april 22, 2013

“I would tell my younger self to work less and take more vacations. I would tell my younger self that everybody is replaceable and hard work isn’t always rewarded so keep that whole work thing in perspective. I would remind my younger self to eat less, work out more, and wear your sunscreen.” ~ Anna Krueger

I find inside Louisville’s Heyburn Building compelling. It sits across the street from the famous Brown Hotel (home of the original Hot Brown), itself a throwback to the 1920’s when both were built. The Heyburn’s twelfth floor hallway feels like The Shining to me, but without a weird “redrum” kid. The place is packed with Mad Men offices. Yet, in all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never met a single person in the hall or heard a sound save for the occasional jet passing overhead.

What the building lacks in vibrancy, my long time friend and director of the Kentucky Foundation for Women, Judi Jennings, makes up for in spades. Judi is one of the most thought provoking people I’ve ever met. She’s a tireless activist, academic, and artistic aficionado. But don’t let that heady stuff fool you. Judi can get down with the best of ’em. In fact, we were musing about how me met 25 years ago. I was, as she likes to tell people, “a kick-butt drummer” playing the Appalshop Christmas party as she and Gurney Norman cut a Hillbilly rug like nobody was watching. Some memories are meant to last, and there’s no better person to make a memory with or dance to my drumming than sweet Judi. May her goodness and compassion be as infectious to the world as her kick-butt dance moves.

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