Editor’s note: This is the sixth “Life in Seely’s Castle” tale. All are available, with photos, at mountainx.com or gospeljerry.com. A lot of people let their hair down in my castle, but Rapunzel never did. No, the answer to the third-most-frequently-asked question about my former residence lay deep in the bowels of the ominous, imposing […]

Editor’s note: This is the fifth installment of Jerry Sternberg’s continuing “Life in Seely’s Castle” saga. The earlier pieces are available on the Xpress website or at www.gospeljerry.com (which also contains additional photos of the castle and its furnishings). Fred Seely, a teetotaler, would have turned over in his grave if he’d known that I […]

Editor’s note: For the first two installments of this continuing saga, see “Seely’s Castle, an Asheville Wonder” (May 9 Xpress) and “Buying Seely’s Castle” (June 20). The first question people would ask when they heard about my acquiring Seely’s Castle was “What’s it like living in that place?” The answer was, “Actually we just camp […]

I am about to commit an act of blasphemy that will rival Salman Rushdie's insult to the Prophet Muhammad and may create an equivalent firestorm. But before you start heating the tar buckets and fetch the rail, please keep in mind that at this point, I am merely postulating, not advocating. Still, with March Madness […]

As I begin my ninth decade of living in Asheville and reflect upon holiday memories from my youth, I find an interesting dichotomy. Here are a couple of examples. I’ve written about attending the city schools in the 1930s and ’40s and my discomfort at having to endure daily Christian prayers and Bible readings as […]

Watching the children scurry around getting ready for school again, I can’t help but remember my own first entrance into that huge, gleaming-white, Merrimon Avenue monolith known as Claxton School some 74 years ago. I had lived in the neighborhood for two years, and now I was finally ready to join my older pals as […]

For some time now, I've been reflecting on the astonishing visit of our president and first lady, who chose Asheville to enjoy a brief respite from the unbelievably trying duties of the office of president and the leadership of the free world. It's significant that these two people of color chose to stay at the […]

The recent discussions among Asheville's "progressive-leaning" City Council members have cooked up some real food for thought. In a recent City Council meeting, Council member Gordon Smith made an eloquent appeal to provide city employees with same-gender partners — I don't agree with labeling them "same-sex partners," because we can't assume that they have sex […]

I am mad as hell about the Airport Authority delegation's $13,000 trip to sunny Hawaii in the dead of winter to attend the Aviation Issues Conference. I'm not mad because the delegation went to Hawaii; I'm mad because the local press irresponsibly sensationalized the issue. They served up this red herring to a populace already […]

When I attended UNC-Chapel Hill in the late '40s, most students viewed the holiday season as a time to relax. For me it represented economic opportunity. My parents had saved to pay my college expenses, but I was responsible for earning my spending money. My first year home from college, a close family friend gave […]

They should put huge, bright-colored condoms on all those phallic symbols standing in front of the Buncombe County Courthouse on the old City/County Plaza to remind the public what the Pack Square Conservancy has done to the community. This $8-million project to turn a park into a park has already cost $16 million in public […]