Zeb Vance: Indeed, no simple man A few thoughts on your recent article entitled “Zeb Vance: No Simple Man” [Jan. 19]. Although Gordon McKinney’s biography no doubt sheds new light on aspects of Vance’s life that have heretofore received less attention, the accomplishments of this great North Carolinian should not be obscured by viewing them […]
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Forest creatures
I was sitting on the edge of a high plateau in Wales, looking out over wide spaces to the sea. It was October, and a stiff breeze blew down the slope. A single little trailer sold hot tea and biscuits. The tea tasted sweet and strong; the biscuits made being outside in this new landscape […]
The Leandro ‘have to’ list
Superior Court Judge Howard E. Manning Jr. doesn’t look or sound much like the Disney version of Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother. Yet this image came to mind recently after Judge Manning invoked the story of Cinderella in his continuing oversight of the Leandro case. The Leandro decisions are the most important N.C. Supreme Court rulings in […]
Wedding Date
If you saw the previews, you’ve already seen every cute moment in Wedding Date, a lackluster attempt to gender twist the fairy tale, Pretty Woman. This clunker is about as charming as a bride and groom smashing one another in the kisser with wedding cake — it’s not romantic, and the act is so blatantly […]
Night vision
Like most women artists of her generation, Marie Hudson did not go from high school to art school. Taking a Spin, oil on canvas, by Marie Hudson Dusty Benedict, her first art teacher, remembers the two years Hudson came to his classes: “She was always apologizing about being messy. I told her that was a […]
The junk journal
News For the far-left-field news item of the week, Asheville’s favorite guitar-slinging teddy bear, Warren Haynes, inexplicably assembled a ridiculously cash-money crew to serve as house band on former MTV pretty boy Carson Daly‘s late-night NBC show, Last Call. In addition to Warren and drummer Matt Abts from Gov’t Mule, the superhero ensemble included John […]
Cartoons
Advice on handling family problems (from brides who’ve been there)
So, you and your betrothed have announced your engagement. Having expressed their joy with dewy emotion, the members of your family have proceeded to go — in a word — bonkers. Now, your mom is phoning three times a day with ideas for your dress. Your dad has added 18 members of his “Lodge” to […]
Wedding Guide: Alternative ceremonies
In an atomized, secularized world, it’s one of our few remaining communal rites — romance’s last refuge from the brutal mundane. But despite what the glossy bridal magazines imply, The Wedding Ceremony doesn’t have to be all organ swells, organdy veils and endlessly organized seating details. It’s your day — why not play it your […]
Something old, something new
Image-making as a human endeavor has altered little over most of recorded history. Perhaps because implements for making marks on a surface — sticks, charcoal, graphite, pigments and brushes — have, themselves, hardly changed. But depiction took a big leap in the 19th century with the discovery that images could be created using light-sensitive materials. […]
Nine lives of an Allman
As far as the canon of rock icons go, Gregg Allman is undoubtedly in a league all his own: The self-described “meat-and-taters type blues man” has just about seen it all in his 57 years. The band that shares his name — the literal founding fathers of the continually regenerating Southern-rock genre — has often […]
The junk journal
News • Taking its cue from WNCW DJ Lee Miller and his excellent weekly program, Local Color (Fridays 9-10 p.m.), newcomers WPVM 103.5 FM have added their own weekly locals-only showcase called Be Here Now. The show’s moniker rather unhappily recalls the gone-now, sort-of-famous downtown venue of the same name — but the new slot […]
Cartoons
Letters to the editor
Stop bulldozing Broadway’s history It certainly wasn’t the Battle of Gettysburg, but Asheville did feel the taste of war — in the spring of 1865. Yes, there was a battle right here in Asheville, which was the mountain heart of Confederate sentiment. On April 3, 1865, Col. Kirby of the 101st Ohio Infantry was ordered […]
The two faces of gentrification
As Asheville continues to attract newcomers, clean up, refurbish old buildings, and (let’s face it) change, we increasingly read and hear that gentrification has struck. The creative citizens who’ve been downtown’s lifeblood for the past 10 or 20 years are being driven out to make way for rich folks — often moving in from the […]
Asheville City Council
Trees dominated the agenda at the Asheville City Council’s Jan. 18 work session. From a discussion of what to do about a developer in Montford who cut a swath of trees after promising under oath not to, to turning thumbs down on a staff-initiated plan to hire a private firm to craft a forest-management plan […]
Squeezing in more open space
A proposed retooling of the open-space requirements in Asheville’s Unified Development Ordinance could lead to more parks, more greenways, maybe even more sidewalk cafes surrounding denser housing and commercial developments in the city. That’s the hoped-for result of a proposal Planning and Development Director Scott Shuford presented to a wary audience of local developers at […]
Letters to the editor
Co-op provides for community and beyond I would like to publicly thank the French Broad Food Co-op for its recent help to Asheville Playback Theatre’s fundraising efforts. As many know, APT will soon travel to Cuba as part of an international conference and training in Playback forms. It occurred to me as I was shopping […]
Consider This
[Consider This is an e-mail update and analysis put out three times a week by the Common Sense Foundation, a nonpartisan public-policy organization formed in 1994 “to ensure that state government and the political process attend to the interrelated economic, political, social and cultural needs of those who are systematically denied access to power,” according […]
Treasure in the woods
Readers of Xpress might remember a recent Cohencidents cartoon that ran in these pages wherein a frustrated man sits at wit’s end in front of a laptop computer and confesses to his puzzled daughter that he can’t explain “why it takes such a long time to write a short story.” Any scribe who has ever […]
Don’t call it a comeback
To begin this story, we first must ask: What the hell is acid jazz? Well, here’s a quick history lesson in what it’s not: Toward the end of saxophonist John Coltrane’s life in the mid-1960s, the jazz icon reportedly started taking copious amounts of LSD — a move he saw as consistent with furthering his […]