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By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

About half way between Sylva and Cashiers on N.C. 107, between Jackson County’s Caney Fork and Glenville communities, is the small but busy Tuckasegee.

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By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Sylva Town Board members are expected to move forward with plans to make the Allen’s Branch community part of the town’s extra territorial jurisdiction Thursday, Aug. 17. However, several local residents are pushing for the boundary’s lines to be redrawn.

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This is about political ignorance, ignorance highlighted by the recent news about Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s apparently serious illness.

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When Waynesville leaders met earlier this month to discuss the site plan and variance requests for the proposed big-box development at the old Dayco site, it seems they spoke with a unanimous voice, urging construction of something other than an off-the-shelf retail center.

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By Chris Cooper

Here are a few things about “modern” rock and pop that I’ve found interesting (in a morbid curiosity kind of way) or just plain depressing recently. Maybe I’ve too much time on my hands. Maybe some of this will actually make sense. Who knows? Read, then discuss amongst yourselves.

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“Scoop”

The world’s been in need of a good Woody Allen film and this murder-mystery/comedy fabulously fills the void. As the magician “Splendini” Allen is a hoot, essentially playing himself with a few card tricks up his sleeves.

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David B. Cotton of Seven Lakes has been named Haywood County manager

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By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

The Town of Sylva has been awarded a $3.5 million grant from the Clean Water Management Trust Fund to purchase a conservation easement to protect its 1,088-acre Fisher Creek watershed.

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If politics makes strange bedfellows, then surely Rutherford Trace offers some curious pillow talk in the legislative halls of Raleigh and Washington, D.C.

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By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

The grassroots group United Neighbors of Tuckasegee celebrated another victory in the battle to keep a rock quarry from locating in its community when county commissioners passed a resolution Thursday night (Aug. 17) imploring state officials not to issue a permit to quarry operators.

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When Todd Berrong, a former gun fighter at Ghost Town amusement park, walked through the gate of his old stomping grounds this week, he saw a circle of six men dressed in cowboy hats and boots, gun holsters slung around their waist, complete with leather vests and chaps.

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By Michael Beadle

To some, it was a crucial military campaign early in the Revolutionary War, an unprecedented patriot force that crushed a potential British ally and paved the way for American independence and inevitable white settlements in Western North Carolina.

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By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Town aldermen are moving ahead with plans to vote the Allen’s Branch community into Sylva’s planning jurisdiction.

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Citizens in Jackson County’s Tuckasegee community should consider themselves lucky. The problem, however, is that luck doesn’t always hold.

It appears very likely now that a proposal to construct a rock quarry in this rural community is not going to fly. Jackson County enacted a high-impact industry ordinance in May 2002 that placed relatively tight regulations on quarries and mines. According to that law, the proposed rock crusher would have to be 1,320 linear feet from the nearest home.

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On-going farmland conservation efforts in the rural Haywood County community of Bethel got a boost with a $20,000 grant from the Pigeon River Fund this month.

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When Bentley Robison enrolled in the Surveying Technology program at Southwestern Community College, he never imagined he would become an actor in a film. But this summer he and three of his classmates, his instructor, his boss and another employee took part in the filming of scenes for a documentary about the Blue Ridge Parkway commissioned by the National Park Service.

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By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

 

About two hundred concerned citizens packed into a Jackson County courtroom Tuesday night to show their opposition to a proposed rock quarry to be located in the Tuckasegee community.

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The Town of Canton’s Labor Day celebrations reach fever pitch this weekend with the Paper Bowl — the football game between Haywood County rivals Pisgah and Tuscola high schools — followed by a concert on Sept. 1 featuring renegade country rocker Charlie Daniels.

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The scandals around N.C. House Speaker Jim Black, D-Mecklenburg, multiply like mushrooms on the forest floor. Yet a casual reader of the news might be inclined to think that Mr. Black was a politician in some other state.

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Too often people tend to write off efforts by the most hard-core social activists as excessive or simply impossible to achieve. These people and their movements are out of the mainstream, many say, their ideas worthy yet impractical, or that their time has not come.

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Several times a year, Park Ranger Susan Sachs heads up to the ozone garden at the Appalachian Highlands Science Learning Center with a trowel and digs up a few new shoots sprouting from the garden’s coneflower plants.

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By Chris Cooper

OK, the title of this one is a bit misleading, seeing as how Eric Johnson’s appearance at Asheville’s Orange Peel technically hasn’t happened yet.

And since I was never able to get my hands on one of those time-traveling silver DeLoreans from the Michael J. Fox movies, I can’t say that I’ve already seen what I’m sure will be a tremendous and inspiring show ... but it sure would be cool if I could.

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By Michael Beadle

What keeps people coming back year after year to the Smoky Mountain Folk Festival at Lake Junaluska each Labor Day weekend?

