2012 – Page 2 – Imaging Specialists, Inc.

Posted on October 23, 2012 October 23, 2012

ISI Receives Awards from NCSH

If you came to the release party for Paths & Passages -Navigating the Blue Ridge and Stratford Oaks Tales, The Tale of Gretchen, you’ve heard our latest news. If you weren’t able to attend, here it is:

Saturday, the 20th, we traveled to Mooresville, NC for the annual awards banquet of the North Carolina Society of Historians. Imaging Specialists was well represented this year: Claire Halsey was awarded a Paul Jehu Barringer, Jr. & Sr. Award of Excellence for her genealogy work and Jeff Halsey was named the NCSH Historian of the Year!

ISI also received a Willie Parker Peace History Book Award for the latest book in our history series, Regimental History of the 61st NC Infantry (published last fall) about Alleghany County men in the Civil War. We gathered text, photos, battle maps and battle summaries for the book; laid out and re-set the text; and optimized the photos for the book which is now available on-demand from Star Route Books and in our shop in Sparta.

Suzanne Mellow Irwin and Zach Hamm, with their families, also attended the meeting and won awards for the first in their series of children’s books, The Stratford Oaks Tales. Zach received a Paul Green Multimedia Award for his artwork and Suzanne a Clark Cox Historical Fiction Award for the story.

A couple of projects of the Alleghany Historical-Genealogical Society also won awards. We were proud to accept awards for the newsletter- our fourth!- Joe M. McLaurin Newsletter Award and the Alleghany Historical Museum, which won an Evelina D. Miller Museum Award.

DSCN7412 — Elizabeth Bray Sherrill, President NCSH and Jeff Halsey NCSH 2012 Historian of the Year

Imaging Specialists publishes the AHGS quarterly newsletters. We also produce the books in the Stratford Oaks series.

We plan to submit several projects and nominate others others in our community for consideration in 2013.

If you know of other projects you think deserve recognition, nomination forms are located on the NCSH site.

Imaging Specialists and the Halsey family is proud to have accepted these honors from the North Carolina Society of Historians. We sincerely appreciate the consideration of President Elizabeth Sherrill, the NCSH Board and the Judges. And we appreciate the help and support of the Alleghany Historical-Genealogical Society.

Posted on October 10, 2012 October 10, 2012

Book Release Party & Signing

Join us Monday, October 22, to celebrate the release of Paths & Passages and The Stratford Oaks Tales: The Tale of Clyde.

Dr. Suzanne Mellow Irwin and Illustrator Zach Hamm will be at The Sparta Store to sign the latest in their Stratford Oaks series.

Photographer Jeff Halsey will also have copies of the latest from Star Route Books, Paths & Passages, available.

Come by to see the new books and hear a few special announcements, as well.

We’ll have some goodies ready to eat and drink. Make your plans now to see us on the 22nd. The event will start at 3 and last till 6. But, if folks are hanging around visiting past then, we won’t run anybody off! We look forward to seeing you!

Posted on August 30, 2012 August 14, 2013

New Projects at Star Route Books!

We’ve got some exciting book projects planned at Star Route. Here are summaries of what’s coming:

Paths and Passages, Navigating the Blue Ridge: Available now. Photographs of the Blue Ridge Mountains in northwestern North Carolina. Scenes of the New River and the Blue Ridge Parkway in Ashe and Alleghany Counties by photographer, Jeff Halsey. The latest from Star Route Books and first in a series of photographic portfolios that attempt to describe and define the mountain region.

Tea Time Recipes: Available now. The much sought-after Dirty Fingers Garden Club cookbook, originally published in 2004 and out of print for many years, is available once again! Now you can learn how to make such delicacies as Cherry-and-Cream Scones, Strawberry Pound Cake, and Lavender Blueberry Soup. 20 photos are included, in black and white and in color.

Stratford Oaks Tales, The Tale of Clyde: Available September 2012. In the follow-up to The Tale of Gretchen, Dr. Suzanne Mellow-Irwin shares the story of a young calf and how he persevered to join the herd. Zach Hamm’s delicate pencil art complements Suzanne’s inspiring message.

