Some time back I wrote that at a future date I’d print seed-starting dates for the remainder of the growing year. I’ve had a couple people ask about that, so I thought now would be as good a time as any to fulfill that promise.

I put together this calendar while farming for a living. Gardening is an inexact science, but I found that as a general rule these dates worked out more often than not. Having a list or calendar at least provides a reminder and guide to get things in that otherwise might be forgotten.

One important note: if you live at elevations higher than 3,000 to 4,000 feet then you might want to add two or so weeks to these suggested planting dates.

May

• Plant leek transplants.

• Direct seed okra.

• Direct seed basil, can plant later as well to have with tomatoes.

• Succession soybeans, beets, onion sets, radish, podding radish.

• Direct seed summer squash, cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon, pumpkin.

• Transplant tomatoes, eggplants and peppers as weather permits.

• Direct seed beans.

• Direct seed winter squash, spaghetti and butternut (don’t hurry, remember these are for storage).

• Under row cover, grow succession plantings of summer ‘lettuce’ mix: suggest, mizuna, kale, collards, tatsoi, red giant mustard, arugula. Use as cut-and-come again, harvest immature for raw salads. Replant short row every two weeks or so for summer use.

• Plant sweet potato slips.

• Plant chard, if haven’t already, also Malabar spinach, dill.

Early to mid June

• Start Brussels sprouts for fall transplants in shade or in shaded greenhouse.

• Succession soybeans, beets, onion sets, podding radish, summer lettuce mix.

• Plant more sweet corn, can keep planting up to July 4 and will make. Also, true for cucumbers, soybeans, summer squash.

End June to early July

• Sow in greenhouse or other shaded spot, broccoli and cabbage for fall planting.

Mid July

• Direct seed rutabaga and beets in garden.

•  Start fall lettuces for transplants.

• Transplant Brussels sprouts when ready to garden.

Late July to early August

• Transplant broccoli and cabbage when ready to garden.

Early to mid August

• Direct seed kale, collards.

Mid August to Sept. 1

• Direct seed turnips for roots, turnips for tops, rape, mustards.

Late August

• Direct seed black Spanish radish, daikon, Chinese cabbage, scallions, mizuna, tatsoi, beet (for tops), chard, spinach, arugula.

• Seed more lettuce for transplants, start in cool place.

September

•  Direct seed regular radishes, carrots, transplant first round lettuces to garden.

October

• Plant mache, claytonia, minutina. Replant tatsoi, mizuna, etc. for cut-and-come again. Transplant lettuces to garden under row cover.

November

• Plant garlic bulbs. Keep planting Asian greens as spaces open.

December - January

• Plant Asian greens. Carrots. Spinach. Let-tuce transplants.

Second week January

• First round cabbage, broccoli

Last week January

• Second round cabbage, broccoli (can continue planting in greenhouse through Febru-ary as needed).

• Peppers (can continue into February as needed, helps germination to start on a heating mat. Must be transplanted into continually bigger containers in greenhouse).

• Artichokes.

First week February

• Leeks.

• Head lettuces such as Buttercrunch, Tom Thumb.

• Chives, thyme, other herbs (continue planting through February, March as needed).

Second or third week February

• Parsley.

In garden toward end of February, first week March weather permitting. Be prepared to cover transplants when temps threaten to drop below 20 degrees.

• Transplant lettuce, broccoli and cabbage into garden.

• Direct seed leaf lettuce, snow peas, English peas, carrots, boc choi, onion sets, spinach, radishes, beets.

First week March

• Start tomatoes in greenhouse or house (must be transplanted into continually bigger containers).

• Start eggplant (in moist paper towels tucked into ventilated plastic sandwich bag in warm place in house, when germinated plant as usual in greenhouse or house).

Second week March

• Plant potatoes in garden (these are for new potatoes).

• Direct seed kohlrabi.

April

• Succession plant beets, onion sets (for green onions), radishes, podding radish.

• Direct seed cilantro, pole or bush beans, first planting of soybeans for edamame, sweet corn when soil warms (old-timers planted early corn when the dogwood blooms).

(Quintin Ellison can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

I’ll admit that I have never been much of a cat person. It’s because I am a little selfish, I guess. When I come home at the end of the day, I like to have a pet who is happy to see me. When I come home at the end of the day, my miniature dachshund goes completely mad. He’s happier to see me than a teenage girl seeing Paul McCartney in 1964. In other words, he adores me, and I like that.

That’s just not how cats roll. In fact, cats don’t roll at all. They don’t roll, and they don’t do tricks, at least not the tricks you want them to do. They do what they like, especially if they are older, as accustomed to wielding power as an old mafia don. You keep company with a cat for very long, you eventually come to realize that you are actually more his valet than he is your pet. You live to serve your cat.

