Polk Lore

And until this year, our school board was mercifully free of the direct influence of the political parties. But last year, North Carolina’s legislature, with the cooperation of our state representative and senator, and over the objections of the county commission, local leaders of both parties, and just about everyone else, made seats on the board partisan positions. So here we are.   But then a s...

Why a candidate is seeking your support is probably a good way to tell the good ones from the bad. You don’t have to agree with their campaign platform to be able to trust them. You don’t even have to share their religion or philosophy. But any decent politician should have a good reason for running in the first place. The less selfish, the better. Which brings us to this episode’ guest. You may o...

Though Karen Pack's relationship with Polk County goes back a long, long way — longer than most of the candidates seeking a seat on the county commission — it wasn’t until 2022, when the state decided it wanted a slice of her family’s land along highway nine, that she realized that not everything was hunky dory with county politics. While the county commissioners eventually agreed to write to the...

Even at the county level, it’s a bit surprising these days to hear a candidate for political office singing the praises of serving alongside members of the opposing party. But that’s Ray Gasperson for you. He was a Democratic county commissioner a few years back when his party held every seat, then when he had to share power, and then when he was outnumbered four to one by his Republican colleague...

Season 3 of Polk Lore begins with an onslaught of election interviews with candidates for county, state, and national offices. I invited everyone I thought might be willing or able to find the time to take part in my modest attempt to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of the local news business model. As of early September, not everyone had accepted, but there's still hope... First up is in...

The chances that the Democratic Party will have to revert to what used to be called a brokered convention this year are non-zero. I think it safe to say they are significantly greater than that. This isn’t what the delegates to the convention signed up for. Well, technically they did, because the party rules spell out exactly what they're supposed to do if something happens to the presumptive...

Even the best schools these days have trouble teaching their students about the awe and wonder of the natural world. The goods news (yet again) is that Polk Schools, with the help of a non-profit called Champions for Wildlife, is doing something to make up for that modern-day shortcoming. Drawing on our county's natural attractions and creative community, Loti Woods and Dale Weiler are using a...

Taking the good things in life for granted is never a good idea, but that’s what happening in some corners of this country when it comes to the value of public libraries. In Georgia, legislation that would require all public libraries to sever ties with the American Library Association just passed the state senate. Over in South Carolina, the Greenville County Library system did just that years ag...

A good number of listeners will be familiar with Chrelle Booker , a Polk County native who’s been on a member of Tryon’s Board of Commissioners since 2017. She’s now Mayor Pro Tem, which is the municipal equivalent of vice-president. She’s also served as president of the National League of Cities’  Women in Municipal Government  caucus. So, it’s not like she doesn’t have  some  experience outside...

This year’s elections are going to be a fair bit different, even if you’re veteran at casting ballots. For one thing, you're going to need photographic proof of your identify. And that not   the only change that the state legislature has foisted on us. In fact, Polk County has been singled out for several additional changes to way we vote, and the way we’re represented, at the municipal, count...

The first campaign speech by Chris Jones the prospective politician was delivered at a county GOP gathering. Aside from one throwaway reference to Boiling Springs as the kind of place we don’t want to turn into, his four-and-a-half-minute speech made no mention of anything or anyone locally specific. It’s as if he was reading a boiler-plate speech that could be written for a candidate for any gove...

Why does Polk Lore devote so much attention to education? Because it’s one of the few things that just about everyone in the county, no matter their political persuasion, agrees is a source of pride. Polk Schools isn’t a perfect institution, of course. But overall, our little school system’s teachers, staff, and board warrant the widespread support they get from the public, from our County Commiss...

Polk County, along with Henderson and Transylvania, are lumped together in what is now called Court District 42. Judicial elections are partisan affairs around here, but I’ve always thought that was a particularly bad idea — for what I hope are obvious reasons — so I was pleased to discover that one of Polk County’s veteran lawyers, a woman who was appointed last year to fill a vacancy on the dist...

