January 21-27, 2015 Vol. 16 Iss. 34 Western North Carolina’s Source for Weekly News, Entertainment, Arts, and Outdoor Information www.smokymountainnews.com
New district attorney will have two offices Page 4 Homebrewing gets crafty in Haywood Page 26
Going once, going twice Pinning down property values is a tricky task these days
Sylva’s Nat. Geo. survivor
Page 6
CONTENTS
STAFF
On the Cover: Macon County’s new property values have been established, a complicated process that was made more complicated due to the boom-and-bust real estate market of the past seven years. (Page 6-9)
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A Sylva man chosen to participate in National Geographic’s “Ultimate Survivor Alaska” series talks about adrenaline junkies and taking part in the show. (Page 34) Donated photo
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News District Attorney Ashley Welch settles into her new job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Franklin’s Caterpillar plan to close, 150 jobs go with it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Jackson TDA appoints new board members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Macon wants money from Jackson for fire, rescue services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 WCU unveils plan for building destroyed by fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Maggie Valley looks to build sense of place with recreation projects . . . . . . . 12 Harrah’s not affected by parent company bankruptcy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Sylva to use wheel locks for those who don’t pay parking fines . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Cullowhee planning initiative finished, goes to commissioners . . . . . . . . . . . 17 No Name Sports Pub noise problems could end music offerings . . . . . . . . . 18 EPA outlines plan for final Benfield cleanup; no timeline for work yet. . . . . . . 21
Opinion
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Hunting dog attack leads woman to fight for law change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Smoky Mountain News
January 21-27, 2015
Homebrewers gather to trade ideas, talk shop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
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January 21-27, 2015
Smoky Mountain News
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news
Welch adjusts to life as a district attorney BY J ESSI STONE N EWS E DITOR fter just a couple of weeks, Ashley Welch is quickly learning what it means to be the District Attorney of the 30th Judicial District. It means juggling court schedules, managing a large staff and traveling between the seven most western counties, which was to be expected. But it has also meant de-activating her personal Facebook page, changing her cell phone number, always being ready to have her picture taken and getting used to her long-time colleagues now referring to her as boss, Mrs. Welch and even Madame DA. “Boss is what I used to call (Mike) Bonfoey, and when someone says Mrs. Welch, I look around for my mother-in-law,” Welch, 36, joked while sitting in her new Waynesville office with a spectacular view of downtown Waynesville and the surrounding mountain ranges.
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January 21-27, 2015
STAFF CHANGES Aside from the unexpected adjustments, Welch isn’t wasting any time getting her offices in order so she can deliver on the promises she made during her campaign for office. She already filled several vacancies in the office, including her previous position as an assistant district attorney. Assistant DA Jim Moore, Welch’s opponent in the 2014 election, was let go when she took over the office and ADA Rachael Groffsky recently left to take a more lucrative ADA job in Buncombe County. “The transition has been good — it’s something new every day,’ she said. “I’m realizing that everyone I’ve hired is unbelievably talented and I have faith that they are doing what they need to do.” She has a total of 25 employees — 10 ADAs, one investigator, one administrative
assistant and the rest are victim witness legal assistants. Welch’s first goal is to clear out the tremendous backlog of cases — particularly a hefty load in Swain County’s Superior Court. She has assigned someone with tons of experience as a trial lawyer to get it caught up. There are several factors that have attributed to the backlog. “Swain had a rash of homicides with multiple defendants and there’s only so much court time there,” she said. “We also lost a prosecutor that was assigned there full time, so Bonfoey sent me and Jim (Moore) there together shortly after we had both filed for office. So needless to say, it was hard to get anything done.” Welch said she also sent five of her 10 prosecutors to court in Haywood County to help work down the 300 cases on the docket. Under Bonfoey, who retired as DA last year, all of the office’s ADAs handled both District and Superior court in Haywood. Welch decided to split the duties up, with newly hired ADA Kaleb Wingate covering District and Jeff Jones covering Superior. Welch said the separation would allow each assistant DA to become more familiar with each court’s players. “It’s not a rare thing, but it’s not been done here before,” she said.
TWO MAIN OFFICES There’s been some confusion over where Welch’s main office will be located after the Macon County News reported that it would be moving to Macon County for the first time in state history. Haywood County has housed the main office for 30 years, and Welch said that wouldn’t be changing. “Obviously, Haywood County is the largest county in the district with the most crime,” she said. “I plan on being here at
“The transition has been good — it’s something new every day. I’m realizing that everyone I’ve hired is unbelievably talented and I have faith that they are doing what they need to do.” Smoky Mountain News
— Ashley Welch
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HCC to hold 50th anniversary community and student event Haywood Community College will hold a 50th Anniversary Community and Student Kickoff event from 2 to 6 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 29, in the campus library. Come see a historical video and display. There will be lite refreshments and a chance to meet Clyde the Bobcat, HCC’s mascot. Sign up for a voucher to the Sunrise Café good for credit toward a food purchase. Students can register for a drawing of a Windows Tablet with keyfolio keyboard and wireless mouse. There will be free 50th anniversary decals to all guests. 828.627.4679.
least three days a week.” On the other hand, Macon County is Welch’s home and she plans on having her own office at the Macon County Courthouse as well. She sees it as having an east and west point of command. There are district attorney offices in every county in the district. The Macon County office is currently staffed with two ADAs and
“Traditionally, the main office is where the DA lives, but I think this is like having two main offices,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean I’ll be any less accessible.”
PRIORITIES Welch said priorities and policies often shift depending on the DA in office, and her
Newly elected District Attorney Ashley Welch sits in her Waynesville office in the Haywood County Justice Center. Jessi Stone photo two other staff members — two more employees than Bonfoey had at the location. Bonfoey had one victim witness legal assistant and one ADA in the Macon office. Welch said she was the second ADA based there even though she said she was hardly ever physically there. The investigator was moved to the Macon office from Haywood County. Macon County is now getting ready to make renovations to the DA office space to accommodate an office for Welch. The set up is a little different than it has been in the past, but Welch said she doesn’t understand the concern with which office she is occupying as long as she is doing her job efficiently. Her location on any given day will depend on where things are happening, so it’s going to be fluid.
WOW celebrates another year The year 2014 proved to be an incredible year for the Women of Waynesville. It was a year of growing pains and change and new adventures and great successes. “This was the year that WOW went from raising $11,000 since our origination to raising $30,000 as an organization,” said Nikki White, president of the women’s group. “And now it’s time to open up our doors again to the women in our community by inviting you all to our Anniversary Celebration party,” which will be held at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 29. The Women of Waynesville community service organization will celebrate its third anniversary at the Herren House in Waynesville. “This is the time to come and check us out, learn more about
priorities aren’t that different from her predecessor. Her focus will continue to be prosecuting cases involving felony offenses against children, habitual felons, drug dealers and driving while impaired. One advantage Welch has is that she served as an assistant DA in the district since 2005 and most of her staff knows where she stands. “They’ve known me for years so they know what’s important to me and have modified their priorities based on that,” she said. Welch said she didn’t think she could work any harder than she did as an assistant DA, but she has quickly found that this job will require her to work harder than she ever has in her life. “I feel confident in doing this job and I feel like I’m where I need to be,” she said.
us and how we work, what our mission is and to help us set up a path for our 2015 year,” White said. WOW did two large fundraising events in 2014. The first was a cornhole tournament for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Haywood County and the other was the first-ever Battle of the Charities event, an 80’s air band competition that brought six local businesses together to support their choice of a local charity. “This one event by itself generated close to $11,000 and has been our largest, most challenging fundraiser we have ever done,” said White. Heavy hors’d oeuvres, wine and non alcoholic beverages will also be served. www.womenofwaynesville.com, www.facebook.com/womenofwaynesville, or call 828.545.6879.
Franklin plant shutting down
and Mickey Luker — had reapplied for their seats. The seat that Custer now holds was the only one to receive a second application. Current members Mary Lanning of Hampton Inn & Suites, Robert Jumper of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce and Jim Hartbarger of Jarrett House were all reappointed, and Jumper reclaimed his role as board chairman. “Robert Jumper has served in that capacity for a year and has done an exemplary job of that,” Commissioner Vicki Greene said before nominating him for the role. The terms become effective immediately and extend through December 2017 with the exception of Taft and Custer, who are filling unexpired terms for retiring board members. Taft’s term will end in December 2016 and Custer’s in December 2015. Sitting board members with terms expiring in December 2015 are Clifford Meads of High Hampton Inn, Ken Fernandez of the Cashiers Chamber of Commerce and Vick Patel of Best Western Inn. Current board members with terms expiring in December 2016 are Ashley Iglesias of Wyndham, Merrily Teasley of Balsam Mountain Inn, Cherie Bowers of Smoky Mountain Getaways Inc. and Alex Bell of AB Fly Fishing Guide Service.
The Jackson County Tourism Development Authority will have some new faces around the table this year after the county commissioners appointed five new members to the board last week. “We received a total of six applications for the five new appointments,” said Chuck Wooten, county manager. “All the applications were people recommended either by the TDA or the chambers of commerce.” The new members are Henry Hoche of Innisfree Bed and Breakfast, representing lodging in south Jackson with 25 or fewer rooms; Sara Jennings of Lonesome Valley, representing retail and tourism in south Jackson; Ken Taft of Landmark Realty and Vacation Rentals, representing lodging with 25 or fewer rooms in south Jackson; Joey Laughridge of Bear Lake Reserve, representing lodging with 25 or more rooms in north Jackson and Kelly Custer of Current Medical Services, representing retail and tourism in north Jackson. None of the board members that the new appointees replaced — Debra Watson, Bob Dews, Brien Peterkin, Julie Stockton
QUESTION: Should I be worried about BPA liners in cans and be buying BPA-free cans? Answer: While some brands do offer BPA-free cans this is not commonplace and this is typically noted on the label.
Here are some facts about BPA. 1. BPA (bisphenol-A) has been approved for use as a liner for cans by the FDA since in the 1960’s. 2. Authorities in the U.S, Canada, Europe and Japan view the use of BPA as a food liner as safe. 3. Studies found that rats given 70,000 times what we would encounter eating canned products had no ill effects – “it was only when rats were given millions of times what humans would consume” could effects be called endocrine disruptors. 4. Studies looking at BPA effect on different organs and different ages and stages of development found the only area of “some concern” were “effects on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland in fetuses, infants, and children at current human exposures to bisphenol A” for other ages/stages of development the concerns were minimal or negligible. 6. While BPA has been studied extensively, alternatives being used for “BPA-free” liners have not. Sources: http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/sya-bpa/ http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/02/26/283030949/governmentstudies-suggest-bpa-exposure-from-food-isn-t-risky Canned foods provide an economical and safe option for many, additionally cans can be recycled while other materials cannot. The use of BPA as a liner for cans has been extensively studied and is currently considered safe by the FDA. It is important for children and adults to eat a varied diet that includes fresh, frozen and canned foods like fruits, vegetables, proteins and grains.
Smoky Mountain News
Jackson County gets new tourism board members
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January 21-27, 2015
largest prime product manufacturing facilities and its global parts distribution headquarters and warehouse will enable the company to reduce shipping costs and drive efficiency by utilizing existing assets. Both the Franklin and Toccoa facilities produce seals used in Caterpillar machines manufactured around the world. “This decision is not a reflection of the dedication that our Franklin and Toccoa employees have demonstrated, but rather about improving efficiency across our component manufacturing footprint and locating seal production much closer to our supply base and several large facilities that use these components,” said Division Vice President Greg Folley. The company will work with employees to determine interest in positions at other Caterpillar facilities where applicable. Displaced employees will receive severance packages from the company and outplacement services from appropriate agencies to ensure they have support during this transition. Macon County was recently designated as a Tier 1 county by the North Carolina Department of Commerce, meaning it is considered an “economically distressed” county. The county was designated as a Tier 2 in 2014, but the county’s small population and the higher percentage of residents living in poverty pushed it into the Tier 1 category. The unemployment rate as of November 2014 was 5.3 percent. The Tier 1 designation will make Macon County eligible for more economic development funding through the state.
news
BY J ESSI STONE N EWS E DITOR acon County was hit with some tough news last week when Caterpillar Inc. announced that it would be shutting down its Franklin plant next year, leaving 150 people without work. Franklin Mayor Bob Scott said he was shocked by the news that seemed to come out of the blue. “It hit me like someone telling me a good friend had died,” he said. “Caterpillar has been like a friend to many people here. These are tough enough times and for this to happen — my concern is what can we do to help these people.” Tommy Jenkins, economic development director for Macon County, said he would be exploring different options of how to assist Caterpillar’s displaced workers with retraining through the community colleges or through the local Employment Security Commission and finding new jobs. “Caterpillar has always been a good corporate member of our community, but like any other business, they’ve had some ebbs and flows,” Jenkins said. “They’ve always done well in our community so it’s taken the whole county by surprise.” The Franklin plant, along with the plant in Toccoa, Georgia, will close in 2016 as Caterpillar consolidates production to the company’s Mapleton, Illinois, foundry. A press release from Caterpillar stated that the transition would impact about 275 positions. According to the press release, consolidating production to an existing location in close proximity to several of Caterpillar’s
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news
Back from rock bottom Macon Realtors reflect on the past, present and future
BY B ECKY JOHNSON STAFF WRITER une Tassillo loves real estate, but she never knew how exciting it could be until she worked her first all-or-nothing, one-dayonly sales blitz for a comeback development. When the gates swung open the morning of the big day, in rushed a line of prospective buyers with every intention of snagging their dream lot before the day was out. Armed with walkie-talkies and sales contracts, teams of Realtors were waiting to greet them. Tassillo jumped in the car of a waiting buyer she’d never met before and got right to business. “I said ‘How much do you have to spend?’” Tassillo recounted. She had scouted the development the day before, picking out choice lots in different price ranges. It was a critical strategy, because once the gates opened, time was a luxury they couldn’t afford. The first to call dibs on a lot got it, and everyone would be racing for the best lots. Tassillo and her carload of clients for the day were soon stuck behind a snaking line of cars winding up the development roads. So Tassillo went with plan B: ditch the car and hike, make that run, straight up the mountain to the lot she had in mind. “And I sold the lot,” she said. “We came back down 45 minutes later and the car is still running and the doors were standing open. It was a lot of fun.” The scene sounds like something from the real estate boom, but in fact, these sale blitzes were commonplace during the bust. For developers, it was a way of jump-starting stagnating sales. And for the bargain-shoppers, who were courted weeks ahead of time from the mountain feeder markets of Atlanta and Florida, the promise of limited-time-only, rock bottom deals was too good to pass up. Tassillo, one of the owner/brokers of RE/MAX Elite Realty in Franklin, became a regular sales agent at these one-day blitzes held across the mountains during 2011 and 2012. “Once you go to one, they all know you and it starts snowballing,” she said. “I sold land at every one of them.” It was a tough time, and Realtors did whatever they could to survive the downturn. Not all did, however. There’s been a lot of attrition 6 in the real estate world since the boom days.
Smoky Mountain News
January 21-27, 2015
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When Carol Lynn Johnson started at Prudential real estate in Franklin in 2007, there were 275 Realtors licensed in the Franklin area. Now, there’s just more than 100. “Sixty-five percent of the realtors aren’t in business any more,” Johnson said. Those who’ve stayed in the game have to work a lot harder. “I used to hear stories about people just sitting in their office taking calls as they come in and writing offers on property sight unseen. I can’t imagine that happening now,” Johnson said. “This is not for the weak of heart or weak of character.” Johnson’s own entry into the real estate business in 2007 was bad timing to say the least. “The month my license was conferred was the month the big mortgage crises hit the fan. I struggled,” she said. Luckily, she wasn’t counting on the income to survive. “If I had, that first year or two, I would have starved,” Johnson said. Gay Moore, a Realtor with Nantahala Real Estate Company, also entered the real estate world just as the market was going south in 2007. “Before that, it was hot as could be. Anyone who walked in bought something,” Moore said. “Now you work harder to get a deal done.” Realtors who never knew the heyday have an advantage of sorts. “Honestly, we weren’t used to the great boom so we didn’t miss it,” said Becky Ramey, a broker/owner at Franklin RE/MAX, who also went into real restate in 2006. These days, Johnson, Tassillo and Ramey are among the top 10 sellers in the Franklin real estate market. So far, this is the busiest January they’ve seen. Ramey has a wall-sized dry erase board over her desk where she tracks all her listings. It’s gotten so crowded lately, she doesn’t have room on the board for her land anymore. Volume is finally picking up, she said. “People know the market can only go up at this point,” Ramey said, rapping her knuckles on her wooden desk for good measure. “People know it is do or die now,” Tassillo added. Across town, Johnson has seen the same rising tide. When a call came in from a prospective buyer last week wanting to schedule a drive around, she flipped through the pages of her desktop planner, looking for an opening among the many showings and even
Winter is normally slow in real estate, but Carol Lynn Johnson with Prudential Markham Bankston in Franklin (inset) is witnessing her busiest January ever, and Becky Ramey and June Tassillo, brokers with RE/MAX Elite Realty in Franklin, are adding new listings by the week.
Becky Johnson photo
closings already penciled in. “If I am starting out the year this strong, this is very exciting,” Johnson said. “I think 2015 is going to be awesome.” Moore has seen a steady uptick in sales and prices in her niche market of Nantahala Lake property as well. “The last two years have been good,” she said. Values are still under their historic high — “A lake house that sold for $800,000 then is probably now worth $600,000,” she said — but are least they’re moving. Thinking back on the 67 closings Ramey did in 2014, she wagered about half were locals and half were the out-of-town variety, be it retirees moving here or second-home buyers. It’s a different landscape than the hey-
number of foreclosures. At the market’s low point, nearly a quarter of all the listings in the greater Franklin area were foreclosures. Now it’s down to 8 percent, Johnson said. Foreclosures had a depressing effect on the real estate market, driving down overall values. Banks were dumping a huge number of foreclosed properties on the market for cheap. “They want to move it and there is no emotional baggage for them. They are going by a spreadsheet,” Johnson said. As foreclosures are cleared out of the pipeline, the glut of property on the market is shrinking, allowing values to climb again. In the meantime, some Realtors like Tassillo have gotten into the game of managing long-term rentals — an attractive option for sellers unwilling to sell at today’s depressed values. Instead of selling now at a loss, they are renting their homes “I used to hear stories about until the market rebounds more. people just sitting in their Banks holding the bag on foreclosures are also taking that route. They’ve begun office taking calls as they renting homes they can’t sell at a decent price, turning a write-off into a moneycome in and writing offers on making asset until values come back up. property sight unseen. I can’t But no amount of waiting will help some sellers. imagine that happening now.” “If they had purchased in 2004, 2005, or 2006, they are never going to — Carol Lynn Johnson see that money,” Tassillo said. day, when more than 75 percent were the outThat’s the tough choice facing sellers today. “What I tell people, is if they need to hold of-town buyers. Twice in the past week, Ramey has seen sell- out for a number it might be two to five years. ers get multiple bites on a house. Until now, sell- They have to decide whether to hang on for ers would usually only have a single buyer on that time frame, or should they go ahead and the table, rather than fielding competing offers. cut their losses,” Ramey said. As for a full rebound, however? Ramey “That hasn’t happened much in years,” Ramey said. “That’s when it starts to transi- doesn’t see that happening. “I think it would be unhealthy if it got tion from a buyers to a sellers market.” back to where it was. We couldn’t sustain the It’s still a ways off, however. Another positive sign is the receding growth that was happening,” she said.
No more rose-colored glasses
This is the closest dollar figure we have on how much the real estate market crashed as a whole in Macon County. A staggering $1.2 billion in real estate value has evaporated since 2007. The homes, land and lots are all still here, of course, but it’s worth a lot less now. Collectively, the value of real estate in Macon fell from $8.9 billion to $7.7 billion over the past eight years — a 15 percent drop on average.
$1.2 billion
Despite a crash in property values over the past eight years, we’ve finally turned the corner. In a reval forecast issued this time last year, property values were tracking 25 percent below 2007 values. But the gap closed in 2014. Values are now only 15 percent lower, a 10 percent rebound compared to 2007 values in a year’s time.
10%
10% Lots in mountain subdivisions were once all the rage, but went out of style faster than butterfly collars. Lot sales have seen only a meager recovery. The number of lots sold increased by only 10 percent from the trough of 2010 to 2014, lagging behind the rebound in home sales. Lot sales once outpaced home sales, but now account for only a quarter of valid real estate sales — fewer than 200 lots sold in 2014 compared to 500 homes that year.
100%
Sales of high-dollar homes — those over $500,000 — have more than doubled since 2011. Less than 30 sold that year, but more than 60 sold in 2014. Moving up a notch to the over $1 million bracket, 25 homes sold last year — a four-fold increase over 2011 when only six homes sold in that range. And in the upper echelon — homes over $2 million — there haven’t been many sales, but the number on the market is growing. There were 25 homes listed on the market for more than $2 million in 2014, up from about 10 the year before.
120%
20%
Homes and lots sold in 2014 that sold for 20 percent less on average than what they were worth in 2007, when the county finished its last reval at the peak of the boom.
69%
Property values soared during the mid-2000s. The last reval before this one was done in 2007. It showed a 69 percent increase in real estate values in the four-year period from 2003 to 2007.
The year the market hit bottom — 2011 had the lowest average sales prices and the least number of valid real estate sales.
65%
The number of valid real estate sales are up substantially: more than 700 sales were recorded in 2014 compared to 420 sales in 2011. Valid sales don’t count foreclosures, short-sales,
The number of home sales doubled — a 100 percent increase — between 2011 and 2014. Home sales have carried the real estate market recovery, compared to the has-been champion of land.
Tommey Allen is part of Macon County's mobile appraisal team, trawling every corner of the county to capture the ebb and flow of real estate values. Becky Johnson photo
The quest for the perfect comp BY B ECKY JOHNSON STAFF WRITER Some weeks Tommey Allen spends more time behind the wheel than a long-haul trucker. It’s not all driving time though. Most of it is just idling along the curb, parked on the roadside and sitting in driveways. Over the past two years, Allen and the rest of the Macon County appraisal team have scouted every inch of road — paved, gravel, dirt or otherwise — to size up all 44,000 parcels of property and ultimately make a prognostication of what they’re worth. “It can be overwhelming,” Allen said. “Yeah, it can get overwhelming at times,” agreed Kaine Matthews, another county appraiser. “One challenge is getting to the houses.” That is often easier said than done, especially when there’s only a construction road leading to it, or it’s hanging off the side of a cliff. Sluggish sales have been the main enemy for the appraisal team in the latest countywide revaluation. There simply wasn’t enough property being bought and sold to establish a baseline in the real estate market. Appraisers peg the value of a house or lot by comparing it to similar houses and lots that have actually sold. But when real estate sales screeched to a halt in the late 2000s, there weren’t enough sales to set that baseline. “If you ain’t got comps ….” said Richard Lightner, Macon’s head tax administrator, using the real estate slang for “comparable sales.”
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auctions or transactions between family members or neighbors.
January 21-27, 2015
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A periodic countywide property appraisal — known as the reval — squares up property values on the county’s tax rolls with real-world real estate values. The last reval in Macon was in 2007 during the height of the mountain real estate rush, when second-home buyers, dreamy retirees and high-rolling speculators sent property values soaring into the stratosphere. There’s been widespread carnage in the real estate market since then. The much-anticipated reval captures the broad stokes of the Macon’s boom-and-bust. Here’s some top data points to come out of the just-released reval.
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Macon’s reval: unplugged and uncensored The time of reckoning is finally here. Macon County’s first countywide assessment of real estate values since the bust came out this week, and it’s full of surprises. For starters, your property values probably didn’t go down as much as you thought they would. The Smoky Mountain News sat down with Richard Lightner, Macon’s tax administrator, to debunk some of the commonly held myths surrounding the reval. REVAL MYTH #1: SINCE MY PROPERTY VALUE WENT DOWN, MY TAXES WILL GO DOWN. Not so fast. Overall, there’s a 15 percent decline in property values. But the county will likely hike the tax rate by 15 percent to make up for it. So while your value may go down, the tax rate will go up, and that may offset that hoped for property tax decrease. Whether your own taxes go up, down, or stay the same depends on where you fall on the spectrum. For those who saw the average decline of 15 percent, your property tax bill will be a wash. For those who saw less of a decline, or even saw an increase, rejoice in the fact your property values fared better than most, and then brace for higher property taxes. If your property value went down more than the average of 15 percent, embrace the consolation prize of your property taxes coming down. “Now we are bringing everything back to a normal footing. The people who may have been overbilled because their values were inflated are going to see some relief now that they’ve dropped, and those who were getting a break before will now have to pick up a bigger share,” Lightner said. REVAL MYTH #2: THE REAL ESTATE MARKET TANKED, SO MY PROPERTY VALUE SHOULD BE A LOT LOWER THAN BEFORE. True, the real estate market tanked, but it’s not as bad as you might think. Some areas of the county barely saw a decline at all, like houses convenient to downtown Franklin and downtown Highlands. “People want to be downtown, within walking area of all that is going on,” Lightner said. Values for high-end, second-home, resort-style property plummeted the most — after all, they had further to fall. Vacant subdivision lots, another hot item during the boom, also fell more steeply. But median-priced homes and starter homes held fairly steady, since they weren’t all that inflated in the first place. REVAL MYTH #3: THE REAL ESTATE MARKET BOTTOMED OUT A WHILE AGO, AND PROPERTY VALUES HAVE COME BACK NOW. Yes and no. While the recession and real estate bust is in the rearview mirror nationally, a turnaround has been slower coming here — particularly in the second-home and vacation market. “We are just now entering into a recovery,” Lightner said. The real estate recovery in the mountains is lagging behind, but likewise, the recession was slower to hit here. “It took a while to enter a full-blown recession in Western North Carolina. The results didn’t
start showing up here until 2009 and 2010,” Lightner said. Nationally, the real estate market hit bottom a few years ago and began going back up. But values were still going down in the mountains until quite recently. “We are such a large second-home market and you look at where the investors and buyers are from, it’s Florida and Atlanta,” Lightner said. “That’s where the money was coming from. They have to recover there first and make their money there before we see it here.” REVAL MYTH #4: THE REVAL IS MOSTLY A GUESSING GAME. COUNTY APPRAISERS DON’T EVEN VISIT EACH PROPERTY WHEN APPRAISING IT. Actually, they do. All 44,000 parcels. The county’s team of appraisers divvies up the county into territories and systematically combs them until they’ve visited each piece of property. They don’t go inside homes, so they don’t know if you have granite counter tops or marble tile. But they probably walked around on your property — they have the right to trespass — to stack it up against other houses in the neighborhood, and ultimately score it against similar property that’s sold recently. Appraisers use recent sales in the neighborhood to set a baseline, and from there, adjust the value up or down for each property based on its characteristics. Does it have more bedrooms than the house that sold down the street? How old does the roof look? Is there an eyesore next door or highway noise? What type of road does it have? “Are you on a paved road, state road, private road, private paved road, private gravel road, private dirt road?” Lightner asked. The view is also of paramount importance. “Is it a panoramic view, good view, excellent view, lake view, mountain view, no view?” Lightner said. The combination of variables are endless but are ultimately tailored to the DNA of the individual property when setting its value. “I have to worry about equality,” Lightner said. “That Mr. Jones in his three-bedroom house is treated the same as Mr. Smith in his three-bedroom house.” REVAL MYTH #5: A FLOOD OF FORECLOSURES AND FIRE SALES IN DEFUNCT SECOND-HOME DEVELOPMENTS SKEWED THE REVAL. They could have, if they were counted, but they weren’t. Real estate was unloaded at rock-bottom prices after the bust, not only at foreclosures on the courthouse steps but in behind-the-scenes short sales, fire sale auctions, and get-‘em-whilesupplies-last hype sales. Considered distressed sales, the sale price in these scenarios is often lower than it would be in a normal arms-length transaction. If these auctions, foreclosures and fire sales were factored into the mix, they would falsely bring down the average selling price. So appraisers kicked those sales out, and don’t consider them when sizing up the true going rate of real estate. Likewise, property sales among family members, post inheritance sales by groups of heirs, and adjustments to property lines between neighbors. These are also tossed out of the equation as well since they don’t reflect the real world values.
