What do you want — blood? The Carolinas Blood Services Region of the American Red Cross has issued an emergency appeal for blood donors in western North Carolina: For the second time in three months, blood supplies have reached emergency levels. The inventory for type O blood stands at 60 percent of a one-day supply; […]
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Ratsville, North Carolina
Rats: The mere word gives most of us the willies. What is it about this ubiquitous rodent that evokes an almost medieval sense of revulsion? Is it the beast’s wily nature? That long, hairless tail? Rats’ significant role in that most fearsome of plagues, the Black Death? This summer, there seems to have been no […]
Roots
There’s an interesting moment about two-thirds of the way through Martin Scorsese’s seminal mid-’70s concert movie, The Last Waltz. The celebrated filmmaker, diminutive and full of big-city alacrity, and bass player Rick Danko — good-natured, with a country boy’s casual grace — retire to the studio’s back room, where The Band is recording. The Last […]
It takes a village
Picture yourself in the dense rainforest of southeast Nigeria, home of the Igbo people. Rivers and streams cross the gently rolling forest land en route to the sea, 60 miles distant. Imagine being in one of the region’s many villages, amid cool, thatch-roofed houses. It’s celebration time: Listen! First, there’s the melodic conversation of the […]
No need to fly to Cannes
“My whole idea of the thing is very grandiose,” says Gene D’Onofrio of the brand new RiverRun International Film Festival. For now, though, after a year fraught with disagreements and stalled negotiations with Asheville film venues, the festival gets under way as a modest — but decidedly high-quality — affair. D’Onofrio, an actor, director and […]
Letters to the editor
Why is it so hard to measure dust? As a follow-up to my letter of two weeks ago regarding the Western North Carolina Regional Air Pollution Control Agency [Sept. 2], I would like to bring your readers up to date on my dealings with the agency regarding the Lowe’s Patton Avenue construction site. Mountain Xpress […]
The compleat healer
When Carol Smith Ali was in her early 30s, she was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. Feeling tired and depressed, she was given a prescription for Valium, which she says helped with her anxiety and stress, but eventually led to a “foggy” seven-year addiction. After beating the addiction, however, her symptoms — particularly her anxiety […]
Asheville City Council
Downtown parking with no hassles — it’s almost like having the heat without the humidity: Whatever would we have left to kvetch about? But as Asheville City Council members listened while consultants presented the results of a $92,000 parking study, it seemed — at least during the Sept. 15 work session — that such an […]
If stones could talk
George Gibson adjusts his baseball cap and stares thoughtfully out at the riot of undergrowth that covers the once-beautiful South Asheville Cemetery. The rail-thin Gibson, now in his 70s, is a deacon at the St. John A. Baptist Church, and president of the South Asheville Cemetery Association; as a result, he has become one of […]
The voices of the stones
A cemetery isn’t just a field full of mouldering, carved stones — it’s a testament to the people who are buried there, and to the times they lived in. The tongues of the deceased may be stilled, but a series of interviews conducted by Dee Williams and Lewis Armmond in 1989 record anecdotes and remembrances […]
Buncombe County Commission
The Buncombe County Commissioners’ Sept. 15 meeting was brimming with conflict and drama, which sometimes threatened to overshadow the proceedings themselves. Late in the meeting, tempers flared as board member Arliss Queen of the WNC Air Pollution Control Agency questioned the commissioners’ denying any knowledge of why the city of Asheville was asked to withdraw […]
Notepad
Breast Cancer Summit Of the 2.6 million women currently living with breast cancer in this country, 1 million don’t even know they have the disease. Nearly 50,000 American women will die of breast cancer this year; and, according to Healthpartners — a community-based, volunteer coalition of individuals and organizations in Buncombe County — the breast-cancer […]
Headline missing
Downtown Man strikes: He would identify himself only as “Downtown Man” when Xpress spotted him on Sunday morning, Sept. 6, in the process of removing trash from of an overflowing street receptacle on Wall Street and putting it into two of his own large trash bags. “I saw the can was full on Saturday morning,” […]
Notepad
Just say no to guns If you believe guns do, in fact, kill people, you’re invited to share in a celebration designed to help keep our city’s young people healthy and our community a safe place to live. Asheville Cares, an initiative begun by Debbie Morrow and the Rev. Sandy Matzko, will hold a rally […]
It’s Rag time again
Rumor has it that they escaped from the imagination of ’60s underground cartoonist extraordinaire R. Crumb, fugitives from a Zap Comics series-in-progress. But when the gossip on the street turns to the swingin’ ragtime/country-blues-based Blue Rags, you can’t always believe what you hear. This much we do know: The ambassadors of rag ‘n’ roll have […]
Moved by the spirit
It’s not that unusual to catch the faint strains of gospel music wafting through downtown Asheville, late on a Sunday morning. But one hardly expects to find that jubilant sound coming from a nightclub — unless the venue happens to be Tressa’s Downtown Jazz and Blues. Gospel music, good food (how does baked eggs picante […]
Hooked on the classics
Under the fluorescent glare of the rehearsal-room lights, it all starts and ends with chairs: setting them up, making sure they’re all accounted for at the end of the evening, folding them and stowing them safely away. It’s an hour before the first rehearsal for the orchestra’s 1998 Masterworks Series, and principal bassist/music librarian/stage manager […]
Symphony facts and figures
Did you know that the Asheville Symphony has no formal connection with the Asheville Civic Center, other than performing its concerts there? And did you know that only 40 percent of the symphony’s budget comes from ticket sales? These are just two of the most common misconceptions about the orchestra, according to Executive Director Steven […]
Letters to the editor
Boycott the deadly Shell game In the past 30 years, Royal Dutch Shell, through its subsidiary Shell Nigeria, has extracted $30 billion worth of oil from Ogoniland, a region surrounding the Niger River delta. … Shell Oil has averaged four oil spills per week and has yearly dumped far greater volumes of oil into the […]
Letters to the editor
Don’t disparage concerned citizens In reference to your County Commissioners Report [Aug. 26], I think you missed my point in the section titled “Placating the public?” I have been researching annexation and related issues in both county and city governments for 15 months. The vendor list [for the annexation study] was not “problematic” — the […]
Buncombe County Commission
While Buncombe County Board of Commissioners’ sessions are rarely hot-blooded, passionate affairs, the Sept. 1 meeting was so brief and agreeable that nary a “nay” was heard the entire time. Perhaps the gathering was purposefully abbreviated, in order to give the commissioners time (and energy) to get to their 7 p.m. community meeting at the […]