Learn about survival at a class held on Haywood Community College’s campus.

Join expert Steve Kuni for a hands-on afternoon dedicated to the art of survival.

From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, April 12, participants will learn to work with the land rather than against it, mastering the “Rule of Threes,” constructing emergency shelters from forest find-lings and coaxing fire from damp winter wood. 

A low-flying plane circling his property was the first sign. The passes were frequent enough to be noticed. Haywood County farmer and longtime Farm Bureau President Don Smart knew immediately what that kind of attention usually means. 

In the old days, Smart said, they’d have been looking for illegal cannabis or tobacco plantings, but that wasn’t why the plane was tracing slow, deliberate circles in the sky over his farm. Two weeks later, confirmation of his suspicions arrived in writing.

In January, in the middle of the week-long subfreezing temps and the snow that froze into ice, one of my sons gave me a belated Christmas gift, Alfred Lansing’s “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (Basic Books, 2015, 416 pages). Originally published in 1959, this account of explorer Ernest Shackleton and his 27-man crew and their long battle for survival in Antarctica sold moderately well, then took off with the public after its reappearance in the late 1980s. Many of you readers have likely read this tale of heroism and resilience, but I was a come-lately to its pages. 

Maggie Jackson doesn’t plan to stop spreading awareness about domestic violence in her community come November. Instead, the Qualla Boundary Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s group co-chair knows it to be a timeless issue. 

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month — a time to honor survivors, remember those lost to violence and recommit to building a community where everyone feels safe and valued. For nearly four decades, REACH of Haywood County has been doing exactly that: working quietly but persistently to make Haywood County a safer, stronger place to live. 

For close to four decades, I’ve been an advocate for victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse. It has been quite a journey. 

Along the way, I’ve met so many incredibly strong, wise, brave, and determined women who have faced terrible abuse from the person who, at the beginning of the relationship, claimed to love them. They have learned the hard way that love and abuse do not go together. 

For many of us, pets are family. They greet us at the door, comfort us when we are sad and offer love without judgment.  

As a mental health clinician specializing in animal-assisted therapy, I have witnessed the deep, healing bonds that can exist between humans and their animals. Companion animals are more than just pets. They often serve as family, as emotional support and at times as the only source of wholehearted love in a person's life.  

Friends of Panthertown invites the public to a one-of-a-kind outdoor skills event: “Orienteering With Map and Compass,” led by renowned wilderness guide and author Burt Kornegay (“A Guide’s Guide to Panthertown”). 

In a move that will raise some eyebrows and just as many questions, the decades-long dance festival put on by Folkmoot USA in Waynesville has quietly been eliminated. 

Squeezed into a corner room on the ground floor of what was once a grade school in a quiet Waynesville neighborhood, a small free pantry and market provides food, clothing and household goods to some of Haywood County’s most vulnerable citizens at no cost. The pantry is one of many, rooted in compassion and community, but also in contradiction.