When sewage began flooding out of the floor one January Saturday at Waynesville’s Coffee Zone, Coni Bishop knew things were about to get bad.

Bishop was the coffee-and-sandwich shop’s owner. And when she and some staff were working one weekend and started seeing the kitchen’s floor drains bubbling up with befouled water, she figured she would be closed for a little while. What she didn’t expect was five months out of business and a move out of Waynesville.

While the Coffee Zone is no more, Bishop’s business has been reincarnated as the Copper Leaf Café, located at High Country Furniture on the edge of Maggie Valley.

The revived coffee spot opened last Monday, following a long and arduous few months for Bishop and her staff, most of whom she had to let go.

She’s been able to reopen, thanks to an agreement with High Country, which owns the shop and employs Bishop to run it. That, she said, solved her biggest problem in the wake of the sewage backup.

“I was reimbursed for the product I lost — we had to get rid of every single thing that was in the store — and we were also able to recover our equipment that got damaged from the water, but that’s all we ended up with,” said Bishop. “We lost our business investment. There was no way to recoup that.”

So while she wanted to restart the business soon after, without startup capital, it was impossible.

There was always the option of going back into the Coffee Zone building, which sits in the center of a shopping center plaza on Russ Avenue and was once a bank. But even after the professionals came in and scoured everything sanitary, Bishop said she just couldn’t move her shop back in.

For one thing, there was the smell.

“It was just horrible,” said Bishop. That’s partly because the sewage had seeped up through the floor drains and then promptly poured back down onto the building’s ductwork and air conditioning system, which were under the floors. And then it sat for three weeks while the issue of who, exactly, was responsible for sorting out the mess.

Was it the town, which is in charge of sewage systems? The landlord, who is responsible for making sure the building remains in solid, habitable shape?

As it transpires, the answer is option B, the landlord. And, according to Bishop, the property owner hadn’t really kept the building maintained to code.

“One of my frustrations, what was so difficult, is that there‘s no enforcement agency that goes around to property owners and sees if they’re up to code,” said Bishop. “I feel like this could have been prevented, or at least [have been] a lot less invasive to our business.”

And, said Town Manager Lee Galloway, that’s true. But a policing operation like that would be far beyond what the town could reasonably manage.

“They’re supposed to remain up to code, but they don’t have to go back and retrofit their building unless they’re having major work done on their building,” said Galloway. “It would be pretty much impossible for us to have enough inspectors to go out and check that sort of thing.”

And Bishop concedes this point, though it was little consolation when she had standing sewage in her kitchen.

The town couldn’t really do anything because they only own the collection lines at the very edges of the shopping center. The sewer lines are all private and ancient, and apparently most people there are pretty unclear about where they even are or how to shut them off. That was another contributing factor to the woes of Coffee Zone, as it allowed sewage to flow freely until someone could locate the shut-off valve.

These days, said Galloway, most new builds put in sewer lines that they then dedicate to the town, transferring responsibility into municipal hands.

“That’s more common now than it was 40, 50 years ago, and I guess for this very problem, because property changes hands and no one knows where the lines are,” said Galloway.

For Bishop, she’s no longer angry about what happened on Russ Avenue; she’s positive about her new venture and not too concerned about losing the dedicated customer base she’d cultivated at Coffee Zone.

“I think once people find out and they realize it’s not in Maggie Valley, it’s just a little way past Smackers, I think well be OK,” said Bishop. “There’s no drive-through, and that’s a down side, that’s something that we lost. Drive-through really was 40 percent of our business. But so far it’s getting busier each day.”

The first 2011 sojourn into the Town of Waynesville’s 8,000-plus acre watershed occurred last Saturday (June 11). The town has been sponsoring and coordinating a couple of guided hikes into the watershed each year since 2007. It’s a way for residents and other interested parties to see this wonderful resource that has been placed in a conservation easement to ensure the town has an ample supply of high-quality drinking water for generations to come.

For those of you just awakening from a seven-year coma, there was a bit of a stir back then regarding some of the attributes of the easement. Some areas of the watershed are in a “forever wild” easement — which basically means hands off. However, a large portion of the watershed is in a “working forest” easement — which gives the town the authority (and perhaps even the directive) to actively manage the forest. And “active” forest management includes logging — a term that, justifiably, sends shivers up and down the spine of many environmentalists/conservationists.

