It has been over 20 years, but those images still haunt me. The photos are from plane crashes, car wrecks, fires, lost children, and others I was covering as a newspaper photographer. It was my first job right out of college at the Hickory Daily Record.

Having just graduated with a degree in Social Work, I was probably better prepared than my colleagues who went to journalism school. Social work has trained me to deal with emotional issues. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s book On Death and Dying introduced me to grief’s stages. She outlined the following steps in her book:

1. Denial and Isolation
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

I was using some of this to process the traumatic events. Probably the best thing I did was talk with other photographers about my experiences. I was processing.

Today we understand these events and how to avoid Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD). Processing these events through journaling and talking with someone is very important.

The Dart Center(www.dartcenter.org) was set up to help journalists know how to deal with trauma and cover trauma. It still is not being taught in most journalism schools, so today, many journalists have PTSD. We need to raise awareness of this problem and prepare journalists, so they do not develop PTSD. We also need to help many heal from the disease.

Here are some ways to treat PTSD:

Behavior Therapy

Behavior therapy aims to modify and gain control over unwanted behavior. The person learns to cope with difficult situations, often through controlled exposure to them. This kind of therapy gives the person a sense of having control over their life.

Cognitive Therapy

The goal of cognitive therapy is to change unproductive or harmful thought patterns. The person examines their feelings and learns to separate realistic from unrealistic thoughts. As with behavior therapy, the person is actively involved in their recovery and has a sense of control.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Many therapists use a combination of cognitive and behavioral therapies, often referred to as cognitive-behavioral therapy or CBT. One of the benefits of this type of therapy is that the person learns recovery skills that are useful for a lifetime.

Relaxation Techniques

Relaxation techniques help people develop the ability to more effectively cope with the stresses that contribute to anxiety symptoms and some of the physical symptoms of anxiety. The courses taught include deep breathing and exercise.

It is best to seek professional counseling. Prevention is a good course of action if you are a journalist. Check out the resources at the Dart Center.

The conservatives see the American Media’s role as Public Relations for the Executive Branch of Government. Pat Buchannan on NBC’s Today Show said the media’s role was to help bolster the troops and the country’s morale.

The media’s role isn’t public relations for the conservatives. However, this is the problem with this group in power. They have continued to bash the media. If the media shows them in a negative light, they believe the media is wrong.

The media has pursued telling the facts. They are giving Americans the facts about the conservatives and liberals.

Throughout the Clinton years, the media uncovered Clinton’s infidelity. Today they have found false statements about invading Iraq.

Weapons of Mass Destruction were one of the main reasons we invaded Iraq, to be sure these weapons were not used against the rest of the world and the US.

One of these flaws was the best-case scenario; they couldn’t directly launch missiles to deliver these to America.

Another fact uncovered by the media was that the 9/11 terrorists were not from or connected to Iraq or Saddam Hussein.

The conservatives would like you to believe they were the silent majority due to the media. This is easily dismissed as false. They have always had a voice and been visible. Today their tactics are not only to be heard, but all the media hear only their perspective.

The conservatives could not elect a candidate of their own without media. They got their message out through the media.

The conservatives see the “media” exposing our flaws to the world as a way we become vulnerable. The cause is important to pursue, and if the “media” would show the positives (PR role), then we could accomplish our objective.

The ends justify the means. Therefore if there are flaws in the process, this doesn’t matter as long as we establish a democratic state in the Middle East to help bolster Israel.

I believe what is finally starting to happen with the conservative media bashing and sticking to their mission no matter the flaws in the American public will not support blindly as they have done. The number of lives being lost daily is causing people who believed in the ideals of the conservative movement to question their validity for the first time.

Bush cited how many Iraqis Sadam killed (Kurds, for example) as one of the reasons he is labeled a terrorist. By using this reasoning, we have killed more civilians than Sadam due to our preemptive strike in this last war with Iraq.

“Senior Muslim clerics said Thursday (March 23, 2006) that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity should be killed regardless of whether a court decides to free him.” Now Americans are upset they sent their boys and men to fight for a group who will put to death a person for becoming a Christian. Finally, America is getting they cannot force another culture to accept our culture of freedom of religion.

Ironically, we believe the only way for democracy to prevail is by preemptive force.

Photo of Don Rutledge with John Howard Griffin as they worked on the book Black Like Me.

