Rich Snowdon – Medium

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Rich Snowdon

I replaced hope with fight

It was summer in San Francisco. Hundreds of us had marched to City Hall for a protest. As the afternoon was ending and the rally was…

3 min readFeb 23, 2021

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Photo of fog overflowing the Golden Gate Bridge and invading the city. You can see one tower of the bridge in muted red, with cables sweeping down and away from it, artistically, and disappearing into the fluffy white. In the background is the bluish charcoal grey skyline of San Francisco. The sky is a dull blue getting ready for twilight. You might think of the fog as a blanket, but it’s chilly rather than cozy.

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Rich Snowdon

That Night

Dogs barking echoes into the woods as twilight comes then goes dark.

1 min readFeb 23, 2021

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Photo of a cabin in the woods, lush ranks of trees on either side, an opening in front of it something like a yard, but scruffy, done by nature. The cabin has warm yellow light in the windows, but the windows have a couple random boards nailed across. What’s that about? Up in the darkened sky is the hazy moon sugaring the scene with misty light.

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Rich Snowdon

Sorrow

Day and night, as we broadcast TV and radio programs into our homes, we’re also beaming them into outer space, where they go traveling at…

4 min readFeb 24, 2021

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A map of the world at night. The continents and other land masses are in bluish-charcoal-grey, making a minimal contrast with the dark black background of the oceans. On the continents are yellow-white dots showing the light of cities and towns. There are big concentrations of light in the expected places: US, Brazil, Europe, India, and China. This graphic makes me think about how amazing this world we’ve created is, and yet, because of the evil humans do, how dark our future is.

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Rich Snowdon

Talk to me

The geese honking in the hollow this morning, sound like barking dogs, with a ragged edge to their mood. I try but I don’t understand…

1 min readApr 13, 2021

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Photo of three domestic geese, white with orange bills, staring directly at us over a woven wattle fence. They each have a stern look on their face. There’s water behind them, then mud, then a wall made of stone blocks. Green branches of a tree are hanging down into the photo with a spot of sun on them.

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Rich Snowdon

Avocets

Scything the water side to side with the curved blade of their bills. Gentle farmers who sow not but reap.

1 min readMar 7, 2021

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Photo of an American avocet against the intense blue background of the water she’s wading in. Her face is white upfront but transitions from her eyes on back over her head and down her neck into a reddish-orange brown, or light russet. Her body is white with black wings which have a white stripe on them. She’s got long, thin ballerina legs. Her bill is dripping water, and some stringy bits of weeds are hanging there. She’s just harvested a tiny red water creature, perfect for breakfast.

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Rich Snowdon

360 Reviews in Activist Nonprofits: All-around Trouble

Replace them with direct conversation or nest them in direct conversation

24 min readMar 5, 2021

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This graphic is set against a black background. In the center it says “360-degree Feedback.” Around it is a circle with six segments listing who gives the feedback: supervisors, colleagues, self, subordinates, suppliers, customers. Each is set in a different pastel color; mauve, green, pink, yellow, purple, blue. I put this image here to anchor in the basic idea of a 360 in case anyone is vague on what it is. But I wrote this post for people who are all too familiar with 360s.

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Rich Snowdon

The Good Samaritan Dumbed Down

Missing the point.

4 min readFeb 25, 2021

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Drawing of the Good Samaritan offering drink to the man fallen at the hand of thieves. The bodies are draw with thick black lines. The man on the ground has a white cloth wrapped around his pelvic area, otherwise he is unclothed. His head is resting on two stacked rocks. The Samaritan, kneeling, is wearing a long blue vest-like garment over a flaxen-colored shirt. He has a russet beard and dull-red turban-like head gear. The background is plain with no detail, making the figures more striking.

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Rich Snowdon

Hand-made, Home-made Soul

When I was a kid in church I was taught that my soul was invisible, immaterial, insubstantial, and incorporeal — all adjectives of…

2 min readFeb 25, 2021

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Photo or graphic of an empty white-out. The center is pure white, like what people talk about seeing when they’re dying, you know, “Go to the light.” But for me, this feels like utter emptiness. Around the center are drops of white against a background of soft gray. I could have picked a pure white graphic to illustrate nothingness, but this one felt more compelling to me — somethings pointing to nothing. I also looked at graphics of blackouts. but my childhood God was so absolutely white.

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Rich Snowdon

The Window Story

Not happily every after, not even happily for long

2 min readFeb 24, 2021

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An artistic graffiti of the word HOPE, in caps, filling two-thirds of the space. In the background are 29 geometric shapes, smooth and jagged, in different bright colors. Sounds like a lot, but it feels just right. The letters of HOPE are each a single color, with decorations on them along an edge. A group of five small squares on the H, five small half circles on the O, and a wave along the back spine of both the P and the E. So this is a symbol of the pretty picture I was talking about.

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Rich Snowdon

Blessed Event

Big bushy Bishop pines, dignified attendants of the scene, have always been at home here wrapped in the cold and the fog of our seaside…

1 min readFeb 24, 2021

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Photo of six pine trees in the foreground, with more ranged behind them immediately and off into the distance. The trunks go up ten to fifteen feet before the branches break out into a bushy crown. Bishops have thick, sturdy, heavy cones that hold themselves tightly together. They’re a work of art. You might imagine a carpenter made them. You wouldn’t ever want one to fall on your head.

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Rich Snowdon

Rich Snowdon

Author of: Asking More of Love Than We've Ever Asked of it. Free at: www.askingmoreoflove.com.

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