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Yes! You have reached Diane Joy Schmidt, storyteller and imagist.  Be sure to visit the new independent, online, state-wide New Mexico Jewish Journal now launching! We have just received a  NM Local News Fund Accelerator Grant, now part of the Press Forward national initiative to rebuild local news, and are pleased to be included with other local news organizations across the state in this important initiative to revitalize local news.  We also now have a new fiscal sponsor, New Mexico Foundation, for more information, go here.
      To read about my semi-autobiographical screenplay, “Turquoise Mountain” and “On This Night” my graphic narrative, both winning industry awards, visit the About page. Scroll below to see latest columns, articles, and picture stories! 

Single Commentary 2024 Rockower Award Coyote Tosses the Stars

The Fifth Question

Coyote Tosses The Stars

What’s the big deal about hate violence?

WE ARE CALLED TO DO MORE  Spiritual Perspectives April, 2023 Passover …Viktor Frankl said, “If we expect something higher of ourselves, we will reach what we are actually capable of. If we aim only for what we are capable of, we are likely to achieve beneath our abilities.” This should make overachievers feel good that, even if they never achieve their most grandiose goals they will have contributed to the healing of the world, rather than adding to its problems. 

WOUNDED HEALING Anthologized  Published January 23, 2023 by Memoir Monday: a weekly newsletter featuring the best personal essays from around the web.  Tikkun Magazine, Highlights of Tikkun. Essay, printed in the Emancipatory Spirituality  section of the magazine, film analysis of  the Holocaust film, Three Minutes – A Lengthening, and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah: A journey, a song.

New U.S. government settlement offer for individual Navajo farmers Navajo Times,  11/10/2022 Mass action tort litigation settlement offer seven years after Gold King Mine spill to individuals.

NDN Kars, Windshield Cracks, How the Light Gets In.” Excellence in Arts Criticism, Rockower Award, 2021

\A Conversation with a Front-line Radiologist and Sephardic Ancestry Seeker Excellence in Social Justice and Humanitarian Reporting, Rockower Award, 2022

Speakers: Irony of Chaco Park withdrawal proposal

 

Passover is the practice of liberation

START-UP NATURE: How We Can Help Nature and the Environment in Israel The oldest nature society in Israel asks Americans to stop planting European pines there for a more ecological approach. Link Winter 2021.

Who by Fire and Who by Water  Column Fall 2021

An Interview with Maria Espinosa   LILITH Magazine. Arts and Entertainment Award, Society Professional Journalists

Meeting Rabbi Celia Surget Profile Fall 2021 Religion Reporting, Society Professional Journalists

PICTURE STORY: “Red-tailed Hawk,”  Another Chicago Magazine Photographer/Writer First Place, National Federation Press Women

Picture Stories: Instructions for How to Succeed in Seventh Grade and  Spider  in Sweet:  A Literary Confection, Issue 11.2. 2019.

Picture Story:  The Encounter: Budapest, in  Geometry,  V. 5, New Zealand.

2022 Awards Society Professional Journalists Top of the Rockies Regional Newspapers: 3 awards, 2 for “An Interview with Maria Espinosa,”  Lilith Magazine, and NM Jewish Link, in both large and small newsrooms; and the third, in Religion, in large newsrooms  for “Meeting Rabbi Celia Surget.”  

2022 First Place, Excellence in Communications Individual Award, for most awarded entries, including 8 for the NM Jewish Link and 1 for the Gallup Independent, for 2 columns. 

NDN Kars, Windshield Cracks, How the Light Gets In

Frozen II: A Heroine Fights Historical Denial

Jojo Rabbit, an anti-hate satire for our time

Albuquerque 8th Graders Visit a Concentration Camp in Poland for their Peace-building Studies

The debate “Left Vs. Right: The Battle for the Soul of American Jewry”

Asylum Seekers Cared for by Jewish Volunteers in Albuquerque; A humanitarian crises driven by Climate Change.  NMPW 2020  1st Place for Photo Essay.


