I remember both my grandfathers very well.  Both served in the military during WWI, and their grandfathers fought in the American Civil War. With that perspective, one can readily comprehend how quickly time moves along.

Nowadays, at age 59, I see things at flea markets that are touted as antiques, yet I may have used some of those things early in life. And all the nostalgic stories of yesteryear are easily sliced to ribbons by memories of having been there. I mention it here in regard to my mother, who died on July 15.

Jean Muirhead was elected to serve in the Mississippi Legislature in 1968, having only recently been also admitted to the state bar. At the time there were only seven women in the Magnolia state who were licensed to practice law. But it was the 60’s, and things were changing fast.

One of her first legislative attention-getters was to break with tradition in regard to the school-age kids who served as assistants in the House and the Senate. They were, they are still, called pages. But in the halcyon days of Deep South thinking, before “the nigras” began howling to be recognized as people, before Yankee television reporters could invade at any moment and send live, color images of the truth back to their anchors’ desks in New York City, life in my home state was vastly different than it is today.

It was a time of male domination. There were only seven female lawyers? Today there are hundreds! And although it never really felt like it to me at the time, as a kid growing up in the late 50’s and 60’s, repression was everywhere. (I’m not about to attempt to explain life through the eyes of a black Mississippian. I am white; but I’ve got my own stories.)

I well remember as a teenager the nagging sensation of living inside an inescapable falseness. Things were not as they seemed. On Sunday mornings I would attend Sunday school and “big church” with my family. And before “big church” began, outside the sanctuary the deacons smoked cigarettes at the front door. Sometimes the preacher would walk through the crowd and cloud of blue smoke, nodding with tight lips at his coterie of ordained sinners. He would never smoke; nor would he condemn those who did, at least not one on one. He would wait until he stood in sanctuary of his pulpit, there to harangue the entire congregation on the evils of tobacco. The deacons on the front row would then clear their throats, cough, and nod in agreement.

Women were seen only in the pews or the choir loft. They had no place on the dais. God’s word was men’s word, and females were not considered astute enough to preach and teach on the complexities of Western religion. Their place was in the home, cooking pot roast, rearing the children, pleasing their husbands.

In those days, drug stores had entrances around back labeled “Colored.” The few public restrooms available were similarly identified. If you are under the age of 30 and are reading this, you probably find it difficult to understand. But repression and segregation were the orders of the day. The world was controlled by white men, no matter how ignorant and brutish they happened to be. Boys wore flat-top haircuts, and girls wore skirts, not pants. Individualism was an arcane and unholy route, and those who took it faced universal condemnation.

In the movie “Patton,” G.C. Scott portrays the mercurial WWII general, George S. Patton. In one scene enemy airplanes begin strafing his headquarters in N. Africa. The planes make a couple of passes over the village until finally a direct hit is made on the building wherein Patton is watching the action from a window. Suddenly plaster and debris is raining down on his head. Grabbing at his revolver in its holster Patton growls, “All right now, by God, THAT’S ENOUGH!” He jumps through an open window onto the top of a truck, and then down to the ground where he stands in the street and fires relentlessly at the planes with his handheld revolver, cursing with every shot.

Well, I doubt my mother did much cursing on the Senate floor, but one day she did realize, “by God, THAT’S ENOUGH!” In glaring, shocking revolt, she appointed a female page to serve her, even though it was not girl’s week. Boys could serve as pages throughout the legislative session; but girls got the opportunity during only one of those weeks, until, that is, Jean Muirhead came to town.

Later she would disrupt the ol’ boys club even more. A bill had come to the floor that had to do with state court procedures. My mother scribbled out an amendment to the bill and took it forward to the secretary of the senate. For other reasons the bill was apparently important to the entrenched powers, the men who wanted the bill passed right then. The secretary read the amendment, which struck the word “male” from the text. If you have never been present when our lawmakers are working, you may not grasp how chaotic it sometimes is. Half the time it appears no one is paying any attention. (The other half they are not.)

