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Preserving plant healers
Fellow gardener/garden writer Victoria Maddux recently shared a horrifying story about her and her husband, John, having been on the receiving end of a swarm of yellow jackets. She described the various treatments they’d used, including meat tenderizer and several homeopathic remedies. Recalling all this later, however, I realized that I’d failed to mention my […]
The Wild Gardener
Thomas Jefferson called the tree mallow the “shrub marshmallow.” In 1807, the then-president planted seeds in his Monticello nursery at the southeastern end of the vegetable garden. Dr. Antoine Gouan (1733-1821) of Montpelier had sent the seeds from France. Gouan, a botanist, introduced binary nomenclature into France; he was also the first to publish a […]
Clogging for dollars
Prize pigs, 600-pound pumpkins, blue-ribbon apple pies and strawberry jams — ah, the state fair, that beloved slice of Americana immortalized in lush Technicolor musicals and cherished in hearts across the generations. That candy-colored sparkle and romantic hum of the midway on a late-summer night. That sweet smell of funnel cakes and fresh … cash? […]
Sweets for the sweet
No panties are thrown on stage at Eddie From Ohio shows. No bras. No hotel-room keys. But one year, right around Thanksgiving, bass/harmonica player and songwriter Michael Clem was surprised with something even sweeter. Literally. Pecan pies. Three of ’em. “They weren’t thrown,” Clem explained by phone from his Virginia home. “We have a little […]
No place like home
Apparently Dorothy had it right. After being swept up in a whirlwind and enduring an odyssey in Oz that turned her perceptions upside down, she finally figured out that … well, you know. These are heady times for the dance arts in Asheville, stirred by the recent influx of splendid new talent. And seeds can […]
Random acts
Fear and loathing in ensemble experiments What: 100 Musician Improv Music NightWhere: The Grey EagleWhen: Thursday, Aug. 21 At $7 a ticket — roughly 14 musicians to the dollar — I figured a 100-musician jam couldn’t be anything but a good deal. Turned out it was merely too good to be true. The flyer promised […]
Cartoons
Late blight
The drought is over! Fungi are ascendant, mold is rampant. Mushroom hunters are delighted — and your tomatoes are probably blighted! Late blight (Phytopthora infestans), the pathogen of Irish Potato Famine infamy, is the likely culprit. It caused a potato-crop failure all across the Emerald Isle (and, by the autumn of 1845, throughout the European […]
The Starbucks stops here
During the 1999 World Trade Organization mass protests in Seattle, Starbucks outlets were looted. On Aug. 13, 2003, seven San Francisco Starbucks sites were also vandalized. Store windows were covered with glue and fake “closed” signs, and mock press releases announcing a mass downsizing of the company were placed outside the stores. Meanwhile, a quick […]
Asheville City Council
“We don’t want it to be like a hotel.” — Council member Joe Dunn, speaking about the county jail annex With the Asheville City Council elections just two months away, Council members have tackled a host of hot-button issues in recent weeks. And the outcomes of those deliberations have not been lost on local voters. […]
Letters to the editor
Asheville needs housing more than parks I like the actual plaza high-rise project better than the Texas-based Grove Park Inn company [Sammons Enterprises] proposing to build it because they wastefully engage in golf. The project is consistent with smart growth, except for the height limit, and will add critically needed, commute-free, residential units to downtown; […]
Asheville City Council
“This smells like the Water Agreement. There are a lot of unanswered questions here. Everybody knows that you don’t get a mail-order bride without first looking at a picture. … The city has done a lousy job getting information to the public.” — Buncombe County resident Don Yelton You know you’re in for a tough […]
Buzzworm news briefs
Me … ow! HENDERSONVILLE — I’ll never be able to look at my cats in the same way again. I’ve always mistaken that long, unblinking stare for a sign of affection. Now, however, I see that it’s anything but — cuddly Bean and sweet Bug are actually sizing me up. We could take him, they’re […]
Letters to the editor
Forget the cars — ticket the hookers! It’s too bad the man in the big, red truck couldn’t do what the Asheville Police can’t seem to do. That is, haul off hookers on Hiawasse Street and Lexington Avenue. It amazes me that every day as I drive by looking for a parking spot in panic […]
Let there be light
“Splendid! Magnificent! Awesome!” is how Henderson County historian par excellence Louise Bailey described Pardee Hospital’s new emergency room. Indeed it is magnificent, Mrs. Bailey, but for reasons beyond the obvious improvements in the health care available to county residents. The visionary architectural design also ushers in a new era for solar buildings in this corner […]
Kewpies’ arrow
Confession time: I was not one of those boys who secretly loved dolls. There was that pre-pubescent naughtiness imposed on a de-accessorized GI Joe and my neighbor’s sister’s Barbie, sure; but beyond that, nothing. So why, then, am I so enamored of Lisa Shenouda’s kewpie-doll photo series Subtle Bodies, which is beginning an extended run […]
Toy story
Exhibit spaces of long standing develop reputations for showing certain kinds of work. An informed visitor to the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway will expect to see well-turned pieces of pottery, furniture, glass or weaving. But not, perhaps, a three-armed, snake-handling doll. The usual skill, craftsmanship and good design aren’t sacrificed in […]
Shouting Swan Lake
“It’s very difficult for me to accept that a dancer spends the day working in a supermarket or wherever — and then later goes to dance two or three hours in the afternoon,” declares Cuban performer Nelson Reyes. While dancers in Havana make an average of 600 Cuban pesos ($28.50) a month, their wage is […]
Cartoons
The nitrogen bar
Because humans need it to breathe, I assumed for much of my life that the principal gas in the “air” was oxygen. School science classes didn’t clear up this misconception; only after I’d studied plant science on my own did I learn that oxygen accounts for about 20 percent of the earth’s air, and close […]