Roy McCrerey stepped off a bus in Asheville’s Pritchard Park to resounding applause and the beat of a bluegrass band. Banners on the bus read “Support the Five Day Weekend,” and McCrerey’s message was simple. He told Xpress, “This is a grassroots movement beginning in Asheville that we expect will sweep the nation!” The weekend’s […]
Author: Cecil Bothwell
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When bees sneeze
Black Mountain beekeeper Ed Buchanan has lost 150 of his 400 hives in the past two years. “Part of it was starvation,” he says. “We didn’t have a good fall flow of goldenrod and aster. The other part was due to CCD.” (Colony collapse disorder is a mysterious malady that’s wiping out honeybees on at […]
Garden Journal
Label conscious: Margaret McGinnis and Tim Charles of Fork Mountain Farm, in Marshall, wrote Xpress to say, “We have decided to certify our produce through ‘Certified Naturally Grown’ (www.naturallygrown.org) rather than become certified organic through the federal government. For many small farmers the cost and time requirements of [organic certification] are unrealistic and unmanageable. The […]
Earthship revisited
Stan and Pattie Frost Jones were in the midst of constructing their Madison County earthship when Xpress first visited the site in October 2003 (see “Earthship Space: Local Couple Building Dream Home Out of Tires,” Aug. 3, 2005 Xpress). Three-and-a-half years later, the decidedly nontraditional house has surpassed the owner/builders’ expectations in multiple ways. Trash […]
The Riceville forest and the trees
Managers of the National Forest are familiar with the Shopes Creek forest and intend to log it. The area is one of the Asheville area’s great “secret” recreational sites.
What’s a farmer to do?
The April freeze left many WNC farmers facing brown blossoms and bleak prospects for the 2007 growing season. Help is on the way.
A sustainable-energy future? SEE Expo wants your ideas
Is a sustainable-energy future in reach? Can we fashion a high-tech civilization that doesn’t rely on technologies that foul our planetary nest? Can your personal energy choices make a difference?
Asheville Home Builders organize a zoning swarm
The Asheville Home Builders Association is recruiting members to make a strong showing at the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners’ public hearing on proposed zoning on Tuesday, April 24.
Buncombe Board of Commissioners preview: April 24 hearing
Zoning is on the front burner next Tuesday when the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners holds a public hearing on proposed county zoning.
Asheville’s next urban park?
A group of downtown residents is urging the city of Asheville to convert city property in front of the Civic Center into a new urban park.
Holism in the hills
The Prama Institute, a new seminar and retreat center located near Marshall, plans to make a splashy debut. Grand-opening events include a poetry reading and workshop with lauded wordsmith Robert Bly film screenings with Palestinian director Hanna Elias. Head space: The Prama Institute’s Sid Jordan, left, and Ramesh Bjonnes in one of the facility’s dome-shaped […]
Garden Journal
Madison’s wonders: Garden writer Edmund Taylor reports, “All of you sophisticates from the big city need to come to the hinterlands of Madison County to see what us yeoman, backwoodsmen and women can do with a pick and a few sticks of dynamite. Believe it or not, Madison has more to offer horticulturally than ramps, […]
America works best when America works less
“Asheville is one of the few places in the country that gets it. This is a place where people realize there is more to life than busting your butt in a cubicle.”
An airport runs through it
Robert Branberg, of Anderson, S.C., recently discovered that he is part-owner of a jetport in Madison County, or rather, he owns part of a jetport. Specifically, he appears to hold title to a hundred feet or so of the middle of a runway.
Buncombe County Commission
The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners tossed off a thin agenda in short order at their April 2 session. The high point of the meeting came when Swannanoa resident Eric Gorney, a former candidate for a seat on the board, presented Commissioner David Young with a pair of pink flip-flops. During the public-comment period, Gorney […]
The lease of our worries
An April 2 decision by Woodfin’s Zoning Board of Adjustment has at least temporarily derailed Progress Energy’s plan to build a diesel-fired power plant on land adjacent to the old Buncombe County landfill. But the company still holds a $1-per-year, long-term lease on the property as well as an option to eventually buy it. Power-less […]
Widespread panegyric
The soundtrack on Golden Gate Gallery’s MySpace page is from Dead Can Dance and sounds for all the world like Jim Morrison. Dead. Tour art is for everybody: Jay Blakesberg doesn’t just photograph jam bands, but has also captured the likes of Ani DiFranco and Emmylou Harris. Scroll down. Jerry Garcia, deadx2. Neil Young, pending […]
Garden Journal
Very fair trade: Too many zucchini starts and not enough tomatoes? Irises want thinning and you need some hostas for that shady corner? Asheville LETS is holding a Seedling Swap & Potluck at Montford’s Magnolia Park on Sunday, April 15, at 1 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, but if you […]
Cooper Boulevard trailer owners evicted in West Asheville
Residents of the Monticello mobile home park, threatened with eviction a year ago to make way for a Wal-Mart SuperCenter, are being forced out to make way for an unidentified developer.
Maxwell Street accounting error?
Greenlife Grocery promised to pay for repairs to Maxwell Street’s sidewalk, but the city of Asheville never sent them a bill.
Making the grade
If present trends continue, more than a quarter of the roughly 2,000 ninth-graders expected to enroll in the Buncombe County Schools this fall won’t graduate from high school. Higher ed: Asheville AVID students (from left) Tiara Talford, J.D. Conwell and John Mattos work on college applications in the high school computer lab. photos by Cecil […]