Mamaw Hollar’s full name is Augusta Townsend Hollar — a lovely, dignified name which, at the age of 10 or 12, I would have scribbled in a notebook as an idea for a future novel.

She celebrated her 92nd birthday on April 15, and her friends and family gathered at the Captain’s Galley (a seafood restaurant in Granite Falls) to celebrate. Today, I got an email with this photo and those details, because the News-Topic often runs birthday announcements and because people know our catchall news@newstopic.net address, but frequently just email things to reporters they’ve met or dealt with before.

The little release included a few more details, including these lines:

“She has 3 children – Larry Hollar, Betty Annas and Dennis Hollar, all of Hudson, 7 grandchildren, and 6 great-grandchildren. ‘Miss Gussie [note -- another absolutely excellent name] loves spending time with family and friends, tending to her flowers, feeding and watching the birds…and sharing stories of her life with Papaw Henry Hollar.”

For all the frustrating things community journalism is (getting the silent treatment from public officials, sitting silently yourself while someone yells at you on the phone, waking up at 11 p.m. knowing for sure you spelled a name wrong), and all the sometimes-disappointing things it isn’t…

It is also Mamaw Hollar’s 92nd birthday, and an announcement in the paper from people who love her.

I’ll take that. I’ll take it today, tomorrow, and the next.

On Friday night, guests will mill around in business-casual dress for Communities in Schools’ Celebrate the Children: A Taste of Caldwell County.

They’ll load their plates with barbecue, pizza, Mexican food, appetizers, desserts and just about any other type of food you could imagine.

Later, music (from the Harper School and the acoustic trio Strictly Clean & Decent) will drift through the room.

Those trappings of the event are firmly on the grown-up side of the age spectrum. But a few others aren’t.

Dr. Seuss-style decorations will fill the room, including decorations made by CCC&TI’s compensatory education students. Steve Stone, the county superintendent, will lead a Seuss-themed cakewalk.

At this event, which is CIS’s main fundraiser, no one wants to forget what it’s all about.

“It’s called Celebrate the Children because we don’t want to lose focus of what it’s all about,” said Terese Almquist, event co-chair and the publisher of the News-Topic. “It’s about the kids.”

For Communities in Schools, every day is about the kids. The organization works to engage the business community and private citizens in a monumental task: Keeping students from dropping out of school.

In Caldwell County, approximately 500 students receive direct, one-on-one mentoring from CIS, and about 6,000 benefit from broader services and programs.

That includes everything from scholarships to events like the Reality Store. During the latter, every eighth-grader in the county gets to choose an (imaginary) education and career and see how it affects their (also imaginary) bottom line.

This year, 93.5 percent of CIS-mentored students stayed in school. Of that group, 95 percent were promoted to the next grade.

“They’re learning so many life skills, and skills that they really can use in the future,” CIS executive director Debbie Eller said.

CIS is partially funded by grants, and it’s a United Way organization. But Taste of Caldwell is its largest fundraiser of the year.

“Without it, there are a lot of things we just couldn’t do,” Eller said.

The event will feature multiple auctions – both live and silent – and food from restaurants and vendors around the county. The silent auction features themed baskets (kids, golf, beauty, gardening, Christmas, and car wash, to name a few). There’s also a $500 cash drawing.

Just don’t get too serious. It’s an event for adults, but it’s about the kids.

Rhodhiss will increase its price for water and sewer service in 2013-14, if the town council approves the proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

The bill for 4,000 gallons of water would rise from $23.51 to $28.

A 4,000-gallon sewer bill would rise from $23.51 to $34.

The town funds its water and sewer system through an enterprise fund, and right now, it’s not breaking even.

“It has to fund itself,” Town Manager Barbara Harmon told the town council Tuesday night. “It has to support itself, and it’s still not doing it. Rates are just too low. You’re going to have to increase the rates.”

Currently, the town is pulling from its capital reserve fund to balance the budget — it will pull $82,000 this year if rates don’t increase, Harmon said.

That’s not sustainable, Harmon said.

“If we continue having to do that, we’re going to run out of money,” she said.

Several town leaders said they didn’t want to raise rates but couldn’t see how they could avoid it.

“It’s not something we want to do, it’s something we have to do,” Mayor Rick Justice said. “There’s no way around it.”

