Last night I attended the retirement ceremony for outgoing Henderson Vance County Chamber of Commerce President Bill Edwards. It was a heartfelt celebration, with words spoken by chamber members, elected officials at the local and state level, even a song honoring Mr. Edwards. At the end Bill gave a moving speech as well thanking everyone. I don’t want to say details of who was there or post pictures since it was private event. But I’ll ask the Chamber if I …
Month: March 2012
FVW Opportunity Recognizes April as Child Abuse Prevention Month With Pinwheel Garden April 4th, 2012
PINWHEELS: A NEW WAY TO LOOK AT CHILD ABUSE PREVENTION Pinwheel Garden Recognizes Efforts to Prevent Child Abuse & Neglect On April 4 at 10am, Franklin-Vance-Warren Opportunity, Inc.’s Family Resource Center and Head Start program will join thousands of child advocacy agencies throughout North Carolina and the nation in recognizing Child Abuse Prevention Month with a pinwheel garden. The pinwheel is the new symbol of child abuse prevention, representing community efforts to provide children with the safe, stable, nurturing relationships …
Tuesday Open Line
Chapel Hill’s town council voted Monday to ban all cellphone use behind the wheel, including hands-free devices. The ban is the first of its kind in the state. Read the full article here With spring here, a device that’s been around since time immemorial is being honored — it’s National Umbrella Month. No one knows who invented the umbrella or exactly when, but it’s estimated that it was being used as much as 4,000 years ago. It’s thought the original …
Richard Brand: So How Come They Can Make Me Do This?
Today there is supposed to be a great debate in the Supreme Court of the U.S. over the Affordable Health Care Act. As the debate keeps being reported in the news the major issue is whether or not it is legal for the government to require all citizens to have some form of health care. The energy behind this debate is the opposition to government telling people what they have to do. Most of us do not like to be …
FIRST® Robotics TermiRaiders from Southern Vance 4-H Robotics Team Will Compete in Regional Tournament Event in Raleigh
The FIRSTRobotics Competition (FRC) is an annual competition that challenges high-school students – working alongside professional Mentors – to design and build a robot of their own, and compete in a ‘ Sport for the Mind™’ that measures the effectiveness of each robot, the power of teamwork and collaboration, and Gracious Professionalism™. Students build and program their own robots against a field of competitors and experience the excitement of science, engineering, technology and innovation. At the 2012 tournament, teams …
VGCC Board Holds Meeting, Accepts $25,000 Grant
The Vance-Granville Community College (VGCC) Board of Trustees held its bimonthly meeting on Monday, March 19 at the college’s Henderson campus. At that meeting, North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund Commission board member Pete Burgess of Henderson presented the college with a symbolic check for $25,000 representing the recent Project Skill-UP grant awarded to VGCC. Project Skill-UP grants were developed by the Trust Fund Commission in collaboration with the N.C. Community College System to help individuals in rural counties of North …
VGCC honors students collect books for Franklin Campus Day Care
The Vance-Granville Community College chapter of Phi Theta Kappa recently conducted a children’s book drive to support the Child Care Center at VGCC’s Franklin County Campus. The day care’s facilities and materials suffered major water damage late last year, ruining some of the center’s supplies, particularly books. In response, students in the Alpha Sigma Chi chapter of PTK, the international honor society for two-year colleges, collected approximately 135 new and gently-used books to replenish the supplies for the preschoolers’ use. …
Terrell Lane Middle School Band visits VGCC
Students in the band program at Terrell Lane Middle School in Louisburg (including the seventh-grade band, pictured here), under the direction of Tracie Winstead, presented a concert in the Civic Center at Vance-Granville Community College’s Main Campus on March 19, as part of an afternoon during which the students learned more about the college. Band members heard from VGCC music instructor Michael Stephenson about the college’s various music programs. College faculty also discussed other college opportunities, including the upcoming summer …
The Garden Path April 2012
The Garden Path, a publication of Kerr Lake Master Gardners has released their April newsletter. Including the Plant of the Month, Checklist for April gardening, and some activities they provided to Vance County Schools. Download and read here Also, Paul McKenzie from the Agricultural Extenion Office will be holding a Beginning Vegetable Gardening Class on Monday, 3/26, 6:30 pm at the Vance County Extension Center (305 Young St., Henderson). He will cover the basics of soil preparation, planting, irrigation, etc. …
Monday Open Line
Weekly Address: President Obama Says House Must Pass Bipartisan Transportation Bil. President Obama is calling on the House of Representatives to pass a bipartisan transportation bill that would repair crumbling roads and bridges and support construction jobs in communities all across America. According to a new report, 90 percent of these construction jobs are middle class jobs. The Senate passed the bill with the support of Democrats and Republicans because if the bill stalls in Congress then constructions sites will …
