If there’s no fat lady, does that mean the opera never ends? Asheville Lyric Opera’s Amanda Horton puts tradition to the test. It’s the opera that made Luciano Pavarotti famous. Could the Asheville Lyric Opera production of L’Elisir d’Amore (The Elixir of Love) vaunt one of its moonlighting divas to stardom? Or at least let […]
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Cartoons
Man of the woods
Timeless beauty: Bernard Elias’ 1970 photograph of Cold Mountain. photo by Bernard Elias When I moved to Asheville, the first book I read about the area was Strangers in High Places by Michael Frome. Among the many pictures sprinkled throughout the book was a familiar face, that of Bernard Elias. At nearly 88 years old, […]
Letters to the editor
Culture Watch blind-sided Roberson I appreciate your usual good judgment and decent arts-and-culture reportage, from which our organization and our members have often benefited. In fact, the existence of your newspaper itself was one reason that our organization chose Asheville as the host city for the Stoneleaf Theatre Festival. Our organization and many of our […]
Do not pass go
Preventing the massive exodus of college graduates from a small city like Asheville is always a concern. But there’s not enough talk about another migration of local young people — the ones who will disappear unnoticed into the new, slate-colored building going up behind the courthouse downtown. Even as work continues on the jail annex, […]
Wading in wonder
When we hear about streams and rivers these days, it’s often in the context of conservation and preservation. But there’s a deeper magic to these waterways that children of all ages still respond to. When I was a small child growing up in Dillingham, N.C., where Big Creek flows from the Coleman Boundary up above, […]
Letters to the editor
Bump-and-grind traffic’s not so calming Jerry Sternberg is so right about traffic-calming devices. They make me mad too! [“Round and Round We Go,” Oct. 11 Commentary]. In addition to the points he mentioned — public streets belong to everyone, requests for such devices are random — there are a few more problems with traffic humps […]
Dig dem taters
One potato, two potato, new potato, purple potato? When we lived in Florida, organic produce wasn’t really on my radar. Occasionally I would notice an organic item or two in the produce section while shopping. Here in Western North Carolina, organic products are ubiquitous — local grocery stores carry organic cleaning agents, organic dog treats […]
Undermining a basic right
Some of our Asheville neighbors are paying more than three times as much for their water-and-sewer service as other city residents. If that weren’t enough of a disadvantage, those neighbors live in a mobile-home park, many are surviving on minimum-wage jobs, and others are disabled seniors. When a proposed Wal-Mart project threatened to displace the […]
Don’t let the pedal steel fool you
Who said there’s not big bucks in alt-country? The boys of Okkervil River with some of their most hardcore fans. photo by Mary Sledd On the eve of its current tour, the Austin, Texas, band Okkervil River released the provocatively titled single, “The President Is Dead.” In keeping with the band’s catalog, the song isn’t […]
Cartoons
Where is his mind?
He’s got his good thing: Frank Black is a big man with a little ukulele. photo by Michael Halsband Frank Black, a roots rocker? Frank Black, the Pixies front man who menacingly called himself Black Francis? Frank Black, born Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV, the man who helped create the quiet-verse/loud-chorus dynamic that laid the […]
Desperate Housewares
Frank Gehry’s “Power Play” club chair is made of bent wood. Much to the amazement of non-philatelists, stamp collectors aren’t all the same. While one collector thrills to triangle-shaped stamps, another relentlessly hunts stamps from former Communist countries. Still another devoted hobbyist might confine her collecting to stamps featuring airplanes (printed upside-down, if she’s lucky.) […]
One giant step for American art
Matron Saint of Multimedia: The evereccentric Laurie Anderson. In a pop-culture landscape where tried-and-true formulas often steamroll creativity and originality, Laurie Anderson stands out. There is simply no one else like her — not in pop music, not in the visual arts, not anywhere. For more than 25 years, Anderson has been smashing the boundaries […]
Cartoons
A place for everything
An eastern red cedar called my name the other day. It was hidden behind a group of other trees on a warm, dry slope at The North Carolina Arboretum. Overshadowed now by the brightly colored maples, sourwoods and dogwoods around it, this evergreen beauty will stand tall in the winter landscape. The eastern red cedar, […]
Save the planet (and your bank account): Buy secondhand stuff
What a deal: Paddler Marie Graven shows off her find. photo by Anna Ferguson If you’re like me, you break out in a sweat whenever a new gear catalog arrives. But since I don’t have a bazillion dollars to spend on such stuff, leafing through those glossy pages sparks desires my pocketbook can’t satisfy. So […]
Letters to the editor
Free bus, no service In these times of high gas prices and poor air quality, I choose to forego owning a car and take public transit. For nine years, I have been able to make this work, but lately I find it an inconvenience. On the evening of Aug. 31, a friend drove me to […]
Poverty plagues our youngest citizens
Better to stoke the public’s fear of immigrants than to talk about poverty and health care. The recently released Census Bureau numbers ought to ignite a state policy debate about health care, poverty and family income, but don’t count on it. Those issues don’t seem to find their way into many of the campaign speeches […]
Gallery gossip
• Looks like Neighborhood Housing Services has hit on a real winner with its Doors of Asheville benefit. This year, the group will auction off 10 full-sized doors and 21 other works. They’re offering a free preview — as well as wine and hors d’oeuvres — at the Grove Arcade on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. […]
Tao of the Dawg
Beware of the Dawg: David Grisman isn’t afraid to mix genres. 30 Years of Dawg Music. That’s the subtitle for Dawg’s Groove — one of two new albums David Grisman is releasing simultaneously this month. Yes, 30 years have passed since Grisman first formed the David Grisman Quintet — the pioneering acoustic-string ensemble that took […]