Support Lake Marion Artisans Activities and Events

The Lake Marion Artisans is a non-profit charitable organization based in the historic district of Summerton, South Carolina.   We are committed to enriching the surrounding communities of Lake Marion through the arts.  As such, we promote and showcase everything from unique crafts to fine arts, much of which are creations of our local artisans.  Their website provides news, educational information, and links to selected resources of interest to those interested in the Arts.

All of our community projects are funded by sales of our artwork (artists donate a portion of each sale to our non-profit Art Gallery) and by the generous donations from our community. The following are examples of some of our most recent activities:

• The Lake Marion Artisans has established a free 'Book Exchange' program. Visit the gallery, browse the art on display, and borrow a good book from our growing library of books.
• In honor of Black History Month, the Gallery hosted quilters from the Summerton Senior Center. An annual event, the exhibit of quilts, many with historical connotations, raised $700, to be used for fabric and other quilting necessities for the Center. 
• The Lake Marion Artisans Gallery has just installed and activated Internet WiFi service for the staff and gallery customers. It is also available to customers of Wen Lily's restaurant next door.
• The Lake Marion Artisans traditionally grants an Arts Scholarship to a junior or senior from the local community each year. This Scholarship and/or Summer Internship is available to participants in all types of art, from the visual arts to computer graphics, dance, music, and writing.
• Our largest community project to date was the Summerton Health Fair, held July 29, 2017, at the Old Historic Scotts Branch High School. Sponsored by Clarendon One Resource Center, Hope Health, Walmart Vision Center, Lake Marion Artisans and many other local organizations, the Health Fair offered health screenings, educational materials and community resources for members of Summerton and the surrounding community.

For more information about the Lake Marion Artisans projects, activities, and events and to make a Donation - go to the Lake Marion Artisans web site.

 

Southern Food

Southerners are known for many things, and cooking is one of them—but not just any old dish out of a generic cookbook, though—real, authentic Southern food. At the mere mention of grits, cornbread and collard greens, you know that you’re probably dining in the South.

"Shrimp and Grits" is a Southern favorite.

Certain foods are synonymous with the area below the Mason-Dixon Line. But why? Well, much is geographic fertility. For example, Georgia and South Carolina peaches are the sweetest available because of the soil and temperature. Our former president, Jimmy Carter, made Georgia peanuts famous because of his farm (and if you’re in the South, you’ve got to boil those peanuts instead of roasting them). To get a taste of a specific region in the South, gather your pecans in Mississippi, grind up some sugar cane from Louisiana, bake up some sweet potatoes from Alabama, or shuck a few ears of sweet, Southern corn from North Carolina.

Summerton, South Carolina, is surrounded by numerous farms and boasts some of the best produce around. As you drive though the countryside of Clarendon County, you’ll see corn, soybeans, peanuts, greens, squash, melons and tomatoes. Numerous tables in Summerton homes and at local churches and social gatherings are filled with the county’s plentiful bounty (minus the soybeans).

Many of the South’s foods have an African-American influence because of the plantations that dotted the Southern landscape. It is from where we get okra, and thank goodness for okra soup and fried okra and okra pilau (pronounced per-low)! Black-eyed peas and rice were staples on large plantations years ago and are still on Southern tables today. Benne seeds and sorghum were used in many dishes, and melons were a perfect treat in the relentless Southern heat. All have roots in African heritage and soil.

But by far the most influential component to Southern foods is family. Families pass down their recipes like they are passing down the crown jewels. Try to get your hands on some families’ prized fruitcake recipes or their barbecue recipes, and you’ll get your hand chopped off! Many Southern families identify themselves by their specific recipes. For some, their recipes make their families unique—and they don’t give away their “specialness” easily.

Whether or not you get your hands on a coveted recipe for sweet potato casserole for Thanksgiving, it’s all good, because even if some Southerners don’t share their recipes, they always share their food and hospitality.

ArtFields 2018 in Lake City, South Carolina

Wim Roefs, the new artistic director of the Lake City Creative Alliance, has expressed her hope that you will participate in ArtFields 2018, a nine-day art competition held annually in Lake City, South Carolina – see http://www.artfieldssc.org

This will be the 6th edition of ArtFields South Carolina and she wants to help make the competition and exhibition better than ever. ArtFields wants to show even higher quality art, improve the presentation of the artworks, attract bigger audiences, generate increased interest from art professionals nationwide, and hope to receive more exposure in art publications and other local, regional, national and international media.

Read more about ArtFields, competition rules, submission of art works, and much more by going to www.artfieldssc.org  Also, feel free to call the ArtFields office at (843) 374-0180.

Move Over ‘Smart Watches’ and Explore the Potential of ‘Smart Rings’

Move over ‘Smart Watches’. Forget having a chip implanted. People are now beginning to explore the capabilities of wearable ‘Smart Ring’ technology, even though its not yet ready for prime time.

