Features

Baywood Ruritan Club will host its 27th annual fall festival Oct. 1.

There is no admission charge.

Opening ceremonies begin at 10 a.m. at the Ruritan shelter. Bring a chair.

The festival features live music, food, tumbling acrobats and more. There will be antique tractors and cars and a mule-drawn wagon offering rides.

Apple butter will be made, and faces and pumpkins will be painted.

The astronomy club will have telescopes for people to see. There will be a pet show and a petting zoo.

The Galax American Legion #245 and Independence Veterans of Foreign Wars Post #7726 came together Sept. 17 at twilight to remember and honor prisoners of war and those missing in action.

The service was held at the Blue Ridge Veterans Memorial next to the Galax Public Library. Coy Shaffner was introduced as a former POW of Germany during Word War II.

INDEPENDENCE — When David Caudill stopped at Grayson Express in Independence for a cup of coffee, it ended up being one heck of a coffee break.

While he was there, the Independence man played the Virginia Lottery’s Cash 5 game, and his ticket ended up winning the game’s $100,000 top prize.

He matched all five numbers in the Sept. 7 day drawing. Those winning numbers were 4-7-8-28-32. When he later went online to check the numbers, he didn’t immediately realize he’d won.

HILLSVILLE – The Carroll County Agriculture Fair is back this year with a full schedule of events and carnival entertainment for all ages. The fair will run from today, Wednesday, through Sunday at the Southwest Virginia Farmers’ Market.

To kick off the fair, local students in second and third grades will enjoy agriculture education days Tuesday through Thursday, with stations to demonstrate different areas of agriculture. Fifth grade students will attend on Friday.

The fair schedule includes:

The second annual Khan-Con last weekend was a destination for lovers of comics, sci-fi and fantasy movies, games and other genres of fandom; and offered a chance for attendees to be real-life heroes for a local boy suffering from a rare disease, Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy.

INDEPENDENCE — Recent nationwide debates concerning the rights of transgender individuals have made headlines this year; the primary topic being policies requiring transgender men and women to use restrooms that reflect the gender that is printed on their birth certificate, rather than the gender they are aspiring (or in the midst of transitioning) to be.

Landmark News Service and Staff Reports

It’s a craze. It’s a phenomenon. It’s the reason so many people are walking the streets, singly and in small groups, eyes glued to their cellphones, seeming to be in search of something.

“Pokemon Go” blends the kids’ game from the 1990s with the technologies of GPS, smartphones and augmented reality. Those people peering into their smartphone cameras see little Pokemon creatures superimposed into real life.

An overcast sky and a few stray drops of rain weren’t enough to drive spectators away from the downy banks of Chestnut Creek as the Galax Volunteer Fire Department’s annual Great Galax Duck Race got underway on July 4.

As always, talk on along the shore was of duck stock, breeding techniques, creek conditions and preferred racers.

Favored among seasoned bettors were Plastic, Yellow, Buoyant and Billed, all descended from legendary stud drake, Made In China, though the many ducks in the race considerably diluted the odds.

INDEPENDENCE — The Grayson-Wythe Regional Library recently welcomed Mary Thomas as the new library director.

Thomas moved to Wytheville from Northeast Tennessee to accept the position. Though she is a newcomer to Grayson County, she said in a recent interview that her family has ties to Virginia. Her father’s family is from Bedford, and several of her cousins live in Pulaski and Dublin.