They float in yellow fluid like eerie embryos, rippling and bubbling and threatening to burst through walls that barely contain them. But instead of birth and beginnings, the gloves that Nick Cave (nope, he’s not the Nick Cave of cult band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) has fashioned into art represent aging, deterioration and […]
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Fair days, fair nights
Mustard-smothered corn dogs, puffy pink cotton-candy clouds and swirling lights from carnival rides — sure, fairgoers love to indulge their appetites and delight their senses. But the North Carolina Mountain State Fair also has a more serious mission: public education. In a time when most folks get their edibles from supermarkets, it’s easy to forget […]
The tale end …
“These folks can take an audience of four or five hundred and make you feel like you’re in a living room with four or five people.” That’s storytelling fan Scott Rogers’ take on the tellers who’ll weave their magic this weekend at Asheville’s eighth annual Tell It in the Mountains festival. Rogers should know. The […]
Reinventing the local air agency
Polite exchanges masked continuing tensions between the old guard and the new, as the recently reconfigured board of directors of the WNC Regional Air Pollution Control Agency assembled for two hastily called, back-to-back, special meetings — each demonstrating the agency’s shifting balance of power. During the Aug. 19 and Aug. 23 meetings, the directors selected […]
Buncombe County Commission
Buncombe County voters will face a weighty question on Nov. 2: “Should the Board of Commissioners for the County of Buncombe enact zoning regulations governing the use of real property throughout the unincorporated areas of Buncombe County in accordance with the grant of power from the State of North Carolina as set forth in General […]
Notepad
In a sedimental mood Most of us don’t usually think of loose soil as a pollutant. But soil erosion and the resulting sedimentation are growing problems in Western North Carolina, according to the Raleighl-based Water Resources Research Institute. Each year, the WRRI, a nonpartisan think tank associated with N.C. State University, meets with its advisory […]
Letters to the editor
Please stay in Minnesota [To Natalie Rebucha, the Minnesotan who praised Asheville in letter published Aug. 25, and said she’d like to move here]: At the risk of sounding unfriendly, I’d like to encourage you and your husband not to move to Asheville. Personally, I’m glad Asheville isn’t advertised more. Why? Growth is exploding! Every […]
Buncombe County Commission
Air-quality activists clustered in the courthouse hallway, expressing disbelief that the Buncombe County commissioners had voted on Aug. 17 to reappoint Doug Clark to a six-year term on the board of the Western North Carolina Regional Air Pollution Control Agency. “Obviously, the good ol’ boy network is a lot deeper and more powerful than the […]
The Sustainable Economic Development Task Force
City Council members decided informally, without voting, to invite the following community leaders to be part of the Sustainable Economic Development Task Force (they did, however, vote to appoint Jack Cecil of Biltmore Farms as chair): • Ed Anderson, ITT/Continental Teves • Bob Burgin, Mission/St. Joseph’s Hospital • Ray Bailey, A-B Tech • Sonny Enloe, […]
Notepad
Celebrate equality For more than 200 years, American women shared half the load of building a nation, without having the right to vote (or, for that matter, any direct voice in running the nation). But that changed with the passage of the Suffrage Act for Women in 1920 — a milestone in the fight for […]
Letters to the editor
Beware the plant gestapo Recently, another law-abiding citizen’s property was raided. Like so many other raids, it happened without warning or “due process of the law.” The [State Bureau of Investigation] and what the owner called “the county mounties” simply landed a helicopter in his back yard — much to the amusement of the neighbors […]
Exploring the sacred within
For most of us, the word “altar” evokes images of group religious rituals. But five local artists envision the altar as a singularly personal tool for spiritual focus and transformation. The idea for an exhibit of personal altars came the day artist Sheri Bennett — who had recently begun designing and building wooden, mirrored altars […]
Simple pleasures
Leonard Jones is a man of few words. But then, words seem unnecessary when he can, instead, dip his house-painting brush (or his finger or, sometimes, a branch from a bush in his yard) into a can of house paint and work his magic on a sheet of roofing tin. Jones lives in the same […]
Air-agency hires new attorney and defers a permit approval
“We’ve got to figure out how to push the envelope of our authority,” stressed new board member Richard Maas, as he quizzed the four candidates hoping to replace Billy Clarke as legal counsel to the board of the Western North Carolina Regional Air Pollution Control Agency. “We need a dynamic attorney … not to tell […]
Notepad
The fate of our forests A recent clash over the management of Western North Carolina’s public lands has put the region in the forefront of a longstanding ideological debate. Earlier this month, the U.S. Forest Service revealed that it had found 28 endangered Indiana bats in the Nantahala National Forest and was, therefore, voluntarily halting […]
Letters to the editor
Of the minorities, by the minorities and for the minorities I see that someone has not only shown me that there is only one group of people that resides here in this city, but that they are the only ones being hired for civil-service jobs as well. I am referring to the minority group of […]
Buncombe County Commission
“This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land,” “Born in the USA” and other rousing music filled the plaza outside the Asheville Civic Center, during a lively show of dissent to the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners’ proposed countywide zoning ordinance. The draft ordinance was the only agenda item at the commissioners’ Aug. […]
Asheville City Council
You could call it a pre-emptive strike: This year’s Honda Hoot was barely over before event organizers negotiated next year’s parking deal with city staff — hinting strongly to City Council members that they wouldn’t return to Asheville without it. And, with little evidence of the vehement objections expressed this past spring, Council members bought […]
Notepad
WNCAP board president resigns After two tumultuous years of service as president of the board of directors of the Western North Carolina Aids Project, Michael Faulkner submitted his resignation in late July. Faulkner’s most recent troubles erupted after an interview with him appeared in the July 2 issue of The Front Page, a newspaper serving […]
Letters to the editor
Concentrating as fast as I can Have a little sympathy for your politician trying to figure out what you’re thinking after he just got done telling you what you’re thinking. “If the election were held tomorrow, who would you vote for, Gore or Bush?” asks the eager young man with the clipboard (or the microphone […]
A (cyber) conversation with Reynolds Price
Since the publication of his first novel — 1961’s A Long and Happy Life, which won the prestigious Faulkner Foundation Award and catapulted the young author to international literary fame — North Carolina’s highly prolific Reynolds Price has written with the urgency of a man running out of time. But time, as it turns out, […]