United Way Youth Corps Complete Camp

The Youth Volunteer Corps of United Way of Anderson County completed its second week of summer camp June 25-29, 2012. During the week, nine youth and three AmeriCorps members participated in the camp. Activities for the week included cleaning and sorting equipment for individuals with disabilities for Touch the Future and playing games with members of Special Populations and assisting them with a garden they planted, maintain and harvest. The participants also made puppets for West Market Early Childhood to be used along with a series of 10 reading books for young children.

On Friday the campers celebrated the accomplishments of the week with a hot dog lunch.

For more information on Youth Volunteer Corps, contact Carol Loyd at (864) 226-3438 or carol.loyd@uwandersoncty.com

United Way Youth Corps Complete Camp

The Youth Volunteer Corps of United Way of Anderson County completed its second week of summer camp June 25-29, 2012. During the week, nine youth and three AmeriCorps members participated in the camp. Activities for the week included cleaning and sorting equipment for individuals with disabilities for Touch the Future and playing games with members of Special Populations and assisting them with a garden they planted, maintain and harvest. The participants also made puppets for West Market Early Childhood to be used along with a series of 10 reading books for young children.

On Friday the campers celebrated the accomplishments of the week with a hot dog lunch.

For more information on Youth Volunteer Corps, contact Carol Loyd at (864) 226-3438 or carol.loyd@uwandersoncty.com.

LH: Overcome Most Common Job Search Challenges

You don't need statistics to tell you that it's not easy to find a job, but they're around to reaffirm that unfortunate reality. With few opportunities, low salaries, and hardly any time to make a good impression, it can often seem hopeless. But just because the numbers may be against you, that doesn't mean you can't beat them.

In this post, we'll take a look at those intimidating job-hunting statistics and factoids one by one, then offer methods to combat each daunting detail.

According to an eye-tracking study, recruiters only look at resumes for about six seconds. That's not a lot of time to make an impression, and is kind of a depressing notion when you put in hours making your resume great. Nonetheless, welcome to reality. You need to make those six seconds count.

Full Story Here

NYT: Americans Caught in "Busy Trap"

TIM KREIDER/NYTimes

If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: “That’s a good problem to have,” or “Better than the opposite.”

Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs  who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.

Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.’s  make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications. I recently wrote a friend to ask if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered that he didn’t have a lot of time but if something was going on to let him know and maybe he could ditch work for a few hours. I wanted to clarify that my question had not been a preliminary heads-up to some future invitation; this was the invitation. But his busyness was like some vast churning noise through which he was shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it.

Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half-hour with classes and extracurricular activities. They come home at the end of the day as tired as grown-ups. I was a member of the latchkey generation and had three hours of totally unstructured, largely unsupervised time every afternoon, time I used to do everything from surfing the World Book Encyclopedia to making animated films to getting together with friends in the woods to chuck dirt clods directly into one another’s eyes, all of which provided me with important skills and insights that remain valuable to this day. Those free hours became the model for how I wanted to live the rest of my life.

The present hysteria is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it’s something we’ve chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it. Not long ago I  Skyped with a friend who was driven out of the city by high rent and now has an artist’s residency in a small town in the south of France. She described herself as happy and relaxed for the first time in years. She still gets her work done, but it doesn’t consume her entire day and brain. She says it feels like college — she has a big circle of friends who all go out to the cafe together every night. She has a boyfriend again. (She once ruefully summarized dating in New York: “Everyone’s too busy and everyone thinks they can do better.”) What she had mistakenly assumed was her personality — driven, cranky, anxious and sad — turned out to be a deformative effect of her environment. It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school — it’s something we collectively force one another to do.

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. I once knew a woman who interned at a magazine where she wasn’t allowed to take lunch hours out, lest she be urgently needed for some reason. This was an entertainment magazine whose raison d’être was obviated when “menu” buttons appeared on remotes, so it’s hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion. More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter.

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Storms Move Through, 90s Expected All Week

A series of strong thuderstorm, some bringing hail and damaging winds, movied through Anderson Sunday night breaking the record heat of the last several days.

The forecast for the week of July 4 currently calls for more seasonal humid days, with highs in the low-to-mid-90s and a chance of afternoon and evening thunderstorms.

