By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

I could have died last week picking up a hitchhiker, but not how you might think.

She was about 40 years old, and she was sitting outside a gas station with her stuff and her dog. Her face was covered with tattoos. She was headed to Oregon, but first she needed a ride to the Health Department in Little Rock. She called herself a “traveller.”

The Health Department was at 3915 W. 8th Street. With my phone almost dead, I decided to take the exit off I-30 and look for the street number rather than use the power-sapping map. But the numbers were nowhere near 3915. Driving through downtown, I keyed in the address, thinking the location must be on the other side of the Capitol. Instead, the phone’s map showed it was farther west and on the other side of I-630.

That was confusing, and meanwhile my phone had dwindled to about 1 percent battery power. I kept looking at the screen as I took the entrance ramp and began to merge onto I-630. I was transfixed by that map and the urgency of that 1 percent, until my passenger calmly said, “There’s a car parked on the side of the road.” Continue reading →

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Mister Rogers died in 2003, but one of the lessons he can still teach us is that you can believe passionately in something and not be a jerk about it.

Fred Rogers, the host of PBS’ “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” is the subject of the theatrical documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” It’s a revealing look at the man who was a part of so many childhoods. It turns out he really was that nice in real life.

But he also was driven by passion and belief. In one black-and-white clip, he said love was at the root of everything – “love or the lack of it.” An ordained Presbyterian minister, he believed television could be a tool to build up children, but instead much of it was shallow, wasteful and designed to mold them into consumers. He wanted something beyond pies-in-the-face humor. Continue reading →

Project Zero’s Christie Erwin takes a selfie with The CALL’s Lauri Currier at the Walk for the Waiting.

There were superheroes on the field at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock Saturday – Superman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, some others. And then a lot of real ones.

The comic book characters – those were actors. The real ones were people like Bryan and Stephanie Emmerling, who are adopting their second daughter after fostering her for the past year-and-a-half.

The Emmerlings – he a FedEx delivery driver, she employed by a mortgage company – were among thousands participating in the Walk for the Waiting. The annual event raises money for three faith-based organizations serving children removed by the state from their biological families because of abuse, parental drug use or other reasons. The CALL works with churches to recruit foster and adoptive families. Project Zero connects potential adoptive families with children whose parents’ rights have been terminated. Immerse Arkansas primarily provides support to children who are aging out of the system without being adopted. Continue reading →