In 300 action-packed pages, Dr. James Loewen, in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong (The New Press, 1996), changes the course of United States History as American high-school graduates know it. Loewen — a longtime race-relations professor — spent two years going over 12 popular American-history textbooks at […]
Author: Webmaster
Showing 9409-9429 of 9872 results
The edge of an era
Were it not for the Sex Pistols, folk-rock icon Richard Thompson might be passing his days as a mild-mannered antique dealer in his native north London. The thunderingly brilliant guitarist with the gorgeously haunted voice, you see, gave up music for a time in the mid-’70s and opened an antiques shop. “That was an odd […]
Notepad
Nights at the Roundtable Last year, Mayor Leni Sitnick held the first Mayor’s Roundtable discussion, wherein a group of interested residents took up the problem of litter, and ways to combat it. Now, Sitnick is hosting a second roundtable, this one focused on the future of downtown — and particularly, how to manage its success. […]
Letters to the editor
All the ugly we can stand It’s time for me to weigh in on the monumentally ugly Pack Place sign. I don’t like it. Sort of like I don’t like un-anaesthetized root canals, or like Custer didn’t like native Americans. I pretty much hate it, pure and simple. As it was going up, I wandered […]
Buncombe County Commission
Accusations flew at the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners’ Sept. 21 meeting. With a community meeting scheduled at Enka High School at 7 p.m. and a request from County Attorney Joe Connolly for a closed session, commissioners were pressed for time, facing a crowded agenda and a packed room. “Just the tip of the iceberg” […]
Notepad
Your voice counts Minorities have often been underrepresented on the boards of local organizations. To address that lack, the United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County is seeking minority community members to serve on local nonprofit boards. Interested individuals are invited to sign up for a free, two-day Community Stewardship Program to be held Sept […]
Letters to the editor
A plant deserves to live This is just to let the people who apparently do not know: A flower planter is for plants and flowers. It is not a seat, trash can, ladder, ashtray, beer coaster, nor a form of entertainment. I would appreciate it if people would show more consideration and appreciation! I have […]
Unplugged adventures
When Bela Fleck and his cohorts on the current Bluegrass Sessions tour first played together in the 1980s, they were the youthful renegades of the genre. Describing his now-40-ish tour mates, though, Fleck notes with a laugh, “I used to call them the young guns of bluegrass, but I can’t call them young guns anymore. […]
Landscapes of the mind
“Nobody wants to travel with me,” declares Asheville artist Kenn Kotara, “because it takes forever to get anywhere.” He pulls a stack of index cards covered with tiny line drawings from his shirt pocket, holding them out as guilty proof. “When I see something by the side of the road that catches my eye, I […]
Doug Hoekstra’s turn
Never mind the Dylan-esque harmonica, the denim and the mug like T-Bone Burnette — Doug Hoekstra is not your typical singer/songwriter. The voice is a little too Lou Reed, the songs shaded a bit more subtly and radically, a la producers Daniel Lanois and Craig Street. And as Hoekstra proves on his latest CD, Make […]
Breaking old habits
Under the continuing glare of public scrutiny, the board of the Western North Carolina Regional Air Pollution Control Agency met on Sept. 13 to consider the first fruits of its recent reforms. Driving the meeting’s agenda was the state’s recent audit of the troubled agency. More than an hour was devoted to a status report […]
Asheville City Council
“To ensure that all citizens are involved in the economic progress of Asheville during this time of growth and prosperity, this Council declares Sept. 27 through Oct. 1 as Minority Enterprise Development Week,” announced Council member O.T. Tomes during Council’s Sept. 14 formal session, urging all city residents to work together with minority enterprises. Mayor […]
The geography of nowhere
James Howard Kunstler struck a nerve. In 1993, surveying the American landscape of sprawling suburbs, wasted inner cities, ever-widening highways and paved-over commercial strips, he wrote The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape (Simon & Schuster) — a searing, often hilarious indictment of the terrible things we’ve done to American […]
Notepad
And the winner is … Each year, the Dr. Marketta Laurila Free Speech Award celebrates local folks who’ve taken strong stands on behalf of freedom of speech. Established in 1987, the award honors Dr. Marketta Laurila, a former UNCA instructor who was denied tenure after becoming a vocal opponent of U.S. policy in Central America. […]
Letters to the editor
“Wake up, Granddaddy” Oh! I can see it now, as my granddaughter Diamond comes to visit me from Raleigh, and we are strolling around the city of Asheville … We meet Mayor O. T. Tomes scurrying out of City Hall on his way to a ceremony welcoming the new African-American superintendent of Asheville City Schools. […]
Tricks of the trade
“When you walk into a room and see that no one up there looks like you, you have to ask yourself, ‘What’s wrong here?’” remarked Asheville City Council member (and New Mount Olive Baptist Church Pastor) O.T. Tomes, during a break at the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce’s first-ever Political Institute, held at UNCA’s Owen […]
Buncombe County Commission
Most of the audience at the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners’ meeting consisted of schoolteachers and administrators waiting to receive recognition from the board for their achievements in education. With only about 20 people in attendance, the Sept. 7 meeting was a fairly low-key affair; commissioners proclaimed Sept. 25 as Hunting and Fishing Day, and […]
Notepad
Honoring minority businesses Minority Enterprise Development Week is a national celebration of the contributions and successes of minority-owned businesses. This year’s local festivities start on Monday, Sept. 27, with a speech by the Rev. Kenneth Ray Hammond at the Breakfast Seminar at the Howard Johnson’s restaurant on Hendersonville Road. Also on Monday, a golf tournament […]
Letters to the editor
Good riddance to the low-level rad-waste compact The North Carolina General Assembly acted responsibly by withdrawing from the Southern Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact. It would have been better had this been done 15 years and $80 million ago; but better late than never. It was irresponsible for our state government ever to have entered into […]
Keb? Mo? on his own terms
His name sounds exquisitely Delta-blues-drenched, but Keb’ Mo’ hails from nowhere near Mississippi. He actually comes from the Compton, Calif., neighborhood better known for spawning such rap stars as Dr. Dre, Eazy E and Marion “Suge” Knight. And the moniker Keb’ Mo’ is really just a childlike interpretation of his given name, Kevin Moore. But […]
Raggin’ on
One loyal fan (we’ll call him John Doe) picked up the newest Blue Rags CD — Eat At Joe’s (SubPop Records, 1999) — at a recent show and studied the cardboard sleeve carefully. “This is really slick-looking,” he commented, eyeballing the hipper-than-hip, full-color photos of band members haphazardly posed, their faces a moody, MTV-style case […]