Independence Day and Giving Back

Hello, Happy 4th of July everyone! I hope everyone is celebrating safely and staying cool in this crazy hot weather. With everything happening this year, I have become much more educated on our history and black America, especially Juneteenth, when blacks were declared free. While 1776 is when we, as a nation, declared independence from England, many of our people were not ‘free’ until nearly a hundred years later and are still fighting for some liberties. I do support the celebration of Independence Day, but I hope that Juneteenth becomes just as celebrated among everybody in the United States.

Also, Hamilton came out on Disney+ yesterday so you can bet your ass I did a whole movie party with my family. I had tickets to see the showing in Los Angeles, but then the pandemic hit so the show was canceled and the tickets were refunded. While I am so bummed that I couldn’t see the live performance, it was great to see the original cast on screen. If you don’t have Disney+, a few different animators created an Animatic Musical to the soundtrack so you can check that out.

Since we are all stuck at home this year and many of us aren’t working, I wanted to find ways to give back and reach out to others. I decided to look into pen pal / letter writing programs with a few different organizations. My younger brother is a marine reservists so I figured that was a great place to start. We found Operation Gratitude, where you can write letters to deployed troops, recruits, veterans, wounded heroes, first responders, and care givers. I also found Paper Bridges, where you can write words of encouragement and support to orphans around the world. The last group we are writing to is senor citizens from the Victorian Senior Care Center. They posted a very cute Facebook campaign to get pen pals for their residents.

I encourage everyone to spend a few minutes and write letters to someone. I enlisted my whole family to get in on the letter writing so we are going to be sending about 40 letters off next week. Feel free to use the links I posted above or find your own organizations that you care about. Remember to be kind, and keep yourself and others safe by wearing a mask.