City of Henderson City Council Meeting Monday March 26th, 2012
The Henderson City Council will hold a Short Regular Meeting on Monday, 26 March 2012 at 6:00 PM with a Work Session to immediately follow. The meeting will be held in the City Hall Council Chambers, at 134 Rose Ave., Henderson, NC 27536 Download the full packet here: 20120326_coh_regular_meeting_packet (74 pages) PUBLIC HEARING a) Consideration of Approval of Ordinance 12-06, An Ordinance Providing for the Zoning of Solar Farms, Wind Turbines and Other Tall Utilities. PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD ON AGENDA …
Vance County Schools – Beef In Schools Contain No Ammonium Hydroxide
With recent reports of consumer concerns over ammonium hydroxide used to process lean finely textured beef, referred to as “pink slime,” Vance County Schools wants parents, students and the local community to know that the school system does not purchase beef products processed with this chemical. Vance County Schools has been ordering fully cooked commercial beef products, mostly in beef patties, since at least the year 2000. The beef product is not ammonia treated ground beef filler that has been …
VGCC StudentRrecognized for Academic Excellence
Vance-Granville Community College has named student Sharon M. Lark of Bunn as its recipient of the North Carolina Community College System’s Academic Excellence Award for 2012. One student from each of the 58 colleges in the state system will be honored at the N.C. Community Colleges Excellence Event, called “The Great Within the 58,” on April 19 in Raleigh. Lark is currently working toward completing two degrees, an Associate in Arts (College Transfer) and an Associate in Applied Science degree …
New VGCC scholarship honors Maria Parham Guild Gift Gallery volunteers
The volunteers who operate the Guild Gift Gallery at Maria Parham Medical Center recently endowed their fifth Vance-Granville Community College scholarship, and this one specifically honors the service of all those who have donated their time to work at the gift shop over the years. The new gift continues a tradition of the organization’s support for education. Since 2008, the Guild Gift Gallery has given over $125,000 to the VGCC Endowment Fund to create scholarships that help deserving students who …
VGCC Awards 328 Scholarships To Students
Vance-Granville Community College awarded 328 scholarships to full-time students at an awards ceremony, held Feb. 22 in the college’s Civic Center. In her welcoming remarks, Dr. Stelfanie Williams, the new president of VGCC, congratulated the scholarship recipients and thanked the donors who support the college’s Endowment Fund, many of whom were on hand to present their scholarships in person. “VGCC is strong in large part because of the wonderful combination represented here today: excellent students on one hand, and supportive …
Vance County Schools Student Accepted to 2012 Governors School
Ethan M. Byrom has been accepted to the 2012 Governors School in recognition of Mathematics. This summer, 550 of the most distinguished North Carolina rising high school juniors and seniors will attend the 2012 Governor’s School. This year’s attendees are particularly fortunate as the program’s future was in question after Governor’s School funding was eliminated in the NC General Assembly’s 2011-13 biennial budget. However, thanks to the efforts of the North Carolina Governor’s School Foundation, which raised more than $700,000, …
Tax Time is Also Scammer Time
Scammers like to use recurring events, such as tax season, as a “hook” to catch you with your guard down. One common tax-time scam involves masquerading as an Internal Revenue Service agent. Scammers know that simply saying “I’m with the IRS” will get people’s attention and possibly get them to share personal information. Someone claiming to be with the IRS recently called a North Carolina business seeking to “verify” information about one of the business’s employees. Fortunately the business did …
White House on Petitions: We’re Listening. Seriously.
By Macon Phillips, Special Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Digital Strategy Back in September when we launched the We the People petitions platform, we really weren’t sure what to expect. This kind of online engagement was brand new for the U.S. Government, but it quickly became clear that there were thousands of Americans across the country who were eager to tell the Obama Administration about the issues they care about most. From the beginning, we promised …
Friday / Weekend Open Line
Tara Servatius, a blogger for the John Locke Foundation, a “free-market think tank” in Raleigh, N.C., resigned on Thursday after posting an offensive cartoon of President Obama on the foundation’s blog earlier in the week. Servatius issued a statement saying she was “genuinely sorry my inclusion of the photo along with my blog post has caused controversy.” But the conservative blogger also defended her inclusion of the photo as an attempt to articulate her position “At the time, I was …
Vance County Animal Shelter Group Meeting This Afternoon
The Vance County Animal Shelter group meeting this afternoon is at 3:30 p.m. This was scheduled during their last meeting. The group will continue discussions on the development of a new animal shelter. Commissioners Brummitt, Wilder, and Wright may be in attendance. The group will meet in the Commissioners’ Meeting Room.