Written Word

by Billy Reeder | December 4, 2023 | Blog, Featured, written word | 0 Comments

I stayed around when I should've moved along I've been a long time leavin' ya, but I'll be a long time gone - Roger Miller 27°47′.765 N 097°23′.424 W It’s hard to leave Texas. I don’t mean that in terms of anything sentimental. When it’s come to me and my Mistress,...

by Billy Reeder | June 19, 2023 | Blog, Featured, written word | 1 Comment

Students would stop by my office to ask even more questions or sometimes just to plop down in a chair and start telling me about their lives.  There was hardly a subject that wasn’t discussed.  We laughed and at times we cried.  But, most of all we connected as humans.  

by Billy Reeder | November 11, 2022 | Blog, written word | 0 Comments

Sometimes when we’re the most vulnerable. Sometimes when we’re the most confused. Sometimes when we’re the most afraid.

Sometimes this is the exact moment we’re willing to pay the most attention.

by Billy Reeder | January 16, 2021 | written word | 0 Comments

My job isn’t to make you cheer for a cure, my job is to make you believe something is diseased and dangerous.  It doesn’t matter if it’s true, as long as I get you to make the association in your mind.  I’m no longer a product, I’m the solution to your problem. 

by Billy Reeder | January 9, 2021 | Blog, written word | 3 Comments

Everything slowed down.  I felt like I was watching someone drown again.  Except it wasn’t a person.  It was a nation.

by Billy Reeder | April 13, 2020 | Blog, written word | 0 Comments

Floods. Fires. Droughts. Sickness. It’s understood that help isn’t coming from anywhere but within. This is the way it’s always been. We know that we are largely forgotten by the rest of the world. We shoulder the heaviness instead of avoiding it. We endure together.

by Billy Reeder | April 6, 2020 | Featured, written word | 1 Comment

That which we call family isn’t so much a tree as it is a confluence of tributaries flowing into a common river. Those tributaries carry culture, genetics, reputation, damage, pride and other unknown specters flowing beneath the surface of those muddy waters. 

by Billy Reeder | February 4, 2020 | immigration, written word | 1 Comment

David had salvaged his life, but that had cost him almost everything else. Everything was gone other than access to what little money he had saved and the clothes on his back. He was forced to live it all behind. His family was gone.

by Billy Reeder | November 18, 2019 | immigration, written word | 0 Comments

The migrant camp is now a full fledge refugee camp. Except there is no United Nations here. No state sponsored anything. Just a sea of camping tents and thousands of people. I followed my border contacts online as the camp went from two hundred to five hundred to a thousand to over two thousand with hundreds more arriving daily. Border Patrol drops everyone off here who has crossed this region of the border seeking asylum.

The mood here is desperation.

by Billy Reeder | September 30, 2019 | Featured, written word | 1 Comment

What changes when someone gives up a life focused on the pursuit of family and career and, instead, commits to a lifetime of intentional poverty, service and a singular focus on something greater than himself?

by Billy Reeder | April 3, 2019 | immigration, written word | 0 Comments

They did not offer to help because they know what monsters do. The people had grown weary, but the monsters had not. Cruelty never tires the wicked.

by Billy Reeder | March 11, 2019 | Blog, written word | 0 Comments

It got me thinking about something I’ve been teaching for years.  You reach people where they are, not where you want them to be.

by Billy Reeder | January 11, 2019 | immigration, written word | 0 Comments

But, he wasn’t taken to a police station. The car pulled into a warehouse and he was made to get out. The police officer handed him over to other men and left. He did not know where he was.

by Billy Reeder | January 11, 2019 | immigration, written word | 0 Comments

The boy escaped Bangladesh in fear for his life. His father belonged to the minority political party and he was marked. He was given an ultimatum; swear allegiance to us or die.

by Billy Reeder | January 11, 2019 | immigration, written word | 0 Comments

She traveled from Africa searching for a safe place to make a new start. A new life. A safe life. She has followed all the rules. She has been polite. She put her trust in the system and here she waits.

by Billy Reeder | November 20, 2018 | Featured, immigration, texas, written word | 0 Comments

“Every day they were taking more people for questioning.” He told me. “You would only hear shouting, brutalization and then you hear gun shots. But, they would never bring them back.”