RURAL

About two years ago, tents started to show up in my neighborhood along the creek beds and in small stands of trees. Most only became visible when the leaves fell, exposing their orange rainflies and blue tarps. This increase in houselessness didn’t feel surprising to me or to my neighbors: The rent has nearly doubled…

It started in the back seat of my family’s Jeep Cherokee, the one with the broken AC and vinyl seats that stuck to my thighs in the late summer heat. After school we would wait, all the doors flung open, for my dad to get off work. My mother reading in the front seat, her…

Rep. Rodney D. Pierce, a Democrat representing Halifax, Northampton, and Warren counties, has an idea for a statewide screening program to help men detect prostate cancer before it’s too late.

With names like that, the Hellbender is hard not to love. It’s North America’s largest salamander and one of the largest amphibians in the world. 

Four months after Hurricane Helene wiped out peak tourism season in western North Carolina, local business owners are still feeling the losses. They believe that direct financial support is needed to keep some businesses open.

During the immediate aftermath of Helene, as soon as I got a moment, I went to our public works facility, looking to thank and check on the many public servants personally.  In that visit I asked several folks how they all personally fared throughout the storm.

Chimney Rock was devastated by Helene’s flood waters and has been inaccessible to the outside world since late September. The fall tourism season was completely lost, and getting tourism dollars back is vital to the community’s recovery.

Western North Carolina is still waiting for funding from Congress nearly three months after Hurricane Helene. If the government shuts down at midnight on Friday, as is increasingly likely, the region will continue to go without critical federal aid for the foreseeable future.

Candidates who feed into this hatred of FEMA, spread or fail to correct the rumor that only $750 will be offered to victims, or, even worse, claim that Helene was an artificial storm, manufactured by liberal political operatives to disable rural Republicans and take their land — the damage from those lies transcends political party and…

Elected officials in North Carolina, led by Governor Roy Cooper, met with President Joe Biden and members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation last week to advocate for federal support for the state’s recovery from Hurricane Helene.