There’s been a lot of discussion about the attack on the student in the cafeteria of Tuscola High School a few weeks ago where one student beat up another and inflicted some relatively serious injuries. Apparently it wasn’t the guilty party’s first incident. I never have understood those for whom fighting is just something that happens on a semi-regular basis, but then again, there are a lot of personality traits I see in others that I can’t comprehend.

By Stephanie Wampler

It was one of those days .... One of those days when an unnecessarily shrill alarm clock tears you from deep slumber, when you swing out of bed and land your foot on a particularly sharp Lego, and while you are hopping and cursing, you crash into the corner of the door.

Back in the early 1950s when Western Carolina University was still Western Carolina Teachers College, I got a crush on a feisty little co-ed named Hedy West during my sophomore year. Hedy played a banjo and sang exhilarating songs about dying miners and terrible injustices visited on people who worked in cotton mills.

“What we’re trying to do here is reduce the impact of development. That’s really what conservation is, the wise use of resources.”

— Blair Bishop, Haywood Community College

How come this isn’t done all the time?

“The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one’s own home.”

“What has become alien to men is the human component of culture — which upholds them against the world.”

— Theodor Adorno, social critic and philosopher

I don’t wear a watch. Why should I? Everywhere I look, I see the time of day. In fact, no matter where I go or how hard I try, I can’t seem to escape the passage of time. It’s on my cell phone. It’s on the oven AND the microwave in our kitchen. It’s on my computer screen, lurking down in the right hand corner.

By James Costa • Guest Columnist

There has been much discussion in recent weeks regarding the notion of opening the upper Chattooga River to boating. As a biologist and as a longtime resident of the Southern Appalachian region, I have studied the issue for the past several months in order to take an informed position on the potential impact that boating might have on the river and surrounding national forest.

Gov. Mike Easley’s proposed budget would decrease the portion of lottery proceeds going to education — before legislators have a chance to fix an already unfair funding formula that shorts the western part of the state — a gamble that citizens throughout the state just shouldn’t support.

By Carl Iobst

Well if this don’t beat all. Over in eastern Germany where lederhosen, apple strudel, and skinheads are tourist attractions, Karl Szmolinsky is fixin’ to feed the world’s hungry. Maybe not the whole world, but you’ve got to start somewhere. And what better place than North Korea, where thousands are starving to death every day!

The Jackson County commissioners should move forward with their temporary subdivision moratorium, notwithstanding all the concerns that have been raised about this proposal.