National Federation of Press Women Awards: 2021 First Place, Writer-Photographer, “
“Red-tailed Hawk,”  Another Chicago Magazine.  2020  First Place,  Photographic Essay, for “Asylum Seekers,”  and Second Place,  Writer-Photographer, for “The Encounter,  Budapest.” New Mexico Press Women Awards 2020 include First Place, Writer-Photographer, “The Encounter,  Budapest,” First Place, Photographic Essay, “Asylum Seekers,” Second Place, Poetry, for “Instructions,” and Honorable Mention, Short Story, for “Spider,” 3 of these are my first published graphic non-fiction stories with photos in literary journals in 2019.

‘”Fresh Start,” a personal essay, is in Issue  79, Summer/Fall 2019   of  Kaleidoscope. “Her work was selected from among more than 350 submissions considered for publication.”

2019 awards:  American Jewish Press Association 38th Annual Simon Rockower Awards, Foundation For Ethnic Understanding Award for Excellence in Interfaith Relations Reporting, 2nd Place, “The Pittsburgh shooting, Our Community Unites in Response” New Mexico Jewish Link, Fall/Winter 2018.

Society of Professional Journalists, Top of the Rockies, Columns/Personal, 2020 1st Place, for Waking Up, Your One Wild and Precious Life, and Driving Christmas Eve. 2019, 3rd Place, for three columns “What we must do,” “Can we change before it’s too late?” and “The Eighth Night,” for the Gallup Independent, circulation 10,000-29,999.  

New Mexico Press Women, 1st Place, Religion article, “Journey of a Torah Scroll,” 2nd place Sweepstakes, and 6 additional awards, including 2nd place, Personality profile, for “Stanley Rosebud Rosen, This Tumult that Teaches Us,”  3rd place, columns, for the NM Link,  and Editorial Column, 3rd place, for “Trust and Betrayal,”  Gallup Independent.

MORE Recent essays and articles:

Asylum Seekers Cared for by Jewish Volunteers in Albuquerque; A humanitarian crises driven by Climate Change  1st place, National Federation Press Women, photo essay. 

State Auditor Brian Colón, A Force of Nature  

There’s a feeling of personal power that radiates from New Mexico State Auditor Brian Colón. Meeting him is something like the rush of taking off on a jet plane. There’s also a sense of bashert, of things happening as they (continue)

Waking Up

Oscar was content to bury his head in the sand and ignore the loud-mouthed ostrich who wanted all the sand dunes. But when the loud-mouthed ostrich took Oscar’s sand dune away, he couldn’t bury his head in it anymore. He finally got mad and joined in the fight. He got the other ostriches to out-yell the loud mouthed ostrich. Things are not so clear today.  (continue)

Your one wild and precious life

 

TRUST AND BETRAYAL 
“Were the churchwomen’s deaths in vain? Have we betrayed their memory? We are going down the same path in this country that led to civil war in El Salvador. Betrayal takes many forms. Earth herself must feel betrayed by its trust in us, her children.”

AN INTERVIEW WITH MIDDLE EAST EXPERT AND FORMER CIA OFFICER BOB BAER   December, 2018

https://drive.google.com/open?id=19H3nUYLiO2LDdZNaSUSBGFQ7qe6pMsVd

SOUL BLUES

SOUL BLUES

For Yom Kippur

After certain experiences in my life, I was never able to be at home in my own skin, I felt an undercurrent of unease, that I had no right to be here.

Stanley Rosebud Rosen, This Tumult that Teaches Us .   Fall, 2018
I found Stanley Rosen sitting in the lunch room talking with Reuben Hersh, 90, the famous mathematician. The two of them together, both with slightly unkempt hair, looked like brothers—clutching their walkers, they were rocking uproariously with laughter at some reminiscence of history that they shared.
        As we listened in the darkening room to his progressive philosophy and the drama of a labor organizer of the 20th century, every name and date cried out to speak its own story, and it became clear why it is critically important to understand this history now.

I’M THE CHILD
June 2, 2018 Spiritual Perspectives, Gallup Independent

Lauren told us to start writing, with the simple words, “I’m the child of . . .”

What We Must Do

Can We Change Before It’s Too Late?

Can We Change Before It’s Too Late? 

