Midori Snyder's Blog, page 9

A New Cover For Hannah's Garden

Here is the almost finished cover for Hannah's Garden, created by the very talented Jennifer Bruce  <jbruce.art@gmail.com>. I am so in awe of how great it turned out. There will be a few more additions (we need the wild hares in this!) but hopefully, I can get the kindle edition out in the near future.

A New Cover For Hnnah's Garden

Here is the almost finished cover for Hannah's Garden, created by the very talented Jennifer Bruce  <jbruce.art@gmail.com>. I am so in awe of how great it turned out. There will be a few more additions (we need the wild hares in this!) but hopefully, I can get the kindle edition out in the near future.

Unicorns and Threads of my Childhood.

I was about 12 when I discovered the basket of woolen embroidery threads and decided to create this charming unicorn. I remember thinking how wonderful it was to create such a creature -- and then, as life has it, I was drawn away to other activities and it sat for over 50 years in the basket. Taking it out now has me thinking about finishing it .. and why not? My grandchildren love the image, and have been giving me advice on colors (one wants a pink Unicorn, another a purple version.) I'll play with it over the next month and see if I can finish something that will satisfy at one or two of them.

The threads belonged to my great grandmother and grandmother -- from a time when they too did so much embroidery. So it feels right, to be finishing now -- if only to keep those old skills I haven't used in many years new again. 

 

 

Creating in a Time of Chaos

Weaving in a time of war and chaos...following Tolkien's ideas of sub-creation in difficult times: "���Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter.���

 

An odd occurrence, as I happened to get a photo of myself working on the back of loom, from the ever present mirrored doors of my closet.  

The Novels of Mythic and Perilous Travel Across Borders

"Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.���

--Cesare Pavese

Here is a short list of my favorite novels that I have reviewed over the last ten years that in many ways embody the sensibilities of Pavese's brilliant observation:

 

Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera is an amazing and haunting work. Makina is given a note from her mother to take to an older brother who has disappeared into the North. Along the way, Makina encounters ambiguous  helpers: the thug who mysteriously owes her mother, the trading of favors with a coyote, the strangers who pull her along the road, the rivers, and mountain passes, and then the cities themselves, full of mazes, flags, and shops until she arrives at a place to discover her brother, changed utterly.   Read more > >

 

Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo, opens with a spare compelling prose, like a darkly lived fairy tale, hinting at the ghostly journey to come in an altered landscape. In late August Juan travels to Comala, a town so hot and dry, popular myth has it that "when people die and go to hell, they return for a blanket." Juan is greeted by Eduviges Dyada, an old friend of his mother's, and quickly learns that Pedro P��ramo, the father he is seeking, is long dead. But the conversation takes an odd turn, as Eduviges tells Juan that his mother had told her just that day to expect him. When Juan tells her his mother is dead, Eduviges shrugs and responds, "So that was why her voice was so weak." Read more > >

 

 Thaliad by Marly Youmans composes her story in free verse reminiscent of heroic epics (a sort of Homer meets Gerald Manley Hopkins), Thaliad recounts the aftermath of a fiery apocalypse and the dangerous journey of a band of children led by a girl whose prophetic visions are guiding them. They seek a mystical a sanctuary on the edge of a lake where, even as children, they must confront the challenges of re-creating a world illuminated by hope and love. In this stunning narrative the eternal is always close at hand in both violent and transfigurative  powers.  Read more >>

 

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obrecht is an astonishing novel, set in what was once Yugoslavia over the course of WWI, WWII, and the recent wars that resulted in its dissection into new territories. War forms an continuous backdrop throughout the novel, often as a distant but deeply felt anxiety and sometimes exploding on the community. Tavelling is a hazard as boundaries shift with the conflicts and "our city," or "our fields" abruptly become someone else's property. Identities shift too as the long married wife whose origin, faith, or language suddenly mark her as an enemy to the new state. Nadia, the novel's protagonist, is a young pediatrician who sets out on a perilous journey, crossing newly minted borders to understand the reasons for her beloved grandfather's strange disappearance and his death alone in a remote village. Read more > >

Naginata Training 1929.

 

 

Beaded Treasures from Great Great Grandmother.

 

I love this photograph, and the lovely calm of the young woman. and yes, the beautiful beaded embroidery.

My great great grandmother immigrated as a small child with her family from Sweden to Northern Wisconsin. They lived and farmed for a while in Ojibwa country -- before moving father west to North Dakota. I have the beaded moccasins with a leather that she wore as a small child. Such sweet work on these little shoes.

 

 

Ah Weh Eyu: Pretty Flower from the Seneca Nation

 

I love this photograph, and the lovely calm of the young woman. and yes, the beautiful beaded embroidery. 

 

Ah-Weh-Eyu (Pretty Flower), from the Seneca nation, 1908.


Sources: J.L. Blessing, published by The Blessing Studio, Salamanca, New York, United States / Wikimedia Commons

Emile as a Young Soldier

My Jewish father was 16 when he fled Nazi Occupied France, and arrived in the US. At 17 he enlisted in the Navy and proceeded to serve in almost every major Naval battle field, including Normandy, where he fought to liberate France. His last engagement was in Okinawa, where a Kamikaze jet fighter bombed the destroyer and cast him, along with others into the sea. He floated, holding onto debris for close to 24 hours before being rescued. He was, like many men of WWII modest and quiet about his service. He lost good friends, and he brought home to their families the last papers and items from their lives at sea.

 

Creating in a Time of Chaos

Weaving in a time of war and chaos...following Tolkien's ideas of sub-creation in difficult times: "���Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter.���