Maybe it is just my history with cats. I had one aunt who had a cat that mauled me when I stepped on her tail as a toddler, and another aunt who had a Siamese cat named “Princess” (of course) who was said to eat children. My aunt brought the cat home from Winston-Salem once and told us, “I’m sorry, kids, you can’t really touch or even go near Princess. She’s temperamental.” If we even ventured into the same room with Princess, she would arch her back and hiss menacingly, then crouch like a cheetah getting ready to pounce, causing us to dive over furniture like little soldiers avoiding gunfire.

With all of this as context, you can imagine how pleased I was when I met my wife years ago and discovered that she owned a cat that she had curiously burdened with the name “Bubbie Thomas” (pronounced “Toe Moss”). I had two dogs, an enormous lab/shepherd mix and a pit bull, and now a cat was going to be introduced into this environment? How was THAT supposed to work?

“Is he temperamental?” I asked her. I figured I had learned my way around cat euphemisms the hard way.

She told me that Bubbie was a pretty laid back cat. I had never heard of that and didn’t really believe her. I will never forget the first time I saw my two-year-old daughter reach over and lift Bubbie off the ground as nonchalantly as picking up a sack of flour and then stand there proudly with her pudgy little arms locked together just under his front arms. It looked as if she were about to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on him. Poor Bubbie had the look you sometimes see in the eyes of people who have been held hostage for a long time, a look of pure resignation with just a drop of hope, a look that said, “I’d sure like to escape, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon, is it?”

I had never seen anything like this in a cat before. I would come to understand eventually that Bubbie was kind of the “anti-Princess,” a cat that would never harm a child, even if the child pulled on his tail, tweaked his ears, or dragged him around in a wagon with a heavy towel covering his entire body, save a whisker or two. “Time to take baby shopping,” my daughter would say, and Bubbie would be off on an imaginary shopping trip. He would probably be trying on jackets, necklaces, and hats soon, and these indignities he would endure as patiently as any monk.

A few years later, when my son was born, the entire cycle began again, and then a few years after that, we brought home a miniature dachshund puppy who, the minute he was first able to pry his own eyes often after having been born, perceived that everything he saw was part of his new kingdom. Though he was no bigger than a cigarette, he was an alpha dog from the start, and within just a few months he and Bubbie began waging a three-year war for control of the home.

Though my general preference for dogs is well-documented, I was heartened to see Bubbie stand his ground against “the black menace,” as we came to call our dachshund. The dog would come racing around a corner or lunge from the sofa, dive-bombing poor Bubbie, who would react surprisingly quickly, considering his advancing age and slowing reflexes. He would hiss and raise a paw like Muhammad Ali fending off a Joe Frazier jab, then throw a rapid fire series of his own jabs.

Eventually, these two worked out an inexplicable truce, and each night they would wind up sprawled out next to each other like a couple of tiny dead cowboys on the sofa while my wife and I watched television or worked on our laptops.

As Bubbie continued to age, he began having some difficulty jumping on and off furniture, and lately he had been losing some weight. We took him to the vet last Friday as a precaution, thinking they could give him a steroid or something to increase his appetite. He was 14 years old, but we figured that with some love and care, he had a few more golden years left in him.

I was on my way to a meeting when my daughter called from the vet’s office and said with a voice choked with trembling bravery, “Daddy, I have some bad news. They’re putting Bubbie to sleep.”

I wheeled around immediately and sped as fast as I could to the vet and got there literally just in time. Bubbie was laid out on the table, barely conscious. My wife, barely able to hold back deep, heaving sobs, was holding and stroking his head. I held her with one arm and petted Bubbie with the other. His eyes were open, but he was completely limp, completely at peace, ready to go.

“He has a terminal disease,” said my wife. “They said it’s just going to get worse and worse.”

When it was over, my daughter could not be consoled, and I could do absolutely nothing to help her except sit on the bed and watch her whole body shake with wave after wave of the first pure grief she had ever had to endure. Memories of Bubbie swarmed the room; we couldn’t wipe them away, couldn’t find comfort in them, not yet. I knew that day would come, but she didn’t, and I couldn’t find the words to convince her.

“Why does it have to hurt so much, Daddy?” she said.

“Because we loved him so much,” I said. What else could I say?

“I never want another pet,” she said, and then screamed, “NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!”

One day, she will. Her broken heart will heal, as broken hearts must. One day, we will be able to talk about all the times she carried Bubbie around in her little arms, her head smushed against his, smiling and holding on for dear life. But not today. Today, we just manage to navigate around that big hole in our home where Bubbie used to be, trying not to fall in.

