Climb every mountain Businesses often celebrate their grand opening by cutting a symbolic ribbon in front of their store. But Sharon Frazier decided to take the tradition to new heights, marking the launch of her business, Mountains To Climb, with a July 13 ribbon cutting atop Mount Pisgah. Mountains to Climb, explains Frazier, is a […]
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Asheville City Council
Just after making a motion to approve plans for a 78-acre Wal-Mart shopping complex at the old Sayles-Biltmore Bleachery site in east Asheville, Council member Carl Mumpower — in one of the evening’s more surreal moments — noted (with a straight face), “This is an administrative decision rather than a political one.” An unusual opinion, […]
Fashioning the future
During the past decade, North Carolina’s textile and apparel industries have cut more than 100,000 jobs. This is a truly sobering statistic, and it is likely to get worse. The latest U.S. Department of Labor projections predict more textile- and apparel-job losses in the coming decade. Are North Carolina’s textile and apparel industries doomed? Based […]
Travelling travails
“Travel” and “travail” are both derived from a medieval Latin word for torture. That’s something you can brood on as you stand in the airport-security line — the strap of your one allowed carry-on bag digging painfully into your shoulder — waiting to find out whether you’ll be the next patriotic American to be: • […]
Toward a more-active activism
More and more people are voicing their concerns about the environment. But the brand of activism endorsed by the Green Anarchy Tour goes far beyond displaying earnest bumper stickers. Riding a wave begun before Seattle, the Green Anarchy Tour 2002 is rolling into Asheville for an all-day, radical, multimedia splash. Billed as “an attempt to […]
Hinging on heritage
From washtub-bass plucking to gripping stories to frenetic clogging, local heritage has always sounded compelling within the merry confines of Asheville’s annual Mountain Dance & Folk Festival. But 2002 marks the 75th anniversary of this celebration of old-time music, bluegrass and Appalachian dance — making it the nation’s longest continually running folk-music festival. So organizers […]
The Practical Gardener
The U.S. Department of Agriculture was started in 1862. Around 1900, the Agricultural Extension System was established as a branch of the USDA. In North Carolina, the department name “Agricultural Extension” was changed to “Cooperative Extension” about 10 years ago, to reflect the changing services that have arisen to meet needs on a county-by-county basis. […]
The Wild Gardener
So far, this has been a banner year for yellow jackets in and around the garden. These small but aggressive insects have taken our daily heat binges to heart and when disturbed (and it doesn’t take much to provoke these avenging creatures) have risen to the occasion, all stings loaded and ready for war. Yellow […]
The Practical Gardener
Local permaculture guru Chuck Marsh introduced me to the term “biological tillage.” It’s one of those phrases that conveys more than the sum of its parts. It certainly sounds agricultural, and an organic approach is part of it as well. But the part I like best is that it suggests that work is being accomplished […]
Notepad
The view from above Our region is facing a host of environmental woes. Often lost in the shuffle of impact studies and environmental assessments, however, is the bigger picture: what we are capable of doing to our planet. With that in mind, one regional conservation group is working hard to educate the public about imperiled […]
Big Splash
During this summer’s World Cup, American sportswriters once again contemplated the future of the world’s most popular sport here in the land of the free and the home of the Braves. And despite an excellent run by the U.S. men’s national team, many scribes still felt compelled to remind Americans that the Beautiful Game would […]
The callous plan of the invisible hand
Everyone agrees that Asheville is gasping from more and more bad-air days. Yet the state remains poised to build the I-26 connector, a gigantic road that’s certain to burden our lungs with more poison. The Asheville Citizen-Times reported recently that the N.C. DOT plans to make the connector eight lanes in order to contain the […]
Asheville City Council
Rumor has it that a member of the Asheville City Council has a tattoo branded on his or her butt. Remember, you read it here first. Asheville resident Gabriel Ferrari raised the specter of decorated government derrieres during the public-comment portion of Council’s July 9 formal meeting. He used most of his allotted three minutes […]
The world comes home to WNC
While cultures clash across the world stage, the local stages in Waynesville and across Western North Carolina are set for a higher purpose. Since 1984, Folkmoot USA — formally known as the North Carolina International Folk Festival, Folkmoot USA — has brought performers from around the globe to share their music, history and heritage with […]
Forgetting to remember
Sometimes you have to forget everything you’ve learned in order to move forward. For Atlanta-based singer/songwriter Kevn Kinney, shedding the experiences of a career that’s spanned more than two decades, 12 albums and 6 record labels proved to be the best way to tap the youthful honesty and wide-eyed wonderment that characterize his latest release, […]
Write from wrong
“One time I saw this woman drive her car right over the back of a beautiful long blacksnake,” recalls local Native American writer MariJo Moore. “And blacksnakes are good snakes; they protect us from poisonous snakes. Then she backed up and drove over it again, and roared away. The snake lay there in the street […]
The Practical Gardener
My mother was raised on a large farm in northeastern Iowa. Until she left, to attend secretarial school in Des Moines, my mother, her mother, and her three sisters spent much of each summer feeding as many as two dozen farm hands who spent long hour in the fields. They fed this army the veggies […]
The Wild Gardener
Pick up a glove left in the garden overnight, move a pot from its spot on a wall, or change the position of a neglected garden hose, and you will find a world of little gray crawling creatures, running from the light and trying to hide as quickly as they can. What are they? In […]
Long-playing record
The streets of jazz/funk have flooded. The modern inception of the genre first drew attention in the early ’90s when Manhattan’s Medeski Martin and Wood began composing funk-heavy grooves dressed with jazz instruments and improvisation techniques. Quickly, as West Coast pioneers such as The Greyboy Allstars fell in line, the back-alley urban fans of jazz […]
Fur bikinis and martini tarts
The Wau Wau Sisters (say “vow vow”), nee Tanya Gagne and Adrienne Truscott, are no strangers to a little transgression. A look-see on any Monday night in the Williamsburg-neighborhood Brooklyn, New York, bar and performance space that hosts the Wau Wau’s weekly show tells all: Their multifaceted act — a martini-tart distillation of the duo’s […]
The latest word
Close Harmony, A History of Southern Gospel by James R. Goff Jr. (The University of North Carolina Press, 2002) Inarguably, Close Harmony is the new bible of Southern gospel music. There’s not much within these pages to tempt the unconverted, but aficionados should be more than satisfied with this well-researched book. Black and white gospel, […]