R.I.P. Joshua Cantrell
Joshua Cantrell’s young life ended at 4 p.m. Monday at Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center in North Carolina. The three-year-old is one of two Floyd County boys suffering from a rare brain tumor that afflicts fewer than 100 a year nationwide.
Both are related to basketball coaches in Floyd County. Cantrell was the grandson of FCHS girls’ varsity coach Alan Cantrell while four-year-old Chance Harman, son of boys’ varsity coach Brian Harman, still fights for his life at the same center.
Another Friday night, another Jamboree
Barbershop Grass (above and left), one of the anchor bands of Floyd’s famous Friday Nite Jamboree, felt like a red-headed stepchild in a recent photo shoot that ran on this blog and in The Floyd Press.
Seems I had a photo of every band that played during the reopening of the country store except them. It wasn’t a slight but an oversight.
I took a break for dinner from 8:30 to 9:30 during that shoot and that’s when BG almost always appears on stage for the Jamboree.
I had a couple of photos of the band but neither made it into the final layout.
So I went back Friday night to concentrate on the band and the crowd during the 8:30 to 9:30 hour.
The visit also gave me a chance to capture some crowd favorites from the weekly event (below) and add more faces to my portfolio. Floyd County blogging dean Fred First was somewhere in the madness as well but we missed each other but Fred also has a report over on his Fragments from Floyd site.
Damn
Went out Friday night to photograph the Friday Nite Jamboree.
Doing such a job right means crawling around on the floor, climbing up for high angles and working up a sweat. So I was soaking wet when I left the Country Store for the cool, crisp night air.
Big mistake.
Woke up Saturday morning with chills, fever, coughing and respiratory problems.
Damn. Loaded up on aspirin, drank lots of fruit juice and stayed in bed for the day. A full schedule went out the window while I paid the price for trying, once again, to do too much too soon.
25-0
Floyd County High School’s girls varsity basketball team aced a perfect season with a crushing 65-31 stomping of Radford to win the Region C championship and head into the state playoffs with a 25-0 record.
Time to clean my cameras and get ready for Richmond.
Better than a soap opera
This showed up in the email today from Tom Ryan, the on-again, off-again owner of Over the Moon.
Back On The Market!
Ever dreamed of semi-retirement, a life of leisure, expensive vacations in Europe, long weekends & making money hand over fist? Me too, but then I decided to open a cafe.
As of February 19th, Over The Moon Cafe is back on the market & available to the ‘right’ person….
The roll continues
The Floyd County High School girls varsity basketball team is now 24-0 thanks to a 84-46 drubbing of Parry McCluer in the Region C semifinals in Pulaski Wednesday night.
For a while in the first half, it didn’t look good but, as Roanoke Times writer Randy King notes, a tsunami roared through the Pulaski gym and drowned the team from Parry McCluer.
“Told my girls we probably lost to the state champs,” PM coach John Armstrong said after the game.
Betrayal
As a journalist, I’m skeptical of everything and everyone. That habit does not always carry over into my personal life or in my business dealings with people.
I tend to trust people in personal and business situations and that tendency has a habit of coming back to bite me in the ass.
Case in point: A longtime client in Northern Virginia, someone I’ve done business with for some 20 years, recently paid an overdue bill with a bum check. We’re talking a large one with five numbers in front of the decimal point. It came back marked “contact issuer.”
On a roll
The 23-0 Floyd County High School girls’ varsity basketball team puts an unbeaten record on the line tonight in Pulaski in the regional semi-finals after they demolished Chilhowie 95-39 in the first round at the local gym Monday night. The team, ranked number one in Virginia, appears on a roll to head into Richmond in March to take it all. This photo is from last year’s state tournament.
We’re sorry…this is a recording
AEP (Always Erratic Power) called shortly before 9 p.m. Monday. Actually, their machine called with a recorded message to let us know the power had been out during last week’s ice storm.
One last ice photo
One more shot from last week’s ice storm. With warmer weather predicted for this week maybe we can get back to other shots.