To the Editor:

Congratulations to the Smoky Mountain News and Cory Vaillancourt!

A series of meetings this month in seven communities along the Blue Ridge Parkway will help formulate an action plan for Blue Ridge Rising, a regional planning effort uniting gateway communities along the Parkway.

To the Editor:

After attending the meeting on Tuesday evening at the Waynesville Town Hall, one of the speeches that stuck with me the most wasn’t one I would have expected — it was the dad who said he was afraid for his daughters, and that while he felt for people who believed they were stuck in the wrong bodies, he shouldn’t have to worry every time they went into a bathroom.

For the third year in a row, First United Methodist Church in Waynesville is teaming up with community partners to celebrate Juneteenth — the federal holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. But while the event has taken place at Lake Junaluska in past years, this year, the community is invited to celebrate on Academy Street just outside of FUMC for a day of music, games, storytelling, food and good company.

Like a lot of Americans, Lyn Forney remembers exactly what she was doing when the whole world shut down.

Sometimes an idea hatches first as a kind of mental knot that doesn’t reveal itself but causes me a bit of anxiety as I try to unravel what’s eating me. When that happens I try to slow things down, open my mind, and almost always the thought will reveal itself. 

Does the American political divide have to divide friends? Families? Communities? Or is there an alternative approach? 

With a hot mid-July sun falling behind the mountains last Thursday evening, rock legend Tommy Stinson strapped on his Gibson acoustic guitar and stood behind a microphone on the side lawn of Yonder Community Market in Franklin. 

The biggest knock against North Carolina’s city- and county-based Tourism Development Authority system is that while it does collect and spend room occupancy taxes to market specific cities and counties as travel destinations — driving Western North Carolina’s tourism-based economy — it does almost nothing for residents of those destinations who have to bear the brunt of soaring housing costs due to short-term rentals, overcrowded attractions and excess demand on infrastructure like roads and water systems.