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!
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:
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)
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
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
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
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 Magazine Apr/May 2016 Fractured Faiths exhibit opening in Santa Fe – Evidence of the Inquisition in the New World. Brief Review, page 52, featured.
After 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.
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 . .
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.
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
“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
“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
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
“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.
“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.
“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.
Up 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.
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 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:
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)
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
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
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
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 Magazine Apr/May 2016 Fractured Faiths exhibit opening in Santa Fe – Evidence of the Inquisition in the New World. Brief Review, page 52, featured.
After 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.
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 . .
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.
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
“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
“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
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
“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.
“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.
“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.
Up 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.
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.
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