Latest news with #Garrison
NBC News
08-07-2025
- Climate
- NBC News
The 'hub' of a tiny Kerr County town feeds locals from a demolished storefront
Lehrmann said she did not receive any warning that the floodwaters were coming. Her first inkling of trouble came when she was roused from her sleep at 4:30 a.m. on July 4 by a frantic phone from her general manager, Courtney Garrison, who lived above the store with her daughter, Stella. Garrison told her there was water in the apartment. 'I was like, 'What? Is there a leak?' Lehrmann said. 'She said, 'No, it's the river. I was shocked. I was like, 'y'all gotta get on the roof.'' Garrison said she was already on the roof when she made the call after being awakened by unfamiliar noises coming from the ground floor. When she opened the door to go downstairs to investigate, 'there was water.' 'I was absolutely stunned,' she said. 'I had to take a beat.' She woke up her daughter and told her, 'We're going out the window.' 'I feel so bad saying we lost everything, but I'm so thankful we're alive,' she said. Lehrmann, who lives in a home on higher ground, said The Hunt Store sits right by the river and all she could do was watch as it was inundated. 'I was stuck at my house because the river was going through my property,' she said. 'It was so frustrating not being able to come out and help because you don't know what was going on. It was complete devastation, complete shock.' Lehrmann said she's determined to rebuild. 'People come here from all over the world just to go camp,' she said of the summer camps dotted along the riverbanks. 'Every person that walks into the store has a memory. And if they don't have one, they make one.' 'We would have people walk in that were 90-plus years old and say they had been in there as a kid,' added Lehrmann, who took ownership of the store in March 2024. 'It's a very special place.' It even has a local specialty called a French Taco, which is a beef patty with cheese wrapped in a flour tortilla and seasoned with pico de gallo. "A woman, Mrs. French, who worked at the store more than 50 years ago, came up with it after she ran out of hamburger buns," Lehrmann said. 'It was just a hit. It's been famous for 50 years.' Ronnie Barker, who has lived in Hunt for 23 years with his wife, Kelly, said his daily ritual involves heading to The Hunt Store to "drink coffee with the guys." 'That's the center point for the whole community," Barker said. "You hang out. Everybody knew everybody. If anyone needed anything, we were there to help each other." Moore, who has been playing gigs at the store for over a decade, said many of the locals call it 'the center of the universe.' 'The people who come here are proud and resilient Texans,' he said. 'I believe they will be rebuilding.'
Newsweek
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Mom of 4 Gets Questioned About Ring Cams All Over House—Footage Says It All
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A California mom has shown exactly why her Ring cameras are necessary at home. Jamie-Lynn Garrison (@jamielynngarrison) posted a reel on Instagram with footage from the cameras that show her daily life in short snippets of chaos: her sons accidentally walking into the refrigerator; toppling backward off couches; and attempting circus-like stunts on stacks of toy blocks. Garrison, a mom of four boys, told Newsweek she had initially installed the cameras for security reasons, but then they became a lifeline. Ring camera footage of the toddler boys in different rooms of house. Ring camera footage of the toddler boys in different rooms of house. @jamielynngarrison "Being a mom of four, things get chaotic fast, and I just wanted to be able to keep an eye on them when I wasn't in the same room," the 26-year-old said. "I quickly realized the cameras were also capturing the hilarious reality of life with boys—like running into walls or epic furniture fails—so it became part-safety, part-home entertainment!" As a boy mom, Garrison said that there is "never a dull moment" in her house—and science can prove it. A 2012 study published in Child Development Research found that boys, on average, engage more in high-energy physical activity than girls, starting in toddlerhood. "They're constantly wrestling, climbing or trying to launch themselves off something," Garrison said. "I've accepted that silence usually means something is being destroyed. But they're also incredibly sweet and funny, and every day is an adventure." Garrison's reel has been viewed almost 2 million times and received over 92,000 likes. She wrote on the text overlay: "When people ask why I have Ring cameras all over my house and this is my answer …". Hundreds of other parents on Instagram flooded the comments with messages of support and solidarity for the mom of four. "Hey boy mom here. So glad I'm not the only one on my toes all day trying to keep my beast alive," one user posted. "I love how [unfazed] you are in every one," another wrote. But, a few viewers raised eyebrows. Some questioned why Garrison wasn't seen intervening in the footage. "The comments have been so funny and supportive, but I've also seen a few people say, 'Wow, you don't even watch your kids!'" Garrison told Newsweek. "Just because I'm a mom, [it] doesn't mean I can't step out of the room for a quick moment or pay a bill on my phone. Sometimes, I'm right around the corner, but boy moms know it takes a blink of an eye." Garrison said the Ring cameras are "lifesavers" in more ways than one, helping her keep track of what the boys are up to and catching moments she wouldn't have seen, "like the little mischiefs or those classic cartoon-style wipeouts," she added. "It's been great for safety and memories, and apparently Instagram!"