A couple of days before Christmas, one of the Facebook pages devoted to issues of community concern in the county reproduced a letter to the editor of the Tryon Daily Bulletin warning us all to “speak out and take Polk County off the list of potential locations for a nuclear waste disposal facility.” Not too surprisingly, the post drew dozens of comments, mostly from those who were angry to learn...

Just before Halloween, I found myself in the pews of the Tryon Presbyterian Church listening to some of the most challenging music I’ve heard in the last 20 years. The musician was Drew Banzhoff, a Gen Zer hired this spring to serve as the church’s musical director. The instrument was the organ, which was no surprise given that the venue was a church.   But it didn’t take long for the playlist to...

Polk County has taken it on the chin this year when it comes to democracy.   Beginning next year, elections for seats on the Polk County Board of Education will be partisan affairs. Anyone who wants to run for one of the three seats up for grabs has to choose between publicly embracing one of the two main parties, or fighting to get on the ballot as an unaffiliated candidate. Which isn’t all that...

Shane Varndore has been a tree guy for pretty much his entire life. But he doesn’t just saw them down and it’s not fair to reduce what he does for a living to just getting rid of inconvenient vegetation. I wouldn’t have asked him to be part of Polk Lore if that was the case. We’ve known each for quite a while, and I guess he’s learned to trust me enough to sit down for an honest talk about trees,...

Overseeing a rural hospital isn’t exactly a soft landing as you prepare for the retirement phase of your career. But that's the path Bill Miller has chosen for himself. More than a hundred and ninety rural hospitals in the U.S. have closed since two thousand five. According to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, thirty percent of the ones that are still accepting patients are...

There are only four big cities in the U.S. where buying a house makes more economic sense than renting. Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Houston. Everywhere else, investing in a home is way out of reach for just about everyone who doesn’t make most of their money from surfing the stock market. I’ve been planning an episode devoted to the affordable housing problem since I began this podcast,...

The big news on the education front in Polk County is the end of non-partisan elections for the school board. In a move that almost no one in the county thought was an even marginally bright idea, the state legislature voted this summer to make elections for seats on the Board of Education partisan races. Like it not changes are on the way for Polk Schools. So, I thought it would be a good time to...

More than 50 years ago, on Christmas Eve of 1968, as Apollo 8 rounded the far side of the moon, astronaut William Anders grabbed a camera and snapped a picture of the Earth as it slipped into view. That photograph, “Earth Rise,” is one of the most influential images ever created. It changed the way we thought about our place in the universe and helped launch the modern environmental movement.   Bu...

Talia Petoia, who had just turned 27, was shot and killed, reportedly by her boyfriend, 21-year-old Tyler Laughter, on March 10, in Mill Spring. Within a few days, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office announced that the killing was accidental — an unintentional discharge while handling a gun. Three months later, following a grand jury hearing, the district attorney indicted Talia’s boyfriend with invo...

There’s new non-profit community-minded organization in your part of the world dedicated to improving your life and those of the people around you. The new organization is called “On Track Saluda.” Its mission is to raise the quality of life in Saluda — and hopefully set an example for the rest of the county — by supplying guidance on how and what we eat, how much we get outside and play, and how...

One of my favorite pieces of wisdom comes from Garrett Hardin, an American ecologist who wrote “you cannot do only one thing." What he meant is that everything is connected with everything else, and that anything we do will have unintended consequences. He was writing first and foremost about the environment, but I like the line because it really a rule for understanding how we organize socie...

For as long as I can remember, Polk County has wanted its own YMCA. There’s one in Hendersonville, and Asheville, Greenville, and Spartanburg all have at least one branch. There’s even Ys in Black Mountain and Marion. The Spartanburg Y runs some programs here, and Camp Skyuka dates back to the 1950s. But what people really want is an indoor pool. Of the 3,000-odd people who filled out a survey las...