A Visit with Rabbi Evelyn Baz Winter Vol. 47, No. 4 December 2017

Muslims and Jews Unite To Support Immigrants

Muslims and Jews Unite To Support Immigrants

Fresh Start

What Chanting a Prayer Might Just Do For You

The First Shall Be Last – One for the money

Trump, the Religious

Swastika graffiti on UNM campus, how headlines got it wrong, and why it matters

Studies on Dementia – Q&A with Dr. Gary Rosenberg

 

Evelyn Rosenberg and Her Explosive Art

The Squirrel Who Got Too Lucky

There Once Was A Woman Who Was Apologetic

Rainbow near Canyon de Chelly Photo © Diane Joy Schmidt
Rainbow near Canyon de Chelly Photo © Diane Joy Schmidt

Waters of Babylon “. . . the coming of the Jewish Messiah, the coming of the Moslem Mahdi, the return of the Christian Christ – like a bad Western, all three gangs are converging on the same town at high noon, gunning for Armageddon.” Posted,  revised, Times of Israel, July, 2016. Published Gallup Independent 2013.

Spirit and Coincidence

10. Opening night 2 DSC_0199

Fractured Faiths: Spanish Judaism, The Inquisition, and New World Identities, ground-breaking and controversial exhibit at the New Mexico History Museum.  The Inquisition followed Jews to the New World. Some fled to what is today Northern New Mexico, and became insular secret communities hidden within the Catholic society, and descendants today are identifying with the customs they retained for over half a millennia.

Hadassah Apr16 P52 Fractured FaithsHadassah Magazine Apr/May 2016 Fractured Faiths exhibit opening in Santa Fe – Evidence of the Inquisition in the New World. Brief Review, page 52, featured.

Spain standingAfter 523 years, Spain offers citizenship to descendants of those who fled inquisition
and reaches out to the Sephardic/Anusim/Crypto-Jewish community of New Mexico, 524 years after the Inquisition, to offer the right of return and opportunity to apply for Spanish citizenship.

Private briefing at the White House with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel B. Shapiro for members of the Jewish press on November 9, 2015 photo © Diane Joy Schmidt
Private briefing at the White House with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel B. Shapiro for members of the Jewish press on November 9, 2015 following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with President Obama that morning. First-place, Single Photo, NMPW, 2016

Experience of a Lifetime: Attending the General Assembly and AJPA Conference
White House private briefing with Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro following Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama, for members of the Jewish press  There were body scanners and guards with bored looking guard dogs and plain clothed men on stairwells sporting plastic earbuds with muscles tight under their suits . . 

IMG_4712
Shalom House with JCC in background. Albuquerque, NM

Albuquerque – Is it a place where Jews can retire?    Albuquerque’s Shalom House is among the dwindling number of affordable senior-housing developments in the U.S. There is a vacuum in the Albuquerque Jewish community for affordable housing here. Journalist-in-Aging Fellowship.

LIGHT BEING Photo Credit 8.21.57 Untitled Project (1) May 10 2015 3 img2873
1st Place, Personal Columns, Society of Professional Journalists 2016.

The Merkabah and the Exegesis of a License Plate
A friend has become a zealot, Israelis are being stabbed, then, a license plate reveals an answer. “It was an older model unwashed car, with bird crud on the window . . .” Personal Columns, first-place, SPJ 2016

#10b. playing w sparklers PJ event
1st Place, 2016 NMPW Specialty articles: Religion – PJ Library Pajama Party a Bouyant Success

“PJ Library Pajama Party a buoyant success” Oct. 12, 2015 “This is one of the main ways I can get him around other Jewish kids…I just can’t afford to belong to a synagogue…when I got the invitation from PJ Library…” Photo story/report

Bee and flowers IMG_1052 copy
1st Place, Personal Columns, Society of Professional Journalists 2016.

“Who by Fire: Reflections on Tashlich and Unetanneh Tokef” Sept. 19, 2015 Listening to Leonard Cohen and casting away guilt allows a dream to surface that relates a trauma that is revealed to be the basis of his song and this prayer told at the New Year. Personal Columns, first-place, SPJ 2016

Frank Jerome Christophe Bubbles Dec 29 2014
1st Place, Personal Columns, Society of Professional Journalists 2016.