A ‘smart ring’ is a wearable electronic device with embedded mobile technology components. It functions primarily as a miniature Near-Field Communication (NFC) device that can interact with a variety of other digital systems (e.g. smart phones, smart locks) to perform certain functions.

The 1st generation of smart rings currently include a mix of the following features and functionality:

• fitness and activity tracker
• monitoring personal health
• gaining access to secure devices or facilities
• smartphone connectivity
• notification of incoming calls, text, emails
• contactless mobile financial payment
• secure storage of selected credentials, e.g. credit cards, passwords
• gesture-based motion controller for computer games and smart TV

Try and imagine what 2nd and 3rd generation smart rings will be capable of doing by 2025.

Check out the Token Smart Ring – It currently only needs to be recharged every two weeks, is waterproof, and comes with a bunch of sensors, including a fingerprint sensor that authenticates the user, and an optical sensor that locks credentials as soon as the ring is taken off.


Smart rings will one day effectively eliminate the need to carry a wallet, credit cards, door keys, car keys, driver's licenses and much more. The global smart rings market, currently around $25 million, is expected to have a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 10.16% and become a $15 billion industry by 2021.


The technology is not yet ready for prime time. It’s still on the bleeding edge, let alone the cutting edge.

Selected Links Wikipedia – Smart Ring Top 8 Smart Rings of 2017  YouTube Video: Top 5 Smart Rings in 2017

HiFi, WiFi, and now there’s LiFi

Back when I was growing up in the 1960s, one of the big thing was the emergence of HiFi – high fidelity sound systems. It was a really big deal when my Dad brought home one of these huge, new systems. It was a big piece of furniture that occupied a prominent position in our living room. We kids quickly hi-jacked the new system to play our wild Elvis Presley rock & roll records. The revolution had begun.

High Fidelity, often shortened to HiFi, was the term used to refer to the high-quality reproduction of sound produced by the new stereo systems developed in the late 1950s and widely sold during the 1960s. This catchy term was used to distinguish the new systems from the lower quality sound produced by inferior audio recordings and equipment used back in the 1940s and early 1950s. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fidelity

At the turn of the 21^st century, along came something called WiFi – a wireless network using ‘radio frequency (RF)’ for interconnecting electronic devices in your home or business to each other and to the Internet. When I installed WiFi in my home around 2001, the only device connected to the wireless network was my laptop. Today, my smartphone, smart TV, and ‘Alexa’ voice assistant are all connected to it – and the number of devices is growing. Most homes in the US now have WiFi.

WiFi is a technology for wireless local area networking to interconnect a wide variety of digital devices used in your home such as personal computers, video-game consoles, Internet routers, smartphones, computer tablets, digital cameras, smart TVs, printers, smart appliances, and other Wi-Fi compatible devices. In 1999, the Wi-Fi Alliance formed as a trade association to hold the Wi-Fi trademark under which most products are sold. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi

The latest thing is LiFi. What has happened is that I have so many devices I need connected to WiFi, that I was buying multiple network extenders to try and cover every square inch of my house, including the decks and my backyard. The wireless network in my home was becoming just too complex and available ‘bandwidth’ was becoming a problem. Thank goodness for the emergence of LiFi.

LiFi is a bidirectional, high-speed and fully networked wireless communication technology similar to Wi-Fi, except it uses a form of visible-light communications technology and a subset of optical wireless communications (OWC) to complement and extend your existing ‘radio frequency (RF)’ based WiFi network. LiFi can carry much more information and provides a solution to the current RF-bandwidth limitations of WiFi. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Fi

To put it another way, think about every LED light in your house or office as a potential LiFi communication device. Think about every outside light, even your street lights, functioning as part of a massive optical wireless network blanketing your town. Li-Fi has almost no limitations on capacity. It will be able to transmit data 100 times faster than today’s WiFi networks. It boggles the mind!

Get ready! LiFi is just about to hit the marketplace in a big way. It is estimated that the Global LiFi market will be worth billions by 2021. LiFi will be what makes the Internet of Things (IoT) happen. Read "Global Light Fidelity (LiFi) Market Outlook By Size, Share, Latest Trends, And Key Players Up To 2028".

Selected Links LiFi Consortium Tech World: LiFi Defined  OpenVLC Platform YouTube: LiFi – What is it? Li-Fi is the Next Phase of Wireless Internet LiFi Market Growth, Trends & Forecast

Local Clarendon County Football Teams: Schedules and Scores - October 2017

The following are links to the 2017 Football Schedule, Roster, and Stats for Summerton and other local high schools across Clarendon County, SC.

• Clarendon Hall Saints (6-4) 
• East Clarendon High School Wolverines (1-8) 
• Laurence Manning Academy Swampcats (7-2) 
• Manning High School Monarchs (6-3) 
• Scott's Branch High School Eagles (5-4) 

Our county High School football teams are now well through the 2017 season. Good luck to everyone as the remainder of the season plays out.

 

 
* Check out MAXPREPS, a CBSSports.com web site for team standings and more complete statistics across the state.