The Southern Highland Reader

Every town worth its grinds needs a coffee magnate, and now Sylva has one.

John Bubacz, owner of Signature Brew Coffee Company and Bubacz’s Underground on Main Street has purchased the competition — Shot in the Dark Cafe — from Lucy Silverman and Justin Goble.

Silverman and Goble were recently married, and she has taken work in Durham. Goble’s departure will be felt on both ends of Main Street, as he is also a workhorse reporter for the Sylva Herald newspaper.

Bubacz, who roasts his own joe at Signature Brew, will reopen Thursday, January 21.

“I’ll move my coffee roaster up there in due time,” says Bubacz, “but we’ll immediately offer fresh pastries, organic fair trade coffee and espresso, snacks and grab-and-go lunch. We will be open 7am-6pm Monday-Thursday with weekend hours TBA.”

Bubacz opened Wha Cha Want Bodega on the WCU campus in 2001, and combined that business with Sylva’s Juice Junkie in 2002. He moved the whole shebang to its current location at the Underground in 2006.

Once, about ten years ago, I was having lunch at a Sylva restaurant called the Spring Street Cafe.

From my table I caught a quick glimpse down an unlikely sightline — framed just so by some plants and interior drapes, down a hallway, and through a cracked door — of a baker’s table. On the table was a wedding cake, and the cake was being carefully decorated by two hands. The hands were all I could see.

The owner of those baker’s hands would one day become my wife, and we would come to own a house across the street from the cafe, where we live today with our three girls.

Spring Street, which has been closed for nearly a year, will soon open again under the ownership of former employee Emily Elders, a Cullowhee native. One of her ideas for an advertisement is a group shot of kids that have sprung from the many friends that have surrounded the cafe for the past ten years. (It better be a big ad).

All along, Spring Street Cafe has held a particular niche in Sylva’s lively-for-a-small-town restaurant scene.

First, in the nineties, it was City Lights Cafe, a small eatery attached to the bookstore upstairs, and under the proprietorship of Joyce and Allen Moore.

About a decade ago it was expanded into it’s full service self by Faye Holliday, whose culinary flair traces at least a little of its lineage to Asheville’s Hector Diaz, owner of the eclectic and popular eateries Salsa’s, Zambra and others.

Holliday and her unusually loyal (for food service) crew built a strong following through wild explorations of fresh local and world cuisines, and Tuesday night old time jam sessions and Sunday brunches were de rigueur among a certain Sylva social set.

Faye’s slow food influence can now be felt in a number of kitchens in the southern mountains.

Holliday sold the place to Lisa Agee a few years back, and Agee, whose desserts were quite a calling card, closed her business last spring, a victim of the economic malaise.

Enter Ms. Elders. As a single mom, a student and director of the Jackson County Greenways Project, you’d think she might have enough on her plate to worry about what’s on everybody else’s, but she’s game. She and a band of volunteers have been sprucing the place up in preparation for a January 26 opening.

“I’m very much inspired by Faye’s ideals,” Elders says. “We’ll be as local and as organic as we can be. My goal right away is to keep price points down, and bring back a lot of the items people remember and love.”

Elders has assembled a crew of former employees and a front-of-the-house manager that’ll be familiar to Sylva folks: Michael Redmon has been a longtime employee of Annie’s Bakery.

Several of the specifics that fans of the place remember will return, sushi Wednesdays and Sunday brunch among them. In addition, Elders and new City Lights Bookstore owner Chris Wilcox hope to develop a more symbiotic relationship than the two businesses have shared before. The cafe’s hours will be much closer to those of the bookstore, and the bookstore will open on Sunday afternoons.

Spring Street will hit the ground running, events-wise. Elders will host a Chamber of Commerce business after hours on January 28th, and will open for business the next day.

Book-signings and an art opening are already on the schedule for February.

SYLVA–City Lights Bookstore, a retail anchor in downtown Sylva since the early eighties, is changing hands.

Owners Joyce and Allen Moore are selling the store to longtime employee Chris Wilcox, effective January 1.