Charlotte Observer Reports Good S.C. Peach Crop

Put your peach-eating hat on, South Carolina.

The state’s peach crop is tasty as ever this year, but the goodness will be gone earlier than ever, area growers say. A milder than normal winter has meant the yield is low and the season will end early, they said.

Still, halfway through the 2012 harvest, peach farmers say the official state fruit is showing them new daylight after a dismal market two years ago, when the stalled U.S. economy made buying a bushel of peaches seem like a luxury to some consumers.

“We’re trying to dig ourselves out of the hole from 2010, the worst year we’ve ever had,” said Jimmy Forrest, third-generation owner of Dixie Belle Inc. produce and peaches in Ward, S.C. “We thank the good Lord this year will be heading us in a good direction. We’re very excited.”

Forrest and his sons, Matt and Clark, plant about 2,100 acres total of peaches and other produce in Aiken, Edgefield and Saluda counties. But peach trees require a certain number of chilling hours over the winter to emerge from their state of rest and properly begin budding and growing at the right time.

Different peach varieties have differing chill requirements, and when optimal chill time is not met, it can change the production cycle. Forrest said he began harvesting May 2 this year; normally he starts around May 15. Harvesting will wrap up at the end of July, when normally it goes until mid-August.

“The crop is somewhat short, because of the mild winter,” Forrest said. “The crop is earlier than it’s ever been and we’ll finish earlier than ever. The quality (appearance, taste and shelf life) has been excellent; the size has been average.”

Full Story Here

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/07/01/3356343/peach-season-looking-good.html#storylink=cpy

CP: White House Salaries Up

The White House released Friday its annual report listing the salaries of all 468 of its employees. Total payroll is up about $700,000 and it has added 14 more employees since last year's report.

The report, which Congress has required since 1995, shows total White House payroll at $37.8 million. The report was due on Sunday but released Friday afternoon. Typically, politicians release information for which they prefer less visibility on Friday afternoons to avoid a heavy news cycle.

Current White House payroll is higher than it was during the last year of the President George W. Bush administration, which was $33.1 million, but lower than it was in 2009, President Barack Obama's first year in office, when it was $39.1 million.

Congress sets the salaries of the president, $400,000, and vice president, $221,100. The next highest paid employees earn $172,200. There are 20 employees making this salary, including Chief of Staff Jack Lew, Press Secretary Jay Carney, Senior Advisor David Plouffe and Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett.

Full Story Here

Sewer Main Malfunctions on Clemson Boulevard

On Saturday, June 30 at approximately 9:50 pm, Anderson County Wastewater Department crews were dispatched to make repairs to a malfunction of the air release valve on a 12-inch sewer force main located at 4299 Clemson Boulevard.

“We received the call at 9:50 pm and immediately dispatched crews to make the necessary repairs,” said Wastewater Manager Derrick Singleton. “Two pumper trucks were sent to the site to contain some of the spill. SC DHEC has been notified, along with Anderson Regional Water so they can monitor raw water intake.”

Wastewater crews are in the process of cleaning up the spill site and will be taking creek samples in the area. Signs warning residents about the Sanitary Sewer Overflow will be posted at the spill site and along Hembree Creek around the Stonewall Woods Subdivision.  County officials request that residents stay out of Hembree Creek until the signs have been removed.

Report: Stress Could Trigger Alzheimer's

Stressful lifestyles could be the key trigger for incurable Alzheimer’s disease, scientists believe. Even the trauma of bereavement or moving home could bring on dementia.

Scientists funded by the Alzheimer’s Society are investigating the link and hope their findings could lead to new drug treatments to fight the disease.

A study at the University of Kuopio in Finland has found that the long-term effects of stress may be the biggest cause of the disease.

When stressed, our blood pressure rises as our heart beats faster and levels of the hormone cortisol in the bloodstream also increase.

Experts believe once cortisol enters the brain it starts to kill off cells there, leading to Alzheimer’s.

Full Story Here

Block Grant Includes Homeland Park Water Line Upgrade

The South Carolina Department of Commerce today announced that approximately $11 million in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds have been awarded to 28 communities across the state. These projects will benefit over 14,000 residents. The $500,000 Homeland Park Water Line Upgrade in Anderson County is included in the past.
 
