The second annual Sylva Pride Festival will take place this weekend, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 10, at Bridge Park in downtown Sylva. The Pride Parade will kick off at noon, beginning at Bridge Park before proceeding down Main Street. 

For me, the Labor Day holiday usually includes being with friends and family, barbecuing, consuming too many hard seltzers, playing in the water and lots of talking, but this year I will be in a tent, on the mountaintop, at a meditation retreat all weekend. 

By Daley Hooten • Rumble Contributor | Going to a concert with my friends was the best way to end the summer. Last Saturday, the local venue Rabbit Rabbit hosted Thundercat, a musician that merges R&B with progressive funk and electronic jazz. Going into the concert, I was pretty familiar with his music but not completely immersed in his discography. After the show, I was completely blown away and impressed with the performance and character of Thundercat.

When I was a college student in the late 90s, I worked part-time at a women’s clothing store in the mall. Back then, many college students worked in the mall, and the pressure was on to not only sell merchandise but to ask people to apply for credit cards. Do you remember those days of either being asked by a sales associate whether you, as a shopper, would “like to save ten percent today when you apply for the [insert name of store here] credit card?” Or, as a part-time retail employee, getting the ask from another part-time employee at another mall retail store: “help me meet my credit card quota and apply for a credit card?”