North Carolina is facing a projected $791 million budget deficit. Some say it could be as high as $1 billion. That’s billion with a “B,” as in “Carl Sagan billion.” For Asheville City Council members, the reality of the state budget shortfall hit home at the Feb. 13 formal session, when City Manager Jim Westbrook […]
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Business Notepad
“Grain is put on this earth with the natural ability to become leavened bread,” says Jennifer Lapidus, owner of the Natural Bridge Bakery in Marshall. Lapidus should know — she makes bread using only grain, some purified water and a pinch of salt. Though she’ll sometimes add a few walnuts, raisins or sesame seeds, Lapidus […]
Forgotten black Confederates
Joe Farrington is one of the forgotten. A slave from Chatham County before the War Between the States, Joe is just one of many who left to serve when the call was issued to defend homes and families across the South. But, unlike many others whose accomplishments were recorded for posterity, Joe never even became […]
Letters to the editor
Mess with my “aesthetic junk” and I’ll mess with yours I’m currently at the South Pole … but the city of Asheville is trying to make my life difficult. Prior to leaving for a year at the bottom of the Earth, I tucked my cars, motorcycles and other toys away for a long slumber. Having […]
Letters to the editor
Take care of your heart this Valentine’s Day Medical Review of North Carolina, Inc. (MRNC) wants you to think of more than chocolate hearts this Valentine’s Day, which falls in the middle of National Heart Failure Awareness Week. During this time of year when so much attention is focused on hearts of all types, we […]
Love for sale
It was with much trepidation and a little humiliation that I found myself sitting in the offices of what I’ll call Dates ‘R’ Us. I had already exhausted the advice and good intentions of friends and family when it came to my single status. Many people had tried to fix me up with women whom […]
The shadow of your file
My neighbor informed me that she’s keeping a file on me. “I’m keeping a file on you,” she huffed in a distinctly threatening tone. I was caught off guard (who wouldn’t be?). What rules of etiquette, I wondered, govern such situations? Does Emily Post or Miss Manners offer relevant advice? Does one thank a filemaker […]
Something they said
“And, honey, I surely do love getting the last word. I’m having my say, giving my opinion. Lord, ain’t it good to be an American!“ — Bessie Delany, age 101, 1992 Asheville Community Theatre’s upcoming production of Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years is thoughtfully written and expertly directed. And the two […]
Lucky break
Chicken divan in the oven. Bottle of wine chilling. And Van Halen’s Diver Down on the Pioneer system. True or false: This is a romantic scene. If you answered false, then you can probably move on and read something else in this issue. But if this sounds like you, you are in for one lonely […]
The look of love
Here it is: The night of your big date with that cute girl from the Qwik-E Mart, and you’re still searching for a suitable activity with which to wooing your convenience-store angel. To make matters worse, it’s cupid season and you don’t know anything about your portential paramour except that she’s adorned her car with […]
The latest word
“Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.” — E. L. Doctorow Reviews In the Forest of Harm, by Sallie Bissell (Bantam, 2001) Deliverance author James Dickey once noted that one of life’s most terrifying experiences is […]
Hooked for life
One of the best things about being a free-lance writer is that people give me free stuff just so I’ll write about it. And once in a while, someone gives me something I actually want — like Black Mountain singer/songwriter Josh Lamkin’s debut CD, Good Again (My House Music, 2001). Lamkin likes to reminisce about […]
Band on the run
La Bottine Souriante, translated from Quebecois, means “the smiling boot” — a reference to the worn-out sole of a working man’s boot, which “smiles” when the sole begins to peel away from the upper. “The basic rhythms of our music is produced by foot-tapping. I have fun exploring different beats so that my foot-tapping becomes […]
Grabbin’ and growlin’
Bluegrass patriarch Bill Monroe might be attempting to claw his way out of the grave at this very moment, trying desperately to stop the madness just unleashed by another bluegrass patriarch — and one of Monroe’s former Bluegrass Boys — Ralph Lewis. But then again, maybe not. The 72-year-old Lewis — the fearless leader of […]
Putting the cart before the horse
The crowd assembled in the Buncombe County commissioners’ chambers on Jan. 26 grumbled at the mixed message: Less than three hours earlier, the commissioners had closed a deal to buy the Union Transfer property on South Lexington Avenue for $1.45 million, planning to site a new minimum-security jail there. Now they were asking people what […]
A game of chess
The plot thickened last week when the Buncombe County commissioners addressed the jail controversy at their Jan. 30 budget retreat, held in the county’s offices on College Street. Commissioners discussed the city’s latest move — initiating a rezoning study in the part of downtown Asheville that includes the county’s newly acquired satellite-jail site. The commissioners […]
Remembering Sweet Pea
Judy Covington Crawley hopes the short life of a basset hound named Sweet Pea will lead to better lives for other dogs. Crawley, a Weaverville animal welfare activist, bought the four-month-old puppy from roadside dealer Roger Moore last May 27. The next day, Sweet Pea started to vomit and suffer from diarrhea. Crawley took the […]
Everything’s not all roses at Azalea
The Swannanoa River has borne the brunt of human activity for many generations — particularly in the stretch that runs along Azalea Road in east Asheville. Before 1900, people dammed up the river not far from what is now the WNC Nature Center, in order to create Lake Craig. By the middle of the 20th […]
Trolley tales
If you love Asheville, you’ll treasure Trolleys in the Land of the Sky — even if you’re not a trolley buff. The book, by Weaverville author Joseph M. Canfield, contains enough photos, maps and text within its 96 pages to steam up anyone who has even the slightest interest in local history. It’s all there, […]
Notepad
Meals on Wheels in dire need of volunteers by Lisa Watters The number of elderly folks in the U.S. is rising — and fast. According to the Census Bureau, the number of Americans 85 and older rose 274 percent between 1960 and 1994; the number of 65- to 85-year-olds rose 100 percent. (During the same […]
Letters to the editor
In praise of white-trash ingenuity It was refreshing to read Jerry Sternberg’s brown-cow theory [Commentary, Jan. 17, “How about a little compassion, folks?”]. I have had a less polite response in mind, considering the way Asheville tends to put out of mind the existence of what is less romantically dubbed the white-trash population. Not necessarily […]