Rumble is a women’s newsletter started by the female staff members at The Smoky Mountain News. The tagline for Rumble is “Fearless, Curious, Generous” — all words used to describe Barbara McRae, who passed away in March after a long battle with cancer. 

The Grinch Award goes to Swain County Sheriff Curtis Cochran, but not for the reasons you may think. We know the Grinch — and law enforcement — gets a bad rep, but we forget that the Grinch wasn’t all bad, and in the end, he came through for Whoville to make Christmas a magical time for all. 

Maggie Valley Town Planner Kaitland Finkle has experience in her field, multiple master’s degrees and a clear, coherent way of sharing complex information. So why then do the Maggie Valley Planning Board and Maggie Valley Board of Alderman regularly ignore her zoning recommendations in favor of their own ideas?

As the late, great rocker Tom Petty once opined, “The waiting is the hardest part,” and it sure seemed that way as Haywood County attempted to recover from disastrous floods this past August. 

And what a year it was for Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers. 

After 27 years of loyal service to the Main Street merchant community in Waynesville, Wall Street Books got booted. The building that the book store resides in has changed hands and unfortunately, a used bookstore isn’t in the plans for those new owners. This winter, bookstore owners are currently in limbo, on the hunt for a new home with an estimated 50,000 books in tow. 

When legendary Drag Queen RuPaul kicks a queen off his reality tv show for up and coming drag queens, he sends them off into the sunset saying, “sashay away.” But if RuPaul had seen the action at Sylva’s inaugural pride parade this summer, he might have said “ooh, sashay my way!”

The winner of this year’s “most likely to get my vote award,” goes to John Hinton. While other politicians seem to have drifted from the understanding of what voters really want, Hinton gets it. It’s money. 

The first-ever award for mismanaging and destroying a longstanding community institution goes to … that longstanding community institution itself. 

This year was a challenging year in so many ways, but that was especially true in Western North Carolina.