For the rest of the story see this week’s newspaper.

For the rest of the story see this week’s newspaper.

Blacksburg police continued investigating multiple break-ins of businesses discovered on Aug. 14.
Mayor David Hogue said he had been told the problem was not restricted to the town.
“I’m in touch almost daily with Police Chief Jamie Ham. We’re doing everything we can, patrolling and doing what we can to prevent more burglaries. I believe we will find who is responsible,” Hogue said. “Our officers are very much on top of it.”

For the rest of the story see this week’s newspaper.

Blacksburg Primary, Granard and Gaffney Middle schools in the Cherokee County School District are being tested for a possible presence of mold.
Interim Superintendent Kim Bagwell said Tuesday a consultant with Crossroads Environmental worked with district officials to collect and analyze samples from the three schools over the weekend.

For the rest of the story see this week’s newspaper.

Candy and gumball machines at Papa G’s restaurant were destroyed in a series of burglaries in downtown Blacksburg.

The missing items were minimal from Sassy Scissors, one of four businesses in downtown Blacksburg, hit by burglars over the weekend.
“I feel violated, because they went through my personal papers,” said Renee Wyatt, owner of the beauty shop at 111 N. Charleston St. “They made a mess. Went through everything, filing cabinets, drawers, looking for money. It’s more of a nuisance. I hope and pray they get whoever did this.”

For the rest of the story see this week’s newspaper.

BY JANET S. SPENCER
HOMETOWN NEWS

Photo by Janet S. Spencer.
Dewitt Elliott who served in WW II pauses for a somber moment of reflection during the Blacksburg VFW Post 4941 annual meeting.

Local veterans shared more than breakfast during their annual meeting Saturday at the Community House.
The informal gathering by Post 4941, Blacksburg’s Veterans of Foreign Wars, was a time of reflection, thanks, fellowship and sharing.
After the meal, Post Commander Clarence Hammett invited the audience to share anecdotes from their military days that prompted laughter and displayed the group’s sense of camaraderie.
Hammett broke the ice by telling about overcoming a language barrier, and Cherokee County VA Officer Todd Humphries, also a member of the post, related a story he admitted was only funny now.
“I was stationed in Germany. My wife and kids were there. We had to catch a train and then switch. The train was late, and the minute I stepped on, it left. My wife and kids were left behind. I could see the kids crying. They had to catch a plane, and we all met at the airport. That was probably the funniest thing that happened, but it was pitiful at the time,” Humphries said.
On a more somber note, Dewitt Elliott who served during WW II said he was unable to add anything to the story session when he was invited to contribute.
“When I was serving, there was no funny stuff going on,” he said.
Following a couple of more tales, Humphries expressed appreciation to members of the post and the ladies auxiliary for their support in keeping the VFW effort alive locally.
“We have a good time just trying to grow. We want the VFW to be here for veterans serving now. We want to have a VFW post for them. We have a lot serving right now from Blacksburg. We want to make sure they have a place to come to 20 or 30 years from now,” Humphries said. now from Blacksburg. We want to make sure they have a place to come to 20 or 30 years from now,” Humphries said.
He added often when he asks veterans to join the VFW, they say they might consider it later.
“We want veterans to know why we’re here,” he said.
Various age groups were represented at the meeting, including Hal Howington who has been a VFW member for 65 years.
Hammett said the local post is non-smoking or professes no tobacco use and is non-drinking, according to its by-laws.
“And not much chewing,” Howington added.

Blacksburg Town Councilman Joe Ross won re-election Tuesday to his District 1 seat.
Ross received 84 votes or 76 percent of the balloting to defeat local businesswoman and political newcomer Suzanne Patterson. Patterson finished with 25 votes.
Only 23 percent of the registered voters in the district cast ballots.
“I felt there should have been a better turnout,” Patterson said. “I wish Joe the best of luck. I feel I did my best, and I’m not through. I mean there are other avenues even if you’re not on the council.”
Ross has served on the Council for 11 years.
“I think it was a good, clean race,” he said. “I thank the people of Blacksburg for supporting me by voting. I have a lot of friends and family who helped me. My wife, especially, helped me contact people. I’m overwhelmed with the outcome.”
In the Gaffney City election, incumbent Councilman Bernard Smith won a sixth term with 69 percent of the votes, defeating Cornelius D. Smith.
The Cherokee County School Board race included the re-election of Barry Bailey who was unopposed and represents Blacksburg’s District 3.
In the race for three additional seats on the School Board, only one of three incumbents was re-elected.
School Board District 1 member Mike Ellis took 55 percent of the vote to defeat Charles Alex Copeland and Michael Nix.
In School District 5, Ron Garner with 81 percent of the vote unseated Amanda Knowles.
Lindley Auton in School District 7 was defeated by Alan McEntire who earned a seat on the board with 61 percent of the votes. McEntire also eliminated Marcia Duncan.
Garner, McEntire, Ellis and Bailey will take their seats on the board in a School Board meeting Monday night.