So, amid the usual confusion, when the secretary called for the vote, the bill passed. It then was moved directly to the House, where, owing to the momentum of the thing, it passed there too. The Ol’ Boys realized they’d been snookered, but to resist would have been embarrassing, and probably futile. There was a chink in the armor, and because of the passage of that bill, women could at last serve on state court juries. It may seem a trifle today, but at the time it was yet another indication that in the homeland of Confederate President Jefferson Finis Davis, a new day was dawning.

(Scott Muirhead lives in Maggie Valley and can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

EDISTO, S.C. — If you’re going to roast in a record-breaking heat wave anyway, you might as well do it at the beach. Here, at least, we have the ocean breezes, a swimming pool at the resort, merciful air conditioning in the cottage we’re renting, and putt putt. No, strike that last item. Putt putt provides no respite at all from the withering heat except for the questionable shade afforded by the Spanish moss and a few scraggly Palmetto trees. It’s just that I have played so much putt putt this week, I cannot seem to form a list of any kind without including it.

Today is our last day at Edisto, so I just completed the last of 712 rounds I have played this week. If I had been forced to play one more hole, I would feed my purple golf ball to the snapping turtles and impale the model lighthouse on the fourth hole with my green putter. I would have thought my son’s obsession with putt putt, which began early last year would have waned by now, but, like a hurricane, it has only gathered strength, picking up in the gulf stream the added obsessions of ping pong and actual golf, the latter of which is almost compensation for the former. I would play golf at least five days a week if I had the money, time, and easy access to a good course, but since I don’t, I usually play once or twice per year, so it is a nice bonus when I get to come here and play the Plantation course with my son and my old buddy, Bill, who lives in Charleston and drives over for a round when we’re here.

This is our third year at Edisto, and we love its quiet, slightly goofy, almost surrealistic charm. In the offseason, there are barely enough people here for a decent game of touch football, and even in the high season, it is easy to get around, find parking places anywhere you go, and do whatever you want without enduring excruciating long lines and obnoxious, frequently intoxicated tourists. As long as you understand that you must leave your frenzied pace at the county line when you arrive and that you are not going to be dining every night in a five-star restaurant, you would probably love Edisto, unless you’re an obnoxious, frequently intoxicated tourist, in which case you’re probably not going to love anything anyway.

As an indication of the slower pace, the first adjustment you have to make at Edisto is that as long as you are there, you will be driving about as fast as the average golf cart or 12-year-old-on-a-bicycle goes, since you will be spending most of your time behind one or the other or both. There are almost as many golf carts and bicycles on the roads as there are cars, but if you come to think of your vehicle as a REALLY FANCY golf cart — with air conditioning and a radio! — and let go of the habit of racing to get everywhere you go, you’ll be fine. As the locals say, “It’s Ed-I-SLOW.” Learn it, know it, live it.

Every year, my wife grabs the real estate listings out of one of the racks in front of the Piggly Wiggly and regales me with various ads, as if it would be the most natural and obvious thing in the world for us to get into one of these places. I remind her that I am a teacher working in the state of North Carolina, which means that any second home we might be able to afford would have to be made of fabric or cardboard.

“Oh well, a girl can dream, can’t she?”

My favorite thing to do at Edisto is to walk out along the bay to watch the sun set and to see the dolphins playing about 50 yards or so off shore. I have yet to visit the bay and not see them there, and, of course, the sunsets are simply gorgeous. The kids like the dolphins, too, though they enjoy chasing the fiddler crabs after dark even more. By the time we leave, we have to use the flashlight to find our way back to the access, and both kids are coated in a film of sand and sea spray — there is no crevice, no nook, no cranny that the sand will not find, and no matter how thoroughly we shower and clean, there is always some residue. For weeks afterward, sand from the beach will spill out of shoes, hats, toys, and clothes, little souvenirs of our vacation.

If we can’t yet afford that place on Edisto, at least we can take a little of it back with us.

(Chris Cox is a writer and teacher who lives in Haywood County. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

The basic issue is safety. That’s it, plain and simple.

While one Jackson County commissioner has questioned the need for R-5000, a new access road for Southwestern Community College’s Jackson Campus, the board of trustees and I contend that not only is there a driving need, it accelerates daily.

