Thick rain falls outside the open door of Stoney Lamar’s studio in the green country dells outside Saluda, N.C. Lamar is buzzing about his lathe, eyeballing lines and making minute adjustments, preparing to make a cut. “It’s like an anthropomorphic dance that gets going between myself and the machines,” says the sculptor from behind the […]
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Cherokee voices, old and new
Throughout history, great epics have been told in verse — Gilgamesh, Dante’s Inferno, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and, in Wales, The Mabinogion, to name a few. The roots of epic poetry are oral — storyteller/bards entertaining and inspiring countless generations of listeners — and Barbara R. Duncan uses this oral form to great […]
American dreams (and Jesus-shaped tomatoes)
Several years ago, after a performance in Asheville, Kate Campbell and her husband, Ira, were driving just north of the city when Kate saw a sign: “Jesus and tomatoes coming soon.” “It was in front of a grocery store, on a neon sign,” the Mississippi-born singer/songwriter (who’s now based in Nashville) remembers. “I wrote it […]
Letters to the editor
Badger article was a fantastic load of crap Regarding the article concerning myself and my garden [“The garden of Badger,” July 29]: Today, I’ve drafted and redrafted letters of rebuttal, [but] the letters were longer than the article itself. [Your] article was a total load of crap — fiction based on a real life. The […]
Asheville City Council
City Manager Jim Westbrook was the first to use the word “tweak” during City Council’s first annual review of the Unified Development Ordinance. Council members quickly followed suit at their Aug. 4 work session, weaving the term throughout their discussion — even, at one point, calling the behemoth master plan “tweakable.” The implied message was […]
Buncombe County Commission
At long last, county residents may have a place to take their household hazardous wastes, and the N.C. Department of Transportation may get a big financial break — if Buncombe County commissioners accept an offer from the DOT to build the waste repository at the county landfill. In a hurried session at the Courthouse on […]
Notepad
Toxic Carolina Pollution statistics for the state of North Carolina were released last month from the Toxic Release Inventory mandated by the Community Right to Know Act. The data show toxic releases to the environment continuing to decrease slowly, while the amount of toxic wastes “managed” by industries has increased, according to a press release […]
Learning the hard way
Shaded by the heavy August foliage, the house at first looks almost complete. Only when you get closer can you get a good view of the damage: the missing roof, the wood panels blocking the gable windows, the charred-brick chimneys propped up by two-by-fours. Seen this way, in the fragile morning light, the Old Kentucky […]
William Smith receives Conservancy Volunteer Award
William Smith of Asheville is a kind and humble man with a dear heart who personifies the word faithfulness. That’s the way Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy Director Lynn Cox describes the 88-year-old recipient of the Conservancy’s 1998 Murray Volunteer Service Award, presented this June at the group’s annual meeting in Crossnore, N.C. Smith had never […]
Notepad
Child care on-line For anyone with questions about local child-care options, help is now no further away than an Internet-ready computer. Thanks to a Smart Start project funded by the Buncombe County Partnership for Children, the Buncombe County Information Partnership’s Web page is now on-line, making a vast amount of state and local information easily […]
Who ya gonna call?
When you discover unidentified or suspicious-looking chemicals, call your county’s emergency-management office or solid-waste division. The state’s Hazardous Waste office in Asheville (251-6208) also covers 19 western North Carolina counties, including those listed here: • Buncombe County: 255-5038 (Emergency Management, Denise Ballew); 250-5460 (Solid Waste) • Henderson County: 697-4877 (Solid Waste); 697-4728 (Fire Marshall) • […]
Friends of a feather
“You wanna hear a crazy bird story?” asks Chuck Brodsky. Almost everyone loves a tale about wild things. Indeed, we kind of crave them, even though we may not like to admit it. And while asking why is too big a question to tackle here, the answer to Brodsky’s original query is yes, Chuck, yes. […]
Letters to the editor
Please, please clean our downtown streets A short while ago, there was a real push to clean the notices off city utility poles. That is an important concern, but what about our sidewalks? I am a local Ashevillean with strong roots in this community, and proud of it. But as a member of this community […]
Letters to the editor
Tell City Council to stop arresting marijuana users [Editor’s note: On Aug. 11, the writer of this letter will propose to City Council that it direct city police to cease arresting people for marijuana use.] Let me state up front that this resolution is rooted in the principles that issue from a belief in the […]
The Garden of Badger
Hidden amid a patch of high grass and wild brush beside the French Broad River sits what looks like the rubble of an ancient temple. Massive, broken, concrete road slabs curve into poetic spirals around the giant oaks and maples. The layered stone walls and artful seating might have coaxed a dialectic out of Plato. […]
Promises, promises
The air was thick with anger and the sense of double-cross on July 13, when board members of the WNC Regional Air Pollution Control Agency elected a new chair — and reneged on their resolution of last year to elect a city appointee in 1998. Ignoring a written request and an oral demand from Asheville […]
Notepad
Black Avenger to broadcast live National radio talk-show host Ken Hamblin, a.k.a. the Black Avenger, will broadcast his three-hour program from the studios of News/Talk 880, WTZY, from 3 to 6 p.m. on Friday, July 24, at the station’s office (70 N. Lexington Ave. in downtown Asheville). Earlier that day (noon to 1 p.m.), the […]
Letters to the editor
Health care is not a right in a just society The letters section of your July 1 issue was so filled with greed, selfishness and contempt [“Readers respond to Andrew Cline’s health care commentary”] that I would appreciate the opportunity to respond. The subject was health care and whether access to this and other basic […]
Burnin’ at your door
Thirteen years ago, Burning Spear appeared on the cover of High Times magazine, kicking back and, in the words of that venerable publication’s editorial staff, “smoking a giant spliff.” A follow-up article (with, by the by, a headline featuring a nice, if predictably cannabis-flavored, pun on Spear’s first name) offered “some words of wisdom” from […]
A doctor in the house
As a child, Arthel “Doc” Watson learned to play banjo on an instrument his father had made from, among other things, the hide of his grandmother’s recently deceased cat. Having also mastered harmonica at a tender age, the 13-year-old Watson started on guitar, the story goes, when he borrowed one and taught himself the chords […]
The coolest lead singer in the world
OK, all you alt-country enthusiasts, let’s take a little trip back through time — before Wilco or Son Volt, before Uncle Tupelo, before the Beat Farmers or Dwight Yoakum or Steve Earle or the Long Ryders or Lone Justice. Let’s go back to the summer of 1982, when the closest thing to any sort of […]