June 15 keynote speech at the fourth annual Journey to Success Conference in Oakville. ]]></description>
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<title>Leaky ceilings I have owned and loved</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 03 May 2010 07:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?leaky-ceilings-i-have-owned-and-loved</link>
<description><![CDATA[ We were dressing for a party while a summer storm drenched the city. Trees swayed and creaked in the wind; rain lashed the bedroom windows. It pelted down with such noisy, wall-beating force, I could have sworn someone was draining a bathtub on the third floor, where no tub had ever existed. &quot;What a stinker!&quot; I said to my husband as I clipped my favourite earrings into place. &quot;Couldn&#039;t you swear you were standing in the middle of that rain?&quot; ]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Judy Brewer</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:41:35 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2192-judy-brewer</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Flannel Memories

Like so many things, I learned to sew because... Posted by Beth Parker. ]]></description>
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<title>The walking life</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:40:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-walking-life</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It started years ago as a multi-tasking move. With one brisk daily walk to work, I could turn my commute into a fitness program. No more jostling for space on crowded subway cars, no more sprints to the gym between meetings. Come to think of it, maybe I wouldn&#039;t need the gym at all (no more annual fees). What a plan!]]></description>
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<title>A fine funeral</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 22 Apr 2010 03:06:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-fine-funeral</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Way back before anyone I knew had died, I cringed at the very thought of funerals. I pictured dark rooms, fussy floral arrangements, ministers droning pieties about people they&#039;d never even met. I&#039;ve since discovered that a funeral can be rich in potential---for creativity, for celebration, for a deepened connection with the world. And I&#039;ve developed a few rough working principles about the elements of life&#039;s most underrated ritual.]]></description>
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<title>Five years old and smitten by love</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:36:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?five-years-old-and-smitten-by-love</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Adults belittlingly call it &quot;puppy love.&quot; But there&#039;s nothing trivial about the tenderness of children&#039;s first longings for each other, or the anguish of their first heartbreaks. That&#039;s what I learned from the five-year-old boy who named his doll Rona after me.]]></description>
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<title>Walking and talking in Victoria</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 18 Apr 2010 10:28:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?walking-and-talking-in-victoria</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Until this morning I didn&#039;t know anemones from amaryllis and never even heard of camas, but I have the good fortune to be in Victoria as spring gardens come into their own, and to be walking its leafy streets with my hostess and friend Maxine, who has ensured that I don&#039;t miss the last Easter lilies or the Monet intensity of massed bluebells seen from afar. We&#039;ve mostly been talking about serious things: the eternal complications of family, the vulnerability of loved ones we once trusted would always be part of our world. One minute we&#039;re pondering about some devastating illness or other. The next minute it&#039;s &quot;Look at those rhodos!&quot;

]]></description>
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<title>How old is OLD? See my story for More on turning 60</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 15 Apr 2010 04:08:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-old-is-old-see-my-story-for-more-on-turning-60</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You might think I&#039;d be a full-fledged adult at the advanced age of---can it be?---60, but I haven&#039;t quite lost the goofiness of girlhood. I still reach for the wrong fork at the occasional candlelit table, still replay awkward conversations and realize too late what I should have said. But there&#039;s definitely something unfamiliar about this point in my life. Sixty is the boundary between thinking I have forever to do my growing up and accepting the fact that I don&#039;t.]]></description>
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<title>Fired for being female: a post-feminist takes up the cause</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:40:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?fired-for-being-female-a-postfeminist-takes-up-the-cause</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Assignment: delve into a $12 million sex discrimination case for Toronto Life magazine. Writer: young woman with no agenda or interest in gender disparity. Result: a feminist conversion and a story that says what older women with big jobs have been saying for years over a second glass of wine. However the case unfolds, that&#039;s news.]]></description>
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<title>The etiquette of asking for career advice</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:34:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-etiquette-of-asking-for-career-advice</link>
<description><![CDATA[ No matter what field you&#039;re in or how accomplished you are, there will be times when you find yourself perplexed by a challenge you&#039;ve never faced before. So you turn to a trustworthy pro with the contacts or the know-how to point you in the right direction. A person like my friend Leslie, a busy self-employed consultant who gets a buzz from sharing what she&#039;s learned.]]></description>
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<title>No extramarital affairs for me</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 07 Apr 2010 03:09:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?no-extramarital-affairs-for-me</link>
<description><![CDATA[ &quot;I love the word &#039;affair&#039;,&quot; said a friend who&#039;s had many more illicit escapades than I will ever know. She had just made her way, with a walker and great deliberation, to the favourite armchair where she sat draped in white terrycloth. She looked through me as if to the scene of some long-ago tryst. Then she looked straight at me with a smile that was equal parts mischief and maternal concern. &quot;You should have an affair,&quot; she announced.]]></description>
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<title>Special Mother's Day price on my beloved mother/daughter memoir</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 06 Apr 2010 04:58:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?special-mothers-day-price-on-my-beloved-motherdaughter-memoir</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;s almost that time of year when every woman&#039;s thoughts turn toward the woman who formed her--her mother. I have just the book for the occasion--my memoir, My Mother&#039;s Daughter, which Alice Munro has  called &quot;wonderfully honest and enthralling.&quot; Now you can buy your personally inscribed hard cover copy directly from me at the special price of $20.]]></description>
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<title>Confessions of an electricity junkie</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 02 Apr 2010 02:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?confessions-of-an-electricity-junkie</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I dismissed Earth Hour as an empty symbolic gesture. Why sit for an hour in the dark when the real challenge is breaking wasteful habits like running the washer for a single pair of jeans? I figured I would break those habits---someday. Then my home lost power for more than 15 hours. And I learned how emotionally dependent I&#039;ve become on electricity at my command.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Resi</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 29 Mar 2010 04:12:54 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2189-resi</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My mother died when i waz 9. She was my... Posted by Breanna. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2189-resi</guid>
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<title>My midlife brain is an overstuffed attic</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:44:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-midlife-brain-is-an-overstuffed-attic</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I was a child, my memory was like a kid&#039;s closet---I could pretty much eyeball the works. Now it&#039;s a crazy jumble of milestones that no one else alive remembers (the time, to the minute, of my sister&#039;s birth in 1953) and stuff you&#039;d think no reasonable person could remember (jingles for defunct cleaning products).]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-midlife-brain-is-an-overstuffed-attic</guid>
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<title>I'm telling my story at Richview Public Library. See you there!</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:19:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?im-telling-my-story-at-richview-public-library-see-you-there</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;s been a good many years since I sat in my bathrobe on the kitchen floor with a glass of wine in my hand and tears streaming down my face while my nine-year-old asked, &quot;Why is mom crying?&quot; I didn&#039;t have the heart to tell him the truth---that I wished I could vanish from this earth with the secret burden of pain that had afflicted me since childhood. Join me on April 8 at Richview Public Library to hear the story of my journey from wanting to die to loving my life.]]></description>
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<title>Lost: my hypochondria habit</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 24 Mar 2010 02:53:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?lost-my-hypochondria-habit</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Sometime in her 50s my mother happened on a dusty box of Tampax that she&#039;d tucked under the bathroom sink God knows when and thought to herself with no small degree of puzzlement, &quot;Hmm, it&#039;s been eons since I had any call for one of those.&quot; If there&#039;s a gene for a menopause from heaven, the kind that tiptoes in unnoticed, she didn&#039;t pass it on to me. Yet in midlife I too lost a part of my psychic self while thinking of more important things. I used to be one of those people who are always fretting over some imagined illness or other. I figured I was stuck with the hypochondria habit that had dogged my steps like a persistent panhandler with a fake hard-luck story. Then one day I turned around and it had vanished.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?lost-my-hypochondria-habit</guid>
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<title>My Mother - Nancy Burroughs</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:13:59 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2188-nancy-burroughs</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Just last month my best friend, my mother became an... Posted by Debra Swafford. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2188-nancy-burroughs</guid>
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<title>It's no one's fault, it's just family ecology</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:18:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?its-no-ones-fault-its-just-family-ecology</link>
<description><![CDATA[ So there you are, a grownup with at least a couple of the following: job, mortgage, vet bills, kid. You have friends who laugh at your jokes, colleagues who ask your advice and may even think of you as their mentor. You also have a family. And when you&#039;re with them, you&#039;re not your usual assured adult self. You revert to the child you used to be as if pulled by invisible hands. At least you&#039;re not playing this game by yourself---your siblings know all the moves and share your wild delusion that someone can win this contest. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?its-no-ones-fault-its-just-family-ecology</guid>
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<title>Nothing like customer service to put the fun back in shopping</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:10:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?nothing-like-customer-service-to-put-the-fun-back-in-shopping</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;s my firm conviction that no one should call me &quot;Sweetie&quot; who has never shared my bed or at least a life-changing confidence, but I make an exception for Sarah, who owns one of the few stores around where it&#039;s still fun to shop. Sarah sells every kitchen gadget you can possibly imagine, plus hundreds of other mysterious gizmos you had no idea you needed---until she explains, with the enthusiasm of a six-year-old and the authority of Oprah, how a piece of cleverly engineered plastic saved her all kinds of time and trouble.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?nothing-like-customer-service-to-put-the-fun-back-in-shopping</guid>
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<title>My brief career as an expert on gender-neutral language</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:37:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-brief-career-as-an-expert-on-genderneutral-language</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;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 &quot;pathetic, whining, whacko, feminist claptrap.&quot; A radio host denounced my &quot;evil, vile pamphlet dripping with slime.&quot; Irate callers lambasted the Ontario Women&#039;s Directorate for having the temerity to publish a 35-page booklet on non-sexist language, anonymously written by me. I&#039;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.]]></description>
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<title>My Daughter - Halley Stubis</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:39:40 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2187-halley-stubis</link>
<description><![CDATA[ A Mother?s Day Diary: Gems and Straw
By Qin Sun Stubis

Almost... Posted by Qin Sun Stubis. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2187-halley-stubis</guid>
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<title>And baby makes mayhem</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:32:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?and-baby-makes-mayhem</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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.]]></description>
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<title>The not-so-funny business of making people laugh</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:43:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-notsofunny-business-of-making-people-laugh</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Back when lunching with writers was part of my job, I booked a date with a humorist beloved across the land for her ability to crack people up. I was expecting to feast on wit. As it happened, I&#039;ve met cabbies with more one-liners and accountants with less gravitas.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-notsofunny-business-of-making-people-laugh</guid>
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<title>A word of advice</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:40:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-word-of-advice</link>
<description><![CDATA[ At the bottom of my purse lies a battered leather case containing a fistful of cards from people with corner-office titles: Executive Producer of This, Senior Vice-President of That, Grand Poo-Bah of Whatever. My favourite card puts them all to shame. It belongs to a much older woman who announces her well-earned role in life with one authoritative word: &quot;Advice.&quot;

]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-word-of-advice</guid>
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<title>The inspiration of everyday heroes</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:52:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-inspiration-of-everyday-heroes</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When a woman of my acquaintance just happened to mention that she&#039;d soon be boarding a plane for Argentina, I pictured her drinking malbec and learning the tango. &quot;Lucky you!&quot; I said. &quot;You&#039;re going to love Buenos Aires!&quot; 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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-inspiration-of-everyday-heroes</guid>
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<title>My fridge runneth over</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-fridge-runneth-over</link>
<description><![CDATA[ There&#039;s a door to my soul that I&#039;d prefer you didn&#039;t open. Some days I can hardly bear to open it myself. I&#039;d rather not confront my unruly psyche. Fears, obsessions, misbegotten dreams...it&#039;s all on display, although exposing the most shameful excesses would take some serious and possibly odiferous digging. But at least I&#039;m not alone. Do you have a fridge, dear reader? Then chances are you&#039;re harbouring a few slimy secrets of your own.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-fridge-runneth-over</guid>
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<title>Cell-phone follies</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:04:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?cellphone-follies</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve been told more than once, by more than one exasperated person, that my cell phone habits leave much to be desired. &quot;You must have called during Pilates,&quot; I explain. Or &quot;The battery was out of juice.&quot; Or &quot;The phone was buried at the bottom of my purse and I couldn&#039;t fish it out in time.&quot; My most annoying answer seems to be &quot;You called? The traffic must have drowned out the ring tone.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?cellphone-follies</guid>
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<title>A western omelet and a side of half-baked creationism</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-western-omelet-and-a-side-of-halfbaked-creationism</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-western-omelet-and-a-side-of-halfbaked-creationism</guid>
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<title>Not the favourite child</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?not-the-favourite-child</link>
<description><![CDATA[ An old friend of my mother&#039;s was refreshing my teacup when she said, looking wistful, &quot;It must have been hard for you, knowing that your sister was her favourite.&quot; So it was at the time, and the memory of early slights dies hard. But I&#039;ve realized not being the family darling has at least one distinct advantage.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?not-the-favourite-child</guid>
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<title>My Broadway Debut</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:19:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-broadway-debut</link>
<description><![CDATA[ At 12 I dreamed of winning the National Spelling Bee, but I went down to ignominious defeat in my Grade 6 class. I cried all the way home and later told the sad tale on my first date with my husband. Then I got a chance to appear on Broadway as an audience volunteer in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Good-bye, orthographic angst!]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-broadway-debut</guid>
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<title>Spelling mistakes and second chances</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?spelling-mistakes-and-second-chances</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My husband was perusing these virtual letters when he told me, not for the first time, &quot;You need a good copy editor.&quot; These would once have been fighting words. Unlike my husband, I was once a copy editor. The craft requires unflinching devotion to the minute, eye-glazing details that no one ever notices except when they&#039;ve been bungled.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?spelling-mistakes-and-second-chances</guid>
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<title>The waitress who was glad we came</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-waitress-who-was-glad-we-came</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I was not at all pleased to be dining at the Madison Bistro in desolate downtown Toledo after a long winter day&#039;s drive from Chattanooga. Hungry and peevish, we&#039;d picked this combination bar/greasy spoon from a list offered up by our dashboard concierge, otherwise known as the nav system. Bistro, to me, says comfort food in the Julia Child tradition---none of which appeared on the menu. But there&#039;s a lot more to comfort than what&#039;s on the plate, as I was about to discover.]]></description>
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<title>Seven reasons to love coming home</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?seven-reasons-to-love-coming-home</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Much as I&#039;ve enjoyed my stay in sunny and friendly Sarasota, I&#039;m ready to return to the rough-edged reality of winter-locked Toronto, where strangers not only won&#039;t say hello, they might snarl if they notice you smiling in their direction. What can I tell you? It&#039;s home. Here are seven home comforts I&#039;ve been missing.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?seven-reasons-to-love-coming-home</guid>
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<title>Pigging out in St. Petersburg</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?pigging-out-in-st-petersburg</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Fernando Botero, whose paintings we viewed the other day at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, depicted all his human subjects as decidedly porcine and gave even the crucified Jesus multiple chins. So it was fitting that we stopped for lunch en route at Skyway Jack&#039;s, the local shrine to all things piggy: sausage gravy, pork chops, pork brains, bacon or any combination of the above, served with home fries redolent of bacon grease.]]></description>
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<title>Where I tucked that post about Holden Caulfield</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:52:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?where-i-tucked-that-post-about-holden-caulfield</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Have you been scouring this site for my post about rereading The Catcher in the Rye after more than 40 years? Did you think I destroyed it for some mysterious reason? It&#039;s been right here all along, an old post deserving better signposting. Here&#039;s where to find it, with apologies to anyone who&#039;s feeling understandably frustrated.]]></description>
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<title>A head of radicchio for the road</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-head-of-radicchio-for-the-road</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Think of your must-have consolations for a marathon road trip. Do I hear any takers for coffee? Trail mix? Freshly loaded iPod. Someone&#039;s bound to mention chocolate, and Tim-bits must have a champion or two. But I have yet to meet another living soul whose survival kit for a three-day drive---Toronto to Sarasota, in deepest, darkest winter---included a head of radicchio. And damned useful it turned out to be.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-head-of-radicchio-for-the-road</guid>
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<title>Choosing death at 37</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?choosing-death-at-37</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;s been a good many years since I was 37 and had just figured out that not only did the state known as happiness actually exist outside sappy greeting cards and over-orchestrated love songs, I had as much right to it as anyone else. My second life---the one that followed my treatment for chronic depression---was in its first astonishing months when I felt as green and tender as a newly unfurled leaf.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?choosing-death-at-37</guid>
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<title>Kate McGarrigle on my mind</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:17:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?kate-mcgarrigle-on-my-mind</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Kate MGarrigle, the singer/songwriter who died of cancer this week at 63, was so wholly and happily bound up in my mind with her sister and partner Anna that in 30-odd years of loving their luminous harmonies I never bothered to distinguish the two. But any fan can tell that &quot;Matapedia&quot; is a story from Kate&#039;s life as daughter, mother and middle-aged woman contemplating mortality. I couldn&#039;t get Kate off my mind tonight. And so on the elliptical machine, where I usually pump away to hard-driving stuff, I couldn&#039;t stop playing &quot;Matapedia.&quot;]]></description>
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<title>The truth about impressing your grandchild</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 18 Jan 2010 04:59:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-truth-about-impressing-your-grandchild</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In the eyes of our 13-year-old grandson, who flew home yesterday after four days with us in Sarasota, the full-body scanner is neither an invasion of privacy nor a prudent concession to the new risks of air travel but an incredibly cool and brag-worthy device from which he had the bad luck to be excluded. Which just goes to show that to entertain a grandchild is to learn how little you know about what currently qualifies as cool.]]></description>
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<title>The voyeuristic pleasures of grocery tourism</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-voyeuristic-pleasures-of-grocery-tourism</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You can tell quite a lot about a place from what&#039;s on offer---or is not---by way of groceries. In the Dordogne countryside, every second driveway sports a hand-lettered sign advertising homemade foie gras, but just try hunting down a liter of milk. In Sarasota, where we&#039;ve rented a condo next door to Publix, it&#039;s a less toothsome story. I&#039;ve never seen so much packaged food you couldn&#039;t pay me to eat.]]></description>
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<title>Surprised by travel, for better and worse</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:59:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?surprised-by-travel-for-better-and-worse</link>
<description><![CDATA[ If you&#039;re not game for glitches, don&#039;t travel: something always goes wrong. Then again, other things go right in unforgettable ways. For instance, our detour to the history-drenched town of Trier, where the most extraordinary sight was the one we didn&#039;t expect---the venerated and debated local treasure that skeptics debunk as a medieval hoax and the faithful revere as the holy tunic worn by Jesus the day he was crucified.]]></description>
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<title>My pick for the alternative Canada Reads awards</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 07 Jan 2010 07:51:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-pick-for-the-alternative-canada-reads-awards</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My friend Kerry Clare, an avid reader and writer whose book blog Pickle Me This is one of my favourite online destinations, has just unveiled her own spin on CBC&#039;s annual Canada Reads awards. I&#039;m on the panel of champions who have the happy responsibility of urging the rest of you to read a magnificent book that deserves to be better known.]]></description>
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<title>Wife of the legendary writer and drunk</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:38:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?wife-of-the-legendary-writer-and-drunk</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The difference between Raymond Carver and your typical bad-boy writer, boozing and bedding his way to premature decrepitude, is that Carver, pushing 40, got scared enough to dry out---a decision that rekindled his sputtering creative fire and made him a grateful man who viewed each day as a gift. His last poems credit a late-blooming love affair with a fellow writer, Tess Gallagher, as the emotional centre of this extraordinary transformation. Yet Carol Sklenicka&#039;s new biography clearly shows that if not for the selfless devotion of his first wife Maryann, Carver would have drowned the gifts that made his name.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?wife-of-the-legendary-writer-and-drunk</guid>
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<title>Rewards and wrong turns on the road to Sarasota</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 04 Jan 2010 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rewards-and-wrong-turns-on-the-road-to-sarasota</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Toronto, where we live, and Sarasota, where we&#039;re spending this month, share a bond right now: in both cities the cold has everyone grousing. I headed out today in a cashmere sweater, a wool jacket and leather boots (so much for sandal fantasies). But if I&#039;d been stuck at home, I&#039;d have reached for my long johns and bear-paw gloves. And then, much as I hate to join the weather wusses, I&#039;d have vented with the best of them. Bottom line: I&#039;m in no hurry to get home.]]></description>
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<title>My Daughter - Rhonda Pond</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:15:18 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2158-rhonda-pond</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My daughter was born when I was 18 years old,... Posted by Linda Pond. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2158-rhonda-pond</guid>
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<title>My Mother - julia</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 30 Dec 2009 08:31:27 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2156-julia</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My  mon was born the only girl after 4... Posted by linda maynard. ]]></description>
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<title>A snowbird in spite of myself</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Dec 2009 08:43:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-snowbird-in-spite-of-myself</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Every year around this time, as winter tightens its grip on Toronto, my husband pointedly draws my attention to the various people we know who&#039;ve decamped for condos in Florida and won&#039;t be back until the crocuses sprout. &quot;I like my routines here at home,&quot; I&#039;ve always said. &quot;Besides, winter in Toronto is pretty tame stuff. Think we&#039;ve got it bad? You should see winter where I come from!&quot;]]></description>
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<title>My top 10 posts of 2009 at ronamaynard.com</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 26 Dec 2009 08:45:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-top-10-posts-of-2009-at-ronamaynardcom</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Among the many rewards of this website is the sweet obligation of an annual top 10 list where every slot goes to me. So here they are, my friends---the posts I wouldn&#039;t want you to miss because they&#039;re the closest to my heart.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-top-10-posts-of-2009-at-ronamaynardcom</guid>
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<title>How my blog posts are born</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 23 Dec 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-my-blog-posts-are-born</link>
<description><![CDATA[ What is it with blog posts on blogging? Every time I write one, my blogger friends want to comment, stirring up on online word fest that recalls the distant days when every poet worth his quill wrote poems about poetry and sprinkled his work with allusions to other people&#039;s verses on the mysteries of their craft. My recent post &quot;Blogging as spiritual practice&quot; inspired some pretty searching questions about why and what I here. I&#039;d never thought about that before. What a worthy challenge for a blogger!]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-my-blog-posts-are-born</guid>
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<title>A perplexed feminist at Baby Gap</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-perplexed-feminist-at-baby-gap</link>
<description><![CDATA[ What with a baby boomlet in the family and Christmas practically upon us, I&#039;ve become a reluctant expert in the latest style trends for those of us too tiny and clueless to care how grownups deck us out, provided the clothes don&#039;t itch. So I am here to tell you what I&#039;ve learned from wide-eyed contemplation of eensy-weensy toddler jeans, fashionably distressed like Dad&#039;s. Guess who they&#039;re for! A boy, of course. Baby Gap and its competitors dress boys like men (or at least like college freshmen) and girls like dolls. The gender divide lives on.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-perplexed-feminist-at-baby-gap</guid>