Sparta Presbyterian Church’s Centennial Cookbook: Available September 2013. This popular cookbook was originally printed in 2006, in celebration of the Church’s Centennial. The book is now available once again; it quickly sold out during the first printing.

Emma Jean’s Blue Ridge Almanac: Available Late 2013. Emma Jean’s Blue Ridge Almanac is written, printed, and published in Sparta, North Carolina. Featuring a calendar, community events, important phone numbers and email addresses for town and county departments, home remedies and more, it is a general resource for folks in Ashe County, NC, Alleghany County, NC and Grayson County, VA.

The Westover Manuscripts: Coming 2014. Written in the 1720s and 1730s, The Westover Manuscripts focuses on the efforts to map the border between NC and VA, as well as other surveying trips during early years of our colonization. The book was actually three books all written by Virginian William Byrd. The “Land of Eden” refers to North Carolina.

Four Brothers in Gray: Coming 2013. A collaborative project with Wilkes Community College, Four Brothers in Gray is the story of the four Proffit sons who went to fight in the Civil War, and the one who returned. The book recounts the Wilkes County family’s wartime experiences in their own words with excerpts from 126 letters.

Get more information on those projects at the Star Route Books site.

Posted on August 23, 2012 August 25, 2012

Imaging Specialists’ Trip to the Musuem

We’re shining a spotlight on the Alleghany Historical Museum! Since the Museum’s opening in 2009, a regular feature of the award-winning AHGS newsletter has been “What’s ~~New~~ Old at the Museum?” In preparing this feature, we’ve photographed items to include. The current newsletter only reaches members of the Society (membership’s only 10 bucks a year), and old newsletters are available online.

We wanted to expand on that feature and make the information available to even more folks. Watch the video below, over on YouTube, or catch it on Alleghany Community Television. ACTV will use the footage as filler between programs, so it will have a huge potential audience- currently around 5000 homes!

(Sorry the animation’s a little choppy on YouTube!)

Posted on July 5, 2012 July 5, 2012

All Signs Point to a Banner Summer!

We’ve been covered up with banners and signs this Spring! And we want to keep it that way, so all through July 2012 banners are 15% off!

Below are pictures of some of our recent projects.

Saturday, be sure to attend the Lion Club‘s Sparta Fest at the renovated Community Auditorium and go to the Alleghany Farmers Market. Sunday, support Cornerstone Youth and Sparta Presbyterian Church. Hit Mis Arados for some great Mexican food. Meet the folks at downtown’s newest shops, Alleghany Golf Carts and Vintage Vincents. If you get lost, find the Courthouse and head a few feet west to the You-Are-Here sign the Sparta Revitalization Committee has posted.

Or, cross the street and come in the store. We’ll help you find your way. There’s a lot of activity in town. We appreciate the chance to be involved!

If you need a sign or banner for your next event, project, celebration, reunion, (whatever!) Call Claire at 336-372-3002 or email for pricing.

Banners

Lions Spartafest Banner — 2-sided 34″ x 12′ 2012 Sparta Fest Banner for Sparta Lions Club

16″ x 10′ Sparta Presbyterian Church Banner

Alleghany Farmers Market Banner — 34″ x 10′ Banner for Alleghany Farmers Market

Banners in production at Imaging Specialists — Farmers’ Market, Sparta Fest, and Sparta Presbyterian Church Banners, and Alleghany Quilt Guild Yard Signs

Yard Signs
Cornerstone Youth will “flamingo flock” your yard!	Flamingo Flock at A Cut Above (336-372-7007)
Printed Signage
Detail of downtown map	Downtown You-Are-Here Sign on North Main
Detail of churches drawn by ISI for downtown map.	Donation “Thermometer” for improvements at the Alleghany Community Auditorium
Corrugated plastic panels in cases at the auditorium entrance featuring donors, vendors and playbills.
Design for corrugated plastic donor panel.	Sponsor Panel
Window Decals
Door Vinyl at Mis Arados (336-372-1414)	Alleghany Golf Carts (336-657-1212)
Window Decals Sign at Vintage Vincents – 32 West Whitehead St. – Just a block from the Courthouse	Vintage Vincents window decals