Julia Sneden

Julia Sneden is a writer, friend, wife, mother, Grandmother, care-giver and Senior Women Web's Resident Observer. Her career has included editorial work for Sunset Magazine, 20th Century Fox and Universal Studios as well as teaching. Julia is a passionate opponent of this country’s educational system, which she feels is floundering. She lives in North Carolina. jbsneden can be reached by email (at) triad.rr.com
Julia Sneden's archive of articles.
Utterly Unsuitable: Choosing a Swimsuit for an Older Woman
Julia Sneden writes: With older women and men all across the country doing water aerobics and swimming laps, wouldn’t you think the bathing suit manufacturers would twig to the idea that there’s a huge market out here? Not only do we seniors buy suits; we buy suits more often than even the teenagers do, because we’re harder on them. No clean surf ‘n sand for us, no lying still on a beach blanket for hours, or languidly standing around the lifeguard’s chair. No, we are up to our clavicles in health club pools full of chemicals, stretching our suits (and our bodies) to all sorts of outrageous extremes, sweating inside them even though the water is cool. more »
Connections
Julia Sneden writes: Children need to be assured that they are their own persons, no matter how much they look like someone from the past. It’s entirely possible that personality types are inherited as easily as the shape and color of eyes, but unlike the physical traits, personality is surely influenced by the nurturing dynamics of each immediate family. It seems to me that those dynamics create what we call character. more »
CultureWatch: A Review of Louise Erdrich's The Round House
It is not easy to describe the brilliance with which Erdrich balances humor and anxiety and terrible truths, but somehow she manages to make us smile in the midst of all the angst. The truth of the rape of his mother eventually does come out, and Joe’s mother is somewhat restored to her old life. That truth, however, brings with it an accompanying, new tragedy, one which marks Joe deeply, and changes forever the child’s relationship to his world. more »
Culture Watch Book Reviews: My Beloved World and Consider the Fork
Reviewer Jill Norgren writes that Justice Sotomayor has said that she wrote My Beloved World because being a role model “is the most valuable thing I can do.” It is to her credit that the memoir is, like the justice, unpretentious and welcoming to readers of all ages. Reviewer Julia Sneden declares the depth of the research for Consider the Fork mind-boggling, but Be Wilson's style is simple, direct, and leavened with wry humor; calling her just “a food writer” would be a bit like calling Yo Yo Ma “a guy who plays the cello.” more »