Godspeed, Bubbie Thomas. We’ll thank you for the memories as soon as we are able. Holding you tight, never letting go.

(Chris Cox is a teacher and a writer. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

You’d be hard pressed to name a state-run entity more closely aligned with the region it serves than the Mountain Research Station in Waynesville. The work going on there is important for the agriculture economy and critical for the emerging crop of growers trying to specialize in exotic and specialty varieties. And researchers at the farm continue to provide direct help to farmers growing crops and livestock that have for years been the traditional mainstays of mountain agriculture.

Perhaps just as important, the Mountain Research Station promotes the lifestyle that will continue to make this region unique. More and more residents place a high value on rural areas and green space, and farms are just as much a part of this movement as wilderness areas. This means doing what we can to help small and large growers remain profitable.

The products from those growers are often going straight into homes. Many who live here are more than willing to pay a little extra for high-quality and tasty foods that come local farms, and many groups and organizations are promoting this lifestyle. As the grow-local, buy-local philosophy gains steam, it builds and strengthens the micro-economies in our rural communities.

It was just a few years ago (2008) that state lawmakers suggested closing the 410-acre research station. Regional supporters fought back hard. Joe Sam Queen, at that time a state senator and now running to return to Raleigh as a state representative, was among those who rallied for the research station.

“We have a diversified agricultural sector with small producers,” he said. The research station provides vital help to these growers, he argued. However, the much-larger farms in the eastern part of the state often carry more political clout.

The Mountain Research Station survived. Bill Skelton, director of the Haywood County Cooperative Extension Office, says the test farm does important work and does it well. He cited its work to improve the cattle herd in the region, while also touting its crop research.

“They put those questions in the ground and see if they can find answers,” said Skelton.

Current work “in the ground” —35 separate research projects — includes tests on what could be new crops in this region like broccoli, truffles and canola (for alternative fuels); continued work with Fraser firs (the first experimental Frasers in North Carolina were grown at the Waynesville farm in the 1970s) and heirloom tomatoes; a project to improve weed control for organic farmers; and continued research to help cattle producers.

“We are becoming more diverse. It’s important that we remain cutting edge. We need to be ahead of the game,” said Mountain Research Station Director Kaleb Rathbone.

The test farm is succeeding at doing just that — staying “ahead of the game.” Let’s hope this economic engine for WNC is here for another 100 years.

(Scott McLeod can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

By Martin Dyckman • Guest columnist

In July of 1861, Major Sullivan Ballou of Rhode Island composed a letter to comfort his wife in the event of his death, which came soon after at the first Battle of Bull Run. What he wrote stirred millions of modern American hearts when its reading concluded the first episode of the Ken Burns PBS series The Civil War.

Most may recall it for how beautifully he expressed his profound love for his wife, Sarah. But it also bears remembering now — particularly now — for how he stated his devotion to the Union cause.

“I know,” he wrote, “how American civilization now leans on the triumph of the government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing, perfectly willing, to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government and to pay that debt.”

Not “this country.”  Not “this nation.” Rather, “this government ...”

Ballou understood the government, as established by the Constitution, to be the proudest accomplishment and the living embodiment of the people of the United States. He did not regard the government and the people, in the way some people do now, as antagonists. To Ballou, the nation and the government were inseparable.

That government – our nation – owed its existence and its survival to the principle of compromise, beginning with the Constitution itself. But the time came when some preferred to destroy the government and the nation rather than compromise to any extent over slavery. The Civil War was the result.

Even as we mark the 150th anniversaries of those events, we’re in deep danger again. As before, the crisis is the stubborn refusal of a radical faction to compromise over anything. They may not be threatening to dismember the government this time, but they would reach the same effect by crippling it in two ways: financially, by “starving the beast,” as they say; and morally, by destroying what’s left of the people’s trust in their government.

They’re well on their way to achieving both goals.

Their latest success was Sen. Richard Lugar’s defeat in the Indiana Republican primary. The Pollyannaish explanation is that the voters saw him as no longer a Hoosier but as a Washingtonian. Whatever the truth in that, the larger reality is that it was the radical faction that  exploited it. They include the fanatically anti-tax Club for Growth, the National Rifle Association, and the shadowy ultra-right financiers who nourished the Tea Party. A nonentity like his opponent, Richard Mourdock, could never have won on his own.

It had been quite a while since Lugar had voted with Democrats on anything, but he might do so again one day, as he had when he voted to confirm Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. So he had to go, even if it meant purging the last Republican in Congress who deserved to be called a statesman.

