Carthage CVB Supports Sales Tax.

News Release: "The Carthage Convention & Visitor’s Bureau Board of Directors voted unanimously to support the City of Carthage Capital Improvements Tax. "In this tough economy, we understand the hesitation to support any tax initiative but our board felt that this tax continuation would continue improvements to Carthage" says Wendi Douglas, Carthage CVB Director.

According to the release "This is not a new tax. It is a continuation of an existing sales tax that was approved by voters in 1996 for Capital Improvements. There will be no change in the sales tax rate or the amount that shoppers currently pay. This is just a continuation of an existing sales tax that will continue once the current tax terminates in March 2012. Previous voter approved projects included construction of two new water wells, two new elevated water storage tanks and over 17,000 feet of distribution line improvements as well as storm water system improvements."

The CVB contracts with the City for tourism services. The total amount appropriated in this year’s city budget for CVB is $90,500 and is funded by the lodging tax.

I was readin’ in the pet column published in the Mail the other day that the writer didn’t think cats oughta be ever put outside. Might get hit by a car or attacked by a wild animal. What about us humans? We might be injured bein’ outside too.

As we often state in our paper, we don’t necessarily agree with everthing that is published. This has gotta be onea the strangest concepts I’ve ever heard.

I’m thinkin’ chickens and geese should get their share of protection also. Bring ‘em all in the house. Goats, pigs, Bessie the milk cow, it’s a dangerous world out there in the great outdoors.

I personally think that most cats I’ve been around are smarter than some folks that write columns for a livin’.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

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Weekly Columns

artCentral

ART NOTES from Hyde House

by Sally Armstrong, Director of artCentral

Our first exhibition for 2011 nears, and today I am printing as the body of my article, the artist’s statement of Brenda Sageng, our first presenting artist opening on February 25th, at 6:00 at Hyde House Gallery. Brenda is a Carthage resident, but her art reflects all her life experiences as most artists can attest. This is her reason for creating art, "the artist’s statement": "What compels an artist to make art? It seldom pays much, can be terribly frustrating, and is often psychically discouraging. Yet, here am I, stretching paper or canvas, selecting colors, and blowing what money I didn’t already spend on books and pet food, on more brushes and paint! My compulsion to make art began with drawing in my own picture books (of which I was blessed to have many) as soon as I could hold a pencil. If I felt the illustrator had forgotten something, I added it -- usually a princess with flowing hair in a fancy dress and shoes. I’m not so much into princesses anymore (raising three daughters cured me of that delusional motif,) but I am still fascinated with the human form and gesture, animals and birds, and the seasonal transience of plant life, as well as old, decaying architecture (I drew castles too.) In my exploration of architectural spaces and biological structures, I have discovered a myriad of similarities: each has a "skin" whether of flesh or brick. Each is constructed of elegantly designed parts, neatly fit together, with wonderful repeating patterns of texture. And, both the plant and the building are made alive by light itself, in ways far beyond visually arresting contrasts. Consider how the soft, pearly glow of a wet winter afternoon, seeps through the cracked and broken windows of a crumbling old warehouse, and lends an almost sacred quality to its decay, giving it breath for one more day. More dramatically, the late afternoon sunlight riding hard on the heels of a passing thunderstorm illuminates a common elderberry bush with an incomparable golden fire. For a moment, backlit against blue-violet clouds, the naked eye can witness photosynthesis turning water and light into a feast of fruit, and, not inconsequentially, the very oxygen we breathe. The more I learn about this visible, yet invisible process, the more singularly miraculous it becomes. Were it not for this "light putting together" by trillions of ancient blue-green algae sucking in the methane and sulfur of early Earth, then exhaling microscopic puffs of oxygen, there would be no atmosphere enveloping our jewel of a planet. So, I paint birds and children because their bright eyes bring me joy. And, I paint the tree; the leaf; the broken twig and the ephemeral blossom, because they feed us all with body and breath." More on this artist and her show next week!