Tag Archive for: #oxfordnews

TownTalk: Boys And Girls Club Of North Central NC Plan Granville Club Renovation

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Vision. Mission. Hope. Community.

Those words get tossed around frequently, but it also takes funding – money – to bring those words to life.

The Boys & Girls Club of North Central North Carolina has served thousands of young people in its almost 10 years of existence. BGCNCNC has the vision to help young people, the mission to provide support to those who need it most. The hope for bright futures and a strong community remain priorities in the five counties that it serves.

And now, some community supporters and benefactors have pledged some substantial amounts of money to help renovate club space in Granville and Vance counties. And BGCNCNC leaders hope to reach a goal of $100,000 by Dec. 31 to be able to start the first phase of a four-part, $5 million renovation of its space in Oxford.

Chief Operations Officer Jacqueline Robinson spoke with John C. Rose on Tuesday’s Town Talk about several recent developments in the cash flow department.

The most recent comes from The Goodwill Foundation, longtime BGCNCNC partners. Robinson said it will give $100,000 to the Granville unit and $50,000 to the Vance unit for club upgrades and safety enhancements.

That donation came about because of two other sizable donations – $25,000 from Strong Arm Baking Co. and $500,000 from Richard and Noel Moore. Richard Moore is a native of Oxford and served as state treasurer from 2001 to 2009.

The downtown Oxford bakery and kitchen was nominated for a Rush Limbaugh Great American Business by a loyal patron. Owners Julia and Thomas Blaine took the opportunity to pay forward the cash prize and challenge others in the community to contribute the other $75,000 to help BGCNCNC reach their Phase 1 goal of $100,000.

Robinson said she and the Blaines attended school together in Oxford. “It’s absolutely priceless,” she said, “for them to be so selfless to (want to) provide great opportunities for young people.”

The initial phase of renovation has a price tag of about $1 million; the Moores’ contribution, matched with an additional $500,000 from the community, will create a games room, multipurpose classroom space and technology upgrades, Robinson said, in addition to collaborative learning space and remote learning stations for the Granville Club.

It sounds like a lot of space is needed to complete the renovations, but space is something that the BGCNCNC has. In 2016, Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. donated a 27,000 square foot warehouse to the BGCNCNC. Since then, the cavernous buildings have been reworked to provide adequate space for the administrative offices, as well as an activities space and a space for a makeshift cafeteria and homework spot.

When a team from The Goodwill Foundation visited the Granville Club, toured the facilities and then heard about Strong Arm’s and the Moores’ investment, “they wanted to be a part,” Robinson said, adding that the Goodwill team “have been fierce supporters of our programs here in Granville and Vance counties.”

Robinson has been involved with Boys & Girls Clubs for 17 years, but she wasn’t ever a club member. There wasn’t a club in Granville County for her to join. But she volunteered while she was in college and now she has the chance to have a front-row seat to see the Granville unit grow.

“I was one of the young people that needed a Boys & Girls Club,” she said. “I make it my mission to make sure that children have the chance” to be a part of such a strong organization.

The club helps young people make positive decisions and have positive youth development experiences, she said.

The renovations at the Vance club will be to its upstairs space, and it will provide more technology and make it a place “where teenagers want to go and grow and thrive.”

Both Robinson and Chief Executive Officer Donyell “DJ” Jones joined BGCNCNC during the pandemic, so they haven’t had the opportunity to get out into the community as they would have liked to.

But Robinson said she and Jones used that time in a positive way. “It was a wonderful opportunity for us to create the narrative” that is proving so helpful to share with the community as pandemic restrictions relax.

“I think people in the community are really beginning to see what the clubs can offer,” she said. “It’s amazing to hear people talk about what the Boys & Girls Club means to them.”

Now that the children are back, Robinson said she and the club staffs are eager to continue to enhance programming and create positive experiences for a brighter future. Pre-pandemic numbers showed upwards of 3,000 club members across the five-county area, and Robinson said last year’s 719 is definitely an atypical figure. Right now, she said Granville has served 156 club members and Vance has 149 on the membership list. “We are ready to relieve some of our capacity restraints,” Robinson said, and grow in numbers again.