In defeat, Lugar lamented the “unrelenting partisanship” of Mourdock, who happily confirmed it by declaring, “I have a mind-set that says bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.”

If that’s the future of this country, we have no future.

There are only two ways to destroy the United States. One is by invasion, which hasn’t been a credible threat for 200 years. The other is by subversion – by insidiously, persistently undermining our respect for the government that represents us. No foreign foe has ever succeeded at that, either.

Writing in the time of Joseph McCarthy, the cartoonist Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo, said it best: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

(Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the newspaper formerly known as the St. Petersburg Times who has written several books on Florida politics. He resides in Haywood County and can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Every small town needs a street festival, and what better excuse for one could there be than goats?

This past weekend a friend and I went to the Spindale Goat Festival, where all things dairy goat took center stage. The festival is now in its third year and attracts thousands, including a multitude of dairy goats and their owners.

The festival had its start as sort of a joke, Shirley McKenzie, association manager for the American Dairy Goat Association, told me.

Spindale, you might not realize, is the home of the American Dairy Goat Association. That was apparently a question asked on the game show Jeopardy one time. I’m told the contestant actually answered the question correctly.

“Someone said, ‘We ought to have a goat parade,’” McKenzie explained.

From a tiny acorn grows the mighty oak … and three years later, the goat parade has morphed into a complete festival. There is music, food and entertainment, carnival rides for kids and lots of goat-themed booths and yes, regular festival-type booths, too.

But let’s back the story up a little and answer that question now burning inside of you: And how exactly did Spindale become home to the American Dairy Goat Association?

McKenzie said that the association was organized in 1904 to collect, record and preserve the pedigrees of dairy goats and to provide genetic, management and related services to dairy goat breeders.

The first office was located in Elyria, Ohio. In 1959, the secretary-treasurer was one Robert W. Soens. A time came when his health required that he move to a milder climate. Soens chose to move to Bostic, N.C., and the American Dairy Goat Association moved with him. As the association’s goat registry grew, it required more space, and so an office was acquired in Spindale in 1963. Today, the group has eight fulltime employees and an annual budget of about $1.3 million.

According to a fact sheet, the American Dairy Goat Association is now third in total dairy animals registered annually in the U.S., following the Holstein and Jersey cow organizations. The group has more than 14,000 members and annually registers more than 37,000 animals. Since it started, the American Dairy Goat Association has registered or recorded more than a million animals.

A few more gee-wiz facts: the American Dairy Goat Association sanctions more than 1,100 shows annually throughout the U.S., with each show routinely averaging more than 1,500 entries. In other words, this is big-time organization in the agricultural arena.

It seems that for many years, however, the American Dairy Goat Association kept a fairly low profile in Spindale. That’s all changed with the advent of the goat festival.

“The goat festival has kind of put us and them on the map,” Spindale Mayor Mickey Bland told me in between greeting festival-goers in his small town. “And I’ve certainly learned a lot about goats.”

Bland asked me if I realized how many different varieties of dairy goats there are. I knew there were several, but it turns out that the American Dairy Goat Association recognizes eight: Alpine, LaMancha, Nubian, Oberhasli, Saanen, Sable, Toggenburg and Nigerian Dwarf.

“This has been entertaining,” Bland said of the three-year old festival.

And it has been an economic boon of sorts for Spindale, which has suffered hard economic times with the collapse of the textile industry.

Frankly many of the folks attending the festival probably couldn’t give a hoot about goats. But goats were ever present anyway, from booths selling goat soap to the goat shows that were taking place. More than 200 goats were participating in the shows, and there were two judges each working separate contestant rings.

Paige Leitman and Ben Heisler made the trip from Atlanta to enjoy the shows. The couple currently lives in a condominium in the big city.

“We love goats,” Leitman told me. “But our homeowners’ association would have a fit if we got them.”

Leitman and Heisler dream one day of owning a small farm complete, of course, with goats.

They learned about the Spindale Goat Festival via Facebook. They’d gotten in on Friday and enjoyed the goat parade, which included a “billy dancing” group of belly dancers and goats.

“It was fabulous,” Leitman said. “Now that is quality entertainment.”

So this time next year when you’re looking for something a bit offbeat to do, I suggest that you consider taking in the Spindale Goat Festival.

(Quintin Ellison can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

“It’s like déjà vu all over again,” quipped the legendary Yogi Berra after watching Yankee greats Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris hit back-to-back homers so often it became almost commonplace.

That’s the sentiment many in Swain County are feeling after the most recent twist in the long and tortuous North Shore Road battle. Another broken promise, like déjà vu all over again. But for those who have been involved in this fight, there is nothing funny about the federal government holding up payments it promised to residents in lieu of rebuilding the road. In fact, it’s imperative that this current impasse get settled, and quickly.

