August 14, 2017

Ridge Spring News

Harriet Householder

The Ridge Spring Farmers' Market is slowing down. We still  had six vendors and fresh local vegetables  such as scuppernongs are here as well as peas, tomatoes, corn, peppers, baked goods and more. We have not been rained once this summer.  How fortunate!!! We had a visit from George Raborn. 

This is a complicated story line and I hope I get it right.  Carol M. is related to Joe Cal Watson and has visited here.  When she saw George Raborn's name in the news column she contacted me and asked me to forward an email to George. Note that I sent the email to his son.  George does have a cell phone but let's his children and grandchildren deal with computers. Carol was from California, had been doing genealogy research and found a connection to the Raborn name.  Well, George called her and they began discussing names, dates and places.  He remembered a family member had moved to Texas.  When he said the person's name, Carol M. in California remarked that that lady was her great-great-grandmother.  It sure can be a small world.

Coming soon will be the end of summer sidewalk sale.  Remember the date SEPTEMBER 9TH.  Many businesses will have specials for you to browse and the Farmers' Market will still be going on.

Judy Adamick ,local artist, was accepted into "With These Hands Gallery" on Edisto Island, SC. She delivered six paintings including "Pond Turtle". See her website: Judyadamickfineart

 Leonard Bell is offering Market Boxes on Thursdays at the Johnston Farmers Market. Each box will contain a variety of, in season, fruits and vegetables as well as offerings from other farmers and artists at the market. If you are interested in ordering a box they are $20 and available for pick on Thursday around 5pm. Please call Mr. Bell at 803-646-2169 or Janet Burgess @ 803-275-8030

School is gearing up.  The school buses are geared up and all is ready to go.  Have a great year.

As if  you have not heard enough about the Solar Eclipse here is a little more about it.

Even if you get clouded over, you'll still feel the world plunge into darkness, yet parts of the distant horizon, depending on where you are, will still appear sky-blue in color. Overhead, where the Sun was in the sky, especially if it's clear, you'll be able to see:

·         the Sun's corona, an extended mass of ultra-heated gas which goes out more than five million miles into space,

·         a very bright star right next to the Sun: Regulus, whose position will be slightly distorted owing to General Relativity,

·         and, if you're lucky, the planets Mars and Mercury, ahead and behind the path of the Sun through the sky, respectively.

·         There will be plenty of other interesting facts about the eclipse for those who view it from space or with scientific goals, such as the fact that the shape of the eclipse's shadow itself isn't a sphere, or that the bending of starlight is how we measure the gravitational field and effects of the largest mass in our Solar System. For those experiencing it from the ground, these are the top seven practical things you should do. Be early, be safe, be warm, and as soon as totality comes to an end, put those eclipse glasses back on. Do not view the eclipse with binoculars or a telescope, as even the slightest sliver of direct sunlight through a device like that can cause permanent blindness! If you do it right, the memories and sights you'll see will be sure to last a lifetime!

Art Center by Joanne Crouch

           Get started on Christmas early with Christmas in August at the Art Center on Thursday, August 24^th from  5:30-7:00.  Using pinecone petals, gold leaf and a gourd to make an ornament that can be used on your tree or displayed year-round.  Cost is $30 ages 10 & up.  You can see a picture on AARS facebook page or our website.  Text instructor, Joanne Crouch at (803)480-0576, call (803)685-5577 or email joanne.crouch26@gmail.com to pre-register for this class.  Pre-registration is required for this class.

     Ridge Spring Rocks!  The Art Center is initiating a movement that takes the simple rock and paints images on them.  The rocks are then hid around town.  When the rock is found, a picture is taken and put on the group’s facebook page, Ridge Spring Rocks!   The finder then hides the rock for others to find.  If you need help getting started, please contact the Art Center on Fridays and Saturdays from 10-4 for more information.  Please join Ridge Spring Rocks! on facebook.

      AARS is also looking for someone who could help us revamp our website.  We also need a way for folks to register for classes online.  If you know someone reliable that we get to help us, please notify me at joanne.crouch26@gmail.com of call (803)658-5577 and leave a message and I will return your call.

      The Art Center is open on Fridays and Saturday from 10-4.  Come and enjoy the work of local artist. 

