The debate featured an all-female stage, a first for a U.S. Senate seat in South Carolina, on the three-month anniversary of the shocking death of Lindsey Graham, which reset the race.

Anderson City Council will give final vote on a proposal to annex and rezone 31.5 acres at 216 Vandiver Road as part of tonight’s meeting at 6 p.m. in council chambers downtown.

The developing petitioning for the annexation plans to construct a 62-lot single-family residential subdivision on the property which borders Vandiver Road and is just behind T.L. Hanna High School.

Moving a festival indoors is not quite the same as moving a meeting indoors. The vendors still needed space. The performers needed somewhere to perform. Children’s activities, art demonstrations and visitors all had to fit into an arrangement that made sense.

The “Conversations on a Bench” event was part of a national effort to bring homelessness into public discussion, the questions were local: Where can someone sleep tonight? What keeps a family from finding housing?

An intersection can be cleared of roadside advertisements and, a few weeks later, look as though no one has touched it. For Matthew Stipe, the director of Anderson County Environmental and Code Enforcement, this is part of the cycle his office must deal with on a daily basis.

The festival will move indoors to Riverside Middle School (the building that previously housed Pendleton High School), 7324 S.C. Highway 187, due to a forecast rain and high winds associated with Hurricane Isaias, town officials announced.

That gap between childhood reassurance and adult uncertainty provides “Avenue Q” its comedy and its warmth. The Market Theatre’s production, directed by Clare Shaffer, brings Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx’s songs and Jeff Whitty’s book to Anderson with an eight-person cast, a collection of locally built puppets and a neighborhood full of people whose lives have not gone according to plan.

The idea came to Anderson School Dist. 5 Board Chairman Tommy Price in church, though it concerned a different kind of congregation - the more than a thousand students attending Robert Anderson Middle School. District 5 for some time has been considering how to reduce that number. Returning Southwood Academy of the Arts to use as a traditional middle school would create another place for students, but it would also displace an arts program that had developed its own following.

The organization operates a Sexual Trauma Center and a Child Advocacy Center, providing free services to survivors of sexual assault and child abuse. During the first nine months of 2026, it served nearly 1,600 people, including approximately 700 children.

Two Anderson locations are part of this week’s Citygate Network’s nationwide Conversations on a Bench initiative, which will run from 3 p.m. Thursday until 3 p.m. Friday.

Nationwide, rescue missions, recovery centers, outreach groups, and other ministries across North America will host a 24-hour livestream of conversations about homelessness, addiction, and mental health.

Anderson County Councilman Elgin, a retired law enforcement officer, said he discussed the idea with Anderson County Sheriff Chad McBride, who is on board with the ban. 

The Market Theatre will open “Avenue Q” on Friday, bringing the Tony Award-winning adult comedy musical to its stage with a collection of puppets locally built specifically for the production The musical follows a recent college graduate who moves to a New York City neighborhood and joins an eccentric group of neighbors while searching for his purpose. The  show combines human performers and puppets with satire about relationships, work and adulthood.

The annual competition is just the opening act for Pendleton’s Fall Festival, which will fill the Village Green and surrounding downtown Saturday. Approximately 100 craft vendors are expected, along with food trucks, food vendors, live music, community performances and an expanded emphasis on making art rather than merely looking at it.

Anderson County Council will consider a proposal Tuesday to prohibit county spending and resources for Flock Safety camera systems, along with industrial tax incentives, a hazardous-materials program overhaul and a proposed zoning map for the Green Pond Station A precinct as part of the regular meeting Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. in the Historic Courthouse. A separate presentation meeting will begin at 6 p.m.

On Sunday afternoon, the rain held off and Anderson County turned downtown into a historic grand gathering with the downtown Bicentennial Parade, with more than 40 entries participating in the celebration.

Belton’s annual Standpipe Festival kicked off Saturday with the induction of a pair of deceased educators into the Belton Museum’s Hall of Fame: Lida Poore and Tolleson Jackson Bratton.

T.L. Hanna 22, Fountain Inn 14

Westside 23, Laurens 14

Emerald 41, Palmetto 3

Wren 34, Powdersville 10

St. Joe’s 36, Pendleton 7

Mayor Rick Sanders is approaching the end of his first year in office with the agenda to make his walking town better with repaired sidewalks, a restored former Girl Scout hut, a future stage at Chapman Park, a walking route that connects stores and churches, Saturday’s two-mile yard sale that joins West Pelzer to Pelzer, and a Christmas Santa house that will allow a town to make a tradition of its own.

Mill Town Players’ production of “Floyd Collins “understands that the story’s power lies not merely in the historical facts — the 1925 Kentucky cave rescue that ended in death — but in the uneasy relationship between the man below and the people above.

Construction is expected finally begin on the building’s conversion into P.F. Meat Co. Butchery & Market, the Anderson branch of the Pendleton business that has built a following around locally and regionally sourced food.