“The CDBG program consistently has a positive impact on communities across our state that lack resources for community development. These resources not only help improve residents’ quality of life, but also help create a more competitive environment for bringing jobs and investment,” said Secretary of Commerce Bobby Hitt.
 
The projects receiving grants were selected through a statewide competitive process. Communities receiving CDBG funding are required to provide at least 10 percent matching funds. To secure grant funding, communities must demonstrate how they will use grant funds to ensure healthy and safe neighborhoods. Projects will address improvements to water, sewer or drainage infrastructure. These projects will eliminate contaminated or dry wells, overflows in septic tanks or drainage, and will result in safe drinking water, improved fire protection, improved treatment of sewage and protection from property damage. By making these strategic capital investments, public health, safety or environmental quality concerns will be addressed.
 
Approximately 87 percent of these funds will be invested within counties that are not considered “developed.” In all, 10,000 low- to moderate-income households will benefit from these improvements.
 
The grants funds are allocated annually to South Carolina from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  The Department of Commerce administers the CDBG program for the state. The program assists communities in providing housing, a suitable living environment and expanded economic opportunities. Grants are awarded to local governments to carry out a wide range of activities addressing housing and community development needs. More than 70 percent of the funding will assist the state’s lower income residents.

Herald: S.C. to Opt Out of Medicaid Expansion

When President Obama met with the nation’s governors in February 2011, S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley asked him to allow states to opt out of key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

Based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday, South Carolina no longer has to ask for permission on one provision. State leaders can simply refuse to take part in the law’s expansion of Medicaid benefits in 2014.

The director of the state Health and Human Services agency said Friday his department would favor opting out if it comes down to that.

“I can say pretty directly that as it’s described now in the Affordable Care Act, the administration is not interested at all in pursuing that expansion,” said Tony Keck, who was selected by Haley to lead the Cabinet agency.

Plenty could change before 2014. Republicans in Congress have pledged to repeal or dismantle the Affordable Care Act, and they could have a better chance if fall elections lead to a power shift in Washington.

But if the expansion of Medicaid rolls is still planned in 2014, South Carolina leaders will have a choice. They can accept or reject federal dollars — 100 percent in the first two years, no less than 90 percent after that — to cover an additional 500,000 mostly working poor in the state under Medicaid. Despite the federal government paying most of the cost, Keck thinks the expansion is a bad deal for the state.

Full Story Here

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/06/29/4083746/sc-agency-chief-state-should-opt.html#storylink=cpy

Haley Cleared of Ethics Charges

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was cleared of ethics charges Friday for the second time in two months, though her family continues to deal with a separate controversy after her military husband took to Facebook to call state lawmakers "cowards." 

The House Ethics Committee on Friday cleared Haley of charges she illegally lobbied while a member of the House. 

Haley's attorney Butch Bowers said the verdict ends the matter and shows Haley's conduct was appropriate. Haley issued a statement saying she is pleased with the results. 

"The Ethics Committee did its job thoroughly, professionally and well," she said. "It's just a shame that our judicial and legislative bodies have had to waste so much of their time on phony political charges that never had any evidence behind them or any basis in fact." 

Haley had testified she did nothing wrong in her previous jobs as a fundraiser for Lexington Medical Center's nonprofit and as a consultant for engineering firm Wilbur Smith Associates. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/29/haley-cleared-ethics-charges-still-faces-questions-over-husband-facebook-post/#ixzz1zEtVIxhK

Museum Looks at Local Civil War Connections

This week at Anderson County Museum's Curator's Corner: Historic Connections - Anderson and Asheville, the historic connection between Anderson and Asheville during the Civil War and beyond will be the featured topic. The event is scheduled for Saturday at 10:30 a.m. at the museum.
Join ACM curator, Alison Hinman for coffee and a talk about the the era of the Buncombe turnpike, the Civil War, World War I and World War II. Cool off this summer at the ACM. The Fred Whitten Gallery is open Tuesday 10 AM - 7 PM and Wednesday - Saturday 10 AM - 4 PM.
ACM is an admission FREE history museum.