From a single building in 1964, the Jackson Campus has expanded to six buildings, plus the new Early College facility built last summer. The same road that served a few dozen students back in 1964 now serves a soaring enrollment of 3,668 college students, plus faculty and staff. Add to that the 155 high-schoolers at the Early College.

With only one way in and out for the entire campus, a new road is needed not just to alleviate congestion, but to mainly ensure safety. During an emergency or the need for quick evacuation, a single road is a handicap.

Back in 1994, 30 years after the campus opened, the need for a new road was included in the SCC Master Plan. Developed by Moore and Associates of Asheville, the plan suggested the college consider other points of access to campus since there is only one way in and out. A possible area, they suggested, was from N.C. 107, with the proper right-of-way into the back property at its most southeast point.

That’s 17 years ago. Our board realized then, even before 9/11 or incidences like Virginia Tech, that we needed to protect the safety of our students.

In the 1990s the college began looking at alternatives. On July 28, 1998, then-President Cecil Groves presented aerial photos of the SCC campus to the board and discussed the development of a potential direct access road to N.C. 107. Since the college is built on a hillside, college officials decided the best alternative would be a loop road around campus with direct access to NC 107. In addition to providing safety for  campus, it would help eliminate congestion at the N.C. 107 and N.C. 116 intersection.

On Feb. 12, 1999, the SCC Board of Trustees approved a plan of property acquisition, as outlined within the revised college master plan. Maps and aerial shots of a proposed route at the back of campus linking to N.C. 107 were included in that 1999 revised master plan. On Oct, 15, 1999, the State Board of Community Colleges approved SCC’s property acquisition plan, including the N.C. 107 access plan for a second means of access to the campus.

Following the state board approval, in 2000 we contacted various agencies outlining the college’s property acquisition plans and the N.C. 107 access road. Among these were David Gourley, real property agent, State Property Office; Wayne McDevitt, secretary, N.C. Department of Environmental and Natural Resources; Ron Watson, division engineer, N.C. Department of Transportation; and Jay Denton, chairman of the Jackson County Board of Commissioners.

It has taken the college 10 years to acquire the three parcels of property necessary to build the road. During those 10 years the agencies involved were kept informed of our plans and progress. Also during those 10 years the college secured legislative action and funding to relocate the N.C. Division of Forestry offices. A planning grant was received in fiscal year 2007-08, with a construction allocation awarded fiscal year 2008-09.

I have been involved with this project since day one and I can tell you it’s been a slow, methodical process, certainly not fast-tracked at all.

Dr. Groves, now president emeritus, said it well in this brief statement, “What we had was an overwhelming need, but with 10 years of tireless planning we developed a workable solution, along with the funding to fix the problem.”

Just down the road Smoky Mountain High School, situated on a hillside with a single road in and out, faced a similar situation. DOT funds were secured to build a second road for the high school. The high school students on our campus, as well as our college students, deserve the same safety factor. We have tried not to burden our commissioners and local taxpayers, and that’s why we worked diligently to secure DOT funding for SCC’s new road.

(George Stanley is the SCC Project Manager for this project.)

Out running early this morning, I was struck by the colors of summer found in the fields along Fairview Road in Sylva. Purple clover, the unique blue of chicory, Queen Anne’s lace providing intermittent touches of white — the fields are lovelier than the most carefully designed perennial garden.

British gardener Mirabel Osler, in her book of essays A Gentle Plea for Chaos, calls on us to intentionally seek wildness in our own gardens. Osler appeals for “controlled disorder,” a pairing of words I like very much indeed.

But controlled disorder can be harder to achieve than one might think.

That’s because it involves risk. And it requires creative ability, and ways of seeing that not all of us have been equally blessed with. All of us, however, can aspire to add touches of wildness to our creations, or let others do so even when we cannot.

It is through failures that much fun comes; or at least, that’s what I’ve experienced in various life roles as gardener, musician and writer. And the occasional, seemingly out-of-the-blue flashes of success can be heady indeed. Those moments provide incentive to keep trying to reach new heights, when the words actually say what you meant, or the music sounds like you hoped it would, or the garden looks like you thought it would look — but better somehow, because there now exists something uncontrived and original. It is your own creation.   

