As part of its transformation to an upscale club and resort, the new Maggie Valley Club is in the midst of a $6 million clubhouse renovation and redesign.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Residents from Jackson County’s Allen’s Branch community said they didn’t know exactly what Sylva town officials were talking about during an informational session regarding plans to bring the area under the town’s extra territorial jurisdiction held Monday night — but they didn’t like it.

Louis Garnett • Guest Columnist

This wasn’t my doctor’s office; it was the vendor exhibit hall at a symposium on pharmaceutical promotion.

The clerk behind the window stuck a form into an Effexor clipboard and handed me a Gentiva pen. But sitting down to read and sign, my elbow intruded onto a chairside table, knocking a flutter of somethings onto the carpet. Collecting the mess, I discovered entry cards for an Imitrex “My-graine Stories Contest,” soliciting migraine experiences in 400 words or less — well, correctly “fewer,” but maybe the judging would be outsourced.

Thanks to a National Science Foundation grant-funded project led by a Western Carolina University professor, 25 young people from Washington’s Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe are seeing firsthand how the nation’s largest dam removal project will impact a river system with deep spiritual and cultural significance to the tribe.

Peregrine falcons, a recovering endangered species, once again nested successfully this spring on Whiteside Mountain in Highlands.

Cyclists will be testing their legs and lungs on the roads of Western North Carolina later this month in the debut of the Tour de Tuck Bike Challenge on Saturday, Aug. 19.

By Chris Cooper

Man, I don’t want to start off with the whole “He’s done it again!” thing. You know, the kind of review where the author is obviously a fan of the artist already, and can do nothing but toss out glowing praise for every note, every beat, every letter of the liner notes. I so don’t want to come off as “that guy.”

Students in Haywood Community College’s Film and Video Production Technology Program just finished an original film written by one of its students.

Canton’s 100th Labor Day Celebration will feature three showings of a 30-minute documentary about the town’s history at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 25; 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 27; and at 4 p.m. on Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 4. All showings are free and will be held at the Canton Colonial Theater.

Storytelling

The term “storytelling” has been acquired by a diverse number of creative folks from musicians (the late Harry Chapin, for example) to artists, filmmakers and writers.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

For the past 24 years, crowds have gathered at Happy Holiday Campground in Cherokee for the annual Cherokee Bluegrass Festival.

By Michael Beadle

Profits are up for Blue Ridge Paper Products nearly two years after devastating floods washed through the Canton paper mill, causing $7 million in damages and temporarily shutting down production.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Members of a grassroots citizens group rallying against a proposal to build a rock quarry in the Tuckasegee community of Jackson County will appear before county commissioners Thursday, Aug. 17, to plead their case further.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Once more, for the last time — Ghost Town has sold.

The announcement came Tuesday morning as regional economic developers unveiled plans for the Maggie Valley theme park to reopen in May 2007. Hank Woodburn, owner of Adventure Landing, which has nine amusement attractions in four states, Al Harper, owner of the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, and Peter Hairston, an independent venture capitalist were expected to close the deal with Ghost Town owner R.B. Coburn Tuesday afternoon.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., has helped Waynesville obtain a loan of $2 million to construct its new fire station.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

About half way between Sylva and Cashiers on N.C. 107, between Jackson County’s Caney Fork and Glenville communities, is the small but busy Tuckasegee.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Sylva Town Board members are expected to move forward with plans to make the Allen’s Branch community part of the town’s extra territorial jurisdiction Thursday, Aug. 17. However, several local residents are pushing for the boundary’s lines to be redrawn.

This is about political ignorance, ignorance highlighted by the recent news about Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s apparently serious illness.

When Waynesville leaders met earlier this month to discuss the site plan and variance requests for the proposed big-box development at the old Dayco site, it seems they spoke with a unanimous voice, urging construction of something other than an off-the-shelf retail center.

By Chris Cooper

Here are a few things about “modern” rock and pop that I’ve found interesting (in a morbid curiosity kind of way) or just plain depressing recently. Maybe I’ve too much time on my hands. Maybe some of this will actually make sense. Who knows? Read, then discuss amongst yourselves.

“Scoop”

The world’s been in need of a good Woody Allen film and this murder-mystery/comedy fabulously fills the void. As the magician “Splendini” Allen is a hoot, essentially playing himself with a few card tricks up his sleeves.

David B. Cotton of Seven Lakes has been named Haywood County manager

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

The Town of Sylva has been awarded a $3.5 million grant from the Clean Water Management Trust Fund to purchase a conservation easement to protect its 1,088-acre Fisher Creek watershed.

If politics makes strange bedfellows, then surely Rutherford Trace offers some curious pillow talk in the legislative halls of Raleigh and Washington, D.C.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

The grassroots group United Neighbors of Tuckasegee celebrated another victory in the battle to keep a rock quarry from locating in its community when county commissioners passed a resolution Thursday night (Aug. 17) imploring state officials not to issue a permit to quarry operators.

When Todd Berrong, a former gun fighter at Ghost Town amusement park, walked through the gate of his old stomping grounds this week, he saw a circle of six men dressed in cowboy hats and boots, gun holsters slung around their waist, complete with leather vests and chaps.

