How awesome is this evening when you can take your daughter and show her how to vote?! #IAmWithRosebud
It is September and it is almost October…it is almost breast cancer awareness month. Right here in the Rettew household, we have enough breast cancer awareness to last us a lifetime, and our house is not filled with pink marketing, but the stories sewn from the many battles we have faced the last ten years.
It is amazing the connectivity of a church and a community. Here we are celebrating the 70th birthday of a dear friend Mrs. Sarah Sprague. She has taken on the role as teacher, connector, leader, and even grandmother to many of our children.
She has served Anderson University, Boulevard Baptist Church, and the Anderson community both within the city limits and as far as China. She is one that I am most appreciative of our relationship and her connective energy is representative of so many in the room celebrating.
Happy Birthday Mrs. Sarah Sprague!
It was 1960 when Harvey Gantt choose to sit at the Kress counter at King and Wentworth Streets downtown Charleston, a place previously off limits to black men and women. This was called the Kress sit-in, part of a nation wide civil rights movement that set off a tsunami across the south.
There is a divisive irony within Colin Kaepernick’s public display of objection. He choose to sit while others stood. Maybe for different reasons than Harvey, maybe hoping for different results? Yet, we find the same act of defiance well within the rights of any American. Or are we really free? Jesse Williams pondered that same thought, “But freedom is somehow always conditional here. “You’re free,” they keep telling us. But she would have been alive if she hadn’t acted so… free.”
I was watching Vice Does America tonight and episode three focused on touring parts of the midwest. There was a section where they visited the Lakota Reservation in Rosebud, South Dakota; a place where the activist from the Great Sioux Nation are peacefully protesting the expansion of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Being a dad is tough…really tough. I have been in the middle of a wonderful campaign interviewing, capturing images of great dads and I am humbled. Each dad I capture…each man I interview…each image showcasing a dad and their children…I am reminded of my struggles.
I am at that age when many of my friends are starting to get divorced and it not only breaks my heart but it makes me even more disillusioned about my ability to break the cycle.
I finally did it…I refurbished this Eastman Kodak Brownie Target Six 20 camera that has been sitting on my shelf since my 40th birthday. Sarah had one heck of a 40th Birthday Party for me which included purchasing old cameras for each of the tables. This is one the cameras she found, so I thought I would start trying to use it.
It was earlier this year that we were approached by Rose’s principle at South Fant that she may no longer be eligible to attend South Fant. I never thought I see the day when this would happen, the day we began a fight to keep Rose in public school…for all the right reasons.
We started a massive letter writing campaign, one that has no resolution. I am at a cross roads. Does it make sense to write about this publicly? Is this form of public awareness shine a direct spotlight onto a narrative that can be construed as “white privilege”? I don’t know the answers and no one is willing to admit that a wonderful program might need some adjusting.