To the Editor:

For nearly 100 years, the Fontana Regional Library System has reflected the traditional mountain values of literacy, truth and community responsibility. These values guided our grandparents who built the first libraries in these mountains. They guided our parents who supported them. And they guide many of us today. Yet these long-held values are now at risk. 

Michelle Harris, director of engagement & marketing and public information officer at Haywood Community College, has been named the 2025 District 2 Communicator of the Year by the National Council for Marketing & Public Relations.

This award recognizes outstanding achievement and leadership in two-year college communications. 

Georgia poet and author Rupert Fike and I lived in the San Francisco Bay area during the 1970s in a time of social renaissance and spiritual awakening. He was with a core group community of some 300 young activists and idealists. The earliest beginnings of this community go back to San Francisco and a weekly meeting called Monday Night Class.

The Fontana Regional Library Board of Trustees is again struggling to implement changes as it trudges forward without legal representation. 

At the Nov. 12 meeting, held in Jackson County, Cynthia Womble, who in September resigned her position as board chair but remains on the board, again expressed concern that Rady Large, an attorney who worked with the board on a pro bono basis, took a new job and couldn’t continue that service.

Girls on the Run of Western North Carolina (GOTR WNC) will host its annual Fall 5K Presented by AdventHealth. Hundreds of girls, families, coaches and community members will lace up their sneakers for this celebration of confidence, connection and joy. 

Waynesville’s newest co-working space is not a corner suite or a cubicle farm — Root & Rise, located on South Main Street, is designed to be welcoming, affordable and collaborative, with a purpose that extends beyond laptops and lattes. 

To the Editor:

We are halfway through the 2025 municipal elections for Waynesville, Canton and Clyde, which will significantly influence the leadership of these towns. Unfortunately, low voter turnout continues to threaten these municipal elections.

This cycle, Canton’s ballot carries the weight of five hard years. A global pandemic. Tropical Storm Fred in 2021. A mill closure in 2023 that upended municipal finance. Hurricane Helene in 2024. The next four years will test the town’s ability to finish flood recovery, modernize water and sewer, help redevelop the mill site and keep taxes predictable while still paving streets and paying bills. 

The Haywood County Farm Bureau will hold its annual meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 20 at the Haywood County Extension Office.

This annual gathering provides members an opportunity to reflect on the organization’s work and to recognize individuals and community members who have made outstanding contributions to agriculture in Haywood County. 

It was a time and a place, and now that place is gone.

Or is it?

I came across some version of that idiom about time and place a few months ago, just as we at The Smoky Mountain News were beginning to discuss how to cover the one-year anniversary of Helene’s historic and deadly impact on this place we call home.