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A study of lymphoproliferative disease virus, a malady affecting wild turkeys, is calling in help from hunters.
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is now able to administer its own water quality certifications, becoming the 49th tribe in the nation to gain authority from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to administer the Water Quality Standards Program.
The nation’s largest single-day river litter removal will mark its 31st year Saturday, April 18.
A network of amateur rain and weather spotters are contributing to the scientific understanding of niche weather patterns on a local and regional level.
Applications are open for teachers looking to attend the 2015 Family Nature Summit, based in Lake Junaluska.
The Watershed Association of the Tuckasegee River will hold its annual meeting celebrating Earth Month at 6 p.m. Monday, April 13, in the community room of the Ginger Lynn Welch Complex on Acquoni Road in Cherokee.
A pair of Western Carolina University students took first this spring, in the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series Eastern Regional, presented by Bass Pro Shops, bringing in a three-day total of 42 pounds, 6 ounces.
Austin Neary and Alex Frazier targeted spawning fish but also fished nearby docks and rocks in Lake Norman near Charlotte with dropshots and jerkbaits, putting up with chilly temperatures from a nasty cold front that swept through the second day of the competition. The combination of three fishing patterns helped the pair navigate changeable weather patterns to bring in the fish.
“I could probably run through a brick wall right now,” Frazier said following his and Neary’s win.
The anglers will go on to compete in the national championship in June.
The Southeast’s most grueling team race will take off from Pink Beds Picnic Area in the Pisgah National Forest near Brevard April 17, covering 212 miles before ending at Nantahala Outdoor Center April 18.
After closing the area in September to protect wintering bats, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park will reopen Whiteoak Sink — but with limited access through May 15.
As part of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the production of “The Actor and The Assassin” will hit the stage at 7:30 p.m. April 10-11, 14, 17-18 and 3 p.m. April 12 and 19 at the Haywood Arts Regional Theatre in Waynesville.
More than 60 Jackson County school students received awards for work exhibited at Western Carolina University during Youth Art Month.
The School of Stage and Screen will close its 2014-15 Mainstage season with a high-flying production of the J.M Barrie classic “Peter Pan: The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up,” at 7:30 p.m. April 16-18 and 3 p.m. April 19 in the John W. Bardo Fine and Performing Arts Center at Western Carolina University.
Colorful Creations, a “Paint Your Own Pottery” studio owned by Jimbo and Stacy Ledford, recently opened in Franklin.
The Smoky Mountain Oyster & Seafood Festival will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 18, at the Maggie Valley Festival Grounds.
Country/southern rocker Joe Lasher Jr. will perform at 7 p.m. April 18 at the Colonial Theatre in Canton. Tickets are $7, with proceeds going to The Community Kitchen, a local MANNA FoodBank partner.
QUESTION: I heard you were going to be at the Mother Earth News Fair. When and where is it and what will you be doing there?
ANSWER: The Mother Earth News Fair will be held at the WNC Ag Center near the Asheville Airport on April 11th and 12th ( Saturday and Sunday).
Clingmans Dome Road in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park opened last week, six days ahead of its scheduled April 1 opening.
The Jackson County Bike Rodeo is calling all kids to come out 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, April 11, to the Jackson Recreation Park in Cullowhee to learn more about life on two wheels.
The fifth annual Assault on BlackRock trail race is now in the rearview mirror, with 82 brave souls battling freezing temperatures frosted with snow and ice to complete the grueling 7-mile race.
A forum on how to transition to solar energy will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, at the Macon County Public Library in Franklin, the second in a string of events to be held throughout the region this spring and summer.
At its annual Scholarship Fundraising Dinner on March 20, the board of Catch the Spirit of Appalachia in Jackson County awarded three scholarships to three deserving applicants. In the presence of over 100 attendees in the fellowship hall of Cullowhee Baptist Church on the campus of Western Carolina University, the following awards were presented:
• The Annie Lee Bryson Memorial Scholarship was presented to Blake John-David Ward of Whittier. Ward is a member of the show choir at Smoky Mountain High, a member of student council, FCA, Crossfit Swerve, and varsity football, wrestling, track and field. He helps work with kids at Riverside Cove youth camp, and helps his family on the farm raising cattle and with the family garden.
• The Mary Jane Queen Memorial Scholarship was presented to Connor Luckey-Smith, from Clyde. Luckey-Smith is enrolled at Four Oaks Academy, plus dually enrolled in the Jackson County Early College and Haywood Early College. He began playing at an early age, and has come into contact with many gifted musicians. He and his brother, along with the band Productive Paranoia, play at area nursing homes, benefits, fundraisers, and more.