New York Times
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
In ‘The Matchmaker,' Meet Dolly Levi Before She Was ‘Dolly!'
Though Thornton Wilder's rarely performed play 'The Matchmaker' is not a musical, it's nevertheless a great pleasure for musical theater lovers. That's only partly because so much of its dialogue sounds unexpectedly familiar if you know 'Hello, Dolly!' — the 1964 blockbuster built on its bones. Lines that the songwriter Jerry Herman turned into lyrics, barely having to alter a word, keep popping up in Wilder's script like old friends at a crowded party. 'I am a woman who arranges things,' says Dolly Levi, the good-hearted widow who's up in everyone's business. 'Go and get your Sunday clothes on,' says Cornelius Hackl, the 38-year-old Yonkers clerk who devises a plan for adventure in New York City. 'This summer we'll be wearing ribbons down our backs,' says Irene Molloy, the milliner he falls in love with there. But even beyond the spark of recognition that has you humming along with the script, 'The Matchmaker,' now enjoying a fine revival at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison, N.Y., is a musical lover's delight, besotted with song. Wilder frequently calls for his characters to sing and dance to popular favorites of the period, roughly the 1880s. 'The Sidewalks of New York,' the 'Les Patineurs' waltz and others decorate and turn the plot while also dramatizing the play's central theme: the necessity of engaging in the culture of one's time. This production, directed with high spirits by Davis McCallum, ups the musical ante. Beneath the festival's open-sided tent in a dell on the grounds of a former golf course, a three-piece band (fiddle, banjo, accordion) plays on a platform above the action. The Hudson Valley setting is neatly invoked at the start by a poem Wilder wrote for 'The Merchant of Yonkers' — a 'Matchmaker' predecessor — set charmingly to music by Alex Bechtel. 'The Map of New York,' another Bechtel song, is the aural equivalent of sepia rotogravure. But the play is hardly old-fashioned — or to put it another way, it's eternal. (Wilder, the author of 'Our Town,' is always interested in the eternities.) No surprise there; the story has a provenance going back via England and Germany to the Greeks and Romans. Dolly (Nance Williamson, looking a bit like Bette Midler) is a jollier version of the parasite character of ancient comedy, who through flattery and persistence attains a place at the rich man's table. In this case, the rich man is Horace Vandergelder (Kurt Rhoads), a Yonkers merchant whose half-million dollars, hoarded and fondled but otherwise never touched, do nothing for the world. Though Dolly finagles to land Vandergelder and cure his miserliness, you understand from the start that she is not meddling merely for her own gain. She also seeks to match the impoverished Cornelius (Carl Howell) to the widowed Irene (Helen Cespedes), and to marry Vandergelder's niece (Anvita Gattani) to a painter (Blaize Adler-Ivanbrook) whom the blowhard merchant derides as unpromising. ('You artists produce something nobody needs at any time,' he thunders.) If Dolly must bend the truth to reach these ends — she invents a young woman named Ernestina Simple, then makes her disappear opportunely — she does so in part, as she explains with good cheer, because life should be exciting and people must live in it. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Hemp was supposed to benefit SC farmers. Many have ditched the crop.
