As schools shut down across the state as part of Gov. Roy Cooper’s executive order, public school systems are trying to mitigate the impact on local families. 

Of all the socioeconomic and educational weaknesses lain bare by the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 perhaps none is more disturbing than the fact that the closure of public schools has resulted for many children not just in a loss of education, but also a loss of nutrition. 

Just in the last week, the number of COVID-19 cases reported in North Carolina has grown from seven cases to 40, but as of March 17 no confirmed cases have been reported in Western North Carolina. 

There’s a strong, long-held sentiment here in rural Western North Carolina that the region is often overlooked when balanced against the state of North Carolina as a whole, but unofficial results from the March 3 Primary Election show that the counties that make up this rugged, mountainous region are more important politically than ever before. 

The atmosphere inside the Lake Logan Conference Center was more akin to a reunion of friends than to a gathering of business associates as members of the Stakeholders Forum for the Nantahala and Pisgah Plan Revision arrived Wednesday, Feb. 26 — and perhaps there’s good reason for that. 

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in a February 2012 edition of The Smoky Mountain News | The names Geronimo and Gen. George Crook are interwoven in the lore of northern Mexico, southeastern Arizona, western New Mexico and the Indian territories in Oklahoma. An association with the Smokies region and the remnant Eastern Band of Cherokees in Western North Carolina is less well known. 

When most people think about exciting election action, they don’t often think about judgeships. 

Judicial races are not usually contested, they’re not usually competitive and so they’re not usually talked about much, for all of those reasons. 

I’m not comfortable writing this, and that’s why I have to write it. In the past three weeks, I’ve given three different people advice that goes against my belief in the value of courage. 

One of these people is a friend whose family pet was shot and killed in her driveway for no reason except that the young man who shot it had a gun and an opportunity. The other is a couple, also friends, who object to Sylva’s prominently displayed Confederate statue. In each separate conversation, I advised my friends to remain quiet because, as I told them, “Speaking out on these issues will change nothing, and you will only suffer if you try to change a culture.” I do believe that the culture of Jackson County, though in so many ways rich and worth preserving, is still very much insular, blindly protective of those we consider “our own,” and equally blind to the continued harm being done by romanticizing and whitewashing a flawed past. I believe this, and yet I would give my friends the same advice today as I did a few weeks ago, and it is because they are not from here. 

Western North Carolina hospitals under the Duke LifePoint umbrella are celebrating several milestones in making communities healthier as a new year begins.

There’s just something so mysterious about Southern crime stories. Small towns with big characters and dark family secrets. People taking the law into their own hands and crooked cops turning a blind eye. If there’s one thing mountain folk appreciate, it’s a tall tale woven together through the decades.