Shelby County Today

April 7, 2020 - Center Garden Club's March meeting program featured Mrs. Janette Wittmann and her voice and piano students from Joaquin who delighted the Club and its guests with a musical tribute to nature. Mrs. Wittmann designed the program to remind the audience of how nature has influenced the development of music since time began.  

Music has been our vehicle to express our thoughts and feelings through sound. Throughout history, composers have used the muse Nature for inspiration. Among the categories included in Mrs. Wittmann's exploration of nature's influence on our music were space, seasons, water, birds, mountains, hills and valleys, prairies and meadows, trees, garden critters, flowers, air and wind.  For each of the natural categories, examples of orchestral, movie music, spiritual, opera, children's songs, songs of yesteryear, choral, madrigals and rounds, Christmas, ballet, cowboy, college songs, patriotic, metaphysical, folk songs, sacred, pop and other genre were performed or cited.

Student performers and their Nature selections included: Madalyn Bryant, "The Puffin" (vocal) and "The Butterfly"(vocal and piano); Kinsey Bryant, "Icicles" (piano);  Emma Lewis, "Trees" ( a reading) and "The Birch Tree" (vocal); and Anna Claire Lewis, "Over the Rainbow" and "Little April Showers" (both vocal). The Bryant sisters are the daughters of Tracy and Jonathan Bryant. The Lewis sisters are the daughters of Brandi and J.C. Lewis.

In the final segment of the program, Mrs. Wittmann also introduced several unusual instruments:  the 'Sea Organ" in Zadar, Croatia and the Jean Sibelius Monument of six hundred pipes in Helsinki, Finland. Mrs. Wittmann had visited both of the unusual instruments. She also introduced the  beautiful manual  Stalactite Organ located in the Virginia's Luray Caverns which Center's own Ann Harmon had once played. Mrs. Wittmann also cited the annual ice music festival held in Geilo, Norway where instruments are carved from ice and then played. In conclusion she encouraged everyone to view these musical wonders on YouTube.

Through this most informative, inspirational, and moving program, produced and narrated by Mrs. Wittmann and performed by her piano and voice students from Joaquin and her, the audience became vastly more aware of how the marriage of nature and music is therapeutic and inspirational, expressing beauty and showing us as Louis Armstrong used to sing: "What a Wonderful World"!

Following the program, the Club served lunch to the performers, their parents, and other guests in the Fellowship Hall of the First Baptist Church.

April 3, 2020 - Our Shelby County Children's Advocacy Center staff is proud to wear blue today to help increase awareness and prevention of child abuse in our community. Post your own #GoBlueDay pictures to our page!

April 3, 2020 - Shelby County Outreach Ministries will be closing ALL programs for the week of April 6th – April 10th with the exception of the Helping Hands Outreach Center. Helping Hands will be open only on Friday, April 10th from 10-2 in order to provide assistance. The senior citizens that are currently being served through our senior programs have received extra meals that will cover them through the next 2 weeks. They will also receive calls to confirm that they are safe, and all is going well. 

If you are scheduled to receive an emergency food box for the last week of March or the second week of April, please come to the Helping Hands Outreach Center on Friday, April 10th to receive it between the hours of 10-2. Our lobby is closed to the public. Food Boxes are distributed by Drive-Thru ONLY. Please be prepared to open your trunk of the car and stay in your vehicle. For information, please call us at 936-598-4990.

April 1, 2020 - With the spread of coronavirus, one of the key things to do is to stay clean and disinfect objects you use on a daily basis.

Jason Fulbright with Intelligent Concepts shares two things that typically get overlooked - your computer's keyboard and mouse or your laptop's keyboard and touch pad. In the past cleaning a virus from a computer required software and some computer knowledge. However, today's threat isn't to your computer's operating system but to your computer's operator - you.

So with that in mind, it’s time, if you haven’t already, to clean your keyboard and mouse.

First off, it goes without saying, your laptop or desktop computer should be off when doing this but be sure to shutdown correctly and not just pull the plug.

If your desktop computer has wired keyboard and mouse devices, they need to be disconnect. If you are new to unplugging either, make sure you notate where they unplug from so you can replug them in once you are done cleaning. If you have a wireless model keyboard or mouse, power them off with a power button or switch if available. If no power off option is available, then just remove the battery.

Use Lysol/Clorox wipes if you have that available. If not, spray some Lysol on a damp cloth. Wipe all the keys and areas where your hands rest. Also, you may want to flip your desktop keyboard over and gently shake loose any particles that have gotten trapped under keys.

Wipe the entire surface of your mouse. If it has a wheel on top, gently spin the wheel with the cloth until you have made several turns.

You are done with disinfecting your keyboard and mouse. Make sure it is dry before plugging them back up or turning them back on.