• The Elmer & Irene Hooper Memorial Scholarship was presented to Grace Ella Morris, from Cullowhee. Morris goes to Smoky Mountain High and Jackson County Early College. An avid fiddle player, Grace spent countless hours performing with the Community Appalachian Music group, playing “Old Time Music” at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. She has been going on mission trips since 2012, spending time with senior adults in the community, and is a current member of the Jackson County Bible club. She came up through JAM in Haywood County, volunteered with the Jackson County Junior Appalachian Musicians and is now a teacher with the organization.
Catch the Spirit of Appalachia’s scholarship program is supported, in part, from the Catch the Spirit of Appalachia Endowment, a component fund of the North Carolina Community Foundations.
A creative photography and folk art exhibit, “Memories — Past, Present and Future” will be showcased April 6-28 in Gallery 86 at the Haywood County Arts Council in Waynesville.
One year after hosting a highly successful event at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., the Cherokee Nation, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians are again partnering to host “Cherokee Days.”
The 9th Street Stompers will perform at 7 p.m. Friday, April 17, at The Classic Wineseller in Waynesville.
Country music legend Loretta Lynn will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 11, at Harrah’s Cherokee.
To the Editor:
Recently, I had to make a tough but necessary decision. As I entered my 23rd year of teaching in North Carolina in traditional public schools as well as a charter school and in all regions of our great state, I realized that teaching was not the job I had signed up for.
I want to offer that along with my North Carolina certification for grades K-6 as well as reading grades K-12, I also hold my National Board Certification in Literacy as a way to help readers understand I had put my heart and soul into the profession. I was not just sitting stagnate waiting for retirement time.
I did what some think unspeakable. Yes, I quit halfway through this school year to take a job in another field. So, I am a teacher who quit. Quitting and entering another profession was not a decision I took lightly. It took a lot of soul searching, prayer, a pay cut, and graduate school. I want to use this opportunity to clarify why I quit:
• I quit because of the ever-increasing role of bureaucracy and red tape involved in our present system of education.
• I quit because my best was no longer good enough.
• I quit because a test score took precedence over a living, breathing student.
• I quit because I could not live under the pressure of being off schedule.
• I quit because I want to have a positive impact on learning which cannot be accurately measured through a test score.
• I quit because professional judgment was essentially a thing of the past.
• I quit because I wanted to be treated as a professional.
• I quit because I no longer felt I could speak my mind without fear of being singled out.
• I quit because I was no longer a teacher, but someone who had been given a job that was physically impossible to complete.
• I quit because of the overuse of assessments no matter the name they are given.
• I quit because we have created students who see reading as a test and not a pathway to learning.
• I quit because teaching students became secondary to assessing students.
• I quit because I love children and learning and had to find another way to have a positive impact on them.
As a teacher who quit, I want to implore everyone to stand up and be a part of doing what is right for children. Our future depends on it.
Deanna Lyles
Waynesville
Harris Regional Hospital and Swain County Hospital have finally settled on new names following the purchase of the hospitals by Duke LifePoint Healthcare last year, but the change announced this week is a minor one.
QUESTION: When something is USDA certified organic does it mean the farmer doesn’t use pesticides on their crops or orchards?
ANSWER: This is not a yes/no answer. How farmers manage their crops depends on the crop, the climate, the land , and the pressures (rainfall, insects, weeds) during the growing season.
Graveyard Fields is closed to overnight camping following a bear break-in to a tent in the popular recreation area, and the U.S. Forest Service is also requiring campers to use bear canisters in adjacent public lands.
Cataloochee Ski Area closed for the season Sunday, ending 141 days of open slopes for 2014-15.
The season outstripped the ski area’s average 126 days per season, but closure came slightly earlier than last season’s March 27 ending. However, the resort saw its best season ever in terms of visitor numbers, logging a 3 percent increase over the 2013-14 season.
“We attribute a lot of that increase to our continued work in bringing new participants to winter sports with programs like our Slide in 5 package, afterschool programs and other learning programs and packages,” said Tammy Brown, spokesperson for Cataloochee. “This type of programming helps us create new skiers and snowboarders who we hope will grow with us and return to ski or ride with us in the future.”
A recently awarded $200,000 grant will pay for two years of work to improve water quality and raise public awareness of clean water for Richland Creek in Haywood County.