Meet Richard Lightner, the eagle eye of Macon’s reval BY B ECKY JOHNSON STAFF WRITER Richard Lightner isn’t one for nostalgia. For nearly 30 years, he’s been running the property reval show in Macon County. But there’s not much he misses about the old days. When Lightner started, every parcel of property had a paper file, and that meant a lot of filing cabinets — “a roomful,” Lightner recalled. When appraisers headed out in the morning to trawl the county roads, they made sure to have a pencil sharpener with them. Now, appraisers have dashmounted computer stands and a laptop. Technology came along in the nick of time, considering the number of parcels to appraise — nearly 45,000 — has doubled since the mid-‘80s. “When my appraisers come in, whatever they did in the field that day goes up to my main frame,” Lightner said. After spending a decade in deep storage, the old paper property cards were finally shredded. Since 2000, Lightner’s been riding the real estate roller coaster like everyone else. “We have just come though extreme volatility that hasn’t been seen before,” Lightner said. This time eight years ago, on the eve of reval notices hitting the mailboxes, Lightner was bracing for a tsunami of public backlash. Homes and land had skyrocketed in the mid-2000s, and the 2007 reval was capturing the market at its peak. Collectively, real estate values went up 69.5 percent in the four short years since
Richard Lightner. Becky Johnson photo
the last reval in 2003. Some saw their property value double, triple, even quadruple when the 2007 reval came out. Sticker shock — and fears over what those higher values would do to their property taxes — landed angry mobs at the appraisal office the next day, waving their property notices and demanding this ridiculous value assigned to their property be adjusted back to reality. In the end, they were right. The property values were ridiculous. And they were indeed adjusted back to reality, just not by Lighter. The market ultimately took care of that on its own. In hindsight, despite what property was selling for on paper during the heyday, values were based on a false premise. They didn’t rise and fall on supply-anddemand economics alone. Sure, baby boomers and retirees were smitten with the notion of a mountain dream home. But that wasn’t the whole story. Speculators and developers were intentionally manipulating the market — even stooping to calculated bank and mortgage fraud — to reap bigger profits for themselves. This reval, Lightner still expects to see appeals, but of a different vein than 2007. Some will undoubtedly show up wondering why their value didn’t come down more given the rock-bottom real estate prices. But the appraisal team has been more exacting in sifting through each sale to decide if it’s a true reflection of the market or an outlier that should be ignored (see story “Quest for a perfect comp”). Still, people who got a hot deal on their property won’t understand why it’s not appraised as low as they bought it for. “I think the appeals will come from people who have bought properties at not market values — through short sales, liquidation sales, bank sales, auctions,” Lightner said. Those distressed sales are serving a critical purpose, though. “I think it will be a while before we get rid of the excessive inventory and vacant lots. Once the supply has cleaned itself up, the prices will start increasing,’ Lightner said.
ailboxes across Macon County were blanketed with new property value notices this week, the first countywide appraisal since 2007. As you ripped open the envelope, there were probably two things on your mind:
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Has my property value gone up or down, and by how much? Will my property taxes go up or down as a result, and by how much? But you won’t find the answers to either of these on your notice. It only gives your newly appraised value — your old value isn’t anywhere to be seen. And it also doesn’t tell you what it all means come tax time, since that technically won’t be decided by county commissioners until June when they finalize the coming year’s budget. But grab your notice, play along, and we’ll walk you through those burning questions.
Step 1: Go to gis2.maconnc.org/lightmap/maps/ Step 2: In the search bar, enter the parcel number from your property notice and hit search. Step 3: When it comes up, click the highlighted “PIN” number among the data field on the left-hand side. Step 4: It brings up your property card, but value shown here may have already rolled over to the new one. To see what your old value was, click on “2014 prop tax notice” in fine print at the bottom. Step 5: Now find the number that says “real estate total value.” This is your old property value. Step 6: Assuming your new value has gone down some, subtract your new real estate value from your old one. Then divide that number by your old property value, and multiply by 100. Step 7: This is the percent your property value went down. But you’re not done yet. Just because your property value went down, doesn’t mean your taxes will go down. Step 8: On average, property values went down 15 percent. So the county will likely hike the tax rate by 15 percent to make up the difference. If your property value went down by more than 15 percent, your taxes will most likely go down. If your property went down by less than 15 percent, your taxes will most likely go up.
Macon County was awash in foreclosures of all kinds following the bust: large-scale developers went bankrupt, fly-by-night contractors flew the coop, wanna-be retirees jettisoned their second-homes when their 401Ks tanked, upside down working families begged for loan workouts. COMPS, CONTINUED FROM 7 Of the limited sales being recorded, prices were all over the map. “They have been fluctuating widely,” Lightner said. And many were suspect. Appraisers had to sort out which were an accurate picture of real world values and which to discount. Foreclosures were the biggest wrench in the works. Macon County was awash in foreclosures of all kinds following the bust: large-scale developers went bankrupt, fly-by-night contractors flew the coop, wanna-be retirees jettisoned their second-homes when their 401Ks tanked, upside down working families begged for loan workouts. On top of foreclosures were the short sales and firesale auctions, which couldn’t be counted as comps either. “You find out if there are any outliers and take out all the distressed sales and deter-
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What you really want to know when new property values arrive in the mail
mine if it is a valid arms-length transaction,” said Matthews. They had to keep their ear to the ground in the real estate world, and regularly called on Realtor friends for insight on whether a particular sale was legit or distressed. But once they weeded the distressed ones out, there weren’t enough sales to set a baseline. The reval was initially supposed to happen in 2011. But Lightner successfully made a case to county commissioners to postpone it for four years, in hopes the market would turn around some. It gave Lightner and his team some breathing room, and the gamble paid off. An uptick materialize in the past two years, just in the nick of time to pull off the delayed reval. “We are finally getting away from the foreclosure sales and have new sales we can actually use to establish the market value,” Matthews said.
January 21-27, 2015
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BY J ESSI STONE N EWS E DITOR acon County is asking Jackson County for money to pay for providing services to its residents in Highlands, but Jackson officials are exploring other alternatives, including establishing fire districts and levying a tax. Macon County has requested about $160,000 from Jackson County to continue offering emergency services to residences in Highlands that are technically located in Jackson County. While Jackson County receives the property tax revenue from these homes, Macon County is burdened with the responsibility of providing emergency services.
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Smoky Mountain News
January 21-27, 2015
Macon County Commissioner Jim Tate told the board during a Jan. 13 meeting that while investigating a county line dispute in the Highlands area, he began discovering just how many services Macon County provides to the Jackson County portion of Highlands, particularly homes in Wildcat Cliffs Country Club, Highlands Falls Country Club and Cullasaja Country Club. Tate said the county line dispute was brought to light several years ago when a constituent asked why he was being taxed for 8 acres in Jackson and 5 acres in
Macon when he only owned 10 acres of property. While the counties are waiting for the state to do a survey of the land to figure it out once and for all, Macon officials hope the two counties can come to some agreement on their own. “The (county) line looks like a double helix and does some overlapping,” Tate said. “There’s a lot of tax value in that area.” Highlands Fire Department is the first department to respond to this area of Jackson County per a mutual aid agreement with Cashiers-GlenvilleSapphire Volunteer Fire Department, and 911 calls made from the area go directly to Jim Tate Macon County dispatch. Highlands Fire Department is getting ready to install a new substation on Cherrywood Drive, and many Jackson County homeowners will benefit from the additional fire protection. Residents located within 6 miles of the substation could see their fire insurance rating go from a class 9 or 10 to a class 5, which will significantly decrease their annual premiums. “Macon County is going to be paying some of it but it will be serving a lot of
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Macon, Jackson negotiate payment for services
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“Macon County needs to do the right thing and continue to provide these services, but it also makes sense and it’s the right thing to do for Jackson County to compensate us for those services.” — Derek Roland, Macon County manager
Jackson County,” Tate said. Jackson County currently pays the Highlands Fire Department $7,300 a year, but Macon officials don’t think it’s enough. Macon County Manager Derek Roland said the area in question included 332 parcels with a $445 million value, according to Jackson County tax records. He said that meant that one household in that neighborhood could save up to $6,000 a year on fire insurance by being upgraded to a class 5. Tate added that those 332 parcels were landlocked — meaning there’s no way for residents to get to Jackson County without going through Macon first. Based on Jackson’s tax rate 28 cents per $100 of assessed value, he said he was able to establish that Jackson brings in about $1.2 million in property tax revenue and disposal fees for property that is mainly serviced by Macon County. “We’re their primary fire department, EMS and 911 service,” he said. “Their trash comes to our landfills Derek Roland and they use our schools and recreation system because it’s just closer and makes sense,” Tate said. With the help of county department heads, Tate estimates that Macon County spends about $160,000 per year to serve those 332 parcels — 188 of those parcels contain structures according to Jackson County records. “It’s the right thing for Macon County to assist those people because we’re closer and because it might take Cashiers 20 minutes to get to one of those Highlands’ homes,” he said. Roland said he sent Jackson County Manager Chuck Wooten an email about Macon County’s position and looks forward to reaching some kind of agreement between the two county governments. “Macon County needs to do the right thing and continue to provide these services, but it also makes sense and it’s the right thing to do for Jackson County to compen-
sate us for those services,” Roland said. “All we want to do is break even and receive our fair share,” Tate said. In the email to Wooten, Roland requested $38,232 for fire protection services based on Macon County’s Fire Tax District formula. He also requested $77,635 in reimbursements for EMS services, $30,191 for 911 dispatch services and $13,752 for landfill services for a total of almost $160,000 a year.
JACKSON’S SIDE Wooten said Jackson County Commissioners would be happy to take Macon’s proposal into consideration, but they may have their own ideas about the best solution moving forward. “We’re now looking at this whole concept of service districts like Macon has,” he said. Setting up fire districts would allow Jackson to contract with the Highlands Fire Department and Highlands would Chuck Wooten receive a portion of the tax revenue collected for that district instead of the $7,300 stipend. “When we first heard about this I made a call to Randy Dillard (Cashiers fire chief ) because if he doesn’t support it, it wouldn’t work,” Wooten said. “But Randy isn’t opposed to giving up property in the district.” In an email back to Roland, Wooten said there is a lot of work to do before a district could be established and that commissioners would probably begin discussing the issue Jan. 20 at their annual planning retreat. Todd Dillard, Jackson’s emergency management director, would be the one to work with the Highlands Fire Department to determine the boundary lines and parcels within each of the service districts. Wooten said the other issue was the cost of solid waste services being incurred by Macon County. He said he was unaware until recently that all trash from the country clubs was being taken to Macon County’s landfill. He said the clubs’ membership/homeowner dues include disposable waste fees and trash from the clubs is hauled to the Macon County landfill. Jackson County will need to obtain certification from Macon County showing that it is providing solid waste service to that area. Jackson County can then waive the assessment to those homes for solid waste and allow Macon County to charge them. Wooten said he was hopeful the two counties could reach an amicable agreement. “It’s reasonable to reimburse them for that cost, but how to establish that needs to be developed,” he said.
An artist rendering shows what the new building might look like.
Western plans replacement for burned-out building BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER estern Carolina University’s slated to get a brand new building on Centennial Drive in place of the one destroyed by fire in November 2013, which was home to businesses such as Rolling Stone Burrito, Subway and Mad Batter Bakery and Café. The project, expected to break ground in
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May and reach completion by August 2016, will entail a 120,000-square-foot building that mixes student housing on the upper floors with commercial and dining businesses on the ground floor. The facility will add 380 student beds to campus and give businesses affected by the fire or currently operating along that commercial strip first right of refusal to occupy the new building, according to a press release from WCU.
“The concept will create a new town-like environment in the heart of the campus, with a mix of commercial and dining establishments on the ground floor, while also adding additional student beds to help accommodate the demands of increasing enrollment,” said Bill Studenc, communications director for the university. Rick Bennett, longtime Cullowhee resident and a member of both Cullowhee Revitalization Endeavor and the Cullowhee Community Planning Committee, isn’t applauding. He would have liked to see the community consulted before the school went ahead with the plan. “I don’t know of any survey that Western took that asked the community’s input or was
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Hanbury, Evans, Wright, Vlattas & Company image
designed to see what the community wanted,” he said. “It was basically what Western needed and that was it. That seems to be the method of operation.” But developing a mixed-use facility was part of the master plan the Board of Trustees endorsed in 2013, Studenc said, and while community members weren’t involved in the specific plans for this building, County Planner Gerald Green, as well as WCU staff who have been active in Cullowhee community planning efforts, were included in the campus master planning effort. Ambling University Development Group will develop the facility according to a design in keeping with other recently constructed buildings on campus, such as Blue Ridge and Balsam residence halls and the Courtyard Dining Hall, Studenc said. The Board of Trustees of the Endowment Fund of Western Carolina University, which owns the commercial strip, chose the company. Notices have already gone out to existing businesses that their leases will end on May 1. “This will enable the Endowment Fund to turn the site over to the developer in order to have sufficient time for the site work that needs to be done, including asbestos abatement, as part of the demolition process,” said Mary Ann Lochner, general counsel to WCU. The board had voted in February 2014 not to fix the building after looking at cost estimates, insurance settlements and tax assessments. In planning the next step, it weighed factors such as the property’s historical significance and its businesses’ contribution to WCU culture, the press release said.
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Building a sense of place The town of Maggie Valley is applying for a grant to help with the cost of replacing old playground equipment behind town hall (above). Many residents would like to see the stairway (below) to the waterfall on Old Still Road restored for hiking purposes, but it presents a liability issue for the town. Jessi Stone photos
Smoky Mountain News
January 21-27, 2015
Maggie moves forward with recreation plan BY J ESSI STONE N EWS E DITOR aggie Valley resident June Johnson wants the town’s recreation plan to go far beyond fixing up an old playground behind town hall. She envisions the park renovations as just the beginning of greater things to come in the valley. “A park is not simply having a piece of land and calling it a park — it’s a place where our five senses are activated,” she said during a public hearing last week. “I want to be sure what we do back here is merely a stepping stone to what we do throughout the valley. I want it to be a vision of building a sense of place in Maggie Valley.” That’s exactly what Maggie Valley Planner Andrew Bowen wants to accomplish over the next several years. A public hearing was held during the last town board meeting to receive input from residents on the town’s recreation plan.
have,” Bowen said. “It’s a lot less work than a pool and the liability is a lot less.”
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Bowen presented a three-part plan to renovate the space behind town hall into a park that could be utilized by people of all ages. The first phase would include replacing the 30-year-old playground equipment, building a covered parental viewing area, installing a bocce ball and horseshoe court, making the walking trail handicap accessible, and adding benches, trash cans and picnic 12 tables. The estimated cost is about $85,000.
“Talk to Waynesville and they will say it’s been a great success for them,” he said. “It’s arguably one of the best skate parks in Western North Carolina right now.” While he knows a skate park is an expensive endeavor, he said it would create a popular, year-round attraction for the town as skateboarders travel all over the region to test out the different skate park terrains. Lee said Maggie could build something smaller than Waynesville in order to be just one more stop for skaters traveling from Atlanta and other cities to enjoy the other outdoor opportunities in the mountains — camping, rafting, kayaking and snowboarding. Bowen read aloud six submitted public comments from residents who had their own ideas about recreation priorities. Several residents suggested restoring the walkway that runs next to the small waterfall on Old Still Road. Jim and Peggy Arnold said the waterfall didn’t get the visitation it deserved and restoring the stairway next to it would create one more outdoor asset for the town. Steve Simpson also requested that the town repair the stairs and restore accessibility to the trail. Randolph Williams said the “no trespassing” sign should be taken down so people can enjoy the short hike to the base of the falls. Mayor Ron DeSimone later said that the waterfall property on Old Still Road above the Maggie Valley Club was given to the town years ago. “There’s limited room for parking on Old Still Road above the golf course, but the real issue is the liability,” he said. “The staircase is in disrepair and insurance companies refuse to cover it.”
“When the park was built 30 years ago, things were much cheaper, but equipment is much safer now,” he said. “Leading playsets have a 30- to 35-year warranty because they limit the plastics used, which is why many are ruined in the sun. Now they use more metal and rubber.” Phase two includes adding a second playset specifically for ages 2 to 5. The equipment also would include handicap accessible items for children with disabilities. Phase three, which is optional, includes installing a splashpad feature for children to use during the warm months. Bowen said splashpads could run about $70,000 depending on the setup and size, adding that the town could save money by doing the installation in-house. He said the town could seek another grant from the state Parks and Recreation Trust Fund in a few years to pay for the splashpad. “This would help us to really stand out and have something different many don’t
Johnson, who has led the effort to create OVING FORWARD several community gardens throughout the After the public hearing, the board of valley, was very much in support of the town’s recreation plans. She suggested a natural aldermen authorized Bowen to apply for a looking approach to the park, including $100,000 matching grant through the North wooden gazebo-like picnic shelters, a water- Carolina Parks and Recreation Trust Fund. If fall instead of a splashpad, bench swings and the town’s application is approved, it would have to commit $50,000 of its own money. plenty of native plants and flowers. Knowing the complexity of the process, Maggie Valley resident Jay Ring questioned the need and feasibility of investing Town Manager Nathan Clark said he and Bowen did some internal scoring, which taxpayer money in a town park. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I’m showed the town’s application would be missnot necessarily against it, but feel like a pro- ing some points that couldn’t really be made up. “But if we try at least we can see where our posal to spend taxpayers’ dollars should have strengths and weaka feasibility study nesses are,” Clark said. before a public hear“A park is not simply Alderman Mike ing,” he told the Eveland said he wasn’t board. “It’s not the having a piece of land for spending money on town’s money — it’s and calling it a park — a feasibility study when our money that we it was clear that the have worked hard for. it’s a place where our playground equipment We’d like to see our money used as judifive senses are activated.” needed to be replaced. “Sometimes you ciously as possible.” — June Johnson, Maggie Valley just need to do it and Ring questioned resident get it done. I was probawhether the amount bly against spending of use the park would get would be worth the expense, and whether the amount of money we did on Parham Park, the town would have to spend additional but now I see how much it’s used and it’s great,” he said. “What we have back there now is an money for maintenance and liability. Maggie Valley resident Jared Lee said he embarrassment and at some point there has to spent several years attending town meetings be some kind of commitment. I agree we have and working with the town of Waynesville to to be careful with how we spend it, but doing get the skate park built at its recreation center. nothing is just as bad as throwing money away.”
BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER aesar’s Entertainment Operating Company, a subsidiary of the same company that manages Harrah’s Cherokee Casino and Resort, announced Jan. 15 that it would be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company plans to separate its corporate structure into two companies, resulting in a debt reduction of about $10 billion, according to a press release from CEOC. The deal would exchange $18.4 billion of outstanding debt for $8.6 billion of new debt, the press release said. But CEOC’s financial woes won’t affect Harrah’s. “I know that a lot of misinformation has been out there, but there’s no effect at all to the properties,” said Brooks Robinson, general manager at Harrah’s Cherokee. “All the properties are open. Nothing has changed with the customers, with anything of how we operate, not just on this property but with all of Caesar’s property.” The type of bankruptcy that CEOC is filing for will allow it to continue operations at its properties. But Harrah’s is not one of those properties, Robinson emphasized, and even if CEOC were shutting down, that would not affect Harrah’s Cherokee, which is owned by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and managed by Caesar’s Entertainment.
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Caesar’s bankruptcy won’t affect Harrah’s
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Film addresses stigma of recovery, treatment January 21-27, 2015
A community conversation on recovery in Western North Carolina will begin with a free screening of the film “The Anonymous People” at 1 p.m. fJan. 22 at the HART Theater in Waynesville. A discussion about recovery will follow the movie. “The Anonymous People” documents stories of fAmericans in recovery in an attempt to reduce stigma and show that addiction is preventable and treatable and encourage people to talk about their experiences. The film and discussion are sponsored by Smoky Mountain LME/MCO and the Governor’s Institute on Substance Abuse. For information call 828.586.5501, ext. 1157 or richie.tannerhill@smokymountaincenter.com.
The N.C. Department of Transportations will spend $6.9 million to repair three tunnels on Interstate 40 from the Tennessee state line to Exit 15 (Fines Creek Road) in Haywood County, work that will require some night-time lane closures. Two of the tunnels, numbers 15 and 104, are located on I-40 eastbound. The third tunnel included in the contract, number 17, is located on I-40 westbound. Daytime traffic, however, should not be impacted. The contractor cannot close or narrow a lane of I40 from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Work on the project can start as early as midMarch 2015, with completion scheduled for midJuly 2017.
Things we want you to know: New Retail Installment Contracts, Shared Connect Plan and $25 device act. fee required. Credit approval required. Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee applies (currently $1.82/line/month); this is not a tax or gvmt. required charge. Add. fees, taxes and terms apply and vary by svc. and eqmt. Offers valid in-store at participating locations only, may be fulfilled through direct fulfillment and cannot be combined. See store or uscellular.com for details. $130 Price Plan based on $90/mo., 10GB Shared Connect Plan plus 4 lines with discounted $10 Device Connection Charges each. Retail Installment Contract required to receive discounts; otherwise, regular Device Connection Charges apply. Other discounts available for additional Shared Connect Plans. Limited-time offer. Contract Payoff Promo: Offer valid on up to 6 consumer lines or 25 business lines. Must port in current number to U.S. Cellular and purchase new Smartphone or tablet through a Retail Installment Contract on a Shared Connect Plan with Device Protection+. Enrollment in Device Protection+ required in all markets except North Carolina. The monthly charge for Device Protection+ is $8.99 for Smartphones. A deductible per approved claim applies. Federal Warranty Service Corporation is the Provider of the Device Protection+ ESC benefits, except in CA and OK. Submit final bill identifying early termination fee (ETF) charged by carrier within 60 days of activation date to www.uscellular.com/contractpayoff or via mail to U.S. Cellular® Contract Payoff Program 5591-61; PO Box 752257; El Paso, TX 88575-2257. Customer will be reimbursed for the ETF reflected on final bill up to $350/line. Reimbursement in form of a U.S. Cellular Prepaid Card is issued by MetaBank,® Member FDIC; additional offers are not sponsored or endorsed by MetaBank. This card does not have cash access and can be used at any merchant location that accepts MasterCard® Debit Cards within the U.S. only. Card valid through expiration date shown on front of card. Allow 12–14 weeks for processing. To be eligible, customer must register for My Account. Retail Installment Contract: Retail Installment Contract (Contract) and monthly payments according to the Payment Schedule in the Contract required. If you are in default or terminate your Contract, we may require you to immediately pay the entire unpaid Amount Financed as well as our collection costs, attorneys’ fees and court costs related to enforcing your obligations under the Contract. Upgrade your handset after 12 consecutive payments made on the Contract. Kansas Customers: In areas in which U.S. Cellular receives support from the Federal Universal Service Fund, all reasonable requests for service must be met. Unresolved questions concerning services availability can be directed to the Kansas Corporation Commission Office of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection at 1-800-662-0027. Limited-time offer. Trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners. Additional terms apply. See store or uscellular.com for details. ©2015 U.S. Cellular 1A-P-R1-1/2015
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I-40 tunnel work will close lanes some nights
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NAMI educates families dealing with mental Illness Where do family members turn when they are faced with the problems and heartaches that come from dealing with a mental illness in a loved one on a daily basis? The NAMI Family-to-Family program, a much acclaimed, free 12-session program for relatives and friends of individuals challenged by mental illness, will be offered in Franklin from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, starting Feb. 24. Sponsored by NAMI Appalachian South, the local affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, this course provides up-to-date information about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, panic disorder, anxiety and other mental illnesses. Class size is limited and pre-registration required. Contact Ann at 828.369.7385 or Linda at 828.369.9838
Wheel locks now legal in Sylva BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER Sylva’s parking rules now have a stronger set of teeth with the passage of an ordinance allowing officers to put wheel locks, also called parking boots, on cars whose owners have accrued unpaid town
Downtown Sylva. file photo
Walmart Awards $1,500 to The Arc of Haywood County
January 21-27, 2015
Jerry Pressley, Walmart manager, presented $1,500 to The Arc of Haywood County for holiday presents and clothes to the individuals served in their program. The Arc of Haywood County is a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving individuals with developmental disabilities and their families. The Arc’s comprehensive skill development training programs are designed and implemented based on individualized needs. Lynn Dills, Arc employee submitted the grant and was presented a check with other employees and board members at the store in Waynesville. “It was very important to me and our staff that each of the individuals we serve had a fun filled Christmas with presents, food and social interaction,� said Lynn Dills. “We appreciate the support that Jerry and Walmart have given The Arc of Haywood County. This year our individuals had an extraordinary Christmas thanks to the generosity of Walmart.� The Arc of Haywood County is governed by an 11-member Board of Directors. The organization is supported by membership dues, donations, fund raising events, grants, state and federal funds and contributions from agencies such as the United Way. For information about ARC, 828.452.1980 or visit wwww.arcofhaywood.org.
parking tickets. Town commissioners first started tossing the idea around in November, when Sylva Police Chief David Woodard brought it to their attention that the town had
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issued more than $7,500 worth of unpaid parking tickets since 2011. Many of the recipients of those tickets had outright told police that they were not going to pay them. “They’ve told some of our staff that they don’t have any intentions of paying them and we can’t collect, but I think we can,� said Mayor Maurice Moody. No one spoke against the ordinance at a public hearing preceding the vote. “What this draft ordinance spells out is if someone has a delinquent ticket that’s been delinquent for 90 days, it allows the police department to place a wheel lock on their vehicle,� explained Town Manager Paige Dowling. To have the boot removed, the vehicle owner would have to pay all outstanding fines as well as a $25 boot fee. If the money isn’t paid within 24 hours of the wheel lock being attached, then police can have the vehicle towed and impounded at any private lot. The owner would then have to pay towing and impoundment fees as well as outstanding fines and the boot fee. “This is just a method to enforce the payment of those fines,� Moody said. Commissioners passed the ordinance unanimously and without discussion.
