South-Carolina
A Little North Carolina Town’s Big Green Heart
The first time I saw Valle Crucis, in 2015, I was speechless, which had nothing to do with not knowing how to pronounce the name. My wife and I were riding with a friend down the twisting ribbon of Highway 194 out of Banner Elk, North Carolina, when a sweep of green opened below us. “This,” our friend told us, “is the loveliest part of the High Country.”
I read the sign as we passed.
“Vail Crucis?”
“You say it ‘valley.’ No idea why they spell it like that.”
I would later learn that it was Latin for “Vale of the Cross,” named, according to legend, nearly two hundred years ago by the North Carolina bishop Levi Silliman Ives for the three streams that converged and brought to mind a Saint Andrew’s cross. My friend didn’t know that at the time, but he was right about Valle Crucis being the loveliest part of the High Country, and by the time 194 intersected Broadstone Road, I was smitten.
The community in the early 1970s.
An unincorporated community of fewer than five hundred souls, Valle Crucis spreads over a gentle shelf of bottomland threaded by the swift waters of the Watauga River. It looks like a postcard from another era, and what it lacks in population it makes up for in character. Here is the original Mast General Store, the elegant Mast Farm Inn, and chef Andy Long’s dazzling Over Yonder restaurant. It’s also—and this would come to matter a great deal to us—home to the Valle Crucis Community Park.
My wife and I grew up in the mountains of South Carolina but had spent the last two decades moving. We’d lived in Charleston and Connecticut and done stints in Europe and Mexico. We were living in Florida at the time and eager to get closer to family, to the white pines, to the mountains. The way the slopes appear as velvet in the hazy distance—we were hungry for that, and bought a house two ridges over from Valle Crucis, in Sugar Grove. As soon as we’d settled, we drove our children to the park and promptly fell in love.
The community park consists of twenty-eight acres of playgrounds, walking trails, and open spaces that stretch along the Watauga, mostly supported by donations and the generosity of the Friends of the Park. During the summer, children squeal on swing sets and drift in inner tubes, and folks fly fish or swish by, power walking in teal wind suits.
Inside Valle Crucis’s original Mast General Store.
Wednesday mornings, the High Country Audubon Society holds a bird walk there. Our son was and remains an avid bird-watcher, so we began taking him when he was seven for what I came to think of as “birding with the elderly.” I’d shunt him into the herd and then jog around the paved track, each time encountering the group staring into some treetop, having hardly advanced since my last lap. Occasionally, I’d even find my son with a pair of two-thousand-dollar binoculars strung around his neck, courtesy of a generous older birder, something that always got my heart racing more than the running. He’d bird while our daughter rode her bike, my hand hovering near the seat. We went nearly every day, and I thought I couldn’t possibly love the park more.
Then I heard about Music in the Valle. My friend Jimmy Davidson, a local musician, told me that every Friday from late May to early September, the park puts on a concert from six till dusk. It’s free and you don’t need a ticket. (A donation is appreciated but not required.) The music ranges from bluegrass to reggae, and pretty much everyone comes.
We went that first May evening and never stopped, seeing for ourselves the beauty of spring turning to summer in the mountains. The sky begins eggshell blue and then, around late afternoon, the day softens, goldens. Come evening the light goes gauzy, and then the fireflies start to wink and shudder, not in the woolly humidity of so much of the South, but in the airiness of elevation, the lazy sureness of a climate that has nothing to prove.
Those Fridays quickly became my favorite part of summer. I thought at first it was because Music in the Valle is what we might call “a doing.” Appalachian State students in sandals and bathing suits stand beside women dressed for a mountain cocktail party, barefoot and Empire-waisted on the greenest grass. Everywhere dogs. Everywhere children on bicycles, helmeted and laughing and waving as they wheel past. Folks spread quilts or fight with complex folding tables, then lay out cheese and prosciutto and wine in stainless-steel canteens. I like to bring a small cooler and visit the food trucks near the stage—the double burger from the Cardinal, a hot dog from Doggin’ It—while the music drifts by.
