Julia Sneden
Julia Sneden was a writer, friend, wife, mother, Grandmother, care-giver and Senior Women Web's Resident Observer. Her career included editorial work for Sunset Magazine, 20th Century Fox and Universal Studios as well as teaching. Julia was a passionate opponent of this country’s educational system, which she felt was floundering. She will be greatly missed as the heart of this website and this editor's friend of fifty years.
Julia Sneden's archive of articles.
Fireflies And Summer Rain ... Stars at Night, a Million Stars, Hung Low
Julia Sneden wrote: But after all, summer is summer, no matter where you live, and it needs nothing else to recommend it. In any guise, it's a time for living lightly and slowing down to enjoy whatever nature brings you. If you do it right, when Labor Day rolls around you'll have begun to be bored with summer, and you'll be ready for Fall's up-gearing once again. In the meantime, let insouciance reign. more »
Utterly Unsuitable
Julia Sneden writes and rhymes about bathing suit shopping: It's an annual chore for most people, this business of buying a bathing suit. For me, it comes around every six months or so. With older women and men doing water aerobics and swimming laps, wouldn't you think the bathing suit manufacturers would twig to the idea that there’s a huge market out here? We buy suits more often than teenagers do, because we're harder on them more »
Lessons From a Lifetime in the Classroom: YOU and I, ME, US, THEY, THEM, WHATEVER!
Julia Sneden wrote: Pronouns, pronouns, pronouns: does no one these days teach youngsters how to use them? The other day a bemused friend quoted from a sweet letter she had received: "Just seeing your face at Mike and I's wedding..." Unbelievable, you say? Even more unbelievable is the fact that the writer is a graduate student at a major university. The child obviously doesn’t lack brains;what she lacks is proper training in the use of her native tongue. And, perhaps, an introduction to the word "our," which would have been a quick rescue as well as referencing what the ceremony had been all about. more »
Still Learning: Lessons from a Lifetime in the Classroom, Eyes on the Prize
Julia Sneden wrote: I once had the father of a 5-year-old ask me: "On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate my daughter?" When I protested that I wasn't in the business of rating kindergarten children, he persisted: "But if you were? Where would you put her?" "As compared to what or whom?" I asked. "As compared to her academic potential? Her social skills? Her satisfactoriness as a daughter? Her athletic ability?"
"You know what I mean," he said. "Compared to the rest of your class, 1-10, where does she stand?"
There seemed to be no point in giving a serious answer to something like that, and I gave him what he wanted to hear. "She's a 10, of course," I said cheerfully. And mentally I added: "And you, sir, are a minus 3." more »