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<title>Blogging as spiritual practice</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:09:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?blogging-as-spiritual-practice</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve never had a mantra or a healing crystal. I bombed at meditation. When someone rhapsodizes about The Secret, I can&#039;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&#039;s called blogging.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?blogging-as-spiritual-practice</guid>
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<title>The year we all were Up in the Air</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-year-we-all-were-up-in-the-air</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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&#039;ve never lost a job myself, I&#039;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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-year-we-all-were-up-in-the-air</guid>
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<title>No safe place: what the Montreal Massacre means to women</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:57:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?no-safe-place-what-the-montreal-massacre-means-to-women</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I was heading home from a Christmas party, sated on champagne and smoked salmon, when the car radio broke the news: 14 young women killed at l&#039;Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal by a gunman shouting, &quot;You&#039;re all a bunch of feminists!&quot; While I was deciding which earrings to wear with my new silk suit, they had been separated from their male classmates and mowed down just because they were bright, ambitious women intent on careers in engineering.]]></description>
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<title>I didn't want to write about the Montreal Massacre. Here's why.</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:35:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?i-didnt-want-to-write-about-the-montreal-massacre-heres-why</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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&#039;t want to think about that, but I&#039;ve learned that the stories I most resist are the ones I most need to tell.]]></description>
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<title>Taming my inner Scrooge</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:27:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?taming-my-inner-scrooge</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Christmas wouldn&#039;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&#039;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&#039;s Church of the Redeemer, starring me and four other recruits. I was off to confront my inner Scrooge.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?taming-my-inner-scrooge</guid>
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<title>Save that thought!</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 07 Dec 2009 02:49:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?save-that-thought</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;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&#039;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:]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?save-that-thought</guid>
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<title>Looking for renovation supplies? You've got the wrong Rona</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?looking-for-renovation-supplies-youve-got-the-wrong-rona</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Perhaps I should be flattered that 680 hardware stores bear my name, but I&#039;ve wearied of convincing baffled guys in trucks that this Rona can&#039;t sell them a mitre box (hey, what&#039;s a mitre box, anyway?) When it&#039;s not a frustrated hobbyist ringing me up, it&#039;s a collection agency looking for someone who used to have my number. Or the Yellow Pages trying to sell me an ad.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?looking-for-renovation-supplies-youve-got-the-wrong-rona</guid>
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<title>My foreign language problem</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-foreign-language-problem</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The hardest thing I&#039;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!]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-foreign-language-problem</guid>
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<title>My Mother - Chapelle Gray</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:41:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2125-chapelle-gray</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My mother passed away on September 8, 2009 and at... Posted by Deedy. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2125-chapelle-gray</guid>
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<title>Ex-lovers: a mid-life meditation</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?exlovers-a-midlife-meditation</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I was steering my cart through Toronto&#039;s most twee greengrocer when a stranger looked up from the organic broccoli and exclaimed in a booming voice, &quot;Hey, I know! You&#039;re the gal who used to live with that writer!&quot; 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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?exlovers-a-midlife-meditation</guid>
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<title>Hillary, my kind of woman</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hillary-my-kind-of-woman</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In the December issue of Vogue, a magazine I rarely buy but this month couldn&#039;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?]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hillary-my-kind-of-woman</guid>
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<title>A lesson in aging from my oldest friend</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:25:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-lesson-in-aging-from-my-oldest-friend</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve come to think the art of living, especially in old age, depends on rewarding the people who can meet your accelerating needs. It&#039;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&#039;t stop lamenting her loneliness?]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-lesson-in-aging-from-my-oldest-friend</guid>
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<title>Teachers to the core</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?teachers-to-the-core</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?teachers-to-the-core</guid>
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<title>My Mother - mom</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:09:47 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2120-mom</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Hi I lost my mom 10 months now..I miss every... Posted by nanoo. ]]></description>
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<title>Hometown kids, older and wiser</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:40:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hometown-kids-older-and-wiser</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;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&#039;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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hometown-kids-older-and-wiser</guid>
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<title>My Mother - Betty Ewing</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:01:28 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2118-betty-ewing</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My Mother was amazing. When I was girl I was... Posted by cherri. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2118-betty-ewing</guid>
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<title>A dual citizen looks at the American health care debate</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:50:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-dual-citizen-looks-at-the-american-health-care-debate</link>
<description><![CDATA[ For a couple of nerve-crunching months this past summer, I couldn&#039;t tear myself away from the fractious, foul-mouthed, flat-out dispiriting debate over U.S. health care. Watching the epithets fly from sober, well-mannered Canada, where we think of health care as a citizen&#039;s right and would no sooner pack a gun at a public meeting than abandon our firstborn child in the woods, I sometimes felt like a rubbernecker at the scene of a brutal car crash.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-dual-citizen-looks-at-the-american-health-care-debate</guid>
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<title>My star turn as the Ghost of Christmas Past</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:16:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-star-turn-as-the-ghost-of-chrismas-past</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Have you heard the buzz about A Christmas Carol? No, not Disney&#039;s fancy-schmancy animated version starring some guy named Carrey as Scrooge---the reading at Church of the Redeemer on December 6, in which Toronto stalwarts of the stage and page will bring Dickens&#039; classic to life with nothing but our voices and our affection for the ultimate Christmas yarn. I&#039;m honoured to be among them.]]></description>
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<title>How we stayed married for 39 years</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:38:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-we-stayed-married-for-39-years</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You know the old saw &quot;Never go to bed angry?&quot; Don&#039;t believe it. I learned in the first few years that there&#039;s just no hurrying a truce when we both need some breathing room. Here&#039;s why we&#039;re still together, and what I&#039;m still trying to learn.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-we-stayed-married-for-39-years</guid>
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<title>Not the glass ceiling but the urinal wall</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:33:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?not-the-glass-ceiling-but-the-urinal-wall</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In 1976, when we still believed in &quot;having it all&quot; and &quot;glass ceiling&quot; was a skylight with pretensions, I landed my first magazine job. Career gurus told me I should learn to act more like men. These days it&#039;s career-minded men who are being told to emulate women. So says Men&#039;s Health, the modern guy&#039;s mentor on every aspect of manhood from getting laid to getting ahead.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?not-the-glass-ceiling-but-the-urinal-wall</guid>
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<title>The pleasures of writing in books</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:14:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-pleasures-of-writing-in-books</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I have this odd little habit that amuses my husband. To be honest, I&#039;m told I have many odd habits. They involve bits of crumpled Kleenex, loose bottle caps, single socks emerging from the laundry...oh, enough of that stuff! Let&#039;s talk about a happier subject, books and pens. The two go together, as far as I&#039;m concerned.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-pleasures-of-writing-in-books</guid>
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<title>Portrait of the sailor as a very young woman</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:09:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?portrait-of-the-sailor-as-a-very-young-woman</link>
<description><![CDATA[ There&#039;s a depth of desire---fierce, wholehearted and relentless---that can seize the heart of a teenage girl and carry her away, perhaps forever. Some girls are so determined to be thin that they&#039;ll starve for their notion of beauty. Others have staked their sense of self on joining violent gangs where rape is the price of admission. Laura Dekker, 14, is raising teen obsession to a loftier plane. She intends to become the youngest person to sail around the world solo.]]></description>
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<title>My 60th birthday: a celebration in three acts</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-60th-birthday-a-celebration-in-three-acts</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I guess the time has finally come to give the birthday festivities a rest. Who knew that turning 60 is like eating dessert in a Burgundian shrine to gastronomy---first the buttery, beautiful avant dessert, compliments of the chef; then the impossibly exquisite confection you ordered; then the apres-dessert, petits-fours borne on a platter that would not be out of place at Versailles?]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-60th-birthday-a-celebration-in-three-acts</guid>
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<title>Not a phone person</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:44:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?not-a-phone-person</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Early on in my friendship with Sarah, she advised me not to phone her. I was perfectly welcome to ring; I just shouldn&#039;t expect a voice-to-voice conversation. Susannah doesn&#039;t like to be caught off guard. She wants to know what&#039;s on someone&#039;s mind before she frames her reply. She loves the freedom e-mail gives her to be funny and warm when she&#039;s in the mood connection. No one writes a more expressive e-mail message than Sarah. But as she told me at our first girlfriends&#039; dinner, she is simply &quot;not a phone person.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?not-a-phone-person</guid>
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<title>Rewards of my online reading habit</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:32:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rewards-of-my-online-reading-habit</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Although I&#039;m still one of the die-hards for whom morning and the daily paper go together like coffee and toast, I can&#039;t seem to get out of my bathrobe without an online tour of newspapers hither and yon, with detours to a blog or two. I keep meaning to share the wealth, only to get distracted (must have been following a link). Here&#039;s an eclectic roundup of online gleanings that inspire me, challenge me, amaze me, move me or crack me up.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rewards-of-my-online-reading-habit</guid>
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<title>The hat that helped one reader beat depression</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:42:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-hat-that-helped-one-reader-beat-depression</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I marvel that I once saw shopping as balm for my spirit. All it offered was distraction and the fleeting promise of care by a bevy of minions better groomed than I would ever be. Yet I remain a firm believer in the power of clothes to express both who I am and who I might become. So when a longtime reader e-mailed me the story of her &quot;happy hat,&quot; I recognized a kindred spirit.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-hat-that-helped-one-reader-beat-depression</guid>
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<title>When McCall's sang the praises of togetherness</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:57:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-mccalls-sang-the-praises-of-togetherness</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Although I&#039;m not among those who feel personally stricken by the death of Gourmet magazine after 68 years, I&#039;ve been thinking these last few days about defunct magazines---the many absent friends at my mental newsstand. I was going to celebrate each one, but the first ran away with this post. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-mccalls-sang-the-praises-of-togetherness</guid>
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<title>Rona Maynard speaks on success to Belleville business women</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:26:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-speaks-on-success-to-belleville-business-women</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When everyone wants a piece of you, a deadline looms and you&#039;ve been cracking your brain on an onslaught of big decisions, it can be dangerously tempting to treat your own powers like a beast of burden. I know the feeling---and I learned the hard way that I couldn&#039;t revitalize Canada&#039;s best-read magazine for women if I didn&#039;t take care of my own vitality. That&#039;s just one of the defining moments I&#039;ll be sharing on October 29 at the Women in Business Luncheon in Belleville, Ontario.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-speaks-on-success-to-belleville-business-women</guid>
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<title>Hats of my life</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:35:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hats-of-my-life</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My mother died nearly 13 years ago, but for a fleeting second recently I could have sworn I saw her striding by---a gray-haired woman in a chiffon scarf, a billowing black raincoat and her signature touch, a broad-brimmed hat worn at just the right angle. It was my own reflection, proof that after a lifetime of doing things my way (which once included going bare-headed in heat waves and blizzards), I&#039;m not all that different from my mother.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hats-of-my-life</guid>
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<title>Dayle, this one's for you</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:12:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?dayle-this-ones-for-you</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Dayle must have been 15 when she opened her mother&#039;s copy of Ladies&#039; Home Journal and found a short story called &quot;Paper Flowers.&quot; The illustration featured two barefoot, guitar-toting girls---one who looks bold enough to hop a freight, the other more demure, as if she&#039;s only toying with rebellion. I wrote the story, which Dayle has remembered with affection for more than 40 years. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?dayle-this-ones-for-you</guid>
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<title>Paper Flowers</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:17:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?paper-flowers</link>
<description><![CDATA[ This story, written when I was 15, was published in Ladies&#039; Home Journal in October, 1965, where it kept company with &quot;What Americans Expect from Robert Kennedy.&quot; A mortifying sidebar identified me as a &quot;prodigy&quot; who &quot;sang in seven languages at a year and a half and, at three, composed what her mother...calls &#039;shapely little narratives.&#039; The story was later cited in the annual Best Short Stories anthology edited by Martha Foley.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?paper-flowers</guid>
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<title>I am at two with my body (i.e., a typical woman)</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?i-am-at-two-with-my-body-ie-a-typical-woman</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My body, two weeks shy of 60, has been acting like a cranky preschooler. It&#039;s forever whining, &quot;I don&#039;t wanna!&quot; Or &quot;You can&#039;t make me!&quot; If I dare to press the point, my body lets loose with &quot;I hate you!&quot; All because I&#039;ve asked it nicely to do what other well fed, lovingly tended, meticulously exercised bodies (including, until recently, my own) are doing without protest.]]></description>
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<title>Not just another lost cat poster</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:43:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?not-just-another-lost-cat-poster</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The temperature called for my gray cashmere sweat pants, when I&#039;d been hoping for a at least a few more days in pink linen capris. Worse luck, the cashmere sweats had been ravaged by moths that had nibbled and chewed from hemline to butt, not sparing the crotch. I craved a little lift to redeem the day&#039;s disappointment. Lo and behold, it appeared on a telephone pole that was swathed in the usual urban collage of posters for everything from yard sales to Japanese lessons. The headline said, &quot;Not just another lost cat poster.&quot;]]></description>
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<title>Women in the innovation economy: how do we tap their full energy?</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:13:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?women-in-the-innovation-economy-how-do-we-tap-their-full-energy</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Now that brain power has trumped muscle power, how can we reshape the economy to take full advantage of women&#039;s capacity and creative energy? On October 28 I&#039;ll explore that question over breakfast with three women leaders in a place dedicated to innovation---Toronto&#039;s MaRS Centre.]]></description>
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<title>What I learned from the man who never retired</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:58:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-i-learned-from-the-man-who-never-retired</link>
<description><![CDATA[ William Safire, the formidably prolific author, columnist and self-described language maven who died this week in his eightieth year, was in the end a man of his word. Nearly five years ago he called his final-Op-Ed column for the New York Times &quot;Never retire.&quot; When I first read that column one weekday morning in January, I had just begun what most people would call my retirement. But I scorned that word.]]></description>
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<title>When family members don't get along: do you have a story?</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:43:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-family-members-dont-get-along-do-you-have-a-story</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In just a few weeks my sister Joyce will arrive in Toronto to promote her new novel Labor Day. This is big news for a number of reasons. She&#039;s the only person left from my family of origin. She&#039;ll arrive just in time for my birthday. She lives in California, too far away for weekend visits. And the last time she came to my city, 14 years ago this fall, we had a bitter fight that led to a years-long silence.]]></description>
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<title>Don't call me dear!</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:55:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?dont-call-me-dear</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My friends and I used to seethe when grizzled tradesmen called us &quot;dear&quot; and our husbands &quot;Mr. So-and-so.&quot; We vowed our kids&#039; generation would banish sexism once and for all. Too bad we didn&#039;t take a stand against ageism. Now that we&#039;re old enough to pay for attentive service, we&#039;re getting &quot;dears,&quot; &quot;sweeties&quot; and &quot;young ladies&quot; from people young enough to be our children. This kind of faux endearment has a name: elderspeak. And the time to stop it is now.]]></description>
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<title>Feasting on remaindered books for $39.95</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:28:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?feasting-on-remaindered-books-for-3995</link>
<description><![CDATA[ There aren&#039;t many places left where a person can spend $39.95 and feel royally pampered without consuming any butter fat or alcohol. Turns out one of those places is three blocks away from my office. It doesn&#039;t have a name, just banners shouting, in stocky red letters, &quot;Bargain Book Blowout!&quot; Today I felt compelled to check it out.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Mary Brady Piton</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:03:04 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2106-mary-brady-piton</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Born in the Edwardian era, Mary was thoroughly modern in... Posted by Margaret Piton. ]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Lya Joy Boles</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 19 Sep 2009 04:03:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2105-lya-joy-boles</link>
<description><![CDATA[ This story and photo is posted on my blog; http://suzanneboles.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/saying-goodbye.... Posted by Suzanne Boles. ]]></description>
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<title>When Mary Travers rang the bell of freedom</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:52:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-mary-travers-rang-the-bell-of-freedom</link>
<description><![CDATA[ For days now I&#039;ve been hearing a familiar old song in my head. Pounding guitar, three young voices in harmony. They&#039;re letting it rip---the hope, the exuberance, the conviction that a new age of equality was about to transform their nation and the world. A woman&#039;s voice soars above the others. &quot;It&#039;s the hammer of justice, it&#039;s the bell of freedom!&quot; sings Mary Travers, band mate of Peter and Paul. On Wednesday she died of leukemia, age 72.]]></description>
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<title>My journey as a cemetery tourist</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-journey-as-a-cemetery-tourist</link>
<description><![CDATA[ If I could be buried in Pere 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&#039;t one of those groomed cemeteries, every flower bed primped like a model for the runway. It&#039;s a wild, romantic place that cries out to be explored while listening to a nocturne by Chopin.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Elizabeth</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:03:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2104-elizabeth</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In the early 1950?s my father, like so many others,... Posted by carin. ]]></description>
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<title>The best advice anyone gave me</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 14 Sep 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-best-advice-anyone-gave-me</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;s hard to believe, as I look at my mensch of a son---husband, father, giver of extravagant gifts and practically a teetotaler---that I once thought he was coasting toward alcoholism. As the daughter of an alcoholic father, I&#039;d noticed a thing or two that stoked my worst fear: another drunk in the family. been an Feeling cursed, I called my friend Val.]]></description>
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<title>Unfinished books: A reader's confession</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:10:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?unfinished-books-a-readers-confession</link>
<description><![CDATA[ On the edge of my bathtub sits a novel I&#039;d been longing to read, by an author whose last book I pressed on everyone I know. I trusted that her latest would carry me away to a fictional world so complete, so believable in every detail that I could lose myself there and return to everyday life both refreshed and expanded by my journey down Story Road. But here I am on page 172---more than halfway along---and the book still hasn&#039;t gripped me.]]></description>
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<title>When a friend is fired</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:40:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-a-friend-is-fired</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Hardly a week goes by when I don&#039;t hear about someone I know---perhaps a whole swath of people---being packaged, let go, laid off, terminated or otherwise shunted aside in what&#039;s presented as a cost-cutting move but may in fact be an excuse to clear the decks of those who are deemed to have served their purpose. So it&#039;s time I boned up on the etiquette of these situations.]]></description>
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<title>How the freshman blues changed my life</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:29:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-the-freshman-blues-changed-my-life</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I fled Middlebury College after one miserable year, convinced that I would never belong. I vowed to put the place behind me, like an ex-husband cut from a photo. I found another school in another country, where I made a life that suits me like my favourite jeans. But decades after I left Middlebury, I&#039;ve realized it wasn&#039;t so bad after all. I see possibilities I couldn&#039;t--or wouldn&#039;t--see in my headstrong teens.]]></description>
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<title>Kitchen mentor, I salute you with an upraised wooden spoon</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:43:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?kitchen-mentor-i-salute-you-with-an-upraised-wooden-spoon</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Among the best perks of editing Chatelaine was being able to take my culinary dilemmas to a maven who knows home cooking the way Alain Ducasse knows haute cuisine---Food Editor Monda Rosenberg, since 1977 a trusted mentor, friend and kitchen confidante to millions of Canadian women (and no small number of men).]]></description>
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<title>At last, a support group for parents of live-in adult children</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:02:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?at-last-a-support-group-for-parents-of-livein-adult-children</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve often wondered why no support group existed for frustrated parents of live-in adult children who expect to hang around for as long as they please---no chores, no house rules, no move-out date or action plan. A group of these parents has been gathering here at my site, learning from one another&#039;s stories. Now they&#039;ve launched that much-needed support group, Enablers Anonymous.]]></description>
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<title>What one reader had to do to buy a book</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:56:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-one-reader-had-to-do-to-buy-a-book</link>
<description><![CDATA[ There ought to be an award for a reader so tenacious, she&#039;ll spend six weeks tracking down a copy of a book. Not a signed first edition of The Great Gatsby (dust jacket intact, every page pristine) but My Mother&#039;s Daughter by one Rona Maynard, available online in paperback for $15.19. Now, you might think online bookstores exist to sell books to people who want to buy them and have gone so far as to type their credit card number in the handy little box. O ye of too much faith!]]></description>
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<title>Celebrating a new novel from my sister Joyce</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:14:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?celebrating-a-new-novel-from-my-sister-joyce</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You can tell a lot about a book from the first sentence. Here&#039;s the latest one that hooked me: &quot;It was just the two of us, my mother and me, after my father left.&quot; I knew I was about to read an honest-to-goodness story with characters on the brink of change they never dared imagine and a plot to keep me wondering, &quot;What will happen next?&quot; These old-fashioned pleasures, often shunted aside by fashionably minimalist fiction, are front and centre in my sister Joyce Maynard&#039;s new novel Labor Day.]]></description>
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<title>Catching courage</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 20 Aug 2009 03:27:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?catching-courage</link>
<description><![CDATA[ On a laden bookshelf at a country inn, I found an abandoned copy of Carolyn Heilbrun&#039;s The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty. Heilbrun&#039;s suicide at 77 had outraged many of her fans, but something compelled me to reach for this book. With a big birthday coming up, I wanted to learn from Heilbrun as she&#039;d been before she lost hope and heart.]]></description>
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<title>Missed Woodstock, seeking route to the garden</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 16 Aug 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?missed-woodstock-seeking-route-to-the-garden</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I get peevish about crowds, mud, stinky toilets and bad food, so I&#039;ve never regretted missing out on the Woodstock festival. While half a million celebrants were camping out on Yasgur&#039;s farm and getting their souls free, I was in staid Toronto, where I&#039;d spent the summer cleaning houses inhabited by student riff-raff like me. Come to think of it, I got the stinky toilets. But I knew I&#039;d missed something momentous.]]></description>
