By Thomas Crowe • Guest Columnist

In case you didn't know it, right here in our midst we have a gem of an organization — an organization that has been fighting for clean air and water for all of us here in Western North Carolina since 1999.

As a founding board member, while I know that many folks have probably heard of the Canary Coalition (think “canary in the coal mine”), there are many that may not be aware of what it does to raise public consciousness about environmental issues and to influence public policy related to these issues.

We’re all at home, on vacation at last. Ella Fitzgerald is wishing us a swinging Christmas, as she does every December. First “Jingle Bells,” then “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” then “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” and on and on, her voice like honey butter on a hot dinner roll. Tammy and Kayden are in the kitchen baking Christmas cookies and joking about the utter foolishness of boys of all ages, including the one who keeps darting in and out of the kitchen to swipe Hershey Kisses — which are intended for the cookies — and another one who is sitting in the living room, enjoying a glass of Pinot noir while watching the cat make a punching bag out of a silver ornament hanging on one of the bottom branches of the tree. The dog is curled up on one arm of the recliner, also watching the cat, as he often does.

Serendipity: an aptitude for making significant discoveries by accident.

I have always loved that word, and I have had numerous serendipity moments. I would like to tell you about the one that happened today. I have been bemoaning the fact that I am not “a Christmas person.” Without children or family, and having the restraints of living on social security, I have come to feel left out of “the season to be jolly.” Of course, I have found that there are others who seem to be condemned to spend the holidays alone or at the Huddle House.

By Steve Ellis • Guest Columnist

As we leave this political season, which has been nasty, brutal and long, I’d like to offer some thoughts. If you doubt my description of nasty, brutal and long, I remind you of our recent controversy here in Haywood County over the newly elected tax collector.

By Bill McLarney • Guest Columnist

We humans are highly skilled and devilishly clever. We can create ball fields, schools, prisons, highways, airports, strip malls, industrial parks, reservoir lakes, landfills, farms of all kinds, Superfund sites, babies  and sustainably managed timber lands — the list goes on. One of the few imaginable things we can’t make is what has come to be called wilderness.  So just maybe we shouldn’t destroy a whole lot more of it.

Dr. Graeme Potter • Guest Columnist

As one of the practicing, board-certified OB/GYNs in the community who provide prenatal care, I’ve been honored to care for more than 800 babies born in Western North Carolina. When I moved here in 2007, I was first associated with a larger practice, and since 2008 most of these babies were delivered with my private practice, Dogwood Women’s Health, and more recently Dogwood Wellness. For much of this time, I delivered babies and did surgical procedures at Harris Regional Hospital.

I am in my office between classes, eating egg drop soup out of a little plastic container with a white plastic spoon, checking email, separating student essays into stacks, wondering whether I will be able to make it until Friday, when my next appointment with the chiropractor is scheduled. Every six months or so, my back slips out of alignment and I spend a few miserable days in varying degrees of pain, with tingling and burning sensations radiating through my torso. I gobble down muscle relaxers and handfuls of Ibuprofen, but get very little sleep until I’m properly aligned again and the pain finally abates, a square inch at a time, a minute at a time. I don’t have time for it, not with the end of the semester bearing down like the gray, oppressive sky just outside my office window, but back pain is notoriously indifferent to my plans and responsibilities.

By Melanie Threlkeld McConnell • Guest Columnist

He usually arrives in the late afternoon, always before dinner time, and he doesn’t stay more than 30 minutes or so. Sometimes I see him arriving, sometimes leaving, his old maroon Oldsmobile crawling along Shelton Street. If I’m out walking, he always waves when he sees me. I wave back. We smile. 

But mostly I see him when he is parked, his car pulled over just enough so others can pass, always next to the same row of graves on the Veterans Drive side of Greenhill Cemetery, across the street from where I live. For several years now, I have witnessed this man, likely in his 80s, sitting alone in his car, always at the same spot. Who does he visit? A late wife? A brother or sister? A child? We have never spoken, nor do I know his name, but his vigil speaks volumes. And his isn’t the only one.

My seniors are writing letters to themselves today, an activity I have students do every year just before the holidays. I will mail these letters to them, as I do every year, when they are 22, only five years in the future, but a universe away. The idea of the adults they will become receiving a letter from their former selves fires their imagination. They write and talk for the full period, describing friends, families, passions, habits to break, or, perhaps, habits to form. I watch them while they work, and on their faces is a pensiveness made of equal parts anticipation, hope, and uncertainty.

Moments, mostly the ones unplanned, are the stuff of important and lasting life memories. 

We had a great Thanksgiving day with our daughter Hannah, son Liam and family in Asheville. My wife Lori and her sister Julie had planned the dinner for some time, and all turned out as we had hoped. 

I left for the office Friday with Lori and Hannah snuggled on the couch watching an old Audrey Hepburn film because, well, that’s what my girls do on vacation days. On Saturday morning we went skiing early at Cataloochee to get in some first-of-the-season runs before the holiday weekend crowds jammed the lift lines. The snow was perfect, and we all gushed once again about how lucky we are to have such a great ski mountain so close to home.