A man works on the cannabis sativa plant used to make hemp. (Photo courtesy of Cannalina Hemp Company) Thomas Garrison, a multi-generation farmer in Anderson County, said he believed the hype around hemp. Garrison, who's farmed in Pendelton since graduating from Clemson in 1980, was among the group who pushed for a 2017 law that allowed farmers in the state to grow hemp, a plant that's the same species as marijuana but lacks the THC that gets people high. Despite being one of the state's hemp pioneers, he abandoned the crop after just two seasons. He didn't even seek a permit in 2020. Garrison told the SC Daily Gazette his venture into hemp was probably the worst in his 45 years as a farmer. It's a risk that Garrison estimates cost him more than $100,000 in unused crops, equipment and time spent, said the 67-year-old son of the late state Sen. T. Ed Garrison, namesake of the livestock arena at Clemson. He declined to specify how much he lost. 'It was not a very good experience,' he said. Hemp was supposed to be the next moneymaker for South Carolina farmers. And once they were able, the farmhands flocked to the opportunity. Many suffered similar fates to Garrison. Farmers and lawmakers described the hemp industry as an unregulated battle for survival, where supply ultimately outweighed the demand, causing many to ditch the crop altogether. 'It was like the Wild West,' Garrison recently told the SC Daily Gazette. After the 2017 law passed, 20 farmers received a permit to grow hemp on a maximum 20 acres each in the state's pilot program. More than 100 applicants were denied. Among the 20 were Danny Ford, Clemson's first national championship football coach, and former state Rep. Chip Limehouse. The pilot program created by the 2017 law allowed a doubling in 2019 to 40 permits farming 40 acres each. But in the wake of the 2018 federal farm bill that legalized the crop nationwide, the Legislature passed another law in March 2019 that deleted the constraints and allowed the state Department of Agriculture to issue licenses to any farmer who met the legal criteria. The agency ended up giving 161 permits for the 2019 crop. For 2020, the number rocketed to 265. But this year, the number of farmers with permits is down to 80. It's unclear how many of those 80 farmers actually grow hemp. Some of the farmers go through the process to get licensed, which costs about $600 and involves a background check. But they aren't planting hemp. They're just keeping their options open. Among the factors that could have affected a desire to grow the crop was the 2019 arrest of Lowcountry farmer John Trenton Pendarvis. Law enforcement claimed his 10 acres of hemp in Harleyville were unregistered and mowed it down the same day. Pendarvis, the first person charged with violating the state's hemp-growing law, filed a lawsuit against the State Law Enforcement Division, including SLED Chief Mark Keel in his official capacity, Attorney General Alan Wilson and others. The suit led to SLED being forced to pay more than $11,000 in attorney fees to Pendarvis in 2023 for its handling of the lawsuit's discovery process. A SLED spokesperson declined the allegations at the time. The mess could have deterred farmers who were worried about being targeted, said state Sen. Brad Hutto, Pendarvis' lawyer. 'I think it definitely had a chilling effect,' Hutto, D-Orangeburg, told the SC Daily Gazette. 'They put a farmer in jail when he was growing a legal crop.' The case is ongoing. Hutto doesn't expect a resolution until at least late summer. When South Carolina first permitted farmers to grow hemp, lawmakers and farmers thought they were getting in on the next big cash crop. Most farmers have a primary crop that they make money on. Hemp was supposed to provide a year-round option to grow for lots of different uses, including clothing, food, textiles and even paper. Encouraging its growth was supposed to allow farmers to continue profiting at times when their main crop could not grow, said House Majority Leader Davey Hiott, who chaired the House agriculture committee when the hemp laws passed. 'It was supposed to help them make a little bit of money,' said the Pickens Republican. A decade ago, Hiott was eager to see farmers capitalize on the industrial use of hemp, such as clothing. In 2017, Pickens County was home to 740 farms, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 'It started that way. It didn't end that way,' Hiott said. David Dewitt, an agronomist at Clemson University said, 'what people really want to do is alter their state of mind.' In 2014, the Legislature passed a law legalizing the sale of CBD, or cannabidiol, a hemp-derived, non-psychoactive oil used for various ailments. But that state law was very limited, authorizing it only for patients diagnosed with severe epilepsy. After the 2018 federal law broadened what was legal, farmers saw an opportunity. And the large majority of hemp growers in the state wanted in. And that's when problems started, farmers told the Gazette. James Fairey, a 50-year-old from Williamston, started growing hemp in 2020, the state's peak for permits. Even after others bowed out of the industry, he continued to grow. After four years of losing money, he finally turned a profit on the crop in 2024. He credits a gradually growing customer base and a willingness to learn along the way for reversing his fortunes. The biggest difference between him and most growers, he said, is he started growing hemp because he believes in the ailment-relieving health benefits of CBD. The money was secondary. 'The only currencies that matter are health and kindness, and that's what I provide,' Fairey said. When hemp growers first started growing, the biomass material used for CBD could be sold for up to $60 a pound, DeWitt said. A couple of years later, farmers were offered as little as $5 per pound. 