AK's Column: National Poetry Month and mental health reflections

Washington Post critic Michael Dirda said it best in an article in early March, “In a time of crisis, poetry can help focus our fears and transform ‘noise into music.'" He writes, poetry “nourishes us, it contributes to our grieving and our healing processes, it gives focus to our loves and to our fears, allowing us to sing them, at the back of our minds, in a deliberate and disciplined transformation of noise into music, of grief into acceptance, of anger at pointless destruction into a determination to save at least something of what remains.”

County library policy comes under scrutiny for religious, political groups

A Davidson County library policy could be crossing the line after one mother alleges she was not allowed to set up her foster care display at an Easter egg hunt. Genevieve Traversy said a staff member pointed to a cross on her hat and shirt before referring to a policy that prohibits political and religious organizations from setting up on library property.