When I was growing up, my father had a bookshelf with glass doors. Behind the delicate handles were elegant hardcovers, fairy tale collections with beautiful illustrations and sentimental classics, like “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy he had bought and read back in the 1970s. But he had another bookshelf, a doorless one, that made all its books far more accessible, attainable, but in some ways slightly less alluring.

When she was just in elementary school, fiddler/vocalist Lake Carver graced the cover of the Down the Road magazine, an annual publication put together through a partnership between The Smoky Mountain News and the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area based in Asheville. 

And much like her current life, Carver was heavily invested in the music scene in her native Wilkes County, finding herself headlong in local jams, all while soaking in as much knowledge and technical ability as possible. 

The latest exhibit from the Haywood County Arts Council, “Weird & Wacky” will open Friday, April 17, at HCAC’s Haywood Handmade Gallery in downtown Waynesville.

This imaginative and playful exhibition will be on display through June 1, inviting visitors to explore art that celebrates the unusual, the quirky and the wonderfully unexpected. 

When money, manpower and supplies from all over the world poured into Western North Carolina after the devastation wrought by Helene, writer and religious scholar Bart Ehrman understood the genesis of this altruism better than most. 

In his new book, “Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West,” Ehrman argues that prior to the rise of Christianity, the concept of providing material help and compassion toward strangers was not in the religious or ethical toolbox of previous Western societies.