It took me a while to realize that for all that, I love Valle Crucis for a deeper reason: My wife and I have measured our lives in that park, on those Fridays. That seven-year-old I kept nervously checking on while he glassed eastern bluebirds now fills in and leads birding walks himself. That daughter who needed me to hold the back of her bicycle has long since pedaled away.
One September evening not too long ago, I sat beside a friend as a V of Canada geese squawked overhead, flying south. It was the last concert of the season, and he nudged me.
“There goes our summer,” he said.
I looked for my children to point it out to them. When I realized they were off with friends, it came to me like a blow that summer wasn’t the only thing passing. But my God, how lucky we were, to sit in so beautiful a place, to mark time in the evening cool and the first blush of dark, on a blanket surrounded by people we love.
The Missouri Tigers dropped game one against the No. 15 South Carolina Gamecocks. They are now on a five-game losing streak in SEC play.
South Carolina took advantage of Missouri not scoring after the second inning to help them get the 10-2 win.
Despite the South Carolina taking the first lead of the game, Missouri took it back right after with back-to-back home runs from freshman designated hitter Mateo Serna and sophomore centerfielder Jackson Lovich in the bottom of the second.
After the two homers, Missouri’s offense went quiet but South Carolina’s did not.
The Gamecocks tied it once more in the top of the third with a solo shot of their own. They then followed that up with a a two-run fifth. Another run in the sixth and five more in the eighth put the deficit at eight with nine unanswered runs overall.
Missouri’s starter, sophomore Logan Lunceford went five innings for the Tigers. Considering his opponents were a top-15 team in the country, he did pretty well. Lunceford only allowed four hits for four runs while striking out six.
Despite six runs coming across during graduate pitcher Jacob Peaden’s tenure on the mound, He left the game with just one earned run through three innings. He gave up just five hits and two walks.
Missouri’s record drops to 20-27 on the season and 6-16 in SEC play, while South Carolina improves to 31-14 and 12-10. The Tigers will take the field for game two at 3 p.m. CT.
As the Biden administration moves to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, scientists say the change will lift some of the restrictions on studying the drug.
But the change won’t lift all restrictions, they say, neither will it decrease potential risks of the drug or help users better understand what those risks are.
Marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule I controlled substance, which is defined as a substance with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. The Biden administration proposed this week to classify cannabis as a Schedule III controlled substance, a category that acknowledges it has some medical benefits.
The current Schedule I status imposes many regulations and restrictions on scientists’ ability to study weed, even as state laws have made it increasingly available to the public.
“Cannabis as a Schedule I substance is associated with a number of very, very restrictive regulations,” says neuroscientist Staci Gruber at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “You have very stringent requirements, for example, for storage and security and reporting all of these things.”
These requirements are set by the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Institutional Review Board and local authorities, she says. Scientists interested in studying the drug also have to register with the DEA and get a state and federal license to conduct research on the drug.
“It’s a burdensome process and it is certainly a process that has prevented a number of young and rather invested researchers from pursuing [this kind of work],” says Gruber.
Reclassifying the drug as Schedule III puts it in the same category as ketamine and Tylenol with codeine. Substances in this category have accepted medical use in the United States, have less potential for abuse than in higher categories and abuse could lead to low to moderate levels of dependence on the drug.
This reclassification is “a very, very big paradigm shift,” says Gruber. “I think that has a big trickle down effect in terms of the perspectives and the attitudes with regard to the actual sort of differences between studying Schedule III versus Schedule I substances.”
Gruber welcomes the change, particularly for what it will mean for younger colleagues. “For researchers who are looking to get into the game, it will be easier. You don’t have to have a Schedule I license,” she says. “That’s a big deal.”
The rescheduling of cannabis will also “translate to more research on the benefits and risks of cannabis for the treatment of medical conditions,” writes Dr. Andrew Monte in an email. He is associate director of Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Safety and an emergency physician and toxicologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
“This will also help improve the quality of the research since more researchers will be able to contribute,” he adds.
Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag
/
CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag
But the change in classification won’t significantly expand the number of sources for the drug for researchers, says Gruber. For 50 years, researchers were allowed to use cannabis from only one source – a facility at the University of Mississippi. Then, in 2021, the DEA started to add a few more companies to that listof approved sources for medical and scientific research.
