With a hot mid-July sun falling behind the mountains last Thursday evening, rock legend Tommy Stinson strapped on his Gibson acoustic guitar and stood behind a microphone on the side lawn of Yonder Community Market in Franklin. 

Vecinos, a free and charitable clinic providing bilingual primary and behavioral health care in Western North Carolina, is leading a $5.6 million effort to better serve the region’s uninsured and low-income residents by bringing multiple health and social services under one roof.

It was just about four years ago when Jeremiah Chatham decided to put down the hammer and pick up a spatula.

The capital of Kazakhstan, Alma Ata, translates to “full of apples” — an homage to the country’s heritage as the birthplace  of the now-ubiquitous fruit. In the approximately three-quarters of a million years since people first discovered wild sour crab apples in a central Asian forest, the apple has traveled the world, splitting into 7,500 varieties as diverse as the orchardists responsible for breeding them, separated by miles and millennia.

There aren’t many synagogues in Western North Carolina, just one west of Asheville. Mountain Synagogue in Franklin is a community of Jews practicing their faith in the All Saints Episcopal Church of Franklin. And as with most Jewish communities around the world, safety is top priority.

Despite the pandemic, the town of Franklin has seen an influx of new retailers in the last year. 

Adam Kimsey will join the Franklin Town Council after the board unanimously appointed him to fill a two-year unexpired term. 

Tribal Council voted Dec. 9 to support the Nikwasi Initiative’s  efforts to land $5 million in grant funds for a cultural corridor around the Nikwasi Mound in Franklin, but the precise details of the tribe’s involvement have yet to be determined. 

Franklin Town Council has agreed on how to spend $73,000 of the town’s $1.3 million allocation from the American Rescue Plan. 

Exactly 123 years to the day after a Black man was dragged from his cell in Franklin and hung from a bridge at the edge of town, a group of activists took the first step in attempting to reckon with Macon County’s most infamous lynching.