By Jeremy Couso
SusanvilleStuff Editor and Publisher
Hello friends and neighbors! It’s the first week of February and Susanville is starting to stretch, yawn and wake up from that long quiet lull after the holidays – the daylight hours are growing incrementally longer, and I swear you can feel a little hint of Spring in the air. Perhaps that is just wishful thinking on my part, but we have had some warm days this week and the snow is melting… I will take what I can get.
A Lot of You Wanted to Win
Thank you to everyone who entered our Valentine’s Day contest here at SusanvilleStuff! In the last two weeks we received a whopping 3,380 entries! (All of which go to my email inbox. Something I have to change before the next big contest. Lol)
Our winner was Sherrie Thornton, and she got a nifty suite of Date Night prizes.
A big thank you to our sponsors, who made the contest possible and to Mrs. Couso, head of our ‘Promotions and Contests’ department, who did a nice job of curating this year’s prize package.
I absolutely love getting to give stuff away like that. It is one of my favorite parts of this job.
In a really geeky way, when we have a big contest underway, we get excited watching the entries pour in. Marshel will run a promo post on social media, and then we will suddenly get a flood of new entries in our email. Every time we hit a landmark like 1,000 or 2,000 entries we feel as though it’s an accomplishment.
Yeah, we probably should get out more.
Two Exceptional Young Ladies
Our SusanvilleStuff readers are very familiar with the exceptional duo of Maddi Johnson and Lily Ammon, this year’s Lassen County 4H Ambassadors. Maddi and Lily are constantly working to improve, well, just about everything around them and I wanted to mention something they did this week that was pretty noteworthy.
The girls have held two ‘Family Fun Nights’ at the fairgrounds to raise money for the Blue Star Moms, the second of which, held Tuesday night in Jensen Hall, raised a tremendous $1,670 to help the Blue Star Moms pack and mail care packages for deployed service folks.
Wow. Fantastic job.
160 people showed up for Maddi and Lilly’s “Bingo Night” fundraiser. Do you know how hard it is to get 160 people to a Tuesday night fundraiser in this town? These young ladies worked incredibly hard to promote the event and that is certainly reflected in the results of the fundraiser.
The Second Annual Cowboy Festival
Bravo to Fair Manager Kaitlyn Midgely and her crew for pulling off yet another successful event with their second annual Cowboy Festival. I didn’t get a chance to go down there, but I have heard nothing but glowing reviews of the event. It’s great to see Mrs. Midgley and the fairgrounds coming up with so many neat events to run throughout the year. There is a lot going on down there!
Johnny and June Forever Tonight at the Sierra Theatre.
I don’t know why I am so excited for this show. Normally I am not a big ‘tribute band’ guy. I’m not much on going and seeing a bunch of musicians pretend to be other, more famous musicians, and generally prefer musicians who are just being themselves. But this is something different.
The live performance tonight at the Sierra Theatre (just seeing a live show in the Sierra is reason enough to go!) features the music of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash and mimics their legendary stage shows of the 1960’s.
I watched some video online and it looks to be a high-energy show with an awesome little backup band, fronted by Danny Evans as Johnny Cash and Essence Goldman as June Carter Cash.
Both Evans and Goldman were talented and successful indie performers, with a ton of industry cred, who met and realized they shared a passion for Johnny and June’s music. The show is an outgrowth of that meeting.
In the online video Evans, Goldman and the combo pull off some pretty authentic renditions of songs from the Cash and Carter catalogue like I walk the Line and Jackson. It sounds like awesome, good musical fun.
The show starts at 7:00 tonight and the Sierra will be serving beer, wine and snacks. Admission is $25.
Beach Volleyball
Lassen College has a new team. It’s a Women’s Beach Volleyball team and their very first season is underway right now. In fact, this morning they are playing Hartnell College. Isn’t that cool?
Have a great weekend everybody!