Moore informed her customers of the change in a letter written on Monday, in which she wrote, in part:

As I begin my 66th year and a new decade, I feel the need to slow and simplify my own life, but I believe that I am leaving the store in capable hands, well suited to dealing with the evolving complexities of the bookselling world.

The Moores bought the store from local author Gary Carden in 1986, and moved it from Main Street to its current location at the corner of Spring St. and East Jackson St. a few years later.

In her letter, Moore also wrote:

Chris and his employees will also be facing many changes.  Some are beginning to affect not only the face of the bookselling world, but even the book itself.  It will take hard work, a constant acquisition of new information, flexibility and most of all, your continuing support to carry City Lights into the new decade.

Many independent bookstores across the country are closing in these economic hard times, but you have continued to say with your dollars that having a real bookstore in Sylva is important to you.  It is essential that you continue that commitment, not only to City Lights, but to all the independent businesses in downtown Sylva.

2009-12-18: Fans and foes of a controversial youth dance club in Sylva aired their thoughts before the Sylva Town Board Thursday. Opponents of “Club Offspring” provided a petition asking the board to investigate the business and to consider closing it. Proponents said the controversy is overblown, and provided a petition of their own. Either way, said Mayor Maurice Moody, we have no evidence that any laws have been broken, but we’ll keep an eye on it.

The dust-up arose after the club, which doesn’t serve alcohol or admit patrons over the age of 24, circulated a flyer that invited teens to come to the venue “as wasted as you want”.

Asheville television WLOS spent the day in Sylva — seeming a little more breathless than the story deserved — and aired images from the club’s MySpace page that showed scantily-dressed teens. One club-goer’s response, in so many words, was that when you dance for hours at a time you need a way to cool off.

More here from WLOS.
More here from the Asheville Citizen-Times.
More here from the Sylva Herald (link will expire in one week)

Sylva teen club draws ire

A teen and young adult party club doing business in Sylva has raised the ire of parents by circulating sketchy flyers that urge kids to “come as wasted as they want” to the venue, located near the intersection of NC 107 and Business 23 downtown.

“Club Offspring”, which does not serve alcohol, advertises that it allows “no adults”.

The flyers, which made their way into the local high school, also made their way into the hands of a local parent, Brian Bartel, who went to Asheville television WLOS with the story and is circulating a petition that he plans to present to the Sylva town board on Thursday. The petition asks the town to shut the club down.

It’s unlikely that the board will have legal standing to do so, whether or not it has the inclination.

Here’s the story from WLOS, in which the station notes that the club’s 22-year-old owner is in the slammer for statutory rape.

More here from Justin Goble at the Sylva Herald.

Bryson City pub owner cited in underage drinking death

The Asheville Citizen-Times Josh Boatwright writes that Charles Hutchinson, owner of Mickey’s Pub in downtown Bryson City, served numerous drinks to an underage patron on May 17, and that that patron left and promptly drove into a nearby building, killing himself.

Hutchinson faces a criminal citation and the suspension of his liquor license.

SYLVA–The holidays are here and so is the spirit of giving!

The Downtown Sylva Association is partnering with The Community Table for a Food Drive from December 1st-23st. Visit some of your favorite downtown hotspots to make a donation that will make a difference at the same time.

Papou’s Wine Shop & Bar, Annie’s Bakery, Yesterday’s Tree, Lulu’s on Main, Friends of the Library, Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, Bubacz’s Underground, Heinzelmannchen Brewery will have a box identified for your donation at their location.

Check our website, www.downtownsylva.org, as this list of merchants will grow in the coming days.

New life for the old post office

It’s hard to think of much that would bring more life to a quiet building than a dance academy, and that’s just what’s coming to Sylva’s old post office, located on Landis St., and closed since spring.

Triple Threat Performing Arts Academy is moving from its current location adjacent NAPA Auto Parts on the Asheville Highway into the old post office. Renovations there are ongoing, and owner Valerie Tissue hopes to crank up in March. Downtown merchants will take note; the academy has over 230 students, whose parents and assorted caretakers have a lot of time on their hands between drop-off and pick-up.