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<title>Feasting on breakfast in Burlington, Vermont</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 14 Aug 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?feasting-on-breakfast-in-burlington-vermont</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My home city, Toronto, prides itself on gastonomic flair. But where are the inventive omelets? The tantalizing updates on corned beef hash? The tofu scrambles so tasty, you don&#039;t miss eggs? I live downtown and I&#039;ve come up dry. In Burlington, Vermont, it&#039;s a vastly more flavourful story.]]></description>
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<title>Read profile of Rona Maynard in Fifty-Five Plus</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?read-profile-of-rona-maynard-in-fiftyfive-plus</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Although I&#039;ll happily admit to being over 55, I never think of my age as a defining part of my identity. Still, when Fifty-Five Plus magazine suggested a cover profile of me, I was not about to say no. Especially since I knew the writer, Jenefer Curtis, who wrote for me at Chatelaine and is one of my readers here at ronamaynard.com.]]></description>
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<title>Still friends after 40 years</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?still-friends-after-40-years</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I was a teenage misfit in a small New Hampshire town with no purveyors of guitars, French magazines or rawhide sandals like the ones worn by Biblical shepherds, I would save my allowance for escapes to the centre of all things hip and freewheeling. With my soul mate Anne, I would ride the dawn bus to Boston and jump on the subway for Harvard Square.]]></description>
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<title>A stolen hour of reflection with Marilynne Robinson</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-stolen-hour-of-reflection-with-marilynne-robinson</link>
<description><![CDATA[ If I must spend upwards of an hour in a doctor&#039;s waiting room, I&#039;m wise to bring a book. The other day I sat down there with Marilynne Robinson&#039;s Home, a dense, meditative novel about guilt and forgiveness, shame and hope, the ache of absence and the unfulfilled promise of return in a family where too much has gone unsaid for too long.]]></description>
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<title>Vacationing back where I started</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?vacationing-back-where-i-started</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Our son was still in day care the first time we drove to New Hampshire, my home state, for a summer vacation on the cheap. Like every day care, Ben&#039;s kept a hamster. Like every preschooler, Ben had a vague grasp of language: he heard what made sense to him, and this didn&#039;t always coincide with what we actually said. He thought we were bound for New Hamster, and New Hamster it has been ever since to my husband and me.]]></description>
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<title>I married a genealogist...and became a genealogy freeloader</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?i-married-a-genealogistand-became-a-genealogy-freeloader</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Our grandson, at 12, is much amused to learn how my husband spends untold hours of time. Genealogy! Now there&#039;s a word to get a 12-year-old rolling his eyes. Think about it: why would anyone choose to study...genies? Hasn&#039;t Grandpa heard of Harry Potter? Kidding aside, I too have been perplexed by this midlife passion of my husband&#039;s.]]></description>
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<title>Hooked on Nurse Jackie</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:48:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hooked-on-nurse-jackie</link>
<description><![CDATA[ If I am ever rushed on a gurney to Emerg, with a tube up my nose and a throng of doctors yelling orders in my wake, I want the first face I see to be Nurse Jackie&#039;s. Nothing stands between TV&#039;s stalwart nurse and her patient---not meddlesome relatives, not by-the-book hospital brass, not MDs determined to be heroes no matter what the cost. And certainly not her own limits.]]></description>
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<title>If Anne Frank had lived to be 80</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:44:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?if-anne-frank-had-lived-to-be-80</link>
<description><![CDATA[ If Anne Frank had lived to a wise old age instead of dying at 15 in Bergen Belsen, just weeks before the camp&#039;s liberation, she would have turned 80 last month. Her birthday was June 12, her transcendent diary a gift on the day she turned 13. It had a red-checked cover and a tiny metal latch like the ones on girlhood diaries everywhere, my own included. I used to begin every entry &quot;Dear Diana,&quot; a homage to Anne&#039;s &quot;Dear Kitty.&quot; I longed for a friend like Anne---so passionate and searching, yet so deft at sending up adult foibles.]]></description>
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<title>The doomed, desperate bargain of Carmela Bousada</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-doomed-desperate-bargain-of-carmela-bousada</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Maria del Carmen Bousada, who has just died of cancer at age 69, leaving two-year-old twin boys, was a woman possessed by a dream: bearing children of her own. Never mind that she had no job or husband when she sold her home at 66 to pay for fertility treatments in California. She once said, &quot;Everyone has to have children at the right time for them. This was the right time for me.&quot;]]></description>
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<title>True confessions of a grownup who still can't ride a bike</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:19:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?true-confessions-of-a-grownup-who-still-cant-ride-a-bike</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Last night I dreamed I was about to ride a bike. Like a living thing, it quivered as I slipped first my right foot, then my left into the pedals and felt the steadying weight of my intention. I had the sense of a journey about to unfold, but then imagination failed me. I woke up wondering what it meant that I&#039;d just dreamed of a motion I never chose to master, even though it&#039;s second nature to everyone over age six.]]></description>
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<title>Woman against computer</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:48:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?woman-against-computer</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I am now the perplexed, strung-out owner of a spiffy new desktop computer. It has a monitor so big and bright, I can see my reflection while writing this (better book that hair appointment pronto). Its operating system has the subtlety and cunning to hide essential files in mysterious virtual crannies. Its keyboard boasts more symbols and buttons than the control panel of a jet.]]></description>
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<title>Greening my emotional ecosystem</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:21:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?greening-my-emotional-ecosystem</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I like to think I do my part for this pollution-choked world we all share. I don&#039;t drive and I&#039;d sooner cross the street naked than sully it with used styrofoam. But I&#039;d better not give myself airs. Metaphorically speaking, there&#039;s another whole ecosystem needing my attention---and everyone&#039;s. It&#039;s the emotional space between any two people, be they spouses, colleagues or harried strangers in a checkout line.]]></description>
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<title>A locker room of her own</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-locker-room-of-her-own</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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.]]></description>
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<title>Condolence notes I've treasured</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:55:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?condolence-notes-ive-treasured</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Last month I shared what life and loss have taught me about the writing of condolence notes. That post already ranks with the most popular I&#039;ve written since this site began. So here I am with an open file folder of the letters that sustained me after my mother&#039;s death. I still reread my favourites. What makes them so consoling? See for yourself.]]></description>
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<title>Wanted: online support group for parents with adult kids at home</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?wanted-the-online-support-group-for-parents-with-adult-kids-at-home</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Just after my most recent speech on dealing with difficult people, a 40-something woman approached me and confided in a desperate half-whisper, &quot;My problem is my 22-year-old daughter who lives with me. She&#039;s a single mother with no job and no plans. It&#039;s not working. I don&#039;t know how much more of this I can take. What should I do?&quot;]]></description>
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<title>Dr. Jerri Nielsen: healer, adventurer, role model</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:03:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?dr-jerri-nielsen-healer-adventurer-role-model</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I learned last night that Dr. Jerri Nielsen had died of breast cancer at age 57, I couldn&#039;t help but take it personally, even though I&#039;d forgotten her name in the 10 years since she made news around the world. I still remembered the tale of her dramatic rescue from the Antarctic research station where she had diagnosed and treated her own disease all winter until a plane could land.]]></description>
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<title>The power of wanting and the death of Neda</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-power-of-wanting-and-the-death-of-neda</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Admit it: sometimes you just want more. There&#039;s so much stuff out there for the craving, and so many other people have more of it than you. I&#039;ve been there. Last week, in a want-more moment, I became transfixed by a young woman&#039;s death on the seething streets of Tehran. And I thought about what it means to want the most important thing of all, with such urgency and passion that you&#039;ll put your life on the line.]]></description>
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<title>Diana Athill's guide to old age</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:40:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?diana-athills-guide-to-old-age</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The way some people carry on, you&#039;d think old age was the well deserved affliction of the lazy and the clueless. Crow&#039;s feet, turkey neck? Get yourself to a surgeon, honey. Aches and pains got you down? Tsk tsk. Guess you&#039;ve been neglecting yoga. But the fact is that one of two things will happen to us all: we&#039;ll die too soon, or we&#039;ll grow old. Thank goodness we now have a straight-talking mentor in the unwelcome art of aging---legendary British author Diana Athill, now 91.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Myrna Cheeseman</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:14:48 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2094-myrna-cheeseman</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I don&#039;t tell my mom, Myrna, often enough, but she... Posted by Lisa MacColl. ]]></description>
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<title>Reasons to blog</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:07:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?Reasons-to-blog</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I don&#039;t know anyone in Novi Sad, most likely will never go there and had to Google the place to find out that it&#039;s in Serbia. So I can&#039;t help but wonder how it happened that on May 14 some stranger in Novi Sad set out for an online stroll and ended up on this website. We&#039;re not talking just a peek in my virtual doorway. The mystery guest actually read these pages for 11 minutes and 47 seconds---a not-inconsiderable sojourn in Blogland.]]></description>
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<title>My coffee dilemma: Alzheimer's protection vs sleep</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-coffee-dilemma-alzheimers-protection-vs-sleep</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Last summer, with much yawning and complaining, I reduced my coffee intake from five cups daily to two. A doctor had warned that if I didn&#039;t ease up on the caffeine, I&#039;d have to put up with chronic insomnia. Now a study of 1400 people shows that drinking three to five cups of coffee a day can dramatically reduce your risk of Alzheimer&#039;s disease, which has ravaged my family. What to do?]]></description>
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<title>What to call the baby: name or nickname?</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-to-call-the-baby-name-or-nickname</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Our grandson had no name for what seemed like the longest time. Then he got one---Gabriel---only to be renamed Cameron. A fine name, in my opinion. But everyone calls him Peanut. As one who never had a baby name, I&#039;d better own up to some mixed emotions about that.]]></description>
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<title>What remains when the intellect is gone</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-remains-when-the-intellect-is-gone</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I was in no hurry to read Still Alice, the best-selling novel in which Alzheimer&#039;s disease overtakes a woman of 50. I didn&#039;t want to care about Alice Howland---wife, mother and Harvard neuroscientist---only to see her erased the illness I fear most, which runs in my family. But I had a long flight ahead, and a little more room in my carry-on bag. Now I&#039;m here to say, &quot;You&#039;ve got to read this book.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-remains-when-the-intellect-is-gone</guid>
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<title>Tiananmen Square on my mind</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?tiananmen-square-on-my-mind</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Twenty years ago today, when tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square and crushed a peaceful protest with harrowing force, I was too caught up in my own pain to give more than a fleeting glance to reports from the scene. My mother was dying of brain cancer. In the fog of impending bereavement, I couldn&#039;t mourn the students whose mangled bikes were their only memorial. Now, just back from China, I can&#039;t get them off my mind.]]></description>
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<title>Guest post: My embarrassing father</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:59:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?guest-post-my-embarrassing-father</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Have you ever cringed at some annoying habit of your father&#039;s? Have you wished he&#039;d act more like normal people and less like his incorrigible self? Ann Banks has been there. With Father&#039;s Day around the corner, she looks back on the first man in her life and sees the gift that escaped her notice then.]]></description>
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<title>The toilet that ruled my life</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2009 05:54:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-toilet-that-ruled-my-life</link>
<description><![CDATA[ We wanted an elegant English toilet for our one and only bathroom. On the throne of our choice, you could complete the most challenging of crosswords in comfort. We were so proud of our champagne-coloured Twyford toilet---until the day it stopped flushing. Then I found myself searching far and wide for a Twyford ball cock, and nothing on earth seemed more precious.]]></description>
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<title>The secret language of families</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-secret-language-of-families</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Around our house we never speak of Tim Hortons. It&#039;s not that we&#039;re too high and mighty for the omnipresent doughnut chain, just that we have our own name for those familiar coffee-scented shops. To us they will always be Hornuts. And when we talk about Hornuts, the real subject isn&#039;t fat-and-sugar-laden confections but the identity we&#039;ve shaped as a family.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-secret-language-of-families</guid>
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<title>Guest post: Size 10 seeks same with matching Tupperware</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2009 01:47:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?guest-post-size-10-seeks-same-with-matching-tupperware</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My virtual friend Jules Torti will go anywhere, eat anything and write about it with her characteristic full-tilt originality. On the face of things, we couldn&#039;t be more different from each other. Yet I recognize myself in Jules&#039;s wonderful essay on what it really means to find your soul mate.]]></description>
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<title>My first love</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-first-love</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Robbie and I were five years old when he named his doll Rona after me. We were going to get married someday. Relationships like ours are belittlingly called &quot;puppy love,&quot; yet there&#039;s nothing trivial or cute about the tenderness of children&#039;s first longings for each other or the anguish of their first heartbreaks.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-first-love</guid>
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<title>A few more memories I'll take home from Shanghai</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2009 08:22:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-few-more-memories-ill-take-home-from-shanghai</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My brain goes into spasm at the thought of living in China&#039;s biggest, bursting-at-the-seams metropolis, with its omnipresent cranes and pollution haze. Still, I have to admire the city&#039;s heritage of openness and the scope of its current ambitions. Here, a few memories I&#039;ll be sharing with friends back home. Shanghailights, you might say.]]></description>
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<title>Shanghai: a crane on every block, chamber pots in every alley</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 16 May 2009 01:03:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?shanghai-a-crane-on-every-block-chamber-pots-in-every-alley</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Shanghai, where we&#039;ve spent six brain-jangling days, is a city of 19 million in one hell of a hurry. You could argue that we&#039;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&#039;ve arrived just in time to see vanishing downtown neighbourhoods that have scarcely changed since the Communists came to power.]]></description>
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<title>Guest post: Sesame Street is...40??</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?guest-post-sesame-street-is-40</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My virtual friend Marnie Woodrow is about to turn 40. Sesame Street has already reached that milestone. So who better than Marnie, an accomplished fiction writer and fan of the show from its earliest days, to reflect on how Big Bird, Elmo and the gang could expand the world of a child? ]]></description>
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<title>A few things I've learned about condolence notes</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2009 08:45:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-few-things-ive-learned-about-condolence-notes</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Back when I was a death virgin, unscathed by irreparable loss, I had no idea how to write to the bereaved. Then my mother died and I became a student of condolence. Her friends became my mentors, teaching me the difference between a truly comforting thought and an irritating platitude.]]></description>
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<title>Mothers and mentors</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2009 05:01:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?mothers-and-mentors</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Why every young woman needs a wise female friend to cheer her on---someone who never worried about her report card or grounded her for missing curfew.]]></description>
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<title>The daughter I never had</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-daughter-i-never-had</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I always thought I wanted a daughter, but the time was never right for a second baby. I had one excuse after another---until at last I realized that one child was enough for me. It was time to make absolutely certain that my birthing years were over. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-daughter-i-never-had</guid>
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<title>Guest post: At least the baby's library is ready</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2009 12:10:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?guest-post-at-least-the-babys-library-is-ready</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Some mothers-to-be plan the baby&#039;s fashion statements. Others can&#039;t wait to see their child on the piano bench or the playing field. For book blogger Kerry Clare, baby dreams feature lots and lots of reading and a chance to reconnect with childhood favourites.]]></description>
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<title>Off to China, but the coffee's still on at this virtual kitchen table</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?off-to-china-but-the-coffees-still-on-at-this-virtual-kitchen-table</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;m packing my bag, clearing out the fridge and wondering which essential item I&#039;ll forget on my long-awaited trip to China (please, not my glasses). Any minute now, I&#039;ll turn off the computer. Used to be, these steps were enough to get me out the door. Now there&#039;s one more: stock my website with lively reading.]]></description>
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<title>Got the blues? Give thanks for something good</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2009 02:55:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?got-the-blues-give-thanks-for-something-good</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I was climbing out of chronic depression more than 20 years ago, I read somewhere about a bedtime ritual that was said to nudge the weariest of hearts toward hope. You were to lie in the dark and give thanks to whatever gods there be for the best moment of your day. How simplistic, I thought. How impossibly naive. What about all the days when nothing good happened?]]></description>
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<title>The many moods of motherhood: 10 songs I love</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 03 May 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-many-moods-of-motherhood-10-songs-i-love</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Let&#039;s hear it for Mother&#039;s Day---and I mean that literally. I&#039;ve gathered a bright but thorny garland of songs to express the many moods of having or being a mother: the starry-eyed admiration of childhood, the guns-blazing rebellion of adolescence, the oceanic missing that follows a mother&#039;s death. We&#039;ve all yearned for a mother who is boundlessly empathic and consoling. But real-world mothers have their quirks and complications, as songwriters have known since the heyday of Anonymous.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Adele</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2009 08:09:49 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2081-adele</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I was 5 months old, my mom adopted me... Posted by Chris. ]]></description>
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<title>The boy who called a truce where adults made nothing but trouble</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:50:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-boy-who-called-a-truce-where-adults-made-nothing-but-trouble</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve been cheering for a boy, just turned 18, who has achieved what battalions of lawyers and child welfare experts could not. He brokered a peace in his conflict-ravaged family, torn for the past eight years by the implacable fury of his parents&#039; divorce. Who says today&#039;s teens are just gossip-crazed airheads?]]></description>
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<title>Why writers need ticked-off readers</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?why-writers-need-ticked-off-readers</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I keep a folder full of letters from readers who say that my words changed their lives. I might start to get complacent if not for my angry readers. Their aggrieved, insistent voices remind me that not everyone shares my take on things.]]></description>
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<title>The gentle art of healing an estrangement</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:48:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-gentle-art-of-healing-an-estrangement</link>
<description><![CDATA[ A friend is just back from spending several days with her sister. Why am I telling you this? Isn&#039;t hanging out together just part of being sisters? Not for these two. They had barely spoken for 15 years. when my friend told me she was making this journey, she looked both resolute and anxious. Now she says her visit was &quot;wonderful.&quot; Her eyes glisten. She means &quot;full of wonder.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-gentle-art-of-healing-an-estrangement</guid>
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<title>A fine day to be born</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:02:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-fine-day-to-be-born</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Friday, April 17, 2009 was to all intents and purposes the first day of spring: a day for sandals and pink nail polish; for skateboards and sidewalk cafes; for remembering to stock up on sunscreen and forgetting you had ever worn clodhopper boots, filmed at the toes with salt. Our second grandson was born on April 17, at 8:30 a.m.]]></description>
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<title>The new crisis in children's mental health</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:49:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-new-crisis-in-childrens-mental-health</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;m thinking today of a preteen boy in Windsor, Ontario, the auto town just across the river from Detroit. I don&#039;t even know his age, let alone his name, his favourite sports team, what kind of music excites him or whether he&#039;s ever loved a dog. But I know something intimate about this boy. I know what he fears. When both his parents lost their jobs in the auto industry, he worried that they couldn&#039;t afford to raise him. So he tried to take his life.]]></description>
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<title>Celebrate National Mental Health Week with Rona Maynard</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:04:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?celebrate-national-mental-health-week-with-rona-maynard</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I remember when we hardly said a word about mental illness in the workplace. The business community lost talent, time and money because no one dared to face the truth. So when the Women&#039;s Executive Network asked me to be the Patron Host of a May 4 luncheon in Toronto that will highlight the business case for grappling with mental illness, I was quick to say, &quot;Count me in.&quot;]]></description>
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<title>All hail the humble toaster!</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?all-hail-the-humble-toaster</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I have been the jaded owner of every kitchen gadget that ever buzzed, flashed or inspired a slew of cookbooks. These gizmos have their uses but they all involve chopping and fussing. Besides, they won&#039;t give you any comfort when you&#039;ve just schlepped home from the airport at midnight with a suitcase full of laundry. For comfort, you need a toaster---100 years old this year and still the key to simple but soulful meals.]]></description>
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<title>Suicide in the family: the legacy of Nicholas Hughes</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:05:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?suicide-in-the-family-the-legacy-of-nicholas-hughes</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Suicides are all but invisible--except when they&#039;re notorious. Nicholas Hughes, a marine biologist and outdoorsman who hanged himself last month, would have been the invisible kind if not for his mother: Sylvia Plath, as famous for killing herself as she is for her remarkable poems. Some say we&#039;ve heard enough about the death of Nicholas Hughes. Writers Linda Gray Sexton and Jeremy Gavron, who also lost literary mothers to suicide, would beg to disagree. ]]></description>
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<title>Rona Maynard speaks in Saint John about women and depression</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 Apr 2009 04:23:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-speaks-in-saint-john-about-women-and-depression</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I wrote my first Chatelaine editorial on overcoming my chronic depression, a reader called to thank me. She was struggling with her own debilitating depression, yet she couldn&#039;t bring herself to say the word, so great is the stigma that surrounds this treatable condition. I&#039;ll be thinking of her on April 15, when I&#039;ll be speaking in Saint John at the Canadian Mental Health Association&#039;s third annual A Day in her Shoes fundraiser. ]]></description>
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<title>Revealed: the secret lives of grandmothers</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?revealed-the-secret-lives-of-grandmothers</link>
<description><![CDATA[ If you are or expect to be a grandmother; if you&#039;ve ever felt a surge of gratitude or a stab of resentment at a grandmother in your child&#039;s life; if you treasure the shoes-off, second-cup-of-coffee frankness of women sharing secrets among friends, you owe it to yourself to read Eye of My Heart: 27 Writers Share the Hidden Pleasures and Perils of Being a Grandmother. Full disclosure: I&#039;m one of the writers.]]></description>
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<title>The glamorous life of an author on the road</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 28 Mar 2009 03:48:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-glamorous-life-of-an-author-on-the-road</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Here in Toronto my gardening friends complain that spring has been teasing them. Up north in Sudbury, where a gray crust of snow still covers the frozen earth, people know better than to rush the seasons. So I&#039;ve just learned on my first visit to the Nickel City, where I was speaking and signing copies of My Mother&#039;s Daughter at the annual Celebrate Women fundraiser.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-glamorous-life-of-an-author-on-the-road</guid>
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<title>The  loneliness of the baffled male shopper</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2009 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-loneliness-of-the-baffled-male-shopper</link>
<description><![CDATA[ There&#039;s a bafflement that softens men&#039;s faces when they have to make a purchase outside their comfort zone. They need a woman to answer their questions: &quot;Is this parsley?&quot; &quot;Which one of these mops is best? And, most touching of all, &quot;Should I get these flowers or the ones over there?&quot; ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-loneliness-of-the-baffled-male-shopper</guid>
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<title>Fit for the pickiest eater</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:43:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?fit-for-the-pickiest-eater</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I love my grandson dearly but I can&#039;t bear to cook for him. The way I see it, every meal could use a jolt of flavour from at least one of the following: anchovies, avocadoes, mushrooms, pesto, olives, onions, assertive cheese, fresh herbs (bring on the cilantro!), green veg (the more pungent, the better) and a generous quantity of garlic. My grandson, age 12, will eat nothing on my hit parade.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?fit-for-the-pickiest-eater</guid>
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<title>My Mother - Mary (Longo) Lucchetta</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:19:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2077-mary-longo-lucchetta</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Mom &amp; Me, on the Q.T.

