Why don’t Polish salt miners ever get sick?

No, it’s not a joke, according to Marisa Spagnoli, owner of Waynesville Salt Room, a new Montgomery Street business that’s capitalizing on one of the latest trends in the spa industry. 

The Town of Waynesville dropped the ball on a minor procedural change to how some zoning decisions are made, but at least taxpayers won’t be left holding the bag. 

Most playgrounds aren’t accessible to children with physical or cognitive challenges; what’s worse, those kids are often left on the sidelines when their peers of average ability hit the slides, swings and sandboxes. 

Near the end of 2016, the North Carolina Department of Transportation announced plans for an $18 million makeover of Russ Avenue, including a disastrous modification that would have forever altered the character of one of Waynesville’s most historic neighborhoods. 

“Take the high road.”

It’s a simple code for life, but one too few take to heart and even fewer have the courage and fortitude to embrace. It’s much easier to go low, to lash out against critics or take unethical measures in order to come out on top.

As first reported in The Smoky Mountain News more than four months ago, Waynesville’s getting a new hotel, and that new hotel is getting lots of tax breaks. The reasons why are no mystery either, according to Haywood County Program Administrator David Francis. 

The site plan submitted by developers for a controversial 200-unit apartment complex off Plott Creek Road was approved by the Town of Waynesville Planning Board July 30, but not before a marathon meeting that dragged on for more than six hours and threatened to stretch into the next day. 

A 4.4-acre parcel in the Allens Creek community could soon put a small dent in Haywood County’s affordable housing crisis, if negotiations between the owner and local human services agency Mountain Projects go well. 

Among the groups visiting this year’s Folkmoot Festival from other countries is one from a place that isn’t quite a country, but is perhaps a historical microcosm of current geopolitical and spiritual conflict between East and West. 

“It’s mostly sunny weather, two or three months we live in winter, the rest of the year, around 30 or 40 Celsius degrees,” said Burcin Ozqus, a performer with Kyrenia Youth Centre Association. “It’s green most all the time of the year.”

Now in its 35th year, the Folkmoot Festival has been around 11 years longer than Maarten Krijger has been alive, but it doesn’t take 35 years of experience with the annual event to understand what has to happen in the next 35.