Spring St. Cafe to reopen

Spring St. Cafe would celebrate its ten-year anniversary in March — if it were open. And apparently it might be, as owner Faye Holliday and space-owners Joyce and Allen Moore are close to reaching terms with an interested party …

Downtown wayfinding system

Downtown merchants — particularly the ones who aren’t directly on Main St. — have long complained about the lack of a standardized signage system for the downtown area. Many have resorted to various sandwich boards placed here and there, bringing about the occasional visit from the sign ordinance folks. Town Manager Adrienne Isenhour has been working this year to implement the needed system, and her efforts got a boost this week with a $9,000 municipal grant from county government.

Downtown Sylva Association; another successful parade

From the DSA: Downtown Sylva celebrated its annual Christmas parade Saturday with a great turn out and amazing floats that showed the time, effort, and talent that went into making such a special presentation. Wilmot Baptist Church won “Best in Show” and $200.  Honorable mention was a tie and goes to Yesterday’s Tree and Heritage Christian Academy.

SYLVA–Sylva town leaders, in a unanimous vote, have named former Economic Development Commission board member Chris Matheson to fill an empty seat on their board.

The vote at Thursday’s meeting filled the seat vacated by newly-elected mayor Maurice Moody.

The naming of Moody’s replacement had been the focus of speculation, because on the frequently ideologically divided board Moody often provided the “swing” vote.

Thursday night’s proceeding before a packed house was the final meeting for Sylva’s longtime mayor, Brenda Oliver. Oliver has served as mayor since 1991, and was a town board member for a decade prior to that.

The meeting was also the last for board member Harold Hensley, who was unseated in recent elections. Hensley was replaced by Danny Allen, a previous board member who won re-election. Also sworn in was incumbent Stacy Knotts. Knotts and Allen were the top vote-getters among five candidates for two seats on the board.

Some, including the newspaper The Sylva Herald, had argued that Hensley, as the third-highest vote-getter in the November elections, should’ve been appointed to fill Moody’s seat.

Coverage from the Smoky Mountain News here.

Coverage from the Sylva Herald here. (Link expires in one week)

SYLVA–We noted recently Verizon’s plans to sell its land-line phone business in 14 states, including North Carolina, to a smaller company called Frontier.

It’s an interesting subject because Verizon has done this before in other parts of the country, and the results have sometimes been tough on rural consumers. The smaller companies don’t have the wherewithal to service expensive rural land-line networks, and so leave consumers with worse service than they had before — or go completely belly-up.

Verizon picked up our area several years ago in a package deal that included the Charlotte region, and some customers argue that the company has always been indifferent to its customer’s needs in the southern mountains.

Well, one Reader reader reports that this just isn’t so. He got some paperwork from Verizon that said, in so many words, that if the company leaves the region before his contract is up, they won’t charge him for terminating his contract early. Thoughtful!

SYLVA–Sylva’s WRGC radio has obtained a copy of a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission document released yesterday that re-states the agency’s belief that Jackson County leadership is in the wrong in its attempts to condemn the Dillsboro Dam.

WRGC reporter Eric Moore quotes from the document:

“An attempt by a state or subdivision of a state to condemn project lands, works, or facilities in order to build a park is clearly preempted [by the Federal Power Act]. The county’s effort to undercut the Commission’s exclusive jurisdiction and to circumvent the Congressionally-mandated judicial review process in order to overturn our orders through state court proceedings is inappropriate.”

View WRGC’s report here.

Recent news from the legal struggle over the dam from the Sylva Herald here (link will expire in one week).

SYLVA–Editorially, the Sylva Herald newspaper has been openly disdainful of the Jackson County Commissioners’ ongoing battle with Duke Energy over the fate of the century-old Dillsboro Dam.

It editorializes on the subject this week. Here’s an excerpt:

Recently we taxpayers have been asked to bear quite a burden for our county’s leaders. First they forced through revaluation right before the housing market crashed. Now we’re paying taxes based on land values that are much inflated over current market value. They then turned around and instituted a pay study by the Mercer Group that resulted in major raises for several county employees. The amount of some of those raises nearly equals the average yearly salary for Jackson County residents. Yet the taxpayers haven’t gotten a single “thank you” for footing the bill.

The editorial is available here for a short while, then afterwards at the Herald’s paid archive.