There was an immediate hue and cry (some perhaps politically prompted) regarding the motivation for and the consequences of logging in the watershed back in 2004. While emotions fer and agin logging the watershed ran rampant at coffee shops and in “letters to the editor,” the town proceeded in a rational way by creating a public oversight committee and commissioning a study of the condition of the watershed and the creation of a management plan for the watershed. I believe it was during this laborious process of studying the watershed and hashing out the details of a management plan that the idea of hikes into the watershed, where citizens could get a first-hand look, germinated.

The hikes have been well received and this year’s first hike was no exception. Alison Melnikova, assistant town manager and watershed hike coordinator extraordinaire, had to halt registration at 65 for this hike. Forty-nine of those registered showed up!

I must say we were quaking in our boots a bit concerning the logistics of providing a quality experience for 65 hikers. But a big shout out to Dan Callaghan, Forest Stewards’ Americorps apprentice forester; Ed Kelley, photographer/naturalist; and Michael Skinner, executive director at Balsam Mountain Trust for answering the frantic pleas for help and volunteering their time to help create a quality outing for participants.

Dr. Pete Bates, professor of natural resources at Western Carolina University, president of the board of directors of Forest Stewards and lead researcher of Waynesville’s Watershed Management plan, has always been one of the leaders for the watershed hikes. In the early years Bates’ groups never got in much of a hike due to all the Q and A regarding the management plan. But Bates is a stalwart and convincing supporter of the plan and the science used to create it and is always happy to discuss the merits and objectives of the watershed management plan.

This year ,Bates got to stretch his legs and obviously had a good hike: “Overall I thought the hike went well. I had about 20 in my group, and we did about an eight-mile, out and back from the water treatment plant.  We saw a variety of forest communities ranging from white pine plantations to rich coves to northern hardwoods at about 4,700-feet elevation. For those in my group, it was a great opportunity to see the watershed and learn more about the town’s efforts to care for its forests.”

We took advantage of Ed Kelley’s photographic skills by offering a last-minute opportunity for those interested in nature photography and had about a half-dozen takers. According to Kelley, “…we did a lot of close-ups and exercises in observation, looking for subject matter, addressed some creative things you can do with your camera when there’s not a lot of great photo subjects, and I answered some technical questions about photography, as well as tried to get them to thinking about using what they saw along the way to plan future photo outings (i.e. a remembering the location of a group of staghorn sumac that will be blazing orange-red in the fall.)”

Michael Skinner kind of floated between groups. Fortunately, he was with my group, with his bird-app, when we had blackburnian warblers overhead. He was able to play the song, coaxing the blackburnian down where most people got good looks. Skinner noted, “I had a few in the group suggest we do this more often.”

As for me, I was doing my usual grand job of spreading misinformation. We encountered some yellow mandarin (not in flower) and I was trying to think of the other common name for it when “cucumber root” jumped out of my mouth. I have no idea why. The plants look nothing alike. There is some similarity in the flowers but even that’s a stretch. I guess I’ll write it off as a senior moment. The other common name for yellow mandarin is fairybells — sounds a lot like cucumber root doesn’t it.

(Don Hendershot is a writer and naturalist. He can be reached a This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

If there’s one thing that runs deep in Appalachia, it’s roots. Whether it’s the roots of its ancient pines or the roots of a unique way of life still celebrated here, the Smokies are steeped in heritage.

And now, with a new festival sprouting up this weekend, Waynesville visitors and residents can celebrate the history and legacy of that singular Appalachian liftestyle.

The Appalachian Lifestyle Celebration is a day-long festival dedicated to the traditions that define the region, like bluegrass music, arts and crafts, and practical crafts like blacksmithing, quilting and wood turning.

Buffy Phillips, executive director of the Downtown Waynesville Association, said a spate of interest in the subject helped spark the idea for the festival.

“There’s a lot of interest in heritage, history and culture. People seem to be really drawn to that throughout the Southeast,” said Phillips.

Festival-goers will have the chance to see live demonstrations of traditional Appalachian handicrafts and practices, such as basket making, blacksmithing, quilting, weaving, wood working, wood carving, pottery, painting and soap making.

Folk toys, old tractors and old tools and other elements of old Appalachia will be on display. Meanwhile, artists and craftspeople still keeping those traditions alive will be on hand to sell their creations.