My mom and I had... Posted by Carla Maria Lucchetta. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?2077-mary-longo-lucchetta</guid>
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<title>Looking for hope</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:22:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?looking-for-hope</link>
<description><![CDATA[ On my way to a friend&#039;s memorial service, I passed a newsstand. A headline caught my eye: &quot;The case for optimism.&quot; Why should I be hopeful? Well, according to Maclean&#039;s, the economy just might be picking up. Hmmm. Only yesterday Maclean&#039;s was crying doom. I&#039;ve learned not stake my mood on the swings of the market or pronouncements in the press. What gives me hope is people who are not afraid to say, in any circumstances at all, &quot;This matters.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?looking-for-hope</guid>
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<title>Writing the obit: one friend's last gift to another</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:12:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?writing-the-obit-one-friends-last-gift-to-another</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The obituary section lies open on my desk. A woman smiles up at me, lighting up the page as she used to light up rooms, podiums and bars in many countries. The words have the familiar laurel-wreath ring of all ceremonial tributes: &quot;Alison Youngman died peacefully at home on March 8, concluding a short illness with the dignity, grace and good humour that had defined her life as a lawyer, volunteer and champion of women&#039;s leadership.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?writing-the-obit-one-friends-last-gift-to-another</guid>
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<title>Apocalypse? Armageddon? I've got a life to live!</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:43:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?apocalypse-armageddon-ive-got-a-life-to-live</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I refuse to spend the next year or five &quot;waiting for the bottom&quot; like a kid on an interminable road trip, pleading to mom and dad, &quot;Are we there yet?&quot; At least mom and dad knew the route to Grandma&#039;s house. No one&#039;s got a clue when we&#039;ll get to the bottom of this economic mess---let alone what it will take to climb out. And meanwhile the prophets of doom keep blowing hot air on the flames of panic, setting the blogosphere ablaze.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?apocalypse-armageddon-ive-got-a-life-to-live</guid>
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<title>The joy of telling the truth about depression</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 02 Mar 2009 09:13:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-joy-of-telling-the-truth-about-depression</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Hey, everybody: I&#039;ve suffered from a mental illness. It&#039;s called depression and it affects one in five of us at some point in our lives. That&#039;s why I&#039;m determined to help break the silence around this still-taboo subject. Here are some video clips from my recent keynote speech to the Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-joy-of-telling-the-truth-about-depression</guid>
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<title>Want to be (or find) a mentor? Read my advice in Best Health</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:42:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?want-to-be-or-find-a-mentor-read-my-advice-in-best-health</link>
<description><![CDATA[ How can you attract---and keep---a mentor who&#039;ll open doors for you? Can a corporate program connect you with that special person? And once you&#039;re on the path to success, how can you find time to mentor others without running yourself ragged in the process? These questions are close to my heart, for reasons you&#039;ll discover in the March issue of Best Health, at Canadian newsstands now.]]></description>
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<title>I lost it in the hotel closet (or the cab or the plane)</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:27:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?i-lost-it-in-the-hotel-closet-or-the-cab-or-the-plane</link>
<description><![CDATA[ We had just settled into our airy retreat at a Sarasota B&amp;B (think antiques, hardwood and a prime view of sailboats skimming the bay) when I realized it had happened again. I had arrived somewhere lovely minus something essential. My favourite jeans, which fit me like no other jeans on earth.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Patricia M. Rayner</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:56:30 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?1989-patricia-m.-rayner</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My favorite photo of my mother is one I took... Posted by Franke James. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?1989-patricia-m.-rayner</guid>
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<title>My most-requested story was the first</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:53:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-mostrequested-story-was-the-first-</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I wish I could choose which writings of mine would resonate most deeply with readers. I wouldn&#039;t pick &quot;The Fan Club,&quot; a story I wrote at age 14 that continues to find new readers after more than 40 years. But an Iowa teacher tells me that &quot;The Fan Club&quot; sparked her love of words and her ambition to become a writer. What an honour.]]></description>
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<title>The Fan Club</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-fan-club</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I was 14 years old and in the ninth grade at Oyster River High School in Durham, N.H., when I wrote this short story, a prizewinner in the Scholastic Magazines annual writing contest for young people. My first published work, it was later featured in the long-vanished Read magazine and has since appeared in countless anthologies for high school students. After more than 40 years, I still get inquiries about &quot;The Fan Club.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-fan-club</guid>
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<title>4000 lives we shouldn't be losing</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 17 Feb 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?4000-lives-we-shouldnt-be-losing</link>
<description><![CDATA[ This morning I asked myself how many people in my circle had been touched by the suicide of someone dear to them. Without even trying, I counted 12 names.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?4000-lives-we-shouldnt-be-losing</guid>
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<title>Following a tough act</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:38:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?following-a-tough-act</link>
<description><![CDATA[ If I had known my plenary speech the other day was going to follow a speech by Canada&#039;s most enduringly beloved female comic, you can bet I&#039;d have done a couple of things differently. First, I&#039;d have hot-footed it over to the Royal York Hotel to catch every minute of inspired mimicry and sheer unbridled nuttiness from Luba Goy of Air Farce Fame. Second, I&#039;d have felt a titch nervous about following Luba.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?following-a-tough-act</guid>
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<title>The poetry of random facts about ourselves</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-poetry-of-random-facts-about-ourselves</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The hottest fad on Facebook, &quot;25 random things about me,&quot; has been debunked as the blatherings of airheads. Yet it proves that the age-old human impulse to connect with others through words is still thriving in the age of the iPod. The best lists have the vividness of poetry. And for me they bring back memories of a remarkable poem written in 1967 by an American college student, Eleanor Wait.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-poetry-of-random-facts-about-ourselves</guid>
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<title>Help! Middle-aged teeth are chewing up the family budget</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?help-middle-aged-teeth-are-chewing-up-the-family-budget</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I try to live within my shrinking means, I really do. No more but-I-love-it purchases for me! Yet whenever I make a date with Lisa, my good intentions desert me. &quot;Do I really need this?&quot; cuts no ice with Lisa. Ditto &quot;I can get it cheaper down the street&quot; or &quot;I think I&#039;ll just wait for the sale.&quot; Lisa is my dentist, a woman of standards. I never guessed I would log so many hours in her chair.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?help-middle-aged-teeth-are-chewing-up-the-family-budget</guid>
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<title> When the president says, &amp;quot;I screwed up&amp;quot;</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?-when-the-president-says-i-screwed-up</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Just when I was getting used to the welcome but startling notion of a black president who invites his opponents and their kids to watch the Superbowl at the White House, Barack Obama surprised me again. He told NBC news, &quot;I think I screwed up.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?-when-the-president-says-i-screwed-up</guid>
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<title>Hold the Botox, but please don't deprive me of Photoshop!</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2009 06:32:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hold-the-botox-but-please-dont-deprive-me-of-photoshop</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;m about two weeks younger than Bruce Springsteen, whose leaping, limbo-ing performance at last night&#039;s Superbowl made me almost proud to be closing in on 60. My knees aren&#039;t up to such moves, but I have it on good authority that I too am a role model for almost-sexagenarians. Which prompts me to ask: can I be a role model and still have my portraits Photoshopped, as normal female vanity requires?]]></description>
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<title>Death of a muse</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 30 Jan 2009 07:18:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?death-of-a-muse</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I had never heard of Dina Vierny when I read that she had died in Paris, age 89. Yet I had often seen the splendour of her naked body, sculpted by Aristide Maillol, whose creative powers she awakened when he was 73 and she the 15-year-old schoolgirl he knew on sight to be his model of a lifetime.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?death-of-a-muse</guid>
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<title>Rona Maynard speaks on leadership at Celebrate Women in Sudbury</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2009 04:47:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-speaks-on-leadership-at-celebrate-women-in-sudbury</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Have you ever thought that inspirational leaders look nothing like you? That they never struggle with uncertainty, never admit to failure, never answer burning questions with &quot;I don&#039;t know&quot;? I used to buy the same tired leadership myths. In fact, I never thought of myself as a leader until I looked around and noticed that people were following. On March 26 I&#039;ll share the seven lessons of my leadership journey at Sudbury&#039;s annual Celebrate Women fundraiser.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-speaks-on-leadership-at-celebrate-women-in-sudbury</guid>
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<title>My tried-and-true ritual for falling asleep</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:45:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-triedandtrue-ritual-for-falling-asleep</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In the small cheerless hours of the morning, when there&#039;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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-triedandtrue-ritual-for-falling-asleep</guid>
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<title>Discovering my inner dancer</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 22 Jan 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?discovering-my-inner-dancer</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Once upon a time, when I played with paper dolls and wore Mary Janes, I wanted to be a ballerina. I thought I was the star of my Saturday morning ballet class, pirouetting with more enthusiasm than grace. I didn&#039;t know that my short waist, knock knees and crooked spine disqualified me from the tutu&#039;d elite. When I danced, I felt beautiful.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?discovering-my-inner-dancer</guid>
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<title>How did we get to be veterans?</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-did-we-get-to-be-veterans</link>
<description><![CDATA[ On October 18, 1979, when I was starting out at Flare magazine, I dictated the letter that gave a young journalist named Antonia Zerbisias her first magazine assignment. I had high hopes for Antonia, who&#039;d just sent us one of those rare pitch letters that have editors asking, &quot;Why has no one else discovered this writer and how fast can I connect her with my readers?&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-did-we-get-to-be-veterans</guid>
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<title>Rona Maynard speaks to ETFO about what she learned from difficult people</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-speaks-to-etfo-about-what-she-learned-from-difficult-people</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Have you ever wondered how certain people keep blowing your cool to smithereens? Where they get that seemingly infallible power to make you run for cover---or shoot your mouth off and kick yourself afterwards? Rona Maynard has been there. She let ego-bashers, nay-sayers and win-at-all-costs competitors stand between her and her goals. Then she learned to turn crazy-making conflicts into wellsprings of strength and inspiration.]]></description>
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<title>The job of cooking</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:34:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-job-of-cooking</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Ah, Sunday. Where did it go? Mostly, I cooked. I haven&#039;t cooked so much--we&#039;re talking both frequency and volume, great potfuls of garlicky fare--since I was young and poor. Now I&#039;m middle-aged, recession-battered and frugal. Out comes the slow cooker. What an apt name. Believe me, it&#039;s a project to cook this way.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-job-of-cooking</guid>
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<title>So what is this thing called the magic of friendship?</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 11 Jan 2009 04:17:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?so-what-is-this-thing-called-the-magic-of-friendship</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The hardest thing about writing is saying what you mean. Or is it finding just the right words to make your point? I waffle back and forth on this, and no wonder: wordcraft is all about meaning. If you haven&#039;t figured out what you mean, you&#039;re bound to cloak your woolly-mindedness in one of those vague, catch-all expressions that leave the burden of interpretation to the reader.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Irene McNeil</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:19:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?1622-irene-mcneil</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I lost my mother when I was 21; she was... Posted by deb paris. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?1622-irene-mcneil</guid>
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<title>The year of friends lost and found</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:25:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-year-of-friends-lost-and-found</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;m plenty old enough to know that my talent for predicting the future is roughly equivalent to my flair for Cirque du Soleil-style acrobatics. yet I persist in thinking of my life as a story I can shape--every year with a theme and a tidy resolution. I imagine myself as the author. Fact is, I&#039;m an uppity character with delusions of control.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-year-of-friends-lost-and-found</guid>
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<title>Kids in the office? Oh, please!</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:19:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?kids-in-the-office-oh-please</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Way back when I had a child at home and an overflowing in-tray at the office, there were times when some emergency or other left me no other choice but to bring my son to work. It was a tense business for us both, not to mention my colleagues. So I was amazed to hear about the new trend shaking up the workplace---kid-friendly offices where children check in every day.]]></description>
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<title>Dumbest euphemism yet for &amp;quot;fired&amp;quot;</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:03:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?dumbest-euphemism-yet-for-fired</link>
<description><![CDATA[ &quot;Terminated,&quot; &quot;downsized&quot; and &quot;packaged&quot; are bad enough. Now along comes---brace yourself---&quot;upgraded.&quot;]]></description>
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<title>Things I'm smart enough not to believe anymore</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:16:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?things-im-smart-enough-not-to-believe-anymore</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Everyone&#039;s got a mental museum where the discarded beliefs of a lifetime gather dust. Welcome to mine. Step right up! I&#039;m not embarrssed in the least.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?things-im-smart-enough-not-to-believe-anymore</guid>
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<title>A writer's guide to drunks</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-writers-guide-to-drunks</link>
<description><![CDATA[ If someone you love is an alcoholic, one question is never very far from your mind: &quot;Why is he doing this to me?&quot; Maybe your drunk is a she, but that&#039;s a detail. All of these stories are essentially the same, and one of them is mine. Which is why, especially around Christmas, I turn for insight to alcoholic writers---John Cheever and Raymond Carver---who have told the truth about their illness.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-writers-guide-to-drunks</guid>
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<title>I've never been fired. How quaint!</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 27 Dec 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?ive-never-been-fired-how-quaint</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Today it struck me that I&#039;m falling out of step with humankind. I&#039;ve never been downsized, let go, laid off, packaged, terminated or otherwise exiled from the ranks of the gainfully employed. I left every one of my jobs when the moment seemed right, not when someone else decided my time was up. How quaint.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?ive-never-been-fired-how-quaint</guid>
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<title>My thank-you note to a happy chorister</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 22 Dec 2008 05:50:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-thank-you-note-to-a-happy-chorister</link>
<description><![CDATA[ There must be 150 singers in the Mendelssohn Choir, whose splendid performance of Messiah I&#039;ve just seen. But I could still pick out the bobbing silver ponytail of my long-lost former workout buddy, Debbie Fleming, whose infectious joy became the highlight of my evening.]]></description>
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<title>Marrying into the family Christmas</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 21 Dec 2008 10:44:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?marrying-into-the-family-christmas-</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In the first tentative phase of couplehood, every day seemed a contest between my way with domestic matters and my husband&#039;s. On top of all the everyday conundrums, we now had to negotiate Christmas. I had always assumed there was one right way to orchestrate seasonal cheer---and where I came from, we didn&#039;t wear tissue-paper crowns at the Christmas table.]]></description>
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<title>Still on HRT after all these years of bad news</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 16 Dec 2008 07:13:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?still-on-hrt-after-all-these-years-of-bad-news</link>
<description><![CDATA[ If there was ever a time to feel like a chump for taking HRT to manage menopausal symptoms, that time is now. The latest study underscores the link between HRT and breast cancer, while news breaks of a drug company paying doctors to affix their names to articles endorsing the controversial therapy. Yet I won&#039;t be quitting anytime soon. Here&#039;s why.]]></description>
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<title>Women who miss their mothers</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?women-who-miss-their-mothers</link>
<description><![CDATA[ For all of us with empty places at our Christmas table, this is the season of missing. I&#039;ve been thinking lately about those of you who&#039;ve lost someone (especially your mother) because it&#039;s clear from my daily Google statistics that grief brings many people to this site. Here, a found poem from the searches of women missing their mothers.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?women-who-miss-their-mothers</guid>
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<title>What I learned from my first Christmas gift to my sister</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-i-learned-from-my-first-christmas-gift-to-my-sister</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I wasn&#039;t ticking her name off a list, expressing my knowledge of red-carpet trends or flaunting my generosity with that famous little blue box. I was just an eight-year-old with saved-up allowance in the palm of my mitten. And what I chose to buy was as fine a gift as any I have given.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-i-learned-from-my-first-christmas-gift-to-my-sister</guid>
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<title>Mood control for the frazzled and fed-up</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?mood-control-for-the-frazzled-and-fedup</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;m not sure why I feel so optimistic these days. It&#039;s not as if the audacity of hope has yet crossed the border to Canada&#039;s capital. Here we&#039;re stuck with the audacity of arrogance and deceit, which is the price of electing the schoolyard bully for Prime Minister. Meanwhile winter&#039;s digging in and the economic news keeps getting worse. The one thing I can control is my mood.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?mood-control-for-the-frazzled-and-fedup</guid>
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<title>Hey, readers! Buy a book now! Publishers and writers need you!</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:51:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hey-readers-buy-a-book-now-publishers-and-writers-need-you</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Have you heard about the big New York publisher that put a freeze on acquiring books? No, this isn&#039;t the latest joke from the sultans of satire at The Onion. It really happened this week at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt as staff at other houses lost their jobs in droves.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hey-readers-buy-a-book-now-publishers-and-writers-need-you</guid>
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<title>A brief conversation that changed my life</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:58:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-brief-conversation-that-changed-my-life</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The best part of being a journalist is interviewing people who have led extraordinary lives. I look back on some of them as mentors. For instance, the vital and exuberant woman who pursued her dream despite ovarian cancer---and whose victory gave me hope as I struggled with depression, the life-threatening cancer of the soul. 

