Random Connect Points:
Reba's Stories

Christmas trees can gin up pretty strong emotions and opinions in people at this time of year. First, there's the "live" vs. "artificial" tree debate. Then, there's the decision of how early a tree should go up. Is it too early to have a tree up before Thanksgiving? And how long can it stay up? Multi-colored lights vs. white lights? Garland vs. tinsel? The options are endless. I always get into the holiday spirit early seeing my Mississippi sister-in-law and nieces'  trees decorated when we visit  at Thanksgiving. That said,  I fall squarely in the Sunday after Thanksgiving as the first day I feel ready put up a tree. I'm also one of the first on my block to drag my tree to the curb the day after Christmas. While many people these days opt for the more-high tech, beautifully lit, artificial trees that are way easier to put up and take down, I still love the process of choosing and decorating a live tree.  This is the first year I've bought a full...

My latest post went live over on my professional blog at The Medway Group.   For anyone who has worked in campaigns, the week leading up to the election is like no other experience. It’s a blinding minute-by-minute chaos of decisions on the fly, anticipating every possibility that could stand in the way of making it to election day. Good memories abound from many of my "last week of the campaign" adventures.  But two fine ladies who were part of these early career memories have now left us, Mary Lou Price and Emilie Theodore.  The morning after the 1994 election. The week-end before the 1994 election "fly-around" Both of these fine ladies have left us now.

House concert: (hous KON-sert) - A gathering of friends, neighbors and music lovers in an intimate home setting to celebrate and support local musicians. OK … so I kind of made up that definition, but it does describe the concept. The idea of house concerts goes back generations to Appalachian traditions. A performer en route between gigs may have had an open night to play at a host’s home along the way in exchange for a good meal and place to lay his head. The host would charge a small ticket price with all proceeds going to the performer. In the modern twist on a house concert,  guests pay a small admission fee  and bring a snack to share if they'd like, their own adult beverages and chairs (we will move inside to the dining room if it rains.) So that's what’s going on October 28 – a house concert at our house featuring  the fabulous Danielle Howle who is just days away from releasing her latest album on Nov. 3. ( Pre-order the album. )  Joining her will be  ...

Panic, fear and worry were only a few of the emotions I felt on a Tuesday afternoon in mid-September when my mother had a second stroke. For the past two years, she has been oh-so-well-cared-for in the skilled nursing area of Still Hopes Retirement Community following a previous stroke and the death of my dad. When I walked into her room that Tuesday afternoon for a quick visit, I knew immediately something was wrong. The team sprung into action to quickly get the medical attention she needed. Over the subsequent month, I’ve tried to keep a running list of all my lessons learned and kindnesses received during this scary experience. Hopefully, these may help others who find themselves managing this type of emergency. Appreciate that the medical professionals are people first - caring, dedicated people. To a person, the medical professionals we encountered from the ambulance to the ER and the ICU to the regular hospital room at Lexington Medical Center were committed, kind, smart,...

Maybe it’s my age or maybe it’s the fact that some of my current work has me skirting around the edges of politics again. I’ve recently devoured three podcast episodes and re-read a book that took me back to the policy issues and politics of the '70s and '80s that interestingly continue to shape our state today. The old adage of "the more things change, the more they stay the same" certainly plays out when looking back at how we got to where we are today. First the podcasts All three of these podcast episodes brought up political and policy issues from the '70s and '80s that still taunt South Carolina today. All three are must-listens for anyone who works in or around legislative politics and state government. ·       Podcast hosts and former state senators Vincent Sheheen and Joel Lourie spent an hour in conversation on “Bourbon in the Back Room” with long-time editorial writer Cindi Scoppe from the Post and Courier . She covered the State House for The Stat...

"Hello Beautiful” by Anna Napolitano is the sweeping story of a large chaotic family in the late ‘70s – early ‘80s with more than its share of eccentricities. It’s a book about love, loss, low lows and high highs, family, forgiveness, grudges and grace.   The Padavano family of four girls and their parents live in a working class Chicago suburb. Alcoholic father + mother mired in unfulfilled dreams = four daughters who heavily depend on each other while, at the same time, also learn to rely on their individual strengths. Willams Waters, a broken young man saved only by his basketball talent, joins the family by way of his marriage to the oldest daughter, Julia. The imbalance that results throws the entire family into a series of life-altering changes. Each of the characters is developed enough to firmly illustrate their individual superpowers. For William, his superpower begins as talent in basketball. For Julia, it appears to be her ambition. The second sister Sylvie, only...

Another historical fiction for the win with “ The First Ladies ” by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. After I really enjoyed “The Personal Librarian” earlier in the summer, this newest book by the same authors piqued my interest. This is the story of friendship, political will, and a passion for righting wrongs that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Black activist Mary McLeod Bethune shared.  Many of the issues familiar in today’s culture – race, gender and divisive politics - played a big role in how these two women made their way through their individual and shared lives. Together, they wielded a behind-the-scenes power that changed the course of the civil rights movement in our country. Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune’s lives ran parallel and intersected repeatedly both in spite of and because of their shared vision for civil rights, equal education and social justice in the country. Plus, they forged a personal friendship that crossed racial lines unh...