The N.C. Division of Water Resources Grant will pay for the Richland Creek Restoration Project to stabilize 5,100 feet of stream bank to reduce erosion, repair 10 failing septic systems to prevent water contamination and construct rain gardens and cisterns to capture and treat stormwater from 65,000 square feet of hard surfaces.
Restoration efforts at Richland Creek began in 2006, combating the impacts of sediment and bacteria that had landed Richland Creek and its tributary Raccoon Creek on the state list of impaired waterways. A laundry list of organizations — local, state and national — have footed the bill, and the partners are providing $140,000 in matching support for this next phase of the project.
Haywood Waterways Association, 828.476.4667 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Following a seven-year brook trout restoration project, Lynn Camp Prong in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is now open to fishing.
Early registration is open for the Blue Ridge Breakaway, a multi-distance bike ride based in Haywood County.
The battle against the hemlock wooly adelgid in North Carolina will continue with help from a bevy of grants from the Hemlock Restoration Initiative, a grant pool set up to fund promising research in the fight against the invasive aphid-like insect that kills hemlocks.
The Hemlock Restoration Initiative is spearheaded by N.C. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler and funded through the state’s multi-million dollar legal settlment with the Tennessee Valley Authority stemming from a federal air pollution lawsuit.
Without intervention, adelgid infestations can kill trees within just a few years. Hemlocks are ecological staples of Appalachian forests, cooling stream temperatures, storing water and providing food and habitat for wildlife.
• National Park Service work crews will suit up to chemically treat hemlock trees located along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Haywood, Transylvania, Avery and Watauga counties, funded through a $25,000 grant awarded to the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation.
• Southwestern N.C. Resource Conservation & Development Council received $25,000 toward its work to create a hybrid hemlock species that will resist the aphid-like insect. The project, based at the Mountain Research Station in Waynesville, involves identifying resistant trees and testing their progeny throughout 17 eligible counties.
• The Blue Ridge Resource Conservation and Development Council received $25,000 to release predator beetles that feed on the adelgid. The beetles, Laricobius nigrinus, are winter predators that must be wild-caught during their active period from April to May.
Friends of the Smokies got its largest-ever fourth-quarter check from sales of the Smokies bear license plate, accruing $105,080 for projects on the North Carolina side of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Teams of middle and high school students from across Western North Carolina went head-to-head over their knowledge of environmental science and natural resource management March 13, with students from Haywood, Swain and Macon counties all representing at the Area 1 Envirothon Competition.
The roof trusses went up on the new Daniel and Belle Fangmeyer Theater on March 21 at the Haywood Arts Regional Theatre in Waynesville.
With the celebration of Easter around the corner, below are several events in communities around our region, from church gathering to Easter egg hunts, brunch to live music.
A conference with a special focus on fermentation science will be held by the Western Office of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, April 9, in the A.K. Hinds Center at Western Carolina University.
Gospel singers Jeff & Sheri Easter will perform at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 3, at the Smoky Mountain Center for the Performing Arts in Franklin.
Free food, giveaways and the opportunity to win scholarships and other prizes will be a part of Southwestern Community College’s 50th-anniversary open house celebration from 4-6 p.m. on Friday, April 10, at the Jackson campus.
Brett Woods has been hired to serve as director of the Southwestern Community College Foundation.
Woods brings more than 15 years of higher education fundraising experience to SCC. He replaces Mary Otto Selzer, who retired earlier this year after helping the foundation achieve its Phase I goal of maximizing a federal match for the Student Success Campaign.
Prior to joining SCC on Feb. 23, Woods served as director of development for Western Carolina University from 2003-08 and again from 2012 through February of this year. From 2008-12 he held the same title at the University of South Florida.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Highlands-Cashiers Hospital has received a generous contribution to purchase five state-of-the-art beds that improve the care for patients at the local hospital.
Nancy East, a member of Shining Rock Classical Academy’s board, has rallied her family to an experience-full fundraiser to gather dollars for the school’s planned focus on experiential learning.
After signing a five-year lease for a 29-acre property on Ratcliffe Cove Road, just past the traffic circle in Waynesville, Haywood County’s first charter school will soon be able to move somewhere a little bigger than the single-room office it now rents downtown.
A stalled rewrite of Jackson County’s steep slope development rules will remain stalled for months, or even longer.
Evergreen Packaging Family Pharmacy and Family Medical Center in Canton announced that it has received an extension to stay open through the end of April.
Evergreen announced in January that it would close the employee clinic and pharmacy at the end of March because of declining use. However, Haywood Regional Medical Center is in discussions with the clinic and pharmacy owners to keep the facilities open.