]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-brief-conversation-that-changed-my-life</guid>
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<title>My favourite gift to a friend is a standout letter of recommendation</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:15:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-favourite-gift-to-a-friend-is-a-standout-letter-of-recommendation</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I don&#039;t drive friends to the airport, bring them treats from my kitchen or even remember their birthdays but I have my own way of honouring their presence in my life. I write standout letters of recommendation. Here&#039;s how I do it.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-favourite-gift-to-a-friend-is-a-standout-letter-of-recommendation</guid>
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<title>Whoever stole my iPod stole the soundtrack of my life</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?whoever-stole-my-ipod-stole-the-soundtrack-of-my-life</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Although I&#039;ve never Twittered or even texted and am rapidly acquiring the knees of a nonagerian, I share a bond with kids who have yet to take a legal drink. Some lowlife has stolen my iPod.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?whoever-stole-my-ipod-stole-the-soundtrack-of-my-life</guid>
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<title>Rona Maynard talks about mothers and daughters at AOL Canada</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:44:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-talks-about-mothers-and-daughters-at-aol-canada</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I once saw an ad for a designer handbag that, aside from all its other irresistibly of-the-moment features, was &quot;big enough for everything except your issues with your mother.&quot; We modern women still have enough of those to fill an old-fashioned steamer trunk. Writer Sarah Treleaven unpacks the maternal trunk with me in an interview for her &quot;How to Be Happy&quot; series.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-talks-about-mothers-and-daughters-at-aol-canada</guid>
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<title>Cyclists vs drivers: a war on the streets of my city</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:36:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?cyclists-vs-drivers-a-war-on-the-streets-of-my-city</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Lately I&#039;ve been thinking of a man who&#039;s lying in a hospital bed, incoherent and minus a leg. It&#039;s been almost a week now since he was maimed in a stand-off with a taxi driver, and he&#039;s still in no condition to tell police exactly what happened late last Friday night on a picturesque downtown corner flanked on one side by a cafe and on the other by a former bread factory, recently converted into lofts.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?cyclists-vs-drivers-a-war-on-the-streets-of-my-city</guid>
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<title>Home alone and loving it</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 18 Nov 2008 06:24:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?home-alone-and-loving-it</link>
<description><![CDATA[ After close to 40 years with the man I love, there are times when the sweetest thing he can tell me is, &quot;I&#039;m going out of town on business for a couple of days.&quot; ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?home-alone-and-loving-it</guid>
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<title>How I learned to love my son's teen years</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:06:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-i-learned-to-love-my-sons-teen-years</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I feared that my son&#039;s adolescence would reduce me to screaming, fist-shaking fury. I had no idea that the dread teen years would be my best years as a mother.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-i-learned-to-love-my-sons-teen-years</guid>
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<title>Bamboozled by a fake blogger</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?bamboozled-by-a-fake-blogger</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The more I learn about Sarah Palin, the less I trust her. But I&#039;m not here to tell you why I&#039;ve hardened my heart. I&#039;m actually rushing to Sarah&#039;s defense. Remember that dishy story about her thinking Africa is a country? Turns out it&#039;s a fiction planted on the blogosphere by a fake policy wonk named Martin Eisenstadt.]]></description>
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<title>A boy and his Xbox: the death of Brandon Crisp</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:42:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-boy-and-his-xbox-the-death-of-brandon-crisp</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Sometimes I look back on my son&#039;s teenage years and wonder how we ever got through. It&#039;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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-boy-and-his-xbox-the-death-of-brandon-crisp</guid>
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<title>I wish I'd been with Dylan on election night</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 09 Nov 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?i-wish-id-been-with-dylan-on-election-night</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I could have sworn the place to be on the momentous night of November 4, 2008 was Grant Park in Chicago. But I&#039;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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?i-wish-id-been-with-dylan-on-election-night</guid>
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<title>Three small good things I did this week</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 08 Nov 2008 10:55:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?three-small-good-things-i-did-this-week</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Should&#039;ve, could&#039;ve, would&#039;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&#039;t bother to do because they seemed so inconsequential. And sometimes it&#039;s the little things that people remember.]]></description>
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<title>Obama's win is my win too---and the country's</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:54:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?obamas-win-is-my-win-tooand-the-countrys</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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&#039;d see in my lifetime: a black President-elect, Barack Obama, addressing an exultant crowd where friends wept in each other&#039;s arms and exhausted but awe-struck children sat on their parents&#039; 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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?obamas-win-is-my-win-tooand-the-countrys</guid>
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<title>Lucky me! A second grandchild in April!</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 03 Nov 2008 05:42:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?lucky-me-a-second-grandchild-in-april</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Although Hallmark doesn&#039;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. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?lucky-me-a-second-grandchild-in-april</guid>
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<title>My Mother - Sheila Mary Wenn Mitchell</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 03 Nov 2008 05:18:48 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?1205-sheila-mary-wenn-mitchell</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When my mother took her last breath, my sister was... Posted by Carol Harrison. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?1205-sheila-mary-wenn-mitchell</guid>
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<title>When Elizabeth Edwards took off her ring</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:51:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-elizabeth-edwards-took-off-her-ring</link>
<description><![CDATA[ With the Washington rumour machine in pre-election overdrive, we&#039;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&#039;s $150,000 campaign wardrobe. I will never forget the Edwardses, though.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-elizabeth-edwards-took-off-her-ring</guid>
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<title>When the marital mattress gets heaved down the stairs</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-the-marital-mattress-gets-heaved-down-the-stairs</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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&#039;t have anywhere near the impact that a good story does. That&#039;s why I&#039;m sharing a story from the Globe and Mail&#039;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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-the-marital-mattress-gets-heaved-down-the-stairs</guid>
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<title>Hunting and gathering for dinner at St. Lawrence Market</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hunting-and-gathering-for-dinner-at-st-lawrence-market</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Around 9 o&#039;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.]]></description>
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<title>One more precious year of my 50s</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2008 06:18:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?one-more-precious-year-of-my-50s</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I can&#039;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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?one-more-precious-year-of-my-50s</guid>
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<title>Insights found while reading</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?insights-found-while-reading</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Every life is a story, which is why I&#039;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, &quot;Yes, that&#039;s it!&quot; Here, a few discoveries from the books on my bedside table.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?insights-found-while-reading</guid>
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<title>Hear Rona Maynard's speech at Canadian Psychiatric Foundation dinner on November 25</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:17:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hear-rona-maynards-speech-at-canadian-psychiatric-foundation-dinner-on-november-25</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;s been more than 20 years since I gathered the courage to pick up the phone, dial a mental health clinic and say, in a rush, &quot;I need help. How soon can I come in?&quot; I had living with depression, on and off, ever since I could remember. Yet the subject seemed too shameful to talk about. So I&#039;m honoured and delighted to be speaking at the Canadian Psychiatric Foundation&#039;s Silver Dinner on November 25 at the Four Seasons in Toronto.]]></description>
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<title>Revealed! The first day of my 60th year</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:59:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?revealed-the-first-day-of-my-60th-year</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Scene: my den, yesterday morning, somewhere between breakfast time and flossing time. I&#039;m not exactly sure because I can&#039;t find my watch. But I could find the computer blindfolded because it&#039;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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?revealed-the-first-day-of-my-60th-year</guid>
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<title>Could you run a business with your daughter? Rona Maynard explores the risks and rewards</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2008 05:39:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?could-you-run-a-business-with-your-daughter-rona-maynard-explores-the-risks-and-rewards</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Let&#039;s say you&#039;re a woman with a thriving business---or an entrepreneurial dream you&#039;re determind to pursue. You&#039;re also the mother of a daughter with skills to share and a career to build. Can you bring her on board and still like each other in the end? More, Canada&#039;s magazine for women over 40, asked me to find out.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?could-you-run-a-business-with-your-daughter-rona-maynard-explores-the-risks-and-rewards</guid>
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<title>Forgiving your parents: real-life wisdom from Steve Martin</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?forgiving-your-parents-reallife-wisdom-from-steve-martin</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I thought Steve Martin&#039;s memoir, Born Standing Up: A Comic&#039;s Life, was going to made me laugh. Instead this startlingly wise and nuanced book made me think in a whole new way about what it takes to embrace the future as your best and boldest self without leaving a painful past behind.]]></description>
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<title>The rocks-and-holes theory of marital happiness</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2008 06:31:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-rocksandholes-theory-of-marital-happiness</link>
<description><![CDATA[ After nearly 38 years with the man I married, I must know at least a smidgen about what it takes to stay together. But when my son and his longtime fiancee finally tied the knot, I didn&#039;t want to overload the newlyweds with sage advice. Which life-changing insight to share? My mother&#039;s, of course.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-rocksandholes-theory-of-marital-happiness</guid>
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<title>Marriage is a lifelong adventure</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2008 06:08:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?marriage-is-a-lifelong-adventure</link>
<description><![CDATA[ There are all kinds of ways to push the boundaries of experience. You can hike mountain trails in grizzly country. You can swim with dolphins. Meditate on your inner energy. These are quick routes to a whole new perspective. But let&#039;s talk about the long route, where how-did-I-get-into-this fears and over-my-dead-body standoffs deter all but the truly committed. It&#039;s called marriage and it&#039;s a lifelong adventure in the unexpected.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?marriage-is-a-lifelong-adventure</guid>
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<title>When adult children move home: do you have a story to share?</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:12:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-adult-children-move-home-do-you-have-a-story-to-share</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When our son moved back home in his mid-20s, we all thought he&#039;d stay for a couple of months until he planned his next step into the adult world. Turned out we had him with us for a couple of years. And by the time he finally moved out (into a house we helped him buy), things had grown a bit tense between us and our beloved only child.]]></description>
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<title>Home at last! The joy of breakfast at my own table</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?home-at-last-the-joy-of-breakfast-at-my-own-table-</link>
<description><![CDATA[ At Harrington House, which has just served as our base for hiking in the Cotswolds, the exposed beams date back to Tudor times and breakfast features an array of choices, all as British as Buckingham palace: bacon, kippers, blood pudding, fried tomatoes and eggs cooked any way you choose. I felt like Christopher Robin when my poached egg arrived, nestled in a circle cut from the surrounding slice of pale whole-grain bread. But breakfast is a highly personal affair, and I missed the familiar pour-and-stir meal that kickstarts my day at home. ]]></description>
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<title>Don't call me &amp;quot;sweetie;&amp;quot; my name is Rona</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:09:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?dont-call-me-sweetie-my-name-is-rona</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Feel free to call me Rona, although Ms. Maynard does nicely if you&#039;re the formal type. I don&#039;t encourage Ro, much as I appreciate the good intentions signaled by a nickname. What you must ever even think of calling me, unless we&#039;re on intimate terms, is &quot;sweetie&quot; or &quot;dear.&quot; And there&#039;s no excuse whatsoever for the dread &quot;young lady.&quot; I have a perfectly serviceable name and I expect you to use it. Especially if you end up serving gluey mashed potatoes in the old age home where I, in my bathrobe, am presumed to be addled just because I&#039;m a little shaky on my feet.]]></description>
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<title>Question of the day: how can I reconcile with my sister?</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?question-of-the-day-how-can-i-reconcile-with-my-sister</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I read your story about making amends with your sister, I recognized my sister and me. We drive each other crazy and haven&#039;t spoken for years. I&#039;d like to make amends but I doubt if my sister wants to hear from me. I so envy women whose sisters are their best friends! What&#039;s your advice?]]></description>
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<title>My first complicated valentine to my sister Joyce</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-first-complicated-valentine-to-my-sister-joyce</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Thirty years before my sister and I told our widely read story of rivalry and love in More magazine, she inspired my very first feature article. I was 28, she was 24, two young women taking their first steps toward a truce in their lifelong conflict.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-first-complicated-valentine-to-my-sister-joyce</guid>
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<title>When my best friend died</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-my-best-friend-died</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You don&#039;t just make friends; you keep them, one guess-what phone call or soul-baring confidence at a time. But the reality is that you can&#039;t keep a friend forever. One of you will die and the other will mourn. And the odds are that no one will send a condolence card. In the hierarchy of loss, friends are thought to rank last, even though a friend&#039;s death changes a woman forever.]]></description>
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<title>Fat chance! Why I'm not giving up bacon</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?fat-chance-why-im-not-giving-up-bacon</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Every time I fill my kitchen with the racy aroma of sizzling Berkshire bacon, so generously marbled that my rashers crisp in a splattering pool of golden fat, I think wistfully to myself, &quot;Will no one ever tell me that this wonderful stuff is good for me?&quot; At last someone has risen to the challenge: Jennifer McLagan, the pleasure-loving author of Fat: an Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes.]]></description>
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<title>Dazzled by a night of shooting stars</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?dazzled-by-a-night-of-shooting-stars</link>
<description><![CDATA[ By the time you read this, my husband and I will be in London, which as far as we&#039;re concerned is the world&#039;s most glorious city. We&#039;ll have a mental checklist of favourite places to revisit, and far too many ideas for other places we haven&#039;t yet seen. But if there&#039;s anything we&#039;ve learned in our travels so far, it&#039;s that the best vacation moments can&#039;t be scripted. They take you by surprise, and then they take your breath away. For instance, the once-in-a-lifetime Leonid meteor shower of 2002.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Lois Shilts</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:09:33 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?934-lois-shilts</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Reading all the stories from other women that have lost... Posted by Karen Waitek. ]]></description>
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<title>My 10 favourite vacation discoveries</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:59:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-10-favourite-vacation-discoveries</link>
<description><![CDATA[ These special spots aren&#039;t the ones I dreamed of visiting for years. Some I checked out in an idle moment, just because they happened to be there. Others tend to be upstaged by more celebrated sights down the road. What they all have in common is that I can&#039;t think of them without smiling. ]]></description>
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<title>While I'm on vacation...</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?while-im-on-vacation</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I wouldn&#039;t dream of traveling with my computer anymore. A few years ago, while my husband was heaving all our overstuffed bags onto a bus at the San Francisco airport, leaving me with only a computer to carry, somehow abandoned the thing at the curb and spent the next several hours madly trying to find it while my husband grimly soldiered on with the rental car people. Oh, by the way it was his computer. So on the vacation that starts today, I won&#039;t be blogging on any park benches. But Letters from Rona will continue to appear because I&#039;ve stocked the virtual larder.]]></description>
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<title>Dress of a lifetime</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?dress-of-a-lifetime</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My son, who will be married this month (date and country to be arranged) has just phoned with a bulletin: &quot;Today we bought the dress.&quot; He&#039;s never been one to talk about fashion but he seemed most keen to talk about this.]]></description>
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<title>The plus side of Palinania</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:08:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-plus-side-of-palinania</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I could have sworn my last mental gasket had been blown by Palinania. I was baffled, weary and plain fed up thanks to all of the following: John McCain for selecting such a stunningly unqualified running mate; our gal Sarah herself for being so damn charismatic and ...well, likeable despite her alarming stance on every one of the issues; frantic liberal commentators for writing her off as &quot;an Alaska hillbilly&quot; instead of giving any thoughts to the roots of her appeal; conservative cheerleaders for shrugging off evidence that the sworn foe of corruption and cronyism is breaking her own rules back home in Alaska; and myself for devouring the whole shamefully addictive drama like too-sweet chocolates with gooey centres.]]></description>
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<title>Hear Rona Maynard's latest interview at thecommentary.ca</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 16 Sep 2008 02:57:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hear-rona-maynards-latest-interview-at-thecommentaryca</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Joseph Planta, a Vancouver journalist who likes nothing better than a frank conversationa about arts and ideas, first crossed my path last fall when he interviewed me during my book tour for My Mother&#039;s Daughter. Today Joe and I got together again at thecommentary.ca, his online talkfest, and the conversation ranged from the meaning of Palinania to the life lessons of writing a memoir. You can listen to the interview here.]]></description>
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<title>My detail deficit</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2008 05:58:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-detail-deficit</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Once upon a time I had a supremely organized assistant who kept my calendar in order. When she was in charge of my life&#039;s little details, I never showed up on Tuesday for meetings to take place on Thursday (or vice versa).]]></description>
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<title>A life history of my goals</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-life-history-of-my-goals</link>
<description><![CDATA[ As far as my parents were concerned, I had come to the University of Toronto to study. In fact my goal was to experience teen sex--and with it what seemed to me the full glory of the 60s--while I still could. In October I would turn 19. That gave me a year to raise my small facsmile of hell.]]></description>
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<title>So when is the wedding?</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 08 Sep 2008 03:14:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?so-when-is-the-wedding</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I have a friend who never fails to ask, when we meet for dinner and a long heart-to-heart, &quot;So how&#039;s Ben doing? Any wedding plans yet?&quot;]]></description>
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<title>Career advice for young women, then and now</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?career-advice-for-young-women-then-and-now</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Once upon a time I wrote the career column for Miss Chatelaine magazine, where I had landed my first job. Miss Chatelaine could not afford a real career expert, any more than I could afford a navy suit on what they paid me. My advice came mostly from how-to books but wrapped in spunky, no-stopping-you prose, it made for a convincing read. Now Hannah Seligson, born in 1982, has written a career guide for the Girl Power generation. And to judge from her advice, not a whole lot has changed since my day.]]></description>
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<title>Dear Governor Palin</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 02 Sep 2008 07:07:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?dear-governor-palin</link>
<description><![CDATA[ As a Hillary supporter, I&#039;m supposed to identify with you. To let you carry the banner of female power and purpose into the next election, despite the fact that when it comes to the issues, you and I agree on absolutely nothing. But we do share one very personal bond. You see, I&#039;m a grandmother. Like you and Bristol, I was caught off guard by an accidental pregnancy. But to everyone&#039;s continuing relief, my grandson&#039;s parents never married.]]></description>
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<title>Invasion of the subway evangelists</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?invasion-of-the-subway-evangelists</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The cool look for an urban male, this summer that&#039;s just about over, is reportedly plaid shorts, a white T-shirt and flip flops. Tell that to the smiling band of brothers who have lately appeared on Toronto&#039;s east-west subway line dressed for school photos of days gone by--pressed gray pants, crisp white shirts, jackets and ties. You&#039;ll never catch them zoning out like the rest of us blank-eyed commuters. They&#039;re much too busy chatting up strangers, and the other day one of them had the cheek to pick me.]]></description>
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<title>The presidential woman: does she really have the public's support?</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:32:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-presidential-woman-does-she-really-have-the-publics-support</link>
<description><![CDATA[ By now it&#039;s widely agreed that Hillary Clinton blew her history-making campaign for President. She did not lose because she was female. And yet it was the inconvenient fact of her gender that pushed her supporters to downplay her empathetic side and come on like an aggressive, armoured warrior queen. Now John McCain has stunned his party by picking first-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Just how big are those famous 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling?]]></description>
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<title>From the sword swallower to the Jersey Boys</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:23:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?from-the-sword-swallower-to-the-jersey-boys</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The Space Cowboy, a tattooed trickster from Australia, wowed my jaded grandson at Buskerfest, Toronto&#039;s annual celebration of street theatre. Then it was time for grownup entertainment: the Toronto premiere of Jersey Boys, which celebrates the triumphantly hummable hits of the Four Seasons while telling a human story about being undone by one&#039;s own hard-won dream and finding the grace to go on. If this show doesn&#039;t pull in the crowds, I&#039;ll swallow a double-edged sword.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother's Daughter arrives in paperback</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-mothers-daughter-arrives-in-paperback</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Let&#039;s hear it for paperbacks! They&#039;re small enough to slip into your purse and light enough not to stress your shoulder. You can read them on planes, on elliptical machines and while trying to stay balanced on a lurching subway car at rush hour. Plus, they&#039;re affordably priced for book clubs and gift lists. So if you&#039;ve been waiting for the paperback edition of My Mother&#039;s Daughter, here&#039;s some good news: today is the day.]]></description>
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<title>My life as a fan: 44 years with Bob Dylan</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:47:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-life-as-a-fan-44-years-with-bob-dylan</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I was 14, with a brand-new $35 guitar and my own frizzy take on Joan Baez&#039;s flowing hair, I sent a buck to the Columbia Record Club and acquired a whole clutch of LPs for my folk collection: Peter, Paul and Mary (too slick), the New Christy Minstrels (too hokey), Harry Belafonte (my grandmother&#039;s heartthrob) and a minstrel poet who won my heart with his image on the cover of The Freewheelin&#039; Bob Dylan.]]></description>
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<title>Ace, righteous and hip to the tip</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:23:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?ace-righteous-and-hip-to-the-tip</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The Hamilton bus terminal, where I killed time yesterday while waiting for a friend to sweep me away to the Bob Dylan concert, is not my idea of a woman-friendly hangout. But I&#039;d brought a good book to distract me and create a Dylanish mood: Straight from the Fridge, Dad: a Dictionary of Hipster Slang.]]></description>
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<title>Feisty old dames</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:32:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?feisty-old-dames</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Okay, I accept it. I&#039;m going to grow old. Either that or die too soon, a prospect so flat-out unacceptable that I&#039;m practically ready to shout, &quot;Bring on the signs of cronehood! The memory lapses, the wattles, the chin hairs and saggy bits! And while you&#039;re at it, bring me a mighty cane that I can bang with authority and vigour when young pups displease me.&quot;]]></description>
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<title>When a friend dies: Rona Maynard writes for More about the invisible passage</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:48:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-a-friend-dies-rona-maynard-writes-for-more-about-the-invisible-passage</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When my best friend died of cancer this past winter, I was so unstrung by grief that one day I phoned her old number at the office, longing for the sound of her voice. Had I lost my mind? It seemed that way because I&#039;d lost my personal historian, who cared enough to remember small details of my life that even I had forgotten long ago. And yet because she wasn&#039;t family, my bereavement went unnoticed by the rest of the world. &quot;Losing Val,&quot; in the September issue of More, is my account of this life-changing, never-ending passage that every woman must face, sooner or later.]]></description>
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<title>A year in the life of ronamaynard.com</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-year-in-the-life-of-ronamaynardcom</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;m breaking out the virtual champagne today. It&#039;s been exactly one year since I launched ronamaynard.com, and connecting with you online has been even more rewarding than I could have guessed. In case you&#039;re new to this community, I&#039;ve rounded up a few of my favourite posts. If you&#039;re an old friend, I&#039;d love to know if yours is among them. Either way, thank you for coming. Without the inspiration you&#039;ve provided in your comments and e-mail messages, this wouldn&#039;t be my online home.]]></description>
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<title>Free at last from the insomniac's little helper</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:49:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?free-at-last-from-the-insomniacs-little-helper</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When it comes to sleep, I have long been a woman of firm convictions: I need eight hours, I can scrape by on six and if I don&#039;t get my share I&#039;ll be an addled, nauseated wraith with an obliterating headache. I was so fixated on sleep that I ended up with a nightly pill habit, which I&#039;ve just beaten while following a strict and unwelcome set of rules that really work.]]></description>
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<title>Spa treatment du jour: sleep therapy</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?spa-treatment-du-jour-sleep-therapy</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I set out to break my sleeping pill habit, I schlepped by subway and bus to your basic red brick medical building. Alongside a mom with a stroller and an elderly gent in a wheelchair, I rode the elevator to the Toronto Sleep Clinic, where the walls are beige and the furniture best described as functional. It didn&#039;t even cross my mind that I could have embarked on this adventure in style, at one of those high-end spas where you&#039;re escorted to your treatment in the softest of robes as New Age music wafts in the fragrant air.]]></description>
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<title>Unloved, unlovely, unwanted by thieves</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?unloved-unlovely-unwanted-by-thieves</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It was one of those unloved, unlovely things you can pass every day without noticing what it is you&#039;ve seen. A man&#039;s bike, sheathed in duct tape and many layers of thick black paint, with a matted plush tiger tail dangling from each handlebar. The mismatched reflectors on its wheels suggested a joyriding kid, but the ungainly proportions of the whole apparatus had an air of desperation, of cast-off parts cobbled together into a Frankenbike.]]></description>
