Let me emphasize this at the outset: My mother is an excellent writer and speller of words.

What I’m going to say in this column shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Times are tough in the newspaper business.

Woman and lass, I have familiarity with and experience in using a variety of manures in the garden: horse, goat, rabbit and chicken.

If you believe ugly, unacceptable, demeaning behavior toward women takes place only in Hollywood, think again.

Through the years, I’ve accumulated more gardening books than I care to admit. It’s a bit of an obsession. There are worse vices, I suppose.

A couple of weeks ago, there were enough mature purple-fleshed daikon in the garden to send me scurrying to cookbooks in search of recipes.

Temperatures dropped this past week to seasonable levels, and the nippy mornings serve as a chilly reminder winter really is on its way.

It’s too bad more people don’t like arugula.

In a misplaced moment of pique, a Facebook acquaintance this past weekend posted about an African-American man suffering shotgun wounds while helping others during the Las Vegas shooting.

It is prime garlic-planting time in Western North Carolina, from now through the middle of November.

Facebook has handed over to congressional investigators more than 3,000 Facebook advertisements. The Internet Research Agency, a Russian firm based in St. Petersburg, paid for the promotions using 470 various accounts and pages.

This nation is being held prisoner. Punch drunk, we lurch from insane moment to insane moment, led by a man who blurts something, anything to please the crowd. When one of a thousand arrows hits an emotionally charged target, President Trump embraces as immutable truth his own irrationalitie…

A few years ago, Pew Research Center found only 48 percent of American adults directly take part in civic groups or activities. Less than 40 percent of those surveyed reported recent contacts with a government official or participation in a public forum.

On occasion, my brain departs for parts unknown. I started Brussels sprouts from seed two summers in a row, last year and the year before. Both times, the plants grew in such a spindly, sad-sack fashion, I didn’t bother to plant them in the garden.

A July 25 crash killed a couple from Eustis, Florida and seriously injured a trooper with the N.C. Highway Patrol. Since this terrible accident, there has been a lot of talk about the dangers of traveling on U.S. 23/74 through Balsam.

“The Mooch showed up a week ago,” a foul-mouthed Anthony Scaramucci told the New Yorker writer. It was perhaps the only sentence he spoke not bristling with more profanities than there are fruit in a fruitcake. I was shocked, and I’m no sweet innocent lass with a pure tongue. In truth, my la…

Despite disavowals to the contrary, don’t make the mistake of thinking only Western Carolina University and the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority are deciding the fate of the dilapidated Cullowhee Dam.

Typically, I find myself at odds with conservative firebrands like Rep. Michael Speciale, a New Bern Republican who called the Women’s March a joke, accused NAACP leader the Rev. William Barber of being a racist and once queried whether, when it comes to humane euthanasia of animals, he shou…

A few years ago, I shadowed a Jackson County building inspector at a construction site.

Listening to a recording of last week’s Jackson County Board of Commissioners’ work session, I was struck by the repeated use of the word “girls” in connection with three professionals in the room, Finance Officer Darlene Fox, county Attorney Heather Baker and Clerk to the Board Angie Winchester.

A friend who reads a number of national newspapers and magazines told me this past weekend she has grown weary of the nonstop coverage of President Trump.

Because of my natural inclination to see the best in people, I find it hard to even hint at such an unflattering possibility, but (sigh) someone must ask the question. For the good of humanity, then, let it be me.

Wow, I’m loving this version of America, the one where we are so great and all. You heard the latest on our climb back to the top, the Montana politician who last week body slammed, then punched, a reporter who questioned him about health care?

Most of my working life has been spent in journalism. I’ve worked in delightful newsrooms and, well, not so delightful ones.

I met Ron and Donna Smith in September 2015, when she could still turn her head.

A writer writes alone, “for oneself and for strangers,” as Gertrude Stein put it. Most learn their craft from others, however, through a combination of imitation and study.

Matt Coffay plans in 2018 to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows.

I read “Young Men and Fire” in 1992, shortly after Norman Maclean’s transcendent work landed on the new book shelf at Marianna Black Library in Bryson City, shortly after my return home to the mountains.

I’ve taken of late to slinking around town avoiding a few people. I promised them a story but failed to deliver.

Sometime in 1992, shortly after taking up my career as a journalist, I started reading back issues of the newspaper in Franklin where I worked.

A few years back, a couple living on Evans Road moved to Thomas Valley between Barkers Creek and Whittier.

Let’s hope Bob Crowley found some contentment and a measure of companionship through reading books and watching sports.