Judy Dedmon grew up in a military family. Her early exposure to different cultures, foods and ideas influenced her world view. Learning how to not pack up and move every two and half years has proved to be one of life's great challenges. Now that she's managed to live in Dallas for 22 years, it's possible that she has conquered the restlessness of her early life. The same cannot be said of her career choices. Well in to her fifties, she is still open to new opportunities.
In January, after twelve years as a stay-at-home mom, she started a program in health and nutrition at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and in July, she will be a Certified Health Counselor. From first grade to Law School, she attended 18 different schools, graduating from Oglethorpe University with a degree in History and Political Science before going on to graduate school.
She earned a Master's degree in Library Science in 1973 and a law degree in 1977 both at Emory University. Four years at the Department of Interior practicing Environmental and Real Property law somehow led to a fifteen-year stint at Fannie Mae.
After three years in the legal department, she moved into management. She served almost ten years as Senior Vice President of the Southwestern Regional office in Dallas, overseeing 250 employees and over 300 lenders in a ten state region. She retired in 1996 to spend more time with her family.
During her stay at home years, she got reacquainted with her husband and children, took up exercising, polished up her healthful recipes, and erased the effects of fifteen years in corporate America. Judy wrote a book, not yet published, but there's plenty of time. She volunteered for her sons' schools, her community and her church, and organizations including Children's International Summer Villages and Boot Camp for Goddesses. She joined three book clubs because left to her own devices, she reads books the world will not long remember. And because old habits die hard, she travels the United States and the world.
Beautiful shoes--comfortable and stylish that garner compliments with every step: I had that pair. I was eleven years old and they were loafers made of exquisitely soft, butterscotch colored leather. They went with every outfit and to every occasion. I planned to wear them until they were in shreds and then get another pair.
One of my earliest memories is throwing a sandal out the window of a moving car. I didn't like wearing shoes and the car window was open. Imagine my mother's frustration when we arrived at our destination. My relationship with shoes has had its ups and downs-marred by violent acts on both our parts from that first shoe incident until the present.
Only flickers of our kerosene lanterns lit the gravestones as thirteen of us stumbled through Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at nine on a recent Saturday night. Sometimes, usually around Halloween, the Headless Horseman swoops among the tombstones, but most of the time our guide, Jim Howell, works solo.
Many of us know what it feels like to be out of step socially, to misread others and to be misread ourselves. Luckily most of us have only a fleeting awareness of that sensation. In his book, Look Me in the Eye, John Elder Robison describes a life in which social misunderstanding and cluelessness is the norm.
If they ever make a movie of my life, I hope Julia Roberts is chosen to play me. Getting Julia Roberts to portray her in a movie is just one of the good things that have happened since Elizabeth Gilbert decided she didn't want to live a boring suburban life and left her husband. Her run of luck started when she wrote a book called Eat, Pray, Love about leaving said husband and traveling around the world in search of inner peace.
When planning my trip to Egypt, spending the night on a felucca was the excursion I most looked forward to, yet was most apprehensive about. Feluccas, sailing boats used on the Nile, haven't changed much since Cleopatra's day. Gold, silk and Lapis Lazuli have been replaced by steel, cotton and plastic flowers, but the basic form is the same--generally a cushioned seating area around the sides and a table in the middle.
Love, loss, heartache, redemption...sex, drugs and rock 'n roll....boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, but wins her back....standard chick lit fare - except that this is Marian Keyes.
I learned about Laurie Colwin from my husband's cousin, Donald, who taught a class dedicated to her work at a small liberal arts college in Connecticut. Struck by what he told me about this New York writer who had died at 48 leaving a husband, a young daughter and several collections of short stories, I set out to find her books.
A book about conjoined twins born to an Indian Carmelite nun living in Ehtiopia, Cutting for Stone was published to great acclaim in 2009. A starred review from Publishers Weekly, author interviews on all the radio and TV talk shows, and reviews in every magazine and newspaper I picked up told me that this was a book to watch. But: Conjoined twins. Born to a nun. Raised in a hospital in Ethiopia. Stop me when I get to something that makes you want to read this book.
On our trip to Egypt, we've found lovely, friendly people, but something keeps us on edge out in the streets: mostly the stories our guides tell us about what to watch for.
There's lots to do in Paris--some of it very expensive and so popular that the lines will remind you of Disney World. If you're looking for something different, fun, interesting, and cheap, check out the Drouot Auction House
We've both been lucky enough to visit Paris many times-some work trips, family vacations as a child living in France and some even romantic trysts to the city of light.
Peter Hessler's grandfather, a Benedictine monk who grew up in Arkansas, was sent to Rome in 1929. He wanted to go to China so much that when the church refused to send him, he left the order, returned to the U.S.
I stopped trusting my brain about ten years ago. After a lifetime of confidence in my brain's ability to retrieve dates, poems memorized in high school and names of everyone in my office-and their kids, I was stunned to realize those facts were harder to find. I could almost recall the information only to have it leap just out of reach.
Fashion gives us lots of choices. With each purchase we choose to be romantic and lacy, bold and bright, tailored and timeless or salty and free spirited. Many of us grope to find a fashion voice that rings true for us. When making financially sound shopping decisions, it's important to distinguish between classics and trends. We have some tips that may help.
Motherhood's many faces are revealed in excerpts of interviews from the StoryCorps booths. The stories, told by or about mothers, are insightful, touching and warmly intimate. Often a child interviews the mother, but sometimes it's siblings talking about their mom or a child interviewing someone who knew the mother. Whatever the bond, the close relationship between interviewer and interviewee seeps through these narratives.
We recently went to see the Chris Rock re-make of Death at a Funeral. The humor was broad and the antics got a bit out of hand, but it's a great premise and a fun way to spend a rainy Saturday morning, which is what we did. Judy enjoyed it. Penni wasn't that crazy about it. The difference -- Penni saw the original Death at a Funeral when it came out in 2007.
Data is fine. Details are good. Information helps. But there's nothing like a good story. A good story can inform, impress or inspire--and sometimes just entertain. Whatever their purpose, stories bring us together as humans and open our minds to possibilities. In 2003 Dave Isay, a radio documentary producer and MacArthur fellow, founded StoryCorps with a mission to collect the stories of everyday people.
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