Four women — Shennelle Feather, Lavita Hill, Shannon Swimmer and Venita Wolfe — were elected to a previously all-male Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians tribal council this fall, and they’re ready to make things happen. 

When Eric Spirtas and Two Banks Development LLC bought the dormant Canton mill property in early January from global corporate supervillain Pactiv Evergreen, the reaction across town was equal parts relief and side-eye.

Relief, because communities across the country have seen too many hulking industrial sites sit shuttered for a decade or more, rotting quietly into the ground while communities wait for a miracle that never comes. 

The Roadless Rule Recission is genuinely so unpopular to have perhaps been inspired by a claim that Trump couldn’t possibly do anything more universally hated than gutting National Park funding, to which the president said, “Oh yeah? Hold my beer.” 

Jackson County’s various governing boards spent much of the year demonstrating that governing does not require attendance, consistency, basic curiosity about consequences, respect for the law or for the feelings of taxpayers, voters and young people. 

Throughout a year when Western North Carolina was begging for more hurricane recovery funding and a less bureaucratic inefficiency, the North Carolina General Assembly demonstrated incredible flexibility and focus — just not on governing. 

The nature of growth requires counties to constantly develop and improve to keep facilities safe, reliable and up to fulfilling the needs of communities.

Voters in Macon County will have a chance to pass the buck, in a sense, on vital projects looming not far on the horizon. Some are so close you can smell them.

Richard Baker is in an interesting place, looking back at a prolific body of work while also staring down an uncertain future.  

Baker, who is sitting on the doorstep of 70, had his work featured at a retrospective last weekend at the Folkmoot Center in Waynesville. The event was well attended, largely by people familiar with the artist and his paintings, people who admire his unique style.   

The Grinch who Stole Christmas and Pactiv Evergreen have a lot more in common than just a shared color scheme and stealing presents right out from under the Christmas trees of children.

When Pactiv Evergreen announced it would close its 115-year-old paper mill in Canton earlier this year, local leaders had to deal with a host of issues: the plight of the workers and their families, their health care coverage, declining school enrollment, pollution and the future of the site itself.

This one goes to the Pigeon River, due both to the actual metals found in a sampling site along its bank and to the very metal way its fish populations have rebounded after the Canton paper mill shut down in June.