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<title>Rona Maynard writes for Best Health about sustaining passion in marriage</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:04:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-writes-for-best-health-about-sustaining-passion-in-marriage</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It happens to even the best matched couple. You look at your beloved and loving spouse in his underwear and think to yourself, &quot;He&#039;s a terrific guy but it&#039;s been a long time since I had the hots for him.&quot; I went looking for advice that makes sense (endorsed by experts but tested by real-life skeptics like you and me). You can read what I learned in the September issue of Best Health. The secret: dating your spouse.]]></description>
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<title>The John Edwards imbroglio: please hold the sanctimony!</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2008 06:06:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-john-edwards-imbroglio-please-hold-the-sanctimony</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Ever since John Edwards finally admitted his long-suspected affair, moralists have been denouncing the former presidential candidate as the worst sort of scumbag. Yet the truth is that all married people fail their spouse sooner or later--at times grievously. At least most of us can confront our marital problems behind closed doors. Political couples have to do it while the cameras roll. ]]></description>
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<title>Peach picking: a sentimental journey</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?peach-picking-a-sentimental-journey</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Next Saturday morning, instead of working out with a butt-kicking trainer who is mercifully away on vacation, we&#039;ll be heading down the highway to a place of legend: the southern Ontario fruit farm where my husband briefly lived in his teens. This time of year, he used to stand under a likely-looking peach tree, extend his arm into the branches and let a perfectly sun-ripened peach drop into his waiting palm. Because I haven&#039;t been blessed with this experience, I don&#039;t know the glory of a peach--or so he has always maintained.]]></description>
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<title>A word of comfort in the night from M.F.K. Fisher</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 10 Aug 2008 10:45:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-word-of-comfort-in-the-night-from-mfk-fisher</link>
<description><![CDATA[ On doctor&#039;s orders, I now get up and read in the middle of the night when I can&#039;t sleep, although my natural inclination is to thrash grimly in bed. I&#039;ve found that the best books to read in the pre-dawn hours are the ones you can dip in and out of with no need to follow a plot--like the elegant, opinionated essays that comprise M.F.K. Fisher&#039;s Last House, in which I found a wonderful contrarian view of insomnia.]]></description>
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<title>Who knew? Paris Hilton is funny!</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:18:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?who-knew-paris-hilton-is-funny</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I thought Paris Hilton was a sleek and shiny bimbo with no social graces until I discovered her tart satirical side in her video rebuttal of a John McCain ad. ]]></description>
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<title>A double standard in the bedroom</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:09:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-double-standard-in-the-bedroom</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The world does not look kindly on a woman who swaggers from bed to bed as men have always done. But to my mind, the real inequality is that a naked woman can&#039;t display her cellulite in post-coital splendour the way a naked man displays his gut.]]></description>
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<title>A writer's greatest reward</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:40:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-writers-greatest-reward</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The world positively teems with terrific writing, not only on bookstore shelves but online, where eclectic prose and thought are available free to all comers. For readers this is a wonderful thing. For writers it&#039;s profoundly humbling to know that people who love to read have more than enough options already to occupy their minds and hearts for a great many lifetimes. ]]></description>
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<title>My son, myself</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:07:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-son-myself</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;d been hoping for a daughter who would play with dolls as I used to do. Instead I had a son with a passion for trucks (the noisier, the better). It was not what I expected, but I&#039;ve learned to like surprises.]]></description>
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<title>Nowhere I have to be, nothing I have to do: bliss!</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:59:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?nowhere-i-have-to-be-nothing-i-have-to-do-bliss</link>
<description><![CDATA[ This holiday Monday, I have our loft to myself, with sunlight streaming from end to end of the place and none of the usual Monday sound track (rumbling buses, boisterous pedestrians) from the street outside. A year or even a week from now, I won&#039;t remember the sweet languor of this moment in my life unless I capture it now. ]]></description>
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<title>There's no such thing as a boring life</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?theres-no-such-thing-as-a-boring-life</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Women learn early to bite their tongues and let other people have the floor. We&#039;re so well trained in solicitude that we often need permission to speak. That&#039;s what my friend Elaine provides every summer at a raucous dinner party in our garden. She always asks us, one by one, to tell the group how our lives have changed since last year. The resulting stories prove that there&#039;s no such thing as a life without drama.]]></description>
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<title>The last sentence: 10 of the best</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:43:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-last-sentence-10-of-the-best</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I first learned to read, I liked to flip ahead to the very last line to savour the secret of the ending. I knew this was not the approved way to read, which made it all the more seductive. I was supposed to be patient and let the author surprise me, but my notion of a surprise had nothing to do with what happened at the end, or did not. It was all about the story&#039;s destiny. A good closing sentence is the pinnacle toward which the story has been climbing.]]></description>
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<title>Want to be my bridesmaid? Lose those wrinkles first!</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:12:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?want-to-be-my-bridesmaid-lose-those-wrinkles-first</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Weddings were created to celebrate married love. In the age of Botox and liposuction, they&#039;re becoming celebrations of physical perfection. No wrinkles, yellowed teeth or flat chests allowed.]]></description>
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<title>If looks could thrill</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:23:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?if-looks-could-thrill</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My new beauty role model is well into her 60s, and neither lifted nor Botoxed. She has given up stilettos, sheath dresses, eyeliner and a husband. When I&#039;m having a bad face day, she reminds me what beauty really is: the artless confidence that comes with letting go of whatever constricts a woman&#039;s best self.]]></description>
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<title>What she did for sex: a loose girl tells the truth</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-she-did-for-sex-a-loose-girl-tells-the-truth</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve read enough hand-wringing news reports about pre-teen girls giving blow jobs and dressing like hookers. The usual suspects (academics and therapists) keep telling me the same old story. I wanted to hear from a real expert: a young woman who has lived it and has the guts to tell the truth. Now along comes Kerry Cohen, author of the brave and eye-opening Loose Girl: a Memoir of Promiscuity.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-she-did-for-sex-a-loose-girl-tells-the-truth</guid>
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<title>My new rented office: a progress report</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:53:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-new-rented-office-a-progress-report</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The beauty of working at home, according to the popular notion, has something to do with the dress code: you can get down to business in your bathrobe (or nothing at all). The downside, I&#039;ve learned the hard way, is that it&#039;s just too easy to find yourself working all the time. That&#039;s why I now go out every morning to a funky rented office around the corner.]]></description>
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<title>If someone in your life has bipolar disorder, check this out now!</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:40:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?if-someone-in-your-life-has-bipolar-disorder-check-this-out-now</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Here&#039;s another sign that the media are at last portraying the mentally ill as fully rounded people you might know and love. On the New York Times web site, you can watch men and women with bipolar disorder speak frankly and powerfully about their incurable but treatable condition. And they&#039;re using their real names, too.]]></description>
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<title>My sister and me: the next chapter</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:13:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-sister-and-me-the-next-chapter</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Last fall my sister Joyce and I shared the truth of our tangled, sometimes crazy-making, never less than loving relationship in MORE magazine. Heartfelt comments have been coming our way ever since. If you missed our essays, here&#039;s where to find them online, plus the next chapter of the story.]]></description>
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<title>Meet Rona Maynard at Read for the Cure on October 15</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:36:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?meet-rona-maynard-at-read-for-the-cure-on-october-15</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve always enjoyed connecting face-to-face with readers, and my next gig promises to be the most rewarding yet. I&#039;ll be joining Giller Prize winners Vincent Lam and David Adams Richards when Read for the Cure comes to Oakville on October 15.]]></description>
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<title>Where will we go when we're not flying or driving?</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?where-will-we-go-when-were-not-flying-or-driving</link>
<description><![CDATA[ July used to be vacation time, when my city cleared out and I felt like the queen of the sidewalk. Now swarming crowds tell me people are staying home in the new era of soaring gas prices and stripped-down flight schedules. Perhaps that&#039;s not such a bad thing. Traveling less will challenge us all to seek other kinds of adventures, creatively, socially and intellectually. ]]></description>
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<title>Learning to sleep</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?learning-to-sleep</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I never guessed I&#039;d become dependent on sleeping pills, but night after night of tossing and turning made a desperate woman of me. Now it&#039;s time to start getting through the night without the insomniac&#039;s little helper. So I&#039;ve just started a course of sleep behaviour therapy.]]></description>
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<title>Speak up if you support the Governor General</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:02:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?speak-up-if-you-support-the-governor-general</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Canada&#039;s Governor General, Michaelle Jean, has always struck me as a woman of vision and courage, the kind of pathfinder you&#039;d want your daughter to become. Her quiet resolve was in the spotlight when she presented Dr. Henry Morgentaler with the Order of Canada. Now she&#039;s facing a tidal wave of anger from pro-lifers while polls show most Canadians are on her side. I&#039;ve been silent until now myself. But that&#039;s going to change right now. It&#039;s time she heard from the rest of us.]]></description>
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<title>A sad, solemn, necessary thing</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:22:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-sad-solemn-necessary-thing</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When Dr. Henry Morgentaler received the Order of Canada for his unstinting, often life-threatening efforts to make abortion safe, legal and accessible, I thought he deserved the honour. Yet I couldn&#039;t rejoice; it would have felt like clapping at a funeral. I had no words to frame my conflicted thoughts until I watched a brave, remorseless movie about illegal abortion in Romania&#039;s darkest days.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-sad-solemn-necessary-thing</guid>
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<title>In search of the perfect dress</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:51:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?in-search-of-the-perfect-dress</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Once I owned my idea of the perfect summer dress. It brought out my freewheeling side, and I wore it until it fell apart. When I spotted an identical dress on a young sales clerk, I wanted to rip it off her in a moment of extreme fashion lust.]]></description>
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<title>The Hillary I'll be watching</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:35:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-hillary-ill-be-watching</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton, and yet she disappointed me. Her rigid demeanour told me that in the 21st century, a woman of intelligence and fire is still not free to be herself. There must have been moments when she asked herself, &quot;What if the worst happens?&quot; Now she knows, and it must be a relief. As a woman roughly her age, I can&#039;t wait to see where she goes from here.]]></description>
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<title>Mental illness and the media: they can't look away anymore</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?mental-illness-and-the-media-they-cant-look-away-anymore</link>
<description><![CDATA[ There isn&#039;t any annual drive to wear a ribbon to fight mental illness. Corporate sponsors aren&#039;t flocking to bankroll fun runs for this largely invisible cause, even though one in seven of us will suffer from a mental illness at some point. But let&#039;s remember that no so long ago, breast cancer was also a shameful secret that touched every family. Then the press took notice. And now, at long last, mental illness is attracting the coverage it deserves.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?mental-illness-and-the-media-they-cant-look-away-anymore</guid>
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<title>A lesson in courage from Martha Graham</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:06:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-lesson-in-courage-from-martha-graham</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-lesson-in-courage-from-martha-graham</guid>
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<title>Portrait of the artist as a young woman blown off course</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-woman-blown-off-course</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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.]]></description>
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<title>A smile between strangers</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 18 Jun 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-smile-between-strangers</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;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&#039;d been watching me go by every day. I was always smiling, he said. And he just had to thank me.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-smile-between-strangers</guid>
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<title>A reunion in my online neighbourhood</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 14 Jun 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-reunion-in-my-online-neighbourhood</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When a stranger Googled &quot;mother daughter,&quot; she rekindled a cherished old connection right here in the mother/daughter gallery at ronamaynard.com. ]]></description>
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<title>What have you accomplished in your life?</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-have-you-accomplished-in-your-life</link>
<description><![CDATA[ One way or another, I&#039;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.]]></description>
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<title>Missing Sheela</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 09 Jun 2008 02:29:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?missing-sheela</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Instead of answering today&#039;s e-mail, I&#039;ve been rereading old messages from my friend Sheela Basrur. It&#039;s a question of priorities. the people who are writing today will still be around tomorrow, or next week, come to that. I&#039;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.]]></description>
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<title>Life without recipes (or time in the kitchen)</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?life-without-recipes-or-time-in-the-kitchen</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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.]]></description>
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<title>Rona Maynard shares the highs, lows and lessons of her life in magazines</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-shares-the-highs-lows-and-lessons-of-her-life-in-magazines</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Rona Maynard started out as a lowly copy editor with no qualifications except a lifelong passion for magazines. She rose to the Editor&#039;s chair at Chatelaine, where she attracted a new generation of readers by rekindling the spark of community. Intimate conversation was Rona&#039;s editorial trademark, and now she&#039;s bringing it to MagNet for a Q&amp;A with D.B. Scott. Join her on Friday, June 6, as she looks back on the lessons of her eventful career, and forward to the challenges that face magazines in an era of brutal competition.]]></description>
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<title>Invisible afflictions</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 29 May 2008 02:26:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?invisible-afflictions</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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&#039;t we give mental illnesses the attention and resources they deserve?]]></description>
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<title>&amp;quot;Such a lovely family, we never saw it coming&amp;quot;</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 29 May 2008 12:06:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?such-a-lovely-family-we-never-saw-it-coming</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I read the grim news about a suspected domestic homicide in a picture-book Calgary family, I immediately thought of Mary Swan&#039;s arresting and devastatingly assured first novel, The Boys in the Trees.]]></description>
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<title>A rhubarb pie between friends</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 29 May 2008 11:29:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-rhubarb-pie-between-friends</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Now is the moment for homemade rhubarb pie, and my mother&#039;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.]]></description>
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<title> Are online friendships for real? Rona answers the question in Best Health</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 29 May 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?-are-online-friendships-for-real-rona-answers-the-question-in-best-health</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Rona Maynard once viewed online friendships as a threat to the time-honoured graces of real-world friendship (the dinner date, the hand-written note, the phone call just to say hello). That was before she learned to use the Internet to deepen old ties and make new ones possible. Read more in the summer 2008 issue of Best Health, the new magazine from Reader&#039;s Digest.]]></description>
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<title>Away from it all</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 27 May 2008 06:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?away-from-it-all</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When we rented a getaway cottage in Maine one long-ago summer, we pictured ourselves eating fresh-caught lobster on a deck overlooking the water. Little did we know we had rented the homeliest of yurts.]]></description>
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<title>Home at last!</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 27 May 2008 06:07:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?home-at-last</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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.]]></description>
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<title>The joyous gastronomic bargains of Argentina</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 22 May 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-joyous-gastronomic-bargains-of-argentina</link>
<description><![CDATA[ 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.]]></description>
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<title>A temple of books in Buenos Aires</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 18 May 2008 08:19:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-temple-of-books-in-buenos-aires</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Some say Buenos Aires is the city of tango. Others call it the city of soccer. Let me be the one to tell you Buenos Aires is a a city of independent bookstores, including the most extraordinary shrine to the printed word I have yet seen anywhere.]]></description>
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<title>A schlepper at Mount Aconcagua</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 15 May 2008 07:21:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-schlepper-at-mount-aconcagua</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Mind if I brag for a minute? After all, it?s not every traveler who follows in the footsteps of the world?s greatest climbers, drawn by the forbidding power of Mount Aconcagua, the tallest peak outside the Himalays.]]></description>
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<title>A fine day in Mendoza, Argentina</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 13 May 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-fine-day-in-mendoza-argentina</link>
<description><![CDATA[ This brilliant fall day in Argentine wine country, I?ve done nothing at all except absorb the sights and sounds of a new place. Knowing it?s spring back home makes the whole experience more refreshing.]]></description>
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<title>A few delicious bites from the buffet of travel</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 11 May 2008 05:03:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-few-delicious-bites-from-the-buffet-of-travel</link>
<description><![CDATA[ A trip is like a breakfast buffet. I want to taste everything because it looks so tempting, and because at home I can?t start my day with scrambled eggs unless I?m going to scramble them myself. So of course I overdo it. The reality is, I?ll never taste it all. ]]></description>
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<title>Books for the plane: my on-board survival kit</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?books-for-the-plane-my-onboard-survival-kit</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Remember the good old days of air travel? You got a free pillow in a cardboard-y cover, you could take your biggest tube of hand cream on board and you didn&#039;t get dinged for an extra bag. Ah, luxury! Now the airlines have left us just one tiny indulgence: we can carry all the books we can stow beneath our seats. Thank goodness, because I&#039;m bracing myself for a 12-hour flight to Buenos Aires.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?books-for-the-plane-my-onboard-survival-kit</guid>
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<title>At long last, a vacation!</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?at-long-last-a-vacation</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You&#039;ll be hearing from me less often these next several weeks. As I write this, I&#039;m packing for our trip to South America. Correction: I should be packing.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?at-long-last-a-vacation</guid>
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<title>Seen once, remembered forever: a tale of time and travel</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 05 May 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?seen-once-remembered-forever-a-tale-of-time-and-travel</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I used to think I&#039;d return to all the travel destinations that have stirred my soul. Now I&#039;ve had to face reality: too many enticing places to see, not enough years of healthy wandering. And if I go back to the Alhambra, I might miss the Great Wall of China. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?seen-once-remembered-forever-a-tale-of-time-and-travel</guid>
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<title>Tossers and hoarders</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 02 May 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?tossers-and-hoarders</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve never had any truck with pompous types who claim that there are two kinds of people in the world, except when I&#039;m the one making the pronouncement. So I am here to tell you that among those who own worldly goods, a spiritual and moral divide separates the tossers from the hoarders. We tossers get a self-righteous charge from purging every corner of stuff we deem to have served its purpose. As you&#039;ve doubtless observed from all those articles and web sites that exalt the &quot;conquering&quot; of clutter, our camp has the upper hand these days.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?tossers-and-hoarders</guid>
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<title>Brilliantly bad prose: a celebration long overdue</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?brilliantly-bad-prose-a-celebration-long-overdue</link>
<description><![CDATA[ All my life I have laboured to write well. But perhaps I&#039;ve been trying too hard. I&#039;ve just realized I may never craft a sentence as memorable as a whole flight of exuberantly bad sentences that appeared in my home-town paper back in 1972 and have resonated in my mind ever since. Trust me, to write this badly takes nerve, swagger and a kind of reckless brilliance.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?brilliantly-bad-prose-a-celebration-long-overdue</guid>
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<title>Another face of my city</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?another-face-of-my-city</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The city I thought I knew like a friend revealed another side of itself when my husband and I took a long evening walk through urban corners we&#039;d never explored. Right on our own turf, we had a mini-vacation that was full of surprises.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?another-face-of-my-city</guid>
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<title>A friend to homeless women (and at least one first-time author)</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 24 Apr 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-friend-to-homeless-women-and-at-least-one-first-time-author</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I didn&#039;t remember meeting Lia Grimanis, a spirited advocate for homeless women. But she remembered meeting me at a crowded reception. And when she bought my book, she took a minute to cheer me on.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-friend-to-homeless-women-and-at-least-one-first-time-author</guid>
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<title>Breaking my own rules</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?breaking-my-own-rules</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve always chafed against killjoy restrictions (never do this, always do that). Then I realized who the ultimate enforcer was. Me.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?breaking-my-own-rules</guid>
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<title>Petals and thorns</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:12:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?petals-and-thorns</link>
<description><![CDATA[ If there&#039;s anyone who understands what it means to stand firm in a crisis, it&#039;s my friend Sheela Basrur, whose leadership during Toronto&#039;s SARS outbreak captured hearts and minds across the land. Now she has cancer, but cancer doesn&#039;t have Sheela. Last week I took a break from move-related mayhem to celebrate Sheela&#039;s latest honour, the Order of Ontario. I came away refreshed by the wisdom she shared at the podium.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?petals-and-thorns</guid>
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<title>Eat here, diet at home</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:58:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?eat-here-diet-at-home</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve yet to sample the famous burgers at the Patrician Grill, but whoever runs this joint has a delicious way with words.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?eat-here-diet-at-home</guid>
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<title>Moving day</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 13 Apr 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?moving-day</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Some women have ex-husbands. I have ex-homes. Yesterday I let the movers carry all the traces of myself and my husband out yet another door. The time had come to live somewhere else (together, thank goodness). Even so, it hurt to leave home.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?moving-day</guid>
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<title>My cast-off hat finds the perfect home</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?My-castoff-hat-finds-the-perfect-home</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The most absurd fashion purchase I&#039;ve ever made was a navy blue cloche that cost way too much and never fit right. But it looks stunning on my friend Christa, who blogs about fashion at Petite Fashionista. May she wear it long and well. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?My-castoff-hat-finds-the-perfect-home</guid>
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<title>A community of readers</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-community-of-readers</link>
<description><![CDATA[ What I learned from giving my cast-off fiction and poetry to Sanctuary, a charity that befriends the the scorned and forgotten.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-community-of-readers</guid>
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<title>Goodbye, home office</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 30 Mar 2008 08:34:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?goodbye-home-office</link>
<description><![CDATA[ For more than 30 years, I&#039;ve had a home office where I could write in my bathrobe before dawn if the spirit moved me. I thought I&#039;d found the room of my own that every woman writer needs, according to Virginia Woolf. Then along came the Internet with all its distractions. Instead of writing, I&#039;m buying furniture and booking vacations. So I&#039;ve made a momentous decision. Starting now, I&#039;ll get dressed every morning and go out to work.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?goodbye-home-office</guid>
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<title>Working for the wife</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:04:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?working-for-the-wife</link>
<description><![CDATA[ A new breed of woman entrepreneur is proving that sometimes the best employee is your husband. Rona Maynard gets the inside story from four of the pathfinders.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?working-for-the-wife</guid>
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<title>Age and beauty: Rona's latest article in More magazine</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:04:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?age-and-beauty-ronas-latest-article-in-more-magazine</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In &quot;If looks could thrill,&quot; 50-something Rona Maynard finds a new beauty role model: a confident, stylish, unBotoxed woman who just happens to be over 60.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?age-and-beauty-ronas-latest-article-in-more-magazine</guid>
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<title>Department of amazing coincidences</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:41:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?department-of-amazing-coincidences</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The big city became a very small small world indeed when I discovered that we&#039;d bought our new home from our grandson&#039;s cousin.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?department-of-amazing-coincidences</guid>
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<title>My secret bond with Jimmy Page</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-secret-bond-with-jimmy-page</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My heart goes out to Jimmy Page. The celebrated Led Zeppelin guitarist has to sell a cherished $2 million tapestry because he&#039;s run out of wall space in his mansions. I know how he feels, because the walls in our new loft won&#039;t hold a custom-made piece of neon art that doesn&#039;t mean a dime to anyone but me. Oh, the exquisite agony! ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-secret-bond-with-jimmy-page</guid>
