Western Carolina University will launch a new master’s degree in chemistry this fall with a professional science concentration in natural products.

Raptors will ride into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with a birds of prey program 10 a.m. Friday, July 25, at Oconaluftee Visitor Center. 

Explore the diversity of fungi in the Southern Appalachian Mountains and their relationships with native plants through upcoming programs at the Highlands Biological Station.

Sister string duo Scenic Roots will continue the Summer Music Series at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 24, at the Marianna Black Library in Bryson City.

The Kansas-based band combines old-time mountain melodies, bluegrass drive, Irish traditions and down-home humor.  The duo is comprised of Erin Rogers on mountain dulcimer and vocals and Amber Rogers on fiddle, banjo, hammered dulcimer and lead vocals.  They take their audiences on a scenic journey as they weave their many musical influences together to create a unique blend of acoustic roots music.  They take you back in time to the days when folks gathered on front porches to play and sing together.

Traditional musician and storyteller Lee Knight will perform as part of the series on July 31.  

Free.

828.488.3030 or www.fontanalib.org/brysoncity.

Acoustic bluegrass quartet The Special Consensus will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 26, at the Stecoah Valley Cultural Arts Center in Robbinsville.

With a repertoire that features traditional bluegrass standards, original compositions, and songs from other musical genres performed in the bluegrass format, the band has released 16 recordings and has appeared on numerous National Public Radio programs, The Nashville Network and the Grand Ole Opry. The band’s 2012 release “Scratch Gravel Road” was GRAMMY nominated for Best Bluegrass Album.

A traditional mountain dinner is available in the Schoolhouse Café prior to the concert at 6 p.m. The menu includes fried chicken, potato salad and a light veggie. 

Tickets are $25 for adults, $10 for students (kindergarten-12th grade), with special dinner passes available

www.stecoahvalleycenter.com or 828.479.3364.

The Great Smoky Mountains Railroad has partnered with Rail Events Inc. and The Jim Henson Company to bring the PBS KIDS series “Dinosaur Train” July 18-20, 25-27 and Aug. 1-3, at the Bryson City Train Depot.

For this event, families will take a ride on a real train bound for the Nature Trackers Adventure Area where young guests will participate in a series of challenges. Also included are music, children’s activities, “Dinosaur Train” merchandise and an opportunity to meet your favorite T. rex, Buddy.

Tickets start at $39 per adult and $30 per child (ages 2-12). Crown Class tickets are available on a limited basis and are $59 per adult and $40 per child (ages 2-12) and $10 for infants 23 months and younger.  

800.872.4681 or www.gsmr.com.

Haywood Community College Professional Crafts Wood instructor Brian Wurst was recently elected to the board of the Southern Highland Craft Guild in Asheville. 

Wurst graduated from HCC’s Professional Crafts Wood program in 2001 and began teaching at the college in 2007. The Southern Highland Craft Guild Board of Trustees is composed of nine members, elected by the membership to serve a three-year term. The board of trustees meets four times each year, at which time the board receives committee reports, acts on Guild policy, approves budgets, reviews programming, plans for the Guild’s future and offers guidance, support and counsel to the executive director. 

The Southern Highland Craft Guild, chartered in 1930, now represents close to 1,000 craftspeople in 293 counties of nine southeastern states. The Guild holds the largest and most important collection of Appalachian craft in the world.

Western Carolina University Provost Alison Morrison-Shetlar announced a change in leadership in the College of Fine and Performing Arts. Robert Kehrberg, founding dean of the college, is stepping down from that position and will return to the faculty in the School of Music. Darrell Parker, dean of WCU’s College of Business, has agreed to also serve as acting dean of the College of Fine and Performing Arts.

“I would like to thank Dr. Kehrberg for his years of committed service as founding dean of the College of Fine and Performing Arts, a role he has held since July 1, 2007, and to Western Carolina University,” Morrison-Shetlar said. 

Prior to becoming dean, Kehrberg had served as interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences since June 2005, as well as for a brief stint in 2004. Under a reorganization plan implemented in 2007, academic programs in the arts that had been housed in the College of Arts and Sciences were relocated to the newly created College of Fine and Performing Arts.

In addition, an announcement is forthcoming about the membership of a campus committee, including its chair, that will conduct a national search to fill the vacant dean’s position on a permanent basis. 

The 5th Annual Hillbilly Woodstock will be held 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Aug 1-2 at the Maggie Valley Festival Grounds.

The Waynesville Public Art Commission will hold a dedication of a new public art piece entitled “Chasing Tadpoles” during the Frog Hop at 5 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 2, in the Historic Frog Level District.

Metalsmith William S. Rogers is one of several studios participating in the July 26-27 Jackson County Farm, Garden, & Studio Tour. The combined farm and arts tour is a first for Jackson County.

Country music megastar Travis Tritt will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 26, at the Smoky Mountain Center for the Performing Arts in Franklin.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

The race for the 11th District’s U.S. House of Representatives seat is officially off and running as the filing period closed Tuesday (Feb. 28), but a recent tour of the district found that a lot of voters are not yet interested in the November race.