“We want to go from the best-kept secret in the community to really being a community catalyst for youth development,” Robinson said.

Want to help BGNCNC reach the Strong Arm challenge? Visit www.strongarmbaking.com and click the link to donate.

Donate to www.bgcncnc.com or stop by the administrative offices at 105 West St., Oxford. The mailing address is BGCNCNC, P.O. Box 176, Oxford, NC 27565.

 

 

TownTalk: Oxford Is The Setting For Katherine Burnette’s First Book

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Katherine Burnette has some tried-and-true advice for aspiring novelists: Treat it like another job and set aside some time to write every day, to help you stay in practice. That advice has served her well as she recently published her first book while keeping her “day job.”

Burnette lives in Oxford and is a district court judge in Raleigh. She serves the 9th District, which  includes Granville, Vance, Franklin, Warren and Person counties. And she spoke with Bill Harris on Wednesday’s Town Talk about her debut novel, Judge’s Waltz.

The novel takes place in Oxford and in Raleigh, and Burnette said setting is important to her and her writing. “Living in Oxford and working in Raleigh – those places are very dear to me,” she said.

Her second novel, tentatively titled Killing Her Sharply, is set in Oxford and Henderson. It’s another crime story about detectives solving murders. She hasn’t had much time since March or so to work on the second book, but she is using this time to get feedback from some writers’ groups she is involved with, especially from the non-lawyers in the group.

It’s important for Burnette to strike that balance that creates compelling reading without getting too bogged down with legal terminology and processes that can make a book boring.

“It’s easy because I have been an attorney and know about some parts of the court system,” she explained, “but I don’t want it to be so technical that people say ‘No, I’m not going to read that.’”

Except for maybe a traffic violation or probate court when settling estates, the average person doesn’t have much experience with how a court operates. Burnette said she wants to give her readers a real sense of what’s involved inside a courtroom or courthouse, and said she draws on her own experiences to paint that picture.

But, she said, “I would say that 99 percent is created out of my head.”

In Judge’s Waltz, for example, a federal judge is found dead and local officials are called in because the FBI is busy. One investigator and her sergeant are in charge of the investigation, and what turns up about the unscrupulous judge’s demise creates a real whodunit.

The second novel has a few of the same characters that Burnette created in Judge’s Waltz.

“I wanted my characters to feel alive and have emotions and not be two-dimensional,” she said. That is part of the craft of writing – and Burnette stepped up her game to make sure she knew exactly how to do that.

“Studying the craft is an important thing to do,” she said. She obtained a master’s in creative writing “to make sure that when I got back into the novel, I could make it enjoyable.”

Elementary-school students are taught that good stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. And Burnette would agree with that part of the craft of writing.

“The middle part is the hardest,” she said. “You get excited about the beginning and know where (you) want it to end.” But developing the story line to get to the end – to keep the momentum going, is where it can get a little challenging.

In Judge’s Waltz, she said she tried to develop the story line threads so hopefully readers don’t guess who “did it” until the end of the book.

She hopes the second book will be out early next year. “I know where I’m going, but I need to get there,” she said of her writing process.

Purchase Judge’s Waltz in Oxford at This ‘n’ That in downtown Oxford, at the Regulator Bookstore in Durham and online where books are sold.

 

City of Oxford Thanksgiving Food Drive Underway; Donate Non-Perishable Items Through Nov. 17

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The City of Oxford has launched its third annual Thanksgiving Food Drive and invites all members of the community to participate by donating non-perishable food items to fight hunger.

This year, the city is partnering with The Help Center NC to fight hunger in the community. Donations are being accepted until Nov. 17 at numerous locations throughout the city, including:

  • Public Works
  • Parks & Recreation
  • Fire Department
  • Police Department
  • Oxford City Hall

Folks who want to combine a little aerobic activity to their donation can join a Zumba class that will be held in Hix Meeting Room on Nov. 3 and on Nov. 17 at the Public Works meeting room. The classes will be from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Hix Meeting Room is located at 313 E. Spring St., Oxford.

Participants should bring three non-perishable food items per class, according to information from city administrative assistant Alyssa Blair. For more information, contact Blair at 919.603.1102 or socialmedia@oxfordnc.org.

