Tag Archive for: #wizsnews

Vance Co. Regional Farmers Market

The Local Skinny! Hand Crafted Holiday Market Coming To The Farmers Market

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Mark your calendars for Saturday, Nov. 18 and make plans to attend the special Hand Crafted Holiday Market at the Vance County Regional Farmers Market.

There will be plenty of vendors on hand for the market, which will be from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., according to Market Manager Pat Ayscue.

“Our very talented crafters have been planning and working overtime on unique gift ideas and

décor for the home or office,” Ayscue said. “Thanks to our farmers who have scheduled the planting and harvesting of our fall crops.”

There should be plenty of leafy greens and pumpkins available to create some delicious Thanksgiving dishes – all the things that make the holiday special. Sweet Inspirations will be well stocked with fresh baked goods and will be available to take special orders.

But Ayscue said folks can expect to find some special handcrafted items, too. The holiday market is sure to help you with gift-giving ideas.

From local honey, pickles, jams and pasture-raised meats, the Holiday Market will have something for everyone.

Contact Ayscue at payscue@vancecounty.org or text 252.425.2092.

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Cooperative Extension With Paul McKenzie: What Works in the Garden

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Listen live at 100.1 FM / 1450 AM / or on the live stream at WIZS.com at 11:50 a.m. Mon, Tues & Thurs.

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TownTalk: Boo! Ghost Hunting With Michael LaChiana

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It’s the spooky stuff Halloween’s made for  – ghosts and spirits, wreaking havoc from the Great Beyond on unwitting humans. But for Michael LaChiana, spirits – whether benevolent or otherwise – are part of the paranormal that he enjoys investigating. And he’s serious about it.

LaChiana, founder of the Heritage Hunters Society, said his investigations aren’t like the TV shows that crowd the guides this time of year. Those shows may have an entertainment value, but he doesn’t put much stock in them.

“I just don’t feel that the paranormal should be entertainment,” he said.

He prefers to research places with a history, a past, where he can fire up his devices to try to discover those from the spirit world who may have something to tell him.

“There are spirits everywhere, as far as I’m concerned,” he told WIZS’s Bill Harris on Monday’s TownTalk. “I like to connect with the spirits that might possibly” be in a historic home or other type of property.

He recently visited again Mount Vernon, home of George Washington. “I did some recordings on the property, in some of the outbuildings,” LaChiana said. The next step is to listen to those recordings to see what may have been captured.

He’s had good success recording spirits in homes across Vance, Granville, Franklin and Warren counties over the years, he said. Those recorded sounds are called “EVPs” – electronic voice phenomena.

“We don’t hear it with our ears, but we capture it with our recorder,” Elliott explained.

He prefers to work in quieter, historic settings, and “go to places that have never been investigated.”

Besides Mount Vernon, he’s visited Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson, and Ford Theater, where President Lincoln was assassinated. He’s knocked off a few of his “bucket list” spots in the U.S. and in Europe, with no sign of slowing down.

“I love the quiet places – you can really get some good responses,” he said. “Nobody talks to them all these years,” he said of the spirits who may be inhabiting any historical spot. “A lot of them want to share.”

LaChiana doesn’t have time for many individual investigations of people’s homes these days. He’s busy with his own research and with his TV show on Amazon Prime called “Heritage Hunters: Journey Through The Past.” The second episode is due out in about a month. It’s about Tom Dooley and who killed Laura Foster. LaChiana said he’s gotten some “amazing evidence” – from a spirit, of course – about who really murdered Foster back in 1866 in the mountains of North Carolina.

 

 

 

Vance County High School

The Local Skinny! Elliott Credits Community Support And Consistency To Vipers’ Success

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The Vance County High School football team marched through the 2023-24 season, tackling opponents one after the other and coming out with wins each time. The Vipers hope to build on that 10-0 record later this week in the opening round of the state playoffs.

Head Coach Aaron Elliott said he and his staff have been preaching consistency to the team, and that is paying dividends.

The Vipers host the Terry Sanford Bulldogs Friday night at 7 p.m. and Elliott said he hopes the community will come out to support the local team.

“This year has been a little different than last year,” Elliott said on Monday’s The Local Skinny! Last year, he said, the coaching staff was working to build that culture of consistency to the football program that had been missing.

Elliott played football here and remembers how Northern Vance and Southern Vance fans got behind their teams. “There was a big deal for Friday night” games, he said.

And he’s looking to get that momentum going again.

“Having a 10-win season,” Elliott said, shows that the kids have bought in to what coaches have been saying. Those wins – one by a whopping 76 points – shows that the players are enjoying the process.

Elliott said he and the team appreciate all the community support that businesses, churches and others have shown, whether by providing meals or sending congratulatory emails, phone calls or text messages.

“That’s been real important,” he said.

He said he’s proud of the way the staff has worked to instill that sense of consistency to the players, and it’s what has contributed to their success this season.

“These kids really feed off the community’s energy,” Elliott said.

The 6th-seed Vipers face the Bulldogs in the first round, and Elliott said if they get the W Friday, they’ll stay at home for the next round – and possibly for a third game at home, depending on how the bracket shapes up.

He said the Bulldogs, like the Vipers, have a good quarterback who can run and throw the football. “We’re going to have to play good and not take them lightly,” he said. But they’ve got a good defense, too, and Elliott’s been watching a lot of film to be ready for Friday.

“I feel real confident on what we can do on offense,” he said. “We’ve gotten really good at executing plays on offense.”

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Cooperative Extension with Wayne Rowland: Winterizing Herbs

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Listen live at 100.1 FM / 1450 AM / or on the live stream at WIZS.com at 11:50 a.m. Mon, Tues & Thurs.

