To preface, this column does not reflect the views or opinions of this publication. For the last 12 years, this weekly column has been (and will remain) a vessel to conjure and express my own personal thoughts amid the wanderings and ponderings of my existence. 

After Covid, Haywood Meals on Wheels lost volunteers and was forced to drop meal deliveries to three days per week. The goal is to return to a five-day delivery schedule. 

The Haywood Community College Foundation is hosting the inaugural Charity Disc Golf Tournament, Discs in the Dogwoods, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Thursday, June 13, on the campus of Haywood Community College in Clyde. 

The Haywood Community College Foundation is hosting the inaugural charity disc golf tournament, Discs in the Dogwoods, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 13, on the campus of Haywood Community College. 

Many years ago when I was an educator, my school was tasked with reading a book titled “The Cycle of Poverty” by Ruby Payne.

This is the time of year when many food-related charities could really use our help to assist individuals and families experiencing food insecurity. 

In 2011, Nikki White and Michelle Briggs sat on a porch drinking wine, envisioning an organization by women, for the women and children of Waynesville. They conceived of a team of ladies that would assist the organizations and nonprofits on the ground, already doing the work to aid women and children in the community. Ten years later, Women of Waynesville has not only provided massive support to those existing organizations, it has also created its own philanthropy projects.

It was a sight to behold — more than 200 volunteers of all ages coming together on a cold Saturday morning in December to ensure the youth of Haywood County don’t go hungry. 

Those volunteers packaged 11,000 meals in under an hour, setting a new record for the Generosity Feeds program. 

You may be familiar with the concept of the “little free library” — those small outdoor cabinets stuffed with donated books intended to feed the imaginations of young and old alike — but the sobering reality of the nation’s roaring economy is that it’s given birth to a disturbing new permutation of the popular donation-based book boxes: the “little free pantry,” stuffed with food intended to feed Western North Carolina’s increasingly poor and hungry children and adults.

There, in Sumter County, Georgia, not far from the Alabama line lies the tiny town of Plains (pop. 784), a most unremarkable place home to a most remarkable man. 

Home for President Jimmy Carter has always been the clay roads and cotton fields of Plains, except when he was at Annapolis, in the Navy, or serving as state senator or governor or president.