SYLVA–The Jackson County Health Department has seen a decline in requests for H1N1-Swine Flu vaccine among people in the groups that are most susceptible, and so is releasing the vaccine to the general public.

This from the Health Department:

We currently have limited supplies; but, we continue to get weekly shipments.

• We have shots for ages 6 months through adults.
• We have H1N1 flu mist for healthy persons ages 2-49

The hours to receive vaccine are:

8 – 12 a.m. and 1 – 4 p.m. on Mon, Tues, Wed, and Fri. and Thursdays 8 – 12 a.m. and 1 – 7 P.M.

SYLVA–One of the most harrowing crimes committed in western North Carolina during the first half of the 20th century is the alleged murder in 1913 of two-year-old Roberta Putnam by her grandmother, Nancy Kerley, known as Nance Dude. Released from prison after 15 years hard labor, Nance Dude lived out her life rejected by her family. But as she never admitted her guilt or testified in court, her side of the story was never heard. In his acclaimed play, Gary Carden imagines what she might have said, combining folklore, some compelling historical evidence, and a playwright’s storytelling art.The much-performed play is now available as a DVD, featuring a performance by Elizabeth Westall.

Friday, December 4, City Lights Bookstore in Sylva will host a reception and discussion to celebrate the release.

The evening at City Lights will feature copies of the DVD for sale as well as refreshments and conversation with the playwright. The focus of the discussion will be not only on the play but also more generally on the subject of preserving and celebrating the folklore and heritage of the region. Pam Duncan, Rob Neufeld, and Michael Beadle will join in the discussion, as well.

SYLVA – Dogwood Women’s Health welcomes Swa Sapp, registered nurse and licensed esthetician to the practice, joining Dr. Graeme Potter, Cindy Noland, CNM and Maggie MacRae, CNM.

Swa provides skincare services including a wide variety of peel strengths and types, facials and hygienic waxing for women and men in a medical setting. She provides support and education for clients as part of the customized skincare her practice offers. She is the exclusive provider of BION skin care products in Western North Carolina.

Swa has been providing skincare services in Sylva for 11 years. She graduated from Duke University and also holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her Certification in Esthetics from Haywood Community College.

Dr. Potter, Noland and MacRae provide OB/GYN services at Dogwood Women’s Health in Sylva, Bryson City, Franklin and Robbinsville. Swa practices in the main office in Sylva, on the campus of Harris Regional Hospital.

Raleigh News and Observer editorializes on this subject here.

STATEWIDE–The Raleigh News and Observer’s Mark Johnson reports today that the state of North Carolina will pay a half-billion dollars to clean up some 6,500 deteriorating underground storage tanks across the state.

The state maintains a fund to help take care of such tanks, which often hold fuel, leak as they age, and contaminate groundwater. Property owners are taking advantage of the fund in increasing numbers, and the state is looking for ways to mitigate the cost.

Among the possibilities: raising the motor fuel and kerosene inspection tax from 1/4-cent to 7/16-cent per gallon to generate more money for the cleanup fund, requiring commercial tank owners to buy insurance to cover cleanup costs, and requiring noncommercial tank owners to pay 20 percent of cleanup costs up to $5,000.

Jackson County residents became familiar with this problem two-and-a-half years ago, when an old tank alongside US 23/74 east of Sylva leaked and contaminated drinking water in the nearby residential neighborhood in Racking Cove.

The Tuckasegee Water and Sewer Authority eventually ran a line from Sylva to the community to provide clean water.

Read Johnson’s story here.

SYLVA–Ja’Quayvin Smalls, a Western Carolina University football recruit who died during an off-season team workout, passed away from “acute lethal cardia dysrhythmia due to cardiomyopathy” according to autopsy results released today.

Smalls also carried the sickle cell trait, according to Dr. Wm. Lawrence Selby, who performed the autopsy at Harris Regional Hospital.

In his report, Dr. Selby noted that Smalls had “a history of sickle cell trait, past positive PPD, and irregular heartbeat with PVC’s during fever approximately 5 years earlier.”

