Opinion
Common sense needed in library debate
I have supported libraries in WNC for over 12 years and been a lifelong library patron. I support all viewpoints being equally represented on shelves providing that librarian gatekeepers allow true balance. However, I do not support or trust an unaccountable bureaucracy with its thumb on the scales of public opinion that entangles three different counties causing unnecessary conflict.
Aligning with the blue zones
With each passing year, I think more and more about the longevity of life. When I was young, I couldn’t wait to be older, to reach those milestone birthdays — 16, 18, 21. Even turning 10 was fun because it’s the first double digit and also 13 because one can finally use the descriptor “teenager.”
Burning books creates problems
To the Editor:
Having read Gary Carden's piece on Ray Bradbury's “Fahrenheit 451,” I was immediately reminded of a quotation from the 19th-century German-Jewish poet and essayist, Heinrich Heine: “Where one burns books, one will ultimately burn people, too.”
Forewarned is forearmed.
David Dorondo
Cullowhee
Budget bill is a disaster
To the Editor:
This budget bill is a disaster!!
It would:
- Make deep cuts to SS, SNAP, Medicaid and Medicare — No!
Save hummingbirds, clean feeders
To the Editor:
There has been a notable decrease in the number of birds coming to my feeder this year, and my neighbors report a similar decrease. This could be due, in part, to a fungal disease caused by unclean feeders.
Some hummingbirds are contracting a fungus at unclean feeders which causes their tongues to swell and results in their death.
Cheers to 26 years of Smoky Mountain News
My office is cool and our building on Montgomery Street in Waynesville is quiet. Almost everyone who works at The Smoky Mountain News has gone home for a few minutes to tend to kids, dogs, wives and husbands as it’s one hour before the annual first Friday in June birthday bash celebrating another year of putting out this weekly print newspaper (and now a seven-day-per-week news website).
I will fight over library issue
To the Editor:
I would like to speak in support of a decision from this board to remove from a library system that continues to make decisions that offer and highlight sexually based material, including sexually explicit material, for children.
Clean energy tax credits help all of us
To the Editor:
On May 22, the House of Representatives voted to pass a budget bill (The One Big Beautiful Bill) that drastically cuts America’s clean energy tax credits. Make no mistake: these cuts will hurt North Carolina and the Town of Waynesville if they become law.
Project 2025’s vision is not my America
To the Editor:
Most of us now understand that Project 2025, brainstorm of the ideologues at the Heritage Foundation and barely mentioned a year or so ago, is very real and that — right now — our federal government is being radically restructured in accordance with that 900-plus page manifesto as it seeks to consolidate power in the executive branch; to consolidate power to the will or whim of the president.
