Franklin, NC
SYLVA–It’s a mystery.
In the Sylva area, where two strong economic engines are a university and a hospital, there is almost no real “starter” housing, built with young professionals in mind. In an economic and societal climate that has families seeking out a more “walkable” lifestyle, the town of Sylva, which has an appealing downtown, has [...]
SYLVA–The Sylva Town Board approved changes to a proposed hillside and steep slope development zoning ordinance amendment on Thursday, June 19, and set a date for a required public hearing.
That hearing will take place Thursday, August 7, at 7pm at Sylva’s Town Hall. The vote on the amendment is likely to take place after the [...]
STATEWIDE–The Raleigh News and Observer reports today on a mixed group of state and municipal administrators, agricultural representatives, water company representatives and environmentalists who are attempting to craft statewide rules for water conservation during times of drought.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources proposed a law earlier in the year which, in the words of [...]
An excerpt from Cintra Wilson’s piece on Lindsay Lohan in the Oxford American :
Name your most painful coming-of-age issue—unrequited crushes, eating disorders, substance-abuse marathons, parental horror stories—Lohan has reportedly had them all. The press has delighted in planting the boot a little bit deeper up her oeuvre every time she trips into the tracks [...]
STATEWIDE–I spent several years as an innkeeper in Balsam, NC and one of our consistently popular attractions was a completed section of North Carolina’s Mountain-To-Sea Trail that passed nearby.
At that time, the completion of a trail from one end to the other of our broad state was but a pipe-dream. Forging trails through in the [...]
REGIONAL–It can’t be mentioned often enough, nor in strong enough terms: the notion of “fresh, clean mountain air” is a misnomer.
Because of wind patterns that carry pollution into the mountains from the upper midwest, and because of the way the mountains trap ground level ozone in the valleys in the summertime, air quality here is [...]
UPDATE-We hitched onto this story back in the spring, and its pulled us along for a few months now. After as-much-reading-as-we’re-willing-to-do on the subject, it seems that senate-approved legislation to allow larger trucks and trailers on secondary roads will have, in practical terms, a minor impact on our mountain communities.
This is because our most dangerous [...]
STATEWIDE–Western Carolina University graduate Chris Geis, an attorney, veteran and former newspaper reporter, gave the broad view of racial politics in North Carolina in a recent op-ed in the Winston-Salem Journal.
What with the spring thumping Barack Obama took from Hillary Clinton in our neck of the woods, it’ll be interesting how inevitable Republican scare tactics [...]
The Smoky Mountain News’s Don Hendershot on the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker, the Great Smoky Mountain Birding Expedition, and the Waynesville watershed.
George Ellison on cuckoos and kinglets in the Smoky Mountain News. Also, rodents and mushrooms.
Jim Casada in the Smoky Mountain Times on streams of the Smokies: Chambers Creek, Oconaluftee River part 2, Oconaluftee River part [...]
CULLOWHEE–Well, I have been accepted as an undergraduate student at Western Carolina University. I will begin classes in the fall as an upper-twenty-something freshman in the music department.
I have often encountered the opinion that formal education ruins a folk musician’s ability to truly ‘feel’ his connection to folk music.
The idea, I guess, is that if [...]