1000 x 90

Today’s Email Announcements

Updated Watauga Humane Society PSA, 10/28

An update has been made to an upcoming WHS event.  It’s the Everything But the Kitchen Sink Sale scheduled for this Saturday, Oct. 28.  Due to the flooding earlier in the week, the location has changed from the Appalachian Dental Care Parking Lot to the Speedway Convenience Store Parking Lot on Blowing Rock Road in Boone. 

 

Blowing Rock Choir to Sing in Winston-Salem, 11/5

The choir of St. Mary of the Hills Episcopal Church in Blowing Rock has been invited to join the choir of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Winston-Salem, to sing Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem in D Minor in its intended liturgical setting as a Requiem Mass commemorating All Saints’ Sunday.  The combined choir of some 50 voices will sing this stunning setting of the mass in the marvelous acoustic of St. Paul’s church at 520 Summit Street in Winston-Salem on Sunday November 5th at 5 pm.

All Saints is the Sunday in the church year on which we remember all of the widely-known and ordinary saints we have known – our family members, friends, and loved ones – who have passed from this life into the next.  Fauré’s composition is one of the world’s most beloved settings of the Requiem, and thus uniquely suited to this commemoration.  It is hauntingly beautiful, composed during a period shortly after both his parents had died, and it stands in stark contrast to masses that focus on judgement and fear.  Fauré himself explained his viewpoint as “it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration toward happiness above, rather than as a painful experience.”  This attitude is perhaps most clearly seen in the final section of the music, In Paradisum – literally a vision of the Kingdom of Heaven, sung primarily by a host of angelic sopranos.

The choir of St. Mary of the Hills is under the direction of Dr. James Bumgardner, and has made several trips to study with the foremost directors of Anglican choral music in Cambridge, England, including George Guest at St. John’s, Stephen Cleobury at King’s, and Tim Brown at Clare College.  The group has been choir-in-residence at Durham Cathedral in England three times, and has sung services for St. Mary the Virgin in New York City, as well as representing North Carolina at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

 

High Country Writers Featured Speaker, Melissa Floyd-Pickard, 11/9

Melissa Floyd-Pickard, Ph.D.,LCSW, at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, will be the featured presenter at the regular meeting of the High Country Writers on Thursday, November 9, 2017 at 10:00am. The meeting on November 9th will not be at the Watauga County Public Library but rather at BREMCO (Blue Ridge Energy), located on Route 421 South in Boone, North Carolina.

Melissa Floyd-Pickard completed her doctoral work at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2002 after receiving her MSW from VCU in 1994. She received her undergraduate degrees in psychology and political science from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Throughout her practice career, she has worked in direct service settings, primarily with persons who have serious mental illness, substance abuse issues, or both. She has served as a consultant with agencies throughout the NC Triad, including mental health agencies, Local Management Entities (LME’s) and the Greater Greensboro United Way. She was the winner of the 2005 Mary Frances Stone Teaching Award. She maintains a strong research agenda and has recently published articles related to social work values in practice, involuntary treatment, jails and mental illness, families and substance abuse practice, and immigrant well-being. In recent years she has engaged in research with persons who have mental illness and have been incarcerated, crisis intervention training (CIT) programs in jails, and involuntary treatment alternatives in mental illness. She is currently serving as Chair for the Department of Social Work at UNCG where she is responsible for nearly 400 students. In 2004 she successfully secured a 1.1 million dollar HRSA grant to fund the training of Master’s Level Social Workers.

Her hobbies include fiction writing, gardening and attempting to play the guitar. She lives in Greensboro, North Carolina with her husband Walter and their two children, Elijah and Iris.

High Country Writers has been “energizing” writers since 1995! Regular meetings are at the Watauga County Public Library on the second and fourth Thursdays of most months from ten until noon and speakers’ programs are co-sponsored by the Library. HCW members present writing skills workshops on the first Thursday of the month and have recently partnered with the Watauga Arts Council in hosting these workshops.  For more information and a current calendar, visit the website: http:/highcountrywriterstripod.com. Guests are welcome.