Random Connect Points:
Reba's Stories

I flew out for a long-anticipated trip Italy with three friends the first week of October. We took off on a Wednesday thankful to leave behind the impending hurricane warnings and paid little attention to the flash flood alerts for Columbia. Little did we know we would spend the better part of our trip watching international news reports showing deadly floods sweeping away friends' homes and devastating our hometown. We stayed glued to international news feeds. We watched our friends' usual social media posts about kids' activities become hourly missives of who needed help where. One friend showed up in a yellow raincoat on international CNN. Yet another was interviewed on the Weather Channel. National news correspondents broadcast from neighborhoods where just days earlier I'd been riding my bike. For several days, I struggled with finding right word to describe what I kept seeing and hearing from the people back home affected by the flooding. A recollection o

This is a throwback Thursday post - it ran last October in a couple of publications but I never posted it here.... The word “home” can have so many different meanings at various times in your life. A childhood home evokes different feelings than your first young-married home. A retirement home is different from a vacation home. All bring about a variety of emotions, memories and feelings.   But one thing is for sure. A house isn't necessarily a home. A real estate agent says he’s showing a “house” to a potential buyer, but that person will probably say he’s buying a “home.” The saying goes “home is where the heart is” not “house is where the heart is.”   A house becomes a home when its walls get covered with photos, its closets bulge with familiar items and stuff you can’t bear to part with, there are stacks of magazines around your favorite chair, and fuzz bunnies from the much loved dog thrive under the furniture. Relative to most people my age, I lived in only a few

This appeared in Midlands Life on September 26, 2015 My job involves working with SC cities and towns as part of an organization sharing information to help their leaders make their hometowns the best they can be. I really love what I do and particularly love the fact that I can often overlay my daily work with my personal interests. Because of several articles I've written for work publications about the growth in and around Travelers Rest , I was recently drawn to try biking the Swamp Rabbit Trail . This nine-mile bike trail was built on an old rail bed that runs between Travelers Rest and Greenville. It has helped transform this small Upstate town into a biking mecca with great restaurants and retail shops. Earlier in the year, I'd written about a local entrepreneur recounting his positive interactions with the city's mayor during a scouting visit that convinced him to locate his business in Travelers Rest . Both he and the mayor spoke with such passion about t

One of the best parts of my job is getting to really experience the cities I visit for meetings and conferences. Working for an organization that helps build strong cities, I love the chance to explore a city's story beyond the everyday tourist sites. A conference I attend every summer typically takes us to locations that aren’t at the usual conference sites like New Orleans, Seattle or Orlando. In recent years, we've met in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, a state park in South Dakota and downtown Minneapolis   - places that never would have hit my radar for travel otherwise. Original interior of the Guardian Building in downtown This year, the meeting was in Detroit. I’ve never been to Michigan and, other than checking my bucket list item of visiting every state, I probably would have had no real reason to visit the state. I will admit my perception of Detroit was that it was unsafe, dirty and with no real attractions to make it an interesting destination. Part of the deca

When I made an impulse purchase of a shiny yellow bike during a recent trip to Greenville, I had no idea how much I'd learn from those 30 pounds of metal. Just to be clear, this isn’t some fancy multi-speed bike that requires special shoes, flashing LED lights and an expensive water bottle. Think Pee Wee Herman on his cruiser not Lance Armstrong speeding through France.   Swamp Rabbit Trail I'd bought the bike after spending two afternoons in Greenville riding the Swamp Rabbit Trail on a rented bike that was a perfect fit for my small frame. The trail is a converted rail bed that runs nine miles between downtown Greenville and Travelers Rest.  It's a peaceful ride with scenery as diverse as the back of industrial buildings to the rolling campus of Furman. Curiosity about the bike I'd enjoyed riding led me to ask the folks at the rental shop about it. The shop, with the cool name of Pedal Chic, focuses on bikes and equipment for just for women. The sales

This is what I saw at the bottom of my driveway one Sunday morning in late May when I pulled out to go to church. A frat party gone bad? A bunch of kids partying in my yard?     But, no, I didn't cringe when I saw these chock-full recycle bins...I smiled. I recalled the great time we'd had the day before getting ready for and then helping to host our annual neighborhood party. I laughed when I remembered the multiple generations pitching in to make a huge feast on the checkerboard of tables we set up in the street. These two recycle bins contained the remains of pizza boxes, soda cans, water bottles, a half dozen ketchup and mustard  bottles that were the base of homemade BBQ sauce, juice boxes, Snow cone cups and yes, a few beer cans and wine bottles too. This party is a neighborhood tradition on our street and several adjoining ones dating back well beyond our 20 years in our house. The "young families" (now in our 40s and 50s) took over from the "older f