Don Rutledge has worked in 143 countries and all 50 states. His work has included assignments from the world famous Black Star picture agency in New York; to civil rights efforts (including documenting the work of John Howard Griffin for Black Like Me); to photo stories in Associated Press, Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, Forbes, Stern in Germany, and Paris-Match in France; and numerous publications in Canada, South America, Europe, and Asia.

It all started in 1955; Don frequently wrote Howard Chapnick, the Black Star Photo Agency president. Don had observed the bylines of the photog­raphers in magazines and saw that Black Star represent­ed many of the photographers. Black Star told Don they wanted to know a portfo­lio before giving him an assignment. Don didn’t have a portfolio. So when Don was corre­spond­ing, he gave them story idea after story idea.

Black Star was frustrated with the person who kept writing them so often. He had some excellent ideas, but can he take a photograph? They wrote back, letting him know they liked one of his ideas. They contacted the parties to see if they were interested. That first story was for Friends magazine. This publication was the magazine of the Chevrolet Company.

Don was so delighted with the response he imme­diate­ly contacted the people, shot the story, wrote the material, and sent the package of contact sheets and material to Black Star. Black Star was quite upset. “We haven’t even talked to them, and you have already shot the story,” was the reply Don received. They also informed him of the many holes in the story and how it would not work. Telling Don was their mistake.

Don contacted the people again and went backfilling in the holes. The feedback was Don’s first time having someone cri­tique his work and guide him. The Friends Magazine not only liked the work but wanted to use Don again.

The Friends Magazine was the beginning of a close relationship of Don with Black Star and even more with Howard Chapnick. Howard Chapnick is considered the “Dean of Photojournalism” and is highly regarded worldwide in the photography business. “His strength over the years was his high sense of ethics and his religiosity if you will,” commented Chapnick. “This carried through into his concern for humanity and the important issues. He tried to use pho­togra­phy to make people aware of the great problems in the world. He used it as a force for change, changing public perceptions and alert­ing the world to the prob­lems that the world suffers like poverty and sickness.”

“One of his great strengths is that he was very observant of the world around him, not only in the big stories but the little ones. He had this happy faculty of being responsive to visually translatable ideas into commercial entities.”

Rutledge says, “Photography… forces us to see, to look beyond what the average person observes, to search where some people never think to look. It even draws us back to the curiosity we experienced in our childhood.

“Children are excited about their surrounding world: Why is the sky blue? Why are one flower red and another yellow? How do the stars stay up in the sky? Why is the snow cold?

“As the years go by, that curious child matures into a normal adult with the attitude of ‘who cares anymore about those childish questions and an­swers?’ The ‘seeing beyond what the average person sees’ fills us constantly with excitement and allows us to keep the dreams of our youth.”

Dan Beatty, the photo quality coordinator at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, worked with Don Rutledge on The Commission magazine, where together they won numerous awards for the magazine.

“Don is the one person who has complete­ly influenced the magazine’s direction. Before Don came, we knew that there was a certain way we wanted to present the mission material in the magazine. None of us had a firm grasp on what direction we should go to achieve our goals. Don provided the direc­tion for us to go. Don never express strong feelings about—in a critique type—on the mag­azine. Just Don’s presence and constant example of someone who always strives for the best is what guided us along. He constantly connected us with different individuals in the field of photojour­nalism and lay­out and design. He felt these would be good influences on the maga­zine or influ­ences that would help us along the road where we wanted to be with the publication.”

Beatty says, “I would not be doing what I am doing, at the level I am doing it, if it hadn’t been for Don. He is an example of con­sistency and integrity in a field where that is not always a constant with the different people I’ve met. He represented something that I wanted to achieve myself. He has been the biggest influence I can think of on me personal­ly and the different photographers I have worked with along with Don.”

Joanna Pinneo, based in Longmont, Colorado, is one of the nation’s top magazine photographers. She has won third place in the Magazine Photographer of the Year competition and has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Her career started in the lab for The Commission and today continues to shoot assignments for National Geographic Magazine.

Pinneo says, “Don spent hours with me, reviewing my contact sheets and helping me see which pictures were successful and tips to improve.”

“He worked with me on depth and layers and meanings. What to include and what not to include. He showed me how a millimeter can distinguish between a good and a great photograph.” “It was just the kind of nurturing a young photographer needs to help figure out what’s important visually and emotionally when taking pictures.”

