Lately, I have been re-reading Rudolph M. Bell's How To Do It, Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians — a terrific social history of how Italians viewed their lives from the 15th to the 17th century. Italians were fairly literate then (the publishing industry was booming). There was a proliferation of self-help and advice […]
How To Do It In the Renaissance Read More »
The pleasure of unpacking in a rented house is deciding once and for all to unpack everything, knowing that in due time, one will be moving again. So there is a desire on my part to organize and winnow everything that has sat in a box somewhere in my old attic for thirty years waiting
“Forget me not,” More Friendship Calling Cards Read More »
I have been going through a cigar box of collected calling cards from my great grandmother and I am astonished by the variety of pretty designs combined with the elegant scripts. It just seems such a lovely convention and I am rather sorry we don’t do it anymore. Now we hand out “business cards” which
“From A Friend,” the Art of the Calling Card Read More »
Part of the joy in sifting through archived papers of my family and my own, is coming upon treasures not seen for many years. I was delighted when I uncovered this letter written in calligraphy from Joan Baez. When I was about 11 or 12, my neighbor friend — an older teenage girl named Eddie,
When Joan Baez Wrote Me A Letter Read More »
Mostly because its not my problems that I am solving. I seem to have spent the last five days putting out fires, rebuilding lost websites, reputations, getting other people’s work done, and completely ignoring my own. How does that happen? I am too much of a competent fixer of problems not my own. And as happy
Being Good At Problem Solving is a Problem Read More »
I posted a few field drawings of my mother Jeanette Snyder yesterday, and wanted to add some more of them because I think they are charming — and remind me of the days when field researchers lugged heavy tape recorders, cameras, and note books, just in case all that heavy technology failed, leaving only the
More Field Drawings: Darjeeling, India 1964. Tibetan Lhamo Performances. Read More »
I have been working through my mother Jeanette Snyder's papers — including a cash of drawings, and strips of contact sheet photographs (many that were never developed and for which the negatives disappeared many years ago) on her research of the Tibetan Lhamo in 1964. She rote a wonderful article "The World Beneath the Tents"
Bittersweet: An Afternoon Under the Tent Watching the A Ice Lhamo Perform Read More »
Quite a while ago I wrote about attending a conference in which one of the novels we were discussing was Emil Zola’s terrific novel, Au Bonheur Des Dames (The Ladies Delight.) The novel, set in the late 1860’s, centers on the invention of the department store (based on the historical store Bon Marché in Paris). The owner Mouret
Fiction and Family Meet At the Bon Marche Read More »
My childhood Christmas experience was populated with these lovely vintage Swedish Christmas postcards. They are actually quite small — too small to put into a US post, which is probably why my mother never sent them out. But she saved them from her childhood and so they became a part of mine. Every Christmas they
God Jul! Our Vintage Swedish Christmas Cards Read More »
Among the many letters I have been archiving from my great, great grandparents in Valley City, North Dakota was this unusual gem. A quick postcard from Hilda (which at that time, judging by the hundreds of postcards I have was the early 20th century version of a paper tweet) alerting my great grandmother that she
A Quick Postcard from the State Hospital for Insane. Read More »
