My best girl (aka: my mother Kathy) turns 75 years young today (Jan. 21). Currently, it’s a cold, frigid Sunday here in the mountains of Western North Carolina, same goes for my hometown of Plattsburgh, New York.

To the Editor:

Beginning a new year during a cold winter, and an election year, I find myself soulful and introspective. 

Cold weather means more time indoors, and more time indoors means more time for books. Here are three for the season of Jack Frost, sweaters and robust beverages.  

For those of you who don’t know her, Julia Nunnally Duncan is an award-winning freelance writer and author of 11 books of nonfiction, fiction and poetry who is a native of Western North Carolina whose hometown is Marion.

A new database cataloguing the work of renowned Smokies photographer, Japan-born George Masa, is now available online. 

Angelyn Whitmeyer might be the last person you would expect to contribute to ongoing research surrounding a Japanese photographer who found inspiration in the Great Smoky Mountains.

At 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 4, in Bryson City, Frank March and Henry Chambers will present “The Lamon Chambers Map” at this year’s first Swain County Genealogical and Historical Society meeting. 

Like a lot of middle-aged-to-older Americans during the holiday season, I’m a person with a healthy nostalgic streak.

Editor’s Note: Since first rolling into Haywood County in August 2012 to start work as the arts and entertainment editor for The Smoky Mountain News, Garret K. Woodward has been extensively documenting banjo players around our backyard.

In the mid-1960s, when Bill Allsbrook was a med school student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he decided to pick up the banjo.