Selby told Tyler Norris Goode and Jon Ostendorf of the Asheville Citizen-Times that he had no clear evidence that the sickle cell trait played a role in Smalls’ death. At question in the national sports media after Smalls’ July death was whether testing for the sickle cell trait — which WCU did not perform — might’ve prevented the death.

Coverage from the Asheville Citizen-Times here.

SYLVA–A final point granite marker and plaque will be dedicated Saturday, Dec. 5, to Nathan Hall, a Southwestern Community College surveying technology student who died May 23, 2008 of leukemia.

The dedication service will be held at 11 a.m. behind the Holt Library on SCC’s Jackson Campus.

Retired Southwestern Community College Surveying Technology instructor Peter Messier, left and graduates of SCC’s Surveying Technology program, Bentley Robison, middle, and John Jeleniewski, right, both of Sylva, assist with the granite marker and plaque that will be dedicated Saturday, Dec. 5, to the late Nathan Hall. The 11 a.m. ceremony behind Holt Library will honor Hall, a former SCC Surveying Technology student, who died May 23, 2008 of leukemia.

“Nathan was a model student and an outstanding individual,” said his former SCC surveying technology instructor Peter Messier. “A young surveyor who left his mark on the hearts of all who knew him by unselfishly giving of himself ” is part of the inscription on the plaque that will be dedicated by his former fellow students.

A native and lifelong resident of Jackson County, Hall was a key player in the formation of the first student chapter of the North Carolina Society of Surveyors and was elected the first president of SCC’s student chapter.

“Nathan was on his way to becoming a great surveyor and an asset to the community,” said Messier. “He had an impressive 3.81 grade point average, had received a $1,000 scholarship from the NC Association of Community College Facility Operations and was just two courses shy of completing his degree when he died at age 27. He lived in the Balsam community and was working for Civil Design Consultants in Waynesville at the time of his death.”

The public is invited to the dedication ceremony which will feature personal tributes to Hall.

CHAPEL HILL–Sylva native and Smoky Mountain High product Cetera DeGraffenreid, now a junior guard at North Carolina, is ACC player of the week.

From UNC:

DeGraffenreid played one of the best all-around games of her career against Coastal Carolina, scoring 20 points and adding eight assists, eight steals and six rebounds in 29 minutes of action. The eight steals tied a career-high for the junior from Cullowhee, N.C. DeGraffenreid followed that performance with a 22-point, four-rebound, three-assist outing against UNLV on Sunday. The guard was a perfect 10-for-10 from the foul line against the Rebels, with several coming down the stretch to secure the win.

Read more here

Cetera DeGraffenreid

STATEWIDE–A Wilmington Star News investigation into salaries paid to Alcoholic Beverage Commission board employees in New Hanover County has led NC Governor Bev Perdue to order a statewide survey of ABC Board salaries and ethics policies.

Writes Shelby Sebens for the Star News:

… in response to the StarNews’ salary information request, State ABC Commission Chairman Jonathan Williams took the matter to the office of the governor, who ordered a look at all the state’s boards.

“Our office has become aware of concerns regarding compensation in local ABC systems and of the reluctance exhibited in responding to a proper inquiry by the press,” Williams stated in a letter dated Thursday to all North Carolina ABC Boards.

The letter requests each board fill out a questionnaire asking for detailed salary and benefits information as well as questions about ethics and nepotism policies.

Meanwhile, today, the Asheville Citizen-Times’ Jordan Schrader details the arrangement between ABC boards in Bryson City and Sylva to split the proceeds of liquor sales at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino, which could be enormous. Alcoholic beverage sales at the decade-old casino were approved during a recent tribal election.

The arrangements for handling the casino liquor sales took some while to work out, as the Sylva board, which holds the casino license, and the Bryson City board, which is closer to the casino, tried to reach an agreement with considerable input from the state.

Portions of ABC proceeds fund law enforcement and substance abuse programs, and so ABC sales are matters of close attention from county-to-county.

SYLVA–Last year, when automobile gas prices were through the roof, CSX railroad began running obvious ads, making a point the industry could’ve been making all along: it makes more sense to pull a couple of hundred trailers with two or three engines than a couple of hundred trailers with a couple of hundred engines.