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‘Ragtime the Musical’ opens tonight to kick off 2023-24 McGregor Live! series

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The McGregor Hall Live! Series kicks off its 2023-24 season tonight as “Ragtime the Musical” takes the stage for performances over the next two weekends.

The curtain rises at 8 p.m. for the Friday and Saturday shows; catch a 2 p.m. matinee on Sundays. The dates are Oct. 27-29 and Nov. 3-5.

The large-scale cast has been in rehearsal since early September to create a show filled with song and dance, with the accompaniment of a live orchestra.

The musical is based on a 1975 novel by E.L. Doctorow, which weaves connections across different cultural groups in New York City during the early years of the 20th century.

Mark Hopper is the director and the musical director for this performance, with Freddie Lee Heath as choreographer and Matt Nowell as technical director.

The McGregor Hall website includes the following synopsis of the show: “…the worlds of a wealthy white couple, a Jewish immigrant father and his motherless daughter, and an African American ragtime musician intertwine. Together, they discover the surprising interconnections of the human heart, the limitations of justice and the unsettling consequences when dreams are permanently deferred. This musical sweeps across the diversity of the American experience to create a stirring epic that captures the beats of the American experience: the marches, the cakewalks and – of course, the ragtime.”
“Ragtime the Musical” is the first in a series of five performances for the 2023-24 season. Other performances include Christmas on Stage – a series of one-act plays, The Tams in concert, Sail ON! The Beach Boys Tribute and Tied up in Knotts: My Dad and Me with Karen Knotts, comedian.

Tickets are on sale now for each of the shows, or save money by purchasing a ticket to all the shows for just $125.

Purchase tickets online at https://www.mcgregorhall.org/, by phone at 252.598.0662 or in person at 201 Breckenridge St.

Visit https://www.mcgregorhall.org/ to learn more about upcoming shows and other events scheduled.

Vance County High School

SportsTalk: Vipers Tangle With Warriors For Final Regular Season Game

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With the Vance Co. Vipers assured of a playoff spot and at least a share of the conference championship, one could think that the Vipers would be taking it easy in the final regular season finale Friday night against the J.F. Webb Warriors. One could also be wrong. Coming off a dominant performance last week at a rain soaked Carrboro, the Vipers want to finish the regular season at 10-0 and not share the conference championship but win it outright. “We’ve had a good week of practice,” head coach Aaron Elliott said on Thursday’s SportsTalk. That may be a bit of “coach speak” that one expects but Coach Elliott isn’t letting the Vipers relax. “We needed to clean some things up on defense,” Elliott said referring to how Carrboro was able to use a short passing game to move the ball. Win or lose, the Vipers are in the playoffs. “We won’t know who we are playing until lunchtime on Saturday,” Elliott stated. The Vipers can’t look past an improved J.F. Webb team though. “They are disciplined, it’s Senior night and it’s a rivalry,” said Elliott.

J.F. Webb Head Coach Keionte Gainey echoes Elliott’s feelings about the rivalry. He knows, even in his first year at Webb, that the rivalry is important. Gainey only has a handful of seniors on his team and has, much like Coach Elliot has done at Vance County, turned the J.F. Webb program around. Webb is 5-4 this season. “It’s the most wins we’ve had since 2010,” Gainey said on Sports Talk Thursday. While that is impressive, what may be more impressive is that his players have increased their GPA from 1.9 to 3.0. He credits the team’s improvements both on and off the field to players, teachers, administration and community buying into his program.

Expect a packed house Friday night at J.F. Webb High School in Oxford. WIZS’ live coverage will begin around 6:50 p.m. immediately following the Joy Christian Center broadcast with Bill Harris and Doc Ayscue on Vance County Friday Night Football.

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville: North Carolina Furniture

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North Carolina is world-renown for many things, including its contributions to tobacco production, textiles manufacturing and the furniture industry. And while much has been written about tobacco and textiles, Granville County native and author Eric Medlin said he was somewhat surprised to learn that nobody had written a book on the history of the North Carolina furniture industry.

So he set about writing one.

“Sawdust In Your Pockets” came out last week and Medlin was a guest on TownTalk’s Around Old Granville segment Thursday to talk about how the beginnings of the furniture industry and its continued presence across the state and what the future may hold in store.

Medlin said the problem with writing the first book about a topic means that there aren’t many secondary sources to delve into when doing research. “I had to dive in and start with company records, newspapers, and things like that,” he said. He said he was fascinated to learn more about the rise of the furniture industry, the increased sophistication of the pieces that were produced and then sent all over the globe.

In the early days, the state had the three key ingredients that fueled the rise in the industry: cheap labor, access to cheap woods and access to railroad connections. Medlin cited small towns that had small furniture operations – Goldsboro and Dunn, for example – but they were overshadowed by the competition of agriculture to become leaders in the industry.

And although the manufacturing operations were called “factories,” the furniture factories weren’t like the giant textile factories with mechanized looms, Medlin said. And assembly lines weren’t the rage yet, either. The workers were equipped with basic tools like electric saws and staple guns to produce the furniture.

North Carolina, Medlin said, remains the leading furniture-producing state in the U.S., but mammoth local furniture manufacturers have scaled back in recent years, thanks to outsourcing to other countries where labor costs are lower.

The future of the state’s furniture industry, Medlin predicted, lies in the production of customized, bulky pieces – things that are not cost-effective to put in shipping containers and load on ships to sell back in the U.S.

Medlin’s book can be found on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, the University of Georgia Press and Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh.

 

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