Out in your community every day | Columnists | Summerville Journal Scene

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Out in your community every day

Published Tuesday, April 19, 2011 7:42 PM

By Ellen Priest
Summerville Journal Scene ®

photo provided

Having just worked the Flowertown Festival, it came to mind how much we here at the paper enjoy interacting with our community.

Each year, we set up a booth and over the course of the 3-day festival, we have hundreds of people come by to visit, take advantage of our subscription specials, have their photo taken at our photo booth, or even just to eat the free ice cream that we hand out each year – because we “have the scoop”.

We here at the Journal Scene love the festival. It gives us a chance to do what we do best, interact with our readers, advertisers, or visitors.

At the same time, up in Berkeley County our Berkeley Independent/Gazette staff was covering the Catfish Festival in St. Stephen.

Reporter Dan Brown has had the pleasure of judging the catfish stew contest for several years now.

After the Festival on Friday night, Regional Ad Director Chris Zoeller and myself had the honor of being celebrity judges for the Shriners BBQ at the Lodge event.

I’m not sure we were qualified, but we enjoyed the eating part, as well as the socializing.

At the same time, our Executive Editor Judy Watts was practicing her dance steps for her performance Saturday night at the Dancing with the ARK stars fundraising event. For those of you who missed it, the video footage of Judy and the other celebrity dancers can be seen at http://www.journalscene.com/news/Dancing-the-night-away.

Each time we attend an event we put up a photo gallery on our website at http://seenit.journalscene.com.

One of the beauties of the age in which we live is that photos that we don’t have room for in the paper can be placed on our website for our followers to look at.

We also have a Facebook page and when we post a new photo gallery, we try to let our followers know it is up by posting it there. So sign up to follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/summervillejournalscene.

Some more events we have coming up include a candidates’ debate and a cooking show.

We will be co-hosting the debate, along with our partners, the Chamber and Pinewood Preparatory School on April 25th at 6:00 p.m. at Smith Hall at Pinewood Prep.

We expect a full house for this sure to be spirited debate.

All three mayoral candidates have confirmed attendance. With Summerville poised to have its first new mayor in almost 40 years, it’s an event you won’t want to miss.

We have three great candidates, Bill Collins, Bill Lomax, and Dickie Miler.

Listening to them speak that night is a good opportunity to help make up your mind as to which man has the vision to lead Summerville for the next four years.

Town Council District 6 is the only opposed city council race and both incumbent Bob Jackson and challenger Billy Simons have confirmed their attendance.

On May 17, we will be bringing back the very popular Taste of Home Cooking Show to CSU’s Lightsey Chapel. Culinary expert Michelle Roberts will once again prepare ten dishes on-stage.

There will be goodie bags with two magazines full of recipes, and assorted coupons and give-aways inside that are worth more than the admission price. During the event we will periodically draw names and give away lots of cool gifts.

Former anchorman, and Post and Courier multi-media producer Warren Peper and myself will be emceeing the event.

The doors open at 4 pm and the event begins at 6:30. Like last year, attendees will be able to save their seats and then head to the vendor room to visit with more than 20 vendors showing off their products and giving away samples. We listened to the feedback last year and have expanded the vendor area to two rooms. We still have room for more vendors so if you are interested in displaying at the show in front of more than 800 attendees, let Chris Zoeller know at czoeller@journalscene.com.

I think one of the things we do best as your community newspaper is not only cover these events, but participate in them.

One of the most fun things about my job is meeting the public and interacting. My staff is looking forward to working the cooking show again this year. It was a long 14-hour day set up through clean up last year but well worth it.

So look for the staff of all three of our papers at the next community event you attend.

We’ll probably be there!

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