Maybe it’s the award-winning performers such as Marc Pruett, David Holt and Sheila Kay Adams. Maybe it’s the wholesome sounds of family string bands. Maybe it’s the chance to see Southern Appalachian clogging teams at their best.

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“Crash”

Sometimes a movie or a book can rock us like a hook to the jaw. This movie, which tells the stories of a dozen or more people as they crash in and out of one another’s lives in a 36-hour period, whaps us upside the head with a flurry of these hooks.

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The Steep Canyon Rangers, the host band of the upcoming Mountain Song Festival in Brevard, continues to carve out their position as one of the nation’s top bluegrass bands.

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By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

A new outpatient clinic designed to serve 3,200 area veterans will open in Franklin in spring 2007, Department of Veterans Affairs officials said Thursday, Aug. 24.

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By Fred Alexander • Guest Writer

There’s never been a more entertaining book for those who enjoy working in a home machine shop than Randolph’s Shop by Randolph Bulgin of Franklin. The gentle, penetrating humor so clearly captured in the text and enlarged aphorisms on nearly every page make this book a surprising delight for the general reader as well.

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According to a recently-released National Park Service study, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is not only the nation’s most visited national park, it also tops the 388 national park units in visitor spending.

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By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Assistant Attorney General David Kirkman hits the play button on a small stereo and turns up the volume. A recording of two voices fills the room at the Jackson County Department of Social Services Building. One voice is that of an elderly woman. The other, a younger male con artist.

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By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Shoes stained with red clay mud and covered with sweat and bits of hay from a morning spent cleaning out the shed on the back of the Monteith property, Sam Hale leads a one person tour through the farmstead’s nearly century-old house pointing out artifacts along the way.

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By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

About 200 concerned citizens packed into a Jackson County courtroom to show their opposition to a proposed rock quarry to be located in the Tuckasegee community.

State mining specialists from the N.C. Department of Natural Resources heard from 25 speakers at the hearing, each one detailing their reasons for wanting the state to deny the rock quarry its application for an operating permit.

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By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

On a conference table covered with blueprints perches a small paper model of a building. The paper model represents the future for the Kudzu Players, Jackson County’s community theater group.

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Recent soil and water testing in the former Francis Orchard in Haywood County have not revealed levels of contamination high enough to initiate a cleanup operation.

However, state and local health officials are encouraging residents of the Tanwoods and Orchard Estate subdivisions to limit direct contact with the soil on their properties due to elevated levels of arsenic.

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A Western Carolina University building now bears the name of a beloved community leader in public education as the WCU board of trustees unanimously approved a resolution renaming the University Outreach Center as the Cordelia Camp Building.

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By Kirkwood Callahan • Guest Columnist

As the final weeks of summer fade into the cooler days of autumn, we are reminded that voters will soon be confronted with another election – theirs to embrace or ignore.

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The month-long celebration of Canton’s centennial Labor Day festival, which had much to offer, wasn’t really about organized labor. Now that the feel-good readings, concerts and historical affairs have passed, though, it’s a good time consider the history of organized labor in this country, ponder its pending demise and try to figure out how workers will fare in the future as U.S. industry undergoes a tidal wave of changing responsibilities.

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By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

There’s money to be had. That’s what National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia told members of several area arts organizations gathered for an NEA grants workshop Tuesday, Aug. 29.

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By Chris Cooper

For all practical purposes, the County bluegrass label is also the Rebel Records label. CD’s bearing the County brand are typically (though not always) early bluegrass and old-time gems that have been saved from the clutches of obscurity, such as last year’s Curly Seckler collection That Old Book Of Mine.

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Tsali Recreation Area

One of my wife’s best household accomplishments in the last few years has been reducing the car camping gear for a family of five to an easy-to-find, easy-to-load combination of two plastic tubs, a picnic basket and tents and sleeping bags. Lori has always loved spontaneity, but with three kids and two careers, suffice it to say the attitudes we lived by pre-kids are little more than distant memories.

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By Michael Beadle

Ticket sales and attendance were both up this season for Cherokee’s long-running outdoor drama “Unto These Hills,” which saw major changes to its cast, crew and storyline.

The retooled production also found its share of detractors, who liked the old show better, according to James Bradley, executive director of the Cherokee Historical Association, which oversees the show.

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Michael Beadle, a local poet and educator, will read poetry that speaks to the mystery of nature and wildness 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, June 19, at the Haywood Public Library in Waynesville. “Call of the Wild” will feature poets such as Mary Oliver, William Stafford and Wendell Barry. It is part of the ongoing Conversations with Poetry series put on by Friends of the Library.

Free. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 828.456.5311.