The town council will discuss the proposed increase further at its June 11 meeting at 6:30 p.m. at Ray Childers School.

On Monday night, the Caldwell County Schools will ask the Caldwell County Board of Commissioners to borrow $14.5 million to build a new middle school for the Hibriten district.

School officials say the school system can make the annual debt payments without an increase in the system’s budget or a tax increase, largely because they’ve anticipated this need for so long.

There are two customary sources that K-12 schools use for construction and other capital projects, Superintendent Steve Stone said: a percentage of sales tax revenue they receive from the county and the state, and a percentage of lottery revenue that’s allocated to school districts based on the number of students they serve.

The Caldwell County Schools get about $2.4 million a year in sales tax revenue and about $850,000 in lottery revenue, Stone said. Both funding streams are restricted to brick-and-mortar capital projects. They can’t be used for teacher salaries, classroom development or anything that’s not a capital expense.

The members of the Caldwell County Board of Education have known for more than a decade they would need a replacement for William Lenoir Middle School, so they’ve been working to pay down debt and put aside some sales tax and lottery revenue, Stone said.

The school’s total fund balance for capital projects now totals about $3 million, mostly from unspent sales tax and lottery revenue, Stone said.

If sales tax revenue rises by just 1 percent a year, the school system could make its payments on the new facility and still manage to add to its fund balance through fiscal 2032-33, according to data provided by Stone.

The General Assembly could throw a wrench into the school system’s plans by cutting what schools get from the lottery or sales tax, but Stone said he doesn’t see that happening. Most districts “live on” those funds and need them for day-to-day operation, he said.

“I think there’s enough people with sense to realize the Wake counties and the Charlotte-Mecks would have to fold,” Stone said.

If the county commissioners approve the school system’s request Monday, the new school should be completed by the 2015-16 school year, Stone said.

In elementary and middle school, Zach Blevins was one of those kids who pose a conundrum for educators: He was too smart.

That is, he was too smart for the traditional model of classroom education, which involves a lot of sitting down at desks. He figured things out quickly, leaving him with a lot of time to sit and wonder just when in real life he would ever apply the algebra he was learning.

“School, even though I didn’t ever really enjoy it, has always been easy for me,” Blevins said.

His classmates complained, he said, and he just did exactly what his teachers told him to do and made 100s.

For him, school was simple. And that was the problem.

“It bored him a lot,” said Zach’s mom, Pamela Blevins. “Until the middle college, and that challenged him.”

Blevins’ parents pushed him through elementary and middle school, patiently explaining to him there were some things in life you just had to do. Then he was accepted to the Caldwell Career Center Middle College, a non-traditional school with a heavy, hands-on emphasis on career and technical education.

Blevins started out on an electronic engineering track, because he had always wanted to work on cars. Then his sophomore year, he needed a filler class and signed up to learn about residential wiring.

To put it lightly, that went well.

“He just soared with this electrical stuff,” Pamela Blevins said.

Blevins wound up placing three times in regional and state competitions for SkillsUSA, an organization that aims to equip high-school students with marketable workforce skills.

Then he drove to Boone to apply for an internship that quickly became a paid apprenticeship instead.

Will Knight, the owner of Climate Control in Boone, had reached out to the middle college looking for an intern. After interviewing Blevins, he offered him a paid job on the spot.

Blevins spent his senior year going to school in the mornings, then working from 1 to 4 at Climate Control.

For most students, that would’ve been too tough a balancing act. Blevins is ranked first in his class.

That didn’t surprise his parents, who have seen their son’s determination in play since he was a kid. He started saving for a car when he was 13. He made one B in his life, when he missed the A by only a tenth of a point.

“That boy sets his mind on something, it’s going to be more than done,” Pamela Blevins said. “It’s hard to hold him down.”

Now, Blevins is graduating from the middle college with an armload of college credits. He’ll attend Caldwell Community College & Technical Institute for two semesters and be done with his associate’s degree at 18.

Blevins wants to keep working in the electrical field – and wants to stay at Climate Control, at least for a while. The job has provided exactly what he wanted and didn’t get as a kid: variety.

“It’s always something different here,” he said. “I’ve never seen two of the same things, ever.”

Zach Blevins isn’t bored anymore.

Graduations usually follow a formula.