1st Place Personal Columns, Society of Professional Journalists 2016. Read here: Serendipity and the Power of Daydreams   The 3 personal columns for the award included this one and Who by Fire and The Merkabah and the Exegesis of a License Plate


Frank Morgan Rabbi Harry Rosenfeld h text© Diane Schmidt_0680 10.12.14“Healing the Wounds of History, The Long Walk and the Holocaust”
Society of Professional Journalists award, Top of the Rockies, first-place in Reporting: General Education, for Gallup Independent daily newspaper, 2015. <29,999 circ. Navajos and Jews discuss healing from genocide. Report, published 2014.

1. © Raise your hands copy“The Anti-Israel Boycott,Divestment and Sanctions Movement Arrives at UNM”  TWO First-place for Excellence in Reporting, Photography, all circulation newspapers and magazines, American Jewish Press Association Rockower Award, 2015, for the New Mexico Jewish Link. Also two first-place, New Mexico Press Association Communication Awards, Photography/Writing category and Specialty articles: Religion. Report and photos, published 2014.

“UNM’s Graduate Student Association Votes to Rescind Anti-Israel Resolution” Against odds, the BDS resolution is rescinded. First-place for Reporting, 2015, circ. >15,000, American Jewish Press Association, Rockower Award, for the New Mexico Jewish Link. Report.

rz JUSTUS I CAN MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE BY PLANTING A GARDEN DSC_0724“An Answer So Simple, I Couldn’t See It”
Stumbling upon a children’s art show in a grocery store rekindles a sense of meaning and purpose. 2015 Society of Professional Journalists award, Top of the Rockies, second-place for Personal Columns, <29,999 circ., as published in Gallup Independent daily newspaper, Sunday Religion page, Spiritual  Perspectives column, contributor since 2009. Column.

Zach and Taina Benjamin resz IMG_1192 copyUp close and personal, a little, with new Federation Director Zach Benjamin. Oct. 27, 2015 New Mexico welcomes new Federation director. Profile.

Email:  dianeschmidt22@hotmail.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/diane-schmidt/56/315/1a5/
Twitter: @dianeschmidt22
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dianejoyschmidt

Earlier Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine cover stories and Chicago Tribune articles, and articles published in the Navajo Times, Gallup Independent and New Mexico Jewish Link, from 2010 to 2015,  to be added.

chicago-exhibition-cover-scn-comb

The Chicago Exhibition photos  by Diane Schmidt of Michele Fitzsimmons – LA: Melrose 1985. Top Ten Best-Seller List, Chicago Tribune. Showcased in “Chicago Classic Photos” book, Richard Cahan, Chicago: City Files Press, 2017.

 

Excellence in Arts Criticism Rockower Award,  “NDN Kars, Windshield Cracks, How the Light Gets In.”

A Conversation with a Front-line Radiologist and Sephardic Ancestry Seeker  New Mexico Jewish Link. American Jewish Press Association Rockower Award, Social Justice and Humanitarian Reporting, 2022. Seven Rockowers in  seven years, .

Navajo Times:
New Bill sets aside 3.5 Billion for Vets Exposed to Toxic Chemicals 

FBI releases list of missing Indigenous in New Mexico and Navajo Nation

Speakers: Irony of Chaco Park withdrawal proposal

Passover is the practice of liberation

START-UP NATURE: How We Can Help Nature and the Environment in Israel The oldest nature society in Israel asks Americans to stop planting European pines there for a more ecological approach. Link Winter 2021.

Who by Fire and Who by Water  Column Fall 2021

An Interview with Maria Espinosa   LILITH Magazine.

Meeting Rabbi Celia Surget Profile Fall 2021

PICTURE STORY: “Red-tailed Hawk,”  Another Chicago Magazine

Picture Stories: Instructions for How to Succeed in Seventh Grade and  Spider  in Sweet:  A Literary Confection, Issue 11.2. 2019.

Picture Story:  The Encounter: Budapest, in  Geometry,  V. 5, New Zealand.