'Nobody wants to grow something they can't sell,' DeWitt said. If the market changes, licensed farmers who are sitting on the sidelines may jump back in. 'Some of them have planted very little, but there's no penalty for not planting it,' Dewitt said. Other early hemp growers included Cannalina Hemp Company, formerly known as Charleston Hemp Company. The company started in 2018 and grew its own hemp, while operating a storefront. In 2020, the decision was made to stop growing the crop. 'There was an oversupply of the market, and the prices collapsed,' said Lina Wu, the company's owner. However, there was still money to be made in selling the CBD gummies, oils, vapes, lotions, and other edibles. The Cannalina Hemp Company's Goose Creek retail location is open and operating. It has a loyal customer base, buys from numerous South Carolina hemp growers and prides itself on carrying quality products at an affordable price, according to its Facebook profile. However, there are 'a lot cheaper products out there, especially in gas stations,' Wu said. When asked if the business would ever return to growing its own hemp, Wu said now is not the time. 'There's too many growers on the market,' she said. Kurt Brower, the co-owner of Carolina Botanicals, echoed a similar sentiment after losing about $200,000 in his venture. Though the company maintains a hemp license, it doesn't make economic sense to grow hemp right now, he said. Brower now focuses on processing biomass for farmers into products they can sell, as well as selling their own products. The 27-year-old said he previously bought hemp exclusively from South Carolina farmers, but as the number of producers has dropped, he's had to start buying from farmers in neighboring Georgia and North Carolina. 'There's no outlet of sale on the hemp side' for farmers, he said. 'It put a chokehold' on growers. Hiott, the House majority leader, said hemp is no longer on his radar. Eva Moore, a spokesperson with the state Department of Agriculture, said recruitment isn't a problem, farmers are often intrigued by growing hemp. But a shift from CBD to growing hemp for fiber or grain would open up new economic opportunities. Moore said she's heard reports that processors are still sitting on hemp they bought in 2022. 'The market has not been great for farmers,' Moore said. 'Whether you're growing cotton, peaches, or hemp, you have to be able to make a living doing it.'
Daily Mail
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Sister Wives star Kody Brown shares odd plans to bond with ex Christine's new husband after son's tragic death
Kody Brown is warming up to ex-wife Christine Brown's new husband David Woolley, after meeting him more than one year ago. On Sunday's episode of TLC's long-running reality series Sister Wives, titled One on One, Kody admitted to host Sukanya Krishnan that Davis is 'great' and 'probably a decent person.' Asked if he could see himself going on a double date with his ex-wife and her spouse, the 56-year-old father-of-18 — who shared a shocking admission about his late son Garrison — took his answer a step further. 'I don't know. I think personally, I think I'm very forgiving and I think that'd be really easy for me,' Kody replied. 'Here's the thing... I had a dirty thought. I thought David and I should go on a guy's trip together. And then I went, no, that would just be so uncool to Christine.' He reiterated, 'I just thought that would absolutely not be fair in any way.' From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. Meanwhile, Christine said in her own interview, 'In a whole other world and universe, I thought it would be nice if, you know, Kody and David could get along and just be buddies.' Sukanya then revealed Kody's guys trip idea her and her husband, who tied the knot in October 2023. David replied, 'We could do that,' as Christine agreed, per an account from People, 'You'd have a good time!' David made a note that 'rules' would have to be established, but added that they would be between him and Kody. Christine also weighed in about the double date proposition, saying she'd be willing to go on a date with Kody and Robyn 'in the future,' but 'right now, no.' She clarified, 'Honestly, I'd have to talk a lot about it beforehand. I'd be a mess before. I'd be like, "I don't know. I don't know if I can do this." And David would be like, "It's going to be OK, you're going to be fine. I'm here. I got you." 'I have a lot of nervousness about that, and a lot of nervousness about being around them right now.' And she said her anxiety is rooted in that Kody 'doesn't know who I am,' adding, 'I don't like what he says about me.' View this post on Instagram A post shared by Christine Brown Woolley (@christine_brownsw) The patriarch shared his side, stating, 'You know, we just haven't healed that much. Christine's very undermining.' Brown's first time meeting Woolley was shown in a November episode of Sister Wives when they came face-to-face during a family Valentine's Day party. Christine went public with now-husband David via social media in February 2023. It came after she and Kody separated in November 2021 after more than 25 years together, during which they welcomed Paedon, 26, Aspyn, 30, Mykelti, 29 on June 9, Gwendlyn, 23, Ysabel, 21, and Truely, 15. Christine rebounded with David, whom she met on a dating app. After they married, the TV personality gushed, 'I'm happier than I've ever been. I absolutely love monogamy — I was made for it.' In addition to his split from Christine, Kody also lost second wife, Janelle Brown, and first wife, Meri Brown.
