Trump overplays his hand with military
Under this commander-in-chief, war criminals are framed as heroes for political gains with his base while veterans who served with honor for decades are vilified. Of all of President Trump’s outrageous, disruptive behavior, it’s his un-military like actions toward our soldiers in uniform that roil me the most.
It’s all about the journey
It’s called Blue Ridge Motorcycling Magazine, and it’s become part of our family. Let me explain.
At almost 60 years old — damn, I can’t believe that’s true — odds are I’m beyond the midpoint of my life. That means I couldn’t realistically blame a mid-life crisis around three years ago when I became obsessed with buying a motorcycle. I had owned dirt bikes as a teenager and so knew how to ride. I wasn’t one of those old guys who was starting from scratch, figuring out the gears and the clutch and braking and starting on a hill and all the nuances of counter-steering and leaning into curves. Once upon a time all that was second-nature.
Can you put a value on what we provide?
Does the information we provide each week — information that we have been producing free for the last 20 years — have a value? I am asking that question of all of our readers.
At our inception in June 1999, we were not so unusual in the newspaper world. We decided to give the paper away, our revenue source being the advertisers who wanted to get their message to our readers. That remains a relatively common model in our business, and you can look around the world and around Western North Carolina and find other print media who do the same.
Wide-ranging coverage, spirited opinions
These days, too many Americans refuse to concede that a point-of-view other than their own has any validity. I’m afraid that the root of this problem is that too few are willing to put in the intellectual energy required to walk in someone else’s shoes. That requires reading, thinking, taking time for reflection, diving deep into issues rather than relying on Twitter and Facebook posts as the whole of one’s political philosophy.
Price tag for new central office is mighty high
Is it a Taj Mahal or a wise use of tax dollars?
I’m talking about the proposal to spend around $13 million to build a central office for the Haywood County School System that will bring administration, food services, transportation, teacher/staff training facilities and more all under one roof.
Ethically speaking, this can be a tough job
Remember those old movies where submarines find themselves navigating through an underwater minefield, sometimes relying on skill to avoid what would be a sure death and other times surviving near misses on luck alone?
That’s what it feels like sometimes in the world of journalism as we try to make the right ethical choices. It seems almost every day we are discussing the right way to cover a story or whether some event should even be reported. Sometimes these issues are discussed at length, other times reporters and editors have to rely on gut instincts and past experience.
We stand by our brand of journalism
It’s rare when one newspaper questions the integrity of another paper and the intentions of a hard-working journalist whose entire career personifies honesty and ethical decision-making. So we were surprised and a bit taken aback after we read Editor Robert Jumper’s column in last week’s Cherokee One Feather in which he referenced an article in The Smoky Mountain News. For that reason, I felt compelled to respond.
Teachers just don’t get enough credit
Summer is ending and schools are opening. It’s the time year when I remember the teachers.
These days, teachers are too often scapegoats for the shortcomings of parents, politicians and society at large. Truth be told, what they do each day in the classroom changes lives and changes the world.
A festival that all of WNC should embrace
It’s fascinating to watch a cultural arts organization grow up, mature, get a little long-in-the-tooth, and then re-define itself to adjust to a changing world. That’s exactly what is happening with Folkmoot, which is now in its 36th year in Western North Carolina.
And what about that mission statement above. In these times when politicized culture wars and presidential twitter tantrums divide us, here is an arts organization whose very existence is based on trying to build bridges and foster international understanding. Folkmoot avoids politics, but now more than ever its mission is relevant and necessary.
Let’s encourage young adults to engage
Many readers know or suspect that Hannah McLeod, who has been publishing columns semi-regularly in The Smoky Mountain News since mid-2018 after graduating from Appalachian State University, is related to me. She’s my daughter.
Hannah is smart, well-read and stays informed on happenings in our country and abroad. She can discuss literature or poetry, current events, music, movies, pop culture, geography, history, and is fluent in Spanish. She took her college classes seriously and managed to earn two undergraduate degrees.