Downtown Smalltown

Bryson City

Notes: Libby Kephart Hargrove, the great-granddaughter of Horace Kephart, gave a public reading of “Our Southern Highlanders” and “Camping and Woodcraft: A Handbook for Vacation Campers and for Travelers in the Wilderness” on Friday and Saturday at the Historic Calhoun Country Inn. Read about it in the Smoky Mountain Times here. We romanticize Kephart here.

Cashiers

Tommy’s Restaurant and pre-election editorials

Cherokee

Cullowhee/Western Carolina University community

Read official Western Carolina University news here

WCU Honors College works for Cullowhee revitalization effort
CuRvE fights the good fight for old Cullowhee

Notes: We’ve added a link from our Outdoors Page to a site that reviews disc golf courses, including the course on the WCU campus … The Cullowhee United Methodist Church is in the midst of a major remodeling project, and is planning an elevated walkway from the Wesley Foundation to Central Drive. Read more here. … Dr. John Wade has been named dean of Eastern Kentucky University’s College of Arts & Sciences. Wade joined EKU as chair of the Department of Economics in 2000 after 23 years as a professor and administrator at Western Carolina University. He has also served as acting associate dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and acting chair of the Department of History. Read more here, from EKU.

Dillsboro


Tourist railroad leaves Dillsboro

Notes:

From the blogosphere: The author of Goddess in Clay took in the Dillsboro Pottery Festival, and shared an account.

Franklin

Highlands

Robbinsville

Sylva

DSA plans Chili Cook-Off
Downtown Sylva Association names newest director
Overview: The Bridge Park Project
Aust, a familiar figure in downtown Sylva, resigns

Notes: (12.12.08) Bear Lake Reserve has departed its sizeable offices in the Downtowner Office Building, next door to Restaurant Five Fifty Three on Main Street, and relocated the sales team to its property in Tuckasegee. • Blew Glass Gallery is open on Main Street, between Vance Hardware and the Jewelry Outlet building. Owner Chad Kindey makes blown glass jewelry and carries other high-quality handmade items. Originally, Kindey  planned to name the business “Hanging Chads”. •  The Sylva Post Office, a center of downtown activity since the mid-sixties, will relocate to Jackson Plaza sometime after new years, 2009. The new location is being added to the plaza, at the end adjacent Roses’s Department store. While the loss to the downtown isn’t to be dismissed, the current location is too small to efficiently handle its volume, and the arrival of the post office at Jackson Plaza will be a benefit to businesses there. Dead shopping plazas are a problem in many communities, and because Rose’s has somehow hung on against the competition, and with the arrival of the post office, Jackson Plaza plaza may have plenty of life left … Meanwhile, the current building has been purchased by former Sylva resident David Schulman, currently of Scottsdale, AZ, who says he will convert the space to retail. He’s contemplating swinging the building’s facade around to the north, and is working with an architect to see whether the idea is feasible …

From the blogosphere:

A blogger whose publication will go unnamed had a mixed experience in Cullowhee and Sylva last weekend:

Also the theatre group went out last night to see a production of Othello done by…dang, I forget the university’s name, but it was in Sylva. It was so wonderful! The set and lighting were especially beautiful and well used, and OHMYGOD. The guy playing Iago. Iago was already my most favorite Shakespearean villain ever, and this guy did the character so much justice and then some. He also had an affinity for slapping everybody’s ass. Especially Roderigo’s. When it was just the two of them on-stage they practically exuded “homo”. Nonexistent personal bubble, anyone?

Speaking of homo, there’s a good reason we will never be coming to Sylva again. Everyone went to Wal-Mart to prettymuch loiter (Though a few people bought stuff) for the forty-five minutes we had left before we were to high-tail it over to the show. We had fun inside wandering around, but when we came back outside we were greeted with an unsavory shock.

Someone had taken the time to buy a pair of panties, three condoms, and put them on the back of our (my mother’s) car.

Since I’m sure no one has seen my mother’s car, I’ll assume they haven’t seen the stickers on the back window. Aside from Torchwood, John From Cincinnati, and Donnie Darko stickers, there’s also one for Obama, the ACLU, the equality symbol, (You know, the yellow equal sign on a blue backdrop?) and one that says “Hate is not a family value”. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind as to why they chose our car to deface. The manager failed to do anything useful, but mother is capable of filing a police report and, thankfully for us, there was a security camera pointed right at our car so it would be pretty easy to check those should the need arise.

Just…ugh.

The author of the Perplexed Investor and came away from the Friends of the Library Used Book Store with some scores. Here’s her account:

While in Sylva, I ran into a used bookstore that happened to be open for 20 more minutes! (We got there at 7:40 p.m.). I’m suspecting that Sylva is a thriving college town with its proximity to Western Carolina Univesity. Accordingly, there were many interesting books. Here’s what I acquired:

The Vedanta Stutras (Part 1)
History as a System and other essays toward a philosophy of history, Jose Ortega y Gasset
Man and Crisis, Jose Ortega y Gasset
Dao De Jing (featuring the recently discovered bamboo texts) translated by Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall
Pontius Pilate, Ann Wroe (a finalist in the Samuel Johnson Prize)
Shu Ching, Book of History, Clae Waltham
The Moral Philosophy of William James, edited and with an introduction by John K. Roth
Peter the Great, Robert K. Massie (it won a Pulitzer Prize I since learned).
The Helen Corbitt Collection–Recipes.

My purchases totalled $30. I gave her $40. All of the books are donated, all of the workers are volunteers and all proceeds are on behalf of the library.

There is something about walking into a used book store (I go to the vintage cookbooks, which in this store was very thin! and the philosophy and religion section) and searching the stacks for something that calls out to you. I wished that I had more time in this store, but I came away with plenty to read to be sure.