About 30 Asheville High School students skipped class today to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq — part of a national day of student action against the war. Students carried signs and chanted while marching from the school to Pritchard Park and along sidewalks through downtown.
At its regular session on Tuesday, March 20, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners will hear from Sheriff Van Duncan on changes in his department and consider: support for Beaucatcher Overlook Park, creation of a Farmland Preservation Plan, tightening animal-control regs and new restrictions on peep-show booths at adult establishments.
Linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky will visit Asheville, albeit virtually, March 19 and 23.
Starting March 16, nighttime checkpoints will be set up across the city of Asheville to check for seat-belt-law compliance. Information Officer John Dankel warns, “Anyone who is caught not wearing a seat belt will be ticketed and fined — no excuses.”
Rubidia Carballo, the Roberson High School student threatened with deportation to her native country of El Salvador, has apparently won her case.
Despite a threat of legal action by the developer of the largest single residential project in Buncombe County history, the Board of Commissioners once again approved sharp restrictions on multifamily construction at higher elevations during a special session held March 8 to allow a second reading of the ordinance. It was originally passed Feb. 27 […]
April may be the cruelest month for poets, but for Western North Carolina gardeners, March takes the cake. Winter water: This 6-foot-diameter pond will be hopping with life in April. photo by Cecil Bothwell Springlike days abound, weeds sprout like mad, and you itch to get your fingers into the soil. Yet you know that […]
Curricular roots: The Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project, with funding from the N.C. Health and Wellness Trust Fund, is doling out seeds and supplies to area schools for their garden projects. Through its Growing Minds project, ASAP has helped launch garden projects at Asheville High School, Evergreen Charter School, Hall Fletcher Academy and elementary schools including […]
Following Saturday’s performance by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Diana Wortham Theatre, his reputation got a standing ovation from many people in the audience. It’s been 50 years since MCDC performed in this valley—all too soon for this dance lover.
Two local environmental groups are considering legal action against the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners to overturn a cut-rate lease granted to Progress Energy to site a controversial new power plant. The Canary Coalition and the Mountain Voices Alliance say the commissioners’ action violated the state’s open-meetings law and ignored the potential impacts on county […]
Merce Cunningham recreated dance, taking it from movement intended to relate a narrative to an organic outgrowth of a body’s natural flow. However, once the internationally famed choreographer developed his method and style—after he trained dancers to execute precise spinal arcs, steps, leaps and bends, he did the unthinkable: He flipped a coin. And the […]
Classes for the masses: The 14th annual Organic Growers School will be held at Blue Ridge Community College on Saturday, March 10, from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The school offers a full day of workshops in all aspects of private and commercial growing. This year there are 69 different sessions, with topics as diverse […]
The city of Asheville wants your help crafting a plan to make the city more bike-friendly. The plan will be the focus of a meeting this Thursday afternoon.
Buncombe County Attorney Joe Connolly chewed on an unlit cigar and shook his head as he left the chamber following the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners’ marathon Feb. 20 session. “That’s the longest one in the time I’ve been here,” he said. A lengthy agenda coupled with massive public opposition to the board’s recent decision […]
First, see the show info below. Dial the number. Make your reservation. I’ll wait. Haywood Arts Regional Theatre’s production of john & jen is a stunner, with actors Melodie Galloway and Mark Jones delivering nonpareil vocal performances. The show is staged in Waynesville’s Performing Arts Center in the tiny Feichter Studio, a setting that heightens […]
Wayne Smith walked into the Xpress office and presented his card: “World Gravity Commission. Conservation research.” Uh-oh. Conserving gravity? Is he a member of the Flat Earth Society, too?
Opposition to Progress Energy’s proposed power plant in Woodfin gained a new ally last week, when members of Rising Tide, an activist group concerned with climate change, strung a banner atop a Woodfin billboard. Nine Asheville police cruisers arrived on the scene and removed the protestors and their banner with help from a fire department […]
Riding a bicycle to school isn’t all that unusual. But when the classroom is a passive-solar, earth-sheltered, cordwood-masonry and rammed-earth greenhouse on 600 acres in the backwoods of Western North Carolina and home is in Portland, Ore. … well, that’s a commute of a different color. Green is one that quickly comes to mind. The […]
Enduring connections to family, friends, memory and place shape the groove that growls and whispers in Greg Brown’s songs. The molasses voice, the tempered twists of tale, the gentle humor and that heart—a heart brimming like a slow river after a summer rain—draw you into his circle, to sit a while, to remember. Brown’s new […]
The Wall Street Journal reports that Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. has used a complicated property-ownership scheme to duck taxes in 25 states, including North Carolina. A story in the Feb. 1 issue of the Journal says that “North Carolina tax authorities are challenging Wal-Mart, saying its REIT strategy was intended to ‘distort [the company’s] true net income,’ according to its filings in the case in Superior Court in Raleigh, N.C.”
Mountain Voices Alliance will offer a community forum on development issues in southeast Buncombe County at the Fairview Community Center on Saturday, Feb. 10, from 10 a.m. to noon.