Even the food, said Phillips, is reminiscent of the old mountain South.

“We’ll have cornbread and beans, corn cakes, iced tea and lemonade,” said Phillips, plus a plethora of other foods that find their roots here.

For mountain music aficionados, however, there will be more than a few acts to choose from.

Headlining the event will be folk musician David Holt. Holt has four Grammys under his belt and a musical resume that spans four decades. He’s played with bluegrass legends like Doc Watson, Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs and spent much of his early career traveling to minuscule mountain communities, learning the finer points of traditional mountain music.

He’ll bring his old-time banjo skills to the stage, where he’ll perform with young acoustic musician Josh Goforth. Goforth is no novice — he’s already garnered a Grammy nomination — and he’s been playing in the Smokies since his childhood in East Tennessee.

In addition to Holt and Goforth, singer-and-storyteller Michael Reno Harrell will give two performances. The Hominy Valley Boys and The Hill Country Band will provide the lively bluegrass background for three local clogging groups.

For those seeking to get in a few rounds on the dance floor themselves, former North Carolina Senator Joe Sam Queen will call a square dance in the afternoon that is open to all ages.

For readers, there will be local authors, traditional storytellers and readers’ theater spinning tales of Appalachia, old and new.

The celebration, said Phillips, has been long in the making and she’s hopeful it will become a regular feature on Waynesville’s downtown summer calendar.

“We talked about this probably at least three years ago, and this is the first year that we’ve been able to pull it off,” said Phillips. “There’s a lot of history and our culture deserving of our interest in this area.”

Schedule

Main stage (Miller Street)

• 9:45-10:45 — Hominy Valley Boys

• 11-11:45 — David Holt

• Noon-1:15   Hominy Valley Boys (Southern Appalachian Cloggers at 12:30 p.m.)

• 1:30-2:15 — David Holt

• 2:30-3:40 — Michael Reno Harrell

• 3:45-5 — Hominy Valley Boys (Fines Creek Flatfooters Cloggers at 4 p.m. and Smoky Mountain Stompers Cloggers at 4:30 pm.)

Courthouse stage

• 9:45-10:30 — The Ross Brothers

• 10:30-11:15 — Ginny McAfee

• 11:15-12:30 — Michael Reno Harrell

• 12:30-2:30 — Hill Country Band (Southern Appalachian Cloggers at 1:15 p.m. and Flatfooters Cloggers at 2 p.m.)

• 2:30-3 p.m. — McKenzie Wilson

• 3-4 p.m. — Hill Country Band (Smoky Mountain Stoppers Cloggers at 3:30 pm.)

• 4-5 p.m. — The Ross Brothers

Southend area

• 11:30-12:15 — McKenzie Wilson

• 12:30-12:50 — HART Readers Theater

• 1-2 — Ginny McAfee

• 2:15-2:35 — HART Readers Theater

• 2:45-3:30 — Ann Lough

Most people snip flowers, drop them into a jam jar with some water, call it an arrangement and place them on a table or counter to bring some outside loveliness into our homes.

Experts in Japanese flower arrange identical flowers, but in a manner that enhances the perfection of each leaf and blossom. These practitioners of the ancient meditative art of ikebana seem, somehow, to improve upon nature — to make it more than it is. Or, perhaps, to show exactly what it is.

With a more than 500-year history, the basic principles of ikebana were rooted in Japan’s Muromachi period, with the oldest school being Ikenobo.

Ikebana, however, has branched out in many directions, and the people who practice this ancient art are involved for many different reasons, said Beverly Barbour, a Waynesville resident who is president of the Blue Ridge Chapter of Ikenobo Ikebana.

Barbour and her husband Jon were involved in Bonsai, and her transition to ikebana seemed a seamless and natural one, she said. Barbour first studied for about five years with an instructor in Atlanta, Mary Takahashi, and now works with Sensei (Instructor) Emiko Suzuki of Henderson County, who has practiced for 22 years.

Suzuki taught ikebana in Japan for 12 years, and is on her second year of teaching the art here in the U.S.

“In Japan sometimes I don’t have to teach a lot of things, because we can share the culture,” she said. In the U.S., by contrast, Suzuki often finds herself helping students learn about the loveliness of space itself within an arrangement.