TownTalk: The Barefoot Movement Presses Onward

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Noah Wall apologized for her scratchy-sounding voice. “I sang all weekend,” Wall told Town Talk host Bill Harris Monday. “I’m exhausted – in the best way.”

Wall, lead singer and fiddle player for The Barefoot Movement, is just back from performing at MerleFest, a popular bluegrass-and-more festival in western North Carolina.

The band will perform at AmericanaFest in Nashville next, then come back to North Carolina for gigs in Holly Springs on Oct. 8 and then at the Kirby Theater in Roxboro on Oct. 9.

Visit Thebarefootmovementofficial.com to learn more.

The Barefoot Movement may have had a heavy bluegrass influence when it first formed more than a decade ago, but today it’s considered to have an “Americana” sound.

That label can include many types of music, from Celtic to Jimi Hendrix, and everything in between. Wall said she likes to think of Americana as any kind of music that incorporates roots music in the sound it produces.

Their new album is called “Pressing Onward,” and music fans may recognize the names of its producers – Chuck Plotkin and Hank Linderman – from their work with such groups as Chicago, The Eagles, Bob Dylan and The Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen.

The new album is the third full-length album that The Barefoot Movement has released. Their sound has evolved, Wall noted, since their first album, which was released a decade ago. Listeners will detect the addition of drums on the new album. And there are no instrumentals as there have been on previous albums.

Wall, the group’s primary songwriter, is joined by husband Tommy Norris on mandolin and Katie Blomarz on stand-up bass. “I’m very proud of the sound we got on ‘Pressing Onward,’ she said.

“When I put together the album sequence, it kind of gave me chills,” she said. Although the songs were pre-COVID-19, the coincidence of releasing the album amid the pandemic was not lost on her. “It is so pertinent,” Wall said, because a lot of the songs just tell the story of how to press onward, despite challenges.

Working with legendary producers like Plotkin and Linderman was special and Wall said one of her takeaways was an oft-used phrase of Plotkin, with regard to choosing songs for the album: If the answer to the question “Does it bear repeated listening?” is yes, then we’d done something right, she recalled.

Wall and Norris recently moved back to Granville County to be near family; Blomarz is still in Nashville, where she and her fiancé (also a bass player) are “livin’ the Nashville thing” and playing their music with a lot of different people. Just as so many other professions have done in the past 18 months or so, they have adjusted the way they practice and share music and, so far, it’s working. They will either arrive at a venue a day or so early to practice together, or Blomarz will fly to North Carolina and hop in the van to travel with Wall and Norris to the next performance.

The band is trying out different guitarists and drummers for the next little bit while they continue to produce and perform music across the country. Concert bookings have been sporadic, coming in fits and starts. But that’s ok, Wall said.

There’s a new music video set for filming, which will feature some Oxford images, she added.

And there are songs to write.

For complete details and audio click play.

 

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Nominate a City of Oxford Employee of the Month

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— info courtesy of the City of Oxford, NC

The City of Oxford is now opening up its ‘Employee of the Month’ to where all employees and the public can make nominations.

In an email received by WIZS, Alyssa Blair, Executive Assistant, City of Oxford, wrote, “We want to recognize City employees who embody the mission and values of the City in action. To nominate and employee/team you can fill out an online form, under ‘Human Resources’, on the City website. You must include the employee(s) name, department, and a brief description of what the employee(s) did.”

Click here – https://www.oxfordnc.org/departments/human_resources/employee_of_the_month.php

City of Oxford employees who embody the mission and values of the City in their daily duties are recognized each month. City employees or citizens can nominate employees when they see individuals or teams demonstrating the city’s values in action.

Oxford Spreads Its Generosity at Thanksgiving and Christmas

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THIS STORY IS PRESENTED IN PART BY DRAKE DENTISTRY

— information courtesy of the City of Oxford and Executive Assistant Alyssa Blair

Just out Monday afternoon, the City of Oxford has released its January newsletter.  In it, Oxford announces the second annual Thanksgiving Food Drive and inaugural Holiday Toy Drive were each a major success.