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<title>The wage gap: is the glass ceiling really to blame?</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:22:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-wage-gap-is-the-glass-ceiling-really-to-blame</link>
<description><![CDATA[ We all know that day care workers earn peanuts, while engineers collect big bucks. So steering women into science courses ought to boost their earning potential. It hasn&#039;t worked out that way. In a provocative new book called The Sexual Paradox, psychologist Susan Pinker argues that well-intentioned efforts to close the wage gap have devalued women&#039;s real desires and motivations. Women don&#039;t see the world as men do, she says. And the reason is rooted in our brains.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-wage-gap-is-the-glass-ceiling-really-to-blame</guid>
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<title>Lunch for the soul</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2008 04:01:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?lunch-for-the-soul</link>
<description><![CDATA[ There&#039;s not much left in my kitchen these days as we gear up to move. But right until the last day, I&#039;ll have the makings of my favourite last-minute lunch: the ultimate grilled cheese sandwich. I&#039;ve made all-day ragus that aren&#039;t nearly as delicious.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?lunch-for-the-soul</guid>
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<title>Claiming the keys: a homeowner's love story</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?claiming-the-keys-a-homeowners-love-story</link>
<description><![CDATA[ A naked home, when you&#039;ve just acquired it, is like a naked lover who has just left his date-night clothes on your floor for the very first time.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?claiming-the-keys-a-homeowners-love-story</guid>
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<title>Going, going, gone: my great pre-move giveaway</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:33:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?going-going-gone-my-great-premove-giveaway</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Some people have yard sales to unload their excess baggage. I wouldn&#039;t bother, even if I had a yard and a brilliant spring day for displaying my cast-offs to the world. Too much work, I say. And besides, I get a buzz out of giving dust-catchers away to people who will really use them.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?going-going-gone-my-great-premove-giveaway</guid>
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<title>Temporarily cool: ronamaynard.com gets an accolade</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:14:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?temporarily-cool-ronamaynardcom-gets-an-accolade</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I hadn&#039;t even heard of the Open Directory when they &quot;cooled&quot; my interactive web site, which just goes to show the limits of my coolness. Just when I got excited, my cool rating disappeared. Now it&#039;s back, for now. But like other good things in life, coolness is a temporary pleasure.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?temporarily-cool-ronamaynardcom-gets-an-accolade</guid>
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<title>Is a husband just a partner in life's everyday grind?</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 05 Mar 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?is-a-husband-just-a-partner-in-lifes-everyday-grind</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It was my husband of 37 years who handed me the March issue of The Atlantic and told me not to miss a punchy piece called &quot;Marry Him,&quot; in which rueful never-married mother Lori Gottlieb makes &quot;the case for settling for Mr. Good Enough.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?is-a-husband-just-a-partner-in-lifes-everyday-grind</guid>
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<title>Just another tourist in search of transcendence</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:08:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?just-another-tourist-in-search-of-transcendence</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;m not sure what I expected to find at the Grand Canyon. Beauty, certainly, but that&#039;s the wrong word for a chasm so vast and start, you can fly over it and see no end. A remarkable short story, &quot;Abyss&quot; by Richard Ford, took me straight to the dark heart of that feeling.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?just-another-tourist-in-search-of-transcendence</guid>
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<title>A Joni Mitchell moment on my winter vacation</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:58:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-joni-mitchell-moment-on-my-winter-vacation</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You wouldn&#039;t think there&#039;s any call for fake rocks in southern Utah. The place teems with real ones, majestically sculptured by nature over many millions of years. But the strangest things happen when you start paving paradise.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-joni-mitchell-moment-on-my-winter-vacation</guid>
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<title>The best thing that happened this week</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 22 Feb 2008 05:17:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-best-thing-that-happened-this-week</link>
<description><![CDATA[ She used to be my protegee. Now she&#039;s my friend and peer. As her mentor, I learned that the greatest reward of leadership is preparing others to lead.  So I was proud and delighted to recommend her for a well-deserved award.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-best-thing-that-happened-this-week</guid>
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<title>The power of reading: Val Ross in her own words</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:36:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-power-of-reading-val-ross-in-her-own-words</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Monday&#039;s post about Val Ross, my friend and colleague who died last weekend at age 57, has touched off a continuing flurry of messages from visitors to this site. Some of you say you wish you could have known her. You can, through her captivating words. Here is an excerpt from You Can&#039;t Read This, Val&#039;s history of lost and forbidden books through the ages.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-power-of-reading-val-ross-in-her-own-words</guid>
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<title>Neither young nor a lady</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:39:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?neither-young-nor-a-lady</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The 20-something waiter called my husband &quot;sir.&quot; He addressed me as &quot;young lady.&quot; He did it once, he did it twice, and at the rate we were going he&#039;d be doing it all evening, this rosy-cheeked kid who was younger than my son. The last time this happened, I bit my tongue. But the best part of growing older is the freedom to speak your mind.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?neither-young-nor-a-lady</guid>
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<title>Two bowls of soup: in memory of Val Ross</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 18 Feb 2008 07:50:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?two-bowls-of-soup-in-memory-of-val-ross</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Readers knew Val Ross as an award-winning journalist and author. Countless people knew her as a friend of rare integrity and grace. I was blessed to be among them. This is my tribute to Val, who died in Toronto of a brain tumour on February 17, at age 57.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?two-bowls-of-soup-in-memory-of-val-ross</guid>
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<title>My favourite first sentences</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:39:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-favourite-first-sentences</link>
<description><![CDATA[ A great first sentence pulls the reader into the story. Even more important, it gives the writer heart to keep on telling the story in the first place. Here, a baker&#039;s dozen of the best, culled from novels I&#039;ve loved through the decades.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-favourite-first-sentences</guid>
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<title>The essential dinner-time ceremony</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 08 Feb 2008 01:24:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-essential-dinner-time-ceremony</link>
<description><![CDATA[ For years my husband has opened an interesting wine as we sat down to dinner. This year he&#039;s on the wagon. As recently as a few months ago, this decision would have unnerved me. Now I understand that conversation, not wine, is really what makes dinner special.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-essential-dinner-time-ceremony</guid>
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<title>My sweet unlikely home</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 04 Feb 2008 01:33:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-sweet-unlikely-home</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When we cashed out of our dream condo, we thought we&#039;d go back to a sensible house. Lo and behold, we&#039;ve bought an eccentrically beautiful loft instead. It&#039;s just the kind of bohemian pad that I aspired to back as a teenage rebel. In my 50s, I&#039;ve discovered it&#039;s not too late to have what I always wanted.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-sweet-unlikely-home</guid>
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<title>My other online hangout</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 04 Feb 2008 01:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-other-online-hangout</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My favourite web site, of course, is this one. But I do have another online hangout that serves a different purpose. It&#039;s called Teebeedee.com, and it&#039;s like a summer camp for the over-40 crowd. It&#039;s a place where we can learn, tell stories and have a lot of fun just being ourselves.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-other-online-hangout</guid>
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<title>Ottawa Art Gallery features Max Maynard in a new show of landscape painting</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 01 Feb 2008 01:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?ottawa-art-gallery-features-max-maynard-in-a-new-show-of-landscape-painting</link>
<description><![CDATA[ An early Max Maynard landscape of the Cowichan Valley will appear in the Ottawa Art Gallery&#039;s new exhibiton &quot;Deep Roots,&quot; on view February 2 to May 4. Rona Maynard&#039;s father is in distinguished company: other featured landscape artists include Emily Carr, Lawren Harris, Edwin Holgate and A.Y. Jackson. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?ottawa-art-gallery-features-max-maynard-in-a-new-show-of-landscape-painting</guid>
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<title>Learning to love my gray hair</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 01 Feb 2008 01:08:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?learning-to-love-my-gray-hair</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Eight years ago, I made a decision that changed my life. I stopped pretending that my hair was still a rich, dark brown. At the time I was Editor of Chatelaine, where we featured my makeover from brown to gray. Next thing I knew, grateful middle-aged readers were pulling off my hat to admire my silver tresses.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?learning-to-love-my-gray-hair</guid>
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<title>The woman with the Canadian flag: an urban encounter</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:13:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-woman-with-the-canadian-flag-an-urban-encounter</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I thought it must be a crime or an accident that had brought police and paramedics to a busy intersection in my city. In fact it was the cortege for a Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan. And a woman he never knew was determined to him]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-woman-with-the-canadian-flag-an-urban-encounter</guid>
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<title>Hiring your husband: Rona talks with trail-blazing women who've done it</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hiring-your-husband-rona-talks-with-women-whove-done-it</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In old-school family businesses, Pop ran the show while Mom tended the files. Now a new breed of husband is proud to work for his wife. And she wouldn&#039;t have it any other way. Sound too good to be true? 
Read Rona Maynard&#039;s eye-opening article &quot;Working for the Wife&quot; in the February/March issue of MORE, Canada&#039;s magazine celebrating women over 40.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hiring-your-husband-rona-talks-with-women-whove-done-it</guid>
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<title>A brief history of my hair</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:07:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-brief-history-of-my-hair</link>
<description><![CDATA[ From a botched Toni home permanent to the risks and rewards of going gray, the story of my hair has been the story of my life. Let&#039;s face it, to be female iis to struggle with your hair.]]></description>
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<title>Mending a tear in the family fabric</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jan 2008 02:11:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?mending-a-tear-in-the-family-fabric</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Growing up, I never knew I had a first cousin named Rosemary Woolery. Her father and mine were brothers in a complicated family where people seldom to spoke to one another. She died years ago. But thanks to her daughter Louisa, I&#039;ve met her right here on this site in the Mother/Daughter Gallery.

]]></description>
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<title>Could you love your gray hair? Rona explores the question on Sounds Like Canada</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jan 2008 01:15:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?could-you-love-your-gray-hair-rona-explores-the-question-on-sounds-like-canada</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Is gray hair an old-ladyish career killer or the sign of a modern woman who&#039;s not afraid to be herself? Shelagh Rogers will pose the question to Rona (who&#039;s been happily gray for eight years), journalist Mary Wiens and career expert Barbara Moses. Tune in to Sounds Like Canada on Monday, January 25, at 11 a.m. in all time zones. Here&#039;s to a lively and eye-opening discussion.]]></description>
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<title>My Mother - Rosemary Maynard Woolery</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:06:36 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?47-rosemary-maynard-woolery</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The one thing that brings my mother to the forefront... Posted by Louisa Woolery. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?47-rosemary-maynard-woolery</guid>
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<title>My googleganger and me</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:03:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-googleganger-and-me</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I thought I must be the only Rona Maynard until I Googled myself and found another one online. Who was this woman? And why did it bother me to share my name with someone else?]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-googleganger-and-me</guid>
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<title>My city, myself</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 19 Jan 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-city-myself</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The Toronto I&#039;ve called home for my entire adult life is becoming an angrier, lonelier place. I could rage against this trend, but I know I&#039;m complicit.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-city-myself</guid>
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<title>Unreal estate: the secret language of real estate ads</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?unreal-estate-the-secret-language-of-real-estate-ads</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The real meaning of &quot;million-dollar view,&quot; &quot;executive home&quot; and other terms that perplex the weary home buyer. How do I know? I&#039;ve been out there pounding the pavement and I&#039;m here to share my hard-earned wisdom.]]></description>
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<title>Adventures in real estate</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 12 Jan 2008 04:48:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?adventures-in-real-estate</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Looking for a home is like looking for love. You hope the next listing will be The One. You tell yourself you can make this work. But when you realize it won&#039;t, there&#039;s always tomorrow.]]></description>
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<title>My first book club</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 11 Jan 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-first-book-club</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Meeting with book clubs is as much a part of being an author as rewriting the same pesky sentence 129 times. Thank goodness book club meetings are a lot more fun.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-first-book-club</guid>
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<title>Selling my dream home</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 07 Jan 2008 02:02:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?selling-my-dream-home</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Now that I&#039;m about to be homeless, I finally understand that home is a state of mind.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?selling-my-dream-home</guid>
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<title>The parents you never knew</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jan 2008 02:38:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-parents-you-never-knew</link>
<description><![CDATA[ One of the hardest things for every more or less grownup person to understand is that our parents had complex lives, full of dreams and hopes and fears, before we came along.]]></description>
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<title>Losing your parents and living better</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2008 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?losing-your-parents-and-living-better</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;s not quite acceptable to admit it, but a parent&#039;s death can free the children to become their best selves.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?losing-your-parents-and-living-better</guid>
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<title>Rona Maynard goes to Broadway</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 01 Jan 2008 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-maynard-goes-to-broadway</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Check out the January issue of Reader&#039;s Digest Canada for Rona&#039;s story on her appearance in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, now coming to Toronto.]]></description>
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<title>A tourist in the kingdom of baseball</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 30 Dec 2007 02:15:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-tourist-in-the-kingdom-of-baseball</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The secret of a lasting marriage has more than a little to do with exploring your spouse&#039;s burning interests. I never managed to develop a passion for baseball. Still, I&#039;m glad I made the effort.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-tourist-in-the-kingdom-of-baseball</guid>
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<title>My perfect Christmas tree</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 24 Dec 2007 02:05:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-perfect-christmas-tree</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Real or artificial? Who cares? Anyone can buy the Christmas tree. Only I can decorate it with the lovingly collected ornaments that make it mine.]]></description>
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<title>Here's to good readers</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 20 Dec 2007 01:52:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?heres-to-good-readers</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Good readers are a lot like good life partners. They don&#039;t expect to love the whole package; they just want a rich experience that rewards the gift of their attention.]]></description>
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<title>My two children: the son and the book</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 18 Dec 2007 02:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-two-children-the-son-and-the-book</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I wrote My Mother&#039;s Daughter, I learned to forget about tangible results and let the work become its own reward. After years of corporate life, this felt a little strange. But it wasn&#039;t really. I have raised a son, and for parents there are no benchmarks except your own love and commitment.]]></description>
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<title>More words to live by</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 17 Dec 2007 02:07:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?more-words-to-live-by</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The latest insights I&#039;ve cribbed from people who know something I don&#039;t.]]></description>
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<title>As long as I'm a mother...</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 17 Dec 2007 01:24:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?as-long-as-im-a-mother</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Just because I no longer listen for the click of my son&#039;s key in the front door doesn&#039;t mean I&#039;ve outgrown the habit of maternal worry.]]></description>
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<title>Not your average dinner party</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 12 Dec 2007 07:57:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?not-your-average-dinner-party</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Why every woman should see Judy Chicago&#039;s stunning work &quot;The Dinner Party,&quot; which is 28 years old and still charged with excitement]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?not-your-average-dinner-party</guid>
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<title>The woman who lived on words</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:45:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-woman-who-lived-on-words</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It wasn&#039;t easy to be friends with Margaret Gibson, a ferociously original writer who struggled with severe mental illness. But by reading her a poem I knew she&#039;d love, I found a moment of grace.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-woman-who-lived-on-words</guid>
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<title>My favourite dish</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 03 Dec 2007 02:42:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-favourite-dish</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Instead of homemade fettucine and other grand culinary productions, I stick to simple pleasures like this mustard-grilled flank steak.]]></description>
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<title>My morning laugh</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2007 04:42:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-morning-laugh</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I can count on The Onion&#039;s bang-on satire to light up the most ho-hum day.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-morning-laugh</guid>
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<title>A moment of grace in cyberspace</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 29 Nov 2007 06:20:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-moment-of-grace-in-cyberspace</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You never know how an online encounter with a stranger is going to enlarge your life. This morning, an e-mail from a stranger did precisely that.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-moment-of-grace-in-cyberspace</guid>
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<title>Five minutes alone with Leonard Cohen</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?five-minutes-alone-with-leonard-cohen</link>
<description><![CDATA[ A poem is the perfect busy woman&#039;s read. It slips into the day&#039;s unexpected quiet places like a cat into a lap.]]></description>
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<title>Style therapy</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 24 Nov 2007 02:29:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?style-therapy</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Why buy an &quot;it bag&quot; that won&#039;t work as my bag? Let fashionistas chase the trends of the moment; I&#039;ll stick to wearable talismans that will lift my spirits for years.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?style-therapy</guid>
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<title>Words to live by</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 21 Nov 2007 06:39:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?words-to-live-by</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Culled from my recent reading: wise thoughts from Norman Mailer, Mary Pipher and Sandra Oh.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?words-to-live-by</guid>
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<title>What's so funny?</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 21 Nov 2007 04:42:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?whats-so-funny</link>
<description><![CDATA[ To truly appreciate Blazing Saddles, the classic spoof western by Mel Brooks, you have to watch it with a kid for whom the only thing funnier than a fart is a whole gleeful chorus of farts.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?whats-so-funny</guid>
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<title>Rona's book is monthly pick for businesswomen's e-newsletter</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 19 Nov 2007 04:19:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?ronas-book-is-monthly-pick-for-businesswomens-enewsletter</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Company of Women, an innovative organization that connects Ontario businesswomen professionally and personally, highlights My Mother&#039;s Daughter by Rona Maynard in its monthly e-newsletter.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?ronas-book-is-monthly-pick-for-businesswomens-enewsletter</guid>
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<title>Sleeping for success</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 18 Nov 2007 04:03:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?sleeping-for-success</link>
<description><![CDATA[ &quot;The Sleep Industrial Complex,&quot; a provocative cover story in the New York Times Magazine, won&#039;t tell you how to get the sleep of your dreams. But it does explain why you&#039;re so worried about those precious eight hours. I feel your pain.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?sleeping-for-success</guid>
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<title>Written on the body</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 18 Nov 2007 09:50:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?written-on-the-body</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The scars and sags on my body are like dings on a well-used car. But to me these so-called &quot;imperfections&quot; are mementos of where I&#039;ve been and what&#039;s happened along the way.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?written-on-the-body</guid>
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<title>I'm new to this game myself</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 16 Nov 2007 06:06:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?im-new-to-this-game-myself</link>
<description><![CDATA[ What I&#039;ve learned about writing from June Callwood, Roger Daltrey and the sheer discombobulating thrill of being a beginner instead of the &quot;veteran&quot; I used to be.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?im-new-to-this-game-myself</guid>
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<title>Rona's latest speeches: power, mentorship and success</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:51:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?ronas-latest-speeches-power-mentorship-and-success</link>
<description><![CDATA[ November is a busy speaking month for Rona Maynard. She&#039;s sharing her real-life wisdom on success and mentorship with the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Health Canada and the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber of Commerce.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?ronas-latest-speeches-power-mentorship-and-success</guid>
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<title>Now available! The reading guide for My Mother's Daughter</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 11 Nov 2007 07:55:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?reading-guide-for-my-mothers-daughter-by-rona-maynrd</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Now ready for your book club: Rona Maynard&#039;s own questions about her memoir, My Mother&#039;s Daughter.]]></description>
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<title>Question of the day: overcoming depression</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:47:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?question-of-the-day-overcoming-depression</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You often speak and write about overcoming depression. What made you decide to go public, when so many people are ashamed to admit that mental illness has touched their lives?]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?question-of-the-day-overcoming-depression</guid>
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<title>Friends no matter what</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:17:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?friends-no-matter-what</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Like a good marriage, the good friendship bends and expands to accommodate life&#039;s transitions.]]></description>
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<title>How old is grown-up?</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:34:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-old-is-grown-up</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The older I get, the younger I feel inside. And I&#039;m in good company. My newest role model, 65-year-old soul diva Aretha Franklin, says she&#039;s planning to overcome fear of flying and study classical piano.]]></description>
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<title>Reasons for loving</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 06 Nov 2007 03:10:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?reasons-for-loving</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When a friend fell gravely ill, I didn&#039;t know what to do or how to help. So I filled a note card with all the things I love about her.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?reasons-for-loving</guid>
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<title>Question of the day: the difference between sons and daughters</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 06 Nov 2007 03:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?question-of-the-day-the-difference-between-sons-and-daughters</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Your only child is a son, yet you write about the mother/daughter bond. Are you sorry that you never had a daughter? ]]></description>
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<title>Sharing happiness</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 02 Nov 2007 06:45:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?sharing-happiness</link>
<description><![CDATA[ A cherished poem can bring friends together. For me, the ultimate pass-along poem is Jane Kenyon&#039;s wonderfully consoling &quot;Happiness.&quot;]]></description>
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<title>Listen to Rona's interview with CBC Radio One</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:14:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?listen-to-ronas-interview-with-cbc-radio-one</link>
<description><![CDATA[ &quot;A mother teaches her daughter, for good and ill, what it means to be a woman,&quot; Rona tells Jo-Ann Roberts of CBC radio in Victoria. &quot;A mother is the keeper of hopes, but also of warnings.&quot;]]></description>
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<title>Paper birds</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 31 Oct 2007 07:13:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?paper-birds</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My father, Max Maynard, never finished anything. So the the family legend went. When he joined A.A., determined to quit drinking in old age, he never quite pulled it off. But he made an honest effort, and that&#039;s what matters now.]]></description>
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<title>Rona goes restaurant reviewing with National Post critic Gina Mallet</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:48:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?rona-goes-restaurant-reviewing-with-national-post-critic-gina-mallet</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Rona has a walk-on part in a review of Gallery Grill by National Post restaurant critic Gina Mallet. Actually, it&#039;s more than a walk-on: she&#039;s quoted with cries of delight. The pair were celebrating the end of Rona&#039;s frantic book tour.]]></description>
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<title>London Free Press praises &amp;quot;style and verve&amp;quot; of My Mother's Daughter</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 29 Oct 2007 12:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?london-free-press-praises-style-and-verve-of-my-mothers-daughter</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Rona Maynard tells her story with &quot;style and verve&quot; in her &quot;angry yet exultant memoir,&quot; says reviewer Nancy Schiefer. ]]></description>
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<title>The doors in my head</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 27 Oct 2007 05:23:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-doors-in-my-head</link>