Barbour said that regardless of how someone gets to Japanese flower arranging, “you can lose yourself in the serenity and beauty of practicing. All Japanese arts have a spiritual aspect to them.”

Western North Carolina members of Ikenobo Ikebana Society of America practice styles that represent distinct and different schools of thought and technique in the art of arranging flowers. Some of these styles include “rikka,” “shoka” and the modern “free style.”

In rikka, basic parts are arranged with many contrasting but complimentary materials to express the beauty of a natural landscape. Shoka features three main branches — shin, soe and tai — to form a unity which expresses life’s perpetual change and renewal. Free style, the most recent in Ikenobo’s ancient tradition, is a more personal expression suited to contemporary environments and tastes.

Ordinary folks plunge flowers upright into a vase of water. An ikebana practitioner, however, might put flowers in a tall container or one as tiny as a saucer. The flowers will go any direction, usually, but one: it is doubtful they will ever be sticking only straight up. And, in fact, the Ikenobo school considers a flower’s bud more beautiful than the flower — “for within the bud is the energy of life’s opening toward the future.”

Barbour currently is studying the shoka style.

“An arrangement in this style represents the way the plants come out of the earth and grow,” she said, adding that ikebana quickly leads those who get involved into a deeper understanding of plants and plant material.

“A lot of the appeal is that you can take very few flowers and plant materials and create such a simple, but fabulously beautiful, arrangement,” Barbour said.    

Want to join?

The Blue Ridge Chapter of Ikenobo Ikebana is made up of members from Western North Carolina. They particularly are interesting in attracting new members from Jackson, Macon, Swain and Haywood counties. For more information, visit www.blueridgeikebana.com. The chapter meets on the third Thursday of every month at 10 a.m. at St. John in the Wilderness Parish House in Flat Rock.

For Mary Edwards, the owner of Craft Collection in downtown Waynesville, news of a possible Michaels coming to town is devastating.

“Well, that’s the end of me,” said Edwards. “I’m small, so I can’t complete with big stores.”

Edwards is surprised Michaels would consider coming to Haywood County.

“I never thought they would come here. They might be bringing jobs but it will put all the small business owners out of business,” Edwards said. “I’ll have to close.”

Ray Fulp, owner of the small, independent pet supply store Dog House around the corner, was just as dismayed.

“I think it would close us up,” Fulp said after learning Pet Smart may be coming to town. “That’s sad, that’s sad.”

Fulp and his wife have been in business for 24 years. This had always been a fear of theirs.

“The way the economy is right now, with a big pet supply coming in to town, we couldn’t make it,” Fulp said.

Fulp, 61, said he’s not ready to retire.

“I guess I could go work for Pet Smart,” he said.

At 57, Edwards is not ready to retire either. As a struggling small business owner, she can’t afford to yet. But after 18 years of selling brushes, paints, inks, beads, scrap booking supplies, balsa wood and sundry other art and craft supplies, Edwards isn’t sure what else she would do.

SEE ALSO: Plans call for new Belk, a Michaels and PetSmart in Waynesville 

Customer service could be the saving grace for Edwards and Fulp as they prepare to go up against the big chains.

Ann Squirrel, a painter who has shopped at Craft Connection for two decades, said she wouldn’t quit coming.

Squirrel admits to making a trip to Michaels in Asheville every three to four months to stock up on things she can’t get from Edwards, but, “anything I need, I always come here first,” she said.

“Even though prices are a little higher, I would still come. She is so wonderful to her customers,” Squirrel said.

Sometimes customers will call ahead with an order and send their husbands to pick up what they need. Edwards will pull out everything they need and have it waiting on the counter.

“I have actually delivered stuff to people,” Edwards said.

One customer had an ankle replacement and couldn’t get out, so Edwards loaded up pecan resin figurines — which people paint as a hobby — took them to the woman’s house and lined them up for her to pick which ones she wanted.

It’s unlikely Pet Smart shoppers would find expertise at the chain store rivaling Fulp. Fulp knows his customers and their pets and takes the time to help them, such as if a dog has an allergy and the owner can’t figure out what it is.

Fulp’s wife, Sandy, operates a grooming business out of the store. It’s developed a loyal customer base for the retail side, and Melissa Leatherwood said she wouldn’t abandon them for Pet Smart.

