Many of us may be tired of cranberries by now, having eaten our fill, and then some, at our recent fall harvest celebrations. And whether you were on team fresh cranberry sauce, or you prefer the canned cranberries, you ate the fruit of a plant native to North America called large cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon).

The highly anticipated red wave hit Western North Carolina hard on Nov. 8, with Republicans retaining several crucial legislative seats and knocking off some longtime Democratic incumbents on the local level.

No matter how it all shakes out in the end, Nov. 3, 2022 will be looked upon as a historic day in Western North Carolina as regional leaders took the first few tenuous steps towards creating an enduring partnership to combat the opioid epidemic.

With dozens of debunked allegations surrounding a “rigged” 2020 election still fresh on the minds of right-wing conspiracy theorists, Western North Carolina’s election administrators are welcoming unprecedented levels of scrutiny in advance of the 2022 General Election.

More than 130 people from 25 Western North Carolina counties met in Boone last month to talk about how best to build the region’s outdoor economy — and over the next two years, that conversation will continue. Building Outdoor Communities, a program from Made By Mountains, aims to help individual communities foster collaboration and expertise to meet their outdoor economy goals.  

It was a chilly February morning in 2020 when Clemson, South Carolina, resident Heyward Douglass laid eyes on the legendary monarch butterfly wintering grounds, first discovered only 45 years before. Oyamel fir trees covered the south-facing slopes of the Neovolcanic Mountains west of Mexico City, and millions of monarch butterflies covered the fir trees, 8,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level.

As a stark reminder of the toll that substance abuse has taken on families across the country and across Western North Carolina, a small group of Macon County residents will travel to Washington, D.C., later this month to help erect a temporary cemetery made up of hundreds upon hundreds of hand-painted tombstones.

New state testing results reveal that schools in Western North Carolina are in the process of a mixed recovery from COVID-era learning disruptions, something state officials say may take years.

A $542,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, matched by more than $200,000 from the Dogwood Health Trust, will help fund six regional projects intended to alleviate some of the pressure in the affordable housing market.

The conversation around police reform has cooled down slightly over the last year, but that doesn’t mean law enforcement agencies around the state aren’t quietly implementing new policies — policies that came on the heels of the movement that gained steam after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020.