Buncombe Commission­ers

Sheriff’s Office reports increased calls for service, decreased response time County still working on reinstating zoning Tensions ran high at the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners’ April 21 meeting. Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources were there to talk about ongoing efforts to clean up […]

A family affair

[Editor’s note: The historic gathering of the Oklahoma-based Cherokee Nation and Western North Carolina’s Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians April 16 to 18 unleashed a cascading array of images, memories and deep emotions. The following text and photos aim to convey something of the essence of the event.] Click here to view slideshow Music by […]

Nips and tucks

Asheville’s budget for the next fiscal year will come in at around $135 million, Chief Financial Officer Ben Durant predicts. And if City Council approves the budget he’ll propose on May 12, it will be balanced, with revenues equaling expenditures. That’s an accomplishment even in a good year, but all the more so given that […]

National Parkinson’­s Awareness Month

April is National Parkinson’s Awareness Month Parkinson’s disease—a central nervous system disorder—currently affects more than 1.5 million people in the U.S. Sixty thousand Americans are diagnosed every year. There is no cure. The major symptoms include tremors, rigidity, an inability to balance and slowness of motion. Medication can mask the symptoms but can’t control the […]

The Green Scene

Not enough, say residents frustrated by a proposed agreement with CTS Corp. for cleaning up contamination at its former Mills Gap Road manufacturing site. A 1987 North Carolina law caps participating companies’ liability in such cleanups at that amount. Contained? Fences don’t prevent toxic vapors—produced by the suspected carcinogen trichloroethylene—from reaching residents living near the […]

Spork

It won’t get much hotter than this: Asheville’s Latin dance community is joining up for a massive Cinco de Mayo celebration. Come to watch and/or come to dance—each group will perform, followed by a set of music designed for dancing and mingling. Salseros 828 brings together a dozen different types of Latin music and dance […]

A dinner to remember

Prom is all about firsts: A first dress with a triple-digit price tag. A first evening out without curfew. And, for most teens, a first grappling with the question that nightly nags a vast majority of American adults: “Where should we eat?” Prom is a culinary rite of passage, marking high schoolers’ formal induction into […]

Outdoors: The Practical Fly

I was in seventh grade when I caught my first trout on a fly, using a royal coachman. Lee Wulff, the warrior god of modern fly-fishing, improved on this classic pattern, substituting hair for wings and tail (to make it more buoyant, durable and easier to see in rough water) and dubbing it the royal […]

Graffiti is in the eye of the beholder

Doesn’t it seem like we are striving for excellence in our artistic community? What is being traded in for depth of substance? I have traveled all over this country and seen some of the best graffiti. But with a lot of the “art” communities in this town, graffiti turns into the same ol’-same ol’ clique […]

Going green, greener, greenest

Are Asheville folks really interested in going green? In celebration of Earth Day, I attended the Leadership Asheville Forum’s “Going GREEN at Home and at Work” presentation. I listened attentively to the three male speakers and the questions that followed. One woman asked what could be done for existing structures to make them more environmentally […]

Will MHO follow its mission?

Mountain Housing Opportunities has proposed building a three-story, 64-unit apartment complex in the middle of a single-family neighborhood in small-town Waynesville. While they have met the letter of Waynesville zoning law, they are not meeting the spirit or intent of their own mission statement, which is to “to build and improve homes, neighborhoods, communities … […]