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Smoky Mountain News January 21-27, 2015
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Committee approves proposal following final public hearing
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REMOVING LITTLE SAVANNAH
Be a voice in Cullowhee The Cullowhee Revitalization Endeavor, called CuRvE, will hold a community meeting 10 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 7 at the Cullowhee Café to share information and progress on projects. CuRvE is a nonprofit whose goal is to beautify and spur economic activity in downtown Cullowhee along Old Cullowhee Road. www.gocullowhee.com or cullowheerevitalization@gmail.com earlier revision had taken out the property parcels that would have connected Little Savannah to the rest of the planning area, and connecting parts of a planning area by road rights-of-way isn’t something that’s held up in court in the past, Green said. The final proposal therefore removed the entire section along Little Savannah Road, but it’s possible that the area could be added back in the future if more property owners eventually decided they wanted in. “I’m hoping we’ll hear from more people in different areas that want to be included,” Green said.
A DYNAMIC PLAN He emphasized that the planning process will be a dynamic one, with a committee of seven Cullowhee residents, property owners and businesspeople deciding on recommended changes to the standards and hearing from anyone who wants to be added. One of those people was Tucker Kirk, who lives off of Edgewater Road just outside of the planning area.
“I’m in favor of us being in that, primarily to protect the Tuck,” he said at the meeting. The planning committee members were favorable to adding Kirk’s neighborhood eventually, but only after taking some time to make sure that’s what everyone wanted. “I think if they want to be included, I’m in favor of that,” Baker said. “We just need the momentum of all of them agreeing to it. This late in the game, to annex some other group of property owners in, we would need their buy-in.”
ZONING FOR MOBILE HOMES The draft of the zoning standards presented at last week’s community meeting included a change allowing single-wide trailers in residential developments, but the planning committee modified that change after Green told the committee he’d heard concerns about single-wides being allowed. “These comments came from residents of existing neighborhoods like Oak Forest, University Heights, and one of my neighbors asked me about it,” Green said. “What I propose is we create two residential districts. One would allow manufactured homes, and that would be mapped everywhere there is not an existing neighborhood.” The planning committee agreed to designate existing neighborhoods as residential areas in which single-wide mobile homes are not allowed — double-wides still would be — while designating undeveloped areas zoned for residential housing as neighborhoods allowing single-wides.
MORE OPEN SPACE NEEDED? Some of those at the meeting last week took a look at the map and didn’t see as much zoned for parks and open space as they would
OBJECTIONS Though most of the comments at the meeting could be categorized as constructive criticism, one landowner made it clear that he was still not happy with the idea of having any zoning at all. “Pretty much what you’re doing anyway is telling everyone what to do with their property,” said Cullowhee resident Doug Parker. Parker particularly disagreed with the plan amendment requiring housing developments with 12 or more units to install sidewalks — such sidewalks wouldn’t be connected to anything else, so what’s the point? he asked the committee. Over the long-term, Green said, hopefully they will connect. You have to start somewhere. “The state is cutting back on its funding for sidewalks, but there are some private funding sources where if you’re building connectivity, they look at you more favorably,” he told the planning committee. The point of the standards is to edge Cullowhee, bit by bit, toward becoming a cohesive, walkable community with a balance of restrictions that protect community rights while still respecting private property. That’s a hard balance to strike, though. Hence why an advisory committee will continue to be in place even when — and if — the development standards are finalized. “It’s a challenging thing,” Green said at the community meeting. “There’s a balance of the private property rights and the community rights. Where is that balance? It’s always something that’s moving. That’s why this process is dynamic.” 17
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One of those concerns came from Arbra Gibson, who owns multiple, largely undeveloped, property parcels along Little Savannah Road. “We moved because Rabbit Ridge [Properties] was right beside us, yet they’re zoning our property both as multifamily and single family,” she said at the community meeting, “which would basically leave what they had zoned as single family unsellable because who wants to live beside apartments?” She said that, while the proposed zoning for other properties on Little Savanna merely reflected the current status quo, the zoning on her property would be different from the present use. That was unfair, she said, and requested that her property be exempt from the planning area. Gibson will get her wish, though not for the reasons she presented at the meeting. “One of the requirements of community planning is that all the property be contiguous,” County Planner Gerald Green said at last week’s committee meeting. “I don’t think we can argue this property is contiguous.” The map presented at the community meeting showed the Little Savannah area connected to the rest of the planning area only by a highway right-of-way along N.C. 107. An
Cullowhee resident Doug Parker shares his thoughts on the planning process at a community meeting Jan. 13, the last before proposed planning standards land on county commissioners’ desks. Holly Kays photo
January 21-27, 2015
BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER t’s been one-and-a-half years since the Jackson County Commissioners first OK’d a committee to look into doing some zoning in Cullowhee, and while Cullowhee is still without development standards, a proposal is on its way to commissioners’ desks. Approval could come as early as Jan. 29, though it could also drag out a good deal longer. “I appreciate all y’all’s input,” said Scott Baker, chairman of the Cullowhee Community Planning Committee, after the committee approved its proposal unanimously. “I know it’s tough. This is a lot of good we’re doing.” “It’s a huge growing step for Cullowhee and our county,” agreed committee member Rick Bennett. The committee’s final look through the standards came after one last community meeting, held Jan. 13. About 50 people showed up, a good bit less than the 75 or so that have attended the other input sessions held along the way, and the comments had a more positive flavor than before. “It was a lot of people talking. There wasn’t as much angst. There were still people that had concerns,” said Baker, who also sits on the Jackson County Planning Board. “It was interesting, the dynamic change.”
like. “I really like this development plan overall very much,” said Jim Costa, who lives in the Oak Forest neighborhood. “One thing that jumps out at me is there’s relatively little designated parks or open space.” In particular, Costa singled out a wetland area off of Little Savannah Road that had been zoned for high-density multi-family housing. Oak Forest resident Catherine Carter had previously expressed her opinion that the area should be zoned more conservatively to protect the species and water quality of the wetland. Costa took Carter’s comment a step further. The area, he said, “might profitably be designated as parks or open space.” Green reiterated that he wants to be careful when it comes to private property, which is why the only open space zoning in the proposal is on county land. “I don’t think that would be a wise request to make to the Board of Commissioners,” Green said. The discussion surrounding that piece of land is a moot point now, anyway, as the Little Savannah area is no longer part of the planning area. However, the planning committee has noted the community’s desire for more parks where possible without infringing on property rights.
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Cullowhee zoning heads to commissioners
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No band bar Sylva pub cancels music acts following noise conflict with neighbors BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER o Name Sports Pub is no longer a music joint, at least not until a dispute between the bar and its neighbors reaches resolution. Owner Gregg Fuller says No Name saw its last regular act on Saturday (Jan. 17), and though it will still honor local band Porch 40’s Jan. 29 booking, that’s going to be it for a while. “Stopping live music here at No Name is a drastic step,” Fuller said. “A lot of people are unhappy about it. But right now I have to take drastic steps. My ability to defend myself has been taken way. I’m guilty until proven innocent.” At least that’s how Fuller feels about the town’s noise ordinance and policy that officers don’t need to witness the noise violation themselves to write a citation — reports from the neighbors are sufficient. The ordinance, tightened in 2011 in response to complaints about noise at Soul Infusion Tea House and Bistro, prohibits “creating unreasonably loud, disturbing sound levels in the town, taking into consideration the volume, duration, frequency and other characteristics of the sound” and goes on to enumerate what some of those disturbing sounds are. Included among them are “the playing of any musical instrument or electronic sound amplification equipment outdoors or from a motor vehicle” between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., if it can be heard from an adjoining property and “the use of any automobile, motorcycle or vehicle so out of repair, so loaded, or in such
January 21-27, 2015
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manner as to create unreasonably loud disturbing sounds.” Last week, Fuller told the town board that the ordinance is unconstitutional because it doesn’t it doesn’t spell out what, specifically, constitutes an unreasonably loud noise and that the neighbor-reported citations don’t offer equal protection under the law. He also pointed out that the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. rule applies to outdoor music, which he doesn’t have anymore. However, Mayor Maurice Moody says he believes the rule applies if music created indoors is audible outdoors. “They [the police department] would tell you that’s fair because they’re applying it to every establishment like mine in the area, but it’s not fair because it’s not equal protection. I’m the one that has neighbors I can’t keep happy, so I’m getting beat with that stick,” Fuller told the town board. And he’s done everything possible to keep the neighbors happy, Fuller said. To comply with the ordinance, he stopped holding concerts outside on the patio, and he pulled out the pool tables, video games and jukeboxes from his back room and turned that into a stage. He planted a vegetative barrier between his property and his next-door neighbor’s and erected a fence. “I understand that I have a neighbor or neighbors that are a thorn in Chief Woodard’s craw, and I understand that he should speak to them and address these neighbors’ concerns,” Fuller said, “but I believe this is a bad, bad situation because I don’t believe that there’s anything I can do to make my neighbors happy.” Since May 2014, police have issued Fuller six noise citations, none of which he has paid. He doesn’t think he should have to, as he’s no longer playing music outside and likens citations written on the basis of neighbors’ reports to giving a speeding ticket via the same method. So, the fee has now skyrocketed from $50 to $2,500 per occurrence, and police reported his unpaid tickets to N.C. Alcohol Law
No Name Sports Pub is in a largely industrial area but is right in front of a church and just downhill from Harris Regional Hospital. A smattering of homes also surrounds it. Holly Kays photo Enforcement, which has threatened to take away his alcohol license. Fuller’s request to the town was that they change the noise ordinance and reporting policy, rescind his fines and tell N.C. Alcohol Law Enforcement there’s no need to pull his license.
BATTERED BY NOISE But this is no tale of a poor, persecuted business owner, said Drew Hooper, who selfidentified himself to the town board as “one of the cranky neighbors.” He said he’s so tired of the “loud hollering and noise and cussin’” that he got a petition started against No Name. So far he’s got 50 signatures from neighbors who say they’re tired of all the noise. “The three that didn’t sign it said, ‘I support it,’ and all of the ones that signed it said,
‘Thank you, thank you for doing it,’” Hooper said, adding that while the noise is pretty awful, he’s had fun chatting up neighbors he’s never spoken to before. There’s no advantage to having a bar in the neighborhood, Hooper said. “Only trouble, noise, health problems and drugs. I’ve walked around where I’ve found stuff in the parking lot, needles and stuff,” Hooper said. Fuller vehemently denied that drugs are present at his bar. Carl Queen, who lives just a short way up the road, said he’s in no way against music but thinks the noise has gone on long enough. “Sitting in the living room watching TV in the summertime, I have to turn the TV up so I can hear the TV because the music is that loud, and I’m talking about 200 yards up the road,” he said.
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January 21-27, 2015
Gregg Fuller’s been a presence on Skyline Drive since 2010, when he opened No Name Sports Pub to fill a void in Sylva’s nightlife scene. His idea? Create a venue where the best bands from all over the country deliver their music straight to Sylva. So, he signed a 20-year lease, sank about $225,000 into upgrades and bit the bullet to put in the 15- and 20-hour days necessary until he was ready for opening day. People came. “This area loves live music, and they wanted to see more and varied music, so I brought them in from all over the area, and we grew quickly,” Fuller said. No Name has been bringing in acts five nights a week, representing a diverse set of places and styles. College students drive up from Cullowhee to hang out at No Name, where the music doesn’t stop until 1:40 a.m., and the bar is also popular with motorcylists. Rob Crisp is one of them. “I go there, hell, probably at least five nights a week,” he said. “It’s right down the road from my “My bottom line is if you own an house.” Crisp said he’s seen some establishment like that, you need to wild bars, but No Name just have more control and a little more isn’t one of them. “You have people that have respect for your neighborhood.” fun there, people that get drunk there, but it’s not wild— Sylva Police Chief Woodard out-of-control. There’s not drugs and hookers,” he said. Town Attorney Eric Ridenhour told the “People just go watch football games. People take their kids there. I don’t know where all board that he sees no constitutional problem with the ordinance, as it simply gives the the controversy came from, really.” The music really isn’t loud enough to police the flexibility to enforce the code combother anyone 200 yards away, Crisp said, mensurate with the wishes of the community. though he can see there being some issues He told Fuller that if he were his attorney, he wouldn’t advise a lawsuit — he’d advise being with the motorcycles. “I would say the biggest noise nuisance a better neighbor. “You’ve been requested repeatedly by would be in the summer, and that would be from bikes coming in and out late at night,” neighbors to stop intruding on their peace and enjoyment, and yet the music continues he said. He’s hoping that things get figured out until 1:40 in the morning,” he told Fuller. soon, because without music his favorite “Instead of even stopping the music indoors bar wouldn’t be his favorite bar. It’s a late- at 11, you’ve gone on to continue to play until night place because much of the bar’s 1:40 in the morning.” “Not only are you continuing to do it and clientele doesn’t even make it there until 9 or 10 p.m., and anyway it’s hard to justify you don’t care,” he added, “you’re refusing to bringing a band all the way across the pay the tickets and thumbing your nose at country if they’re only going to play for a everybody.” Fuller, meanwhile, told the board that it couple hours. “Of course,” he said when asked if he’d go would be missing an opportunity to make there less frequently without live music play- their town the happening place if they ing. “I would hate to hurt the business in any squeezed him out. “It used to be your citizens went to way, but that’s obviously the appeal.” Asheville to hear live music,” he said. “Now Asheville comes here and they spend their OT BUYING IT money here. I’m trying to be an asset to the The town board didn’t share Crisp’s per- community.” For now, though, No Name Sports Pub spective, and neither did Chief Woodard. “I just really don’t know what to say,” will be a no band bar. “It’s either lose live music or lose my busiWoodard said when Fuller finished speaking. “I’ve tried working with him, and it just seems ness,” Fuller said.
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to get progressively worse. My bottom line is if you own an establishment like that, you need to have more control and a little more respect for your neighborhood.” “I can sympathize with these people,” said Commissioner Harold Hensley, who spearheaded the ordinance tweaking in 2011. “I’ve had this same experience. Believe me, it’s hard to try to sleep with your head under a pillow.” But Fuller pressed the board to consider changing the ordinance to more clearly spell out what kind of noise is and is not allowed. After all, he said, he’s zoned as a nightclub, so some level of noise has to be OK. But what level? “I need to be able to protect myself. I need to be able to go into the parking lot with a noise meter,” he said. Moreover, his attorney says so, Fuller told the board. Point-blank, his council has advised him to sue the town, sue the police department, sue his neighbors. “Does it have to be in black and white until you do something?” Woodard asked. “Can’t it be right morally?” “Your right to swing your fist stops where my nose begins, so your music has to stop disturbing the neighbors. It’s as simple as that,” Hensley said. “That’s a pretty good summary right there,” Moody responded.
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“The only time we get peace and quiet there is about two times a year on Thanksgiving and Christmas when it’s closed, and that’s about the size of it,” agreed James Lupo, whose property is adjacent. “I sure hope something can be done.”
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Fly Fishing the South
Source: Environmental Protection Agency presentation
That means it has to use city water for all its Once the oxidation is complete, the EPA needs and must discharge all its wastewater would finish the job by introducing microorinto the city sewer line. In fact, the entire area ganisms to eat any contaminants left over, is zoned such that private wells are not metabolizing them into harmless compounds. allowed — and incidentally, the creation of George Marshall, president of HVO, is all such wells would be the only way that the cur- for this plan and doesn’t expect the remediarent contamination levels would become tion work to affect the company’s operations. problematic, Bornholm said. He also said he’s had a good relationship with “The only risks associated with the site is the EPA and doesn’t feel any threat from the if the site becomes a residential property and current situation. people stick wells in the ground,” Bornholm “It will be minimally disruptive, only bringsaid. “Otherwise, there’s no risk really associ- ing in a truck or two, and really won’t disrupt ated with that site.” our operations here,” he said, “and secondly it’s But no Superfund site is done until it’s back dealing with the groundwater and not anything to nearly pre-contamination conditions. That’s that would be airborne or something you’d why the EPA’s newest remediation plan calls for come in contact with. Everyone in this area is about $1.3 million on municipal water.” worth of cleanup and Of course, the monitoring. actual work could still “The good thing be a long way off. about this site is the Right now the EPA’s Comments on the plan to finish cleaning work was done 15 taking public comup the Benfield Industries site can be subyears ago and a good ment on its remediamitted to Jon Bornholm, remedial project job was done and the tion plan, but getting manager for the EPA, through Feb. 12. EPA has done a good funding to actually Email comments to bornholm.jon@epa.gov job of monitoring,” carry it out is a whole or mail them to U.S. EPA Region 4, said Waynesville other ball game. Superfund Division, 61 Forsyth Street SW, Town Manager “The branch offiAtlanta, Ga. 30303. A copy of the plan is Marcy Onieal. cers from all 10 [EPA] available in the administrative record at The plan calls for regions get together, Waynesville Town Hall. injecting some kind and they prioritize of oxidizing chemical the list of sites and — likely hydrogen peroxide — into the basically the prioritization is based on risk,” groundwater via injection wells spread 10 to 15 Bornholm said. “It’s going to fall low on that feet apart. The hydrogen peroxide would react list.” naturally with the carbon in the contaminants, It could be years before funding is turning it into harmless water and carbon approved to finish cleaning up the Benfield dioxide molecules. It would likely take two or Industries site. But funding could also come three injections spread nine to 12 months along more quickly if EPA’s headquarters apart to get the job done, Bornholm said. decides it’s important to be able to say they’ve “The trick is getting the contact of the oxi- finished a project. dant with the contaminant,” Bornholm said. “That’s how Barber’s Orchard [in If we can accomplish that, this will be a suc- Waynesville] got funded,” Bornholm said. cessful solution of the residuals.” “Headquarters needed a bean.”
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Smoky Mountain News
BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER t’s been 32 years since Benfield Industries in Hazelwood burned to the ground, 25 since the Environmental Protection Agency designated it as a Superfund site and 13 since cleanup on the site finished. But the work’s not done, according to the most recent EPA monitoring. The agency is hoping that its latest remediation plan for the former chemical distribution company site will take care of creosote contamination in Hazelwood once and for all. “Some of the contamination is leaching into the groundwater,” said Jon Bornholm, EPA remedial project manager for the Superfund site. Superfund sites are abandoned or uncontrolled areas housing hazardous waste and are listed on the National Priorities List to await a remediation plan and funding to carry it out. “The contaminants we’re seeing are creosote related. In order for us to walk away from the site, we have to make sure those levels are protected.” The current contamination levels aren’t dangerous, per say, Bornholm said. The EPA’s monitoring shows that while the chemicals are in the groundwater, they aren’t migrating to neighboring properties or waterways. As part of its deed, Haywood Vocational Opportunities, which now occupies the site, can’t use the groundwater for any purpose.
NOW UNDER NEW OWNERSHIP
January 21-27, 2015
EPA looks to end 30 years of contamination at old Benfield site
1976: Benfield Industries Inc. begins operations, purchasing chemicals in bulk to package for resale. 1982: Fire destroys the facility. 1989: The site is placed on the National Priorities List as a Superfund site. 1995: A remediation plan is finalized. 1997: Cleanup begins. About 23,000 cubic yards of soil are treated and disposed offsite, while another 4,000 cubic yards determined not to be at risk for leaching contaminants are buried onsite. 2001: A groundwater extraction system is installed to pump groundwater from the site for treatment in Waynesville’s sewer system. Cleanup concludes and Haywood Vocational Opportunities purchases the property. 2007:The groundwater extraction system is shut down after evaluation finds it is no longer effective. 2012: Soil sampling concludes that contaminants persist in the soil but are not migrating offsite. 2015: A proposed remediation plan is released.
news
The Benfield Industries Superfund site, where Haywood Vocational Opportunities currently operates, is outlined in red. EPA map
828-456-3551ext 351 www.BalsamSpa.com
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Opinion
Smoky Mountain News
School boards need to fight the good fight
T
legislature than the NCAE. This organization of elected school board members is very similar to the N.C. League of Municipalities or the N.C. Association of County Commissioners. These groups are generally well respected in the legislature and get the ear of the leadership, particularly since many state lawmakers began their political careers as town board members, county commissioners or school board members. And what is it the School Board Association wants? Their legislative agenda is pretty straightforward and Editor can be found at www.ncsba.org. You know, I’ve had two kids graduate from public schools and a third nearly there. My wife is a teacher, and I’ve been on PTOs and advisory councils throughout my children’s educational years. So I just don’t like it when the General Assembly — Democrats or Republicans — votes to take resources away from schools. And that’s just what has happened. To sum up what has happened since the 2012 Republican revolution in the N.C. General Assembly, I’ll quote from an article written by Duke University Professor Helen Ladd and Edward Fiske, who is a former education editor of the N.Y. Times and edits the Fiske Guide to Colleges. This appeared in the Raleigh News and
Scott McLeod
he Haywood County School Board narrowly voted (5 to 4, with Chairman Chuck Francis breaking a tie) to contribute money toward a lobbying effort by the N.C. School Boards Association. The decision is the right one given the current situation in Raleigh and hopefully will be money well spent. Lobbying is a catchall phrase that often has a negative connotation. I get that. When business groups direct thousands of dollars to candidate campaigns and then try to use that support to influence legislation, things often get sleazy. We’ve all read about it happening too many times. And lobbying efforts by public employee unions very often ruffles feathers. The N.C. Association of Educators is an important group — and I personally agree with much of its legislative agenda — but there’s no doubt the GOP-led legislature in North Carolina and this group have been butting heads. In fact, at campaign forums around our counties during this past election, there was a very noticeable friction between GOP lawmakers and teachers. Our own Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, wrote in this newspaper that he believes the NCAE is an outright supporter of the Democratic Party. From my perspective, it seems a better way to put that would be to say the NCAE supports candidates who support their agenda. More Democrats are in that camp than Republicans, hence the NCAE’s support of those candidates. Anyway, the reality is that the School Boards Association will likely have a better chance of influencing this particular
Sounds preachy, but it’s right: be true to yourself O
ships, the difficult choices that young people face, and the consequences of those choices. For guidance, we might turn back to Shakespeare: “This above all: To thine own self be true.” But what does it really mean? Perhaps it means, among other things, not sacrificing any part of yourself to “fit in” or to get people to like you. This kind of sacrifice might take many forms, from Columnist laughing at a racist joke to selling out a friend to participating in any kind of cruelty toward another person to going further than you are prepared to go on a date. You have to ask yourself — always, always, always — whether doing things in the hope that someone will like you more is more important than doing things that will certainly cause you to like yourself less? The truth is that people learn this lesson at various stages in their lives, and some people never learn it at all. The vast majority of these people live their lives in confusion and misery, never understanding why their relationships don’t work out or why every
Chris Cox
ne of the pure joys of my job — teaching English on the college level — is getting to spend time with young people still working out their identities and finding their own way. In my composition classes, they tell me (and each other) their stories, and in my literature classes, they wrestle with Emerson, Dickinson, and Shakespeare, among others, absorbing it all and testing new ideas against their experience. We discuss, we debate, we search for meaning, we try to find common ground. It is usually easier for the older ones — there is so much difference between being 17 and being 20 or 21 — while the younger ones sometimes struggle, which might not be so apparent on the surface, but is abundantly clear in their papers and journals. Years ago, I had a young man taking my American Literature class, and in his journal entry on the poet Allen Ginsberg, he disclosed that he was gay and described in heartbreaking detail his struggle with reconciling his sexual orientation with his religious faith. A couple of years after he left our college, I learned that he had committed suicide. I have read so many of these journals over the years. Sometimes the entries involve the roiling seas of human relation-
Observer last September:
“Since taking power in 2012 Gov. Pat McCrory and the Republican leaders have enacted a series of efforts aimed at weakening the state’s commitment to public education. They have, among other things, reduced the number of classroom teachers, teacher assistants, assistant principals, guidance counselors and nurses in North Carolina schools. They have cut funding for textbooks and other learning materials and eviscerated teacher professional development — all the while giving favored treatment to charters and adopting a voucher program that diverts funds from public schools and puts them in the hands of religious and other private schools immune from private accountability.”
In my humble opinion, the vote and our public school system are the two great equalizers in this country. One’s a right, the other is an institution, but it’s the two together that have helped mold the culture of the great middle class that is this country’s greatest asset. So if we must work to shore up what I’d call an assault on our public schools, then let’s do it. If that means lobbying by our elected state school boards, then more power to the them. (Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com.)
new love interest turns out to be a dud. When you make other people’s opinion of you more important than your opinion of yourself, you are on the wrong path, a path that leads to codependency and despair. You must remember that you are always in control of the decisions you make. You must not blame peer pressure, or your parents, or alcohol, or anything else, for your decisions. You alone must bear the consequences of your decisions — for better or worse — so it stands to reason that you must also accept the responsibility for making good choices. Hopefully, you will notice that when you make good choices, you feel empowered and proud of yourself. Hopefully, you will notice that when your peers make bad choices (or when you make them yourself ), that you suffer the consequences, whether it is a blow to your reputation or your own self-respect. Remember, even if no one ever finds out what you do, you yourself will know, and that matters so much more than you might think. “This above all: To thine own self be true.” It seems to me that so many college students feel the pressure from their parents to declare a major based on income potential — or what the parents perceive to be the best path to a successful career — rather than choosing a major that really suits them. This is almost always a bad idea. I have seen so many students choose a major because it led to a high-paying job, only to abandon that job a few years later and return to school because they “wanted to do something they actually liked” instead of doing a job every day that they genuinely hated.