The pharmacy is open from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and the clinic is open from 8 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
The clinic serves employees of the Evergreen Packaging plant in Canton, employee dependants and mill retirees. When the closing was announced clinic users mounted a public campaign to save it.
To the Editor:
On behalf of the Western Carolina Affiliate of the National Move To Amend and We the People of Jackson County, I’d like to profoundly thank the Jackson County Commissioners for passing the resolution to call on our state’s General Assembly to join with other states to petition the U.S. Congress to create the People’s Amendment that will reverse the Supreme Court’s decision on Citizen’s United vs. the U. S. Board of Elections.
In summary, the amendment declares that human beings only are afforded the constitutional protection of inalienable rights and that corporations and other artificial entities are not persons and have no such protection. The amendment further declares that the unbridled spending of money to influence elections is not First Amendment-protected free speech and can be regulated by national, state, and local governments.
In passing this resolution, our commissioners are leading the way for other North Carolina legislative bodies to join with over 500 other community and state legislative bodies around the nation who have already passed such resolutions to create a movement to bring forth the People’s Amendment. Beyond legislative bodies taking these actions, hundreds of ballot initiatives on this issue have been brought before voters throughout the country, in both liberal and conservative states and districts. In every single initiative, without exception, the people have voted overwhelmingly in favor of a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood and money as free speech.
Move To Amend is endorsed by hundreds of organizations from progressives such as the American Institute for Progressive Democracy to the more traditional like Veterans for Peace. Endorsers come from grassroots organizations such as the Family Farm Defenders and historically established organizations such as the National Lawyer Guild. Included among the many endorsers are the NC AFL-CIO, Kentucky Education Association, and numerous churches and interfaith alliances.
It is clear, Americans know that corporations and other artificial entities are not persons. They also know that the massive influx of corporate money into politics distorts and corrupts our electoral process. Americans know that these two judicial, not legislated, doctrines negate the basic fabric of our democratic republic by undermining the hallowed principle of one-person, one-vote. I wholeheartedly thank our county commissioners for standing as proud patriots in the ongoing battle to preserve a democratic republic governed by, of, and for We the People.
Allen Lomax
Sylva
To the Editor:
Last week I attended a really good workshop in Swain County on landowner rights that was sponsored by the N.C. State Cooperative Extension and the Rural Advancement Foundation International, USA. Even though I intellectually understood that recent bills and regulations passed by the General Assembly governing the exploration and production of oil and gas using hydraulic fracturing favored the oil a gas companies, it really hit home during the workshop.
It is your decision as to whether you want to lease your oil and gas rights, but either way no one is going to protect your rights, or get you the best deal except you. You need to know how to do a survey to see if you even own your subsurface rights. You need to know what to do if a landman approaches you, how to check his background, how to negotiate a contract. If you don’t want to lease your subsurface oil and gas rights, or don’t own them but get forced into a drilling unit through forced pooling, you need to again know your rights to make agreements to protect what happens on the land surface you do own.
These are all things you can learn in the workshop. Other industries might contact you for your mineral rights or sand and gravel rights. How would you react? There have been mines in times past in our area.
Due to another new law, anyone selling a home or land has to sign a mineral and oil and gas rights mandatory disclosure statement before the purchaser makes their offer. A Realtor in the workshop said they don’t know how to advise people on filling it out, but the workshop speaker did. If you want a landowner rights workshop in Haywood County, contact the Cooperative Extension Service at 828.456.3575, or contact James Robinson of RAFI at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and tell them you want this workshop. You need to know your rights so you can protect them. No one in the federal or state government is going to protect them for you
Donna Dupree
Jackson County
To the Editor:
I was disturbed by the article by Becky Johnson regarding the annexation of Lake Junaluska into the town of Waynesville. It stated that all the neighboring towns and county commissioners had passed resolutions supporting it. Excuse me, but why are they supporting something that has as nothing to do with them, and really is none of their business. They are not the ones that are going to be paying additional taxes with seemingly less services. Can I send my tax bill to them? Not everyone here at the lake supports the annexation.
Also I resent being labeled as a “stable (horses or cows) of well-educated affluent residents.” It sounds as if Lake Junaluska residents are a commodity that Waynesville would like to add to its tax base, and I can assure you we are not all “affluent” as we were referred to.
What really bothers me is that an important issue that should decided between the residents of Waynesville and Lake Junaluska — since we are the ones it concerns — has now been thrown open to all the neighboring towns and the county.
Gretchen Branning
Lake Junaluska
