Liz Snyder

This week, my friend Thea Sullivan wrote an excellent article for Salon about her profoundly gifted son, Jack — one of Ms. H’s closest friends and a fellow homeschooler.

It mirrors so much of my process of letting go the “shoulds” of childhood for Ms. H – of my many preconceived notions of what her life should [...]

In the recently published study of organic versus conventional agriculture, Stanford researchers concluded that organic foods were no more nutritious than their conventionally-grown counterparts. There’s one catch – the study was a meta-analysis. It’s a term that puts the nerdy-numbers-loving part of my brain on high alert.

What’s a meta-analysis, you ask? Well, it’s a study that [...]

Today, the amazing blogger, activist, and author Sarah Wu (aka Mrs. Q) published my guest blog on her site, Fed Up With Lunch. It is such an honor to be featured there, and I hope you enjoy reading it!

In defense of the childhood treat

It can be painful sometimes, being that “mean mom.” The one saying “no” [...]

I have always been effected by SAD (seasonal affective disorder), ever since I was a kid. November and December were the “Heart of Darkness” where I struggled to stay awake, think straight, or get much of anything done.

Today I just realized that it’s “that time” and for the first time in my life, I am totally [...]

I was both honored and anxious when Full Circle Farm’s ED Wolfram Alderson asked me to write something about being the co-founder of Full Circle Farm. So many unresolved feelings, such a sense of loss – it’s hard to describe what it feels like when you voluntarily walk away from something, and yet that something is [...]

Yesterday I went to the world premiere of America The Beautiful: The Thin Commandments by extraordinary filmmaker Darryl Roberts. In it, Roberts is newly diagnosed with heart arrhythmia and high blood pressure, and told to go on multiple medications (that cause, ahem, erectile dysfunction). Undaunted and unwilling to take the cocktail of anti-party pills, Darryl embarks [...]

With a graduate degree from Oxford, I think I have proven myself exceptionally good at “the testing game”. I have no anxiety around tests – but I strongly object to the sense of self-worth that these test scores represented for me for the first 20+ years of my life. It’s a lot to unlearn.

This year, we’re enrolling Ms. H [...]

Yesterday, I watched Ms. H have her friend R teach her how to crochet. Sitting on a bench at a local park, the two girls were rapt with concentration as Ms. H’s fingers slowly but surely figured out how to loop and pull. Her movements were clumsy, her results loose and ill-formed. I cringed at her [...]

A movement is unfurling…

Fresh food for family, friends and neighbors. A verdant garden in a city blighted by foreclosure. Neighborhood kids picking sun-ripened tomatoes.  A prison sentence.

Sing it with me: one of these things is not like the other one, which one could it be?

For one mom, gardening in her front yard has landed [...]

As part of my new position with FIRST 5 Santa Clara County, I had the privilege of speaking to the program manager of Maine Senior Farmshare. They generously extended their time to share information about this incredibly innovative program, which will eventually be published as one of several case studies that will be used to create a [...]