The greatest pieces of music, the finest paintings, the pieces of literature most of us consider works of genius — all are stamped with individuality and wildness.

The critic Harold Bloom described this better than I can. He wrote about “strangeness, a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange. … When you read a canonical work for a first time you encounter a stranger, an uncanny startlement rather than a fulfillment of expectation.”

Even in news writing there can be wildness, though we are seeing increasingly diminished willingness among journalists to take risks — failure these days can mean getting booted out of the field altogether, because there aren’t a lot of newspaper jobs out there anymore.

Several people recently have asked me whether I like writing for The Smoky Mountain News better than I liked writing for the Asheville Citizen-Times, where I spent 10 years as a regional reporter, investigative reporter and editor/manager.

The answer is complicated, but it’s directly connected to what I’m trying to write about in this column — there is more freedom with The Smoky Mountain News to experiment, and I love that. I can put a bit of controlled disorder into my writing, take risks and venture beyond my own skill level, even get a little wild. Sometimes I fail; in fact, often I fail — but I believe that failure has value. It is real, you see.

For instance, I never, ever used four-letter words in the Citizen-Times. I quoted someone using the “f” word repeatedly, however, in a recent article for The Smoky Mountain News, and I did so without feeling the least bit apologetic or ashamed. The story was shocking and the word belonged, and I was pleased everyone at the paper seemed to understand that was so.

I never used first person when writing a news article for the Citizen-Times. I don’t a lot even here, but I do if it seems right — playing the omniscient narrator sometimes grows old. Who exactly do we think we are fooling, anyway? Obviously real people write news articles, and sometimes it feels comfortable to acknowledge that truth.

I never was sarcastic, or ironic, in my news stories for the Citizen-Times. Sometimes I’m too sarcastic in articles for The Smoky Mountain News, and there have been occasions when I realize (oops, too late, it’s already been printed) that I went too far.

I’m taking risks because I told myself that this time around, I’d do things differently. It’s not about my having fun at someone’s expense, I promise you that. I decided, the moment I came back to newspapering after a three-year hiatus, that I’d write what really takes place or I’d leave the field again, and for good and forever this time.

What does that mean? Well, it means that if Commissioner Joe Blow says something stupid, I don’t cover for him anymore — he gets to look stupid in the newspaper, too. Or, if people are clearly trying to undermine or sandbag something they’ve agreed to do, I try now to spell that out, and not pretend everything made sense and everyone is getting along when, in fact, it didn’t and they aren’t.

All that said, there is much I do miss about working for a larger organization. And probably what I miss most dearly is the opportunity to work with a variety of different writers and editors, all bringing their individual creative abilities to the task at hand. I learned a lot rubbing shoulders with people who saw things differently, or had been trained in doing things another way than I had been trained.

We are a much smaller staff at The Smoky Mountain News, meaning there isn’t a lot of opportunity for being exposed to different methods of presenting, reporting or editing. By now, we all are pretty much familiar with each writer’s gee-whiz writing tricks, personal idiosyncrasies and general ways of doing things.

But there is great opportunity at this small, independently owned newspaper for an individual writer to take risks, to enjoy controlled disorder and even to be a bit strange — and for that, I’m very grateful indeed.

(Quintin Ellison can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

If you read the information Duke Energy is spreading throughout the news media in its vast public relations campaign, you’d be led to believe the request for a 15 percent rate increase (17 percent for residential ratepayers) is a result of meeting new environmental regulations, especially in building the new “state-of-the-art” coal unit at Cliffside.

This is a distortion of reality that should be understood by all public officials, news outlets and members of the rate-paying public. I commend the Macon County Commissioners and the Franklin Board of Alderman for being the first public officials to take a stand against this round of rate hikes. Hopefully others will follow in short order.

This is the second of three rate hikes Duke Energy will be requesting for its expansion at Cliffside. For those who have not followed this issue closely, the energy from this plant is not intended to meet the energy needs of North Carolinians, where demand has been steadily declining due to efficiency and conservation measures in the past decade.