There’s a president/principal/chancellor introduction, a procession of speakers that reads like who’s-who-in-local-education, the valedictorian and, of course, the keynote guest.

Caldwell Career Center Middle College breaks out of that mold.

Only three officials – Caldwell superintendent Steve Stone, CCC&TI president Ken Boham, and middle college principal Brian Suddreth – got much speaking time at the middle college’s graduation on Thursday. And those speeches were as brief as it gets, clocking in at about a minute apiece.

The rest of the middle college’s ceremonies went to the 40-some graduating seniors.

Each student got a brief window of time, in between picking up their diploma and shaking a row of hands, to speak.

Some declined. Graduate Katherine West told the audience, to laughs and applause, that she planned to just “take this thing and get outta here.”

But most took a few minutes to share a quote or a story or a piece of advice.

The students talked about the hard times. Some had battled dyslexia that made them too scared to talk in public; some the loss of their parents’ furniture jobs; others depression and anxiety.

They talked about people they loved – the grandmothers who made hot potato soup on cold nights, or the brothers who died too soon, or the parents who pushed them, sometimes kicking and screaming, to a degree.

They talked about the things they’d learned at the middle college – a nontraditional school that focuses on making sure its students don’t get a cap and gown without gaining a marketable skill. They talked about wiring houses and waking up before the sun for internships.

They talked about the most unconventional senior projects you’ll ever hear about – if you see graduate Annessa Monroe, ask her how she trained a goldfish.

They talked about their memories of high school, and their fears and hopes for what was ahead. They talked about the decision to give up an easy life to enlist as a Marine, or the struggle to become a first-generation high school graduate.

Those who plan graduations face the same challenge year after year: How do you honor students’ accomplishments while still keeping in mind that there are babies squirming and knees tapping and minds drifting out in the audience?

The middle college solves that dilemma by handing almost all of its time over to the students. As a result, you see more than a procession of names and faces, blurring over time, across a stage.

You see a real picture of a real class of kids. You get a glimpse of the bedrooms where they sprawled out and did their homework; the last-minute panic that set in as their final projects came due; the people they loved who nudged them toward the finish line.

It doesn’t take longer than a traditional graduation – guests are in and out in less than two hours.

And the night is about the graduates.

“People always ask how long this will take,” English teacher Grayson Beane said. “Well, it’ll take about an hour and a half. But they’ve worked for 13 years. They deserve a minute and a half.”

From an essay Raines wrote for The Atlantic almost a decade ago, after losing his job over Jayson Blair. Adds a new layer to Politico’s piece on Jill Abramson — and the conversation around it — doesn’t it?

Something pretty amazing happened in Kidd Brewer Stadium Saturday.

I don’t need to tell the whole story – don’t need to wax poetic about fans spilling out of stadium seating onto the field after knocking off an undefeated, number-one team. At home. In the cold.Regardless, the point is that games like Saturday’s are crucial in periods of our history like the one we’re facing right now. It’s possible that The Appalachian is starting to sound like a broken record on this topic, but it’s true – fiscally, these are dark times.

And when the budget’s low, you lose out on plenty. Clubs, programs, activities, classes and services are being cut all over campus.

But we have one constant here at Appalachian State University, one thing that continues to boost morale no matter what we’re facing.

And we’re about to lose it.

If we make the move to the FBS, we’re taking a university program that has consistently thrived and offering it up as a sacrifice. Sure, all might go well. All might go swimmingly, amazingly – but it’s a risk. It’s not assured.

For every division-move success story, there’s a horror story. We might be a Boise State or a South Florida, moving up in the rankings quickly and spreading our name around the national scene.

Or we might take after Florida International, which lost all but three games in its third year in the FBS, or Louisiana-Monroe, which hasn’t had a winning season since it made the jump…14 years ago.

We could see game attendance dropping, school spirit fading and success waning. We could be willingly giving away one of the biggest points of pride at Appalachian – something that stays steady and constant even when everything else is rocky and uncertain.

Is that really what we want?

My answer is no. Let’s move up to the FBS someday, absolutely. But let’s do it when we’re steady and secure – when the athletics program is just the cherry on top of a university where everything else is going well.

For now, if something’s good – we’d do better not to mess with it.

After 92 years on King Street, the Boone Drug lunch counter will close in December, making room for the Feeding All Regardless of Means (F.A.R.M.) Café.

