The year 2024 has been a difficult one for many people. It has been stressful for most of us, but I’m better off than a lot of people. Here’s a brief review of 2024 from my viewpoint in North Carolina.

Travel: My sister and I took advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic being over and vaccines continuing to be available – along with relatively good health – and we took trips to Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Cherokee in the western part of NC as well as a long-anticipated return trip to the Outer Banks of NC in the early part of the summer.

We visited Boone and the campus of our alma mater, Appalachian State University, just two weeks before much of western NC was ravaged by Hurricane Helene. We continue to count our blessings that we did our traveling in the months and weeks before the hurricane.

Hurricane Helene: September brought a “perfect storm” of days of heavy rain followed by Hurricane Helene to western North Carolina. It is the most destructive storm to hit the state in recorded history. The statistics and photographs are impossible to get one’s head around.

Of the 1,329 roads that were closed due to the flooding and landslides on September 25-26, 183 of them remain closed as of Friday, including Interstate 40 near the border with Tennessee.

I saw a video made on Wednesday of several miles of US-19 in Ramseytown, NC. You can’t even tell there was ever a road there, and it is unimaginable that the little Cane River running alongside it is capable of rising so high and doing so much damage.

Last week, 10,000 tulip bulbs were delivered to Swannanoa, NC – a gift from the head of a bulb company in The Netherlands. Next April, Swannanoa will look quite different than it has since September 25^th!

People from all over the US and world have pulled together to help western NC begin to recover from the September storm. I’ve tried to highlight examples in my weekly blog posts. I’m not equipped to show the full picture. I’ve merely tried to keep a light shining on the situation as it disappears from the news headlines.

US Presidential Election: We survived a US Presidential campaign that seemed to last for a decade. Now we’ll get to see if our democracy and our country’s long-standing ties with other countries will survive the results.

Award for my local history books: I received The North Carolina Society of Historians Journalism Award of Excellence for Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1 and Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2 in November.

My Writing: I’ve made a lot of progress over the last couple of months on my devotional book, I Need The Light: 26 Weekly Devotionals to Help You Through the Cold Months. Work continues on my historical novel with the working title The Heirloom. Stay tuned!

If you haven’t subscribed to my e-newsletter yet, please click on the “Subscribe” button on my website: https://www.janetmorrisonbooks.com. You’ll receive a free downloadable copy of my historical short story, “Slip Sliding Away” and my e-newsletters.

In November I changed my newsletter from a several-page every-other-month format to a short weekly email.

Social Media: Technology is still pulling me into the 21^st century, but I’m kicking and screaming. My new endeavor this year was Instagram. I try to share quotes I like (many of them from books I’ve read), information about my website and blog, as well as publicity for my books. I’m trying not to not come across too salesy.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

I hope you’ve had an enjoyable holiday season so far.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina where it is mighty cold for the next several months.

Happy New Year!

Janet