Rather, the Cliffside project is part of Duke Energy’s plan for expansion into new competing territories in other states. For example, in 2009 Duke expanded by signing a contract with five electric cooperatives in South Carolina to provide up to 1,500 megawatts of new capacity. That’s more than twice the capacity of the new unit at Cliffside, indicating an already existing large surplus of generating capacity for Duke Energy.

In addition, the new Cliffside hardly represents “state-of-the-art” coal technology, not even by the industry’s own standards. So-called “clean coal” technology was previously defined by the industry as Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) technology in which clean-burning methane gas is the ultimate fuel extracted from the coal prior to burning. IGCC units would in addition, supposedly, allow for the capture and sequestration of CO2 or greenhouse gases.  

Duke Energy chose not to build an IGCC plant at Cliffside (perhaps because the practicality did not live up to the industry hype), but instead is constructing an old-fashioned, dirty, pulverized coal-burning power plant that will release into our air sulfur-dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, hydrogen chloride, cadmium, barium, dioxins and dozens of other hazardous and toxic chemicals. While it’s true that the new plant will reduce the output of most of these pollutants from what older plants produced without emission controls, the poisons of Cliffside’s operation will continue to add to the buildup of toxins already permeating our environment, including and especially mercury. The new unit at Cliffside will do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions, and in fact will double its previous output of greenhouse gases to approximately 6 million tons per year, or as much as would be produced by a million automobiles.

The continued use of coal derived from mountaintop removal mining is devastating a huge geographical region in Appalachia, its people, its history and its water supply. And the toxic coal ash pile from Cliffside’s operation will build as a catastrophe in waiting.

There is nothing responsible about the Cliffside project and ratepayers in North Carolina should not finance this project through outrageously high rate increases. The state should instead be pursuing policies that will result in further reductions in energy consumption and the transformation to clean, safe, less expensive renewable technologies as quickly as possible.

Write to the NC Utilities Commission Chairman Edward Finley and request multiple hearings throughout the state on Duke Energy’s application for a rate increase: Chairman Edward Finley, NC Utilities Commission, 4325 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, N.C., 27699-4325; or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; or call 919.733.6067.

(Avram Friedman is executive director of the Canary Coalition, a clean air advocacy group. he can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

I’ve been volunteering with the Folkmoot USA International Dance Festival for about 15 years. It’s one of the most culturally rich, unique events in these mountains. It was going on before the Iron Curtain was raised, bringing dancers from those former communist countries to the U.S. for some eye-opening adventures.

Today, as terrorists lurk in shadowy places around the world and political divisions remain firmly entrenched, the message of this festival remains as strong as ever: people are more alike than they are different, and overcoming political and religious differences isn’t all that difficult when you focus on sharing instead of dividing. For the 28 years that Folkmoot has been in existence, politics has never won out over the sharing of traditions.

During the planning for many of the festivals in past years, some of us on the Folkmoot Board had nagging worries in the back of our minds that some countries would simply not get along. But it never happens, at least not for any kind of geopolitical reasons.

No, the worst we’ve had in 28 years are disagreements over who should do the finale, complaints about beds not being comfortable or rooms being too hot. Some of these are problems that have to be dealt with — and thank goodness for the Folkmoot staff — but these aren’t game-changers.

Folkmoot is an opportunity to forget politics and put xenophobic notions aside, and I would encourage everyone reading this to do just that and enjoy one of the performances happening in your community over the next week or so (July 22-31). You won’t be disappointed.

•••

I wrote a story for this year’s Folkmoot Guidebook about the history of the festival. While doing the research, I learned about an early attempt to bring Folkmoot under the tent of Bele Chere, Asheville’s huge street festival.

Charles Starnes, a former Tuscola High School principal and Folkmoot volunteer, was a close friend of Dr. Clint Border, who founded the festival. After Folkmoot’s first festival in 1984, it became very popular very quickly. Asheville’s own Bele Chere started in 1979, and was a small event compared to what it has become today.

Starnes told me — and Brenda O’Keefe of Joey’s Pancakes confirmed — that early on Bele Chere organizers contacted Folkmoot about bringing the festival to Asheville and running it in conjunction with Bele Chere. The idea was that the two festivals together could turn into something really big.

