The phones we carry everywhere contain or have access to more information than the largest libraries in the world, many times more. It’s the same with our laptops, tablets, desktops or whatever digital device one prefers. All the collected knowledge of science, literature, mathematics and the arts that humans have amassed since the dawn of civilization is right there at our fingertips. 

If I could go back now and talk to my 12-year-old self, I’d tell him a few things. First, most of these grown-ups that you think are awful are, in fact, pretty awful, so try to relax a little. Second, you know those kids in your school that you can’t stand, the really mean ones? It doesn’t turn out so well for most of them. It turns out that karma’s a thing.

Lately I’ve been pondering the meaning of life. If everyone took their very best skills and traits and put those into the universe, think how amazing the world could be. I’ve also been considering what the future holds for my two boys and other children. With melting glaciers, yelling politicians, sports heroes dying in helicopter crashes and bizarre, deadly viruses spreading across the globe, it’s a wonder our youngest generations wake up hopeful each day.

I’m not comfortable writing this, and that’s why I have to write it. In the past three weeks, I’ve given three different people advice that goes against my belief in the value of courage. 

One of these people is a friend whose family pet was shot and killed in her driveway for no reason except that the young man who shot it had a gun and an opportunity. The other is a couple, also friends, who object to Sylva’s prominently displayed Confederate statue. In each separate conversation, I advised my friends to remain quiet because, as I told them, “Speaking out on these issues will change nothing, and you will only suffer if you try to change a culture.” I do believe that the culture of Jackson County, though in so many ways rich and worth preserving, is still very much insular, blindly protective of those we consider “our own,” and equally blind to the continued harm being done by romanticizing and whitewashing a flawed past. I believe this, and yet I would give my friends the same advice today as I did a few weeks ago, and it is because they are not from here. 

By Mark Jamison • Guest Columnist | Some have called it the death of irony, the moment when Kenneth Starr, he of special counsel fame, stood in the well of the Senate and bemoaned the possibility that impeachment had become a partisan political tool. Then again, the gaslighting and Eddie Haskell-like pronouncements of cognitive dissonance by folks like Sen. Mitch McConnell have become normalized to the point where many are no longer horrified, just merely curious at what the scriptwriters of this perverse reality show that stands in for American political culture will come up with next. The emperor may have no clothes, but in the valley of the willfully blind who cares to notice?

When I came into the bedroom last Sunday afternoon, Tammy had this look on her face.

“What is it?” I said.

“Kobe Bryant’s dead,” she said.

By Steve Wall • Guest Columnist | Why do we even need any medical insurance programs or Social Security?

Well, because about 500 elderly folks in Haywood County are in nursing homes with their fees paid by Medicaid. And over 4,500 of our community’s children are enrolled in Medicaid. Virtually anyone over 65 gets their medical bills paid primarily paid by Medicare. And most people over 65 depend on Social Security to escape the poverty that threatened their  aging family members before 1936 and President Roosevelt. 

Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.

— Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of the United Kingdom

“Let me put a face on this for you.”

So uttered Natalie Henry Howell in a gut-wrenching presentation to Haywood County Commissioners and a roomful of Second Amendment Sanctuary supporters on Tuesday night, Jan. 21. 

It’s been a somber few days since the world learned of the death of Kobe Bryant, his teenage daughter, Gianna, and the seven other passengers on that helicopter in Calabassas, California. Hearing of the tragedy and reading the coverage made me realize that mortality stops for no one, not even a sports hero as big as Kobe.

By Martin Dyckman • Guest Columnist | No one in America should be above the law, least of all the person most responsible for enforcing it. But there he is: Donald Trump, preening and posturing and scoffing at the Constitution like some latter-day Mussolini, his conceit inflamed by the Justice Department’s policy that a sitting president can’t be indicted.

Nothing in the Constitution or any law Congress made says so.