Regardless of how nice a car you drive, if you are driving it each day to a job you hate, it will not make your life any better. Still, some students do not heed Thoreau’s admonition to embrace the simple life, believing that money and possessions really are the key ingredients to a happy life. Why, after all, does almost everyone play the lottery, as if wealth is the answer to all of life’s problems? Because our materialistic culture teaches us that we will be happier and more popular and better looking if we buy this car or that soda or that deodorant. We are besieged on all sides with this message. Did you ever notice that when you actually do buy something new, the buzz lasts for just a short time before you begin looking for that “next high” that will make you happy? Your happiness is always out in front of you, a carrot on the stick you never quite catch up with. Pretty soon, you are not living in your life, but toward it — toward the end of the day, the end of the week. Toward summer vacation. Toward retirement. Toward that great reward in the hereafter. If all of that sounds peachy, well OK, I guess. But is this the life you imagine for yourself, one in which you spend the majority of your time on this Earth waiting and wanting? If not, you better spend a little more of your time thinking about what it means to be true to yourself. (Chris Cox is a writer and teacher who lives in Haywood County. He will be reading from his new book, The Way We Say Goodbye, at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 23 at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva.)
A perspectve of a retired ob-gyn on today’s situation
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The role of midwife in the maternity care has been well established in this community because of their superb performance and conduct of ethical practice even before his arrival. Why now try to make a distinction? If his intention is trying to send a message as if something may not be right in midwives’ practice, he should feel ashamed. By nature of training of midwives and in the goal clearly defined in their association, they job is confined in care of normal uncomplicated pregnant women helping vaginal birth. Their performance must have been good enough to be hired by MMH group, possibly the major threat to his hospital. Competition is the core of capitalism that brings the quality of service and lowers the cost. Medical business should not be different from any others. I would encourage fair competition as well as collaborative work ethics in the three groups of practice instead of any dirty game plan that would stir mud and induce nefarious odor. In fact I am very happy for the consumers (patients) in this region having another choice with newly opened MMH group. Welcome aboard. (Gwang S. Han, MD, was the first board certified specialist in ob-gyn west of Asheville. He practiced for 33 years in Sylva, retiring in 2007, originally coming from Korea in 1967.)
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and intriguing, in the newspaper article. A young physician made a statement saying doctors practicing in Sylva don’t push for unnecessary interventions, claiming low cesarean section rate of 17 percent (nationwide it is 22 to 23 percent). She insinuates that the obstetricians are as qualified as she or perhaps better, but in other towns have been doing inappropriate cesarean sections. Statistics would be meaningless unless there is a critical mass to analyze from. However, I am very concerned with such a low number and would rather look into perinatal mortality and morbidity of this hospital to see whether the quality of care has been compromised. Complications in maternity care happen very randomly and are unpredictable in occurrence. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to have thorough peer reviewing in such a small hospital like the one in Sylva. The intriguing story is the announcement by Harris administrator “promoting the fact the four providers who deliver there are all physicians.” He knows that the major workforce in his hospital has been midwives delivering mostly vaginal births during last seven years and generating quite a substantial revenue not only for their employer but for the hospital as well. Had he believed in inferiority of quality of care by midwives, it would be indeed derelict of his duty to let them keep practicing the way it has been.
January 21-27, 2015
BY GWANG S. HAN G UEST COLUMNIST Obstetrics is the branch of medicine dealing with parturition, including care before and after delivery but also concerned with reproduction of society in a broader sense. The word of “obstetrics,” derived from Latin, means midwife, woman assisting the parturient, or the woman who stood by the parturient. Midwifery is a much older term than obstetrics and originated in England, being used since 1483. The British health care system has a long tradition with midwifery even during the Elizabethan era and allows more power and wider territory for midwives to maneuver and provide their own style of care. Obstetrical services were traditionally provided by midwives in the USA, and until well into the twentieth century up to 85 percent of births were by midwives. In 1968 the American College of Nurse-Midwives was absorbed as a part of American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who assumed the responsibility of educational qualifications and national certification of diplomats for title of CNM, assuring a quality standard of care nationwide. Obstetrics and gynecology had been separate and independent fields until 1931 when they were united and first board certification examination was held. In 1974, there were a little more than 10,000 board certified specialist nationwide; currently there are around 55,000, and ob-gyn’s rapidly achieving recognition as women’s primary physician. The specialty of obstetrics and gynecology was very lately introduced west of Asheville, and in fact there had never been a specialist until I opened my solo practice in Sylva in 1974. Sylva Hospital has long been the “go to hospital for the region,” a popular place to come seeking obstetrical care from doctors in Sylva and to deliver their babies. This trend has nothing to do with current providers in Sylva. This tradition has been established even before my arrival and in fact I was a beneficiary of that tradition. When I arrived in Sylva in 1974, the level of obstetrical care was at a 1960 level, in my assessment. There were no dedicated nurses assigned to labor and delivery, no obstetrical
anesthesia available, instruments were rudimentary, the concept of how to provide obstetrical care primitive, and there was no concept of how to manage “high-risk” obstetrical patients. My job has been two parts: first, be available for my own practice; second, I had to be readily available to any general practitioner not only in Sylva but in surrounding communities. It was rather precarious and potentially dangerous because of the ever-increasing threat of malpractice, but I didn’t have any option but to extend my helping hand. The number of deliveries has increased from around 300 to at its peak up to 900 per year for various reasons, but mostly due to the two steady and fairly reputable independent practitioners providing service in Sylva, in my case for 33 years. However, there has been a varied number of obstetricians practicing in Sylva — from two to six — competing in a business sense during my practice time. Hospitals can’t stay in business unless they generate enough revenue to meet payroll, to upgrade and improve the hospital and recruit new physicians. The hospital and physicians in the community have to provide better care in unison than surrounding community hospitals to attract clients (patients). The U.S. birth rate 2013 was 63 per 1,000 women of childbearing age (age 15-45). My rough estimate is that this would be about 350 births per year in Jackson and Macon counties if the residents of each county decided to stay within their borders. So obviously Sylva hospital attracts more clients from surrounding communities. The main story in the newspaper involves the one particular individual in the practice in Sylva, monopolized and “megalithic,” the only rolling musical chair that lost all her employees including two physicians and three midwives. The reason why and how was not elaborated in the newspaper. I suppose she had that many employees by recruitment, consolidation and possibly with a strong support and financial assistance from the hospital. There are two newly opened group practices, one by the Sylva hospital group and the other by Memorial Mission Hospital (MMH); a new kid in the block hiring three midwives who vaulted out from the “megalithic” practice. It appears to be none other than her own making although she seems to be trying to portray herself as a victim. I have to respect those professionals and their own decision. However there are two stories, disturbing
opinion
Editor’s Note: This column was submitted after an article on ob-gyn practices ran in late November in The Smoky Mountain News. That article can be read at http://www.smokymountainnews.com/news/item/14658.
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tasteTHEmountains Taste the Mountains is an ever-evolving paid section of places to dine in Western North Carolina. If you would like to be included in the listing please contact our advertising department at 828.452.4251 AMMONS DRIVE-IN RESTAURANT & DAIRY BAR 1451 Dellwwod Rd., Waynesville. 828.926.0734. Open 7 days a week 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Celebrating over 25 years. Enjoy world famous hot dogs as well as burgers, seafood, hushpuppies, hot wings and chicken. Be sure to save room for dessert. The cobbler, pie and cake selections are sure to satisfy any sweet tooth.
BOGART’S 303 S. Main St., Waynesville. 828.452.1313. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Carry out available. Located in downtown Waynesville, Bogart’s has been long-time noted for great steaks, soups, and salads. Casual family atmosphere in a rustic old-time setting with a menu noted for its practical value. Live Bluegrass/String Band music every Thursday. Walking distance of Waynesville’s unique shops and seasonal festival activities and within one mile of Waynesville Country Club. BOURBON BARREL BEEF & ALE 454 Hazelwood Ave., Waynesville, 828.452.9191. Lunch served 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Dinner nightly from 4 p.m. Closed on Sunday. We specialize in hand-cut, all natural steaks, fresh fish, and other classic American comfort foods that are made using only the finest local and sustainable ingredients available. We also feature a great selec-
BREAKING BREAD CAFÉ 6147 Hwy 276 S. Bethel (at the Mobil Gas Station) 828.648.3838 Monday-Friday 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Closed Sat. & Sun. Chef owned and operated. Our salads are made in house using local seasonal vegetables. Fresh roasted ham, turkey and roast beef used in our hoagies. We hand make our own eggplant and chicken parmesan, pork meatballs and hamburgers. We use 1st quality fresh not pre-prepared products to make sure you get the best food for a reasonable price. We make vegetarian, gluten free and sugar free items. Call or go to Facebook (Breaking Bread Café NC) to find out what our specials are. BRYSON CITY BAKERY AND PASTRY SHOPPE 191 Everett St., Bryson City. 828.488.5390 Offering a full line of fresh baked goods like Grandma used to make. Large variety to choose from including cakes, pies, donuts, breads, cinn-buns and much more. Also serving Hershey Ice Cream. Open seven days a week, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. BRYSON CITY CORK & BEAN A MOUNTAIN SOCIAL HOUSE 16 Everett St.,Bryson City. 828.488.1934. Open Monday-Friday 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday brunch 9 a.m. to 3p.m., Full Menu 3 to 9 p.m. Serving fresh and delicious weekday morning lite fare, lunch, dinner, and brunch. Freshly prepared menu offerings range from house-made soups & salads, lite fare & tapas, crepes, specialty sandwiches and burgers. Be sure not to miss the bold flavors and creative combinations that make up the daily Chef Supper Specials starting at 5pm every day. Followed by a tempting selection of desserts prepared daily by our chefs and other local bakers. Enjoy craft beers on tap, as well as our full bar and eclectic wine list. CATALOOCHEE RANCH 119 Ranch Dr., Maggie Valley. 828.926.1401. It’s winter, but we still serve three meals a day on Friday, Saturday and long holiday weekends. Join us for Breakfast from 8 to 9:30 a.m.; Lunch from 12 to 2 p.m.; and Dinner buffet from 6 to 7:30 p.m., with entrees that include pot roast, Virginia ham and herb-baked chicken, complemented by seasonal vegetables, homemade breads,
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CITY LIGHTS CAFE Spring Street in downtown Sylva. 828.587.2233. Open Monday-Saturday 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tasty, healthy and quick. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, espresso, beer and wine. Come taste the savory and sweet crepes, grilled paninis, fresh, organic salads, soups and more. Outside patio seating. Free Wi-Fi, pet-friendly. Live music and lots of events. Check the web calendar at citylightscafe.com.
FILLING STATION DELI 145 Everett St., Bryson City, 828.488.1919. Open Monday through Wednesday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Sundays (in October) 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Locals always know best, and this is one place they know well. From the high-quality hot pressed sandwiches and the huge portions of hand-cut fries to the specialty frozen sandwiches and homemade Southern desserts, you will not leave this top-rated deli hungry. FRANKIE’S ITALIAN TRATTORIA 1037 Soco Rd. Maggie Valley. 828.926.6216 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Father and son team Frank and Louis Perrone cook up dinners steeped in Italian tradition. With recipies passed down from generations gone by, the Perrones have brought a bit of Italy to Maggie Valley. frankiestrattoria.com
THE CLASSIC WINESELLER 20 Church Street, Waynesville. 828.452.6000. Underground retail wine and craft beer shop, restaurant, and intimate live music venue. Kitchen opens at 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday serving freshly prepared small plate and tapas-style fare. Enjoy local, regional, or national talent live each Friday and Saturday night at 7 p.m. www.classicwineseller.com. Also on facebook and twitter.
FROGS LEAP PUBLIC HOUSE 44 Church St. Downtown Waynesville 828.456.1930 Serving lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; Dinner 5 to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. 5 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday. Frogs Leap is a farm to table restaurant focused on local, sustainable, natural and organic products prepared in modern regional dishes. Seasonal menu focuses on Southern comfort foods with upscale flavors. www.frogsleappublichouse.com.
CORK & CLEAVER 176 Country Club Drive, Waynesville. 828.456.7179. Reservations recommended. 4:30-9 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Tucked away inside Waynesville Inn, Cork & Cleaver has an approachable menu designed around locally
GUADALUPE CAFÉ 606 W. Main Street, Sylva. 828.586.9877. Open 7 days a week at 5 p.m. Located in the historic Hooper’s Drugstore, Guadalupe Café is a chef-owned and operated restaurant serving Caribbean inspired fare complimented by
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CITY BAKERY 18 N. Main St. Waynesville 828.452.3881. Monday through Friday 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Join us in our historic location for scratch made soups and daily specials. Breakfast is made to order daily: Gourmet cheddar & scallion biscuits served with bacon, sausage and eggs; smoked trout bagel plate; quiche and fresh fruit parfait. We bake a wide variety of breads daily, specializing in traditional french breads. All of our breads are hand shaped. Lunch: Fresh salads, panini sandwiches. Enjoy outdoor dinning on the deck. Private room available for meetings.
COUNTRY VITTLES: FAMILY STYLE RESTAURANT 3589 Soco Rd, Maggie Valley. 828.926.1820 Open Daily 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., closed Tuesday. Family Style at Country Vittles is not a buffet. Instead our waitresses will bring your food piping hot from the kitchen right to your table and as many refills as you want. So if you have a big appetite, but sure to ask your waitress about our family style service.
www.CityLightsCafe.com
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CHEF’S TABLE 30 Church St., Waynesville. 828.452.6210. From 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday dinner starting at 5 p.m. “Best of” Award of Excellence from Wine Spectator Magazine. Set in a distinguished atmosphere with an exceptional menu. Extensive selection of wine and beer. Reservations honored.
sourced, sustainable, farm-to-table ingredients. Executive Chef Corey Green prepares innovative and unique Southern fare from local, organic vegetables grown in Western North Carolina. Full bar and wine cellar. www.waynesvilleinn.com.
We’ll feed your spirit, too.
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jellies and desserts. We also offer a fine selection of wine and beer. And a roaring fire in the fireplace. So come enjoy mile-high mountaintop dining with a spectacular view. Reservations are required.
Mon.-Fri. 7-4 Sat. 8-4
828.587.2233
Order By the Dozen: Bagels, Cookies, Cupcakes, Pastries and More!
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Smoky Mountain News
January 21-27, 2015
BLUE ROOSTER SOUTHERN GRILL 207 Paragon Parkway, Clyde, Lakeside Plaza at the old Wal-Mart. 828.456.1997. Open Monday through Friday. Friendly and fun family atmosphere. Local, handmade Southern cuisine. Fresh-cut salads; slow-simmered soups; flame grilled burgers and steaks, and homemade signature desserts. Blue-plates and local fresh vegetables daily. Brown bagging is permitted. Private parties, catering, and take-out available. Call-ahead seating available.
tion of craft beers from local artisan brewers, and of course an extensive selection of small batch bourbons and whiskey. The Barrel is a friendly and casual neighborhood dining experience where our guests enjoy a great meal without breaking the bank.
Cataloochee Ranch 119 Ranch Drive, Maggie Valley, NC 28751 | CataloocheeRanch.com | (828)926-1401
a quirky selection of wines and microbrews. Supporting local farmers of organic produce, livestock, hand-crafted cheese, and using sustainably harvested seafood. HERREN HOUSE 94 East St., Waynesville 828.452.7837. Lunch: Wednesday - Saturday 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday Brunch 11 a. m. to 2 p.m. Enjoy fresh local products, created daily. Join us in our beautiful patio garden. We are your local neighborhood host for special events: business party’s, luncheons, weddings, showers and more. Private parties & catering are available 7 days a week by reservation only.
MOONSHINE GRILL 2550 Soco Road, Maggie Valley located in the Smoky Falls Lodge. 828.926.7440. Open Wednesday through Saturday 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. Cooking up mouth-watering, woodfired Angus steaks, prime rib and scrumptious fresh seafood dishes. The wood-fired grill gives amazing flavor to every meal that comes off of it. Enjoy creative dishes made using moonshine. Stop by and simmer for a while and soak up the atmosphere. The best kept secret in Maggie Valley. themoonshinegrill.com
JUKEBOX JUNCTION U.S. 276 and N.C. 110 intersection, Bethel. 828.648.4193. 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Serving breakfast, lunch, nd dinner. The restaurant has a 1950s & 60s theme decorated with memorabilia from that era.
NEWFOUND LODGE RESTAURANT 1303 Tsali Blvd, Cherokee (Located on 441 North at entrance to GSMNP). 828.497.4590. Open 7 a.m. daily. Established in 1946 and serving breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week. Family style dining for adults and children.
LOS AMIGOS 366 Russ Ave. in the Bi-Lo Plaza. 828.456.7870. Open from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. for lunch and 5 to 10 p.m. for dinner Monday through Friday and 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Enjoy the lunch prices Monday through Sunday, also enjoy our outdoor patio.
ORGANIC BEANS COFFEE COMPANY 1110 Soco Road, Maggie Valley. 828.668.2326. Open 7 days a week 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Happily committed to brewing and serving innovative, uniquely delicious coffees — and making the world a better place. 100% of our coffee is Fair Trade, Shade Grown, and Organic, all slow-roasted to bring out every note of indigenous flavor. Bakery offerings include cakes, muffins, cookies and more. Each one is made from scratch in Asheville using only the freshest, all natural ingredients available. We are proud to offer gluten-free and vegan options.
MAD BATTER FOOD & FILM 617 W. Main Street Downtown Sylva. 828.586.3555. Open Tuesday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Wednesday-Saturday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Hand-tossed pizza, steak sandwiches, wraps, salads and desserts. All made from scratch. Beer and wine. Free movies with showtimes at 6:30 and 9 p.m. with a Saturday matinee at 2 p.m. Visit madbatterfoodandfilm.com for this week’s shows. MAGGIE VALLEY CLUB 1819 Country Club Dr., Maggie Valley. 828.926.1616. maggievalleyclub.com/dine. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Fine and casual fireside dining in welcoming atmosphere. Full bar. Reservations accepted.
PASQUALE’S 1863 South Main Street, Waynesville. Off exit 98, 828.454.5002. Open for lunch and dinner, closed Wednesdays. Classic Italian dishes, exceptional steaks and seafood (available in full and lighter sizes), thin crust pizza, homemade soups, salads hand tossed at your table. Fine wine and beer selection. Casual atmosphere, dine indoors, outside on the patio or at the bar. Reservations appreciated.
SMOKY MOUNTAIN SUB SHOP 29 Miller Street Waynesville 828.456.3400. Open from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. A Waynesville tradition, the Smoky Mountain Sub Shop has been serving great food for over 20 years. Come in and enjoy the relaxed, casual atmosphere. Sub breads are baked fresh every morning in Waynesville. Using only the freshest ingredients in homemade soups, salads and sandwiches. Come in and see for yourself why Smoky Mountain Sub Shop was voted # 1 in Haywood County. Locally owned and operated. SPEEDY’S PIZZA 285 Main Street, Sylva. 828.586.3800. Open seven days a week. Monday-Friday 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Saturday 3 p.m.-11 p.m., Sunday 4 p.m.-10 p.m. Family-owned for 30 years. Serving hand-tossed pizza made to order, pasta, subs, gourmet salads, calzones and seafood. Also serving excellent prime rib on Thursdays. Dine in or take out available. Located across from the Fire Station. TAP ROOM SPORTS BAR & GRILL 176 Country Club Dr. Waynesville 828.456.5988. 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week. Enjoy soups, sandwiches, salads and hearty appetizers along with a full bar menu in our casual, smoke-free neighborhood grill. THAI SPICE 128 N. Main St., Waynesville. 828.454.5400. Lunch: Tuesday-Friday 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday noon to 3 p.m. Dinner Tuesday-Saturday 4:30 to 9 p.m. Closed Monday. Thai Spice, an authentic Thai restaurant, warmly welcomes you to experience a superb dinning experience. Don’t be timid, the food comes mild, medium, hot and Thai Hot. You choose. www.thaispicewnc.com VITO’S PIZZA 607 Highlands Rd., Franklin. 828.369.9890. Established here in in 1998. Come to Franklin and enjoy our laid back place, a place you can sit back, relax and enjoy our 62” HDTV. Our Pizza dough, sauce, meatballs, and sausage are all made from scratch by Vito.
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January 21-27, 2015
J. ARTHUR’S RESTAURANT AT MAGGIE VALLEY U.S. 19 in Maggie Valley. 828.926.1817. Lunch Sunday noon to 2:30 p.m., dinner nightly starting at 4:30 p.m. World-famous prime rib, steaks, fresh seafood, gorgonzola cheese and salads. All ABC permits and open year-round. Children always welcome. Take-out menu. Excellent service and hospitality. Reservations appreciated.
MOUNTAIN PERKS ESPRESSO BAR & CAFÉ 9 Depot St., Bryson City. 828.488.9561. Open Monday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Friday 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. With music at the Depot. Sunday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Life is too short for bad coffee. We feature wonderful breakfast and lunch selections. Bagels, wraps, soups, sandwiches, salads and quiche with a variety of specialty coffees, teas and smoothies. Various desserts.
RENDEZVOUS RESTAURANT AND BAR Maggie Valley Inn and Conference Center 828.926.0201 Bar open Monday thru Saturday; dining room open Tuesday thru Saturday at 5 p.m. Full service restaurant serving steaks, prime rib, seafood and dinner specials.
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Fruits of their labor
Based out of Haywood County, the Black Bear Homebrew Club meets monthly to discuss their craft beers and try new styles and flavors. (From left to right) Kyle Boudreau, Nate Novgrod, Scott Koger, Josh Bright, Will Crenshaw and Kosuke (the dog). Donated photo
Homebrewing in WNC
BY GARRET K. WOODWARD STAFF WRITER Greg Geiger looked at it as a way to save money. “I started brewing when I was a sophomore in college,” he said. “Honestly, I was a poor college student and making beer was much cheaper than buying it back then.” Head brewer at Nantahala Brewing Company in Bryson City, Geiger’s initial interest in craft beer has molded itself into a bountiful and ever-emerging career, with several of his Greg Geiger brews winning numerous awards at prestigious competitions. “But, getting into homebrewing and into the local homebrew club exposed me to it and allowed me to appreciate the world of craft beer in a way that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to,” he said. In the last two decades, the craft beer industry has exploded. From 90 breweries around the country in 1980 to over 2,800 and counting in 2014 (www.brewersassociation.org), the pas-
sion and support of the products is as astounding as it is evolving. And at the center of the majority of these businesses is someone who started homebrewing and fell in love with the craft. “It’s been an interesting time for home and craft brewing,” said Gary Glass, director of the American Homebrewers Association. “In 2005, we started to see an uptick in interest in homebrewing, and that certainly goes handin-hand with the craft beer industry growth, especially seeing as most craft brewmasters started out as homebrewers.”
CUP RUNNETH OVER Based out of Boulder, Colorado, a craft beer mecca in its own right, the AHA is home to 44,000 members and 1,900 homebrew clubs across the United States. Started in 1978, the association’s goal from day one has been to not only connect homebrewers with each other, but also perpetuate and grow the hobby. “Homebrewing continues to fuel the creativity,” Glass said. “What we see in homebrewing is what’s going to happen in craft brewing a
A Western North Carolina homebrewer’s rally (right) was recently held by the American Homebrewers Association at the Funkatorium in downtown Asheville. Garret K. Woodward photo
couple years later, and vice versa with all of these new beer styles coming out from commercial brewers that inspire homebrewers to try new things.” Combing through the AHA website (www.homebrewersassociation.org), one comes across the Black Bear Homebrew Club in Waynesville. What started out as a semi-regular gathering of friends and homebrewers in Haywood and Jackson counties, the club officially formed last October, with monthly meetings, discussions and tastings abound. “It’s a bunch of folks that like to homebrew,” said Nate Novgrod, head of the Black Bear Homebrew Club. “We come together and like to share our different beers, to try other styles and flavors.” Novgrod got into homebrewing eight years ago. He was simply tired of the same old commercial beers offered on the market (i.e. Budweiser, Miller, Coors). He wanted something more, and soon started toying around with a homebrew kit. “The standard stuff out there doesn’t have a whole lot of taste,” he said. “For me, craft beer is what I’ve always liked, and homebrewing is a natural extension of that because you can make the exact beer you want.” So, what does Novgrod think about the craft beer boom in Asheville and Western North Carolina? “I’m all for it — the more good beer out
there the better,” he said. “I knew Asheville was blowing up, but I’ve been surprised to see how big it has gotten in Waynesville with four breweries in town now.”
BEER GEEKS UNITE Last Saturday afternoon, dozens of WNC members of the AHA converged onto the Funkatorium, an experimental satellite brewery for the popular Wicked Weed Brewing around the corner in downtown Asheville. Milling about in the rally crowd was Heidi Dunkelberg, owner of the Coffee Cup Café in Clyde, as well as a longtime homebrewer, hop grower and craft beer advocate from Haywood County. “I got into homeHeidi Dunkelberg brewing 10 years ago,” she said. “Cooking is my passion and that led me to making my own beer. Now, I’m learning more about the science of brewing, which has opened up a whole new world to me. You’ll never stop learning about craft beer, there’s always something new to discover. There’s always new techniques, new styles, old styles, new hops — it’s endless.”
S EE HOMEBREW, PAGE 29
“A lot of folks that have interest in [homebrewing] are afraid to try it because they think its hard or complicated. If you can cook, you can make beer, it’s really not different.” — Nate Novgrod, head of the Black Bear Homebrew Club
BY GARRET K. WOODWARD
St. Mary’s Academy. Nicci Molinski photo
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** $30,000 RAISED ** IN 3 YEARS You Are Invited to JOIN US FOR OUR 3RD ANNIVERSARY PARTY Thur., Jan. 29th at 5:30 PM at the Herren House
This is a FREE EVENT 94 East St., Waynesville 828-545-6879 828-452-7837 Heavy hors d’voeurvres & refreshments will be served.