The North Shore Road saga is littered with bruised feelings and broken agreements. The $52 million cash settlement was agreed to in a 2010 memorandum of understanding that was signed at Swain County High School in a ceremony attended by 200 people. The payments were intended to resolve the decades-old dispute between Swain County and the federal government over a road flooded during the construction of Fontana Lake back in the 1940s. The government at that time promised to rebuild the road but never did.

But it wasn’t just the broken promise to build the road that has contributed to the emotional turmoil suffered by many in Swain County. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, senators and congressmen from North Carolina lined up on different sides of the issues, cajoling presidents and cabinet secretaries to either build the road or compensate Swain citizens for their loss. Many visited the area, promising to do what they could in Washington. It has been a decades-long seesaw, with momentum swinging wildly with the political winds.

Through all of this, it has been Swain County residents who suffered. Families have been divided and friendships strained. That’s why the 2010 memorandum of understanding was so important, because no matter what side of the issue one believed in — build the road or provide just compensation — there was finally an end in sight.

Now federal bureaucrats, hopefully just temporarily, are foiling that agreement. The short description of the current imbroglio goes something like this: an initial $12. 8 million payment was made in 2010. The 2011 payment of $4 million was lost to budget cutting. This year’s $4 million was included in the Park Service’s budget, but because there was not line-item description in the budget directing NPS bureaucrats to send the money to Swain, it can’t be released, they say.

We’ll call bull on that. The agreement has been signed, and Park Service bureaucrats should not be able to hold up payment on what is owed to Swain County. If Rep. Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville — who happens to be a Swain County native — can’t get this fixed pretty quick, then we’ll have to agree with those who have long insisted the feds had no intention of holding up their end of this deal. We hope the naysayers are mistaken.

(Scott McLeod can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

By Gwang S. Han • Guest Columnist

Simply put, I question if there is a problem with the current system at Harris Regional Hospital and Haywood Regional Medical Center, supervised by Carolinas HealthCare in Charlotte.  Since retiring in 2007 after 33 years in Sylva specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, I paid little attention to the hospital’s future. Some old patients share their complaints of deteriorating quality care, emergency room problems, or the lack of good doctors; they never complain about the business structure established in merging two hospitals. However, I wonder why and how they arrived at this business model; what triggered it? Did local hospital management, boards of trustees, groups of physicians elect to merge, or did Carolinas HealthCare offer a deal too good to refuse?

The real problem appears loss of revenue for Harris Regional Hospital caused by a continuous drain of patients mostly to Asheville doctors, as stated by Steve Heatherly, Harris Hospital administrator. This has occurred since 2007 and increased almost 25 percent between 2007 and 2010, according to Becky Johnson of The Smoky Mountain News.  Hospitals do not admit patients: doctors do. Patients are not stupid and can judge the quality of care they receive, especially women.

So what happened in those two years? Can identifiable causes explain the decline of the Sylva hospital? Did the “loss of a few doctors” cause the large migration of patients? Or was deteriorating quality of care at Harris Regional Hospital not the main reason for people to flee to Asheville for medical care? Was the hospital so poorly run that it needed outside help, or were the replacement doctors in certain specialties not providing the same quality of care people received from those few doctors who left?

The uproar from complaints by a few Sylva physicians appears confined to the business aspect of medical practice, as if recently implemented organizational system is the reason patients go to Asheville. Hospitals do compete; doctors also compete in providing quality medical care. Doctors are the main workhorses and hospitals play supporting roles for physicians to carry out their jobs. Healthy competition between hospitals and between physicians does not lead to a downhill path and death: to the contrary.

The two hospitals must have reasons to elect the “big daddy” approach instead of allowing two not-necessarily-close siblings to pool their energy and financial resources and use their combined synergy to retain their deserved market share instead of worrying about the eventual demise of one or both medical facilities. Size of business offers some advantage with its flexibility to maneuver, deep pockets, and ability to negotiate with insurance companies for remuneration. However, “big daddy” doesn’t have a reason to feel charitable toward these two ducklings (not necessarily ugly). It calculated its “take” by offering mighty financial power and business acumen, namely a bigger business market and bigger referral base. There is some truth in old saying that the friendship between two competing entities is inversely proportional of square of distance. This might have been the reason the hospitals chose Carolinas HealthCare instead Memorial Mission Hospital.

