The Red Pencil
Newsletter of Watauga County Retired School
Personnel
Vol.XVIII, No.2 October
2017____________________________________steelebecky58@gmail.com
October Meeting
When: Thursday, October 19, NOON, $10, check made payable to
Watauga County NCRSP
Where: Deerfield Methodist Church
Why: To share time with each other AND to hear from Shannon
Carroll, High
Country Food Hub Coordinator with Blue Ridge
Women in Agriculture
With: non-perishable
food for the Hunger Coalition. Please also remember to bring children’s books for Santa’s Toy Box,
and let’s load down that long table in the Fellowship Hall with INDIVIDUAL SIZES of fruit, heatable
meals, cereal, and everything else for the more than 400 backpacks our school
kids take home every weekend. Don’t forget all the lovely, noisy, loose change you’ve been collecting for
the Scholarship Fund, and don’t forget the plastic bags and medicine
bottles!
If you don’t RSVP via email or receive a call from one of our volunteer callers, please call
Becky
Steele before 8 PM on Sunday, October 15,
or email her at steelebecky58@gmail.com.
If you have time, please plan to stay for
just a few minutes after the
meeting
to help clean our meeting space.
President’s Message
Autumn
is once again in the air as colorful leaves flutter gently to the ground.
Shorter days lead to longer nights, so let’s all savor the most colorful season
of the year! Once we “fall back” an hour on Nov. 5, we’ll miss these longer
days of sunlight.
We
anticipate a most interesting, informative program on October 19th
presented by our own Shannon Carroll, coordinator of the Blue Ridge
Women in Agriculture. She’ll be sharing information about their work to
strengthen the High Country's local food system.
Membership
continues to be our focus for this year, and at our last board meeting, we
discussed the following strategies:
1)
Meeting with NCAE representatives
from each of our schools. We’re already working on completing this
strategy.
2)
Making our local unit more visible.
Bill Watterson created an informative article for the local newspapers about
who we are, what we do, and how to join NCRSP.
3)
Scheduling a meeting with Dr.
Elliott and several of our board members. Our goal is to have his endorsement
to publicize NCRSP in the schools, as well as to have ways to connect with
potential retirees.
4)
Continuing to contact and reach out
to all retirees. Everyone can help in this endeavor. If you know of any
current, or pending, retirees, please let us know, or make a contact to invite
them to one of our meetings.
Concerning Community Participation, please make the effort to submit your
volunteer hours. Only 15 of us turned in hours at the August meeting. We can do
better! Either turn in a print copy of your hours at a meeting, or feel free to
email Candace with your hours. mcandacehall@gmail.com
Be sure to check out the Fall issue
of Panorama and see our unit’s photo
and article. Candace Hall, along with a number of other NCRSP members,
represented us well in volunteering at Letterland at Tweetsie!
Open Enrollment for our Health Insurance is now underway. Stay
informed and choose the plan that meets your needs.
Your new NCRSP membership card is
coming in November, and let me know if you’re interested in the State
Convention, March 14-15 in Winston Salem, or the Regional 1B Convention, April
26th in Conover.
An
appreciative “shout out” to Linda Seamster for donating her lovely handmade
quilt in August
as
a raffle for our scholarship fund. Congratulations to Mike Dreisbaugh, the
winner of the
“Leafy Lap Quilt”!
Mary Linda Dooley
Treasurer’s
Report for Watauga Unit of NCRSP 
As of 16 September 2017
Shares
Account $ 32.67
Money
Market $ 3265.97
Checking Account
Beginning Balance
$5198.98
|
|
Income:
|
Expenses:
|
DEP.
3rd quarter dues $ 161.33
|
Ck#1089 Precision Printing: RP & Enroll $
87.43
|
DEP. Lunch Collected: August
$ 360.00
|
Ck#1090 USPO: Red Pencil
Postage $
24.50
|
DEP.
Scholarship Raffle $ 474.00
|
Ck#1091 Saralyn Kader: Membership & Mile $
47.97
|
DEP. Scholarship Donations (2)
$ 44.74
|
Ck#1092 DUMC: Venue $
30.00
|
Ck#1093 BBQ: Food $
225.00
|
|
Interest
(Aug) $ 1.00
|
Ck#1094 USPO: Transmittal Form $ 3.38
|
Interest
(Sept) $
|
Checking Account Fee (Aug) $
1.00
|
Checking Account Fee (Sept) $
|
|
Total Income: $ 1041.07
|
Total Expenses: $ 419.28
|
Ending Balance $5820.77
Dedicated Amounts included in Ending Balance:
Grant Funds: Committees $1579.00+83.19-47.97 Balance $1614.22
Scholarship
Funds $
897.50+568.74 Balance $1466.24
Grant
Funds: Avery $ 347.42-22.85 Balance $324.57
Submitted by
and approved by Executive Board
19 September 2017
Linda Seamster
Treasurer
Heartline -
News from our NCRSP Family
Dot Barker just went on a Christian Tours trip to Wisconsin
and Michigan, spending two nights on Mackinaw Island.