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I even knew who I was. They were the ones conspiring with me about how to make a tree fort, how many ice cream sandwiches we could get if we pooled our lunch money together, and who of us could make the shot from half-court when handed the basketball at a moment’s notice. Nothing was ever the same for me when I left the St. Mary’s. We took off for public school following sixth grade. We were now middle school students, meeting new people, having new experiences, and moving on with our lives. But something always remained, something that was exchanged in glances with St. Mary’s chums in the middle school hallways, at the prom, amid college parties, and in conversation at our 10year high school reunion. That something was our past and what connected us all — St. Mary’s. It was heartbreaking seeing all of these photos of the school burning down being posted on Facebook, some by neighbors, other by friends who live nearby. And yet, following the fire, the memories and sentiments started flowing in. Folks who attended the school in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and until it closed in 2012 all shared their old photos and memories. Former students reconnected and reopened the doors on friendships long placed on the quiet shelf of life. All of these people, who are scattered across every corner of the world, coming together because no matter how far away they are or have traveled or will wander, one thing remains the same — where the starting point was.
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January 21-27, 2015
he temperature was 20 degrees below zero with a howling wind. As I listened to the online stream of my hometown police scanner, I couldn’t believe what I The Get Right Band (funk/soul) will perform at was hearing. Way up yonder, on 7 p.m. Jan. 23 at BearWaters Brewing in the Canadian border, in the tiny Waynesville. town of Champlain, New York, The “Robert Burns Dinner” will be held from my elementary school was burn5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 24 in the Tartan Hall at ing to the ground last Friday the Franklin Presbyterian Church. evening. Over 100 years old, the enormous stone structure was Mangus Colorado (bluegrass/Americana) will ablaze, with massive flames reachperform at 9 p.m. Jan. 24 at No Name Sports ing up into the frozen winter sky Pub in Sylva. of the North Country. Voices of firefighters and disDarren & The Buttered Toast (funk/soul) will patchers echoed out of the scanperform at 9 p.m. Jan. 24 at Mad Batter Food ner, with last names and accents I & Film in Sylva. knew all too well. French Haywood County Arts Council’s annual meetCanadian surnames and other ing/reception will be at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 22 at town fire departments chipping in Gallery 86 in Waynesville. to help that rekindled memories deep in my mind like a match being struck. It was surreal to hear it all as my field of vision was overcome with school, it was overseen by nuns and the parish priest. It was a place not only did my faces not thought of in years. The scanner sister and I attend, but also my mother, voices stated street locations to set up a aunts and uncles. perimeter to tame the fire. I remembered I first encountered the building when I those streets. I remembered playing on entered pre-school. I remember how loomthem, walking along the sidewalks, talking ing the building appeared from the outside. with cronies I haven’t seen in over a decade, It was old stone and brick, and had this very or at least since high school graduation. Saint Mary’s Academy was an institution. intimidating feel to it. The stairwells creaked and the well-worn doors squeaked. It was Not just in the literal sense, but also in matcold and drafty in the winter, hot and humid ters of the community at large, and of the in the summer months. You could hear the heart. It was the first place I really knew radiators groan on in the mornings and footbesides my childhood home. I mean, when steps echo down long, silent corridors. you start being cognizant of the world But what filled the air was a sense of puraround you it usually occurs during those pose — an atmosphere of love and nurturing early years in elementary school. A Catholic
“What filled the air was a sense of purpose — an atmosphere of love and nurturing experienced day in and day out.”
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This must be the place
experienced day in and day out. I remember a lot of laughter, an array of incredible teachers, and the whole world at my fingertips, right outside the window near my desk. There was the shenanigans of recess, field trips to apple orchards and pumpkin patches, trial and error attempts at answering a question correctly at the blackboard, deafening cafeteria lunches, basketball games and square dancing in the dusty gymnasium, weekly masses to reflect on the daily life of being a youngster, and the dreaded “see me after class” when one got ahead of themselves in the eyes of the teacher. And then there was the friends, the people I met when my age was in the single digits. Those folks, though we may only cross paths every so often, will always hold a special place in my heart. They knew me before
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arts & entertainment
On the wall • Haywood County Arts Council’s annual meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 22, at Gallery 86 in Waynesville. The gathering will begin with a wine and cheese reception, following by a presentation and performance. Attendees will be asked for input by the following questions: What are we doing well? What do we need to do more of? What should be doing differently? 828.452.0593. www.haywoodarts.org. • “Planes: Fire & Rescue” (Jan. 24, 31) and “The Boxtrolls” (Jan. 24, 31) will be screened at The Strand at 38 Main in Waynesville. Saturday morning cartoons will also be shown at 11 a.m. For screening times, click on www.38main.com or call 828.283.0079. • The Contemporary Craft Series exhibit featuring the work of Mike Sluder will be on display through Feb. 22 at The Bascom in Highlands. As one of the country’s most notable metal artist, Sluder has made a name for himself creating breathtaking and sophisticated metal art, moving beyond his gritty and industrial beginnings. Sluder’s works have been featured in the Museum of Design, Atlanta, as well as in national and international exhibitions and publications. www.thebascom.org or 828.526.4949.
ALSO:
• “Lucy” (Jan. 22), “The Boxtrolls” (at 2 and 6:30 p.m. Jan. 23-24), “The Big Lebowski” (Jan. 29), “The Matrix” (Jan. 30) and “The Book of Life” (Jan. 31) will be screened at the Mad Batter Food & Film in Sylva. Screenings are free and begin at 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted. www.madbatterfoodandfilm.com. • “Into The Woods” will be screened Jan. 23-29 at the Highlands Playhouse. Showtimes are at 2, 5 and 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and also 2 and 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets cost $9. For dates and more information, call 828.526.2695. www.highlandsplayhouse.org.
“Tracking Time,” an exhibition of paintings by Anna Jensen and Karen Ann Myers, will open with an artist discussion and reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 22, in the Fine Art Museum at Western Carolina University. The exhibition brings together the work of two artists who create intimate, surreal and sometimes haunting psychological paintings of friends, family, lovers and conflicts, said Denise Drury, curator and interim director at the FAM. Jensen’s laborious process combines references to art history, pop culture and natural science that ultimately culminate in personal chronicles representing the conflicts in her life. The women in Myer’s paintings are posed in her actual bed, but the rooms in her paintings are fantasies functioning as metaphors for an interior life. The exhibition runs through March 27. www.fineartmuseum.wcu.edu or 828.227.3591.
There will be an array of art classes offered throughout the month at The Bascom in Highlands, as well other activities put on by the institution around Macon County. • A basic hand-building and wheel throwing class will be offered from 10 a.m. to noon Jan. 22 at The Bascom. Class includes a 25-pound bag of clay. $100 for Bascom members, $150 for non-members. • The Kid’s Creation Station will be from 10 a.m. to noon Jan. 24 and 31 at The Bascom. Theme will be metal. For ages 5 to 10. $20 per month. • A figure drawing class with Knight Martorell will be offered from 5 to 6 p.m. Jan. 21 and 28 at The Bascom. Draw from a live model in the adult education studio. $10. aalig@thebascom.org or 828.787.2865. • The Franklin After-School Art Adventure will be from 3:30 to 4:45 p.m. Jan. 21 and 28. The theme will be metal.
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Paintings by Karen Ann Myers (pictured) and Anna Jensen will be exhibited through March 27 at Western Carolina University. Donated photo
Children, adult classes at The Bascom
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January 21-27, 2015
• The “Come Paint with Charles Kidz Program” will be at 4 p.m. Jan. 22 and 29 at the Charles Heath Gallery in Bryson City. $18 per child. Materials and snacks included. 828.538.2054.
‘Tracking Time’ exhibit, artist discussion at WCU
BONDED & INSURED
Students will explore popular techniques, theories in art history, as well as dive into contemporary and folk art. For ages 5 to 10. $20 per month. www.thebascom.org or 828.526.4949.
‘Winter Craft’ series in Bryson City
Crafter/owner of Taylor’s Greenhouse, Karen Taylor will be the instructor for the “Winter Craft” series at Wild Fern Studios in Bryson City. • A wet felting workshop will be held Jan. 24. The class explores the art of wet felting, along with needle felting and the basics that go along with making a unique piece of jewelry. • A handmade salves and oil workshop will be held Jan. 31. Class will discuss and demonstrate how to extract and utilize the materials. Each series date runs from 10 a.m. to noon. Class fee is $20. 828.736.1605.
Call today to schedule a free consultation!
On the street
HOMEBREW, CONTINUED FROM 26
WHERE TO BEGIN
• Western Style Square Dancing Lessons will be offered from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Mondays through April 20 at the Recreation Center in Cullowhee. $65 per person. Register at the center.
Kilcullen added. Now headlong into his endeavors at Nantahala Brewing, Geiger can breakdown the process easily for beginners curious to know more. “It really isn’t that difficult. When you’re brewing beer, you’re really just providing an environment that makes a particular strain of yeast happy. You’re trying to give the yeast their best chance to multiply,” he said. “They like sugar and oxygen, and we give that to them with malted barley and air. They don’t like to compete with bacteria and viruses, so give them a clean and sanitary place to grow. They like very specific temperature ranges, this can easily be controlled with a heating pad in the winter and a temperature controlled cool space in the summer — old refrigerators
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Want to know more? For more information on how to homebrew, clubs in your area, supplier locations, events or craft beer resources, click on www.homebrewersassociation.com. If you’re interested in joining the Black Bear Homebrew Club or see when their next meeting is, click on www.facebook.com/blackbearbrewing or email Nate Novgrod at nnovgrod@gmail.com. are great for this.” Geiger also recommends picking up a copy of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian. “This book is considered the Bible of homebrewing and Charlie is considered the godfather,” he said. So, what’s the biggest misconception with homebrewing? “That it’s hard,” Novgrod said. “A lot of folks that have interest in it are afraid to try it because they think its hard or complicated. If you can cook, you can make beer, it’s really not different. For me, it’s a quiet process with the steps you have to take. It takes me about four hours from start to finish on a brew day, and I have a good chunk of time where I have a routine — it’s nice and relaxing for me.” When asked about his next batch of craft beer, Novgrod said it would be a pretty important one. “I’m getting married in May, so I’ll be brewing all the beer for the wedding,” he said.
Smoky Mountain News
With an estimated 1.2 million homebrewers the United States (over two-thirds starting the last decade), the craft is quickly gaining momentum. But, where does one begin if they’re interested in giving it a go? “First, don’t be intimidated,” Glass said. “Brewing is actually a very simple process and I highly recommend started out with an extract kit. It’s very easy to do and with the quality of the extract kits these days, you can make some really great beer using simpler techniques than can minimize your mistakes.” “With homebrewing, there’s a lot to learn from your failures, and you’re going to have them, but if you can pay attention, watch what you did and have patience, and give it time, you’ll be rewarded,”
“I went to see Dr. Hamel and the results have changed my life. I am able to express myself in front of people with much more confidence and boldness. I recommend this to everyone wholeheartedly.” - MH
January 21-27, 2015
Sour production manager for Wicked Weed, Richard Kilcullen is at the center of the craft brewing universe and its recent sour beer movement (different kinds of yeast, aged in wine barrels). Strolling the floor of the Funkatorium during the rally, Kilcullen gives extensive tours around the facility, all the while answering any and all questions posed about his products. “I’m blown away by the turnout today, a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of interested people and Richard Kilcullen refinement in their palettes. If you’d have told me five years ago how popular sour beer would be, I’d have never believed you,” he chuckled. “But, with craft beer, it’s like anything else these days, people are starting to care more about what they’re putting in their bodies, in what they eat, and drinking is the same thing.” Starting out as a homebrewer, Kilcullen remembers fondly those early days and how much he has, and still continues to have, in experimentation, fermentation and consumption. “It was about the chance to mimic something I love,” he said. “They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I just liked being able to recreate and see how these recipes were built, how to deconstruct them, the thrill of making something.”
• A wine tasting will be held from 2 to 5 p.m. Jan. 24 and 31 at Papou’s Wine Shop & Bar in Sylva. 828.586.6300.
arts & entertainment
• The “Robert Burns Dinner” will be held from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 24 in the Tartan Hall at the Franklin Presbyterian Church. Celebrating the Scottish tradition, there will be a “Calling of the Clans,” recitation of “Ode to Haggis,” the “Immortal Memory” of Burns, as well as toasts, group singing and dancing. 828.524.7472.
Wishing You the Best of Everything in 2015!
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arts & entertainment
On the beat ‘World’s best young Elvis’ to play WCU Travis LeDoyt, acclaimed by critics as “the world’s best young Elvis,” will bring his tribute to the “King of Rock-N-Roll” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 31, in the John W. Bardo Fine and Performing Arts Center at Western Carolina University. The show will be in honor of what would have been Presley’s 80th birthday this month and is part of the 2014-15 Galaxy of Stars Series. LeDoyt captures the essence of Elvis in his prime, and restricts his shows to the hits and ambience of 1954 through 1962. Utilizing a three-piece band featuring guitar, bass and drums, he takes his audience back to the fun and excitement of a 1950s Elvis concert. LeDoyt has been selling out shows and receiving accolades from audiences from around the world. He has been on four tours in the United Kingdom and has performed in Hong Kong, China, Chile and Canada. Tickets cost $21 for adults ($15 in groups of 20 or more), $16 for WCU faculty and staff members, and $7 for students/children of any age. The performance is sponsored by David S. McGuire and F. Patrick McGuire Dentistry. The media sponsor is 540 AMWRGC Radio. 828.227.2479 or www.bardoartscenter.wcu.edu.
• BearWaters Brewing (Waynesville) will have The Get Right Band (funk/soul) on Jan. 23 and Max Gross Weight Jan. 30. Both shows begin at 7 p.m. www.bwbrewing.com or 828.246.0602. • City Lights Café (Sylva) will have The Neidlingers (singer-songwriter) on Jan. 23 and Joseph Catanese (singer-songwriter) Jan. 31. Both shows begin at 7 p.m. www.citylightscafe.com. • Classic Wine Seller (Waynesville) will have Kevin Lorenz (guitarist) Jan. 23, Joe Cruz (piano/pop) Jan. 24 and 31, and James Hammel (jazz/pop) Jan. 30. All shows begin at 7 p.m. $10 minimum purchase. 828.452.6000 or www.classicwineseller.com.
Travis LeDoyt will perform Jan. 31 at Western Carolina University. Donated photo
January 21-27, 2015
BALSAM RANGE TO APPEAR ON DAVID HOLT PROGRAM Acclaimed Haywood County bluegrass group Balsam Range (pictured) will be one of many acts featured in the premier of ‘David Holt’s State of Music’ at 10 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 29, on UNC-TV. The show features some of today’s finest musicians like Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Bryan Sutton, Josh Goforth and the Branchettes. The one-hour program was shot on location around Western North Carolina for North Carolina Public TV. www.davidholttv.org.
Music faculty showcase at WCU
Smoky Mountain News
A Faculty Showcase Recital will be held at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 27, in the Coulter Building at Western Carolina University. The evening will offer audience members the chance to hear a wide variety of performances by many faculty members from WCU’s School of Music. The concert will include a performance of Mario Gaetano’s composition “Circles” with Gaetano on marimba and Andrew King and Daniel Myers on percussion; Paul Pierne’s “Bucolique Variee” performed by Alicia Chapman on oboe, Shannon Thompson on clarinet and Will Peebles on bassoon; a movement titled “Allemande” from Jean Sebastien Bach’s Sixth Suite for Unaccompanied Cello performed by Brad Ulrich on flugelhorn; James Naigus’ “River Lullaby” interpreted by Zsolt Szabo on trombone, Travis Bennett on horn and Lyn Burkett on piano; and “Monster Studies,” a modern composition by Girard Kratz, performed by Ian Jeffres on saxophone and Lillian Pearson on piano. Free. zszabo@wcu.edu or 828.227.3954. 30
• Frog Level Brewing (Waynesville) will have Craig Summers & Lee Kram at 6 p.m. Jan. 22 and 29, and Through the Hills (Americana/folk) at 7 p.m. Jan. 23. Free. 828.454.5664 or www.froglevelbrewing.com.
ALSO:
• Innovation Brewing (Sylva) will have an Open Mic night on Jan. 21 and 28, a jazz night Jan. 22 and 29, and The Liz Nance Trio Jan. 24. All events begin at 8 p.m. www.innovation-brewing.com. • Mad Batter Food & Film will have Painted Giants and The Breedlove Brothers Jan. 23 and Darren & the Buttered Toast and Lyric Jan. 24. All shows cost $2 and begin at 9 p.m. www.madbatterfoodandfilm.com. • No Name Sports Pub (Sylva) will have Mangus Colorado (bluegrass/Americana) on Jan. 24 and Porch 40 (funk/rock) Jan. 29. All shows are free and begin at 9 p.m. 828.586.2750 or www.nonamesportspub.com. • Rathskeller Coffee Haus and Pub (Franklin) will have Gary Carter on Jan. 24, John Phillip Brooks Jan. 30 and Nick Prestia Jan. 31. All shows are free and begin at 8 p.m. www.rathskellerfranklin.com or 828.369.6796.
The Café String Quartet will hit the stage Jan. 31 in Franklin. Donated photo
Café String Quartet to play Franklin The Café String Quartet will perform at 7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 31, at the Smoky Mountain Center for the Performing Arts in Franklin. Their music includes classics by Beethoven, Gershwin, Bach and many other notable composers, but they also throw in an
eclectic mix of fan favorites that keeps things exciting. Each quartet member draws from a rich professional history of training and study as well as eclectic performance experiences. Enjoy an evening of classical, pop, jazz, Broadway and more as the group brings their unique perspective of performance and storytelling in a salute to love songs. Tickets cost $14. www.greatmountainmusic.com or 866.273.4615.
• Tipping Point Brewing (Waynesville) will have Dave Desmelik (singer-songwriter) at 9 p.m. Jan. 30. Free. • Western Carolina University (Cullowhee) will present the Sheila Jordan Jazz Vocal Recital on Jan. 23 and Alex Shlifer (violin) Jan. 26. Both performances are at 7:30 p.m. and will be held in the Coulter Building. www.wcu.edu.
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Books Painted Horses is one for the ages W
hen people ask me what I’ve been doing this fall, I tell them I’ve been on a reading jag — reading new novels hot off the press. What I’ve found is that there have been a lot of very good books that have come out in the last year, including some by some very talented new writers who are just coming on the scene. Books that I’ve read and recommend so far this fall include The Book of Strange New Things, by David Mitchell;, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, by Reza Aslan (a book of non-fiction written like fiction); All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr; Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandell; Orkney, by Amy Sackville; Orfeo, by Richard Powers; and then all the while dipping into the Collected Stories of Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor for a little historical perspective. But maybe the best of all of these new novels and new writers is a brand new book by Malcolm Brooks titled Painted Horses. The book is a combination of war story, art history, cultural anthropology and archeological history of Europe and Native America, mystery/thriller, environmental activism, and a romance novel — all of which is poetically written in explicit detail and marvelous description. The research, alone, for this book must have taken Brooks half a lifetime, so right-on is his factual knowledge of all these places and subjects, which extends to and includes some perfect French that he utilizes at the end of the book. Painted Horses takes place in the 1950s when the west was still very much wild. Catherine Lemay is a young archeologist who has come for the first time to Montana with a job that has her working ahead of a major dam project and who has only one summer to prove nothing of historical value will be lost in the flood that will inundate a huge canyon. John H is a former mustanger with an intuitive genius for breaking horses and a veteran of the U.S. Army’s last mounted cavalry campaign in WWII. He lives a fugitive life deep in
the canyon and one step ahead of extinction, but driven by pursuit of one last wild thing. Driven by his past and his quiet wisdom, he inspires Catherine to see beauty in the stark Montana landscape as her heart opens to more than just the vanished past. These two are surrounded by characters who will become friends and adversaries as Indian and Anglo traditionalists are pitted against a ruthless mega power company called Harris Power & Light to try and preserve an ancient and sacred landscape and its millennia-old relics. What starts for Catherine and her new Crow Indian friend Miriam as a fact-finding field trip into the desert, by the book’s end has become a cloak-and-dagger tale of intrigue and lethal capitalistic politics. A love story that becomes a horse race that becomes a cliffhanger with lives and loves and ancient artifacts on the line. But the best way to describe a story is in the words of the storyteller himself. “He knew of monuments left by people whose wanderings had long ceased, messages pregnant with lost meaning, shields and symbols etched into the stone face of a jump or rendered in fading paint on the wall of an overhang. Arrows, chevrons. Palm prints from hands long ago. He’d studied chips of flint scattered in the sand like shards of memory
Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks. Grove Press, 2014. 367 pages. itself, tea leaves testifying to long-lost arts. The coaxing of a tool from a stone, lethal and beautiful and truer for the both. A blade, a notched point. He had many things to show her.” During the course of this engaging saga, Brooks takes us from Montana to London, to the second World War in Spain and Italy, to a Lascaux-like cave in Brittany, to Paris, and back again. “What a ride!” would be the perfect metaphor for a book about a horse wrangler who follows the herds of wild horses on the western plains. Brooks’ main character
John H is not only a horseman but also an artist who paints — you guessed it — horses. As Brooks describes him: “He experiments, more than once painting figures [of horses] across her abdomen, across her back, over the ridges and flutes of her ribs. Her belly button becomes an eye, her shoulder blade a forequarter.” All the while and with The Rolling Stones’ “wild horses, wild horses, couldn’t take me away…” running through my head and reminiscent of Larry McMurtry’s and Jim Harrison’s tales of wild horses and the far western Badlands of the U.S., Painted Horses did take me away and right into the thick of the story and its characters. It is the quality of the writing that does this and which transported me there like an H.G. Wells timemachine. “Who would a person love. When would death knock. Mysteries like the wheels of a gear regulated in turn by wars and invasions, earthquakes and famines. In the end the magic of being alive was both created and destroyed by a velocity not perceived but present, each lifetime hurtling toward a light so bright you could but glance before you were forced not only to look away but to forget you ever saw it, for meaning itself was no more than a cipher within that light.” Brooks is also a master at using such poetic devices as metaphor and simile. The text is full of them — always pithy, always poignant. Like shards and flint-points from an archeological dig, Brooks’ associative mind is working overtime: “John H does not speak French well enough to follow their conversation, which whirls and flashes like a festival, but he gathers she loves to argue, her tongue quick as a matador’s cape,” Or “Her nerves felt like a shoelace that wouldn’t stay tied.” or “… something beyond a fin or bare stone breaching the sage along the river like the keel of a capsized boat.” And in another slightly longer passage: “The low ceiling undulates in shallow
Professor releases chapbook
READing Paws at Hudson Library
A recently published chapbook of poetry titled Marks of the Witch by Catherine Carter, associate professor of English at Western Carolina University, explores topics ranging from time and feeling inadequate to getting gnawed on by crickets. The 20-page book of poems won the 2014 Jacar Press Chapbook Contest and is now available from Jacar Press, an independent publisher of full-length collections, chapbooks, anthologies and limited edition collectible book art. Carter said that although some of the poems in the chapbook were inspired by a rough time in her life, she hopes readers will find the overall arc hopeful. She traces her interest in the literary craft to childhood when she heard poetry on a regular basis as a result of “rare opportunities” and “rare parents.” ccarter@wcu.edu or 828.227.3931.
Children ages 6-12 are invited to practice early reading skills by reading to a canine companion from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. every Tuesday at the Hudson Library in Highlands. Beebles, an Old English sheepdog from READing Paws, is one of the newest volunteers. She loves kids, is an excellent listener and never turns down a good story. Dogs are now being used in many school and library settings to help motivate youngsters to read. The use of trained therapy dogs in reading programs can result in children who feel comfortable reading out loud, read more often and attempt more challenging books. As kids improve their literacy skills, they’re learning to love to read. Many times children never get a chance to read without someone telling them that they have mispronounced a word or skipped a part of the story. Reading dogs, such as Beebles, provide
Smoky Mountain News
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white domes, as though the four of them have been inhaled down the trachea of a giant. At times he’s nearly disoriented, the shadow of the cave and the endless dancing animals bending his brain like the lick of a gas. Eventually, he tries to speak and nothing comes out. He can’t get his tongue to touch the roof of his mouth, can barely get the muscles of his jaw to pry his lips apart, as though paralyzed in a dream in which he should be running for his life.” There are these kinds of engaging descriptions throughout this book. Lots of great oneliners that one would be tempted to lift for one’s own purposes to insert into the makings of one’s own poems. But I digress, for along with the extraordinary one-liners there are also passages of beautiful simplicity and depth. “Two men loaf in identical black berets and identical work smocks, smoking identical cigarettes, and although probably forty years separate them John H has the disorienting sense he is seeing twins of a sort, or perhaps parallel incarnation of the same beast, unified in spirit yet separated by the long crawl of time.” But when everything’s said and done and even though the love story takes the fewest pages to play out, it is that story which predominates and which one is left with, lingering in one’s mind: “She wanted to know everything. She wanted to hear his voice, to keep him talking. In the glow of the lamp she could just see the stack of canvases against the wall, and she saw more than horses. She saw a blur of poppies on a damp green field, a city at night, a horizon of lights that reminded her of The Great Gatsby. She had a greedy urge to rifle the entire stack, imagined herself alone with his things, a thief of secrets. She wanted to piece him together like a puzzle. She was torn between two ends of a mystery, wanting to solve it on one hand, seduced on the other by things she didn’t know.” Thomas Crowe is the author of the award-winning nature memoir Zoro’s Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods and writes editorials and reviews for this paper. He lives in Tuckasegee and can be reached at newnativepress@hotmail.com.
children with the opportunity to simply enjoy reading. 828.526.3031 or www.fontanalib.org or www.readingpaws.org.
Cox to present new book Writer Chris Cox will read from his new essay collection The Way We Say Goodbye at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 23, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. The collection is sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes wistful, but always beautifully written. Cox is a columnist for The Smoky Mountain News, and the author of another book, Waking Up in a Cornfield. His columns have won numerous awards on the state and national level and have been reprinted in magazines such as The Reader’s Digest and Smoky Mountain Living. He teaches English at Southwestern Community College in Sylva. 828.586.9499.