The café is part of One World Everybody Eats, a national organization designed to relieve hunger at the local level. Under the nonprofit’s business model, diners can pay for their meal via donations or volunteer time at the restaurant, or they can choose not to pay for their meal.“Essentially it’s called a community kitchen, which is not a soup kitchen,” board member Linda Coutant said. “A soup kitchen might just be where you hand out free food to indigent people. But a community kitchen, on the other hand, is where everybody eats together.”

Staffing and support for the café will be mostly volunteer-based, according to a press release. The organization will seek student support at an interest meeting in Plemmons Student Union’s McCrae Peak Room, to be held Tuesday, Nov. 8 at 5:30 p.m.

“It’s easily accessible for students and it’s a good cause because it gives people who can’t pay for food the opportunity to give back by volunteering,” said Molly Thompson, senior public relations major and F.A.R.M. Café media relations liaison. “It’s a great way for students to help relieve hunger in Boone.”

Although the closing of the lunch counter marks a new beginning for the community, it’s also an ending for its employees – including two Appalachian State University students.

Junior appropriate technology major Ethan Hardin and senior history major Adam Frazier have worked at the historic drugstore’s lunch counter for over a year. Both said working at Boone Drug was a less-than-typical college work experience.

“It has helped me get to know what people outside the college campus are like and see the locals and get to know them,” Hardin said. “It’s good experience to not just know the college crowd. There are a lot of opportunities to plug into the Appalachian community, but not a lot of chances to plug into the Boone community. So that’s been cool.”

Although Frazier is disappointed about losing his job, he said he’s more upset for the women who have “devoted their lives” to the restaurant.

“I like working with these women,” he said. “It’s a different perspective than just working with college students.”

Hardin said that although the lunch counter has been consistently understaffed, it has helped him draw closer to his coworkers.

“I don’t think I’ve had a work family that works as well as we do,” he said. “I’m going to miss the place, that’s for sure. I’m mostly going to miss the people I work with.”

In the last four decades, enormous strides have been made toward racial equality. University enrollment among minorities is up. Sometimes, bigotry as a whole is thought to be on its way out.

Does that mean race no longer matters? Are we past that issue? Can we – as a society, as a university – call ourselves post-racial?These issues and more will be discussed at an intercultural Lunch and Learn on Wednesday from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. in Plemmons Student Union’s Multicultural Center. The event, “Post-Racial America in the Age of Obama?” is sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Student Development.

The discussion will be moderated by Raj A. Ghoshal, assistant professor of sociology, whose classes focus on economic and social inequality, crime and punishment and race.

Ghoshal’s perspective on the central question of the Lunch and Learn is that we’re not living in a post-racial society – not yet, anyway.

In 2009, he wrote an opinion piece in The Raleigh News and Observer titled “Despite racial leap, disparities still linger.”

“Assuming that an Obama presidency signals that racial equality has been achieved would be a serious mistake,” the article reads. “In many significant ways, racial minorities, especially African-Americans, remain disadvantaged in American society.”

One of Ghoshal’s colleagues in the sociology department knew about the article and recommended him to the Multicultural Center’s director, Gus Péna, who was looking for someone to speak about race at a the event.

Through the Lunch and Learn, the sociology professor will lead an activity to help students and attendees examine their unconscious assumptions about race.

He also hopes to add some facts to a discussion that so often bases its arguments on emotion.

“Race is something that’s obviously talked about a lot in the media,” Ghoshal said. “But it sometimes seems like a fact-free discussion. It’s very anecdotal. It’s very emotional. What I’m hoping to do is provide some information and perspective,” Ghoshal said.

He will do that by presenting information on strides that have been made in recent decades, but he’ll also introduce some disappointing statistics about employment discrimination, inequity in the criminal justice system and the wealth gap along racial lines.

“That’s not to say that we’ve made no progress, because clearly we have…but we’re not there yet,” Ghoshal said.

Ghoshal also hopes to inspire students to take some responsibility for the racial inequality that still exists – not because they caused the problem, but because they have the power to solve it.

“We didn’t set up this system, so we shouldn’t feel guilty about it. But we can still feel responsible for it,” he said. “We can take responsibility for it, not because we created it – we didn’t create it – but because of the kinds of people we are.”