Linda Seamster won honorable mention for her quilted wall
hanging during the Wilkes Quilters'
Guild Show.
Mary Linda Dooley says, “The Canadian Rockies are the place
to go for breath-taking beauty, especially traveling on the Rocky Mountaineer!”
Books for Santa’s Toy Box
Christmas in October! It seems
too early, doesn't it? But if we bring
our books for Santa's Toy Box to our October 19 meeting, they can be given out
this year. (When we bring the books in
December, they have to be stored until the next year, because our
December meeting is after the
give-away.)
Santa's Toy Box, which will celebrate its 31st year of operation in the
High Country this year, is a wonderful project that allows families who might
otherwise struggle, to provide their children with presents. Parents are always
asked to include at least one book in their choices. So please bring new or gently used books, no
writing in them, to our October meeting.
Books can be bought very inexpensively at the continuing book sales at
both the Watauga County Public Library and the Blowing Rock Community Library.
You can often find very good, gently used books at both locations. You just
might find a book for
yourself as well. :)
Women in Agriculture
Coordinator to speak at October meeting
Shannon
Carroll, our speaker at the Oct. 19 meeting, is the High Country Food Hub
Coordinator with Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture. She worked as an
instructional technology specialist in Watauga County Schools for 30+ years at
the district, high school and elementary levels providing leadership and
support for instructional technology.
Her work in instructional technology
began way back in 1983 when she traveled to all 8 elementary schools
transporting Apple II computers in the back of her covered pickup truck,
setting up “labs” in any available open space in the building with enough
receptacles to plug them all in and teaching students how to program the Logo
turtle. Then came staff
development for teachers, MECC
software, IBM Writing to Read labs, a move to WHS, word processing, SIMS,
Impact NC, the internet, Microsoft Office and the list goes on and on until she
finished her career with Watauga County Schools at Mabel with NCWISE, Smart
Boards, laptops, iPads and creating school gardens.
She retired from Watauga County
Schools in 2013 and is currently dividing her time between three part-time
positions - being the High Country Food
Hub Coordinator, the Lettuce Learn garden coordinator for Parkway School, and helping
her husband, Terry, with his SunCatcher Passive Solar Greenhouse business. She
also recently earned her Master Gardener certification. In her free time, she
enjoys gardening, traveling to visit her sons, and going for long walks.
She looks
forward to having an opportunity to share information about Blue Ridge Women in
Agriculture and their work to strengthen the High Country's local food system
by supporting women and their families with resources, education, and skills
related to sustainable food and agriculture.
!
Rah! Rah!
Rah! Sis-boom-bah!
Where did you go to school?
Where did you receive your
professional training? How about your
spouse/partner/significant other?
Children and grandchildren? The Red Pencil wants to know where you went to
school and where your spouse, children, and grandchildren matriculated,
too.
Please send this information to
Nanci Tolbert Nance, ntn@skybest.com or P.O. Box
188, Blowing Rock NC 28605 or complete the card on your table at our next
meeting.
Following the example below will
make collating all this information much, much easier. We’re betting you have fellow alums in our
group that you don’t even know about!
Example:
Nanci
Tolbert Nance
|
Appalachian State Teachers College,
Atlantic Christian College,
|
Appalachian
State University
|
|
Husband,
Larry
|
Appalachian
State Teachers College, Florida State University
|
Son,
Geoffrey
|
University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
|
Granddaughter,
Eliza
|
Auburn
University
|
Grandson,
Tolbert
|
University
of South Carolina
|
For more
information, go to
Phew! Stink
bugs invade
If, like most of us, you’re finding
hordes of stink bugs in and
around your house, you might want to
try building your own trap to get rid of the invasive species, which arrived in
the U.S. only 20 years ago, but has since spread across most of the country,
especially the East Coast.
There are a
lot of commercial traps, and even some other homemade traps, that are no doubt
effective, but one of the least expensive traps to make includes an empty
2-liter plastic bottle, an LED light, black electrical tape, and masking tape.
Click on the link below for more information: 
———————————
If you haven’t
received your 2018 Open
Enrollment
booklet yet, call 855-627-3847 for more information.
Open Enrollment
ends October 31, 2017.
NCRSP Community
Participation Volunteer Hours 2017 Name:
Category
|
Jan
|
Feb
|
Mar
|
Apr
|
May
|
Jun
|
Jul
|
Aug
|
Sep
|
Oct
|
Nov
|
Dec
|
Total
|
Education
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
||||
Other
(not familial)
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
x
|
Candace will be happy to take
your information by phone at 264-5763 or by email to Total Hours in All Categories ________ mcandacehall@gmail.com
!
The Red Pencil
Watauga County NCRSP
PO Box 2963
Boone, NC 28607