“I would rather give local businesses my support than a chain,” she said, as she loved up her freshly groomed shih tzu emerging from the back.

When Best Buy came to town two years ago, also jumping on the Super Wal-Mart train, a locally owned CD store in downtown Waynesville braced for the worst.

“We definitely lost some business to Best Buy,” said Shawna Hendrix, general manager of the Music Box.

It was impossible to compete with the prices of the mega-music retailer across town.

“They can sell them for cheaper than we can purchase them from our warehouse,” Hendrix said.

They survived by offering what Best Buy doesn’t carry: bluegrass, country, blues, jazz, Indy labels and other music genres outside the confines of Top 40 pop. The store also diversified, adding clothing and other retail along with CDs.

When asked if it looked they would make it, Hendrix said the owner is too stubborn to give in.

Belk department store in Waynesville might be moving from its anchor spot beside Ingle's grocery store to a much larger and brand-new building beside Super Wal-Mart.A Michaels craft store and Pet Smart might also join the ranks of big-box chain stores at the Waynesville Commons development on South Main Street, according to building plans submitted to the town's planning office.

The new stores have been proposed for a 12-acre commercial site next to Super Wal-Mart that originally was slated for a Home Depot. When the economy tanked, Home Depot pulled out, and has been trying to off-load the tract.

While construction plans under review by the town call for an 85,000-square-foot Belk, the Waynesville store manager said it is still too new to talk about.

"The details haven't quite been published. It is still in the works," said Reasey Johnson, the general manager of Belk in Waynesville.

Plans were filed with the town by CBL & Associates, a commercial property development firm that has been marketing the site for Home Depot. There has not been a sale of the site recorded yet, and the tenants are not yet cast in stone.

"We have nothing official to announce regarding a prospective development in Waynesville," Matt Phillips with CBL & Associates. "We explore a number of opportunities; some that are realized and some that are not. We will be pleased to make an official announcement when we have actual information to share."

County economic development leaders have been working for years to bring development to the former industrial site. A sprawling, rusting, old factory was bulldozed to make way for the retail strip complex five years ago. But new stores have been slow to locate there because of the economy.

"This is what we expected to happened, but the unfortunate three year economic hiatus held us up," said Waynesville Mayor Gavin Brown, also a member of the county's economic development commission. "It is nice to see we are having nationally known businesses locate in the community. I'm not saying there aren't local suppliers of those same products, but it is nice to know Waynesville is recognized as a place to be."

Developers in Waynesville rejoice: your customers may now park in front of your buildings. Sometimes. In some places.

The new rules, passed after nearly two years of deliberation, will allow limited parking in the front of businesses for high-traffic commercial districts, something that was strictly forbidden under the town’s smart growth policies, much to the chagrin of some developers and business owners.

Parking design has been a controversial topic since 2003, when the town’s new land-use plan relegated parking to the side and rear of buildings in favor of a streetscape defined by building façades — a more attractive option than asphalt parking lots.

But a committee tasked with reviewing the town’s land-use plan over the past year recommended the town allow some parking in front buildings.

After two months of debate of their own, the town board was split 3-2 on exactly how much parking should be allowed in front during last month’s town board meeting.

Town leaders ultimately did not allow as much parking in front as the land-use review committee or the town planning board suggested. Instead of allowing two rows of parking spaces in front of the building, the town board cut that down to just one row.

Town board members Libba Feichter, Wells Greeley and LeRoy Roberson voted to limit parking in front to just one row.

Greeley, who wasn’t on the board when the original ordinance was hashed out, said he was pleased with both the process and the result. Greeley said that he knew coming in that the standards would be a challenge — the parking provisions in particular.

He said that he feels like the end result was a good compromise between the pro- and anti-parking factions.

“I think this strikes a compromise as being now commercially friendly but yet still trying to keep the façades and the front of the buildings maintained,” said Greeley.

Roberson said that he was also pleased with the eventual outcome of the months of discussions and debates.

He also came to the board after the initial statutes were penned, but said that the cleaned-up version will lay a good framework for future development.

“I just think it gives it a better look,” said Roberson. “Instead of having another Russ Avenue on South Main, you’ll have something that’s more appealing and something that will function better overall.”

Mayor Gavin Brown and Alderman Gary Caldwell sided with the committee in wanting two rows.