By Michael Beadle

To some, it was a crucial military campaign early in the Revolutionary War, an unprecedented patriot force that crushed a potential British ally and paved the way for American independence and inevitable white settlements in Western North Carolina.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Town aldermen are moving ahead with plans to vote the Allen’s Branch community into Sylva’s planning jurisdiction.

Citizens in Jackson County’s Tuckasegee community should consider themselves lucky. The problem, however, is that luck doesn’t always hold.

It appears very likely now that a proposal to construct a rock quarry in this rural community is not going to fly. Jackson County enacted a high-impact industry ordinance in May 2002 that placed relatively tight regulations on quarries and mines. According to that law, the proposed rock crusher would have to be 1,320 linear feet from the nearest home.

On-going farmland conservation efforts in the rural Haywood County community of Bethel got a boost with a $20,000 grant from the Pigeon River Fund this month.

When Bentley Robison enrolled in the Surveying Technology program at Southwestern Community College, he never imagined he would become an actor in a film. But this summer he and three of his classmates, his instructor, his boss and another employee took part in the filming of scenes for a documentary about the Blue Ridge Parkway commissioned by the National Park Service.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

About two hundred concerned citizens packed into a Jackson County courtroom Tuesday night to show their opposition to a proposed rock quarry to be located in the Tuckasegee community.

The Town of Canton’s Labor Day celebrations reach fever pitch this weekend with the Paper Bowl — the football game between Haywood County rivals Pisgah and Tuscola high schools — followed by a concert on Sept. 1 featuring renegade country rocker Charlie Daniels.

The scandals around N.C. House Speaker Jim Black, D-Mecklenburg, multiply like mushrooms on the forest floor. Yet a casual reader of the news might be inclined to think that Mr. Black was a politician in some other state.

Too often people tend to write off efforts by the most hard-core social activists as excessive or simply impossible to achieve. These people and their movements are out of the mainstream, many say, their ideas worthy yet impractical, or that their time has not come.

Several times a year, Park Ranger Susan Sachs heads up to the ozone garden at the Appalachian Highlands Science Learning Center with a trowel and digs up a few new shoots sprouting from the garden’s coneflower plants.

By Chris Cooper

OK, the title of this one is a bit misleading, seeing as how Eric Johnson’s appearance at Asheville’s Orange Peel technically hasn’t happened yet.

And since I was never able to get my hands on one of those time-traveling silver DeLoreans from the Michael J. Fox movies, I can’t say that I’ve already seen what I’m sure will be a tremendous and inspiring show ... but it sure would be cool if I could.

By Michael Beadle

What keeps people coming back year after year to the Smoky Mountain Folk Festival at Lake Junaluska each Labor Day weekend?

Maybe it’s the award-winning performers such as Marc Pruett, David Holt and Sheila Kay Adams. Maybe it’s the wholesome sounds of family string bands. Maybe it’s the chance to see Southern Appalachian clogging teams at their best.

“Crash”

Sometimes a movie or a book can rock us like a hook to the jaw. This movie, which tells the stories of a dozen or more people as they crash in and out of one another’s lives in a 36-hour period, whaps us upside the head with a flurry of these hooks.

The Steep Canyon Rangers, the host band of the upcoming Mountain Song Festival in Brevard, continues to carve out their position as one of the nation’s top bluegrass bands.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

A new outpatient clinic designed to serve 3,200 area veterans will open in Franklin in spring 2007, Department of Veterans Affairs officials said Thursday, Aug. 24.

By Fred Alexander • Guest Writer

There’s never been a more entertaining book for those who enjoy working in a home machine shop than Randolph’s Shop by Randolph Bulgin of Franklin. The gentle, penetrating humor so clearly captured in the text and enlarged aphorisms on nearly every page make this book a surprising delight for the general reader as well.

According to a recently-released National Park Service study, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is not only the nation’s most visited national park, it also tops the 388 national park units in visitor spending.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Assistant Attorney General David Kirkman hits the play button on a small stereo and turns up the volume. A recording of two voices fills the room at the Jackson County Department of Social Services Building. One voice is that of an elderly woman. The other, a younger male con artist.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Shoes stained with red clay mud and covered with sweat and bits of hay from a morning spent cleaning out the shed on the back of the Monteith property, Sam Hale leads a one person tour through the farmstead’s nearly century-old house pointing out artifacts along the way.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

About 200 concerned citizens packed into a Jackson County courtroom to show their opposition to a proposed rock quarry to be located in the Tuckasegee community.

State mining specialists from the N.C. Department of Natural Resources heard from 25 speakers at the hearing, each one detailing their reasons for wanting the state to deny the rock quarry its application for an operating permit.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

On a conference table covered with blueprints perches a small paper model of a building. The paper model represents the future for the Kudzu Players, Jackson County’s community theater group.

Recent soil and water testing in the former Francis Orchard in Haywood County have not revealed levels of contamination high enough to initiate a cleanup operation.

However, state and local health officials are encouraging residents of the Tanwoods and Orchard Estate subdivisions to limit direct contact with the soil on their properties due to elevated levels of arsenic.

A Western Carolina University building now bears the name of a beloved community leader in public education as the WCU board of trustees unanimously approved a resolution renaming the University Outreach Center as the Cordelia Camp Building.

By Kirkwood Callahan • Guest Columnist

As the final weeks of summer fade into the cooler days of autumn, we are reminded that voters will soon be confronted with another election – theirs to embrace or ignore.