The passion surrounding the 2024 election was monumental, and as I observed my fellow Americans, the overarching emotion that simmered to the surface, no matter the party affiliation, was fear.

To the Editor:

Donald Trump has been guilty of spewing so many fact-free statements over the years that ‘fact checking’ has become a ritual after every Trump pronouncement. No one, including the people that support him, denies this fact.

Lisa Briggs, director of Western Carolina University’s Human Remains Detection K-9 training program and Emergency Disaster Management program, and Edwin Grant, HRD K-9 program instructor and long-time law enforcement officer, have been deployed with their HRD K-9s since the start of the recovery process for missing persons in Western North Carolina following the devastation left by Hurricane Helene.  

Editor’s note: This first part of this review was published in the July 24 edition of The Smoky Mountain News The evidence is clear that social media is not healthy for girls under the age of sixteen.

A month ago I called my brother-in-law, known to all the family as Uncle Jim, to ask a favor. He readily said yes to the favor, then said he had one for me. He wanted me to read “The Anxious Generation,” the book about the first generation to go through adolescence with smartphones. 

A Republican congressional primary debate hosted by the Clay County Republican Party on Jan. 13 revealed clear differences between the two candidates, incumbent Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-Henderson) and Hayesville businessman Christian Reagan, despite mostly avoiding major hot-button issues and topics important in rural Western North Carolina. 

I hear tell of people, a precious few, who are not permanently tethered to their phones, people who are able to go hours at a time without being accessible or needing to access someone else. People who dare to be unavailable for a period of time, if you can imagine such a thing. Do you know anyone like that? 

(Editor’s note: All the characters in this column are fictitious) Guy walks into his local taproom and is gratified to see his favorite spot open.

Before March 2022, 28-year-old Zeb Ross didn’t have a social media presence. No Instagram, TikTok or Twitter. He did have a personal Facebook account for a little while, but got rid of it when he was a teenager because, according to Ross, “there’s good and bad with social media, but it can also be a distraction.”

As increasing child abuse rates continue to plague many homes in Haywood County, a recent red herring took hold on social media, leading the Waynesville Police Department and Haywood County Sheriff’s Office to investigate an alleged human trafficking ring that doesn’t seem to exist.