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Outdoors
Smoky Mountain News
Surviving the adventure bug
Sylva man reflects on televised Alaskan survival experience, the adventure lifestyle BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER cott McCleskey didn’t really know what he was saying yes to when he boarded the plane to Alaska, pack of gear in hand, to take his place on the National Geographic Channel show “Ultimate Survival Alaska.” All he knew was that he’d done a Skype interview for the slot, later fielded a call telling him to keep his hair long and eventually been given the nod to compete on the show
S
— provided he could be up north within two weeks. That was a pretty tight timeline, considering that McCleskey was in the middle of closing on a house at the time. McCleskey, 36, is a world-class kayaker who has been an Olympic team alternate three times, but when he’s not running rapids he works as a carpenter in Sylva. “I called in all the troops and we dried in the house for him within two weeks, and off to Alaska I went,” he said while enjoying some
McCleskey, right, stares at the mountains ahead with teammates Kasha Rigby and James Sweeney. National Geographic Channels/Brent Meeske photos
Huddle House hash browns and coffee back home in Western North Carolina. To some, it probably seemed like a crazy cliff to jump off of. “Ultimate Survival” entails three months spent in the Alaskan wilderness, with four teams of three outdoorsman each completing a series of 13 challenges in which they must complete a dangerous backcountry trek within 60 hours, armed with nothing but some cursory outdoors gear and a map. But to McCleskey, it wasn’t crazy at all. “There’s very few of us that get absolutely awesome experiences that they can go do, and then the second part of that is having the guts to say yes to those experiences,” he said. “It’s one thing to be given one. It’s another thing not to take it.”
SURVIVING LOSS In the years leading up to the Alaska trip, McCleskey had been haunted by one of those unexploited opportunities. Four years in a row, his paddling buddy Jeff West had asked him to come along to run the Stikine River in Canada. Each time, he’d say no — it was just a “really scary, dangerous situation,” that river. McCleskey ran into West shortly before he took his last trek to the Stikine. He never made it back from that trip.
Watch the show Despite having been on “Ultimate Survival Alaska,” McCleskey says he’s just as much a fan as anyone else seeing it for the first time. While he was out there, he knew quite well what his team went through but never got a chance to find out what adventures the others encountered on their treks. “A lot of times I’m like, ‘We had it so rough,’ and then I watch it and I’m like, ‘They had it real bad,’” McCleskey said. “Ultimate Survival Alaska” airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. Eastern time on the National Geographic Channel through the season finale March 22. www.channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/ultimate-survival-alaska
“It really takes that moment of being right on the edge to find a moment of serenity in the whole world.” — Scott McCleskey
“That knocked me down for year, a year or two,” McCleskey said. It took some time to summon the will to paddle again. “I was driving out toward the Grand Canyon last year and [thought], ‘I can’t explain what I want to do but I know there’s some epic adventure that I want to do, that I got to do. I don’t know what it is, but I know other people don’t want to do whatever that epic adventure is I want to do.” It wasn’t long after he got back that the phone rang with National Geographic on the other end. In Alaska, McCleskey quickly discovered he wasn’t alone in having lost a comrade in adventure, or in having spent months laid up
McCleskey holds a shotgun while looking at bears across the river.
on the couch, recovering from an attempt gone wrong. “I’d say that’s one thing all of us held in common,” McCleskey said of the show’s contestants. “We’d lost a friend doing what we do.” But it was no sad group of grief-ridden exadventurers that greeted him in Alaska. These were people who had moved on from loss to resume lives filled with ski jumps off of 50foot cliffs, record runs of Class V rapids and weeks spent battling backcountry elements. A good thing, because the competition left no room for fear. The contestants were dropped out of helicopters and floatplanes, abandoned in the middle of nowhere, left with no buffer between themselves and the beautiful but sometimes destructive forces of nature. “It was an experience of a lifetime of selftest,” McCleskey said. For starters, the maps were based on 60year-old data. Since 1950, glaciers have receded, exposing unmapped terrain underneath, and the magnetic declination — the difference between magnetic north and true north — has shifted to something wildly different from that noted on the maps. Then, of course, there was just the fact that the wilderness of Alaska was new and unfamiliar territory for a Southerner like McCleskey. A north Georgia native and longtime resident of Western North Carolina, he wasn’t used to the way the summer sun rose at 4 a.m. and stayed up till midnight, and he didn’t have much experience climbing glaciers and anticipating avalanches. “So far of what’s been on TV, the first two expeditions were exceptionally hard on me because my skill level in the snow was barely strong enough to survive,” he said. One of the most heart-stopping moments, McCleskey said, was a scene that “barely glanced” on TV but could have been the end — an avalanche. He and his teammates, both much more experienced in snowy backcountry than he, were roped together for safety, McCleskey fully reliant on them to walk him through the escape, they fully reliant on him not to fall and drag them down into the icy chaos. It’s definitely not a show that’s fabricated or scripted for the cameras, McCleskey said. The life-or-death situations shown on TV most definitely happened, but a lot else happened, too, sometimes in places so remote the camera crews couldn’t even make it in. National Geographic has asked its contestants not to talk about those moments when cameras were absent and the story is dependent on who says what. Suffice it to say, McCleskey reflected, “what didn’t happen really still emotionally sits with me.” But would he do it again? The answer came quickly: “Absolutely.”
SERENITY THROUGH ADRENALINE McCleskey is careful to say that he doesn’t have a death wish — he’s got a home and a wife with whom he
NPS/Bielenberg photo
outdoors
National park volunteer Ed Langston talks to visitors at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Smokies visitation tops 10 million For the first time in more than a decade, Great Smoky Mountains National Park saw more than 10 million visitors during 2014. Last year, 10.1 million visitors came to the Smokies — an 8-percent increase over the previous year. Visitation had been slightly down in 2013, due in part to the federal government shut down that closed the park. But last year was still 4 percent more than 2012, spurred by strong July and August visitation as well as the highest October visitation in 27 years. “We are honored to welcome so many people to the Smokies to enjoy America’s
Smoky Mountain News
he learned an important lesson about survival: It was only when he traded panic for relaxation and focus on the task at hand that escape was possible. “Whenever you’re really facing a lifethreatening situation and looking at yourself from the outside point of view and thinking clearly, it’s a really epic experience to have,” he said. So says the guy who’s paddled every mile of the Tuck, hiked pretty near every piece of trail in Western North Carolina and tried out for the Olympics time after time. In Alaska — that wide, clear sky, those tall, glacier-ridden mountains, the days that never end — he got to take all that to a whole new level, learning skills he didn’t even know he was missing. “To have a whole world open up for me was just really neat,” he said. “I was like a kid in a candy store.” McCleskey and teammate Kasha Rigby brace against each He’s glad to be home in other to cross a river. WNC, where it’s possible to snowboard, mountain bike that moment of being right on the edge to and kayak all in the same day. He’ll keep find a moment of serenity in the whole doing all that, and he’ll also probably conworld.” tinue to push the envelope of adventure. He remembers in particular the time he “You never can explain that,” he said of was in his boat on the Green River (a very the bug for self-test. “As a young man you’re technical Class V river south of Asheville), fearless, and you don’t look at the danger. running a high rapid, and capsized. As an older man, you try to make all the McCleskey was sucked around and around logical decisions and hope it doesn’t hapa hole in the water, unable to escape until pen to you.”
January 21-27, 2015
plans to have many more adventures — but there’s something about those moments when death is possible, when the situation facing you is the only real thing in the world, that brings everything else into focus. “Everybody that I’m around is just super high-energy, and everything seems chaotic until you’re at that point of fight or flight and everything just finally slows down and becomes peaceful,” he said. “It really takes
most visited national park,” said Acting Superintendent Clay Jordan. Overall, visitation was up by more than 400,000 from 2012 to 2014, but a huge portion is due to a traffic increase on the Foothills Parkway West, a through road on the Tennessee side of the park that more than doubled its count from 194,379 in 2012 to 507,842 in 2014. Meanwhile, Cataloochee and Fontana Lake entrances posted a decrease from 2012. Oconaluftee also saw slightly decreased visitation, welcoming 1.91 million visitors in 2014 compared to 2.06 million in 2012.
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outdoors
Beef up your beef quality
Retiring Soon?
Beef producers will have a chance to learn about how quality beef production and economic gains can go hand-in-hand with a Beef Quality Assurance training at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 27, at the Jackson County Extension Center in Sylva. The beef quality program was created in 1987 to help beef producers raise, feed and harvest high-quality beef with a focus on practices that farmers can implement to up their beef quality while earning greater profits from healthy cattle. Robert Hawk, 828.586.4009 or robert_hawk@ncsu.edu.
Retirement Retirement Income Planning Income Planning 401K Rollovers 401K Rollovers Annuities Annuities Understanding Understanding Social Security Social Security Understanding Understanding company benefits benefits” company benefits”
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Daredevils will congregate along Lake Junaluska on Saturday, Jan. 31, to take the chilly plunge into the lake, all in support of youth environmental education. Plungers can also opt to make a mad dash into the lake from the beach in lieu of a deep-water jump off the dock. Costumes are encouraged — as are spectators to witness the third annual Polar Plunge. Hosted by Haywood Waterways Association and Lake Junaluska Assembly, the event raises money for Kids in the Creek, a hands-on learning experience for all middle-schoolers in Haywood County to get up close and personal with the Pigeon River. The program has reached over 11,000 students since its inception. Donated photo Registration begins at 11 a.m. at the Lake Junaluska beach near Waynesville and festivities start at 11:30 a.m. $25 or free by raising sponsorships, with 100 percent of proceeds going toward Haywood Waterways’ youth education programs. www.crowdrise.com/3rdpolarplunge or mail in the registration form at www.haywoodwaterways.org/pp.html. Walk-ups welcome.
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Smoky Mountain News
In this issue:
Author Denton Loving on one of life’s greatest questions The Chattanooga Zoo works to preserve hellbenders Historical and harrowing tales of snowstorm survival Carroll Best’s banjo legacy PLUS ADVENTURE, CUISINE, READING, MUSIC, ARTS & MORE
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Couple conserves private tract in Jackson
A new conservation agreement finalized by the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee will protect 104 acres in Cullowhee from development, preserving it for wildlife, small-scale agriculture and timber management. The land, owned by Joan Byrd and George Rector, is the second tract that they’ve voluntarily placed restrictions on, preventing it from ever being developed. “We both wanted in some way to help preserve the historical, rural character of Jackson County,” the couple said. “This is
one of the fastest-growing counties in the region, and as the population increases, it is essential to protect the resources that people will demand in the future: farmland, clean water and healthy forests.” The tract borders the Nantahala National Forest for 1,500 feet on the west side. To the east, it borders another conserved tract for 1,200 feet, which Rector and Byrd also own. It is visible from the Blue Ridge Parkway and includes 1.8 miles of forested streams. It’s home to bear, deer, turkey and forest songbirds. 276-23
The conservation easement diminishes their property value, but is a benefit to the region and environment, said John Culclasure, land protection manager for LTLT. “We are grateful to have had the opportunity to protect what we have, but when it comes to conservation there is always so much more to be done, and we only wish we could contribute more,” the couple said. The Conservation Trust of North Carolina helped fund the technical costs of the transaction.
A new canoe portage around the Lake Emory dam is expected to open in Franklin sometime in late spring. The portage is good news to boaters floating the Little Tennessee, who will have an easier time scooting around the dam, but it will also provide improved public access to the water’s edge. It will feature a put-in and take-out for kayaks and canoes, as well as a 540-foot trail down to the water from the parking lot. Construction is about 97 percent complete, but restoration work at the Franklin Powerhouse and Dam is also underway, meaning that the area must remain closed to the public for a while. The improved Lake Emory Access Area on Lakeside Drive also opened in September. The amenities were put in by Duke Energy as a condition of getting its federal hydropower permit renewed for the dam. Duke had to provide a portfolio of recreation improvements, including river and lake access areas, across the region as part of the permit renewal terms for its dams. Separately, Macon County is currently seeking funding for a grant from Duke Energy to put in another access point on Cartoogechaye Creek at the Parker Meadows Recreational Complex. The proposal has not yet met final approval.
JAN. 23 | FRI. 7:30PM | COULTER COULTER | FREE
Music Music:: Guest, Sheila Jordan Jazz VVocal ocal Recital
JAN. 27 | TUE. 7:30PM | COULTER COULTER | FREE
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January 21-27, 2015
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This cove will now be protected from future development thanks to a conservation easement donated by Cullowhee residents Joan Byrd and George Rector. Donated photo
Access on Lake Emory gets better
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Smoky Mountain News January 21-27, 2015
outdoors
Hike the Dirty Dozen Wilderness Hike Challenge. To complete the challenge, hike at least
Linville Gorge. Tim Holmquist photo
Venus flytrap poachers caught Four men, ages 22 to 49, were arrested with 970 Venus flytraps in their possession earlier this month at the Holly Shelter Game Land in Pender County, earning the distinction of being the first to be charged with a felony for the crime. It had been a misdemeanor until a law change in December. The carnivorous plants are rare in the wild, growing in swamps and bogs in southeastern North Carolina. Only about 35,000 remain, according to an estimate from the N.C. Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. If convicted, the men face up to 29 months in prison and fines. Efforts are being made to replant the Venus flytraps close to where they were taken.
The A.T. just got a little longer The Appalachian Trail has a new official length. It increased by 3.9 miles from last year to 2,189.2 miles due to trail remeasurements and relocations. Mileage and shelter information is updated annually from trail volunteers. On the Tennessee-North Carolina line, 1.5 miles were added, and 0.2 miles were added on the North Carolina-Georgia line. The bulk of the mileage increase came from southwest Virginia, where remeasurement added two miles. The final increases came from central Virginia and the New York-New Jersey line, which each saw increases of 0.1 mile. The Appalachian Trail Data Book and the Appalachian Trail Thru-Hikers’ Companion document all mileage changes.
EARWOOD, E ARW WOOD, MOORE WO MOOR RE CA RPENTER GUY Y CARPENTER A T
Aggie Guy
David Moore
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Smoky Mountain News
A T T O R N E Y S
January 21-27, 2015
We’ve W e e’ve e expande ex expanded ourr services. se services... and our name name.
outdoors
Looking for a new way to explore the wilderness? Check out the Dirty Dozen
10 miles in each of the 12 designated wilderness areas in the southeastern United States by this September. The Dirty Dozen, launched last September, is part of the ongoing celebration of the 50th anniversary of The Wilderness Act, which was passed in 1964 and has preserved pristine lands across the country. The Dirty Dozen Challenge is being orchestrated by The Wilderness Society’s Southern Appalachian Office and Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine — so far, more than 400 hikers have signed up. “We’ve been amazed by the overwhelming interest in the challenge thus far,” said Brent Martin, regional director for The Wilderness Society based in Sylva. “The photos and hike descriptions we have received from hikers are inspiring and truly speak to the beauty and unique qualities of the designated wilderness areas within our region.” “To complete the challenge — and earn prizes — hikers must finish the hikes and then submit information about each hike along with a photo.” www.southeastwilderness50.org/dirtydozen
Nathan Earwood
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Kim Carpenter
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WNC Calendar
Smoky Mountain News
COMMUNITY EVENTS & ANNOUNCEMENTS • Gem Capital Gun Show will be Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 24-25, at Haywood Fairgrounds in Waynesville. Show is from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m.-4 p.m. on Sunday. $8 admission. gemcapitolshows.com or 400.1704. • Haywood Community College will hold a 50th Anniversary Community and Student Kickoff event from 2-6 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 29, in the campus library. Historical video and display, free decals, refreshments and appearance by Clyde the Bobcat, HCC’s mascot. Sign up for a voucher to the Sunrise Café good for credit toward a food purchase. Students can register for a drawing of a Windows Tablet with keyfolio keyboard and wireless mouse. 627.4679. • Ladies of WOW host their anniversary and open door party at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 29, at organization’s headquarters at the Herren House B&B in downtown Waynesville. Free. Women in Haywood and surrounding counties are invited. Heavy hors d’oeuvres, wine and non-alcoholic beverages served. Info: www.womenofwaynesville.com or www.facebook.com/womenofwaynesville. Call Nikki White for reservations: 545.6879. • Grady’s Groundhog Day will be held from 10:30 a.m.noon on Monday, Feb. 2, at Chimney Rock Park. Free with park admission.
MLK EVENTS • Western Carolina alumnus and attorney Brandon A. Robinson will be keynote speaker for WCU’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 21, in the Grandroom of the A.K. Hinds University Center in Cullowhee. Sign up: jacooper@wcu.edu. ftbrown@wcu.edu or 227.2276. • As part of its Martin Luther King Jr. celebration, themed “We As One,” Western Carolina University will students performing music and showcasing art at 6 p.m., Jan. 22, in club Illusions in University Center. ftbrown@wcu.edu or 227.2276. • A Marin Luther King service, organized by Jones Temple AME Zion Church and Grace Church in the Mountains (Episcopal) will be held at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 25, at Jones Temple in Waynesville. A covered-dish luncheon will be held at 1:30 p.m. in the Jones Temple Dining Hall.
BUSINESS & EDUCATION • Free computer class covering the free photo-editing computer software GIMP will be offered at 5:45 p.m. on Jan. 21 at the Jackson County Public Library. 90 minutes. Taught by retired WCU professor Roger Bacon. Limited to first 16 who register. 586.2016. Co-sponsored by Friends of the Jackson County Public Library. • A small business owners roundtable, an opportunity to network and learn, will be held from 8:30-10 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 21, at the Haywood Community College’s Library Conference Room. sbc.haywood.edu or 627.4512. • Computer security tips will be offered at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 22, at Macon County Public Library. Tips are by Dave Stewart, computer consultant and owner of local computer services store Wired. 524.3600. • Haywood Community College will offer Student Success seminars from 1-2 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday, Jan. 26-27, in Building 300, Room 335A. Both are free and open to the public. The topic of Monday’s seminar is Study Skills Tips. Tuesday’s seminar topic is Time Management Tips. Information at 627.4646 or drowland@haywood.edu.
Visit www.smokymountainnews.com and click on Calendar for: ■ Complete listings of local music scene ■ Regional festivals ■ Art gallery events and openings ■ Complete listings of recreational offerings at regional health and fitness centers ■ Civic and social club gatherings
nity building in Franklin. Cost is on a donation basis. Proceeds benefit community projects and community building improvements. 369.2254. • Ice Bowl Disc Golf Tournament and Chili Cookout starts at 9 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 25, at the Fontana Village Resort. $20 entry fee plus five canned good items. Proceeds benefit Hope for Families and the Fontana Foundation.
• Financial/Investments will be the topic of a Men’s Night Out program at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 27 in the third floor video conference room at Angel Medical Center in Franklin. 349.6887 or 349.2426.
• A Polar Ice Plunge to benefit Kids in the Creek and youth education will take place on Jan. 31 at Lake Junaluska. Registration starts at 11 a.m. at the Lake Junaluska beach; festivities start at 11:30 am. Cost: $25 or free by raising sponsorships; Proceeds benefit Haywood Waterways’ youth education programs. 476.4667. Donate or register at www.crowdrise.com/3rdpolarplunge.
• A free financial aid workshop will be held from 5:306:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 27, with Laura Misner of the College Foundation of North Carolina. Limited number of tablets will be provided by the library for the workshop. Registration required: 648.2924.
• ReMax Realty is hosting a “Re-Gift” Sale held by Feline Urgent Rescue (FUR) of WNC from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 31 in Waynesville. To donate, contact Maggie Hickle at 843.422.2704. Info on FUR: www.furofwnc.org.
• A forum for everyone interested in helping shape Western Carolina University’s next Quality Enhancement Plan – centered around a single them to improve the institution and enhance student learning – will be held from 10 a.m.-noon on Thursday, Jan. 29, in the theater of the A.K. Hinds University Center in Cullowhee. Information: strategicplan.wcu.edu, qep.wcu.edu or 227.3825.
• Affordable Care Act help is available from 3-6 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 21 and Jan. 28 at the Jackson County Public Library. 586.2016.
• A Quickbooks Basics for the Business Owner (threepart series) will be offered from 6-9 p.m. on Thursdays from Jan. 29-Feb. 12 at Haywood Community College. Learn the tools to understand the financial health of your small business. sbc.haywood.edu or 627.4512. • “The Importance of writing: How it builds your platform and supports your brand” will be the topic of a luncheon presentation for the Asheville Jewish Business Forum (AJBF) from noon-1:30 p.m. on Feb. 2 at Yao’s Chinese/Sushi Buffet in Asheville. Lunch (approximately $10) is at your own expense. Author, educator and visual artist Michelle Baker will be the presenter. For info or to register, contact AJBF president Brad Morris at 561.289.4451. • A business owner’s guide to social media: starting from scratch to online success, will be offered through Haywood Community College from 6-9 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 3, in the auditorium at HCC’s Regional High Technology Center, 3000 Building. Computer workstation provided for each business owner; bring tablet/iPad if you have one. sbc.haywood.edu or 627.4512. • Free GED test-preparation classes offered by Southwestern Community College, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and 5:30-8:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays, SCC Swain Center, Room 101. Instruction in other college and career readiness activities including computer skills, resume writing, filling out job applications, job searches, college entrance exam prep, college applications, financial aid and more. 366.2000 or stop by the Swain Center. • Guidance on looking for a job or gaining basic job skills will be available from 1-4 p.m. each Wednesday at the Macon County Public Library. One-on-one help from a Southwestern Community College employability instructor. 524.3600. • Tech-savvy questions will be answered from 10 a.m.8 p.m. every Tuesday in the month of January at the Jackson County Library. 586.2016.
FUNDRAISERS AND BENEFITS • A Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser will be held from 810 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 24, at the Holly Springs commu-
HEALTH MATTERS • Affordable Care Act representatives will be available from 9 a.m. to noon on Jan. 21 at Joey’s Pancake House in Maggie Valley. • Free screening of the recovery film “The Anonymous People,” which promotes the discussion of addiction and mental health issues, will be held at 1 p.m. on Jan. 22 at HART Theatre in Waynesville. For information, contact Richie Tannerhill with Smoky Mountain LME/MCO at 586.5501, ext. 1157, or Richie.tannerhill@smokymountaincenter.com. • Be Well Western Carolina, a resource for holistic wellness, is hosting a “CELEBRATE the NEW YOU” open house event at 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 22 in Waynesville’s Forga Plaza Loop. RSVP to Michelle Sanderbeck at 734.7702 or michelle@bewellwc.com. • The Red Cross will hold a blood drive from 1:30-6:30 p.m. on Jan. 22 at Hazelwood Elementary School in Waynesville. Redcrossblood.org or 800.733.2767. • The Red Cross will hold a blood drive from 9 a.m.-6 p.m. on Jan. 26 at Longs Chapel Church in Waynesville. Redcrossblood.org or 800.733.2767. • The Red Cross will hold a blood drive from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. on Jan. 26 at Swain County Hospital in Bryson City. Redcrossblood.org or 800.733.2767. • The Macon County Board of Health will hold a meeting at 6:15 p.m. on Jan. 27 at the Macon County Human Services Building in Franklin. The agenda will include discussion of the current flu outbreak, other emerging communicable diseases, changes in onsite wastewater permitting and a short presentation on the 2014 State of the County Health Report. • Healthy Eating will be the topic for the Jan. 27 Ladies Night Out Program in the cafeteria at Angel Medical Center. Bring a hat, scarf or gloves for donating to Cold For A Cause, and receive an extra door prize ticket. Program will be presented at 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Guest speaker is: Jeffrey Whitridge, RD, CSO, LDN. • The Red Cross will hold a blood drive from 10 a.m.2:30 p.m. on Jan. 27 in the Burrell Building at Southwestern Community College in Sylva. Redcrossblood.org or 800.733.2767. • The Red Cross will hold a blood drive from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. on Jan. 27 at Macon County Public Library in Franklin. Redcrossblood.org or 800.733.2767.
All phone numbers area code 828 unless otherwise noted. • “Eat Smart, Move More, Weigh Less,” a weight-management program, will be offered starting on Jan. 27 at the Haywood Extension Center in Waynesville. Information session is Jan. 20. To learn more, contact Julie Sawyer, family and consumer science extension agent with Haywood Cooperative Extension, at 456.3575 or julie_sawyer@ncsu.edu. More info at: www.EatSmartMoveMoreNC.com. • The Red Cross will hold a blood drive from noon-5:30 p.m. on Jan. 28 at Western Carolina University’s Hinds Center in Cullowhee. Redcrossblood.org or 800.733.2767. • The Red Cross will hold a blood drive from noon-5:30 p.m. on Jan. 29 at Western Carolina University’s Hinds Center in Cullowhee. Redcrossblood.org or 800.733.2767. • The Red Cross will hold a blood drive from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. on Jan. 30 at Harrah’s Casino Hotel in Cherokee. Redcrossblood.org or 800.733.2767. • Affordable Care Act representatives will be available from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Thursdays until Feb. 12 at Maggie Valley Town Hall. · Harris Regional Hospital and Swain County Hospital offering free assistance to those wishing to sign up for National Health Insurance Marketplace coverage anytime by calling at 586.7355 or 888.982.9144 www.healthcare.gov.
RECREATION AND FITNESS • A course in aqua fitness will be offered on Mondays and Thursdays from Jan. 20-April 30 at Western Carolina University’s Reid Gymnasium pool in Cullowhee. Classes meet from 5:30-6:15 p.m. Cost: $65. 227.7397 or conferences.wcu.edu. • Open play volleyball and practice will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday in January and February at Waynesville Recreation Center. Free for members; $6 per non-members. Open to ages 18 and older. 456.2030 or dhummel@waynesvillenc.gov. • Registration for a women’s volleyball league has begun at the Recreation Center in Cullowhee. Games are Tuesday nights starting in March. $175 per team. 293.3053. • Friday Night Skiing at Cataloochee every Friday through Feb. 27. Registration closes at 4 p.m. the Friday before the trip at Jackson County Recreation Center in Cullowhee. Lift ticket only: $25, lift ticket and ski or snowboard rental: $35; lessons are available for $10 (age 6). 293.3053.
SENIOR ACTIVITIES • A creative living class on “Sugar: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” will be held at 1 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 2, at the Senior Resource Center in Waynesville. Free. Registration required. 356.2800. • A creative living photography show and reception will be held from 2-4 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 2, at the Senior Resource Center in Waynesville. Free. Registration required. 356.2800. • Cornhole for seniors will be held from 1-2:30 p.m. on the third and fourth Wednesdays of each month at the Haywood County Senior Resource Center. 452.6789. • A fitness class designed specifically for seniors will meet from 11 a.m.-noon on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at the Waynesville Recreation Center. 456.2030 or tplowman@waynesvillenc.gov.
