In the depths of The One Stop in downtown Asheville on Saturday, members of the Travers Brothership and Abby Bryant & The Echoes were setting up and sound checking for that evening’s inaugural “Blue Ridge Blues Jam.” 

Having recently read and reviewed for the Smoky Mountain Living magazine Vicki Lane’s And The Crows Took Their Eyes, a fine novel set in Madison County during the Civil War and focused on the Shelton Laurel Massacre, this week I returned to that era with J.L. Askew’s War In The Mountains: The Macbeth Light Artillery at Asheville, N.C. 1864-1865 (Covenant Books, Inc., 2020, 535 pages).

Vaccination coverage is picking up in Western North Carolina, with the percentage of the population receiving at least one dose now in the double digits for every far western county. 

Last week, North Carolina officials recommended that all schools return to in-person learning as soon as possible. 

By Barbara Durr and Peter H. Lewis • Asheville Watchdog | Six months ago, as part of a reckoning on racial injustice, the City of Asheville and Buncombe County both passed resolutions to consider reparations to the Black community as a way to begin making amends for slavery and generations of systemic discrimination. The votes were hailed as “historic” by The Asheville Citizen Times, and ABC News asked, “Is Asheville a national model?”

As people continue to struggle through the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for pro-bono legal services has spiked, putting more demand on nonprofit legal organizations like Pisgah Legal Services and Legal Aid.

Just last week, Swain and Macon county health officials lamented over a limited supply of COVID-19 vaccines making it to them from Raleigh, and this week they have a better understanding of why. 

It’s a label that some avoid at any and all costs. But, for Becky Robinson, it’s a sincere and genuine term of endearment that she wears like a badge of honor: “dive bar.” 

“We do wear it as a badge of honor. And I think it’s the comfortability factor,” Robinson said. “I feel that you can come in here and you can be comfortable. You can come in and have a good time. Everybody is welcome. You don’t have to pretend to be somebody else in here — you can just be yourself.” 

The COVID-19 vaccine distribution has begun in Western North Carolina with the first doses going to healthcare workers and emergency medical technicians and paramedics on the frontlines. 

Passing modest, nondescript houses with swing sets and dog houses in their yards, the big red pickup truck lumbered up the winding mountain road, bed filled with bread, cereal boxes, canned goods and the like. Negotiating one final hairpin, it slowly creeps into the grassy driveway of Hannah Orlikowski.