Imagine how this scenario could work, if it was a reality: a state Department of Transportation in lockstep with the wishes of the state’s citizenry, an organization that went to great lengths to work with towns, counties and other entities to try to help reduce congestion by managing traffic with an eye toward quality of life instead of simply moving more cars.

By Dawn Gilchrist Young

“ ... and all day I turn over my own best thoughts,

each one as heavy and slow to flow

as a stone in a field full of wet and tossing flowers.”

— Mary Oliver

“Writing keeps me company living here by myself.”

— Zora Walker

What does a woman of 74 do with her spare time when her husband dies and her grown children all have lives of their own?

The same popular culture that some have alleged to produce yet another mass murderer wasted no time in trying to explain him to us in the hours and days following the massacre at Virginia Tech last week.

The expansion announced last week by Smoky Mountain Biofuels and Mountain Energy will help place Western North Carolina at the forefront of a homegrown energy industry that holds great promise for the region and the country.

Call me a little superstitious, but I defend my right to harbor a few fears. That’s why, after breaking my ankle and wearing a cast for nine weeks, I waited almost eight weeks after the darn thing was off before writing about the experience. The doctor says I’m healed, but the last thing I wanted to do was slip up — literally or figuratively — and find myself back on crutches.

Thank goodness for Don Imus.

After 25 years of gutteral lyrics in the name of entertainment, none of which was protested, banned, boycotted or demonstrated against by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the Imus faux pas has finally brought trash music to a level of national outrage where it should have been long ago.

Swain County native Heath Shuler is doing his home county a favor by putting together a powerful congressional coalition to support a cash settlement in lieu of building the controversial North Shore Road. Truthfully, there’s little chance that this road was ever going to get built, so taking a $52 million payout seems a much smarter option than holding out hope that a decades-old promise would ever be kept.

By Carl Iobst

Ed Stephens of Dillsboro recently had a problem with the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad. According to the Sylva Herald, Stephens said the railroad is abandoning old train cars on his property. Stephens “called them and asked them to remove the cars.”

He’s on record, and we for one will hold him to it: Haywood County’s new solid waste director says anything that “can be recycled should be.”

It’s not clear what Swain County commissioners are hoping to accomplish by turning over to the District Attorney’s office the investigation into the way the sheriff’s office handled excess meal money, but there’s evidence that a long list of people could be implicated if this probe is taken seriously.