2022 Awards Society Professional Journalists Top of the Rockies Regional Newspapers: 3 awards, 2 for “An Interview with Maria Espinosa,”  Lilith Magazine, and NM Jewish Link, in both large and small newsrooms; and the third, in Religion, in large newsrooms  for “Meeting Rabbi Celia Surget.”  

2022 First Place, Excellence in Communications Individual Award, for most awarded entries, including 8 for the NM Jewish Link and 1 for the Gallup Independent, for 2 columns. 

NDN Kars, Windshield Cracks, How the Light Gets In

Frozen II: A Heroine Fights Historical Denial

Jojo Rabbit, an anti-hate satire for our time

Albuquerque 8th Graders Visit a Concentration Camp in Poland for their Peace-building Studies

The debate “Left Vs. Right: The Battle for the Soul of American Jewry”

Asylum Seekers Cared for by Jewish Volunteers in Albuquerque; A humanitarian crises driven by Climate ChangeNMPW 2020  1st Place for Photo Essay.


National Federation of Press Women Awards: 2021 First Place, Writer-Photographer, “
“Red-tailed Hawk,”  Another Chicago Magazine.  2020  First Place,  Photographic Essay, for “Asylum Seekers,”  and Second Place,  Writer-Photographer, for “The Encounter,  Budapest.” New Mexico Press Women Awards 2020 include First Place, Writer-Photographer, “The Encounter,  Budapest,” First Place, Photographic Essay, “Asylum Seekers,” Second Place, Poetry, for “Instructions,” and Honorable Mention, Short Story, for “Spider,” 3 of these are my first published graphic non-fiction stories with photos in literary journals in 2019.

‘”Fresh Start, a personal essay, is in Issue  79, Summer/Fall 2019   of  Kaleidoscope. “Her work was selected from among more than 350 submissions considered for publication.”

2019 awards:  American Jewish Press Association 38th Annual Simon Rockower Awards, Foundation For Ethnic Understanding Award for Excellence in Interfaith Relations Reporting, 2nd Place, “The Pittsburgh shooting, Our Community Unites in Response” New Mexico Jewish Link, Fall/Winter 2018.

Society of Professional Journalists, Top of the Rockies, Columns/Personal, 2020 1st Place, for Waking Up, Your One Wild and Precious Life, and Driving Christmas Eve. 2019, 3rd Place, for three columns “What we must do,” “Can we change before it’s too late?” and “The Eighth Night,” for the Gallup Independent, circulation 10,000-29,999.  

New Mexico Press Women, 1st Place, Religion article, “Journey of a Torah Scroll,” 2nd place Sweepstakes, and 6 additional awards, including 2nd place, Personality profile, for “Stanley Rosebud Rosen, This Tumult that Teaches Us,”  3rd place, columns, for the NM Link,  and Editorial Column, 3rd place, for “Trust and Betrayal,”  Gallup Independent.

MORE Recent essays and articles:

Asylum Seekers Cared for by Jewish Volunteers in Albuquerque; A humanitarian crises driven by Climate Change  1st place, National Federation Press Women, photo essay. 

State Auditor Brian Colón, A Force of Nature  

There’s a feeling of personal power that radiates from New Mexico State Auditor Brian Colón. Meeting him is something like the rush of taking off on a jet plane. There’s also a sense of bashert, of things happening as they (continue)

Waking Up

Oscar was content to bury his head in the sand and ignore the loud-mouthed ostrich who wanted all the sand dunes. But when the loud-mouthed ostrich took Oscar’s sand dune away, he couldn’t bury his head in it anymore. He finally got mad and joined in the fight. He got the other ostriches to out-yell the loud mouthed ostrich. Things are not so clear today.  (continue)

Your one wild and precious life

 

TRUST AND BETRAYAL 
“Were the churchwomen’s deaths in vain? Have we betrayed their memory? We are going down the same path in this country that led to civil war in El Salvador. Betrayal takes many forms. Earth herself must feel betrayed by its trust in us, her children.”

