Mayor Leni Sitnick is wearing green-colored glasses these days. She’s not thinking just about greenways, or more motorists on the Blue Ridge Parkway — although those items might be included in her green dreams. But Sitnick is thinking much bigger. She imagines Asheville as the headquarters for America’s environmental businesses, the mayor said during a […]
Author: Webmaster
Showing 9850-9870 of 9872 results
Buncombe County Commission
Ever rented an apartment with a leaky roof, running toilet, busted steps, a low-voltage current humming through the bathtub — and a landlord who doesn’t see a problem? Up until Jan. 21, renters in Buncombe County facing such predicaments had no official county-government office to turn to. What did they do? “They called me,” says […]
Notepad
Our Town, Waynesville style Get ready for a production of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Our Town,” the likes of which you’ve never imagined — or discussed. “It’s going to be an experience, I’ll tell you,” predicts Dr. David Guerin, who will both direct and play a key role in the play. But Guerin’s production […]
Letters to the editor
Why you shouldn’t invest in the stock market The stock market is usually an irresponsible place to invest. Stock investors often have no idea what their money does to people and the Earth. It is an absentee ownership so far removed from accountability that many think only numbers are involved. Because no one feels personally […]
So you wanna be a writer?
Mountain Xpress asked Bill Brooks for a few general guidelines to help those of us who are still laboring away at our own novels and short stories. Bill’s advice: • “Writers write, and everyone else talks about it. To become a published, professional writer, you have to a) study your craft, and b) practice your […]
Headline missing
Some folks think that Jerry Garcia killed the ’60s, by suggesting to Mick Jagger that the Stones use Hell’s Angels for security at Altamont. Others say Garcia killed the ’60s in the mid-’90s, by dying — thus pulling the plug on the seemingly perpetuitous performing entity called The Grateful Dead. And some folks maintain that […]
Chick sleuths
Imagine this: Sherlock Holmes — that’s right, the pipe-smoking, “Watson, you putz” guru of detective fiction, in his ubiquitous overcoat … and what is that? a deer-hunting cap? — lies on his bed, the better to slither into a pair of too-tight jeans, just so he can hit the town, dressed to the Halloween nines […]
A wintry dance with death
A woman stands with a sword through her chest, weeping beside her extracted heart. A deer, with a woman’s face and a side bristling with arrows, leaps. These startling images come from the self-portraits of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, who in bold, firm strokes seemed to map her own personal suffering on the canvas — […]
The secret language of jazz
It’s a tough gig, you’d think, playing jazz in a small Southern city known for its devotion to folk and bluegrass. But that’s not the way Luci Anne Evans and Tom Coppola see it. “Are you kidding?” Evans says, rolling her eyes. “Musicians in Manhattan wish they could live here. When they sleep at night, […]
It’s a Waffle House world
Man, I was more broke than Korea. The spare change under my Salvation Army sofa cushion was going fast. It was obvious I needed a job, and since I already ate most of my meals at Waffle House, I figured I might as well work there, paper hats be damned. You know the Waffle House. […]
Buncombe County Commission
Many Buncombe County residents love their junkers, and in a Jan. 13 public hearing peppered with laughs, applause and controversy, a whole heap of those folks let the Buncombe County Commissioners know it. In a courtroom three times the size of the chambers where the commissioners usually meet — but still not big enough to […]
Letters to the editor
Ashely Siegel has seen too many movies! She had the unprecedented audacity to pan Titanic for being historically accurate. She actually believes it would have added to the movie to distort the facts a bit. [Perhaps] so that she could pay yet one more visit to the la-la land of “let’s pretend”? The strength and […]
Letters to the editor
Who killed the French Broad as an American Heritage river? “On a winding dirt road near the top of the watershed, you stand above a tree-thick basin and the slight man in clean mended overalls turns his blue eyes toward you as he cocks his head. “‘Hear that racket down there? That’s your French Broad. […]
Headline missing
“It all came out of these two fascinations of mine, one with fire and the other with rust,” reflects artist Alice Bain Martin. Fire and rust. No, it’s not a James Taylor song — it’s Martin’s new exhibit. The untitled show is a strangely colorful study of the spectrum of textural interaction between human emotion […]
Buncombe County Commission
The joint city/county minority-business plan, more than a year in the making, is good — but it needs more work, Buncombe County Commissioners decided at their Jan. 6 meeting. After hearing complaints from several black-community leaders that the plan is incomplete — and, according to publisher Clarence Benton, “doomed to fail” — commissioners unanimously tabled […]
Notepad
MLK Day celebrations Celebrate and commemorate the man and his dream during the 17th annual, multi-event Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. Economist, writer and syndicated columnist Dr. Julianne Malveaux will be the keynote speaker at the 17th annual Interfaith Prayer Breakfast, on Saturday, Jan. 17 at the Asheville Civic Center. Tickets cost $7, and are […]
Legislating taste in Weaverville
Some residents just don’t like it. Vinson Parsons, a commissioner on the Weaverville Town Council, called it “ugly as hell.” But the town’s lawyer, Carl Loftin, told local officials that, even if people think cinderblock outbuildings and unusually shaped lots are unattractive, there’s nothing illegal about them. Residents attended the Dec. 15 Town Council meeting […]
Wizard foretells worldwide drama
Where will you be in 14 years? What will you be doing? After a 2,000-year gestation period, including some particularly difficult years immediately ahead of us, those of us still hanging around the Earth in the year 2012 will enjoy a renaissance the likes of which we’ve never known. We’ll be filled with a higher […]
Flushing money through the sewage-treatment plant?
How could a business possibly raise its prices, sell the same number of widgets, and yet collect less money for them? It doesn’t take a certified public accountant to know that something’s amiss at the Metropolitan Sewerage District of Buncombe County. Even though the district raised its residential sewer rates by a total of 7.5 […]
Notepad
Award-winning rest areas When you’re cruising down a North Carolina highway, your legs crossed tight and trembling as you pray, “Please, Lord, let me make it to a bathroom soon,” that rest area looming up ahead may seem like heaven. Desperation aside, however, the N.C. Department of Transportation recently singled out four of the 61 […]
Postmodern hyperspace and the people of Leicester
One doesn’t meet a person like Sarah Harnden — one experiences her. She’s the poster child for a realm where the supermodels include migrant workers, homeless children and weathered men leaning on weathered barns, striking their best James Dean-meets-Merle Haggard poses. Gesticulating into the air, as if creating a life-size mural with imaginary finger paints, […]