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Author Archives: James Thomas Snyder
Tool of the trade
This is an L.C. Smith and Corona Company Standard Typewriter in the collection of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. It is a training model for children: instead of letters printed on the keys, illustrations of animals correspond with … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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Belief from the inside out
The Pulitzer Prize awarded last month to Carla Power’s If the Oceans Were Ink, an outsider’s meditation on The Holy Qur’an with the help of a learned Islamic scholar, signals a subtle but seismic shift in our intellectual world. It joins other … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Politics and Political Theory, Public Diplomacy, Uncategorized
Tagged Books, Carla Power, faith, interfaith, Islam, Muslims, politics, Qur'an, religion, Umma
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Why I Love Comic Strips
This comic strip, a Sunday installment of Peanuts by Charles Schulz, ranks as my favorite above all others. I can’t explain why. Maybe it’s the incredibly loaded conversations that don’t seem to go anywhere or resolve themselves. Maybe it’s the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged berkeley breathed, bloom county, calvin and hobbes, charles schulz, comic strips, Doonesbury, garry trudeau
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Joan Didion, Californian
Joan Didion seized my attention early, before I wrote for myself. Assigned “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” in high school, I read with amazement her cool, detached descriptions of things I recognized growing up in California. I graduated quickly to “The White … Continue reading
The Power of Babel
For most of the last nine months I have had the extraordinary benefit of intensive foreign language training. I had resources, faculty, structure and time all to my benefit: online and computer resources, a diverse faculty from many countries to learn different … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged China, Chinese, Cultural Diplomacy, Facebook, foreign language, language, language acquisition, Public Diplomacy
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What matters most
A recent opinion article by Roger Cohen about a book and polling data demonstrating a gulf in transatlantic public opinion struck me as a windy but representative example of the unnecessary polarization in our political debate. We find more visceral examples of this bifurcated outrage … Continue reading
What LEGO Taught Me
For my birthday my wife bought me the LEGO kit Benny’s Spaceship. For anyone who’s seen The Lego Movie you’ll get the joke. It’s the outrageous monster outer space cruiser the little blue 1980s LEGO astronaut with the busted helmet … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged aesthetics and politics, architecture, art, engineering, LEGO, The LEGO Movie
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