Caldwell said that, while he’d never be completely happy and did vote against the parking proviso, the overall compromises that were reached were workable.

Town Planning Director Paul Benson said the idea was to offer a clean and inviting aesthetic, while still giving businesses, and their customers, workable parking.

“The concept of one row is that it sort-of replaces on-street parking in places where you can’t have on street parking, and still keeps buildings pretty close to the road,” Benson said. “I think [the aldermen] recognized that a limited amount was probably desirable, at least in some locations, but they didn’t want to go too far.”

What that means will differ greatly for businesses and developers on the ground from district to district, and sometimes even from case to case, said Benson.

“It varies from no parking in front, like in the central business-type districts, to maximum parking in front with a controlled-use permit,” said Benson, referring to the new stipulation that allows some developers to ask that their property be made a special zone, with site-specific conditions.

Ingles on Russ Avenue, which is pursuing a major expansion, is the first to be granted such a permit.

Not everywhere in town, of course, would be privy to parking-in-front. For businesses, it’s limited to the town’s three major commercial districts — Russ Avenue, the Elwood-Junaluska district and South Main Street — and certain residential districts.

Under the newly verdant trees shading the lawn of the historic Haywood County Courthouse, 29 people silently lined the sidewalk last Friday, sending the message that they were “struck speechless” by slashed state funding proposed by House Republicans.

Their signs bore slogans decrying the deep cuts handed down to schools, universities, the elderly and environmental programs, among others.

Pacing in the sun on the courthouse steps behind them, Rep. Ray Rapp, D-Mars Hill, was anything but speechless. He’s the group’s spokesperson, and it’s probably fair to say that he’s livid about the cuts.

The phrase that he keeps returning to, and indeed the one that he has trotted out on the House floor throughout the budget debate to characterize the Republican’s approach to cuts, is “ready, shoot, aim.”

There’s no money, he said, he gets it. But there must be a line drawn somewhere, and he is concerned that the money-slashing sword is being drawn too quickly and wielded too loosely.

“We’re talking about fundamental services that are being cut to our people,” said Rapp. “These cuts are draconian, destructive and deeply disappointing.”

The ones he seems most viscerally worked up about are the ones that affect children and the elderly — the House plan calls for $1.2 billion to go from school funding and 50 percent of the money senior centers get would be taken away. Project Care, an in-home service for the elderly that got its start in Haywood County, would be eliminated completely. More at 4, a preschool program would take a big hit, as would its early development companion, Smart Start.

Rapp tends to refer to such educational reductions as “eating our seed corn,” and, he said, he thinks it’s going to have a negative impact on the future.

Rapp and his fellow Democrats have a plan to stave off some of the slash-and-burn that would sweep across the state if a similar budget emerges from fiscal wrangling in the Senate later this month. Rather than cutting the state’s sales tax by a penny, keep the sales tax at its current level. A one-cent sales tax billed as temporary to solve state budget shortfall two years ago was set to expire this year. Keeping it in place would at least defend schools from some of the more painful and deleterious blows.

“Nine-hundred million of that $1.2 billion could be erased by simply continuing that one-cent sales tax,” said Rapp.

The idea, though, isn’t likely to get much traction in a General Assembly that’s ruled by Republicans, many of whom ran on a no-tax-increase platform of fiscal conservatism, or at least promised a lightened tax load.

Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, who bumped out incumbent Democrat John Snow last November, is one of Rapp’s Senate counterparts. He’s not going for the sales tax extension, and his Republican colleagues, he said, are unlikely to do so, either.

“It was a temporary tax for two years and it expires June 30, and if they thought that they needed a tax for longer than that, they should’ve voted for it,” said Davis.

If all goes to plan, he expects that he and his Senate colleagues may be proffering their own budget — similar, he said, to the House offering — within a few weeks.

Davis concedes that these cuts aren’t easy to swallow, but he maintains that, for now, they’re necessary.

“We’re not too excited about cutting good programs, but there’s only so much waste, fraud and abuse in the budget,” said Davis.

Davis said that he is hearing pleas from constituents, however.

“The magnitude of this problem is significant. I have lots and lots of people calling me, writing me letters, emailing me, telling me that they know we have some serious problems, but don’t cut my programs,” said Davis. “This is not easy.”

