Let them eat falafel

Almost two months after receiving an eviction notice, the Ali Baba restaurant is still serving up assorted Middle Eastern dishes at its shoebox-size site in the Grove Arcade. The restaurant’s owners aren’t taking the order lying down. They’ve filed a lawsuit charging the arcade’s management with breach of the 10-year lease. And on Sept. 15, […]

Garden Journal

Shroomin’: The Asheville Mushroom Club presents a mushroom fair and exhibit at the North Carolina Arboretum on Saturday, Oct. 6, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The program will introduce the great variety of fungi growing in Western North Carolina and offer a chance to get outside and explore mushrooms in the landscape. Small-group collecting […]

Buncombe County Commission­ers

Imaginineering Buncombe: Commissioners David Gantt (left) and David Young pitch ideas during a brainstorming session at last week’s retreat. In the background, Planner Cynthia Barklow takes notes. photo by jonathan welch With little fanfare, the Buncombe County commissioners voted unanimously to cancel Progress Energy’s long-term, dollar-per-year lease of river frontage in Woodfin. Approved Jan. 16, […]

Tried and true

Few local enterprises have enjoyed the kind of widespread, ongoing support and kudzu-like growth achieved by the nonprofit Organic Growers School. The annual event’s wide-ranging classes and workshops draw enthusiastic, standing-room-only crowds. Each March, upward of 1,000 teachers and students gather for an intensive, daylong exchange of knowledge about organic agriculture. Sheep thrills: The Organic […]

Miles away

Deborah Miles, founder and director of the Center for Diversity Education at UNCA, was recently awarded the 2007 Evan Mahaney Champion of Civil Liberties Award from the Western North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “We are honoring Debbie for conceiving and operating this decade-old program, which has won many awards and wide […]

The Garden Journal

Heritage Crafts Weekend: The North Carolina Arboretum’s newly renovated Heritage Garden presents a weekend of demonstrations, plant sales and musical performances on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 22 and 23, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. Handmade products will be available for purchase, and regional nurseries will sell plants used in heritage-craft traditions. The […]

Old dogs, new tricks

While tuning his guitar during a visit to WPVM’s studios for a recent live radio performance, Chris Smither said: “The biggest change I’ve seen in music during my career is that people [play] in tune now. You listen to some of the old vinyl records, and it jumps out at you: They couldn’t tune their […]