According to both Starnes and O’Keefe, Dr. Border was absolutely adamant that moving the festival to Asheville was not even open to discussion. Folkmoot, he said, would always be based in Haywood County. Twenty-eight years later, it is still here and is very successful.

As for Bele Chere, well, it did not need Folkmoot to thrive. It has become Asheville’s signature event and one of the largest street festivals in the country.

•••

And now for a little politics.

The current debate about debt and spending in the U.S. has highlighted a fundamental flaw of democracy: can people vote against their self-interest in the name of shared sacrifice?

As democracies across Europe — Ireland, Portugal, Greece, and now Italy — teeter on the verge of insolvency, governments are struggling to find a middle ground. Those on opposing sides of the political divides are whipping up their constituents, just like here in the U.S.

Many people have seen this coming and been writing about it for years. We have created social welfare programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — that have become very expensive. The senior citizens who get those benefits aren’t about to support cuts. Military spending here is huge, but those states and communities who depend on military bases don’t want them downsized or closed. The wealthy don’t want to pay more taxes, but they are the ones who can afford it. And on and on.

To fix these problems, I have to vote for leaders who will vote against my self-interest. So do you. The big question is whether any democracy can take this step, where the majority votes against what will benefit them in the short run.

(Scott McLeod can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

With the weather so hot and sticky, it’s hard to grasp that now is the time to start preparing the fall garden.

I, for one, am glad. I’ve always hated summer gardening, which for organic gardeners poses particular difficulties. Heat and moisture equals blight and disease, and those are exactly the weather conditions summers usually cook up for us here in Western North Carolina. Then, of course, there is the unending war with legions of summer insects bent on destroying whatever might be left.

Additionally, as I’ve written previously, the garden got away from me this year. It is a weedy mess, totally unlike any garden I’ve ever had before. I blame the shock to my system of having to actually work again at a newspaper — I believed those days were long in my past, and yet I awoke to find myself once again a reporter. Laboring under deadlines, attending municipal and county board meetings, conducting endless interviews on an endless number of subjects, it’s no wonder (or so I reassure myself) that I haven’t devoted the time needed to the garden. Why, it’s amazing I even get out of the bed some mornings.

But the changes of seasons can bring rebirth, and I’m now planning a fall garden that will redeem my summer failures. I will be a phoenix rising from the ashes; or something like that, anyway.

• I am slightly behind on the calendar of when I usually start my Brussels sprouts plants for later transplanting, but it’s not too late yet. I’ll start them when I also plant broccoli and cabbage, this week or this weekend at the latest.

• This week or next is also the time to direct seed rutabaga in the garden. This is a slow growing plant, and it needs ample time to reach its full potential before cold weather sets in.

• Beets, too, can go into the garden now, as can additional carrots. The difficulty is germination — if the rains let up, then I’ll need to use shade cloth to keep the soil from drying out too quickly after I seed. Or, you can use a board — seed, water well, lay a board on top, and be sure to check each day for signs of germination. When you see the tiny green sprouts, remove the board, which helps to trap moisture in the ground so that this small miracle can take place.

• I tend to plant my fall greens later than is traditionally done in WNC. Many local gardeners will start seeding turnips, mustard and so on in mid-August. I generally wait until the first week of September, because it seems to help with insect control. Besides, unless you are a market farmer, what’s the rush? You don’t want a cooked mess of greens anyway until you can eat them alongside a bowl of pintos and a slice of cornbread, and that culinary delight is only enjoyable with a bit of frost on the ground.

• In late August I direct seed winter radishes, such as the black Spanish radish and daikons.

• From late August through the first couple of weeks in September is a good time to plant Chinese cabbage and other Asian greens such as mizuna and tatsoi. More on those, and soon — I’m a big fan of Asian plants, and each year I’ve tried a few new ones, and rarely been disappointed.

(Quintin Ellison can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Redistricting is always political, and voters on both sides have to accept that. The party with a majority will get districts that it hopes will advance its ideology.

But the recently released map for our 11th Congressional District has ripped out the cultural and business heart of Western North Carolina. By taking a large part of Asheville out of the 11th, we’re left with a district lacking a center, merely a collection of mountain counties strung along the spine the Smokies.

