A new database cataloguing the work of renowned Smokies photographer, Japan-born George Masa, is now available online. 

Angelyn Whitmeyer might be the last person you would expect to contribute to ongoing research surrounding a Japanese photographer who found inspiration in the Great Smoky Mountains.

At 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 4, in Bryson City, Frank March and Henry Chambers will present “The Lamon Chambers Map” at this year’s first Swain County Genealogical and Historical Society meeting. 

Like a lot of middle-aged-to-older Americans during the holiday season, I’m a person with a healthy nostalgic streak.

Editor’s Note: Since first rolling into Haywood County in August 2012 to start work as the arts and entertainment editor for The Smoky Mountain News, Garret K. Woodward has been extensively documenting banjo players around our backyard.

In the mid-1960s, when Bill Allsbrook was a med school student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he decided to pick up the banjo. 

I have always been a fan of old books. There’s a comfort I find in between the pages of a story written long ago, a sort of escape from my modern-day life.

In her classic novel “Little Women,” Louisa May Alcott has her character Margaret gaze bitterly at the family’s frostbitten garden and proclaim that “November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year.”

To the editor:

When young men of Ancient Athens reached the age of 17, they took what was known as “The Athenian Oath.”

Following a three-year absence, the Mountain Life Festival will return 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 23, at the Mountain Farm Museum in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.