CEDAR MOUNTAIN NEWS FOR THURSDAY JANUARY 21, 2016

CHILI COOK-OFF

The chili cook-off scheduled for 1-23 at the Cedar Mountain Community Center had to be rescheduled to Saturday January 30th. Bring your pot of chili to the center by 5pm. The chili sampling begins at 5:30pm. Prizes will be awarded to the best chili cooks. Judging is done by the samplers. The donation is $5.00 per person and wholly benefits the community center.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JIM

There will be a celebration for Jim Dunlap's 80th birthday at the Cedar Mountain Community Center on Sunday afternoon January 31 from 2:30pm until 4:00pm. Everyone who knows Jim or has heard about him is invited! Cake, coffee and cider will be served.

PANCAKE BREAKFAST

The Cedar Mountain Fire/Rescue Auxiliary will be holding a fundraiser for the department on March 12th from 8am to 11am.

RED CROSS BLOOD DRIVES

Hosted by the CMFRD Auxiliary, there will be blood drives at the Cedar Mountain Fire Rescue Dept on Feb 27, April 30, June 18, and Aug. 20 from 8:30 to noon.

WANT TO LEARN BRIDGE? A beginning Bridge class will be offered at the French Broad Community Center on Saturday February 20th at 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Pam Harpootian will be leading the class. This class is being sponsored by a co-operative effort between Silvermont Senior Center and Brevard Duplicate Bridge Club. Pre-registration required call 828-966-5050 or 803-237-3816; carolinaex@aol.com. $20 for the book and $5 per class. CHRISTINE'S RAMBLINGS

SNOWED IN Everybody I know was snowed in last week here, and churches did not hold services. But at least we had power. I hope I speak for all in Cedar Mountain. I hope too that you got to see our full moon during the snow days; it was beautiful.

I painted and lightly sculpted nine gourds as chickens, for Easter or year 'round, which I hope to put in our local gift shop "Changes in Altitude" by early February. I am also carving a trio of fancy fish on a gourd which I will paint too; am also painting a cypress knee with bunnies all around it. I haven't had an opportunity to create on gourds or cypress knees for almost two years. I do hope you'll drop in and ask Tracy to show you my art. I'll let you know when I put them there.

Hubby Joe got on his 4-wheel-drive tractor Saturday to scrape our driveway. It took him two days this time, an hour each day, but he is almost 81 year's old, so I think that's great. Still, no county road-scrapes have come down our road, at least by Sunday evening, so we didn't go anywhere. "Wheeler Hill" is treacherous.

PICTURE THIS

The snow was deep. We had 8 inches that increased to about a foot by day two. However our Chihuahua is only about 7 inches tall at the shoulders, so she couldn't go out. Imagine her in the snow. Would one be able to see the tips of her little ears? Alas I put newspaper out on our covered front porch for her to "visit", and she was very quick about it. But big "Burley", our golden retriever, was able to go out in the snow and he loved it. We feed the birds during really bad weather and they remembered, because they came in force. By Sunday we had deer in our yard begging too; a buck and two doe's. No telling what wandered our yards during the night.

VIRTUAL SCHOOL

Have you heard about our county offering "Virtual School" days instead of snow days during this blizzard? Via the majestic computer, students were sent school work to do each school day they were out due to weather; four hours of work per day. I think that's super. As I didn't have to babysit because school was out I was able instead to do some painting. There is no virtual babysitting - yet.

BIRTHDAY

I must give a special shout-out to daughter Carri Harris of Brevard, whose birthday will be this week: January 31st. Happy Birthday dear daughter. Love & kisses.

AROUND THE HOUSE

I was still snowed into my subdivision as of Tuesday morning. Just thankful the power stayed on.

KALLIE KAT

Since being permitted outside, this was the first snow my Kallie Kat has experienced up close and personal. I opened the sunroom door and she dashed out only to put the brakes on and dash right back inside. Cats have expressions and hers was priceless.

PHOTOS

Since I’ve been housebound, I've been working on ancient photos and negatives. I had/have boxes and boxes of them. I discovered that Picasa (free photo editing program) will convert b/w negatives to "positives" and have been scanning and saving a lot of them.

Some negatives are so old and the emulsion so bad you can't figure out who or what's on them. All are being trashed. I'm scanning old photos too and then tossing them.

Some photos of relatives go back to 1913. I'm keeping the originals on those for my daughter.

Thanks for all the birthday greetings. I spent the day very quietly hoping the powers that be wouldn’t notice.

We’d love to hear what’s going on in your life or in the community, if you would like to share. Please send all news to

cedarmountainnews@hotmail.com.

All news for next week has to be received by Monday evening in order to be published in the Thursday edition of the Transylvania Times.