What Really Matters in Love and Life? Ask a 100-Year-Old Woman
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A few years ago, author Judy Gaman was writing a book on the subject of longevity, so she set up an interview with a 100-year-old woman named Lucille Fleming. There was no way Judy could know that her own life was about to take a new, healthier and happier path, thanks to the wisdom of this remarkable centenarian. You might even say that Lucille became her “mother figure,” in the sense that she opened Gaman’s eyes to what really matters in life.
Gaman shares Lucille’s secrets to living a long and meaningful life in her book, Love, Life and Lucille: Lessons Learned from a Centenarian, which has touched the hearts of readers everywhere and drawn rave reviews.
Marybeth Conley, anchor for WREG-TV News Channel 3 in Memphis, said, “Grab a tissue and strap in! This emotionally charged memoir will have you busting out laughing one minute and crying the next. Judy paints the picture masterfully and leaves the reader forever touched by Lucille’s wisdom. My listeners still talk about how charming Lucille was, even years after my interviewing her!”
In her own words, Gaman says she was so busy making a name for herself that she barely took the time to enjoy life or simply stop to breathe. She spent every day going full speed ahead without looking back. And then she met Lucille Fleming.
Gaman described Lucille as “an elegant and spirited woman who had just recently turned 100,” one who “had the fashion and style of old Hollywood, but it was all hidden behind the doors of her senior living center. What began as a quick meeting became a lasting friendship that transformed into an inseparable bond. Lucille brought incredible wisdom and great stories to the table.”
Together, the two began living life to the fullest and met many interesting people along the way, including actor and icon Suzanne Somers, who joined Lucille and Gaman on stage for an event about longevity (Somers also wrote the forward to Gaman’s book).
But then Lucille’s life came to an end at age 103 through unexpected and unfortunate circumstances ― and the very first lesson she ever taught Gaman proved to be the most important one of all.
Judy Gaman is an award-winning author, nationally sought-after speaker and CEO of Executive Medicine of Texas. She also co-hosts the Stay Young America! podcast.
As a media expert, she has appeared on hundreds of television, radio and podcast interviews. Judy recently released the pilot for Front Row to CEO, a talk show where she interviews some of the most interesting CEOs in an engaging and inspiring way.
For more information, please visit www.JudyGaman.com, or follow the author on Instagram (lovelifelucillebook) or Facebook (@jgamanspeaker).
Love, Life and Lucille: Lessons Learned from a Centenarian Publisher: She Writes Press ISBN-10: 1631528823 ISBN-13: 978-1631528828 Also available in eBook and audiobook formats Available from Amazon.com
Trish Stevens Sydney Shaw Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Angel Faces Retreats Facilitate Emotional Healing for Women Disfigured by Trauma
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Since 2003, the nonprofit Angel Faces has helped transform the lives of adolescents and young women who have suffered severe, permanent scars and disfigurements from burn injuries and traumatic events through intensive, residential retreats, and ongoing support.
Founder Lesia Cartelli was severely burned by a natural gas explosion when she was just 9 years old, and as an adult, she recognized the psychosocial needs of adolescent girls and young women with disfigurements.
The next retreat takes place June 11-16 on a private compound (courtesy of an anonymous donor) on lake Winnipesaukee in beautiful Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.
The theme for this retreat is “Let it Roll,” and sessions led by licensed mental health professionals will focus on managing healthy relationships, boundaries, post traumatic growth and understanding the impact of trauma on our lives.
Professional artist Kate Lemay will lead an art project, “Let It Scroll,” during which participants will create beautiful scrolls on canvas decorated with both words of forgiveness for their past selves and motivational messages for their budding, future selves.
Additional program elements include yoga, climbing and journaling, plus one-on-one instruction from professionals in the cosmetics industry to teach the women how to minimize scarring while enhancing their individual beauty.
“Our six-day retreat is a unique gathering of women who have been left marred by severe trauma (abuse, car crashes, bonfires, explosions, war and house fires) to find the courage to heal,” Cartelli said. “We encourage the participants to not waste their pain, and to use their trauma as a gift to discover their resilience and strength. Time at the retreat is inspiring for attendees and those who are privy to volunteer.”
Angel Faces Founder Lesia S. Cartelli has witnessed and experienced the struggle with social interactions, boundaries, and self-esteem issues that plague adolescent girls and young women with scars. In her 40 years of experience in developing educational and psychosocial programs supporting trauma victims, she became aware of the intense need for a more in-depth program. She created Angel Faces to inspire and empower adolescent girls and young women with burn/trauma injuries to reach their optimum potential and develop meaningful relationships with themselves, their families and their communities.