By Chris Cooper

The brainchild of programmers Robert Smith (no, not the guy from the Cure) and Bill Walters, Blue Stone produces evocative, dreamy textures that skate between subtlety and head-spinning surprise. Taking cues from Enigma, Tangerine Dream and maybe some Enya and Sarah Brightman, Breathe goes for the dreamy soundtrack feel and manages to bring some world influences to the mix.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Travel writer and National Public Radio commentator Jeff Biggers spent 20 years collecting and researching the stories and historical papers that make up the backbone of his new work The United States of Appalachia.

By Michael Beadle

OK, first things first — Craig Karges is not a comedian though he makes his audiences laugh. He’s not a magician, though he uses magic. And he’s not a psychic, though psychic happenings occur in his shows.

He likes to refer to himself as an “extraordinist” — someone who demonstrates extraordinary phenomena like floating tables, metal bending, and mind reading — and shows you just how amazing life can be if you’re willing to trust your intuition.

By Michael Beadle

Art class is not just a place to make art for yourself — sometimes it’s a place to help those who are less fortunate.

“We need to help the homeless people,” said Hunter Creson, a fifth grader at Central Elementary School.

Kindergarten

The other day I went to a kindergarten class for “Career Day.” I had 15 minutes to talk about cartoons, draw some cartoons, and find out what these 5-year-olds knew about cartoons.

When I was a kid, adults talking about what they did was a very big deal for me. Especially if they enjoyed it. Nothing is more encouraging than seeing people’s eyes light up when they are talking about something they love doing.

By Michael Beadle

Sequoyah is perhaps one of the most recognizable names in Native American history — and quite rightly so. After all, he was the only person in human history to invent a language on his own without first having the skills to read or write.

The symbols he developed into a syllabary are used to identify all the syllabic sounds of the Cherokee language, a feat that helped the Cherokees record and save their culture.

By Michael Beadle

It’s a special day for 14-month-old Tawodi Clapsaddle.

Several adults including his father, Ethan, look on as the curious toddler explores tiny furniture and grabs a hold of toys in his new classroom at the Dora Reed Tribal Childcare center in Cherokee.

I pride myself on being a good cook. After 10 years of effort, I have finally mastered homemade cinnamon rolls. Entire batches have been known to disappear in seconds. I can cook suppers dripping with cheeses and overflowing with tangy marinaras. I can do Southern meals with fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy and lots of garden vegetables. I cooked for a local inn and heard guests say that the main reason they returned was the food. I don’t consider myself a gourmet by any means, but I do figure that I have learned some things about food and making it taste good.

By Michael Beadle • Columnist

The recent worldwide protests against cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Mohammed have given humanity a chance to take a closer look at itself, and it’s not a pretty sight.

Too often the opportunity for self-examination and honest discourse about our differences — whether based on culture, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation — give way to the worst humanity has to offer: ignorance, fear and hatred.

A coalition of environmental groups and local residents lost their appeal against a logging operation in the Nantahala National Forest in Jackson, Macon and Swain counties.

Residents in Macon and Jackson counties joined three regional conservation groups — Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition, Western North Carolina Alliance, and Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project — to appeal a proposed logging operation. Their top complaint was logging on Kirby Knob, located on the ridge above Savannah and Tilley creeks on the border of Jackson and Macon counties. Kirby Knob is designated as a Natural Heritage Area by the state and is one of the highest points in Jackson County.

By Marshall Frank

“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

— Ariel Durant, author and historian

Not long ago, I was encouraged by a publishing company to write a book on the infiltration of Islam inside the United States, and what effect it might have on our nation.

“This is an administration that believes in natural resource exploitation, and hang any future cost to the public owners. This is not incompetence at work (as some might say, looking at Iraq or Katrina), but ideology, and these people are very good at what they do.”

— Bill Thomas, the Conservation Chair for the Pisgah Group of the Sierra Club

Counties with national forest or park land in their borders get two types of money from the federal government: payment in lieu of taxes, known as PILT, and a 25 percent cut of logging revenue.

Those pitching the plan to sell off pieces of the national forest claim the parcels on the list are inconsequential.

The tracts on the chopping block are small, isolated islands surrounded by privately-owned land, don’t contribute to forest ecology, aren’t used for recreation, are too small for logging and are generally more trouble than they’re worth for the forest service, say those who proposed the sale.

When Dick Morgan, a fisherman from Maggie Valley, heard that two acres on Hurricane Mountain was on the chopping block in the proposal to sell off portions of the national forest, the gravity of the plan hit home.

One of this favorite fishing holes, Hurricane Creek in the Harmon Den area of Haywood County, comes off the mountain, close enough to its own headwaters to host coveted native brook trout. If sold, the tract atop Hurricane Mountain would make a trophy house site for someone, but sediment from the construction would muddy his precious Hurricane Creek, he said.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Macon County Art Association publicity manager Pat Mennenger busied herself arranging crackers on a platter while a gaggle of fellow board members unwrapped homemade hors d’oeuvres, positioning them on two tables in the back of the association’s Uptown Gallery on Main Street in Franklin.