For Davis, the loss of legitimate programs is lamentable but necessary to right the state’s listing fiscal ship. He’s hopeful that things will soon get better, good programs can be restored and rainy day funds replenished. But today, even a great program may not be great enough to stay around.

“We cannot fix our state budget without touching those items, so some programs are really getting the ax,” said Davis. “But you know, nothing is a good deal if you can’t pay for it.”

Rapp, however, said the cuts have become unpalatable.

“I don’t think the average citizen anticipated the depth of cuts that they’re making,” Rapp said.

Americans love pad thai.

This one fact, Nonglak Pafuang is sure of. After moving to the U.S. from Thailand five years ago, she’s learned that the varied cuisines of her homeland are popular stateside, but none more than pad thai, a popular stir fry that features fried egg and rice noodles. It’s just one of the things she’s learned over the last half-decade spent starting and running Thai restaurants around the Southeast.

Pafuang, known to pretty much everyone as Doh, is the manager of Waynesville’s newest restaurant, Thai Spice. The Main Street store isn’t her first foray into Asian dining. She and the restaurant’s owner, Karan Kalongrat, have opened and run two other Thai dining spots, one in Wilmington and one in Anderson, S.C.

Those restaurants are now in the hands of their capable staff, said Doh. And she and Kalongrat have brought their traditional Thai flavors to the mountains.

“We plan to stay here,” she said. “When I look out of the door, the mountains and trees are so pretty.”

Originally, they’d looked at Asheville as their next location, enamored of its beauty and mountain charisma. But they eventually settled on Waynesville, which won out with its small town charm. It took them three months to get the place ready for action, and they opened their doors in early April after checking off a sizable list of repairs and renovations.

And in their short time in the space once occupied by Ceviche’s on Main, she said things look promising.

Unlike the other locales where they’ve set up shop, Doh said that so far, their Waynesville patrons have been eager diners who have been waiting for a Thai option to open its doors.

“It seems like people in this town really seem to know Thai food,” said Pafuang. And while they grew love and support for their food over time in their other homes, she said they started almost from scratch with customers there.

And noticing those customers’ preferences is how they craft their menu; thus, the pad thai.

“We pick the most popular dishes that American people know,” she said, which usually include curries in addition to pad thai.

But if she had her way, Pafuang would be serving the more spicy and flavorful dishes that her home country’s national kitchen has to offer.

While much American food relies on the two heavyweights of flavoring — salt and pepper — to add kick to the cuisine, Thai fare, she said, samples a much broader selection of the seasoning range, both in taste and heat. On the restaurant’s menu, there’s even evidence of this: the options for each dish are mild, medium, spicy and Thai spicy. This, she said, is why her favorite Thai dishes are the most intensely spicy, flavorful offerings that don’t often make their way onto the restaurant’s menu. They’re a bit too punched up for the average American palate.

But she’s confident in the offerings that do feature on their menus, because she knows Kalongrat’s culinary standard is high. That’s why she can focus her energy and attention on making sure customers are not only enjoying a good product, but having fun and relaxing while doing it.

“I like to make a restaurant beautiful,” said Pafuang. “I’m happy when people come and enjoy the atmosphere.”

And she has, indeed, brought a sunny, Asian warmth to the place, gracing the vibrant orange walls with local art from Frog Level’s Gallery 262. A gleaming golden dragon greets diners at the front entrance and sheer white curtains billow behind it and in the front windows. The space itself is small but open, and diners are clustered around small tables that line the walls.

And while it’s a different experience than other restaurants that grace the downtown landscape, Pafuang hopes that locals will continue to warm to it, and maybe even try a new thing or two.

“When they get used to having Thai food,” she promises, “really, they’ll love it.”

(Thai Spice is located across the street from Sun Trust on Main Street in Waynesville.)

It’s 4:30 on a Tuesday afternoon, and in a kitchen in Frog Level, a chocolate almond layered torte is beginning to take shape. It’s a paragon of decadent, gourmet virtue, and it’s being lovingly crafted, layer on layer, for entry in this year’s Taste of Chocolate competition.

But it’s not being forged at the hands of a professional chef or restaurant culinary team. It’s a group of teenagers in black aprons, taking over the old Armory kitchen after school, perfecting their entry before getting a jump on some homework.

