It is ridiculous that you still print any letters on the topic of bicycles vs. motor vehicles. By now we all know the differences between these, and we understand the various nuances of their coexistence on public roads. There is nothing to be gained from printing the same complaints over and over. There are risks […]
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Bland Ho!
Weekly Asheville Disclaimer Page: 01/27/10
• Briefs
• Kid Care with Arnold
• World’s largest puzzle
• Craigslist Asheville
Tourists get new owner
Just south of downtown sits McCormick Field, Asheville's very own "field of dreams," where Babe Ruth and many other baseball legends have left their footprints. Home to the minor-league Asheville Tourists, it's our Wrigley Field or Fenway Park. So when it was announced Jan. 5 that Palace Sports Entertainment had sold the ball club to […]
Stories of coal
In the battle to stop mountaintop removal in Appalachia, Grammy Award-winning singer Kathy Mattea is firmly entrenched in the center of the dialogue. Answering the call: While "singing is like breathing," the challenges of advocacy and activism are "much more involved," says Mattea. Photo by James Minchin. "I'm living in the question of how we […]
Junker’s Blues
"Lo, there shall come an ending!" – Stan Lee What has transpired: Having spent hours carefully sorting through a mixed bag of records and then carelessly leaving the whole batch behind to pick up the next day, the junker finds his labors benefiting another when his deal is blocked by the son-in-law of the collection's […]
Come health or high water
In 1992, while working for a suburban New York newspaper, I wrote a story about a woman who had to go deep into debt to get surgery for a thyroid condition. She's probably still paying it off. The point of the story was that 16 million Americans lacked health insurance. But Bill Clinton had just […]
Shame on you, Xpress
Times may be tough, but that's no reason to abandon your basic mission — publicly stated — and your historic role in town. When a group of volunteers, Americorps people, and professional builders and construction tradespeople come together to funnel funds from a federal program to weatherize homes in West Asheville, free, while training at-risk […]
Airport board’s Hawaii trip doesn’t fly with me
As a 36-year veteran of attending and making decisions to not attend such optional conferences or business meetings as a senior executive working for several Fortune 10 companies, it is apparent that the recent decision by the Asheville airport board to attend the meeting satisfied their personal agendas of being in Hawaii during the winter […]
Cyclists more at risk than car drivers
In a recent letter to Xpress, Howard Shepherd asserts that if "cyclists want to be taken seriously as vehicles" then they must act like vehicles, obeying the same traffic laws as cars, trucks and SUVs [Jan. 6]. In almost all respects, his point is well taken. The easiest way for me and my road bike […]
A bike-friendly Asheville would be more liveable
This is perplexing: While many forward-thinking and growing cities large and small — such as Portland, Louisville and New York City — are making bicycle transit a high priority, Asheville has become a national hotbed of anti-bicycling sentiments that have boiled over to hostility for some. Or so it seems from reading some of the […]
The homeless aren’t the problem, but delinquents are
Being homeless does not make someone bad, but being violent, drunk and hostile does make them a problem. Portraying the delinquents who terrorize the people who live, work and frolic in downtown Asheville as peaceful homeless individuals who have just fallen on hard times and merely want to eat is just plain insulting. It's insulting […]
Weekly Asheville Disclaimer Page: 01/20/10
• 12th-gayest city
• Briefs
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• Fringe Festival
CTS of Asheville contamination
In 1999, neighbors living adjacent to former electroplating facility called CTS of Asheville discovered an oily substance in their drinking water. When the Environmental Protection Agency responded, they found levels of trichloroethylene, a toxic substance and suspected carcinogen, at 21,000 parts per billion: more than 4,000 times the safe standard for potable water. Those neighbors […]
Review of The Big Bang at ACT
The aerobic performance of The Big Bang‘s two actors and their sheer indulgence in the silly is a wonderful prescription for the mid-winter blahs.
Tale of a takedown
"Today our right to free speech was stolen," an indignant Kathie Lack declared. She serves as chair of the Buncombe County Republican Action Club, a small activist offshoot of the local Republican Party. Whodunnit?: After a billboard sponsored by the Republican Action Club was defaced with graffiti in November 2008, then Buncombe County Republican Party […]
Artillery
When Anna Thompson, noticed that the little office space at 10 Walnut St. had been vacated, she wasted no time contacting the property owner with an ambitious plan. Within a month of finalizing details, Thompson has created The Project Gallery, an art space that will be holding its first opening reception this Friday, Jan 15, […]
Christmas fades
It's that time of year when people really start whining — about the season, the weather, the dark, the temperature or post-holiday depression. The closest I've come to any sort of resolution, though, is to try to embrace all that the darkness has given (or taken away). Somehow, embracing the dark seems to hold more […]
Thanks to those who helped a Helpmate volunteer
As a volunteer on the crisis line for Helpmate, a local domestic-violence agency and shelter, I once received a call from a woman wanting to leave an abuser and move in with friends in a different state. However, she lacked sufficient funds to pay for the gas to get her there. Helpmate offers many incredible […]
Why WPVM is now MAIN-FM
A few of our listeners [at the radio station formerly known as WPVM] called during our holiday fund drive to ask why we've begun to refer the radio station as MAIN-FM rather than by the call letters as we used to, so I thought I'd take a moment to explain. It has always been MAIN's […]
Weekly Asheville Disclaimer Page: 01/13/10
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