By Ben Robinson
Staff Reporter

brobinson@thepccourier.com

With first pitch set for this afternoon, the Big League World Series returns to Easley for the 14th year in a row to determine best 16-18-year-old baseball team in the world.

The field for the tournament, held at the J.B. “Red” Owens Complex, was finalized over the last week as regional tournaments wrapped up around the U.S. and the world.

The host team, S.C. District 1, is one of two teams that received an automatic bid into the tournament.

Trying to win its first series crown since 2007, the host

Photos by Nikki Rutledge/For The Courier

Sid Alexander, who learned the trade from his father, Beattie, in 1965, demonstrates the carving of a monument at Alexander Granite and Marble at 6959 Calhoun Memorial Highway in Easley. Below left: The intricate design work, carving and contouring are what Alexander believes makes his company’s work “unique.” Alexander operates the company with his son, Nic. Below right: A trip to the sand-blasting room in the company’s workshop is one of the crucial steps in the creation of a monument.

By Nikki Rutledge  For The Courier

news@thepccourier.com

Some may think doing the same thing every day for 50 years is a mundane way to go through life, but not Sid Alexander.

His father, Beattie Alexander, founder of Alexander Granite and Marble, taught Sid the stone masonry trade in 1965 when he was just 13 years old, and he has spent his life honing his craft.

The years have been spent carving and shaping granite or marble monuments by hand with a hammer and chisel, sand-blasting the inscriptions on them by hand, hand-carving designs on almost every one and enjoying every

Celebrating our natural resources

Washington, D.C. — The nation’s top elected officials don’t seem to agree on much — but they completely agree that Americans need to spend more time in the nation’s parks, forests, refuges and other public spaces.

Proclaimed by the President and each governor and celebrated annually in June, Great Outdoors Month is a bipartisan celebration of America’s abundant and diverse outdoor recreation resources and the passion Americans have for

Ella Hennessee jams with her instructor, Susan Ware-Snow.

Locals leading the way in

preserving musical traditions

By Dr. Thomas Cloer, Jr., Special to The Courier

I have a certificate, proudly displayed on my wall, from the Stamps-Baxter Normal Music School, verifying that “Tommy Cloer after having passed a reasonably rigid examination and by good deportment is entitled to this Theory Grade Certificate, June 8th –June 26th, 1953.”

The music school sessions were attended by all ages, children and adults. The teachers informed my parents that I was the youngest ever to pass their exam on the Rudiments of Music. I had just finished the second grade. I also have on my “Books in Use” shelf a 1939 song book titled “Favorite Songs and Hymns: Shape Notes,” compiled by Virgil O. Stamps and J.R. Baxter and published by Stamps-Baxter Music and Printing Co., Inc., which had thriving businesses in Dallas, Texas, Pangburn, Ark., and Chattanooga, Tenn. Suffice it to say the company “done real good” in Southern Appalachian churches.

Sacred Appalachian music is central to many of us that as children had those emotional, life-lifting sounds implanted in our minds. I remember vividly when this music began to move out of the churches in Southern Appalachia and began to be used as entertainment, as well as being used for worship. This was, I think, a

On July 19, 1910, the governor of the U.S. state of Washington proclaimed the nation’s first “Father’s Day.” However, it was not until 1972, 58 years after President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day official, that the day became a nationwide holiday in the United States.

MOTHER’S DAY: INSPIRATION

FOR FATHER’S DAY

The “Mother’s Day” we celebrate today has its origins in the peace-and-reconciliation campaigns of the post-Civil War era. During the 1860s, at the urging of activist Ann Reeves Jarvis, one divided West Virginia town celebrated “Mother’s Work Days” that brought together the mothers of Confederate and Union soldiers. In 1870, the activist Julia Ward Howe issued a “Mother’s Day Proclamation” calling