Look, there’s a lot most of us don’t like about Asheville. Most of us in this part of the state prefer small towns and isolated mountains and we don’t like traffic and crowds. Some of us can’t stand the very idea of malls and mega shopping centers.

Still, it is the metropolis of our region. We go there for festivals, we go there to shop for big-ticket items, to attend concerts and other cultural events. We use its hospitals. Many of us go there everyday to work, returning to our small towns every evening.

It gives our district more clout to have a vibrant, growing city whose name constantly comes up around the country as one of the best places to live and raise a family.

On the other side of the coin, I imagine folks in Asheville might be more upset than we are. Now they have to share a representative with Gastonia, a former mill town that has become, more or less, a suburb of Charlotte. There’s little hope that a representative from that new Piedmont district will actually know anything at all about Asheville, which is a mountain town through and through.

Redistricting is difficult and complicated, no doubt, and there is no mandate to think about a region’s culture and history. But Asheville and all of Buncombe County should be in the district that includes the seven western counties. In this case, we belong together, and I hope the lawsuit challenge that is sure to come succeeds.

•••

A report sent to the General Assembly last month recommended — for all intents and purposes — that all three community colleges west of Buncombe merge administrative functions with a larger institution. This is just a bad idea that hopefully will be shelved.

The report’s intent was to find ways to save money at the state’s community college system. That’s a great idea, but unfortunately it is those of use in smaller, rural counties that would suffer from the proposal.

According the report, community colleges with less than 3,000 full-time equivalencies (which is sort of like a full-time student) would merge many of its accounting and administrative positions with the larger colleges. That means no president and no deans locally. Haywood, Southwestern and Tri-County community colleges all have less than 3,000 full-time equivalencies.

Right now, community colleges get 27 percent of their funding from the counties where they are located. Cut the staff, get rid of the local presidents and move staff to Asheville, and you can kiss that money good bye. The local county commissioners would not pay, I’ll guarantee it. Then the savings would disappear.

Plus, community colleges by definition are supposed to serve and reflect the communities where they are located. Without local leaders, they would lose that local focus and the ability to work closely with the local business community.

Finally, this fundamental change would only save a pittance: $5 million out of a $1.2 billion state budget. That’s less than one half of 1 percent. That speaks, it seems to me, to a pretty efficient operation.

Our community colleges are going to take their budget cut from this General Assembly session and make do as best they can. But this merger plan is just a bad idea that would do much more harm than good.

(Scott McLeod can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

To carve Asheville out of the 11th Congressional District is completely irrational.

My campaign will work with all Western North Carolina Democrats to fight this gerrymandering. We’ll oppose it on every level. We look forward to supporting a united legal challenge. And, I urge Re. Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, to join us in this.

Asheville is, after all, the economic hub of this region with 40,000 daily commuters who follow the river valleys to work each morning. Asheville is the medical center for the region for the same reason: rapid transportation can be a matter of life and death. Asheville is the legal nexus as well, with its Federal Courthouse serving all of the western counties and is also the banking and business core of the region.

More compelling is the fact that fully one third of the residents of WNC live in Buncombe County!

The French Broad River inexorably links Transylvania, Henderson, Buncombe and Madison counties. The economic ties of our region are all a function of our mountain watersheds. The Land of Sky Regional Council, which includes those four counties, is not an artificial consruct — it is a planning district dictated by geographic reality. Our railroads and highways follow the river valleys due to geographic necessity as well.

By jamming Asheville into the 10th Congressional District, and adding Avery, Burke, Caldwell, Mitchell and Wautauga counties to the 11th, the Raleigh Republicans have removed the region’s media center, the source for the news that lets people see what government is doing in order to cast intelligent votes.

For voters in those north-central counties, Winston-Salem and Charlotte are the major media sources, while Morganton and Hickory are the closest economic centers. Meanwhile, Asheville’s news media will suddenly be reporting on congressional news related to Gastonia, which is clearly a part of the greater Charlotte metropolitan area.

The GOP can pat itself on the back, believing that its cookie-cutter tomfoolery is long deserved payback for past Democratic sins, but what they’re doing is showing us that all they care about is power — not the people of our state. They don’t want the people of WNC to have a representative in Washington who stands up for our regional interests. That should be a matter of concern to Republicans and Democrats alike in these mountains. They don’t want us to have a champion in Congress who will fight for our jobs, our health and our lives.

