Cory Vaillancourt

From dogs and cats to snakes and ferrets, the disaster caused by Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina created a crisis in the already stressed animal welfare community. In some cases, people have had to give up pets on a hopefully temporary basis until they could secure stable housing. Inside is a look at one such case and a Haywood County animal rescue helping to ease the burden. Cory Vaillancourt photo

After decades of paying for hurricane recovery operations along the North Carolina coast, Western North Carolina taxpayers finally had a reason to ask the rest of the state to return the favor in the wake of Hurricane Helene. On Dec. 11, the rest of the state answered with a resounding “no.” Senate...

Gov. Roy Cooper, seen here at the historic Haywood County Courthouse in 2022, has left an indelible mark on the Tarheel State over his 40 years in public service. Cory Vaillancourt photo

T wo weeks after an unusual meeting where Commissioner Terry Ramey was told to resign over lies he helped spread about the post-Helene housing situation in Haywood County, the other four commissioners made clear they weren’t in the mood for any more shenanigans — removing one woman from the meeting, refuting more lies and even using a little bit of poetry from a cherished Western North Carolina scribe to keep things on track.

I started this annual feature nearly a decade ago to poke fun at the emerging scourge of fake news — lies, really — that had popped up at local government meetings. It was a prophetic move, unfortunately, and in the intervening nine or so years it’s only gotten worse.

By the end of the 1900s, groups of marginalized Americans like women, Blacks, Hispanics and others had made great strides in their respective liberation movements after centuries of subjugation, leaving some to wonder if we’d ever again witness the bravery and sacrifice required when the oppressed refuse to be treated as second-class citizens any longer.

A local hero comes home to Western North Carolina for the first time in 20 years, potentially reigniting a longtime feud with an old nemesis and proving that some things always stay the same.

S unny sea-level Savannah, Georgia, is known for a lot of things — historic colonial beauty, low country cuisine and a wide-open bar culture that benefits from/endures one of the nation’s few open container laws — but it also has a rich musical legacy that locals are now using to help victims of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina.

Following up on a campaign promise he made just over a year ago, newly-elected North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson stood within eyeshot of what used to be Pactiv Evergreen’s Canton paper mill to remind the company that he wasn’t going to ease up on a lawsuit filed by his predecessor, now-Gov. Josh Stein.

NCGOP Chairman Jason Simmons, seen here at the 2024 State Convention in Greensboro last May, is responsible for nearly every aspect of party operations in North Carolina. Allison Kuhn photo