Authenticity often doesn’t lend itself to good drama
Back in 1952, when I was one of a dozen Western North Carolina high school students who wrote winning essays on the Trail of Tears, I sat with a transfixed audience in Cherokee’s Mountainside Theatre and watched T’sali die.
Support for downtown Sylva is a wise investment
Sylva town officials have OK’d a budget for the upcoming fiscal year that has just about eliminated funding for the Downtown Sylva Association (formerly SPIR). That’s a mistake the citizens of Sylva and the downtown business community should not tolerate.
Saving farms is not about nostalgia
If you think taking tangible steps to protect farmland is more about nostalgia than anything else, guess again. As change continues at its rapidly accelerating pace, having protected private land on which to grow crops could become an important part of the American economy.
The difference between co-opted and compromised
By Avram Friedman
In January of 2006, Jim Hansen, a climatologist advising the Bush Administration, said that we have “at most 10 years” to make the drastic cuts in emissions that might head off climatic catastrophe. Hansen was speaking to just one major threat to our existence on earth. Likewise, the continued use of fossil fuels and nuclear technology poses the threat of other disastrous consequences such as acid rain, excess nitrogen deposition, mercury contamination and radioactive materials saturate the environment and endanger public health for generations to come.
Look at TDA structure, and then let’s move on
After last week’s surprising meeting of the Haywood County Council of Governments regarding the tourism board, perhaps there is finally an end in sight to the controversy regarding this board.
Scared of the Dark?
By Stephanie Wampler • Columnist
The dark is a strange creature. It has so many faces.
“Dark” is how we have always described our worst times. Thousands of years ago, the phrase “the valley of the shadow of death” was coined, and it still strikes a deep chord. We can all think of some dark time in our lives.
A heated rivarly where everyone’s a winner
By Eric Larson
Where I grew up, you had to choose sides early: You were either a University of Alabama football fan or you pulled for the Auburn “War Eagles.” I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but some people were actually shot and killed over arguments that arose from this bitter, storied rivalry.
Finding a father while keeping a Dad
By Marshall Frank
Imagine having a fathers of all varieties. Step, biological and adopted? Here’s a story about such a person.
Not everyone’s life is utopia, complete with white picket fence, family barbeques and one set of happy parents. No one knows that better than Russell.
The principle is always important
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
So how far have we come?
Each year as summer dawns, when children begin counting the days until shoes become something they just have to keep track of and not wear, I continue a tradition started on June 2, 1999. That was the date the first issue of The Smoky Mountain News was published.
