Aiken County Treasurer to Open Office in Wagener

Aiken County Auditor Charles Barton and Treasurer Jason Goings are pleased to announce the opening of satellite offices in Wagener.
These offices will be opened on February 23rd, 2017 and are located in The Listine Gunter Courtney Community Center 49 Roy Street, Wagener.  The days of operation are the second and fourth Thursdays of each month from 9 AM to 4 PM. The use of currently available space has allowed these services to be provided to the citizens of Aiken County with little recurring additional costs. Citizens will be able to register cars, apply for high mileage, and pay current personal property and real estate taxes.  Registrations and decals will be issued by this office for renewals on vehicle taxes.

There will be a ribbon cutting at 10AM on the opening day, Feb 23.

Author Bruce Wise Weeks to Visit Nancy Bonnette Library

Photo courtesy the book's Facebook page.

Bruce Wise Weeks has written a novel about the Kitchens Mill area and presented it to the Nancy Bonnette Library on Sunday, February 26, from 2 - 4 pm.  Purchase your copy of Salleys Kitchen on Amazon and follow the Salleys Kitchen Facebook Page for more information.

Here's the official description:

Told in an achingly beautiful voice, Salleys Kitchen conveys the story of a tender first love among brutal racial hatred.  Set among the sandhills of a western South Carolina cotton farm, it is ripped from the actual events that occurred in that region during the late 1960s.  With painstaking realism, the story paints an intense portrait of life as a black person during the Jim Crow Era in the South.  Seen through the eyes of a young white boy lovingly raised since an infant in the southern black culture, his unique point of view articulates his struggle to enter adulthood as a white black person.

 

Wagener Resident Linda N. Merryman Publishes Paranormal Novel

Photo and Article by Valerie Sliker, courtesty Wagener Monthly

Wagener resident Linda N. Merryman has completed her first novel which has just been released in paper book or eBook format on Amazon.  7 Lamps Were Burning, the first book in the paranormal fantasy Cloudwalker Series, is a story about hope and redemption as Sasha, a young woman of Native American and Russian descent and the steward of Pandora’s Jar, has the key to saving the Cloudwalkers, an ancient fallen race.  Can Sasha bring hope back to mankind and redemption to seven earthbound spirits while dealing with her own issues of insecurity?

Linda Merryman, a native of Houston, Texas, has been a Wagener resident for a couple of decades.  Having raised her five children here, she is now helping out with her grandchildren.  She has a sister in Wagener, and twin brothers, one in Virginia and one in Texas. 

Always a big reader, Merryman admits to being more dreamy and creative than organized.  If she isn’t writing or reading, then she’s drawing or painting and one time she went through a singing phase, but writing is what tugs at her the most.

While carpooling to work with her daughter in 2012, Merryman began writing the Cloudwalker series on napkins at the restaurant where her daughter worked.  She graduated to writing in notebooks and finally, a computer.  The first story practically wrote itself, such was the flow of the muse.  Several minor characters demanded bigger roles and the story spilled forth into two, then three books. 

Paralysis Recovery Specialist Ken Bryant to Donate Services to Area Disabled

Paralysis Recovery Specialist Ken Bryant, a well-known therapist among the spinal cord injury community, will visit Aiken, SC, March 6 – 10, 2017 to provide his healing touch, at very little expense, to those paralyzed from spinal cord injuries or strokes. 

Bryant has experienced a 100% success rate with restoring some feeling or movement among his clients.  His method involves restoring or rerouting signals from the brain to the muscles, he does not repair a damaged spinal cord.  Bryant stated that when he works on a set of muscles, it takes two to five minutes to turn the muscles back on.  “You can see the change immediately,” he said, adding, “All we’re doing is turning muscles on, then they (his clients) have to build their strength up over time.  I have a God given gift to un-paralyze people.  I’ve never once seen where it hasn’t worked.” 

Bryant’s program usually consists of a five-day program at his Pinellas Park, FL location, working only a couple of hours each day with his clients.  The clients then continue strength training on their own with a personal trainer at a gym near home.  In Aiken, he will offer one session per client, un-paralyzing one muscle or muscle group, in an effort to see as many clients as time permits.  He has previously offered this program in Oregon, Cleveland, Toledo and more.

Wagener-Salley Academy of Leadership And Military Science

Wagener Salley High School’s proposal for Superintendent Dr. Sean Alford’s Thematic Programs Initiative was approved at the district’s December school board meeting and will go into effect for the 2017/18 school year.  Under the direction of Principal Ute Aadland, WSHS chose to focus the school’s theme on the strength of their leadership training through their 60-year Agricultural Education Program and their 12-year Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps Program (JROTC).

The Thematic Programs Initiative is designed to accelerate learning by enhancing the preparedness of students for college and career readiness and to meet the needs of an increasingly technical and highly-skilled future workforce.  Students will have increased access to specialized coursework and technical fields of study.

Aiken County schools have each selected an academic theme that best represents their core competence.  The WSHS Academy of Leadership and Military Science rises from the school’s long tradition of leadership training in the JROTC and Ag departments.  Both programs will be expanded through additional coursework, community service and leadership activities, as well as active recruitment and partnership with their feeder school (Busbee Corbett).

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