To me, the problem seems that the perfect picture doctors and hospitals have drawn is not what they expected to see and is not a perfect one. Is there someone or some organization to blame for the ugly picture or for the unfair deals as claimed by a few Sylva doctors? Let me remind you that these two hospitals have existed in two different business environments in a geopolitical-business sense and have two different doctors’ groups employing different business models. Perhaps Sylva has the advantage of being located in the bottleneck of two major highways and experienced an earlier introduction of medical specialties than in towns west of Sylva. Haywood has the handicap of being close to Asheville, the capital city of WNC.

The population and industry in Jackson County can’t support the hospital and the number of doctors in Sylva unless they are draw patients from surrounding communities. In fact, a lot of patients the Sylva hospital claims to have lost are not from Jackson County, but those from other communities who sought medical care in Sylva because they found better care than from doctors in their local community or it lacked specialists.

As the first board certified obstetrician and gynecologist west of Asheville, I witnessed on the ground level how people sought better care for their needs. Women are smarter, far more discerning, and more selective in choosing their doctors than men, in general, when looking for quality. The majority of medical decisions in the family are made by the woman in the house. They don’t mind of traveling distances seeking “better care.” Sixty five percent of my patients were not from Jackson County, but I doubt I could have attracted so many patients from different areas unless they thought it better. Most patients came by the word-of-mouth from other people, in fact more than 90 percent.

I think the two hospitals should maintain their separate identities and invest strength and financial resources in areas where they provide the best care: internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, and the surgical fields. Harris Hospital has taken many missteps wasting its resources with misguided objectives (one example is purchasing spine table so scarcely used). It would benefit from a modern Women’s Center, including a new labor and delivery room with modern, appealing décor instead of using the 1970s ugly, depressing facility. The year I arrived, about 250 deliveries occurred in the Sylva hospital; at its peak, close to 900 deliveries happened in one year (there were many fewer in Waynesville). I believe almost two- thirds of the deliveries were for people outside of Jackson County. Obviously, field of women’s and children’s health care can be a successful enterprise for this hospital.  

In summary I don’t see a problem with the business structure since Harris Hospital has its own boss and administrative system with the help of Carolinas HealthCare. It should work with Haywood County in areas useful for both institutions. The key now is to regain the confidence and trust of people in this area. I kept the following message at the entrance of my office: “Please don’t come to see me unless you have trust in me.” It may take a long time for trust to return, but the two institutions have no other option but to try. Don’t underestimate consumers, clients, or patients and their ability to discern the quality of care or their knowledge of their health issues. Additionally, the residents of Jackson County should be concerned and become more actively involved in this effort. I wish them the very best.

Gwang S. Han, MD, FACOG, is a retired Jackson County physician.

Here in the South, if you are of a certain age, you have two families at least. The first is the family you’re born into. About that, you have no real say in the matter. Your second family consists of the people who, like you, grew up watching “The Andy Griffith Show.” Like you, they believe that Mayberry is a real place, even though they know it isn’t, and yet it still is, really, just as real as the actual place they grew up, perhaps more so in some important way.

If that last sentence makes sense to you, you’re probably one of us. That means you probably know all the episodes by heart, even the ones  shot in color after Don Knotts left for the bright lights of Hollywood. It means that you know the real names of the actors who played the important characters, and just about all of them were important. Andy and Barney were the main characters, of course, but any member of the family knows that Frances Bavier (Aunt Bea), Ron Howard (Opie), Howard McNear (Floyd the barber), Jim Nabors (Gomer), Hal Smith (Otis), Betty Lynn (Thelma Lou), and Aneta Corsaut (Helen Crump) were every bit as crucial to the show as Andy and Barney. These were not just one-dimensional supporting characters but fully realized, vividly fleshed out human beings with indelible personalities of their own. In any given episode, one of them might be the protagonist instead of Andy or Barney. Any one of them could easily carry the show for as many episodes as the writers wished, and each had turns at being “the star.”

Aunt Bea relishing her “kerosense cucumbers.” Opie raising his baby birds. Thelma Lou refusing to be in Barney’s “hip pocket.” Gomer trying to repay Andy for saving his life. We know and remember every episode. In a way, they have mixed in among our own childhood memories, since many of us first saw these episodes as children and have seen them countless times since. Watching reruns of the show is, for us, akin to pulling out the family photograph album and remembering when. We love getting together with other members of “the family” and reminiscing.

“Remember that time when Andy and Barney were trying to help Goober get a girl?”

Ah, yes, Goober Pyle, played by George Lindsey. Goober was introduced to the show in 1964 as Gomer’s slightly less sophisticated cousin (“Goober ain’t stupid,” said Gomer. “He’s ugly, but he ain’t stupid.”). Goober worked at Wally’s filling station and almost always sported a beanie with turned-up edges that made him look like Mayberry’s court jester, which he was, but only at times, because none of Mayberry’s characters were ever that simple, just as real people are not.