AN INTERVIEW WITH MIDDLE EAST EXPERT AND FORMER CIA OFFICER BOB BAER   December, 2018

https://drive.google.com/open?id=19H3nUYLiO2LDdZNaSUSBGFQ7qe6pMsVd

SOUL BLUES

SOUL BLUES

For Yom Kippur

After certain experiences in my life, I was never able to be at home in my own skin, I felt an undercurrent of unease, that I had no right to be here.

Stanley Rosebud Rosen, This Tumult that Teaches Us .   Fall, 2018
I found Stanley Rosen sitting in the lunch room talking with Reuben Hersh, 90, the famous mathematician. The two of them together, both with slightly unkempt hair, looked like brothers—clutching their walkers, they were rocking uproariously with laughter at some reminiscence of history that they shared.
        As we listened in the darkening room to his progressive philosophy and the drama of a labor organizer of the 20th century, every name and date cried out to speak its own story, and it became clear why it is critically important to understand this history now.

I’M THE CHILD
June 2, 2018 Spiritual Perspectives, Gallup Independent

Lauren told us to start writing, with the simple words, “I’m the child of . . .”

What We Must Do

Can We Change Before It’s Too Late?

Can We Change Before It’s Too Late? 

A Visit with Rabbi Evelyn Baz Winter Vol. 47, No. 4 December 2017

Muslims and Jews Unite To Support Immigrants

Muslims and Jews Unite To Support Immigrants

Fresh Start

What Chanting a Prayer Might Just Do For You

The First Shall Be Last – One for the money

Trump, the Religious

Swastika graffiti on UNM campus, how headlines got it wrong, and why it matters

Studies on Dementia – Q&A with Dr. Gary Rosenberg

 

Evelyn Rosenberg and Her Explosive Art

The Squirrel Who Got Too Lucky

There Once Was A Woman Who Was Apologetic

Rainbow near Canyon de Chelly Photo © Diane Joy Schmidt
Rainbow near Canyon de Chelly Photo © Diane Joy Schmidt

Waters of Babylon “. . . the coming of the Jewish Messiah, the coming of the Moslem Mahdi, the return of the Christian Christ – like a bad Western, all three gangs are converging on the same town at high noon, gunning for Armageddon.” Posted,  revised, Times of Israel, July, 2016. Published Gallup Independent 2013.

Spirit and Coincidence

10. Opening night 2 DSC_0199

Fractured Faiths: Spanish Judaism, The Inquisition, and New World Identities, ground-breaking and controversial exhibit at the New Mexico History Museum.  The Inquisition followed Jews to the New World. Some fled to what is today Northern New Mexico, and became insular secret communities hidden within the Catholic society, and descendants today are identifying with the customs they retained for over half a millennia.

Hadassah Apr16 P52 Fractured FaithsHadassah Magazine Apr/May 2016 Fractured Faiths exhibit opening in Santa Fe – Evidence of the Inquisition in the New World. Brief Review, page 52, featured.

Spain standingAfter 523 years, Spain offers citizenship to descendants of those who fled inquisition
and reaches out to the Sephardic/Anusim/Crypto-Jewish community of New Mexico, 524 years after the Inquisition, to offer the right of return and opportunity to apply for Spanish citizenship.

Private briefing at the White House with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel B. Shapiro for members of the Jewish press on November 9, 2015 photo © Diane Joy Schmidt
Private briefing at the White House with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel B. Shapiro for members of the Jewish press on November 9, 2015 following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with President Obama that morning. First-place, Single Photo, NMPW, 2016

Experience of a Lifetime: Attending the General Assembly and AJPA Conference
White House private briefing with Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro following Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama, for members of the Jewish press  There were body scanners and guards with bored looking guard dogs and plain clothed men on stairwells sporting plastic earbuds with muscles tight under their suits . . 

IMG_4712
Shalom House with JCC in background. Albuquerque, NM

Albuquerque – Is it a place where Jews can retire?    Albuquerque’s Shalom House is among the dwindling number of affordable senior-housing developments in the U.S. There is a vacuum in the Albuquerque Jewish community for affordable housing here. Journalist-in-Aging Fellowship.

LIGHT BEING Photo Credit 8.21.57 Untitled Project (1) May 10 2015 3 img2873
1st Place, Personal Columns, Society of Professional Journalists 2016.