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Registration is up and running for the 31st Cullowhee Native Plant Conference to be held July 16-19 at Western Carolina University.

Workshop topics include native plant propagation, nature photography and garden design tips, while field trips will include visits to areas where new plant life is emerging, canoe trips and hikes to notable plant communities. Presentations will cover growing and caring for native plants; the connections between birds, insects and native plants; managing pests; engaging children in native plants and more. 

Conference participants are encouraged to dress comfortably. On-campus housing in Balsam Hall is available and registration is open through July 11. 

Register online at www.nativeplantconference.wcu.edu or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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A summer lecture series dedicated to natural history and conservation will kick off with a talk from Dr. Lee Alan Dugatkin at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, June 19, at the Highlands Nature Center. 

Dugatkin is a biology professor at the University of Louisville, where he researches the evolution of social behavior, and is the author of the popular book Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose and The Prince of Evolution, as well as two textbooks and numerous magazine and journal articles. 

The Zahner Conservation Lecture Series serves to educate and inspire the public through a series of talks from well-known regional scientists, conservationists, artists and writers. They are held weekly at 6:30 p.m. on Thursdays at the Highlands Nature Center. www.highlandsbiological.org or 828.526.2221.

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Local food sales are surging in Western North Carolina, and agriculture is alive and well. 

Direct farmer-to-consumer food sales in the region increased nearly 70 percent between 2007 and 2012, growing from just under $5 million to more than $8 million, according to the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project’s analysis of the recently released 2012 Census of Agriculture.

Direct sales include growers selling directly to customers through farmers’ markets, co-ops or produce stands, and directly to restaurants or value-added food producers.

Statewide, however, North Carolina saw only a slight increase in direct sales; taking away data from the 23 westernmost counties results in a net decrease for the state. Per capita, WNC customers buy about three times as much food directly from farmers as do their counterparts in the rest of the state. 

Accompanying this trend is a local reversal of a nationwide loss in farm acres. Between 2007 and 2012, Western North Carolina added more than 10,000 acres of farmland while the rest of the state lost acreage. 

“The 2012 Census of Agriculture verifies what we see every day in Western North Carolina — the local food movement is growing,” said Charlie Jackson, ASAP’s Executive Director. “We just never imagined it would be this dramatic.”

According to ASAP, consumers spent over $170 million on local farm products in 2013, a 42 percent increase from the previous year.

ASAP’s own data shows that local farms and locally grown food are defining features of life for the people who live in the region. In every category of local food sales there have been large increases. More restaurants, universities, hospitals and public schools are embracing local food as well. 

“Local food is more than just a trend, it is now a movement,” said Jackson. 

www.asapconnections.org/local-food-research-center or www.appalachiangrown.org. 

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 A book by Western Carolina University biology professor and Highlands Biological Station director James Costa titled Wallace, Darwin and the Origin of Species has been published by Harvard University Press.

The book provides an in-depth look at the work of 19th-century English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who co-discovered the principle of natural selection in 1858. Costa analyzes the development of Wallace’s thinking through the lens of the naturalist’s “Species Notebook,” the field notebook and journal in which Wallace recorded his evolutionary ideas during his eight years of exploration in Southeast Asia in the 1850s. 

“This engaging and very accessible book is the most comprehensive and well-balanced account of the development of Wallace’s early evolutionary thinking ever written,” said George Beccaloni, curator and director of London’s Natural History Museum A.R. Wallace Correspondence Project.

James Costa, 828.526.2602 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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The North Carolina League of Conservation Voters has released its 2013 scorecard for North Carolina legislators, a number based on the legislators’ voting record on key environmental issues. 

This year, a record number of legislators — 82 — earned a score of zero. Among them were Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin; Rep. Michele Presnell, R-Burnsville; and Rep. Roger West, R-Marble. Previously, West and Davis had seen somewhat higher scores of 30 and 10, respectively. This is Presnell’s first term. Rep. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville, earned a score of 89, a jump from his previous high of 82.

nclcv.org.

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out tenttreeJan Eagle got a scare when a tree fell on her campsite at Cataloochee Campground during her stay at Great Smoky Mountains National Park May 30. Eagle, who lives in Tucson, Ariz., was on the first day of her 12-day stay when the tree fell where she had been sitting moments before. She had moved away from the spot and was uninjured from the incident. 

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out fishdayChildren will get a chance to learn firsthand about Cherokee fishing traditions by re-enacting a fish harvest on an ancient stone fishing weir at 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday, June 23, on the Tuckaseegee River.

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out campersOutdoor Mission Camp, an affiliate of Youth For Christ USA based in Maggie Valley, is offering a wilderness camp for Western North Carolina students, grades 6 to 12, on a donation basis, as well as a 10-week wilderness discipleship course for college-age students.

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