KIDS & FAMILIES
• Celebrations for Winnie the Pooh’s 90th birthday will be held at 10 a.m. (ages 0-5) and 3:30 p.m. (K-2nd grade) on Tuesday, Jan. 20, at the Macon County Public Library in Franklin. A third celebration will be held at 10 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 22 for ages 0-5. Stories, crafts, light refreshments. 524.3600. • A trip to the 25th annual Wilderness Wildlife Week to Pigeon Forge is being offered by the Waynesville Parks and Recreation Department for Jan. 24-25. Open to all ages; parents must accompany children under 17. $65 includes single room or $35 per person for a double-room. Price also includes Sunday breakfast and travel. Participant responsible for other meals. Trip leaves at 8:30 a.m. on Jan. 24 and returns by 8 p.m. on Jan. 25. 456.2030 or tpetrea@waynesvillenc.gov. • Paws 4 Reading, a family story time, will be held from 3:30-5:30 p.m. every Tuesday at Hudson Library in Highlands. Children (grades K-6) practice early reading skills by reading to a canine companion. Info: www.fontanalib.org, www.readingpaws.org or 526.3031. • The “Come Paint with Charles Kidz Program” will be at 4 p.m. Jan. 22 and 29 at the Charles Heath Gallery in Bryson City. $18 per child. Materials and snacks included. 538.2054.
• “Planes: Fire & Rescue” will be shown Saturdays in the month of January at noon and 2 p.m. at The Strand in Waynesville. Free. www.38main.com or 283.0079. • “The Boxtrolls” will be shown at 7 p.m. Jan. 23, 5 and 7 p.m. Jan. 24 p.m. and at 2 and 4 p.m. Jan. 25 at The Strand in Waynesville. Free. www.38main.com or 283.0079. • “The Boxtrolls” will be screened at 2 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 23-24 at the Mad Batter Food & Film in Sylva. Free. www.madbatterfoodandfilm.com. • “The Boxtrolls” will be shown at 7 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday, Jan. 27-28; Friday, Jan. 30; and at 2 p.m., 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 31, at The Strand in Waynesville. Runtime: 1:40. Rated: PG. • RIO II will be shown as part of the kids winter movie series at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Jan. 31 at the Colonial Theater in downtown Canton. Kids winter movie series at the Colonial Theater in downtown Canton. $3 per person. 648.2363 or www.cantonnc.com. • Free family movies are shown at 3:30 p.m. each Tuesday at Marianna Black Library in Bryson City. Disney, Hallmark and other family-oriented movies. Popcorn is provided by Friends of the Library. Each attendee receives one free movie check-out. 488.3030. • Family movie time, 4 p.m. Mondays at Jackson County Public Library. Call for title of movie: 586.2016. • Family movie time Thursdays, 3:45 p.m. at Albert Carlton, Cashiers Community Library. Free with popcorn. Call for title: 743.0215.
• SafeKids USA Blue Dragon Tae Kwon Do School offers defense training with after-school classes Monday through Friday and Saturday mornings. 627.3949 or www.bluedragontkd.net. • Homeschool PE classes have started at the Recreation Center in Cullowhee. Thursdays, for ages 5-9 and 10-14. $20. 293.3053. • Teen time 3:30-4:30 p.m. Thursdays at Waynesville Library. A program for teens and tweens held each week. Each week is different, snacks provided. 3562511 • Homework Help, 3 to 5 p.m. Mondays for students in grades 2 through 6, Canton Branch Library. Former schoolteacher turned Youth Services Librarian Katy Punch offers homework help on a first-come, firstserved basis. Katy, 648.2924. • Teen Time, first, third, and fourth Tuesdays at 4 p.m. for ages 12 and up. Spend time with other teens talking about and sharing with each other. Jackson County Public Library. 586.2016. • A Teen Writing Group will meet at 6 p.m. on the fourth Thursday of each month at Jackson County Library, ages 12 and up. 586.2016
• Projects and activities after school Fridays, 3:30 p.m. for school age kids at Jackson County Public Library. Get your hands dirty with science experiments, discovering animals and making easy recipes. 586.2016. • Adventure Club on Tuesdays 3:30 p.m. - 4:15 p.m. for grades K-2 at the Macon County Public Library. 524.3600. • Book Club on Wednesdays 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. Books and hands-on activities for grades 3-6. Macon County Library. 526.3600. • Children’s craft time, 4th Wednesday, 3:45 p.m. at Cashiers Community Library. 743.0215
• Mountain Community Chorus will hold auditions for its fall season at 6 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 2, with rehearsal from 7-8 p.m. at Clegg Recital Hall at Young Harris College in Young Harris, Ga. Tenors in great demand. For info, visit www. www.mountaincommunitychorus.org or call Lucy Cole Gratton at 494.2914. • Imago Theatre’s “FROGZ,” a family-friendly show combining Cirque du Soleil-style acrobatics with masks, mime and music, will be presented by Western Carolina University at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 18 at the Bardo Center in Cullowhee. Tickets ($5 students; $10 all others) on sale now. bardoartscenter.wcu.edu or 227.2479. Information: ace.wcu.edu or faortizpineda@wcu.edu or 227.2612.
FESTIVALS AND SPECIAL EVENTS • The “Robert Burns Dinner” will be held from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 24 in the Tartan Hall at the Franklin Presbyterian Church. Celebrating the Scottish tradition, there will be a “Calling of the Clans,” recitation of “Ode to Haggis,” the “Immortal Memory” of Burns, as well as toasts, group singing and dancing. 828.524.7472.
ON STAGE & IN CONCERT
NIGHTLIFE • Innovation Brewing (Sylva) will have Open Mic night at 8 p.m. on Jan. 21. www.innovation-brewing.com. • Frog Level Brewing (Waynesville) will have Craig Summers & Lee Kram at 6 p.m. on Jan. 22. Free. 454.5664 or www.froglevelbrewing.com.
• Kevin Lorenz will play at 7 p.m. on Jan. 23 at Classic Wine Seller in Waynesville. Classicwineseller.com or 452.6000. • Mad Batter Food & Film (Sylva) will have Painted Giants and The Breedlove Brothers at 9 p.m. on Jan. 23. Cost of show is $2. www.madbatterfoodandfilm.com. • BearWaters Brewing (Waynesville) will have The Get Right Band (funk/soul) at 7 p.m. on Jan. 23. www.bwbrewing.com or 246.0602. • The Neidlingers (singer-songwriter will be at City Lights Café at 7 p.m. on Jan. 23 in Sylva. 587.2233. • Frog Level Brewing (Waynesville) will have Through the Hills (Americana/folk) at 7 p.m. on Jan. 23. Free. 454.5664 or www.froglevelbrewing.com.
• Western Carolina University will present the Sheila Jordan Jazz Vocal Recital at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 23. The event will be held in the recital hall of the Coulter Building on the WCU campus. www.wcu.edu.
• No Name Sports Pub (Sylva) will have Mangus Colorado (bluegrass/Americana) on Jan. 24. All shows are free and begin at 9 p.m. 586.2750 or www.nonamesportspub.com.
• Wynonna and Friends will perform at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 24, at the Smoky Mountain Center for the Performing Arts in Franklin. Tickets start at $42. GreatMountainMusic.com or 866.273.4615.
• Mad Batter Food & Film (Sylva) will have Buttered Toast and Lyric at 9 p.m. on Jan. 24. Cost of show is $2. www.madbatterfoodandfilm.com.
• Western Carolina University will present the Alex Shlifer on violin at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 26. The event will be held in the recital hall of the Coulter Building on the WCU campus. www.wcu.edu. • Western Carolina University will present a Faculty Showcase Recital at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 27, featuring a wide variety of performances by many faculty members from WCU’s School of Music. The event will be held in the recital hall of the Coulter Building on the WCU campus. Admission is free of charge. zszabo@wcu.edu or 227.3954 • The play “Shining City” will be on stage from Jan. 30-Feb. 1 at HART Theatre in Waynesville. Friday and Saturday shows are at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday’s show is at 3 p.m. harttheatre.com or 456.6322.
• James Hammel (jazz/pop) plays on Friday, Jan. 30, 7 p.m. at the Classic Wine Seller. $10 minimum purchase. classicwineseller.com or 452.6000. • BearWaters Brewing (Waynesville) will have Max and Gross Weight at 7p.m. on Jan. 30. www.bwbrewing.com or 246.0602. • Rathskeller Coffee Haus and Pub (Franklin) will have John Phillip Brooks at 8 p.m. on Jan. 30. Free. 369.6796 or www.rathskellerfranklin.com. • Tipping Point Brewing (Waynesville) will have David Desmelik (singer-songwriter) on Jan. 30. All shows are free and begin at 9 p.m. • Rathskeller Coffee Haus and Pub (Franklin) will have Nick Prestia at 8 p.m. on Jan. 31. Free. 369.6796 or www.rathskellerfranklin.com. • Joe Cruz plays at 7 p.m. on Jan. 31 at the Classic Wine Seller. classicwineseller.com or 452.6000. • Joseph Catanesa an Americana musician form Athens, Ga will be at City Lights Café at 7 p.m. on Jan. 31 in Sylva. 587.2233.
BOOKS & AUTHORS
• Innovation Brewing (Sylva) will have Jazz night at 8 p.m. on Jan. 22. www.innovation-brewing.com.
A&E
• No Name Sports Pub (Sylva) will have Porch 40 (funk/rock) on Jan. 29. All shows are free and begin at 9 p.m. 586.2750 or www.nonamesportspub.com.
• Innovation Brewing (Sylva) will have The Liz Nance Trio at 8 p.m. on Jan. 24. www.innovationbrewing.com. • Joe Cruz plays at 7 p.m. on Jan. 24 at Classic Wine Seller in Waynesville. Classicwineseller.com or 452.6000. • Rathskeller Coffee Haus and Pub (Franklin) will have Gary Carter at 8 p.m. on Jan. 24. Free. 369.6796 or www.rathskellerfranklin.com. • Innovation Brewing (Sylva) will have Open Mic night at 8 p.m. on Jan. 28. www.innovation-brewing.com. • Innovation Brewing (Sylva) will have Jazz night at 8 p.m. on Jan. 29. www.innovation-brewing.com. • Frog Level Brewing (Waynesville) will have Craig Summers & Lee Kram at 6 p.m. on Jan. 29. Free.
• Adult Writing Group will meet at 6 p.m. on Jan. 22 at the Jackson County Library. Class consists of exercises, group readings and writing mechanics. 586.2016. • Author Chris Cox will read from and sign his essay collection “The Way We Say Goodbye” at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 23, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. Cox is a columnist for The Smoky Mountain News, and he teaches English at Southwestern Community College. Reserve a copy: 586.9499.
CLASSES AND PROGRAMS • Mountain Cooking Club’s “All About Braising” will be held from 10:30 a.m.-1 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 7 at Fines Creek Community Kitchen. $60 fee, plus $1 membership in Mountain Cooking Club. Club is operated by chef Ricardo Fernandez, former co-owner/chef de cuisine of Lomo Grill. 246.7465, chefricardos@gmail.com or www.chefricardoskitchen.com. • Six weeks of unusual art projects for adults and children (age 8 and up) Mondays 6:30-8:30 p.m. starting Jan. 26 at the John W. Bardo Fine and Performing Arts Center in Cullowhee. Conferences.wcu.edu or 227.7397. $99/person or $40/student. • A figure drawing class with Knight Martorell will be offered on Wednesdays in Jan. at The Bascom in Highlands. aalig@thebascom.org or 787.2865.
ART SHOWINGS AND GALLERIES • A photography exhibit entitled “Seeing with New Eyes” by Sharon Mammoser will be on display from Jan. 14-April 19 at The North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville. Parking fee. www.ncarboretum.org or sharenaturemore@gmail.com. •An exhibition of paintings by Anna Jensen of Asheville and Karen Ann Myers of Charleston, S.C., opens with a panel discussion featuring the artists and reception event from 5-7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 22, at Western Carolina University’s Fine Art Museum in Cullowhee. The exhibition is entitled “Tracking Time” and will be on display through March 27. The museum is open from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday through Friday, with extended hours until 7 p.m. on Thursday. www.fineartmuseum.wcu.edu or 227.3591.
Smoky Mountain News
• Games for kids on the fourth Wednesday of the month at 4:30 p.m. at the Jackson County Public Library. Play a variety of games including AWE After School Edge Computers, board games and other fun activities. 586.2016.
• Café String Quartet will perform at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 31, at Smoky Mountain Center for the Performing Arts in Franklin. Tickets: $14. Classical, pop, jazz, broadway and more as the quartet blends performance and storytelling in a salute to love songs. 866.273.4615 or www.GreatMountainMusic.com.
454.5664 or www.froglevelbrewing.com.
January 21-27, 2015
Ongoing kids activities and clubs
• Elvis impersonator Travis Ledoyt will perform the music and moves of Elvis Presley (circa 1954-1959) as part of the Galaxy of Stars Series at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 31 at WCU’s Bardo Center in Cullowhee. Single-show tickets are $21/adults; $16/WCU faculty and staff; $7 students and children. 227.2479 or bardoartscenter.wcu.edu.
wnc calendar
• Six weeks of unusual art projects for adults and children (age 8 and up) from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Mondays starting Jan. 26 at the John W. Bardo Fine and Performing Arts Center in Cullowhee. Conferences.wcu.edu or 227.7397. $99/person or $40/student.
Kids movies
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wnc calendar
FILM & SCREEN • “Lucy” will be screened on Jan. 22 at the Mad Batter Food & Film in Sylva. Screenings are free and begin at 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. www.madbatterfoodandfilm.com. • “The Big Lebowski” will be screened on Jan. 29 at the Mad Batter Food & Film in Sylva. Screenings are free and begin at 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. www.madbatterfoodandfilm.com. • “The Matrix” will be screened on Jan. 30 at the Mad Batter Food & Film in Sylva. Screenings are free and begin at 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. www.madbatterfoodandfilm.com. • “The Book of Life” will be screened on Jan. 31 at the Mad Batter Food & Film in Sylva. Screenings are free and begin at 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted. www.madbatterfoodandfilm.com. • “Into The Woods” will be screened Jan. 23-29 at the Highlands Playhouse. Showtimes are at 2, 5 and 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and also 2 and 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $9. For dates and more information, call 828.526.2695. www.highlandsplayhouse.org.
MUSIC JAMS AND GROUPS • Old-time music jam from 1-3 p.m. the first and third Saturday of the month at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on U.S. 441 outside Cherokee. 497.1904. • A community music jam will be held from 6-7:30 p.m. on the first and third Thursday of each month at the Marianna Black Library in Downtown Bryson City. Anyone with a guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, dulcimer – anything unplugged – is invited to join. Singers and listeners are also welcome.
January 21-27, 2015
• Cruso Circle Play & Jam, 7 p.m. every Tuesday, Cruso Community Center and Friendship Club in Cruso. www.facebook.com/crusocircleplayjam. • Signature Brew Coffee Company holds Sylva Open Jam nights on the second and fourth Thursday of the month. Shop provides the instruments, you provide the talent. Chris Coopers’ Fusion band hosts. • An open jam session is held from 6:30 to 9 p.m. each Thursday at Heinzelmannchen Brewery in Sylva. All skill levels and instruments welcome. 631.4466 or www.yourgnometownbrewery.com • Golden Aires singing group meets at 10:30 a.m. every Thursday at the Golden Age Senior Center in Sylva. Secular and religious music. Performances given at area nursing homes. Singers need not be seniors to join. goldenagecenter1@verizon.net.
Smoky Mountain News
• Karaoke is held at 7 p.m. every other Friday at the American Legion Post 47 in Waynesville. Open to all members and their guests. 456.8691.
• Men Macon Music, canella singing, meets at 5:30 p.m. every Monday in the Chapel of First Presbyterian Church, 26 Church St., Franklin. Visitors welcome. 524.9692. • Mountain Dulcimer Players Club meets from 2 to 4 p.m. on the first and third Sundays of each month at the Bryson City United Methodist Church. Knowledge of music not required, tablature method used. 488.6697. • Pick and Play Dulcimer Group of Sylva meets at 1:30 p.m. on the first, third and fifth Saturday of every month in the fellowship hall of St. John’s Episcopal Church. 293.0074. • The Franklin Early Music Group meets every Monday at 9 a.m. at the First Presbyterian Church. 369.5192. • The Nikwasi Dulcimer Players meet every Thursday afternoon from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. at First United Methodist Church in Franklin. All are welcome. 524.1040 or 524.2294.
Outdoors • An NOLS Wilderness First Aid Class will be taught by instructors from Landmark Learning from Feb. 28March 1. Minimum enrollment must be met by Jan. 30. $175 per person. Must be 16; participants under 18 must have a legal guardian present at registration. For info, contact Jennifer Bennett at the Recreation Center in Cullowhee at 293.3053 or jenniferbennett@jacksonnc.org. Facebook: www.facebook.com/jackonsrecreationandparks. • Military Appreciation Days will be held on Jan. 2223 at Cataloochee Ski Area in Maggie Valley. 926.0285 or cataloochee.com. • Yoga for Outdoor Fitness class will be held from 6-7 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 21, at REI Asheville. Free. 293.5924. • Fitness Monitor Basics is offered for free from 7-8 p.m. on Jan. 22 at REI Asheville. Learn about fitness technology components, their use and functionality. Register at: www.rei.com/event/49083/session/107229. 293.7404. • The Icycle Mountain Bike Event returns to Fontana Village Resort on Jan. 24. Registration starts at 8 a.m.; first race is at 11 a.m. Register at http://www.active.com/fontana-dam-nc/cycling/mountain-biking-races/icycle-2015 or 498.2211. • The North Carolina Catch program, a three-phase conservation education effort focusing on aquatic environments, will be offered through May 15. The program is offered by the Waynesville Parks and
All phone numbers area code 828 unless otherwise noted. Recreation Department. Free for members; daily admission for non-members. 456.2030 or tpetrea@waynesvillenc.gov.
SNOW SPORTS • A learn-to-ski series organized by Waynesville Parks and Recreation will be held 4-9 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays in January and February. Prices per trip for rec center members are $23 for lift ticket only; $35 for ticket and rentals; $7 for helmets and $10 for lessons. Prices for non-members are $25, $38, $7 and $10, respectively. 828.456.2030 or tpetrea@waynesvillenc.gov • Ski races for middle school and high school at Cataloochee Ski Area. Races start at 6 p.m. every Tuesday for middle school and every Wednesday for high school. Season ends Sunday, March 1 for both. $30/night or $175/season – non-pass holders; $75/season pass holder with own equipment. www.isalessite.com/cataloochee/catalog/ticket. • The Cataloochee Challenge Cup Race Series at Cataloochee Ski Area. Races are held at 7 p.m. ever Thursday through Feb. 26. Age categories are 18-20, 21-29, 30-39, 40-49 and 50-over for both men and women. $15/race only; $35/race and lift ticket (6-10 p.m.). Helmet and goggles required; available for rental. Register between 6-7:30 p.m.
FARM & GARDEN • A Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) program training will be held at 6 p.m. on Jan. 27 at the Jackson County Extension Center. Approximately 2-1/2 hours. For those who’ve not been BQA certified in the past five years. 586.4009 or Robert_hawk@ncsu.edu. • An agritourism workshop will be hosted by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, Southern Appalachian Family Farms, and the Western North Carolina Food Policy Council from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 27, at the Clay County Extension Office in Hayesville. Inclement weather date is Wednesday, Jan. 28. RSVP with Charlie Kissling at Charlie@southernappalachianfamilyfarms.com. Info at southernappalachianfamilyfarms.com and www.wncfpc.org.
• An organizational meeting to discuss the formation of a poultry club for Jackson County will be held at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 29, at the Jackson County Cooperative Extension Office. Free. 586.4009. • North Carolina Cooperative Extension in Macon County is taking applications for participation in its Master Gardener Program. To earn Master Gardner status, participants must receive 42 hours of training and must complete a volunteer component. Classes start in February. 349.2046 or macon.ces.ncsu.edu. • A training class for Haywood County’s 2015 Extension Master Gardener Volunteer program will be held from 9 a.m.-noon on Tuesdays from January through April. 456.3575. $120. Must complete class and participate in 40 hours of volunteer efforts through extension center.
HIKING CLUBS • A Carolina Mountain Club hike on Seniard Ridge Loop near Shining Rock with a 1,800-foot ascent will take place on Jan. 21. 545.6487 or mbgcmc@gmail.com. • A Carolina Mountain Club hike up Pine Mountain in Enka with a 2,400-foot ascent will take place on Jan. 25. 458.1281 or mcornn@aol.com. • A moderate day hike of 3-6 miles is scheduled for Feb. 21. Participants meet at 9 a.m. on Feb. 21 at Cullowhee Recreation Center. $5 activity fee per person; minimum of four and maximum of eight. Must be 16; participants under 18 must have a legal guardian present at registration. For info, contact Jennifer Bennett at the Recreation Center in Cullowhee at 293.3053 or jenniferbennett@jacksonnc.org. Facebook: www.facebook.com/jackonsrecreationandparks. • The Nantahala Hiking Club will take an easy 3/4mile hike with 100 ft. elevation change on Tuesday, Jan. 27. Visitors welcome, no dogs. Bring a lunch. Call leader Bill Crawford, 524.2280, for reservations. • The Nantahala Hiking Club will take a strenuous 10-mile hike with a 500-foot elevation change on Saturday, Jan. 31, on Savannah Ridge in Jackson County. Visitors welcome. No dogs. Reservations: Don O’Neal, 586.5723.
•The Appalachian Farm School, a pilot program to centralize agricultural business training in the state’s seven western counties, starts Jan. 29 and runs alternating Thursdays from 6-8:30 p.m. through April 9. $75 includes dinner during each class and all materials. Register at www.wncfpc.org/appalachian-farmschool or call 399.0297. Info at: wncfpc@gmail.com
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Puzzles can be found on page 46. These are only the answers.
Great Smokies Storage 10’x20’
92
$
20’x20’
160
$
ONE MONTH
FREE WITH 12-MONTH CONTRACT
828.506.4112 or 828.507.8828 42
Conveniently located off 19/23 by Thad Woods Auction
PRIME REAL ESTATE Advertise in The Smoky Mountain News
UPBEAT ADS
MarketPlace information:
NEW HIP-HOP REALITY TV SHOW!! Now Accepting Submissions! Your ONE SHOT to WIN $100,000 + Record DEAL. Will You Take It? www.MyOneShot.TV Twitter: @OneShotShow
The Smoky Mountain News Marketplace has a distribution of 16,000 every week to over 500 locations across in Haywood, Jackson, Macon, and Swain counties along with the Qualla Boundary and west Buncombe County. For a link to our MarketPlace Web site, which also contains a link to all of our MarketPlace display advertisers’ Web sites, visit www.smokymountainnews.com.
REACH READERS ACROSS North Carolina for only $375. Run your 25-word classified line ad in 99 newspapers with one call to this newspaper, or call NCPS at 919.516.8009.
Rates: ■ Free — Residential yard sale ads, lost or found pet ads. ■ Free — Non-business items that sell for less than $150. ■ $12 — Classified ads that are 50 words or less; each additional line is $2. ■ $12 — If your ad is 10 words or less, it will be displayed with a larger type. ■ $3 — Border around ad and $5 — Picture with ad. ■ $50 — Non-business items, 25 words or less. 3 month or till sold. ■ $300 — Statewide classifieds run in 117 participating newspapers with 1.6 million circulation. Up to 25 words. ■ All classified ads must be pre-paid.
ARTS AND CRAFTS ALLISON CREEK Iron Works & Woodworking. Crafting custom metal & woodwork in rustic, country & lodge designs with reclaimed woods! Design & consultation, Barry Downs 828.524.5763, Franklin NC
Classified Advertising: Scott Collier, phone 828.452.4251; fax 828.452.3585 | classads@smokymountainnews.com
AUCTION GOING, GOING, GONE! Promote your auction with a classified ad in 96 N.C. newspapers. A 25-word ad is only $375. For more information, call this newspaper or 919.516.8009.
WAYNESVILLE TIRE, COO
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Serving Haywood, Jackson & Surrounding Counties
HARPER’S AUCTION COMPANY Friday Jan. 23rd @ 6:00 p.m. Join Us, We Will Have Lots of Goodies; Household Goods, Glass, Furniture, Box Lots and Much More... 47 Macon Center Dr. Franklin,NC 828.369.6999. Debra Harper, NCAL #9659, NCFL #9671. harpersauctioncompany.com
Offering:
MAJOR-BRAND TIRES FOR CARS, LIGHT & MEDIUM-DUTY TRUCKS, AND FARM TIRES.
Service truck available for on-site repairs LEE & PATTY ENSLEY, OWNERS
MON-FRI 7:30-5:00 • WAYNESVILLE PLAZA
828-456-5387
276-30
AUCTION: Tractors, Tools, Forklift, Boats, Shop & Power Equipment, Specialty & Plumbing Tools, Fiberglass Equipment - Online Only Auction, Jones County, NC. www.HouseAuctionCompany.com 252.729.1162 NCAL#7889 AUCTION Lake Wylie Home & Contents, 10925 Windy Grove Rd. Charlotte, NC 28278. Bid Online thru Tuesday, 1/29. www.rhlee.com R.H. Lee & Co. NCAL3738 - Brooks Auction. NCRE25534
AUCTION AUCTION Construction Equipment & Trucks, January 27th, 10am, Richmond, VA. Excavators, Dozers, Dumps & More. Accepting Items Daily thru 1/23. Motleys Asset Disposition Group, 804.232.3300x.4, www.motleys.com/industrial, VAAL#16. PUBLIC AUCTION Wednesday, January 28 @ 10am. 1403 S. Lafayette St. Shelby, NC. Complete Liquidation of 35+ yr. old Temco Tractor & Farm Equipment Parts Dealer. Thousands of New Stock & Rooms Full of Used Tractor Parts. 704.791.8825. ncaf5479. www.ClassicAuctions.com WATERFRONT PROPERTIES Auction, 11.2+/-Acres Prime Waterfront on Trent River & Mill Creek, Pollocksville, NC - just 15 minutes from New Bern - Online Bidding ENDS January 22. Over 2300ft. on deep water. www.HouseAuctionCompany.com 252.729.1162. NCAL#7889
BUILDING MATERIALS HAYWOOD BUILDERS Garage Doors, New Installations Service & Repairs, 828.456.6051 100 Charles St. Waynesville Employee Owned.