Well, no kidding. That’s true no matter how pricey gas becomes.

CSX’s tagline – “our trains can move a ton of freight 436 miles on a single gallon of fuel” – has become a fighting slogan for the entire industry lately, as the prevailing economic and environmental winds begin to signal a railroad renaissance.

Financier Warren Buffet’s purchase of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad recently drove the point home. Said Adam Hochberg on National Public Radio: “Buffett’s $44 billion acquisition, via his company Berkshire Hathaway, is one of a number of signs that freight railroads are in resurgence. While they may have been thought of as passé in the 1960s and 1970s, they’re now playing a vital role in the transportation system.”

Lobbyists for the asphalt and trucking companies, who for so long thought railroads were kaput, still make the argument that logistically, trucks work better.

“You can’t back a freight train up to the Harris Teeter,” one industry rep told Business North Carolina not long ago.

But some industry analysts believe that almost any regulations created to fight emissions will favor railroads, and that logistical issues with moving goods on the local level are easily overcome – in fact, are already overcome in some cases by the use of containers that can then be moved to flatbed trucks.

Closer to home, the topic reminds me of a sidewalk conversation I had in Sylva when gas was at it’s peak. “Before long,” my friend told me, “we’ll be able to ride a train to Asheville.”

I’m not sure I’m buying that – the cost of the necessary trestle work between Sylva and Waynesville alone would raise even Buffet’s eyebrows – but it is safe to assume that freight trains (which are allowed to run on ricketier tracks than passenger trains) aren’t going anywhere soon, even from our area.

A representative from Norfolk Southern Railway told me as much not long ago, saying that the line between Asheville and Sylva, which Norfolk Southern owns, is a money maker. The expansion of Jackson Paper Manufacturing in Sylva can only help.

As for true passenger rail, though, most of its advances will be focused on the cities.

Still, mountain residents can catch Amtrak in Toccoa Falls, GA, or Greenville, SC and ride the Southern Crescent southwest toward New Orleans or northeast toward Washington, through the Piedmont and to all points beyond.

Proponents of the long-fought-for return of passenger rail to Asheville are still at it, so that Amtrak spur — which would run up the mountain from the Piedmont — is still a possibility. (The two links in the previous sentence are from the Asheville Citizen-Times, here’s a Twitter report from MountainXpress from a recent Asheville Rail Corridor meeting).

And plans for the long-considered magnetic levitation train between Atlanta and Chattanooga and perhaps on to Nashville just got an infusion of federal cash. Maglev trains, used widely in Japan and Europe, achieve speeds of some 300 mph, mainly by not touching the ground.

If you don’t plan to hop a train anytime soon, but still like to think about them, this post from Ruminations from the Distant Hills and this one from Appalachian History might tickle your fancy. And here’s a history of the WNC Railroad from Tim Osment for WCU’s Digital Heritage.

Here’s a phenomenal flickr set, if you like to look at pictures.

SYLVA–The Southern Highland Reader has accepted an invitation to partner with Asheville’s daily newspaper, the Citizen-Times, as part of a nationwide, yearlong initiative by the American University Institute for Interactive Journalism called the Networked Journalism Project.

The project is an effort in five national media markets – Seattle, Tucson, Miami, Charlotte and Asheville – to gather ideas and lessons for future collaborations between media outlets of different sizes, and will be coordinated by the daily newspaper in each of the markets except Tucson, where an online-only news provider, Tucson.com, will oversee the effort. The project is funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The Southern Highland Reader and its regional partners will form WNC LINC in order to share readers, resources and ideas. The sites will link together and from a portal on the homepage of the Asheville Citizen-Times.

The Southern Highland Reader, launched in 2008, has three main goals: to provide news that pertains to the southern mountains of North Carolina; to serve as an aggregator that leads readers to other online news sources for the region, including all of its weekly papers, its blogs and broader regional dailies; and to offer features and information that help paint an accurate picture of life in the southern mountains.

The Asheville Citizen-Times became one of the five markets involved in the project to some extent on the strength of its web presence. Citizen-Times.com was recently named one of the best seven newspaper websites among the largest publications in the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association.