Photo by Janet S. Spencer.
Author Jerrold Peeler of Blacksburg displays, “Thicketty,” his recently released work of historical fiction. He also drew the cover’s art.

  Jerrold Peeler of the Pleasant Hills community in Blacksburg is a storyteller.
His yarns are based on information gleaned as a child from his great-grandfather’s cache of memories eagerly shared by Peeler’s aging uncles and aunts with any members of the younger generations who would listen.
Peeler, 73, is proud to have been in their audiences.
He absorbed the anecdotes with a hunger for more and retells them today with a slight spin that might have gotten him in trouble at an earlier age with the original narrators of his great-grandfather’s recollections.
But an effective and careful twist in his recently-released first book, “Thicketty,” gives the reader not only an appreciation of his love of history but details  a way of life from well over a century ago.
It’s a novel accepted as historical fiction set between 1854 and 1871 in an area that was then Spartanburg County.
Peeler successfully limits deviation from facts only to changing the names of his subjects as he preserves the historical significance of events surrounding the Civil War in areas known now as Cherokee, Spartanburg and Union counties. He details an area stretching to and above the North Carolina border before the counties were delineated that came to be known as “The Dark Corner,” based partly on a brief period of military occupation by the conquering North.
The distinction remains today in the true accounts of history, and Peeler extends the setting of his book beyond the Thicketty Mountain area where he was born in portraying the far-reaching turbulent life before, during and after the Civil War.
“I remember all the stories that were told to me.  My book is a part of what happened to all the families back then. What I’ve written is just a synopsis,” he said.
“Thicketty” contains a little bit of everything.  “Murder, everything  you can imagine. The local history is true right down the line,” Peeler said.
Dr. Bobby G. Moss, Blacksburg native and resident, noted author and professor emeritus of history at Limestone College, agreed.
“This is a book everyone should read. It gives a better understanding of what life was like in upper South Carolina and across the state. The reader will see the names of many places he or she recognizes, like Limestone Springs, Wofford College, and see how Jerrold ties it all together,” Moss said.
Moss applauded Peeler for skillfully weaving the thread of history through the fabric of the book.
“In so doing, he has recorded the history of a section of the state which will become more important to the readers of his book for years to come,” Moss said.
He described the result of Peeler’s literary effort as a faithful record of every day life so realistically captured that the reader can occasionally smell the sweet and stale tobacco of men at work.
“The pain of backbreaking labor by both men and women can be felt,” Moss said.

Characters come alive
Moss,  who has written several non-fiction books on Revolutionary War history,  praised Peeler’s ability to make his characters viable living individuals.
“They are very human with all the characteristics. His characters know love and hate, sorrow and happiness and all the emotions of life. He lets his characters speak in their own language. They express themselves in the local dialogue and quotes from long ago that best express their feelings,” Moss said.
Peeler claimed one of his favorite quotes of a voice from long ago, but still heard today being used by people in describing a huge smile as someone “grinning like a mule eating briars.”
His story radiates from the Thicketty Mountain community which is now in Cherokee County in a quadrant between the Macedonia and Cherokee Creek communities.

For the rest of the story, see this week’s issue of The Blacksburg Times.

By Theron Willis
HOMETOWN NEWS

Dr. Michael Fanning of the Olde English Consortium gave a presentation pleading the case for comprehensive tax reform for South Carolina to a full crowd last Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. at Greenville’s Carolina First Center. Fanning said that the state’s current tax system is outdated and disproportionate, relying too heavily on unreliable revenue steams and allowing too many exemptions for sales and services so that the state’s tax revenue is shrinking exponentially each year. Fanning is executive director of the Olde English Consortium a group comprised of eight school districts in the Rock Hill area dedicated to improving education in their region and statewide.
According to Fanning, SC is in its third year of negative revenue growth collecting less money than the previous year. As we enter into the 2010-2011 year we are down $600 million and by the end of that year we could be an additional $1.5 billion short. Continuing budgetary shortfalls has caused cuts in many critical areas especially education, which has suffered nine rounds of cuts amounting to over $700 million in the past eighteen months. For this coming school year K-12 education will be funded at 1994-1995 levels.
Fanning said that at one time the state had a stable tax system but because of the permanent tax cuts and exemptions enacted during more prosperous times including the virtual elimination of one of our most stable sources of revenues (personal property tax), that is no longer the case. Now  the recession and subsequent high unemployment, and revenue from income and sales tax has dropped and continues to drop, which has placed the state in a precarious position.
South Carolina had a tax model likened to a three-legged stool that was balanced by three major sources of revenue: sales, income, and property taxes.  In 2006, SC passed Act 388, which eliminated owner-occupied property taxes to fund public schools and put a one-cent state sales tax increase to replace the money generated from property tax. According to Fanning this turned the state more into a two-legged stool and dangerously dependent on the two more volatile revenue streams, income and sales tax, which now accounts for 87% of state revenue.  SC is now collecting 24% or $1.57 billion less for the state’s general fund budget than in 2006.  The homeowner property tax break created by Act 388 has caused $585 million in lost revenue. In addition the General Assembly has had to reimburse SC school districts each year out of the general fund for the funding deficit created by the tax swap from property tax to sales. In ’08-09 general fund reimbursement was $50 million, ’09-10 was $108 million and ’10-11 is projected to be a little over $120 million. The elimination of the grocery tax has cost the state about $430 million in lost funds.

