With the current stay at home order in place at least through May 8, the Maggie Valley Town Board of Aldermen is discussing putting a plan in place to begin reopening town businesses.

It’s late morning and situated behind his desk in the back office of the Haywood Arts Regional Theatre in Waynesville is Steven Lloyd. Leaning back in his chair, Lloyd sighed at the question posed to him: what’s the current status of HART? 

If you haven’t noticed, the boomers are having a hard time staying home during this pandemic. Doing nothing and performing tasks online doesn’t sit well with the natural disposition of this cohort. 

Last Thursday evening, I sat in my recliner, in my one-bedroom apartment in downtown Waynesville, and gazed over at the overflowing pile of old clothes and junk slowly sliding out of the nearby closet like some Southern Appalachian landslide after a heavy rainfall. 

So, probably like most of y’all out there, I’ve spent a lot of time during the continuing quarantine combing through the details of my life, physically and emotionally, whether I intended to or not. 

Can we all admit that this quarantine is getting a little weirder every week? The rules for what we can and cannot do in order to defeat the coronavirus have become so specific that many of us are staging strange little rebellions at home by completely obliterating the rules that were once so much a part of the fabric of our daily lives that we took them for granted.

Growing up, my family spent the week of Easter at Ocean Lakes Campground in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We had a little blue and white camper on Sharks Tooth Trail a few streets back from the ocean. Easter typically fell around our county’s spring break, so once that final school bell rang, we packed up our van and headed south. 

As the nation focuses on protecting the human population from contracting and spreading COVID-19, mandatory business closures have impacted the humans who’s mission it is to take care of our pets. 

The irony’s not lost on many that one of the most essential businesses affecting the lives of people around the world is the business of death. 

Darren Nicholson has played the Grand Ole Opry and the International Bluegrass Music Association award showcase numerous times. He’s got a bookshelf full of glass IBMA recognitions and more number one bluegrass hits with his band Balsam Range than he has fingers to count with.