While she expects more sources to be added in time, she and many of the researchers she knows have yet to benefit from the recently added sources, as most have limited products available.
“And what we haven’t seen is any ability for researchers –cannabis researchers, clinical researchers – to have the ability to study products that our patients and our recreational consumers or adult consumers are actually using,” she adds. “That remains impossible.”
There is very little known information about what is in cannabis products on the market today. Some studies show that the level of THC, the main intoxicant in marijuana, being sold to consumers today is significantly higher than what was available decades ago, and high THC levels are known to pose more health risks.
And Monte cautions that the reclassification itself doesn’t mean that cannabis has no health risks. Monte and his colleagues have been documentingsome of those risks in Colorado by studying people who show up in the emergency room after consuming cannabis. Intoxication and cyclical vomiting (cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome) and alarming psychiatric symptoms such as psychosis are among the top problems bringing some marijuana users to the hospital.
Research on cannabis has been lacking surveillance of these kinds of impacts for decades, he says. And rescheduling the drug will not fill that “gaping hole in risk surveillance,” he writes.
Copyright 2024 NPR
The South Carolina baseball travels to Missouri this weekend for a three-game SEC series. Here is everything you need to watch and listen to the games, plus start times, pitching, weather, and odds.
Information last updated Friday, May 3 at 8 a.m.
[PREDICT & WIN: South Carolina-Missouri series]
South Carolina-Missouri Game 1
- Date/Time: Friday, May 3, 7 p.m. ET
- Television: None
- Streaming video: SEC Network+ (verified TV provider required) with Nate Gatter, Noah Reed
- Radio: Gamecock Radio Network with Derek Scott, Stuart Lake; pregame at 6:45 p.m.
- Streaming audio: Learfield and the South Carolina Gamecocks app (Apple, Google)
- Weather: Partly cloudy, with a low around 60. East wind 6 to 8 mph.
- Odds: South Carolina is a moneyline favorite of -200.
[GamecockCentral for $1: In-depth coverage and a great community]
South Carolina-Missouri Game 2
- Date/Time: Saturday, May 4, 4 p.m. ET
- Television: None
- Streaming video: SEC Network+ (verified TV provider required) with Nate Gatter, Noah Reed
- Radio: Gamecock Radio Network with Derek Scott, Stuart Lake; pregame at 3:45 p.m.
- Streaming audio: Learfield and the South Carolina Gamecocks app (Apple, Google)
- Weather: Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly between 3-4 p.m. (CT), then showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm after 4 p.m. (CT). Partly sunny, with a high near 78. Southeast wind 7 to 10 mph becoming west in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 70%.
- Odds: Will be released Saturday morning.
South Carolina-Missouri Game 3
- Date/Time: Sunday, May 5, 2 p.m. ET
- Television: None
- Streaming video: SEC Network+ (verified TV provider required) with Nate Gatter, Noah Reed
- Radio: Gamecock Radio Network with Derek Scott, Stuart Lake; pregame at 1:45 p.m.
- Streaming audio: Learfield and the South Carolina Gamecocks app (Apple, Google)
- Weather: A chance of showers, with thunderstorms also possible after 4 p.m. (CT). Partly sunny, with a high near 73. East wind around 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%.
- Odds: Will be released Sunday morning.
[Newsletters: Get breaking news and analysis from GamecockCentral]
South Carolina-Missouri: Probable starting pitchers
Friday
- South Carolina Roman Kimball (R-So., RHP) 2-1, 4.10 ERA, 26.1 IP, 26 BB, 36 K
- Missouri Logan Lunceford (So. RHP) 1-4, 7.04 ERA, 47.1 IP, 17 BB, 43 K
Saturday
- South Carolina Eli Jones (Jr. RHP) 3-2, 3.91 ERA, 53.0 IP, 15 BB, 44 K
- Missouri Javyn Pimental (Jr. LHP) 2-2, 3.64 ERA, 42.0 IP, 13 BB, 45 K
Sunday
- South Carolina: TBA
- Missouri TBA
Scouting Missouri
- The Tigers come into the weekend with a 20-26 overall record and a 6-15 record in SEC play.
