SNACK IN A BACKPACK TAKES OFF  

To meet the needs of children whose main nutrition are the meals served at school. Many children in the counties served by The Craddock Center rely on free breakfast and lunch during the school week. Because of lack of food on the weekends and during school vacations, the Backpack Program concept was developed at the Arkansas Rice Depot fifteen years ago and has become a national program. The Craddock Center is participating in one county currently and plans to share this model with the other eight counties we serve. Nearly 60 percent of Fannin County students receive free or reduced meals at school.

“That’s two out of every three kids”, the school nutrition director reported. Each child in the program takes a backpack loaded with nutritious kid-friendly, non-perishable food home on Fridays and returns the empty backpack on Monday and volunteers repeat the process each week. Last week

The Craddock Center volunteers filled 64 backpacks at two schools with 832 packages of weekend food to children in need. If you’d like to help alleviate hungry tummies on the weekends, sponsorship opportunities are available:
· 1 child for 1 week: $6.00
· 1 child for 1 month: $26.00
· 1 child for 1 semester: $120.00
· 1 child for 1 school year: $240.00

Pattie Park, Liz Dobson, Director of Fannin County Head Start/Pre-K, and Beverly Cowan have prepared the backpacks for Friday delivery. We are looking for partners/sponsors for this program to help keep kids from going to bed hungry. — TLS  

MEET CRYSTAL SPARKS        

Our newest Arts Specialist on the Children’s Enrichment Program staff. Crystal has a passion for using music and movement to enrich the lives of young children, giving to them skills and tools to be successful in school and life. Currently a Kindermusik educator, she also taught developmental gymnastics for 10 years and developed a “Mommy and Me” gymnastics program which she still teaches. She and her husband, Jeff, have been married 21 years and have three daughters, whom she home schools. Originally from West Virginia, where her love for music, reading, writing and creative expression was nurtured, she has made Andrews, North Carolina, her home since 1996. We are fortunate to have Crystal as the Music Arts Specialist in six Head Start/Pre-K classes in Andrews and Murphy, North Carolina. Welcome, “Ms. Crystal”!!! — TLS

GUESS WHO TURNED 50?   

March 2 Cat in the Hat was 50 years old. To help celebrate this birthday with 220 children at Gilmer County Head Start/Pre-K a woman’s Bible study group at First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta gave a Dr. Seuss Party. This group of women arrived dressed in Cat in the Hat costumes to deliver cupcakes, Dr. Seuss pencils and an assortment of Dr. Seuss books to each classroom. Because the schools were closed due to snow on the real birthday, March 2, the Cats in the Hats had to reschedule and arrived on April 2, the same day as the Easter Bunny. You can imagine the energy flooding the school that day - almost enough to raise the roof! Many thanks to the Cats in the Hats for delivering much joy to these children. — TLS

THING ONE and THING TWO CELEBRATE DR. SEUSS’ BIRTHDAY        

Kim Cheves and Tracy Walker of the Children’s Enrichment Program presented a special program for Read Across America in Fannin, Gilmer and Dawson Head Start/Pre-K schools. They appeared in full costume as Thing One and Thing Two bringing games, songs, dances, stories, a limbo stick and the Gooney Bird. They made the letters of the alphabet with their bodies, played a rhyming game with words, played Gossip Game with a Seuss phrase demonstrating how much fun learning can be when you have teachers as creative as The Craddock Center Arts Specialists! — TLS

SILAS HOUSE AND PUBLIC OUTCRY TELL A MOVING STORY         

At the 6th Annual Helen Lewis Lecture. Through words and music Silas and his band, Public Outcry, fight mountaintop removal, an ecologically devastating form of coal mining. Silas House and band members, Katie Larken and Jason Howard, raised their voices testifying to what it means to live in Appalachia and the value of preserving the culture’s history and spirit through songs and stories. House reported mountaintop removal has destroyed a million and a half acres in the past 30 years and continues at an accelerated rate now. He lamented, “It’s not just destroying the land; it’s destroying a whole people. It’s destroying a culture. It’s destroying towns. People are part of the environment. It’s killing them. Between 1991 and 2004 33,000 jobs were lost in the Appalachian area of Kentucky. And there’s no end in sight.” House does not say the coal industry should be shut down; but he thinks mining can be done with respect and responsibility, treating the place and its people with dignity. He concluded by saying, “Remember, we all live downstream. Live by the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” — TLS

SHARPER THAN THE PAINS         

To body, mind, and spirit which all of us endure in our lifetime are the pains we feel when our children are hurt. And they do get hurt, even when being the objects of our most careful attention. Life can seem so uneven and so unfair.

I have in mind now, not the cut finger or the sudden fever, but the blows to the mind and to the heart. The parent fears the lingering effects of hurt feelings or of a sense of being wronged by some person or event. No parent wants a son or daughter to carry into adulthood a sense of being a victim, or perhaps worse, a veiled hostility that wants to get even.

It was my mother’s habit to dull her children’s pain and even to rise above the cause of hurt by creating out of the occasion a song. An example. One morning she returned to the kitchen from the smoke house, knife in hand but with no ham. Hams were smoked in a small out building to which Momma went on wintry mornings to retrieve slices of ham to feed her brood. But in the night someone had stolen the ham. She had her own pain, but she felt ours as well. No ham! He’s going to the Bad Place when he dies, isn’t he, Momma?

Momma was at the stove, busy but silent. In a few minutes she began to hum. She was writing a song in her head. Then she began to sing:  

   We have biscuits, we have jam; Let him have that greasy old ham. How can he eat that greasy old ham,  
   When we have the biscuits and we have the jam?  

The tune was light and easy. Soon we were all singing, smearing jam on biscuits and feeling a bit sorry for the man who was left with that greasy old ham. — FBC

FALL PREACHING WORKSHOP              

Dr. Tom Long from Candler School of Theology will be the presenter of the Fall Preaching Workshop scheduled for Monday, October 4. The topic will be announced soon. The workshop will be held at Cherry Log Christian Church from 9:00 a.m.—1:00 p.m. A free continental breakfast and deli lunch will be served. The workshop is free but reservations are needed. Call or email The Craddock Center (706-632-1772/craddockcenter@tds.net) to reserve a seat. — TTB  

MANY THANKS            

To the Osbornes, Reeds and Woods who donated color printers so now we can print at all three computers. Of course, they wouldn’t have worked without the help of our Master IT Doctor, John Garceau. We are so grateful to all of you! — TLS