“We stumbled and we all felt very sad, but we’re feeling like, OK, we’ll just stand back up and move in the direction we had hoped to move in,” said board Chair Nelda Holder at the May 8 meeting of the WNC Regional Air Pollution Control Agency board. That was just after she’d announced, “We […]
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Burning zeal
Back in the ’80s, someone broke into a beer joint on Swannanoa River Road, robbed it, and then set the place on fire to cover their tracks. “It was an obvious torch job,” says arson investigator Harley Shuford, Asheville’s longtime representative on the Asheville Buncombe Arson Task Force. “You could see the pour patterns from […]
In the prime of life
On her 25th birthday, Erin Conklin made a resolution. “By the time I turned 30, I wanted to have a master’s degree, a good career, or be in a position where I could own a home,” she said during an interview in her cellar apartment in north Asheville. “Well, 30 came, and I’m as far […]
Trial by fire
Burning homes for the insurance money just isn’t all that common in Western North Carolina, according to arson investigators. It does happen, but getting even is a more likely motive. “I’ve seen a lot of the spite-and-revenge types of fires,” reveals arson investigator Harley Shuford. Among mountain folk, says the straight-talking Shuford, a spurned lover […]
Asheville City Council
By recent standards, Asheville City Council’s May 9 meeting was an extraordinarily quiet one. It was mercifully efficient and short, as well, clocking in at one hour and 20 minutes. The one issue that could have been contentious — a zoning change and conditional-use permit for a proposed apartment complex in north Asheville — proved […]
The six-cent killer
It was a simple change in tax law: eliminating the sales-tax exemption for free newspapers in North Carolina. The N.C. Department of Revenue says the change was made in the interest of fairness. Legislators who passed it say they were unaware of its presence within a much larger tax bill presented to them at the […]
Notepad
A cracker in the pines True wisdom is often born of unlikely marriages: love and death, crime and poetry, chocolate and peanut butter. Add to that list a delicate environmentalism and an upbringing in a Southern-redneck junkyard, and you have the experience of celebrated author Janisse Ray, whose book Ecology of a Cracker Childhood caused […]
Letters to the editor
Legalization is the only solution to drug epidemic We are told that there is an epidemic of drug use in this country. Certainly this is true: From aspirin to Prozac, Valium to Viagra, alcohol to nicotine, everyone uses drugs. We use drugs to modify our state of mind and improve our health. We use them […]
Strive not to drive
It was during one particularly bright and sunny day that my perpetual wanderings brought me to the boulder-beaded, tree-shaded edge of a certain river. There, amid colossal chunks of stone and the voices of rushing water and foam, I found the monster. She slipped up behind and beneath me, without my noticing, until her fetid […]
While Rome burns
Last summer, I decided to take 15 minutes out of a busy day to water some flowers. It was too hot and there were too many plants to use my watering can (made in Spain), so I opted for the hose (made in Malaysia). Like an especially unclean black snake, its five sections — each […]
The daily grind
Forget about booting up the computer this weekend — instead, strap on a pair of real dust kickers and take a spin on a Jersey ox, during the Western North Carolina Nature Center’s fifth annual Farm Fun Day. An ox, you say? Yep — who knew that early Appalachian homesteaders often rode oxen? You’ll learn […]
Secret in the attic
If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d most likely walk right by the undersized yellow sandwich board parked on the sidewalk in front of Sluder’s Furniture Store. (“Umbra,” whispers an announcement tacked on the board, accompanied by a blurred, black-and-white photo of a girl under an umbrella. Little arrows point inside.) And […]
Pulling strings
Truly timeless stories — the ones that transcend generation gaps — always include some lesson about the way the world should work. The Emperor’s New Clothes teaches us not to be vain; Rip Van Winkle warns us not to be lazy; and, according to Aesop’s famous fables, all immoral acts inevitably lead to bad luck. […]
Horns, strings and airborne panties
One fall day in 1984, the demon-god Boognish appeared to Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo, a pair of eighth-graders in New Hope, Pa. The boys followed his command, changing their names to Gene and Dean Ween and beginning a Scotchguard-huffing, mushroom-eating musical collaboration that can only be loosely classified as bizarre. From there, the story […]
Strange bedfellows
What th–!?! They’re cancelling Yeah!? Oh, $#%)•TT”! All across the universe, millions of aliens are mourning because Yeah!, a nationally syndicated comic book, is no more. And with it goes the three-piece girl band that built its reputation entirely on interplanetary gigging, but could never develop a following at home. Central characters Woo-Woo, Krazy and […]
The road to nowhere
People have always come up to me and said, “Man, I’d give anything to be able to do what you’re doing.” Yeah, well, me too. Those of us who feel deep down in our bones that we were put on this planet to write and play music have given up an awful lot to follow […]
Easy livin’
As far as Ann Dunn knows, her Asheville Civic Ballet Company is breaking new ground in presenting George Gershwin’s 1935 opera Porgy and Bess as a ballet. Even is Porgy has been done as a dance piece before, the upcoming production is unique for another reason. In both the original production and most subsequent ones, […]
The drive for cleaner air
Henry Ford would never have believed it. And anyone paying today’s gas prices might consider it wishful thinking: cars powered by something other than gasoline. But there they were, sitting in a parking lot in downtown Hendersonville on a recent, sunny afternoon: shiny new alternative-fuel vehicles from Volvo, Nissan, Chrysler, Ford, Toyota, Saturn, Oldsmobile, Pontiac […]
Asheville City Council
The Asheville City Council threw local air-pollution control a lifeline. At their May 2 meeting, Council members unanimously supported maintaining an independent local air agency. It would include both an autonomous decision-making board and a citizens advisory committee. Council expects the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners to sign on, with the details to be worked […]
An ugly truth
“So, what’s the difference between your fast and a little kid who holds her breath until her face turns blue to get her way?” the woman asked. She was on her way to a church service and had stopped to talk as I sat in Pritchard Park with a dozen other women and men, beneath […]
The shame of a village
It was during one particularly bright and sunny day that my perpetual wanderings brought me to the boulder-beaded and tree-shaded edge of a certain river. There, amidst the colossal chunks of stone and the voices of rushing water and foam, I found the monster. She slipped up behind and beneath me, without my noticing, until […]