The Wake Forest Parks, Recreation & Cultural Resources Department will host a two-day online esports gaming tournament featuring “Rocket League” on Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 22-23. Open to players ages 10 and older, the inaugural “Battle in the Forest” will be played online and live streamed on Twitch.tv. Registration continues at https://bit.ly/BattleintheForest, and there is no cost to participate.   Teams comprised of three players each will compete in the two-day tournament which will run in conjunction with “Bull City Gaming.” Qualifying rounds will take place Saturday with the top eight teams battling it out in the finals on Sunday. The top two teams will receive a variety of prizes donated by Ads N Art Screenprinting, Chick-fil-A, Barton College Esports, Contender eSports, MSG Art and Design, Wake Forest Awards & Engraving, and Play4Life Comics. Considered one of the top esports games in the nation, Rocket League is a vehicular soccer video game developed

The members of the American Legion Auxiliary Unit 187 and American Legion Post 187 are invited to the dedication of the flower garden at the American Legion Post 187, 225 East Holding Avenue, on Sunday afternoon Aug. 15, 2020 at 2 p.m. The garden will be dedicated in memory of Master Sergeant Joseph Anthony DeLois and affixed with a brass plaque to his memory. American Legion Auxiliary President Debora Godfrey will officiate and a short outdoor reception will follow. Due to several medically fragile members attending, face masks are required. #

Mark Dwyer, Commander of Walter E. Cole Post 187, American Legion, recently commented; “What an extraordinary amount of school supplies were accumulated for children of soldiers assigned to the Warrior Transition Battalion at Fort Bragg. This year’s campaign in spite of COVID-19 was an incredible success.” People from Wake Forest and surrounding communities for the past 10 years have responded to a request from veteran organizations to provide school supplies for the children of soldiers in transition from worldwide deployments and assigned to the Transition Battalion at Fort Bragg. The items received were sorted and boxed and will be transported to Fort Bragg later this week. Veterans who were responsible for planning, sorting, and delivering the much needed school supplies wish to send out a great big “Thank You” to all who participated in this worthwhile project. If it were not for their generosity many service member children attending school would be

Households can apply for up to $500 Wake County will help local residents keep the lights on, the water running and other utility services active through a new relief program for people struggling to pay utility bills due to COVID-19. WakeHELPS offers up to $500 per household to pay past-due balances on bills for electricity, natural gas, water, wastewater and solid waste services. Using $5 million in federal funds, the program should help at least 10,000 families pay back what they owe to utility providers. “With protections against utility shutoffs beginning to expire, Wake County is stepping up to help families who can’t make ends meet during this pandemic,” Wake County Board of Commissioners Chairman Greg Ford said. “No one should have to go without water at a time when handwashing is so critically important, and no one should have to go without air conditioning when the heat index is in the

If you are a hermit back in the woods you might not have heard how President Donald Trump has been fomenting unease and distrust about voting by mail – even though he uses it. Do not believe all that misinformation. Five states – Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah – have been using vote by mail for years with infinitesimal amounts of fraud – something like 0.0000006 instances. In another state, Nevada, the legislature just passed a bill to allow universal mail-in balloting and the governor is expected to sign it soon. And most of the states, including North Carolina, allow voting by mail without an excuse. The North Carolina State Board of Elections and the Wake County Board of Elections are anticipating a much higher volume of absentee ballots, also called voting by mail. They were used during the Civil War, all overseas members of the armed forces can