The Merkabah and the Exegesis of a License Plate
A friend has become a zealot, Israelis are being stabbed, then, a license plate reveals an answer. “It was an older model unwashed car, with bird crud on the window . . .” Personal Columns, first-place, SPJ 2016

#10b. playing w sparklers PJ event
1st Place, 2016 NMPW Specialty articles: Religion – PJ Library Pajama Party a Bouyant Success

“PJ Library Pajama Party a buoyant success” Oct. 12, 2015 “This is one of the main ways I can get him around other Jewish kids…I just can’t afford to belong to a synagogue…when I got the invitation from PJ Library…” Photo story/report

Bee and flowers IMG_1052 copy
1st Place, Personal Columns, Society of Professional Journalists 2016.

“Who by Fire: Reflections on Tashlich and Unetanneh Tokef” Sept. 19, 2015 Listening to Leonard Cohen and casting away guilt allows a dream to surface that relates a trauma that is revealed to be the basis of his song and this prayer told at the New Year. Personal Columns, first-place, SPJ 2016

Frank Jerome Christophe Bubbles Dec 29 2014
1st Place, Personal Columns, Society of Professional Journalists 2016.

1st Place Personal Columns, Society of Professional Journalists 2016. Read here: Serendipity and the Power of Daydreams   The 3 personal columns for the award included this one and Who by Fire and The Merkabah and the Exegesis of a License Plate


Frank Morgan Rabbi Harry Rosenfeld h text© Diane Schmidt_0680 10.12.14“Healing the Wounds of History, The Long Walk and the Holocaust”
Society of Professional Journalists award, Top of the Rockies, first-place in Reporting: General Education, for Gallup Independent daily newspaper, 2015. <29,999 circ. Navajos and Jews discuss healing from genocide. Report, published 2014.

1. © Raise your hands copy“The Anti-Israel Boycott,Divestment and Sanctions Movement Arrives at UNM”  TWO First-place for Excellence in Reporting, Photography, all circulation newspapers and magazines, American Jewish Press Association Rockower Award, 2015, for the New Mexico Jewish Link. Also two first-place, New Mexico Press Association Communication Awards, Photography/Writing category and Specialty articles: Religion. Report and photos, published 2014.

“UNM’s Graduate Student Association Votes to Rescind Anti-Israel Resolution” Against odds, the BDS resolution is rescinded. First-place for Reporting, 2015, circ. >15,000, American Jewish Press Association, Rockower Award, for the New Mexico Jewish Link. Report.

rz JUSTUS I CAN MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE BY PLANTING A GARDEN DSC_0724“An Answer So Simple, I Couldn’t See It”
Stumbling upon a children’s art show in a grocery store rekindles a sense of meaning and purpose. 2015 Society of Professional Journalists award, Top of the Rockies, second-place for Personal Columns, <29,999 circ., as published in Gallup Independent daily newspaper, Sunday Religion page, Spiritual  Perspectives column, contributor since 2009. Column.

Zach and Taina Benjamin resz IMG_1192 copyUp close and personal, a little, with new Federation Director Zach Benjamin. Oct. 27, 2015 New Mexico welcomes new Federation director. Profile.

Email:  dianeschmidt22@hotmail.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/diane-schmidt/56/315/1a5/
Twitter: @dianeschmidt22
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dianejoyschmidt

Earlier Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine cover stories and Chicago Tribune articles, and articles published in the Navajo Times, Gallup Independent and New Mexico Jewish Link, from 2010 to 2015,  to be added.

chicago-exhibition-cover-scn-comb

The Chicago Exhibition photos  by Diane Schmidt of Michele Fitzsimmons – LA: Melrose 1985. Top Ten Best-Seller List, Chicago Tribune. Showcased in “Chicago Classic Photos” book, Richard Cahan, Chicago: City Files Press, 2017.

 

Night Moves, Chicago Through The Eyes of an All-Night Taxi Driver. Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, Story and Photo Essay, January 22, 1984. Awarded NEA National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellowship for these photos and of coffee shop waitresses at night.