A long time ago (about 1995), I was invited to contribute a short story for Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's short story collection. At the time, we were encouraged to write short stories dipped in sexual content for grown-ups. Ok, I thought, that sounds like fun. So I cooked up a short story with […]
Revisiting The Past; Short Fiction and Other Stories. Read More »
Happy Anniversary, Mr. We look so earnest, so young, and so in love hanging on to each other. I made my wedding dress two days before the wedding—a Vogue pattern of an Albert Nippon dress. The fabric was $1.39 a yard. The most expensive thing we paid for at the wedding was your suit—which
Forty Four Years and Still Sweet. Read More »
Amid all this heavy lifting of my research notes, I re-read my essay, "A Chorus of Clowns and Masked Comic Theater" " written for Realms of Fantasy on the history of clowns, from antiquity to the Marx Brothers. It's funny, and I enjoyed re-reading it as it provides a comprehensive view of the different
Interlude in the Research: Call in the Clowns, Satyrs, Fools, and Nymphs. Read More »
I love these wildly imaginative graphite portraits of "People Inconvenienced by Objects and Thought" by Stefan Zsaitits. They look almost exactly how my head feels right now. itchy, scratchy, and aggravated by an eye infection. It has been something of a rough road for these last four months as we traveled from Longmont, Colorado, to
People Inconvienced by Objects and Thoughts Read More »
Ok..so here are two more photos of my father, Emile, with his cousins on leave after the liberation of Paris. I am almost certain that the man is Yves Jouffa's cousin, and the woman is Yves's sister, Roselyne —but I am waiting for the family in France to confirm this. I
My Father Emile Snyder In the War Read More »
I am very grateful this New Year as my mother has survived the last two weeks, which included a harrowing medical-emergency flight from Canada in a small air ambulance in those snow storms that shut down the Midwest, a week of tests, bad news, more bad news, then not so bad news, then finally,
Another Year, Another Birthday Read More »
Kilimanjaro Rainforest, 1967 Just today, I received a Facebook message from an old friend, Mary, who lived in Tanzania when I was 14. She recalled when we climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in 1967. At 14 years old, I was the youngest of the troop, composed of students from the Economics department, my father (who was teaching
Looking Back on Kilimanjaro Read More »
This is an older post, but one that I love to revisit as a way to memorialize my father Emile's life and the journey he took to arrive in the United States as a Jewish teenager fleeing Nazi-occupied France. In this time of trial in our nation, where politicians seek to use their positions to
Mythic Moments: The Arrival of the SS Excambion at New York Harbor, January, 1941 Read More »
St. Augustine of Hippo, a figure often remembered by young Catholics for his plea to God during his wild youth, "Give me chastity and continence, but not quite yet," Has left us with a wealth of wisdom. One such quote, which a friend recently shared with me, resonates particularly powerfully in our modern
Love and Do What You Will… Read More »
(Photos by Peter Zelei/istockphoto and John Robert Shepard) This happened across my internet desk one morning, and I stopped everything to read it. The poet Donald Hall wrote a short story about a journey he took post-WWII with his very young bride, driving from Oxford to Greece by way of Yugoslavia. It is one of
Donald Hall: One Road Read More »
