Kathryn Kirkpatrick and Annie Woodford will share poems from their latest collections, "Creature" and "Peasant," at 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. 

Recently, a teacher of history asked me, a former teacher of history, about ways to bring history alive for high school students. My response hasn’t varied in 40 years: “Make connections.” Students — and the rest of us as well — need to remember we live today with the consequences of events like the signing of the Declaration of Independence or the Battle of Gettysburg.

One of the best things about the East Coast is the fall. Last November, I made a trip to California and was surprised to find mild weather and a nameless time. There’s a reason it’s called the place where seasons never change, and I realized then and there, I was an East Coast girl through and through. 

Fifty years ago this year, I dropped out of graduate school and my studies in medieval history, and set off in a different direction. I’ve never forgotten the thought that came rolling along right behind my escape from academia: “Now I can finally read whatever I want.” 

(Editor’s note: This is the second part of Anne Bevilacqua’s review of “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order.” The first part can be found at smokymountainnews.com.)

Until 2014, no U.S. adversary, including Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, had managed to achieve even 60% of American GDP. In that year, China became the first, and did so “quietly,” says Rush Doshi, political scientist and author of “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order.”

(Editor’s note: This is the first section of a two-part review. See next week’s SMN for the second part.)

Does China seek to replace the United States in its position as global leader? This is the question that political scientist Rush Doshi answers in “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order” (Oxford University Press, 2021, 339 pp). 

Several years had passed since I’d last hunted with any enthusiasm. I’d go out into the field, find some game, and take home a few trophies, but the old thrill, that sense of anticipation and joy, had gone missing in action. I began to suspect my days of excitement and pleasure while on the hunt were at an end. 

Recently, I read an article about a Tolstoy short story. Curious if I had it, I pulled out Tolstoy’s, “Master and Man and Other Stories” (Penguin Classics, 2005, 293 pages) and found it. It was very short so I finished it in one sitting and moved on to the next story.

In the first of what will be many additional expenditures of taxpayer funds related to the withdrawal from the Fontana Regional Library system, Jackson County commissioners have formally engaged a library consulting firm to help them understand what it takes to run an independent public library and to facilitate the transition if necessary. 

For all of you ’70s and ’80s hipsters, I’ve got one for you. In his new book, acclaimed author Paul Elie (“The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex and Controversy in the 1980s,” Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025, 464 pages) takes a deep dive into the music and arts scene of the 1970s and 80s.