TRACing a solution
There are currently 80 total sales tax exemptions creating a loss of a potential $2.7 billion. This is more than what the state actually collects, which is $2.5 billion. Some of the most disproportionate sales tax exemptions can be found in vehicle sales tax caps, which is currently capped at $300 regardless of the price of a vehicle. The sales tax for a $5,000 Hyundai is $300, and the sales tax for a $385,000 Lamborghini Roadster is $300 as well,  creating in essence a $22,800 exemption for the purchase of a Lamborghini. The same $300 sales tax applies for a $36,000 BMW. Fanning said that North Carolina collects $1,080 on the same BMW and Georgia collects $2,520.  “If we could have safer streets and smaller classrooms couldn’t we at least raise the vehicle cap to $400?” Fanning asked the crowd. The $300 sales tax cap regardless of price applies to boats, RVs, and airplanes as well.
In addition the state exempts 134 potentially taxable services, which amounts to $955 million in exempted income annually. Examples of tax-exempted services include pet grooming, lobbying, public relations, and bail bonding. Only 34 services are currently taxed including diaper service, credit information, and funeral services.

By Theron Willis
HOMETOWN NEWS

Photo by Diana Deaver
Steven Hyatt with his Nikon D3S standing on the steeple of St Michael’s Episcopal with St. Philip’s Episcopal in the background. 

Former area resident Steven Hyatt is gaining some artistic fame in the low country for his stunning photography of the historic places of worship in Charleston, giving people a spectacular inside glimpse of structures that many may have only seen from the outside.
The 27-year-old is originally from Pauline and spent a lot of time while growing up in Woodruff with his grandparents Keith and Rosie Thomas who still live in Three Pines. The Dorman High graduate moved to Charleston seven years ago to attend the College of Charleston where he majored in religion and philosophy.
He currently works at Imaging Arts Fine Art Photography Gallery and in the spring of last year visited the Unitarian Universalist Church located directly behind the gallery. While inside the church he was awestruck by the immense and overpowering beauty that surrounds a person from all sides in a sacred space of such size and magnificence and found himself faced with both a challenge and a mission. That mission was to convey those same sensations of wonder and reverence in a photograph,  and not just of the Unitarian church but of the different places of worship throughout the aptly nicknamed Holy City. Thus his project called Churches of Charleston was born.
Hyatt uses a process called high dynamic range imaging, or HDRI, to recreate the effect of seeing a church interior with human eyes, which is able to discern differences in dark and light tones simultaneously, something that a camera is unable to do. Using a Nikon D3S camera Hyatt shoots up to nine photographs at different exposures creating a set of images that show off details of dark and light areas respectively. He then takes those images and processes them in Photoshop to create a single picture that reveals the different areas of light and shadow.
Since last year he has photographed many historic sanctuaries throughout the city,  about 18 of the 33 he has on his list including two synagogues: Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim and Brith Sholom Beth Israel. What he has photographed so far can be viewed at www.churchesofcharleston.com.
Hyatt’s photography has excited the interest of both the parishioners of the respective churches and of the public as well to whom the interiors of most of these historic churches are an undiscovered treasure. “It’s an unknown to some people,” Hyatt explains saying that most people have only experienced the outside architectural beauty of these structures and not the inside sanctuaries.
 Hyatt believes his project has bearing in several different avenues.  “It’s relevant on multiple levels,” Hyatt explains. “It’s religiously and historically relevant and as an endeavor it’s architecturally and artistically relevant as well.”
Hyatt’s grandparents in Woodruff remember when he got his start in photography. “He’s always been very artistic,” Rosie Thomas said. “He could make a pretty picture with a cheap camera and I have those framed to prove it.”
They can remember his collection of old cameras he had on shelves around his room and are proud of the giant steps he has made artistically since then.
“I’m really proud of him,” Keith Thomas said. “The pictures from Charleston look awesome.”
Hyatt has plans to publish the church photographs in a book but says a website format has its own benefits. “It has to have an end for a book format but for a website it can be a continuous project.” 
To see more of Hyatt’s other work visit www.stevenhyattphotography.com