The Great Spangled Fritillary has been a frequent visitor these last few days to the butterfly bush growing beside the cabin, and they should be joined within days by the migrating Monarchs who’ll be making their annual trek through the North Carolina mountains, a journey that peaks for us in September or early October. I’ll … Read more
From my cabin to Cades Cove Loop in the Smoky Mountain National Park is a 270-mile round trip that takes you above the clouds, through lazy elk herds feeding on the roadside, and past more stunning views than a man can well comprehend in a single day-trip. But if that’s what you’ve got, that’s what … Read more
Harriet Tubman was born into slavery here outside Cambridge, Maryland, in Dorchester County, and no one could have predicted at her birth in 1822 that she would become its most famous and most celebrated citizen. Tubman was a freedom fighter like no other. Though “barely five feet tall,” she became a giant. In 2024, the … Read more
If everyone always lies to you, Hannah Arendt once wrote, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, “but that no one believes anything at all anymore—and rightly so, because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, to be ‘re-lied,’ so to speak” — the liar constantly rewriting his own history. Arendt … Read more
Staff Reports / The New York Times It’s hard to know how many of us citizens are monitoring the mess oozing from the ground in Ohio, where toxic waste water from fracking is bubbling out of the soil in dozens of places and is all but certain to show up one day in the drinking … Read more
The domesticated tomato may date back 7,000 or more years, but the 2026 edible variety didn’t show up in Murphy, North Carolina, until July 23 at our local farmers market. At least this was the first I had seen this season. So, naturally I’ve been eating a summer’s worth of tomato sandwiches since. And every … Read more
Valerie Turner lays lead guitar, handles lead vocals, and specializes in intricate Piedmont-style ragtime fingerpicking, while her husband and bandmate Benedict (Ben) Turner provides traditional roots percussion using the washboard, bones, harmonica, and harmony vocals. The two serve as cultural historians and educators preserving early African-American country blues.
Most of us who live in the area recognize that the popular local store known as Cherokee Guns is fond of using its advertising as the sort of in-your-face provocations that are more or less “red meat” for the MAGA base that seems to be the store’s target audience. See the above photo for a … Read more
My newish Guardian 5.5 came with an okay taco-style leather sheath, but I guessed before ordering the knife that the scabbard would’t do justice to the fine blade from the Washington state maker. I was right. So I made my own. One of the early sheaths I made in a dark brown finish that I’m … Read more
Curves, tunnels, steep ascents, unnerving drops down the mountain when the weight of the train threatens to overrun the engine and send the whole enterprise cascading down into ruin. Life is like that. Phoebe, left, and Poe look me over and wonder if he can be trusted, this strange man who has taken them into … Read more