- Missouri is coming off a 13-1 win over Lindenwood on Tuesday night. Matt Garcia had three RBI and Danny Corona had two hits and two RBI in the win.
- Jackson Lovich leads the Tigers with a .293 batting average while Trevor Austin has 10 home runs and 30 RBI this year.
- On the mound, Ryan Magdic has two saves and 29 strikeouts in 22 innings pitched.
- Kerrick Jackson is in his first season in Columbia. He was the head coach at Memphis from 2021-23. He is the first African-American head baseball coach in Southeastern Conference history.
(Info from USC Media Relations)
[On3 App: Get South Carolina push notifications from GamecockCentral]
South Carolina-Missouri series
- Carolina leads the all-time series with Missouri 20-13 heading into the weekend.
- Last season, the Gamecocks swept the Tigers, winning 9-8 in the opener on a fielder’s choice and throwing error in the bottom of the ninth.
- Ethan Petry’s RBI single in the 12th gave the Gamecocks the sweep in the 5-4 win.
- Carolina is 5-10 all-time against Missouri in CoMo.
(Info from USC Media Relations)
[PREDICT & WIN: South Carolina-Missouri series]
Gamecock Radio Network: Affiliates for SEC baseball series
- Allendale, 93.5 FM, WDOG
- Camden, 98.7 FM, WCAM
- Camden, 1590 AM, WCAM
- Charleston, 98.9 FM, WTMZ
- Chesterfield, 107.3 FM, WVSZ
- Columbia, 107.5 FM, WNKT (flagship station)
- Florence, 96.3 FM, WOLH
- Florence, 1230 AM, WOLH
- Greenville, 104.9 FM, WROO
- Greenville, 1440 AM, WGVL
- Myrtle Beach, 100.3 FM, WSEA
- Rock Hill/Lancaster, 107.1 FM, WRHM
- Spartanburg, 98.3 FM, WSPG
- Spartanburg, 1400 AM, WSPG
- Waynesboro, 92.9 FM, WYBO
Knicks learn from their mistakes in series-clinching win over 76ers
Reasons for each MLB team to be optimistic — and pessimistic — about the rest of the season
Bearing witness, celebrating strength: How poetry has changed lives for NPR's audience
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24016883/STK093_Google_06.jpg)
As Google’s antitrust trial wraps, DOJ seeks sanctions over missing messages
China increases aggressive moves against Taiwan as island prepares to inaugurate new president
See it: Tesla crashes into Columbus convention center at 70 mph
Colorado Rockies game no. 116 thread: Zac Gallen vs José Ureña
Fox News Politics: Georgia the whole day through
Death of missing Oregon girl found in stream ruled homicide
At least 2 dead as tornadoes hit Alabama, damage homes across Southeast
Australian lawmakers send letter urging Biden to drop case against Julian Assange on World Press Freedom Day
Brussels, my love? Champage cracked open to celebrate the Big Bang
Have you seen this emotional support gator? Wally's owner says he's lost in Georgia
Video: University of Chicago President Says Pro-Palestinian Encampment ‘Cannot Continue’
Border Patrol sector stops hundreds of Chinese illegal immigrants in just two days as numbers soar
-
News1 week agoLarry Webb’s deathbed confession solves 2000 cold case murder of Susan and Natasha Carter, 10, whose remains were found hours after he died
-
News1 week agoFirst cargo ship passes through new channel since Baltimore bridge collapse
-
World1 week agoHaiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigns, transitional council takes power
-
World1 week agoSpanish PM Pedro Sanchez suspends public duties to 'reflect'
-
World1 week agoUS secretly sent long-range ATACMS weapons to Ukraine
-
Movie Reviews1 week agoHumane (2024) – Movie Review
-
News1 week agoAmerican Airlines passenger alleges discrimination over use of first-class restroom
-
Education1 week agoVideo: Johnson Condemns Pro-Palestinian Protests at Columbia University