These are the most recent participants in Kids at Work, a program put on by the Haywood Jackson Volunteer Center that gets at-risk kids out of possible mischief and into the kitchen, learning skills that they can take into their lives and, hopefully, into the workplace.

It’s headed up by Corey Costanzo, a counselor with Aspire Youth and Family, a Haywood County organization dedicated to helping young people and their families succeed.

Costanzo saw a niche in the educational system that needed filling — the region was pretty low on vocational training for young people that could offer them marketable job skills, right out of school.

When he heard that Haywood County’s Juvenile Crime Prevention Council was calling for ideas to help at-risk and court-involved kids get a kick start in society and the workplace, he jumped on the opportunity.

“If we teach them how to cook and give them counseling and social skills, we’re going to see a marked improvement,” says Costanzo, and the kids who are in the program seem to agree.

Averrie Gast says she is a good example of this. She’s a friendly, talkative blonde who is in the thick of the culinary fray in the kitchen, washing dishes, mixing chocolate, asking questions of professional chef Ambra Lowenstein, the group’s teacher.

She was referred to the program by her therapist, who thought it would help her confront her paralyzing fear of hot water.

“When I was 18 months old, I was burned by boiling water, and my whole life I’ve had a fear of boiling water,” she explains.

Since facing her fear with her friends in the kitchen, though, she’s broken its spell and says she’s now, a few months later, able to cook in her kitchen alone.

Plus, she says, the program has not only helped her conquer her fears but also given her a community that she loves and skills she can take into the workplace.

“It’s kind-of like our own little family,” says Gast of the tight-knit group of six.

They’re the third round of students to go through the program, and they learn everything from whipping up a roulade to washing the dish it’s served in. That way, says Costanzo, kids like Averrie graduate with the knowledge and experience to move into entry-level positions at any number of restaurants.

They don’t just stick with normal American fare, either, says Costanzo, which helps expose them to a raft of cuisines that will help them in the workplace, and will broaden their own culinary horizons and hopefully inject some more interesting, healthy options into their daily diets.

Kaleb Sise says this is one of his favorite elements of the program. He’s tall and tattooed, with his short, red hair styled up into a messy faux-hawk and gauges in his ears. Unlike some of his classmates, he’s dreamt of a chef’s life since childhood, and he appreciates the diversity that the program’s curriculum offers.

“My favorite food is Asian cuisine, and we’ve done that before,” says Sise, noting that he’s been experimenting in the kitchen since childhood. “When I was younger, I wanted to be a chef, I have since I was little, so I already knew some things.”

But whether their life’s aspiration is to be a chef or consider successfully producing unburned toast a culinary triumph, Costanzo has seen the benefits of the program change the lives of many students. So far, he’s had 84 participate, and says he’s seen some pretty dramatic improvements in some, both behaviorally and socially.

“One of my kids, he’s been in juvenile detention, he’s been kicked out of two schools, and now he calls me on weekends with his mother in the grocery store because he’s staying home on Friday night, cooking for his family,” says Costanzo. “To me, that’s the greatest success.”

That kind of transformation, he says, comes from not only teaching kids new and valuable skills, but putting them into a community of other kids and adult mentors who help them with homework, social and family issues and provide them a safe, fun and helpful environment on a regular basis. After being exposed to that, he says, a lot of his students don’t want to leave the program.

Among the six here today, a few were already expressing that very sentiment.

Although the program is producing pretty great benefits for the kids personally, its aim is really to offer them longer-term success professionally by getting them into the workplace.

The economy, though, is still brutal, especially for high school students and recent graduates with a dearth of on-the-ground experience.

That’s part of why they’re teaming up with The Open Door in Frog Level — where the kids already cook a few times a month — for this month’s The Whole Bloomin’ Thing festival.

The students will cook brunch to raise funds for the charity, and Costanzo hopes it will afford them some exposure to area restaurant owners who see their skills and will offer them a chance to improve them with real-world employment.

But even if not all of his graduates go on to culinary careers, Costanzo says he considers the shifts in their lives and their thinking a tremendous success in its own right.

“We really want them to be a part,” says Costanzo. “We want to give kids an opportunity to experience a different kind of family than what they’re used to.”

And in this group, where more than one said they came into the program with few friends or community and will be sad when they graduate from Kids At Work, that benchmark of success has probably already been reached.