Cartelli is also the author of Heart of Fire (Carlyle Publishing; ISBN-13: 978-0990430711), in which she shares the details of her own traumatic experience and the path that led to her founding of Angel Faces.
For more information and a schedule of 2022 retreats, please visit www.angelfaces.com, or follow the organization on Instagram and Twitter at @angelfacesinc.
Trish Stevens Beverly Moore Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
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Counseling is a significant aspect of pastoring, and marriage counseling is the most common form of counseling for many clergy. To address the needs of husbands who come to him for marriage counseling, Pastor Scott LaPierre says the first thing he looks at is the man’s relationship with Christ.
“Our relationship with our wives, our relationship with our children, is a reflection or outpouring of our relationship with Christ,” La Pierre said in a recent interview. “And it’s our relationship with Christ that we need to draw on at those times when we’re upset.”
In his new book, Your Marriage God’s Way, LaPierre distills lessons from scripture, carefully examining the principles for building a strong, biblical marriage—one in which your relationship with Christ brings guidance and blessing into your relationship with your spouse. “God is the author of marriage. He designed the roles and responsibilities for husbands and wives,” LaPierre writes in his book. “He knows what couples need so they can experience healthy, joyful, Christ-centered relationships, and He provided the principles in the Bible.”
LaPierre gives readers the tools to:
Understand the unique roles and responsibilities of husbands and wives
Recognize and resolve conflicts with a heart of hope and compassion
Follow God’s worthy command to love and cherish your spouse unconditionally
A companion workbook is also available (LaPierre’s Your Marriage God’s Way Workbook) to help couples apply biblical principles to their own marriage.
The workbook aims to help couples:
Understand the unique roles God has given each person
Identify ways to better help, encourage, and support each other
Make serving God the focal point of the marriage
“Let’s journey together, with the Bible as our guide, to experience the blessings of a Christ-centered relationship,” LaPierre writes. “Whether you’re at the beginning of your journey or you’ve been on the road together for years, Your Marriage God’s Way will provide the helpful and encouraging insights you need to experience marriage as God intends it.”
About the Author Scott LaPierre is the senior pastor of Woodland Christian Church in Woodland, WA, an author, and conference speaker. He holds an MA in Biblical Studies from Liberty University. Scott and his wife, Katie, have nine children, and they are passionate homeschooling advocates. Scott is a former schoolteacher and Army officer.
To learn more about Pastor Scott LaPierre, please visit www.scottlapierre.org, or follow him on Twitter (@PastorWCC), Instagram (@pastorwcc) or Facebook (@SctottLaPierreMinistries).
Your Marriage God’s Way: A Biblical Guide to a Christ-Centered Relationship Publisher: Harvest House Publishers ISBN-10: 0736983961 ISBN-13: 978-0736983969 Available from Amazon.com
Your Marriage God’s Way Workbook Publisher: Harvest House Publishers ISBN-10: 0736983988 ISBN-13: 978-0736983983 Available from Amazon.com
Trish Stevens Mandy Sullivan Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
And Suddenly Life Will Never Be the Same: Almost Like Praying a Contemporary Family Drama
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What would happen if a suburban woman with a hard-as-nails façade and a detailed life plan was suddenly saddled with caring for a 6-year-old girl from the Bronx?
Such is the dilemma facing Dolores Farrell in Almost Like Praying, the intriguing new novel from author Joel Samberg. But the 6-year-old girl is just the tip of Dolores’ family-centered iceberg. When readers first meet her, she is a woman with a future all planned out: She’ll marry an attorney, have sons who will become attorneys, daughters who will become patrons of the arts, and live in the shadow of Harvard University, thereby continuing her privileged, purebred Irish-Catholic legacy.
Instead, Dolores must watch as each of her children adopts a lifestyle quite different from what she had envisioned. One daughter becomes a waitress, another a shock jock. One son becomes a cop (a troubled one at that), another a cartoonist. Much to his mother’s dismay, the cartoonist is also missing a leg due to a terrible childhood accident. That, of course, had not been part of Dolores’ original plan.
Almost Like Praying, which fictionalizes some real thoughts and memories, is told through a trilogy of stories reconstructed by a curious journalist who, as a boy, lived across the street from the family at the heart of the book. One day from his old bedroom window, the journalist sees Dolores on her front step hugging a dark-skinned little girl named Maria, and smiling—something he feels the grim-faced Dolores would never do. That’s what prompts him to research and write the stories.