CONSTRUCTION/ REMODELING ACORN STAIRLIFTS. The Affordable solution to your stairs! **Limited time -$250 Off Your Stairlift Purchase!** Buy Direct & SAVE. Please call 1.800.291.2712 for FREE DVD and brochure. ALL THINGS BASEMENTY! Basement Systems Inc. Call us for all of your basement needs! Waterproofing, Finishing, Structural Repairs, Humidity and Mold Control. FREE ESTIMATES! Call 1.800.698.9217 SULLIVAN HARDWOOD FLOORS Installation- Finish - Refinish 828.399.1847.
CONSTRUCTION/ REMODELING PROFESSIONAL INTERIOR PAINTING CALL DENNIS AT: LUCAS PAINTING Co.
828.421.4057 DAVE’S CUSTOM HOMES OF WNC, INC Free Estimates & Competitive rates. References avail. upon request. Specializing in: Log Homes, remodeling, decks, new construction, repairs & additions. Owner/Builder: Dave Donaldson. Licensed/Insured. 828.631.0747 or 828.508.0316 SAFE STEP WALK-IN TUB. Alert for Seniors. Bathroom falls can be fatal. Approved by Arthritis Foundation. Therapeutic Jets. Less Than 4 Inch Step-In. Wide Door. Anti-Slip Floors. American Made. Installation Included. Call 800.807.7219 for $750 Off.
AUTO PARTS BLOWN HEAD GASKET Cracked Heads/Block. State of the art 2-part Carbon Composite Repair! All Vehicles Foreign or Domestic including Northstars! 100% guaranteed. Call Now: 1.866.780.9038 SAPA
AUTOMOBILES 99-2000 GMC SIERRA SLT/Z71 3-Door, Great Work Truck, Runs Strong, Never Wrecked, Toolbox, Bedliner, Rail Guards. Highway Miles, NC-FL 20k/yr. $3,800. For More Info 828.736.7000. *CASH TODAY* We’ll Buy Any Car (Any Condition) + Free Same Day Pick-Up. Best Cash Offer Guaranteed! Call for FREE Quote: 1.888.858.5835 SAPA DONATE YOUR CAR, Truck or Boat to Heritage for the Blind. Free 3 Day Vacation, Tax Deductible, Free Towing, All Paperwork Taken Care Of. 800.337.9038.
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beverly-hanks.com Michelle McElroy — beverly-hanks.com Marilynn Obrig — beverly-hanks.com Mike Stamey — beverly-hanks.com Ellen Sither — esither@beverly-hanks.com
Haywood Properties — haywoodproperties.com • Steve Cox — info@haywoodproperties.com
Keller Williams Realty
Main Street Realty
kellerwilliamswaynesville.com • Ron Kwiatkowski — ronk.kwrealty.com
Mountain Home Properties — mountaindream.com
101 South Main St. Waynesville, NC 28786
• Sammie Powell — smokiesproperty.com
Main Street Realty — mainstreetrealty.net
www.smokymountainnews.com
January 21-27, 2015
McGovern Real Estate & Property Management
(828) 452-2227 • (800) 467-7144 (828) 456-6836 FAX
|
info@mainstreetrealty.net
mainstreetrealty.net
• Bruce McGovern — shamrock13.com
276-24
Emerson Group • George Escaravage — gke333@gmail.com
Prudential Lifestyle Realty — vistasofwestfield.com Realty World Heritage Realty realtyworldheritage.com • Carolyn Lauter realtyworldheritage.com/realestate/viewagent/7766 • Martha Sawyer realtyworldheritage.com/realestate/viewagent/7769 • Linda Wester realtyworldheritage.com/realestate/viewagent/7771
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Committed to Exceeding Expectations
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Residential Broker Associate
(828) 550-2810
mobrig@Beverly-Hanks.com
www.Beverly-Hanks.com 276-12
• Phil Ferguson — philferguson@bellsouth.net 276-08
TO ADVERTISE IN THE NEXT ISSUE 828.452.4251 | ads@smokymountainnews.com
JOIN OUR TEAM! Guaranteed pay for Class A CDL Flatbed Drivers! Regional and OTR. Great pay/benefits/401k match. CALL TODAY 864.299.9645. www.jgr-inc.com EOE ONLINE MILLIONAIRE’S Secrets Revealed! The internet has made thousands of millionaires! Learn their secrets. FREE info at www.revealall.info or 1.305.515.6884. SAPA
AVIATION GRADS Work With JetBlue, Boeing, NASA And Others. Start Here With Hands On Training For Faa Certification. Financial Aid If Qualified. Call Aviation Institute Of Maintenance 1.866.724.5403 WWW.FIXJETS.COM. SAPA HIGH-TECH CAREER With U.S. Navy. Elite tech training w/great pay, benefits, vacation, $ for school. HS grads ages 17-34. Call Mon-Fri 800.662.7419
RE/MAX — Mountain Realty remax-waynesvillenc.com | remax-maggievalleync.com Brian K. Noland — brianknoland.com Mieko Thomson — ncsmokies.com The Morris Team — maggievalleyproperty.com The Real Team — the-real-team.com Ron Breese — ronbreese.com Dan Womack — womackdan@aol.com Catherine Proben — cp@catherineproben.com
GET PAID WEEKLY! FT and PT mail work from home. For full details visit: www.750weekly.com or call 512.827.0060 (24/7) SAPA
EMPLOYMENT
arilynn brig
Full Service Property Management 828-456-6111 www.selecthomeswnc.com Residential and Commercial Long-Term Rentals
The Seller’s Agency — listwithphil.com
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BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES
BE YOUR OWN BOSS! PT/FT No Exp Needed. Training Provided Not MLM No Cold Calling Earn Up to $5000 per month! Set Your Own Hours Schedule your Interviews Now at: www.bizpro104.com
ERA Sunburst Realty — sunburstrealty.com
• • • • • • •
TOP CASH FOR CARS, Call Now For An Instant Offer. Top Dollar Paid, Any Car/Truck, Any Condition. Running or Not. Free Pick-up/Tow. 1.800.761.9396 SAPA
HOME BASED BUSINESS Serious impact on retirement for self-motivated people. Create your own safety net. Flex hours. FREE online training! Escalating income potential! For more info visit: www.project4wellness.com SAPA
Beverly Hanks & Associates • • • •
AUTOMOBILES
find us at: facebook.com/smnews
EMPLOYMENT DRIVER TRAINEES NEEDED! Become a driver for Stevens Transport! No Experience Needed! New drivers earn $800+ per week! PAID CDL TRAINING! Stevens covers all costs! 1.888.748.4137 drive4stevens.com DRIVERS: New Equipment Just Arrived. New Year - New Opportunities. Want Better Pay? Better Home-Time? & Compensation?? CDL-A 1yr. Exp. 877.704.3773 FTCCFayetteville Technical Community College is now accepting applications for the following positions: Buyer. Benefits Specialist. Data Management Technician. For detailed information and to apply, please visit our employment portal: https://faytechcc.peopleadmin.com Human Resources Office. Phone: 910.678.8378. Internet: http://www.faytechcc.edu. CRC Preferred Employer. An Equal Opportunity Employer. FULL TIME BOOKKEEPER/ PAYROLL ADMIN. POSITION Available. Accounting Degree or equivalent work experience with minimum of 2 years’ experience with QuickBooks, full knowledge of accounts payable, accounts receivable helpful, indirect cost accounting a plus. Must have experience with on-line data base payroll management. Excellent computer skills required, experience with Microsoft Excel and Word. Applications available at DisAbility Partners, 525 Mineral Springs Drive, Sylva. Please call Gale at 828.631.1167 for more information. DRIVERS: Super Career in 2015! Earn up to $0.43/mile, $2,500 Sign On Bonus PLUS up to $0.03 per mile in bonus! Call 866.291.2631 or SuperServiceLLC.com CAN YOU DIG IT? Heavy Equipment Operator Training! 3 Week Program. Bulldozers, Backhoes, Excavators. Lifetime Job Placement Assistance with National Certifications. VA Benefits Eligible! 866.288.6896
EMPLOYMENT
EMPLOYMENT MEDICAL BILLING TRAINEES NEED! Doctors & Hospitals need Medical Office Staff! NO EXPERIENCED NEEDED! Online Training gets you job ready! HS Diploma/GED & Computer needed. Careertechnical.edu/nc. 1.888.512.7122
Job Opportunity Do you love reading Smoky Mountain Living? Want to be a part of our family by selling advertising for the magazine? Smoky Mountain Living is seeking an independent, outgoing, self-motivated person to help grow our customer base. You may work from home. Sales territory would be the mountains of North Carolina/South Carolina and/or eastern Tennessee.
EMPLOYMENT TEACHER RECRUITMENT FAIR To fill 2015-16 Vacancies ~ did you know over 700 teaching positions were filled by the following Virginia school divisions in the 2014-15 school year: Counties of Alleghany, Bath, Botetourt, Carroll, Craig, Floyd, Franklin, Giles, Grayson, Henry, Montgomery, Patrick, Pulaski, Roanoke and Wythe; and the Cities of Martinsville, Roanoke and Salem. Join us on Fri, Jan 30, 2015 - 4pm to 7pm. & Sat, Jan 31, 2015 - 9am to Noon at the Salem Civic Center, 1001 Boulevard, Salem, VA 24153. See: www.wvpec.org (Job Fair) to download application, see division requirements and inclement weather updates. Sponsored by the Western Virginia Public Education Consortium. WELDING CAREERS Hands on training for career opportunities in aviation, automotive, manufacturing and more. Financial aid for qualified students. Job placement assistance. Call AIM 877.205.6458.
PETS HAYWOOD SPAY/NEUTER 828.452.1329
SOCIAL SECURITY Disability Benefits. Unable to work? Denied benefits? We Can Help! WIN or Pay Nothing! Contact Bill Gordon & Associates at 1.800.371.1734 to start your application today!
FURNITURE COMPARE QUALITY & PRICE Shop Tupelo’s, 828.926.8778. HAYWOOD BEDDING, INC. The best bedding at the best price! 533 Hazelwood Ave. Waynesville 828.456.4240
LAWN & GARDEN HEMLOCK HEALERS, INC. Dedicated to Saving Our Hemlocks. Owner/Operator Frank Varvoutis, NC Pesticide Applicator’s License #22864. 48 Spruce St. Maggie Valley, NC 828.734.7819 828.926.7883, Email: hemlockhealers@yahoo.com
REAL ESTATE ANNOUNCEMENT Prevent Unwanted Litters! The Heat Is On! Spay/Neuter For Haywood Pets As Low As $10. Operation Pit is in Effect! Free Spay/Neuter, Microchip & Vaccines For Haywood Pitbull Types & Mixes! Hours: Tuesday-Friday, 11 - 5 pm or by Apt. 182 Richland Street, Waynesville
LEASE TO OWN 1/2 Acre Lots with Mobile Homes & Empty 1/2 Acre + Lots! Located Next to Cherokee Indian Reservation, 2.5 Miles from Harrah’s Cherokee Casino. For More Information Please Call 828.506.0578 BRUCE MCGOVERN A Full Service Realtor shamrock13@charter.net McGovern Property Management 828.283.2112.
NICOL ARMS APARTMENTS NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS Offering 1 & 2 Bedroom Apartments, Starting at $400 Section 8 Accepted - Handicapped Accessible Units When Available
TATUM A VERY STRIKING LOOKING DOG WITH A BLUE MERLE COAT. HIS PERSONALITY IS JUST INCREDIBLE - GENTLE, EASYGOING, LOVES TO BE PETTED AND HE HAS QUITE NICE MANNERS.
OFFICE HOURS: Tues. & Wed. 10:00am - 5:00pm & Thurs. 10:00am- 12:00pm 168 E. Nicol Arms Road Sylva, NC 28779
Phone# 1.828.586.3346 TDD# 1.800.725.2962 Equal Housing Opportunity
PUBLISHER’S NOTICE All real estate advertising in this newspaper is subject to the Fair Housing Act which makes it illegal to advertise “any preference, limitation or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin, or an intention, to make any such preference, limitation or discrimination” Familial status includes children under the age of 18 living with parents or legal custodians, pregnant women and people securing custody of children under 18 This newspaper will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate which is in violation of the law. All dwellings advertised on an equal opportunity basis.
STORAGE SPACE FOR RENT BULLFROG STORAGE Convenient Location 19/23 Between Clyde and Canton
5 x 10 = $25 10 x 10 = $40 10 x 20 = $75 • NO CONTRACTS • Nobody Beats Our Rates
828.342.8700 CLIMATE CONTROLLED STORAGE UNITS FOR RENT 1 Month Free with 12 Month Rental. Maggie Valley, Hwy. 19, 1106 Soco Rd. For more information call Torry
828.734.6500, 828.734.6700 maggievalleyselfstorage.com GREAT SMOKIES STORAGE Conveniently located off 19/23 by Thad Woods Auction. Available for lease now: 10’x10’ units for $55, 20’x20’ units for $160. Get one month FREE with 12 month contract. Call 828.507.8828 or 828.506.4112 for more info.
VACATION RENTALS CAVENDER CREEK CABINS Dahlonega, North Georgia Mountains. **WINTER SPECIAL: Buy 2 Nights, 3rd FREE** 1,2,& 3 Bedroom Cabins with HOT TUBS! Virtual Tour: www.CavendarCreek.com Call Now Toll Free 1.866.373.6307 SAPA
COMM. PROP FOR RENT HIGH TRAFFIC RENTAL SPACE For Retail Business, Food Service, Office, Studio, Shop, Etc. In Middle of Downtown Sylva Historic Distict. Includes Kitchen, Bathroom, Storage & Entrance From Both Main & Back Streets. $600/Month, Includes Water. Connecting Space Available if Needed/Additional Seperate Entrance. Call For More Info 828.298.7287
PERSONAL CHILDLESS, MARRIED COUPLE Seeks to adopt. Will be hands-on mom/devoted dad. Love, laughter, learning. Expenses paid. Preplacement assessment approved by Better Living Agency, 6/26/2014. Jeanne & Damian 1.855.563.8901. HERO MILES To find out more about how you can help our service members, veterans and their families in their time of need, visit the Fisher House website at www.fisherhouse.org SAPA MAKE A CONNECTION. Real People, Flirty Chat. Meet singles right now! Call LiveLinks. Try it FREE. Call now 1.888.909.9978 18+. SAPA YOUR AD COULD REACH 1.6 MILLION HOMES ACROSS NC! Your classified ad could be reaching over 1.6 Million Homes across North Carolina! Place your ad with The Smoky Mountain News on the NC Statewide Classified Ad Network- 118 NC newspapers for a low cost of $330 for 25-word ad to appear in each paper! Additional words are $10 each. The whole state at your fingertips! It's a smart advertising buy! Call Scott Collier at 828.452.4251 or for more information visit the N.C. Press Association's website at www.ncpress.com
FOR SALE CHAMPION SUPPLY Janitorial supplies. Professional cleaning products, vacuums, janitorial paper products, swimming pool chemicals, environmentally friendly chemicals, indoor & outdoor light bulbs, odor elimination products, equipment repair including household vacuums. Free delivery across WNC. www.championsupply.com 800.222.0581, 828.225.1075. ENJOY 100 PERCENT GUARANTEED, Delivered?to-the-door Omaha Steaks! SAVE 74 percent PLUS 4 FREE Burgers - The Family Value Combo - ONLY $39.99. ORDER Today 1.800.715.2010 Use code 48829AFK or www.OmahaSteaks.com/mbfvc46 SAPA
smokymountainnews.com
KAYA A VERY EXOTIC LOOKING 6 MONTH OLD KITTY. HER EYES, COLORING AND MARKINGS ARE QUITE UNUSUAL. COME SEE HER IN PERSON!
FINANCIAL BEWARE OF LOAN FRAUD. Please check with the Better Business Bureau or Consumer Protection Agency before sending any money to any loan company. SAPA
REAL ESTATE ANNOUNCEMENT
January 21-27, 2015
Please send all resumés to hylah@smliv.com
PETS FLEA, TICK & HEARTWORM Petmeds at Wholesale Cost. www.PetCareRx.com or call 1.888.478.5672. Ask about $20 off Pet Plus Today! SAPA
WNC MarketPlace
OWN YOUR OWN TRUCK! Best Lease Purchase Deal in the Country! *You can earn over $150,000 per year. *No Credit Check. *Late-model Freightliner Columbia. *Low Truck Payment. Call 866.612.2218 to talk to a recruiter. Apply Now Online @ www.joincrst.com
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www.smokymountainnews.com
January 21-27, 2015
WNC MarketPlace
Super
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SNAKE HANDLING
CROSSWORD Koteas 69 Peaceful 70 Snake’s relatives? 73 Arcade game pioneer 75 TV prizes 76 See 81-Down 77 Union foe 78 Billfold filler 82 Org. fining polluters 83 1:50, e.g. 85 Noodles shaped like knotted snakes? 88 Emerald, e.g. 89 Symbol of a team 91 Camera type, for short 92 Frying vessel 93 Thing that hones a snake’s skills? 98 Part of TLC 100 Gather up 101 Treater’s phrase 102 Sobbing soul 104 Sour 105 Tit-for- 106 “Pretty nice!” 110 Now being broadcast 113 Living an isolated life 115 Snake’s balderdash? 117 Aromatic 118 Gazed 119 “- down the hatches!” 120 “No, No, -” (old musical) 121 Mistake list 122 Broom room
ACROSS 1 Appear on the scene 7 Mystery writer Christie 13 Sister of Snow White 20 Canadian dollar coin 21 As well 22 Retired female prof 23 Mischievous snake? 25 Capitol Hill bigwig 26 Bicycle part 27 Like Saturn 28 Ink-filled tool 29 Blend 30 One of the Musketeers 32 Graceful bird 34 Touchy- - (overly emotional) 35 Greets with a head bob 37 What there is when a snake is inside a keg? 42 Sioux tribe member 43 Beatle bride Yoko 45 Golfer Palmer 46 Vienna is its cap. 47 Study of snake vision? 50 Bottom line 52 HP or Dell products 55 Confused 56 Noble act 57 St. Louis Arch architect Saarinen 58 Canoe variety 60 Skeletal axis 62 Snake with a talk show? 65 1980s TV’s “Remington -” DOWN 68 “Crash” actor 1 - unto itself
2 - Hashanah 3 Boxing tactic used by Ali 4 Derives from logic 5 Rule breaker, e.g. 6 Always, to poets 7 On the line 8 Hired hood 9 Snug as 10 “It Had - You” 11 Sticks with, as a belief 12 Nibbled away 13 Transmit again 14 Boding sign 15 Sun Yat- 16 Pencil tops 17 John of “Three’s Company” 18 Star, to Pierre 19 Baseballer Strawberry 24 Prefix with cycle 28 Infamous box opener 31 Lyric poems sung by single voices 33 Newswoman Barbara 34 “As I Lay Dying” novelist 35 Star burst 36 Big elevator producer 38 Incursion 39 Curve part 40 Connections 41 Lamb’s call 44 Frank 48 Pass gingerly 49 Golf ball supporter 51 Pull along 52 Funeral pile 53 French city on the Orne 54 - terrier (dog breed)
57 Internet auction site 59 Ghana’s land 61 Wall coatings 62 Film snippet 63 Petroleum 64 Actress Huppert 65 “Peter Pan” pirate 66 Pack down tightly 67 Actress Stone 68 Where some very big birds are raised 71 Goldfish part 72 Superhero insect 73 Put-on 74 Mai - (rum drinks) 77 Surfeit 79 Hopefuls 80 Jazzman Kenton 81 With 76-Across, quit, informally 84 “Jimmy” has two 85 Pre-A.D. abbr. 86 Suffix with ball or bass 87 Suggestion 88 Body signal 90 Unthrifty type 93 Mete (out) 94 Actress Seyfried 95 30-year late-night host 96 Raspy 97 Kigali’s land 99 Rome’s Via 103 Tokyo, once 105 Tightly strung 107 Polish river 108 Prefix with byte 109 Boone of baseball 111 “Gotcha” 112 Pay to live in 114 Filming locale 115 Pal of Tarzan 116 “Go On” network
answers on page 42
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WEEKLY SUDOKU Place a number in the empty boxes in such a way that each row across, each column down and each small 9-box square contains all of the numbers from one to nine. Answers on Page 42
Common goldeneye just surfacing from a dive. You can clearly see the nictitating membrane.
The naturalist’s corner
creative commons photo
BY DON H ENDERSHOT
The uncommon common goldeneye
T
he best way I know of to get a rare bird to fly the coop is to write about it. So by the time you see this article the two drake common goldeneyes that have been hanging out at Lake Junaluska for the past week or so will likely have vanished. But they have been consistently sighted along the shoreline on the “cross-side” of the lake a couple of hundred yards from the dam. Common goldeneyes are uncommon to rare at Lake J. I wouldn’t be surprised if goldeneyes visited the lake each fall/winter season, but they usually just drop in for a rest — here today, gone tomorrow — so someone has to be in the right place at the right time to record them. These two birds make the third sighting of c. goldeneyes this season. There was one from mid to late December; one during count week (12/30/14 to 1/5/15) of the Balsam Christmas Bird Count and now these two, which have been with us for a long time in goldeneye-days. Common goldeneyes nest across Canada and Alaska down to Minnesota, Michigan
and the northeastern U.S. They are cavity nesters and depend in large part on cavities from large woodpeckers like pileateds and flickers. They will also use natural cavities and/or open depressions created by broken limbs. Common goldeneyes have strong site fidelity and will reuse the same cavity. Females will lay their eggs in the nests of other females, including other species like wood ducks and hooded mergansers. Common goldeneyes are some of the latest fall migrants and they often overwinter as far north as open water allows. Eastern birds overwinter down the eastern seaboard from Newfoundland to Florida and inland as far as the Mississippi River. These handsome ducks get their name from their golden yellow iris. Hatchlings have brownish-grey eyes that turn purple to blue to blue-green as they age, they don’t acquire “golden” eyes until they are adults. Adult males are basically black on top and tail, with an iridescent head that shines from black to green depending on the light. There is a round white cheek patch between the eye and the bill. They are clean white on flanks, breast and belly. The female has a chocolate-brown head and is grayish on back and breast. Her bill is black at the base and
tipped with yellow. Juveniles can be quite variable but are generally similar to females with brownish heads and grayish bodies. It seems to be a pretty good year for common goldeneyes across the region. They have bee reported from the Newport River in Carteret County and Lake Crabtree in Wake County — both in North Carolina and from Donnelley WMA in South Carolina so far, this month. Common goldeneyes feed on aquatic
insects, small fishes, crustaceans and aquatic plants, which they obtain by diving. And like all diving ducks they have a clear nictitating membrane that covers the eye when they dive. I mention this so you can check it out in the photo. As I was finishing this on 1/19, I came across a post on Carolinabirds, noting that the common goldeneyes are still at Lake J. (Don Hendershot is a naturalist and a writer. He can be reached at ddihen1@bellsouth.net.)
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January 21-27, 2015
JANUARY
Come join us in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for the
25th Anniversary Wilderness Wildlife Week! This special free event features more than 400 educational seminars, 65 hikes and field trips into Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the local area, as well as more than 70 onsite exhibitors! Ken Jenkins • Dr. Bill Bass • The Talk is Cheap Tour featuring Bill Landry, Sam Venable, Jim Claborn & Elizabeth Rose
...and many other exciting programs!
The LeConte Center at Pigeon Forge 2986 Teaster Lane Pigeon Forge, TN 37863
Smoky Mountain News
Featured sessions include presentations by: Lee Stetson & Alan Sutterfield
For more information, visit MyPigeonForge.com or telephone the Pigeon Forge Office of Special Events at (865) 429-7350 47
AutoStarUSA.com
Matthew Fox GM TECHNICIAN
Matthew Fox of Canton, NC is remaking his debut at Waynesville Automotive. The North Carolina native, who went to High school and got his Automotive Degree right here in North Carolina, is Waynesville Automotive’s newest GM Technician. Fox previously worked at the same location, under different management, in 2005. When he left in 2008, Fox went to work at another independent shop and then with stock cars as a pit road and tech official from 2010-2012. “I’ve always been interested in the technology and mechanics of cars,” Fox said. And he has the Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) and GM Certifications to prove it! Fox, who has been back at Waynesville Automotive since the beginning of December, says he is really enjoying the people, the atmosphere and the tech equipment at his new job. Despite his extensive experience and love for all things car, diagnosing problems and fixing vehicles isn’t his favorite part of the new job. “It’s about helping the customers and making them happy,” Fox says.
280 Hyatt Creek Rd., Waynesville, NC 28786
285 Hyatt Creek Rd., Waynesville, NC 28786
January 21-27, 2015
When he’s not working, Fox enjoys spending time with his friends and family, which includes his wife, Teresa, their Great Dane, Chihuahua and two cats. He also enjoys outdoor sports and admits he is a bit of a gun enthusiast. He even builds them himself!
*Excludes additional shop supplies & hazardous waste fees. Excludes synthetics, diesels & some specialty vehicles. Not combinable with other offers. See Service Advisor for details.
Visit Matthew at Waynesville Automotive for all of your service needs.
CANTON
SYLVA
ASHEVILLE
750 Champion Drive Canton, NC 28716
1188 West Main Street Sylva, NC 28779
2 Westgate Parkway Asheville, NC 28806
(828) 492-0631
(828) 586-0202
BLACK MOUNTAIN
(828) 785-1561
COMING FEB 1ST
308 Black Bl k Mountain M t i Ave. A Black Mountain, NC 28711
Smoky Mountain News
POWERHOUSE CERTIFIED PRE-OWNED SPECIALS
2011 Toyota Corolla LE
STK # H829
2008 Ford Edge SEL AWD
STK # 41544B
2013 Hyundai Elantra GLS
STK # P1411
2010 Ford Taurus Limited AWD
STK # H704B
*Prices do not include taxes, title, license or $499 doc fee. See dealer for details. Subject to prior sale. Artwork for illustration purpose only.
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