![\"\"](\"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/American-flag-small1-580x394.jpg\" "\\"American")
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I love the American flag, I photograph it every time I find a great one. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Because it stands for something bigger than ourselves. \u00a0Men and women far braver than I have given their very lives to hold it high, to preserve it, to help it stand! \u00a0Love of country is one of our greatest devotions, right under our Love of God, but above all else.<\/p>\n
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The love of friends is still very high on the list of our priorities. \u00a0It is that devotion that has led me to a very difficult decision, but one I must make. \u00a0Let me give an illustration to that point. \u00a0Let’s pretend that I have been invited to my son Scott’s house in Florida for Christmas with my entire family, Sherelene, all of my children, their spouses, and my six grandchildren. \u00a0I’m so excited to get to be with them! \u00a0My time with them is always so precious. \u00a0Then I get a call on Thanksgiving that the plans have changed, each of my three families and Sherelene are going to have to be somewhere else, but I’m still invited to their empty house and enjoy Christmas alone. \u00a0What do you think I would do? I’m sure you can guess!<\/p>\n
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I joined NAPP almost a dozen years ago, then worked with Kelby Media and now KelbyOne. \u00a0Over those dozen years I’ve met and adopted the teams into my family of close friends, a lot of people that were part of all those different iterations of the same company! \u00a0Business is a fickle thing and all kinds of things can happen to change the fortunes of a business, as sad as it is, it sometimes means some people have to be let go to help the company survive. \u00a0This has happened \u00a0several times over past few years. \u00a0A number of great people are still at KelbyOne, unfortunately the ones I was closest to, with the exception of Scott himself, are now all gone.<\/p>\n
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This is my dilemma, can I still go home for Christmas? \u00a0 Sadly no. \u00a0I have decided to pull out of Photoshop World, and from Kelby One. \u00a0I’m not mad at anyone, quite the opposite, I am very thankful for all the great times I’ve had working with Scott and all his incredible team, for all those years. \u00a0I’ve loved taping classes, speaking at Photoshop World, meeting all the great members and Scott’s people have treated me better than I deserve! \u00a0I want to thank Scott Kelby for allowing me to be a part of such a great team, meet so many wonderful people and for being so kind to me. \u00a0I wish it could have gone on forever!<\/p>\n
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But, sadly, now I can’t go home for Christmas!<\/p>\n
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Blessings,<\/p>\n
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the pilgrim<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love the American flag, I photograph it every time I find a great one. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Because it stands for something bigger than ourselves. \u00a0Men and women far braver than I have given their very lives to hold it high, to preserve it, to help it stand! \u00a0Love of country is one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chronicles"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16661"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16667,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16661\/revisions\/16667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}