As a young fellow, I often identified with Goober, who was shy and uneasy around girls, always relying on jokes and impressions of movie stars like Cary Grant or Edward G. Robinson in an attempt to impress them, always measuring himself against more experienced, worldly competition and coming up short, always awkward, hesitant, and uncertain. In spite of this, onward he plunged into the dense thicket of romance, armed only with the dullest butterknife to try to clear a path and find his way. That’s EXACTLY how I felt as well, inept and awkward, but propelled forward by forces I could neither comprehend nor resist. Over and over I stumbled, but, like Goober, I kept flailing away.

As Barney Fife put it in his pep talk to Goober, “Andy’s got a girl, I’ve got a girl, all God’s children got a girl.”

If Goober could find a girl, maybe I could, too. If Goober could keep trying, why shouldn’t I?

There are a lot of great Goober moments in the show, but my favorite may be an episode late in the series in which Goober forgets his razor on a camping trip, comes back with a scruffy beard, and then becomes convinced that he has become an intellectual because Andy, Floyd, and Aunt Bea tell him he looks “different,” and Goober longs more than anything to be different, to be as wise, successful, and self-assured as anyone else. Heavily influenced as he always is by the power of suggestion, Goober becomes overconfident to the point of being unbearable, pontificating on any and every subject to any and every person until Andy finally explodes (he was more irritable in the colored episodes, I submit) and tells him to shut up. Goober is chastened, fairly limping out of the barbershop in humiliation. But then we see him again at the weekly meeting of the town’s history club, offering a tentative and mercifully brief remark on the industrial revolution, followed by a self-effacing comment and that trademark grin.

Once again, Goober had gathered his pride, courage, and determination, and plunged ahead into the wilderness of human interaction.

Just a few short days ago, George “Goober” Lindsey died after a brief illness at the age of 83. He joins Don Knotts, Hal Smith, Frances Bavier, Howard McNear, Aneta Corsaut, and Jack Dodson, among others, who have gone on to that Mayberry that, in a way, exists in everyone who is part of this particular family, the Mayberry that is permanent and unchanging, the Mayberry where there is always time to make homemade ice cream on the porch on Sunday after church, where you can catch up on the local gossip in Floyd’s Barber Shop, and where on a warm summer night, you can hear Andy strumming his guitar all the way to the end of Maple Street.

(Chris Cox is a writer and teacher who lives in Haywood County. He can be reached This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

The specialty license plates that have provided millions of dollars for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway — and plenty of other needy organizations in this state — may disappear if legislative leaders don’t take action to repeal a measure approved in its last session.

The measure to do away with the full-color plates was originally passed in the last General Assembly session due to safety concerns that law enforcement officials could not read the numbers. However, a highway safety committee has now recommended modifications that will allow the plates to keep their “look.” The state Highway Patrol agrees.

We at The Smoky Mountain News are partial to the Friends of the Smokies plate. Not only have we long supported the work of the Friends and the importance of the park to this region, our Art Director Micah McClure worked long hours with former Friends of the Smokies Executive Director George Ivey to design the plate. We think it’s a beauty, and it works.

The point is that supporters of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park need to contact lawmakers and let them know these plates and the revenue they bring in are important. Supposedly the repeal is in the bag, but anyone who follows politics knows that things can change fast.

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This is a short story of two bands. It’s also a way of trying to make up. Corrections in our newspaper get Page 2 billing, but this one warrants a little more detail.

So it was in our April 25 edition on page 24, in the schedule of events for the Greening Up the Mountains festival in Sylva: “3-4 p.m.: Noonday Sun, a Seattle-based Christian pop/rock band.” They were to be the featured band at one of the festival’s stages.

And Noonday Sun is indeed a Seattle-based Christian pop/rock band. Google it and you can see for yourself. But that’s not the band that played at Greening Up the Mountains. That band is the Jackson County-based Noonday Sun, which describes itself on their Facebook page as purveyors of “Aggressive instrumental fusion.”

Let’s see, Christian pop/rock band or aggressive instrumental fusion band. Couldn’t be more different. Kind of like a serious newspaper being mistaken for a shopper.

We pride ourselves in knowing our communities. That means being knowledgeable on who is the county board chairman and what band is playing where. Both very important depending on who’s reading.

To top it off, Chris Cooper, one of the guitarists for Noonday Sun, wrote music reviews for this newspaper for a few years. So, our apologies. I didn’t even know it had happened until running into Adam Bigelow at City Lights, and he couldn’t resist a little ribbing.

More importantly, I keep hearing about the growing Sylva music scene. That’s good for all musicians in Jackson County. And I don’t think many of them play Christian pop/rock. Thank God.