Review from David Marshall James:  "Y Is for Yesterday" by Sue Grafton

   Kinsey Millhone-- Santa Teresa, California, P.I.-- has gumshoe-d her jeans-clad way through 25 novels over the past 35 years.    And she's only 39.  Author Sue Grafton wisely left her protagonist time-encapsulated during the 1980s, at which point the writer sent her detective out on the literary stage.

   Date-wise, in this 25th Kinsey Millhone mystery, it's still 1989, as she wraps up her latest rounds of business. People still use pay phones (Kinsey hath not a cell phone-- I don't recall someone using one until 1993), and she's still typing reports on her portable Smith Corona.     Her P.I. biz is still mostly concerned with legwork, with hours stuck on the freeway (or staked-out at some curb), in her Honda.

   Kinsey works off intuition, reading people's faces and voices, when she gleans information.  Life doesn't come processed through a computer or a texting device. Rather, it hits Kinsey like a gust off the Pacific Ocean.  She breathes in its saltiness, tastes it, feels it in her nooks and crannies.

   The clock turns back even further in Kinsey's latest case, as she deals with a passel of twenty something's who attended an elite private school in 1979, when one in their midst was murdered.

   After serving an abbreviated juvenile sentence, the boy who fired the murder weapon is back in Santa Teresa, living with his parents, who find themselves blackmailed.  This powder-keg mix of high-schoolers generated several scandals, including the production of a sex tape.  The tape's existence is known to a group of students and parents, some of whom have viewed it.

   The police have heard about it, but it did not surface during legal proceedings.  Hello, here it is ten years later.

   Additionally, Kinsey is preoccupied with protecting herself against Ned Lowe, the psychopathic serial killer who darned near notched Kinsey's name on his vic-list.  He's also stalking his ex-wives.

   Grafton's plotting, stylistics, and characterizations demonstrate why she's been a major player on the publishing scene for 35 years.  The almost-500 pages of her latest novel flip by as if propelled by a Pacific gust.

   All bets are still off as to how Grafton will tie up the matters of Kinsey Millhone in her "Z" narrative.  No deaths of recurring characters, please.  Howzabout fading out on Kinsey in a beach chair, watching the sun set over the Pacific, sipping her beverage of choice (a fine Chardonnay), while dining on one of her favored peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches?  With perhaps an engagement ring from Det. Cheney Phillips, STPD, glistening in the waning sunbeams?

Harriet's Garden Tips:  The caterpillars have found my hidden parsley.  I will tell you that I do not kill them, I just remove them.  With all the rain and the ground being soaked, it is a good time to dig up those trees that are in the wrong place.  The longer you wait, the deeper those roots will grow.  I am still finding pecan trees in the oddest places.  The morning glory vines are not nice vines.  They are flimsy and small at the base but then grow thick and unyielding as they get to the top of the plant they are growing on.   Get your soil tested for your fall garden of vegetables or plants.

REMINDERS

All Summer Saturdays: Ridge Spring Farmers' Market

August 21: Total Solar Eclipse

Sept. 9: Ridge Spring Sidewalk Sales Event

October 14: Ridge spring harvest Festival

Ridge Spring Library hours: Mon/Tues 8:30 am - 12 pm; Wed., 8:30 – 4:30;         Thurs 8:30 am –12:30 pm; Fri 8:30 pm -4:30 pm; Sat 9-12

Ridge Spring Library Toddler Time Mondays at 10:30

Saluda County Library Hours:  Mon/Wed 8:30 am-5 pm; Tues/Thurs 8:30 am – 6 pm;   Fri 8:30am – 5 pm; Sat closed new fax machine and can send toll free

Narcotics Anonymous Fridays at RS Library at 7:00 PM

Ridge Spring Post Office hours:  Mon-Fri. 7:30 am – 11:30 am; Sat 9 – 10 am

Recycling Center Hours: Mon/Wed/Fri 1-7; Sat 7-7; Sun 3-7; Tues/Thurs closed

First Thursday of the Month:  AARS meets at 6:30, 685-5783

Every Friday & Saturday:  AARS hours 10 – 4 or by appt, free admission

Third Thursday of the Month: FORS at Library at 5:00; no meetings in July & August