Ten years ago this summer, I sat at the kitchen table at the beach and finally put together a blog for my writing. It wasn’t a pretty site. My design skills were non-existent. The design options for an amateur like me were minimal. At that point, it was just going to be a place for me to catalog my published writing and maybe post a few personal pieces I wrote. Ten years and 162 posts later, I’ve finally gotten around to a reboot of Random Connect Points thanks to another quiet week at the kitchen table at the beach. I can’t say my design skills have improved but the options available to an amateur designer have increased. Maybe one day I'll get around to properly tagging posts and photos so the search feature will work, but for now, I'm happy with this! My beloved yellow bike continues to grace the cover photo. The more modern “hamburger” drop down menu cuts down on clutter on the landing page. I’ve chosen a simple white background with a fun headline font. And finally afte...

Every year, I dust off this “first day of first grade” photo taken in front of then-Crayton Elementary School. It makes me thankful for these girls and the many other friends who have walked with me, loved me and showed up for me along the way.  First day of first grade. Crayton Elementary  These five little girls became friends as very young children primarily because of proximity living in the same neighborhood.  (Front row: Libby Heath, Nora McArthur Fowles. Back row: Katherine DuBose Duvall, Nancy Marchant Harris, Reba Hull Campbell).  Our mothers were friends, too, because of proximity, church and family connections. I’ll always be grateful to our moms for the playgroups, carpools, spend-the-night adventures, the “six for $24 dress specials” from White’s at Richland Mall, birthday parties, watchful eyes and family trips that we all probably took for granted. By the time these five little girls reached this first day of first grade milestone, we’d known each ...

Stories of local folks who’ve found national acclaim always interest me. And if they’re in the world of journalism or politics even more so. That’s part of the reason I picked up Craig Melvin’s book, "Pops," on a recent trip to the Richland Library. While I don’t know Craig personally, we’ve got enough mutual friends that I feel a little kinship with his story. While this book focuses on Craig's path to the Today show set, it’s more than just his professional story. This book explores his journey to understand and accept an unaccountable father who battled alcoholism and who wasn’t very present in Craig’s growing up years. The timing of the book lines up with Craig’s own journey as a father to his young children, Delano and Sybil. Craig’s storytelling skills from years in television translate nicely to the page with a writing style that’s conversational and descriptive without sugarcoating the challenges his family faced. He deftly balances facing down the demons he d...

“The Personal Librarian” by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray was such a delightful surprise. Historical fiction isn’t normally my top reading choice, but to stay true to one of my summer reading goals, I’m trying out new genres and new writers. This one was spot on. The book follows the life of a young woman in the early 1900s who is hired by the mega-wealthy financier JP Morgan to be the personal librarian for his extensive manuscript and art collection in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. While this was a perfectly acceptable type of position for an unmarried young white woman of the time, the intriguing story line of the book is based around the fact that Belle da Costa Greene is actually Belle Marion Greener, a Black woman. The book builds from Belle’s family story that includes her father, Richard Greener, the first Black Harvard graduate who spent his life as an activist for equal rights. Belle’s father leaves the family over the fact that her mother...

I’ve long been a collector of travel guides. There’s a stack on my bookshelf of books about Spain, Mexico, Italy, Thailand, France, England, Scotland, Israel and Egypt among others. Then I stopped buying travel guides somewhere in the mid-2010s when the internet put travel planning at my fingertips in real time. In today’s digital world, old fashioned travel books may seem to be obsolete. Who wants to travel with a 300-page book when the same info is available right on your phone? Not to mention, so much of the info in a hard-copy travel guide is outdated the day it’s published. For recent post-covid travel, however, I’ve become a fan of travel guides again. I enjoy going to the library and checking out a stack of books about my travel destination. I vicariously pre-travel to my destination running fingers over the colorful maps, pondering the adventures to be had in various parts of a new city. Then I pick my favorite book of the bunch and buy a copy at the local bookstore (my lat...

"Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" by Scottish writer Gail Honeyman caught my eye at the library on a book display for Mental Health Awareness Month. The cover and the title drew me in (although I ended up “reading” as an audiobook on a driving trip – the accent of the Scottish main character is spot-on). At the beginning of the book, Eleanor appears to be an eccentric young woman with a one-dimensional, rigid, and highly judgmental world view. She seems to take every experience and interaction so literally that she can’t fathom why a barista would need to know her name when ordering coffee. She's baffled at why anyone would have reason to eat in a restaurant where food is more expensive and more likely to have been touched by unclean hands. I felt the book started slow, but, as it progressed, I realized the tempo was probably part of the author’s scene-setting to lay out Eleanor’s narrow world perspective. Bit by bit, Honeyman brings the reader into the story of ...

When I made an impulse purchase of a shiny yellow bike eight years ago, I had no idea how much I'd learn from those 30 pounds of metal over the years. 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. Bikes were a rite of passage when I was growing up. I treasure the photo of me and my grandfather as I sat on my first tricycle. As a tween, I loved my pink bike with the banana seat and sissy bar. The last bike I had owned as an adult was stolen from my backyard in Washington more than 25 years before. After that, it wasn’t I disliked biking … it just never came up as a mode or transportation or form of exercise. I impulsively bought the yellow bike eight years ago after spending two afternoons in Greenville riding the Swamp Rabbit Trail on a rented bike that was a perfect fit for my small frame. This one stood out pro...