•••

Sometimes the written word is powerful. A beautiful description, a humorous phrase, a concise metaphor or a moving line of poetry can inspire. Martin Dyckman’s letter in this edition (see below) ripping Mitt Romney’s judgment is memorable not for the partisan tone but for its last line. Dyckman has written several books and is a former journalist in Florida. He is talking about Romney, but the line could describe any leader who has done something that proves he has become too enamored of power: “… is to give cause for wonder as to whether any part of the candidate’s soul remains unsacrificed to his ambition.”

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The upcoming issue of Smoky Mountain Living magazine (www.smliv.com) is dedicated to mountain women. It hits newsstands and mailboxes the first week of June, but we’ve just wrapped up the writing, editing and design of the summer issue, and it’s worth a read. I’d recommend picking one up or going all in and getting a subscription.

I won’t give away any content, but I will offer up one line describing a mountain woman that came from one of our readers. It’s rich: “You can tell she’s a level-headed woman because she has snuff running out of both sides of her mouth.”

(Scott McLeod can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

With our average last frost date of May 10 or so it’s time to start planting the main garden. Corn and beans can go in, and over the next few weeks, so can summer staples such as tomatoes, squash and okra.

I would not rush to plant these latter plants — wait until the soil is good and warm. The tomatoes will sit and sulk otherwise, plus you’ll get poor germination of seeds planted too early.

One item that is plentiful in my garden now but will soon be a sweet spring memory is lettuce. As soon as the weather consistently grows warm lettuce will grow bitter and then bolt. There are things you can do to tide yourself over until cooler, lettuce-growing weather arrives again, however:

• You can place shade cloth over the lettuce bed, keep the lettuce cut back to prevent bolting and water two or three times a day. Field studies have shown that it’s not just heat that causes bolting — cumulative light levels and low moisture contribute as well.

This seems as good a place as any to define what I mean by bolting. This is simply a natural process of a plant going to bloom in an effort to produce seed to propagate itself. Lettuce, and spinach for that matter, is notorious for prematurely bolting. Lettuce has compounds that cause that distinctive and unpleasant bitter taste via substances called sesquiterpene lactones. The bitterness becomes increasingly pronounced during the growing season. You can minimize the taste by washing the lettuce in warm water.

• You can plant a lettuce selected for slow bolting qualities. My favorite is a loose leaf aptly named Slobolt. Some gardeners enjoy a French Batavian called Sierra, also genetically selected for being slow to bolt. You can find these varieties easily through various seed catalogue companies.

• You can plant a hot-weather “lettuce” mix. When I was a market gardener, I grew a mix that sold like gangbusters once the main lettuce crops had bolted. These I grew as cut-and-come-again crops. I’d seed heavily and then use scissors to shear the plants when they reached several inches in height. The plants would re-grow and I’d repeat the process. You might consider placing an insect barrier over the beds as well; this will eliminate the need to spray. What I mean by an insect barrier is that you use a manufactured lightweight fabric, also available from numerous seed catalogue companies, over your crops. Insect barrier is light enough that it can rest directly on the plants, but if you prefer you can use metal hoops to keep them up and off of them. I use 11-guage lengths of wire available from the fencing section of local feed and seed stores and cut them into four-foot hoops.

My beds were about 30-inches wide and seeded with a generous hand as noted already. The 30-inch width worked well because I could easily straddle the beds and harvest.

The mixes you can plant vary widely. I generally used baby collards, arugula, baby chard, baby kale and beet greens. I’d replant a new bed every three weeks or so trying to keep ahead of the competition from weeds. Other people also have grown kommatsuna (an Asian green), vitamin green, Tokyo bekana, cutting celery and tetragonia.

Do not make the mistake I made one year and seed them all together. My thought was to mix in the field so I would not have to mix later, but this didn’t work well because the plants grow at wildly different rates. Arugula, for instance, grows very fast indeed whereas the beets grow more slowly. It’s nice to keep them separate so you can harvest according to the growth rate of a given plant.

One nifty idea that I read online in a gardening forum which I might get around to doing this year: A fellow who was selling a variation of this mix (which can be cooked or eaten raw) grew his on salad “tables” made of rows of side-by-side hay bales with three inches of mushroom compost piled on top. The tables are weed free and, over time, compost themselves and can be used to regenerate the garden. He noted that it’s important to use hay bales that are bound with synthetic twine to keep them from breaking apart prematurely. For those of us without a lot of space, or who don’t want to engage in a losing battle with weeds, this sounds like a terrific way to grow plenty of green stuff.

(Quintin Ellison can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)