It’s hard not to love where we live
When I travel and tell someone I’m from Waynesville, a small town nestled in the Smoky Mountains, the comment is always met with awe and excitement.
Are courthouse politics gumming up the system?
When I came back to The Smoky Mountain News after six months away from journalism, one of my first trips was to the Haywood County Courthouse.
When the levee breaks: A perfect storm steers WNC toward a judicial crisis
Some catastrophes happen in the blink of an eye, while others develop so slowly they’re imperceptible, like a crack in a levee propagating below the waterline.
Right in rain: After 15 years of forecasting, Local Yokel is shifting focus
Preston Jacobsen, a man some know better as the Local Yokel Weather guy, comes by his love of meteorology honestly.
Living in WNC is getting harder for workers
The affordable housing crisis looms as this region’s most pressing problem. And so far, no one has proposed any kind of sweeping proposal that will solve it.
Bridge to clean energy: Leaders mull WNC’s energy future
When the first transmission lines began popping up in the mountains 100 years ago, only one type of power provided the energy traveling through them — hydroelectric.
Sheriffs in Western North Carolina face challenges, change
The job of the county sheriff is important even though the county sheriff’s job is widely misunderstood.
Big money coming for rural broadband
More than a hundred economic development professionals, elected officials, internet service providers and interested parties from across North Carolina’s seven westernmost counties met March 21 in Franklin to acquaint themselves with the ways in which unprecedented amounts of state and federal broadband monies will be used to close the digital divide in rural Appalachia.
Into the fold: Blue Ridge Craft Trails foster community, tradition
The studio space of blacksmith Rachel David is vast. Inside an enormous old hay barn there is equipment everywhere – massive hammers, a forklift, tools, wires, tables, cabinets, machinery that is incomprehensible to the non-smith layman.
It takes a village: Strong collaborative partnerships support victims in WNC
In 1978, there were all of two shelters in North Carolina for survivors of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault and their children. Today there are over 100, working collaboratively to support victims of interpersonal violence and sexual assault, many of which receive funding from the money allocated through the Violence Against Women Act.