The foreword by Tom Kennedy, former director of Photography for the National Geographic Society and now managing editor for multimedia, Washingtonpost.com Interactive, states in his introduction to the book that “Don’s photos sparkled with examples of human joy, tragedy, and daily life in between. . . . Don’s photos convey the power of God’s handiwork and His presence in our world. . . . I’m proud to have had him as a mentor on my life’s journey.”

Don is retired and lives in Midlothian, VA.

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14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 15 He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 1

6 He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you. 17 You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.

Deuteronomy 8

Earlier in my career, I was pretty cocky about all I had done to get where I was. It was all me and all my hard work.

I didn’t apply for my first two jobs but was asked to come on board. I thought it was because I was a lot better than everyone else. Of course, I never said this out loud to anyone.

Just six years into my career, I lost my full-time job due to the economy and was laid off. It was then I cried out to God why? I could have easily seen God wondering why I asked him to intervene since I had done everything myself. As the scripture says, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.”

The next three years were ones where I had my wilderness experience. I was surviving and not having lots of fun. But I was grateful to be paying the bills. I decided to go and get my seminary degree during this time. My experience was only three years of turmoil, unlike Israel’s 40 years.

The job right out of seminary, I was hired without ever having met my employer face to face. This time I knew it wasn’t me but God who was in charge of this journey.

When I get a job, I still want to celebrate my talents being honored. However, I am even more aware of how many other photographers could have been hired to do the job. When reading the scripture, “…remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today,” I pause and remember my three years.

If I had not experienced the layoff, I doubt I would have come to understand how much I accomplished, not due to me but because of my God, who has given me blessings of health, opportunity, and relationships which allow me to succeed.

While I would like to say I learned my lesson—I didn’t. There are times as a full-time freelancer the phone doesn’t ring. I have thought of everything I can to promote myself. After much prayer, I have consulted professionals and taken their advice, but I am still awake at night and wide awake every once in a while.

This is when I am reminded of what hope is all about. Hope is the assurance of things to come (it will all work out) because looking in the past of things done (Jesus’ victory over death) is now a firm, unshaken, well-grounded, immovable persuasion and certainty.

We will lose hope when we forget where God has brought us from. Remember all he has done and is doing.

In October last year, I had the rare opportunity to go to West Africa for three weeks. The people of West Africa were so kind and wonderful.

Earlier the children learn to carry things on their heads. The posture of the people is incredible.

Since they do not have sugar in their diets like Americans, their teeth are in better condition.

[Nikon D4, 85mm, ISO 2800, ƒ/1.8, 1/100]

This is the season of weddings. Weddings are one of the highlight events of our time here on earth. Jesus’ first miracle was at a wedding, and he used the wedding as a metaphor in his parables.

The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.

John 3:29

Few people can interrupt whatever I am doing and have my full attention. Each of these people is what I call my closest friend.

You can even know when someone else is interacting with a close friend. The mood changes and you see a glimpse of the joy in their hearts when interacting with their friend.

Jesus talked about what friends will do for one another.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

1 John 3:16

What is so special about friendships that we stop what we are doing and give our full attention to these relationships?

Forgiveness is at the core of friendship. Tom Peters says corporations should reward people for failure because failure means risk; without risk, there can be no success. In Laura Beth Jones’s book, Jesus CEO, she relates a story:

I was once in a self-discovery group where people were not mincing words. One man, sitting very stiffly and quietly, was a candidate for promotion within his organization. His body language was a picture of caution and fear. Finally, a woman gave him this sound advice: “You need to fail a few times. Then you will understand that people will love you even when you are not perfect.”

We have all taken risks with people in the past and have been sorely disappointed by many of them. We found out who wasn’t our friend for sure. Most of us then learned to take fewer risks so we would not feel the pain of disappointment.

God did not rest until he created humanity in the Garden of Eden. He wanted relationships. His artistry created us in his likeness to desire relationships as well.

Reading the Bible, each story centers on the character’s relationship with others and God. God allowed Job to be tested because he knew how strong the association was, to begin with.

And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,”[a] and he was called God’s friend.

James 2:23

The footnote in my Bible for “God’s friend” says, “This designation (see 2Ch 20:7) further describes Abraham’s relationship to God as one of complete acceptance.

It has been said to have a friend; you must be a friend.