“The novel sprung from my own roots,” Samberg said. “Growing up on Long Island, one of my best friends had a mother who to me seemed humorless and severe. I had always wondered about her. She became Dolores. Also, whenever my family drove through the Bronx, I’d look at the ramshackle apartment buildings and wonder how the kids who lived there would fare in my own middle-class neighborhood. One of them became Maria.”
Featuring flawed, relatable characters, Almost Like Praying offers a compelling message that likely will resonate with readers everywhere.
Author Joel Samberg decided to become a writer as a boy. He wrote a screenplay when he was 12 and sent it to MGM, and although the studio turned it down, an executive’s encouraging note suggested that he never give up on his dream to be a writer. Two years later, his English teacher sent a nasty note home to his parents falsely accusing him of plagiarizing a book report because she said it was too well-written for an eighth-grader. That settled it: from that point on, he has never given up.
Samberg has written for dozens of magazines and has published seven fiction and nonfiction books, including Some Kind of Lonely Clown: The Music, Memory, and Melancholy Lives of Karen Carpenter.
Almost Like Praying Publisher: Black Rose Writing (http://blackrosewriting.com) Release Date: April 28, 2022 ISBN-10: 1685130097 ISBN-13: 978-1685130091 Available from Amazon.com, Black Rose Writing and other online booksellers.
Trish Stevens Parker Wilson Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Proactive Patient Education Empowers Consumers to Be Better Partners in Their Care
If you need an immediate response, please text or call Dr. Wilcox at 816.885.9214.
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If you’ve postponed any nonurgent procedures or doctor visits over the past couple of years, now is the time to educate yourself before wading back into the murky waters of the American healthcare system.
“Proactively educating yourself on the American Healthcare System means you will have more control over the care you receive,” said David Wilcox, a patient advocate and doctorate prepared nurse with 28 years in health care. “There are things you can do as an individual to make sure you’re getting the best health care possible.”
In his important new book, How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Healthcare System: A Patient’s Handbook for Survival, Dr. Wilcox shares a behind-the-scenes look at many facets of our healthcare system and provides insider tips to help patients and family members navigate through the morass, avoid surprise bills and ultimately achieve better outcomes.
Of note, he encourages consumers to research doctors and hospitals, and gain an understanding of the risks and benefits of any recommended procedure. Dr. Wilcox also explores what to do if you have to go to a hospital, how to handle a denied insurance claim, how to find alternatives to high-priced prescriptions and why the current pay-for-fee system is inadequate. Readers will also discover the direction the healthcare system needs to move in, to holistically care for patients — information that he says the health care entities would prefer you didn’t know.
His goal in writing this book, he said, was to level the playing field, enabling consumers of health care to understand how to avoid getting caught in the systemic net.
“Entering the American healthcare system, one has to have a basic knowledge of it to be safe,” he said. “Not being prepared and knowledgeable means you will have little control over the health care you receive.”
Dr. David Wilcox is an Amazon international bestselling author and health care professional who believes proactive patient education enables those accessing the healthcare system to be better partners in their health care. He also believes that everyone has the right to access the American Healthcare System safely. A Doctorate-prepared nurse who also holds a Master’s in Health Administration and is Board Certified in Nursing Informatics, Dr. Wilcox has nearly three decades of health care experience as a bedside nurse, hospital administrator and in health care information technology, which has helped him to develop his unique perspective on the American Healthcare System. For more information, please visit https://drdavidwilcox.com/.
How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Healthcare System: A Patient’s Handbook for Survival Publisher: Here for You Publishing ISBN-10: 0578878364 ISBN-13: 978-0578878362 Available now at https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578878364
Trish Stevens Alex Spencer Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Moments That Defined the Extraordinary Partnership of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel
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Today, former U.S. President Barack Obama and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel are known as two of the world’s most influential leaders, together at the center of some of the biggest controversies and most impressive advancements of the modern world. But while their friendship has been the subject of both scrutiny and admiration, few know the full story. “Their relationship was by no means linear. They had their differences. The important thing is that despite their differences, they came out on top; they came out stronger because they had enough respect for one another,” said political activist and author Claudia Clark during a recent interview. Clark’s new book, Dear Barack: The Extraordinary Partnership of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel, is a thoroughly researched exploration of the parallel trajectories that led to Obama and Merkel meeting on the world stage, and the trials—both personal and political—that they confronted in office. At times, in the leaders’ own words, the book details such events as Merkel’s historic acceptance of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the 2013 NSA spying scandal, demonstrating the highs and lows of this extraordinary alliance.