By Chris Cooper

Duncan Sheik demonstrates a sort of understated brilliance that’s almost alarming when you hear it. Ballads slip from majestic to broken at the turn of a phrase. Grit and political outrage collide with hypnotic guitar and carefully arranged strings. The list of enthusiastic descriptions could just go on and on.

By Michael Beadle

A farm girl recounts her memories of a special calf named Rupert and a gravedigger tells of his long career around a cemetery. These two poignant and yet comical stories about birth and death feature masterful storytellers in one-person, one-act plays for one special evening of theatre and music.

Ali Farka Toure

Guitarist Ali Farka Toure has been hailed for his distinctive mix of Arabic-influenced Malian sound and American blues — often billed as the West African answer to John Lee Hooker. Toure was born in 1939 into a family from the Timbuktu region of Mali with noble roots tracing back to the Spanish Moors who first crossed the Sahara to control the salt and gold trade.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Macon County and Natural Resources Conservation Services officials have negotiated a settlement to a disputed bill submitted by engineering firm McGill Associates that came in approximately $200,000 higher than expected.

The Golden LEAF Foundation has made a $1,573,109 grant to Haywood Community College to establish an advanced machining center at its Regional High Technology Center in Waynesville.

The Downtown Waynesville Association’s Patsy Rogers was honored as a Main Street Champion in a recent Main Street awards ceremony in Salisbury, and a project recognzing DWA’s 20th anniversary was given an Award of Merit.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Sylva voters will have another go at passing liquor by the drink in this May’s primary elections.

Since 1994, Sylva has held two votes, both rejecting liquor by the drink sales. The margin of defeat decreased from 163-91 in 1994 to 220 to 209 in 2001 — numbers supporters say are indicative of changing tides and a possible groundswell of support that might carry the vote over this time.

The Land Trust for the Little Tennessee (LTLT) recently acquired a “working farm conservation easement” protecting 53 acres of rich bottomland and a half-mile of Little Tennessee River frontage on the historic Hall Farm in the Cowee community of northern Macon County.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Arthur Pitts sat in a plastic lawn chair waiting to pick up prescriptions from The Village Pharmacy in Waynesville Monday afternoon (March 13).

At 73, he is one of the nation’s many Medicare subscribers. His coverage comes through a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan, which he says has been fairly reliable so far.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

As the revamped Medicare system moves from policy to practice, pharmacies nationwide increasingly are faced with confused customers and bureaucratic red tape.

Customers come in with a prescription to be filled and for one reason or another are denied. Sometimes customers are simply trying to refill their prescriptions ahead of time, perhaps in preparation for a trip. But most often the problem is a result of human error, such as information that doesn’t match up between customers’ insurance cards and what’s in the computer system like birthdays or cardholder identification numbers.

Western North Carolina Rep. Charles Taylor, R-Brevard, has spoken out against the proposed sale of 300,000 thousand acres of National Forest land.

During U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth’s testimony on the Forest Service’s 2007 budget request hearing before the House Interior Appropriations Subcommit-tee, which Taylor chairs, Taylor said the sale was “not going to happen.”

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund has announced a three-year, $138,600 grant to renew its support for science education programs for middle and high school students on the North Carolina side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Concerned by continuing decline of the cerulean warbler, five conservation groups, including some based in Western North Carolina, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Interior Secretary Gale Norton calling for the bird’s protection.

By Michael Beadle

By day, Nancy Lux crunches numbers as a certified public accountant in Waynesville. After work, you may see her whizzing by on her road bike breaking the sound barrier.

Well, maybe not that fast, but in an all out track sprint, she can get up to 40 miles an hour — not bad for someone who took up competitive cycling about four years ago.

North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley called last week for roadless areas to be protected in the Nantahala and Pisgah national forests — in opposition to a Bush Administration move last year that lifted bans on logging and road building in roadless areas.

By Chris Cooper

It’s tricky when you find the word “hype” used repeatedly in the glowing fan reviews of a band, as in: “living up to the hype” or “easily surpassing the hype” and so forth.

By Michael Beadle

Succulent shrimp. Marinated roast beef. Creamy soups and sweet vegetables. And don’t forget dessert.

The annual Parade of Nations will showcase international folk troupes along Main Street in Waynesville on Saturday, July 26, as part of the annual Folkmoot USA extravaganza.

The free parade will begin at 10:30 a.m. at the historic courthouse and travel up Main Street through the center of downtown Waynesville for three blocks. This year’s Folkmoot festival and parade will feature the dance, music and culture of seven countries: Colombia, Turkey, Taiwan, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, Romania and Hawaii.

Folkmoot USA had a $9.2 million impact on Western North Carolina in 2013, according to an economic impact study conducted by Tom Tveidt of SYNEVA Economics.

The study included the Western North Carolina region but focused on Haywood County, showing that Folkmoot’s overnight visitors spent $6.6 million during their visit. Outside day-trippers spent an additional $89,000 in Haywood County.

Only overnight and outside day-trip visitors were included in Folkmoot’s study.