“Because of the generous and helpful spirits throughout our community, we were able to give food and gifts to approximately eight families, totaling 23 men, women, and children throughout the Oxford area. Not only were we able to help all our sponsored families, but we were able to donate more to the Central Children’s home,” the publication states.

All participants and those who gave are much appreciated.

The Oxford January newsletter says, “2020 was a difficult year and the City of Oxford is overjoyed at the amount of love and generosity received.”

Also in this edition, save the date items, an employee recognition, the public works facade and more.

The Facebook post containing the entire newsletter is embedded here.

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Oxford Board of Commissioners to Hold Regular Meeting This Evening

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100.1 FM ~ 1450 AM ~ WIZS, Your Community Voice ~ Click to LISTEN LOCAL

-Information courtesy the City of Oxford

The Oxford Board of Commissioners will hold a regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, December 8, 2020, at 7 p.m. online via Zoom.

Please click here to register in advance. Advance registration is required to attend the virtual meeting.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

If you have trouble accessing the meeting, please call (919) 603-1100.

Please click here for the full meeting agenda.

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City of Oxford’s First Holiday Toy Drive in Full Swing

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100.1 FM ~ 1450 AM ~ WIZS, Your Community Voice ~ Click to LISTEN LOCAL

The City of Oxford is proud to bring the 1st Annual Holiday Toy Drive to the community. Donations of new, unwrapped toys for children are needed.

Donations can be brought to Oxford City Hall, located at 300 Williamsboro St., by December 18, 2020.

Toys are needed for children between the ages of 3 and 11 years old, as well as for a baby (girl) on the way. No toy shall be turned away!

If you are interested in more specific information, please call (919) 603-1102.

Oxford Prep School

Town Talk 11/11/20: Donated Items Needed for Oxford Prep’s Senior Project

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THIS STORY IS PRESENTED IN PART BY DRAKE DENTISTRY

McKayla Boyd and Bryce Garrett, seniors at Oxford Preparatory School, appeared on WIZS Town Talk Wednesday at 11 a.m.

Boyd, of Oxford, and Garrett, of Bullock, discussed their senior project: collecting items for local families affected by abuse and domestic violence.

Partnering with Families Living Violence Free (FLVF) in Oxford, items collected will be distributed to families in need this holiday season.

Requested items include:

  • Toys for children ages 1-6 (new or used)
  • Adult and child hygiene products
  • Non-perishable food items (ramen, soups, breakfast items, snacks, canned food, etc.)
  • Throw blankets
  • Clothing items – size 2T to Adult (new only, please)

Donors are asked to sign up online at https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0D4AACA72BA2FDC34-griffin

Donations may be dropped off at the front lobby of the school located at 6041 Landis Road in Oxford. Items will be sanitized before taken to FLVF for distribution.

Stating that Oxford Prep is big on students giving back to the community via service hours, Boyd said the senior class is happy to partner with FLVF for this drive. “I spent a lot of time looking for an organization that would let us do something to give back to our community,” said Boyd. “When I found FLVF, they were very excited to work with us.”

Garrett said his class is looking forward to providing supplies to those in need, and he hopes to see the drive become an annual event. “Our goal for our school is to keep this a tradition,” he said.

To hear the interview in its entirety, go to WIZS.com and click on Town Talk.

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Oxford Commissioners to Hold Regular Board Meeting Nov. 10

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100.1 FM ~ 1450 AM ~ WIZS, Your Community Voice ~ Click to LISTEN LOCAL

-Information courtesy the City of Oxford

The Oxford Board of Commissioners will hold a regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, November 10, 2020, at 7 p.m. online via Zoom.

Due to a recent “Zoom Bombing,” the City of Oxford will now have pre-registrations for all meetings. The meetings will be kept public and are available to everyone who is interested in attending; however, registration will be required in order to receive the meeting ID and password.

Registration will remain open until 30 minutes before the meeting begins.

Click here for the Nov. 10 meeting’s registration link. For registration, you must enter your name and email address; the meeting ID and password will be sent to the email address you enter.

“Zoom meetings follow all regular meeting protocols and any disruptions will be cause for immediate dismissal. Please silence all electronic devices, except those needed for the meeting.”

If you have trouble accessing the meeting, please call (919) 603-1100.

Please click here for the full meeting agenda.