Category Archives: Uncategorized

Expedition (Blogging Black Lamb and Grey Falcon)

Posted on August 2, 2021 by James Thomas Snyder

“There was everywhere the sweet-smelling scrub, and thickets of oleander, and the grey-blue swords of aloes; and on the lower slopes were olive terraces and lines of cypresses, spurting up with a vitality strange to see in what is black … Continue reading →

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UPDATE: The Price of Promotion – Diversity and Retention

Posted on November 22, 2019 by James Thomas Snyder

This is a follow-up to my earlier article, “The Price of Promotion,” which criticized the U.S. Foreign Service promotion system.  The following analysis is based on the Department of State Bureau of human Resources “Foreign Service Promotion Statistics by Cone, … Continue reading →

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The Price of Promotion

Posted on September 24, 2019 by James Thomas Snyder

The State Department’s employee evaluation process is worse than terrible.  It is no better than a gamble. Consider this career choice: you are a second-tour FS-04 consular officer serving your country in an American embassy abroad.  You have tenure, which … Continue reading →

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The Cost of Lies

Posted on September 17, 2019 by James Thomas Snyder

On April 26, 1986, Reactor #4 at a Soviet nuclear power station in northern Ukraine exploded.  As with almost everything in Soviet history, that is about all anyone can agree on, but it was enough.  The worst nuclear accident on … Continue reading →

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Tool of the trade

Posted on July 3, 2016 by James Thomas Snyder

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 →

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Belief from the inside out

Posted on May 8, 2016 by James Thomas Snyder

Carla Power’s Pulitizer Prize-shortlisted 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 unmistakable indications that mostly secular Western … Continue reading →

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Why I Love Comic Strips

Posted on January 31, 2016 by James Thomas Snyder

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 →

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Joan Didion, Californian

Posted on November 27, 2015 by James Thomas Snyder

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 →

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The Power of Babel

Posted on September 16, 2015 by James Thomas Snyder

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 →

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To Slip the Surly Bonds of Earth

Posted on May 26, 2014 by James Thomas Snyder

Not far outside Paris stands one of the many monuments to the almost innumerable dead of World War I. This one is not unusual marking the graves of the many Americans who fought and died on European soil during that conflict. … Continue reading →

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