By Stephanie Wampler

I begin this article with a momentous announcement. This announcement will, I think, bring a general feeling of gladness to the community. (Drum roll ...) Everyone, I want to tell you that I recently found my inner goddess.

When I saw that I had been named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” the first thing I felt like doing was calling my high school science teacher, Emmy Lu Godwin. Mrs. Godwin was as small as an action figure and whiter than foot powder, but she was also mean and sharptoothed. Imagine a cross between an albino ferret and a vampire, then add a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, and that was Mrs. Godwin.

The business sector in Jackson County will benefit from the renewed efforts to establish a working Economic Development Commission.

Haywood Regional Medical Center, the entire medical community and its volunteer board of directors have some work to do. That is, they do if they want to protect the hospital’s competitive position in this region. Repairing the damage done by the controversy surrounding the firing of the emergency room physician group is vitally important.

Sometime before daylight on the day before Christmas Eve, Tammy and I were gently nudged out of sleep by a small, familiar voice.

New Year’s resolutions? Don’t believe in most of them, especially those that are akin to a miracle diet or those no-risk investments tips that keep junking up the inbox in our email program. A sound resolution is more of a decision to dedicate one’s self to hard work and perseverance, not capricious fantasizing about how one wishes things could be.

This deserves emphasis, given the central role that public education plays in North Carolina political debate: our schools have vastly more resources to work with than they did a generation ago.

Thursday night, the Haywood Regional Medical Center Board chose to breach the hospital’s contract with Haywood Emergency Physicians rather than consider mediation, as proposed by the medical staff.

Several years ago, as Christmas approached, I remember my youngest daughter saying, “I can’t imagine what I want for Christmas; I have everything I could possibly need.” She grew up and no longer says such things in anticipation of Christmas or birthdays.

The proposed sale of U.S. Forest Service land to find money for counties who have lost revenue from declining timber sales is just a bad idea, a product of the Bush Administration’s fiscal indulgences rather than well thought-out land management policies.