It was just about 12 years ago when I first rolled into Waynesville. After a solo 18-hour, 1,000-mile trek from my native Upstate New York to Western North Carolina, I found myself sitting in an office chair awaiting an in-person interview with Smoky Mountain News publisher/founder Scott McLeod. 

This week SMN is celebrating its 25th anniversary as a business. As we mark the milestone, this industry is changing so fast it’s dizzying.

Having just recently written a review for these pages of an anthology made up of multiple writers published in 2023 with a similar title that was edited by Ervin Laszlo, I am taking the liberty to review the much more singular and shorter primer that Laszlo wrote in 2022 prior to putting together his large anthology.

In springtime, all things are possible. Everything around you that is alive is imbued right now with the same hopeful energy.

For Jerad Davis, it all started with a dry, nagging cough in the summer of 2022. With shortness of breath, low energy, brain fog and night sweats, he initially chalked it up to long COVID. But, upon going to the doctor and through some medical procedures, he was eventually diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep. 

— Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” 

We hoped he’d die in his sleep, that we’d find him curled up in the bed in that old, familiar way, having slipped as comfortably and naturally from this dimension to the next as a river flows into the sea. 

I love the energy surrounding a new year. Why are beginnings so enchanting? Perhaps it’s the hope and anticipation of the unknown or maybe an open opportunity to shed old habits, behaviors and beliefs that are no longer serving us.

If 2024 were a table laid out before you, how would you imagine it: a beautiful, feast-laden smorgasbord of rich and tasty dishes with succulent sides, or an after-dinner wreck piled high with crusted up dirty dishes, overturned wine glasses and already eaten carcasses of dead birds and picked-over porcine bones? 

Remember the game of bloody knuckles? You pretended to strike your friend with your fist and if they reacted with a nervous movement you shouted, “you flinched!” and then you got to punch them on the arm as their punishment? Ahh, good times! This instinctive reaction reveals a little more when we look at it under the energetic microscope and apply it to how we can change our conditioned responses to situations that bring us pain.