<description><![CDATA[ New possibilities are everywhere, at every age. It&#039;s all a question of seeing them.]]></description>
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<title>Read a profile of Rona in Moods magazine</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:57:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?read-a-profile-of-rona-in-moods-magazine</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Rona Maynard&#039;s comeback from depression is the fall cover story in Moods, a unique magazine for people coping with mood disorders.]]></description>
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<title>Still married after all these years</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 25 Oct 2007 03:09:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?still-married-after-all-these-years</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Like a fine bottle of wine, young lovers need time to lose their rough edges and reveal their best selves. Sometimes I wonder how we did it. ]]></description>
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<title>Join the conversation between Rona and Dale Goldhawk of Rogers TV</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 21 Oct 2007 04:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?join-the-conversation-between-rona-and-dale-goldhawk-of-rogers-tv</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The lines will be open at Rogers TV when Rona sits down with Dale Goldhawk to talk about a subject close to her heart: depression. ]]></description>
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<title>The truth about looking younger</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:55:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-truth-about-looking-younger</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Back when I was going to bars with fake ID, I&#039;d do anything to look older. I thought I&#039;d always have this problem. Now I&#039;m always on the lookout for ways to look younger. Here&#039;s some unconventional wisdom.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-truth-about-looking-younger</guid>
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<title>My Mother - Betty Postill</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 17 Oct 2007 05:26:02 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?44-betty-postill</link>
<description><![CDATA[ There are many stories about the courage my mother conjured... Posted by Terry Poulton. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?44-betty-postill</guid>
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<title>Robert Fulford calls Rona's book &amp;quot;engrossing and eloquent&amp;quot;</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 17 Oct 2007 04:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?robert-fulford-calls-ronas-book-engrossing-and-eloquent</link>
<description><![CDATA[ National Post columnist Robert Fulford praises My Mother&#039;s Daughter while assessing the legacy of Rona&#039;s artist father, Max Maynard.]]></description>
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<title>Like a fish without a bicycle</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 15 Oct 2007 04:20:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?like-a-fish-without-a-bicycle</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Once upon a time, feminists weren&#039;t supposed to admit that they actually needed a man. I thought we&#039;d left those days behind. But in a lively new book, feminist heroine Katha Pollitt admits to being a world-class fool for love. And some of her biggest fans are up in arms.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?like-a-fish-without-a-bicycle</guid>
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<title>Read the Globe interview with Rona</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 15 Oct 2007 04:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?read-the-globe-interview-with-rona</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Sarah Hampson of the Globe calls My Mother&#039;s Daughter &quot;a beautifully told story of a horrific childhood.&quot; We have to question &quot;horrific,&quot; but we&#039;re not about to quibble with &quot;beautifully told.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?read-the-globe-interview-with-rona</guid>
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<title>Scrambling for the back seat</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 15 Oct 2007 04:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?scrambling-for-the-back-seat</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Some women don&#039;t aim for leadership until they see that other people are already following. Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin is a perfect example, and she&#039;s honest own enough to talk about her battle with fear of failure.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?scrambling-for-the-back-seat</guid>
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<title>The envelope, please</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 11 Oct 2007 04:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-envelope-please</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;s been close to 20 years since my mother was alive to send me letters. Then a friend of hers appeared with the ultimate gift: a lost letter, full of feeling and insight.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-envelope-please</guid>
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<title>The gift of gratitude</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 08 Oct 2007 04:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-gift-of-gratitude</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I can&#039;t demand gratitude of others, but I can cultivate it in myself. Thank goodness!]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-gift-of-gratitude</guid>
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<title>Winnipeg Free Press applauds My Mother's Daughter</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 08 Oct 2007 04:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?winnipeg-free-press-applauds-my-mothers-daughter</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Rona Maynard is indeed her mother&#039;s daughter, says the Free Press--&quot;brilliant, creative, feisty, fallible, honest, introspective and a terrific writer.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?winnipeg-free-press-applauds-my-mothers-daughter</guid>
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<title>A plan for kid-friendly communities</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 06 Oct 2007 08:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?A-plan-for-kid-friendly-communities</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When kids run wild on safe streets, they stretch their minds and bodies while learning a sense of fair play. Now traditional childhood games are all but forgotten. A Canadian hero aims to turn things around, and she\&#039;s looking for help.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?A-plan-for-kid-friendly-communities</guid>
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<title>Watch Rona's interview on Fine Print</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:39:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?watch-ronas-interview-on-fine-print</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Passionate reader Carolyn Weaver speaks with Rona about mothers, daughters and becoming one&#039;s own woman.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?watch-ronas-interview-on-fine-print</guid>
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<title>Readers fall in love with My Mother's Daughter</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 05 Oct 2007 08:41:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?readers-fall-in-love-with-my-mothers-daughter</link>
<description><![CDATA[ &quot;I couldn&#039;t put it down,&quot; readers say. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?readers-fall-in-love-with-my-mothers-daughter</guid>
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<title>A tale of two sisters</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 04 Oct 2007 08:28:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-tale-of-two-sisters</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My sister Joyce and I share a complicated heritage of rivalry, love and disappointment. For years we didn&#039;t speak. Then at last we were able to embrace possibility instead of standing guard against pain.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-tale-of-two-sisters</guid>
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<title>The compliment conundrum</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 04 Oct 2007 05:41:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-compliment-conundrum</link>
<description><![CDATA[ We love to tell other women what&#039;s special about themselves.  So why do we brush off compliments directed our way?]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-compliment-conundrum</guid>
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<title>Age cannot wither her</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 01 Oct 2007 03:09:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?age-cannot-wither-her</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I hadn&#039;t thought of Patricia since she taught me English 35 years ago. Now here she was beside me on the subway platform, looking proudly and stylishly herself]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?age-cannot-wither-her</guid>
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<title>My Mother - Joanne Thompson</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:07:21 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?42-joanne-thompson</link>
<description><![CDATA[      &quot;You are so like your... Posted by Tiffany Anderson. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?42-joanne-thompson</guid>
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<title>Looking for Mousie</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 01 Oct 2007 03:33:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?looking-for-mousie</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I tried to shield my child from the pain of loss, but losing is an art that every child needs to learn.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?looking-for-mousie</guid>
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<title>Hear Rona's interview with The Commentary</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 01 Oct 2007 03:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hear-ronas-interview-with-the-commentary</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The Commentary, an online arts and current affairs publication, calls My Mother&#039;s Daughter &quot;candid and absorbing.&quot; ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hear-ronas-interview-with-the-commentary</guid>
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<title>My Mother - Amelia</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 30 Sep 2007 04:39:03 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?41-amelia</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Growing up, I always thought my mother Amelia was &quot;different&quot;.... Posted by Sarah. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?41-amelia</guid>
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<title>Question of the day: why another Maynard family memoir?</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 28 Sep 2007 05:21:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?why-another-maynard-family-memoir</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Your mother and your sister both wrote memoirs. Now you&#039;ve joined the family business with your own memoir, My Mother&#039;s Daughter. Why did you choose to write another book about the Maynard family instead of an original story?]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?why-another-maynard-family-memoir</guid>
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<item>
<title>Holden Caulfield revisited</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:13:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?holden-caulfield-revisited</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It&#039;s been more than 40 years since I fell in love with Salinger&#039;s hero, and he&#039;s not the same adorable guy. He&#039;s prickly, judgmental and afraid to grow up. But I still really want to hear about it. And The Catcher in the Rye is still a great book.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?holden-caulfield-revisited</guid>
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<title>My kingdom for a good night's sleep</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 25 Sep 2007 04:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-kingdom-for-a-good-nights-sleep</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Back when I could sleep through anything, I waged a nightly campaign to stave off bedtime. Oh, the irony!]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-kingdom-for-a-good-nights-sleep</guid>
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<item>
<title>Bringing it all back home</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 22 Sep 2007 07:21:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?bringing-it-all-back-home</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I thought I never wanted to return to the prairie city where my mother came of age. But it&#039;s where she fell in love with my father, and where she used to struggle with her own formidable mother. Now Winnipeg is where my book tour begins. And I&#039;m keen to revisit my family&#039;s roots.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?bringing-it-all-back-home</guid>
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<title>Globe calls My Mother's Daughter &amp;quot;a moving tribute&amp;quot;</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 22 Sep 2007 02:51:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?globe-calls-my-mothers-daughter-a-moving-tribute</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Globe and Mail reviewer Elizabeth Grove-White concludes, &quot;Maynard&#039;s memoir taps into the witches&#039; brew of clear-eyed candour and emotional ambivalence that colours many of our mother/daughter relationships.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?globe-calls-my-mothers-daughter-a-moving-tribute</guid>
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<title>Question of the day: what a journalist needs to know</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 20 Sep 2007 05:57:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?question-of-the-day-what-a-journalist-needs-to-know</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;m a high school student and aspiring journalist making plans for university. Should I major in English or journalism?]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?question-of-the-day-what-a-journalist-needs-to-know</guid>
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<item>
<title>A few of my favourite books</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 20 Sep 2007 04:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-few-of-my-favourite-books</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Some of these books changed my life. Others are just so irresistibly compelling, I find myself telling every reader I know, &quot;You&#039;ve got to read this.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-few-of-my-favourite-books</guid>
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<title>Toronto Star applauds My Mother's Daughter</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 17 Sep 2007 04:22:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?toronto-star-applauds-my-mothers-daughter</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Reviewer Robin Harvey calls My Mother&#039;s Daughter &quot;searingly honest&quot; and &quot;a most compelling read.&quot; ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?toronto-star-applauds-my-mothers-daughter</guid>
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<title>Rona's book goes to Harvard</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 17 Sep 2007 03:40:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?ronas-book-goes-to-harvard</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Paula J. Caplan, a leading feminist thinker and author, is recommending My Mother&#039;s Daughter to her students in a Harvard course entitled &quot;Myths of Motherhood.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?ronas-book-goes-to-harvard</guid>
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<title>A better life than hers</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 17 Sep 2007 03:10:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-better-life-than-hers</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Every generation of women aspires to what mom didn&#039;t have. Now it&#039;s baby boomers&#039; turn to be told that our frantic lives didn&#039;t cut it. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-better-life-than-hers</guid>
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<item>
<title>Get real! Motherhood revisited</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 15 Sep 2007 07:07:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?get-real-motherhood-revisited</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Rona Maynard&#039;s book about her relationship with her mother reveals the impossible expectations we all place on our own mum]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?get-real-motherhood-revisited</guid>
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<title>Hear Rona's speech for Gift of Wisdom breakfast series on October 29</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 15 Sep 2007 06:44:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hear-ronas-speech-for-gift-of-wisdom-breakfast-series-on-october-29</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Meet Rona at the Arcadian Court, 401 Bay St., Toronto, to learn how the mother/daughter bond can point the way to success in the workplace. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hear-ronas-speech-for-gift-of-wisdom-breakfast-series-on-october-29</guid>
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<title>What women want...and other discoveries from the hot tub</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 14 Sep 2007 04:06:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-women-want-and-other-discoveries-from-the-hot-tub</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Take a happily exhausted group of hikers from all over. Add soothing hot water. Listen to the stories that prove we&#039;re more alike than different.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-women-want-and-other-discoveries-from-the-hot-tub</guid>
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<title>Mommy's too old</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 10 Sep 2007 10:54:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?mommys-too-old</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When a woman in her 50s or 60s becomes pregnant, she has another shot at youth. But what does she lose?]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?mommys-too-old</guid>
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<item>
<title>Question of the day: how can I make peace between my warring daughters?</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 10 Sep 2007 05:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?question-of-the-day-how-can-i-make-peace-between-my-warring-daughters</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You and your sister have written frankly about the difficulties between you. I&#039;m the mother of two young daughters whose relationship is full of pain. I have tried to mitigate my older daughter&#039;s rage and resentment but seemingly to no avail. Do you wish your mother had done something to lessen the pain between you and your sister? Am I unknowingly adding to my daughters&#039; pain?]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?question-of-the-day-how-can-i-make-peace-between-my-warring-daughters</guid>
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<item>
<title>It's not my problem</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 07 Sep 2007 10:50:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?its-not-my-problem</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Liberation means no more search and rescue.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?its-not-my-problem</guid>
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<item>
<title>Why I'm still married</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 07 Sep 2007 06:16:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?why-im-still-married</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I&#039;ve been married as long as some of my friends have been alive. While they were still putting peas in their ears, my husband and I were dealing loudly and gracelessly with weightier matters like whose turn it was to throw dinner on the table.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?why-im-still-married</guid>
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<item>
<title>Hear Shelagh Rogers' interview with Rona and Joyce Maynard</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 07 Sep 2007 03:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hear-shelagh-rogers-interview-with-rona-and-joyce-maynard</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Rona and her sister Joyce have just met up on Sounds Like Canada to talk about their 50 years of passion and pain. The childhood rivals recently became collaborators on a joint project for MORE magazine, &quot;A tale of two sisters.&quot;]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?hear-shelagh-rogers-interview-with-rona-and-joyce-maynard</guid>
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<item>
<title>Question of the day: how can I find Fredelle Maynard's books?</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 07 Sep 2007 01:16:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?question-of-the-day-how-can-i-find-fredelle-maynards-books</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Years ago I lent my copy of Raisins and Almonds to someone and never got it back. How can I replace it? I don&#039;t see your mother&#039;s books anywhere.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?question-of-the-day-how-can-i-find-fredelle-maynards-books</guid>
</item>
<item>
<title>My Mother - Frances Perodeau</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 05 Sep 2007 05:44:32 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?37-frances-perodeau</link>
<description><![CDATA[ My mother died from cancer in 1950, when I was... Posted by Liz Carmichael. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?37-frances-perodeau</guid>
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<item>
<title>My Mother - Gertrude S. Jordan</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 05 Sep 2007 06:51:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?36-gertrude-s.-jordan</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Mom dreamed of being a music teacher or opera singer.... Posted by Kathleen J. Hemmer. ]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?36-gertrude-s.-jordan</guid>
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<item>
<title>Question of the day: was writing your memoir a catharsis?</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 03 Sep 2007 11:25:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?question-of-the-day-was-writing-your-memoir-a-catharsis</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You&#039;ve had a difficult childhood and a history of depression. Did you write your book to get it off your chest?]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?question-of-the-day-was-writing-your-memoir-a-catharsis</guid>
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<item>
<title>The necessary art of condolence notes</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 03 Sep 2007 09:34:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-necessary-art-of-condolence-notes</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Once I went shopping for the perfect black dress to accessorize for any occasion. Now I buy note cards for reaching out to friends in need. And white is the new black.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-necessary-art-of-condolence-notes</guid>
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<item>
<title>From the book</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 03 Sep 2007 05:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?from-the-book</link>
<description><![CDATA[ With her formidable mind and inimitable style, I thought my mother would always be the invincible protector of my childhood. Then came the winter of her confusion.]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?from-the-book</guid>
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<item>
<title>Every second woman I know is in transition</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 28 Aug 2007 10:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?every-second-woman-i-know-is-in-transition</link>
<description><![CDATA[ We used to know our place in the world. Then a child left home or a job ended. What next?]]></description>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?every-second-woman-i-know-is-in-transition</guid>
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<item>
<title>Writing the next chapter</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 28 Aug 2007 08:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?writing-the-next-chapter</link>
<description><![CDATA[ What&#039;s it like becoming a formerly important person? Rona Maynard tried to do it by the book]]></description>
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<item>
<title>The hat that got away</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 22 Aug 2007 05:19:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?the-hat-that-got-away</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It was perfect in every way, as if the hat gods had created it just for me. But I told myself I couldn&#039;t afford it.]]></description>
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<item>
<title>My bicultural identity</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 22 Aug 2007 04:24:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-bicultural-identity</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I chose to make Canada my home, but the U.S. is still my native land.]]></description>
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<item>
<title>Cats of my life</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 22 Aug 2007 02:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?cats-of-my-life</link>
<description><![CDATA[ With my cats, I&#039;ve expressed every facet of my character--for better and worse]]></description>
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<item>
<title>A parent's place</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 21 Aug 2007 02:06:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?a-parents-place</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I didn&#039;t want to say yes when my right hand man requested an eleventh-hour adoption leave. But I couldn&#039;t afford to say no.]]></description>
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<item>
<title>Question of the day: how did you balance your life?</title>
<pubDate>Mon, 20 Aug 2007 07:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?how-did-you-balance-your-life</link>
<description><![CDATA[ You&#039;ve been able to combine career and motherhood. How did you balance your life?]]></description>
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<item>
<title>Teachers who changed my life</title>
<pubDate>Sun, 19 Aug 2007 02:17:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?teachers-who-changed-my-life</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Teaching just might be the purest expression of our need to connect with one another.]]></description>
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<item>
<title>Life lessons from my local beggars</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 17 Aug 2007 08:30:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?life-lessons-from-my-local-beggars</link>
<description><![CDATA[ One woman&#039;s struggle with urban guilt]]></description>
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<item>
<title>Latest favourite</title>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 Aug 2007 03:59:18 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?latest-favourite</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The most recent favourite comment.]]></description>
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<title/>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 Aug 2007 03:59:18 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?view-all-favourites</link>
<description><![CDATA[ View all favourite comments as selected by Rona Maynard.]]></description>
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<item>
<title>Why I wrote My Mother?s Daughter</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 15 Aug 2007 03:45:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?why-i-wrote-this-book</link>
<description><![CDATA[ One January morning in 2005, I sat down at the desk in my home office and wondered what to do with the next phase of my life. I had just left my job at Chatelaine ? a job that had defined me for a decade. ]]></description>
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<item>
<title>When your mother dies</title>
<pubDate>Tue, 14 Aug 2007 11:22:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?when-your-mother-dies</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Around the time my mother died, the tender words of other women enveloped me like a quilt stitched by many pairs of hands. Longtime friends, mothers of friends and friends of colleagues, these women had one thing in common: their mothers had died. (&quot;It was 40 years ago,&quot; one said, &quot;and I still think of her every day.&quot;)]]></description>
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<item>
<title>Join the mother/daughter community</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 04 Aug 2007 01:43:42 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?add-story</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Add your story to the Mother/daughter community.]]></description>
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<item>
<title>My Mother - Rakieh Mourtada</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 04 Aug 2007 10:33:56 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?11-rakieh-mourtada</link>
<description><![CDATA[ In memory of Rakieh Mourtada, April 21, 1935 to June... Posted by Rasha Mourtada.]]></description>
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<item>
<title>My Mother - Lucia Dell'Agnese</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 04 Aug 2007 10:29:31 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?12-lucia-dellagnese</link>
<description><![CDATA[ When I was four, I had New Mom.  She... Posted by Angelica Siegel.]]></description>
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<item>
<title>My Mother - Dorothy Buxton</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 04 Aug 2007 09:44:08 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?10-dorothy-buxton</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It?s 11 a.m. on a Saturday morning, an ungodly hour... Posted by Bonnie Buxton.]]></description>
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<item>
<title>Question of the day: What would your mother think?</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 2007 06:00:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-would-your-mother-think</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Your mother was a formidable character and a tough critic. What would she think of My Mother&#039;s Daughter?]]></description>
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<item>
<title>Intimate strangers</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:39:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?intimate-strangers</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The healing art of confiding in someone you?ve just met]]></description>
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<item>
<title>Sexism and double standards</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:35:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?sexism-and-double-standards</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The real reasons critics dislike women?s mags.]]></description>
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<item>
<title>My day care kid</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 2007 11:21:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?my-day-care-kid</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I have a wonderful son. At 24, Ben has friendships that have lasted for close to a decade, passions that range from Greek philosophy to graffiti art and a deep appreciation for women (one woman in particular). ]]></description>
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<item>
<title>For bed or for worse</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 2007 11:19:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?for-bed-or-for-worse</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Why some of the happiest couples choose to sleep in separate beds]]></description>
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<item>
<title>May I help you?</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 2007 11:17:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?may-i-help-you</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I have just spent a weekend unpacking from a move. You can picture the results: armfuls of cut-up boxes and a mountain of overstuffed garbage bags full of junk I should have tossed long ago. Late Sunday night, I made what felt like the hundred-and-forty-seventh trip to the garbage room of our new condominium. I was wondering how many more trips I had to go and whether my back would hold out when I heard a friendly voice call, &quot;Let me help you.&quot; ]]></description>
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<item>
<title>Food for the soul</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 2007 11:15:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?food-for-the-soul</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Every time my whole day falls apart, I know there&#039;s always one last chance to set things right. It&#039;s called dinner. ]]></description>
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<item>
<title>What I had to learn about success</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 2007 11:01:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?what-i-had-to-learn-about-success</link>
<description><![CDATA[ I broke a bad habit: measuring my life against other people&#039;s.  ]]></description>
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</item>
<item>
<title>Rona?s book tour kicks off in Winnipeg September 24.</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 2007 08:23:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?ronas-book-tour-kicks-off</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Here are the dates for Rona?s western tour, as well as Ontario appearances confirmed so far. More dates and details will be added.]]></description>
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</item>
<item>
<title>Book a speech</title>
<pubDate>Sat, 28 Jul 2007 11:05:00 EST</pubDate>
<link>http://ronamaynard.com/index.php?book-a-speech</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Rona Maynard&#039;s pointed, witty speeches have won standing ovations from business and non-profit groups across the country. Whether her topic is beating depression, managing mental illness at work or staying fresh and focused under stress, Rona sends her audiences out feeling energized and inspired.]]></description>
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