HCS adopts shortened quarantine policy

Haywood County Schools will follow new COVID protocol, referred to as “5+5 COVID Guidance,” after a presentation from the Haywood County Health Department during a special called meeting Monday night. 

Embracing solitude: Retiree finds peace in yearlong quarantine

In the pre-pandemic world, life was a constant swirl of activity for Lynn Jones and her husband. 

Rub Some Dirt In It

By Moe Long

It’s time to be the hero in your own life

Guys aren’t supposed to sit and wait. Guys are supposed to take action, to get things done.

Yet we seldom get the chance. Most weeks, most months — shoot, most decades — we try to be kind and do what we can.  Sully Sullenberger had been flying for domestic airlines for 29 years: dragging his flight case through terminals, sitting in a pilot’s seat that was still warm from the last guy, flying all over the country, all day long, just to end up in Cincinnati.  Then on a cold January afternoon, about two minutes after he left LaGuardia for two-hour trip to Charlotte, he had a broken airplane over Manhattan.

The days just drone by, listlessly

I am thinking of a scene in the movie “Fargo” that captures exactly how I am feeling a couple of weeks into quarantine. The bad guy needs to bury a suitcase full of money somewhere on a long stretch of highway, so he pulls the car over, grabs the suitcase, and walks over to a barbed-wire fence that runs along the road as far as the eye can see.

Takeout ordering the new norm for local restaurants

It’s Saturday evening at The Sweet Onion in downtown Waynesville. Normally during the time of year, the dining room and bar counter would be packed with locals and tourists alike, servers zipping around in every direction, the open-air kitchen buzzing with orders atop a fiery grill. 

From Wuhan to Western North Carolina: A Coronavirus Pandemic timeline

When the first rumors of a strange new contagious pneumonia-like illness began circulating in China late last fall, few could have imagined that the coronavirus outbreak would grow to become the global pandemic that it is today. 

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