Taking office at the height of the 2008 global recession, Obama was keenly aware of the fractured relationship between the U.S. and Europe, Clark explains in the book. And for her part, Merkel was suspicious of the charismatic newcomer who had captivated her country. Faced with the challenges of globalization, the two often clashed over policy, but—as the first Black president and first female chancellor—they shared a belief that democracy could uplift the world. United by this conviction, they would forge a complicated but inspiring partnership. A story of camaraderie at a global scale, Dear Barack is a “fit-all” in terms of politics and shows that it is possible for political adversaries to establish bonds of respect—and even friendship—in the service of the free world.
Claudia Clark is an author, speaker and activist focused on social justice and democracy. In 2017, Clark and her husband moved from California to Germany, where she served as the national Get Out the Vote (GOTV) coordinator for the Democrats Abroad Germany chapter from January 2019 to May 2020. Clark has several advanced degrees, with a focus on social work, women’s history and labor relations. She currently lives in Berlin, where she is conducting research for her next book which will compare the experiences of the Northern Irish during the height of the IRA conflict with the East Germans during the Cold War.
Dear Barack: The Extraordinary Partnership of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel Publisher: Disruption Books ISBN-10: 1633310574 ISBN-13: 978-1633310575 Available from Amazon.com, Disruption Books and Claudiaclarkauthor.com
Trish Stevens Sydney Wells Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
43 Years Later, the Unseemly Saga of Spectacular Bid is Revealed
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In an era of spectacular thoroughbreds, Spectacular Bid may have been the most exalted racehorse of them all. In 1979, he won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness — and transcended his sport on a run of 12 consecutive stakes victories. But his quest for the Triple Crown was lost with a third-place finish in the Belmont Stakes due to a series of bizarre events that have never been accurately reported.
In The Fast Ride: Spectacular Bid and the Undoing of a Sure Thing, author and journalist Jack Gilden tells the story of what really happened the day “the Bid” lost the biggest race of his life. Along the way, Gilden introduces readers to a cast of characters from the gilded age of late twentieth-century horse racing, from Bid’s owners, the renowned Meyerhoff family, to Grover “Buddy” Delp, the fast-talking trainer, to teenage jockey Ronnie Franklin, whose meteoric rise to fame aboard Spectacular Bid came at the cost of his innocence and well-being. “I came into the story as Franklin lay in an East Baltimore hospice gasping his last breaths,” Gilden writes in the introduction. “I was aided and abetted by one of his friends who had decided it was time that the truth came out.”
Also present in Gilden’s narrative are four of the era’s magnificent Latino riders, Ángel Cordero Jr., Jacinto Vasquez, Georgie Velasquez and Ruben Hernandez. They all felt the sting of rejection and bigotry during their long careers, even as they found their way and raised the level of competition to a feverish pitch.
Underlying Spectacular Bid’s saga was the thin line between hard work and excess, including substance abuse, animal manipulation, doping and race fixing. Hardly anyone in the horse’s circle made it out unscathed or undamaged.
The Fast Ride is the story of a great racehorse, unfulfilled dreams, the exhilaration and steep price of striving at all costs, and an American era in which getting everything you ever wanted could be the most empty and unfulfilling sensation of all.
Jack Gilden is the author of Collision of Wills: Johnny Unitas, Don Shula, and the Rise of the Modern NFL (2018). His editorials, columns and articles have appeared in Orioles Magazine, the Baltimore Sun, the Evening Sun, Chesapeake Life, Style magazine and the Baltimore Jewish Times. He has written about the anti-Semitism of H.L. Mencken, the literary life of Bernard Malamud, the lost legend of “Swish” Nicholson, Joe Louis as civil rights hero and the profane genius of Earl Weaver. He scripted the Orioles 40th Anniversary Video, narrated by the legendary Jim McKay. Gilden lives in Baltimore with his wife, two children, two step-children, and his dog.
For more information, connect with the author on Twitter at @JackGilden, or visit www.williamsonlit.com.
The Fast Ride: Spectacular Bid and the Undoing of a Sure Thing Publisher: University of Nebraska Press ISBN-10: 1496230507 ISBN-13: 978-1496230508 Available from Amazon.com, BN.com and other online retailers
Trish Stevens Ben Marshall Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