Of course, their stated goal is to create another “safe” Republican seat in the 11th District. But contemplating that outcome should also be extremely unsettling to WNC voters.

Republicans have long been trying to scuttle Social Security and Medicare. They are the same people who brought us NAFTA, CAFTA and WTO deals with China — sending  our jobs out of the country. The Republicans’ apparent overarching goal is to divert American wealth to the wealthiest, while middle class workers in WNC lose their jobs, their homes and their health care.

This is the time for us to unite as Democrats — blue dog, yellow dog, middle of the road. We are share one common bond — we are Mountain Democrats!

Let’s show Raleigh Republicans that we may vary in our political opinions, but when our home turf is threatened we come together to defend our mountain homes.

I feel that challenging these maps constitutes an absolute obligation to my constituents, both as an Asheville City Council member and as a candidate in the 11th Congressional District. These western mountains are my home, yesterday, today and tomorrow.

(Cecil Bothwell is an Asheville city councilman and a Democratic candidate for the 11th Congressional District seat now held by Rep. Heath Shuler. The proposed redistricting map released last week  would take Asheville out of Shuler’s 11th District.)

There is much myth and lore connected with beekeeping, such as telling the bees when the master has died so they won’t abscond after his or her death, and a method of swarm control called “tanging.”

Research studies have debunked the virtues of tanging, or beating a stick against something metal to drum down the bees. There is no scientific evidence, zippo, to support people who believe the folk tale that you can bring home a swarm.

I’m a modern girl and all, but I flat-out believe in tanging — and I nearly brought a swarm of bees down on myself this past Saturday doing it. I learned tanging from local guys. They learned to tang from their parents and grandparents, who in turn were taught tanging by their parents and grandparents, and so on — this is an unbelievably old practice, a method of bee husbandry that dates to antiquity.

My reading has muddled up my memory, and I frankly am unsure if anyone locally uses the word tanging — more likely, they just told me to beat on a washpan with a stick when there was a bee swarm. Lacking something metal at hand, I’ve seen these guys drum on empty wooden hives (called “gums” by oldtimers), and on empty five-gallon buckets. Bees, apparently, aren’t particular in this one respect.

So on Saturday, at about 10 a.m. just when it was starting to get really hot, I was working in the garden when I heard the familiar roar, looked up, and saw the bees taking off from the hive. It surprised me, frankly, because this is sourwood season and they ought to have plenty of work to keep them happy and focused. But bees, as I’ve mentioned before, do whatever they please, others’ wishes and needs and limited time to deal with swarms be damned.

This particular swarm was determinedly headed west, over the house and away from me, seemingly intent on settling high out of reach in a cherry tree. I’ve lost at least four swarms this year, and I wanted at least a shot at putting up this one — tanging was the only thing I knew to do.

A swarm does not move particularly fast. The bees have gorged on honey before leaving the hive, I suppose to help sustain them while they move in to a new home, and they fly heavy in the air. Watching a swarm of bees has a mesmerizing quality that is different from anything else I know, and you can get lost in following the languid flight of individual bees who are caught up in the tornadic motion of the swarm — the swarm seems to form a huge single organism. The noise, too, lulls and draws you in — that hypnotic roar, the noise of thousands of bees sounding together, a chorus like none other.

I broke the spell, however, and looked around for something to beat on. I noticed a metal watering can. After emptying the water, I started hitting it with a stick. I drummed, and the large swarm seemed to hesitate in the air; then it slowly returned in my direction and began revolving more or less just over my head. They dropped down, and I went into a crouch, worried I’d get a drive-by sting or two.

After several minutes, the swarm settled into a nearby, small tree, me still drumming away on my watering can. I wish I could tell you that I went and collected the swarm, but after a short time they simply went back into the hive — a false start, probably indicating the queen wasn’t able, or willing yet, to go.

Still, I’m left as always believing in tanging, research findings to the contrary. Is it the rhythm that brings them down? I don’t know, but it works.

(Quintin Ellison can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)