Busking for Brother Wolf


We get to listen to a lot of music while we’re working here at MX.  Live music comes drifting through the front windows of our offices in the Miles Building, adjacent to the Flat Iron sculpture on Wall Street.  There’s almost always someone busking down there – but yesterday’s theme was refreshingly different.  Photo by Jake Frankel.

Great Outdoors, Asheville: Building on Roosevelt’­s legacy

You know it, your friends know it, and area visitors including Barack Obama know it:  Western North Carolina offers many high-quality opportunities to recreate in the great outdoors.

That’s why the administration launched its Great Outdoors Initiative’s Listening Sessions here in Asheville today, along with a handful of other locations across the U.S.  It probably helps that North Carolina is a national leader when it comes to investing public funds in land protection and conservation—even in tough economic times. photo by Jerry Nelson

Listening for the Great Outdoors: public forum today

Obama’s back in town Thursday, July 15 – or at least, officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Interior, and the White House’s own Council on Environmental Quality are – for a Great Outdoors Listening Event, a public forum aiming to gather information about successful conservation efforts in the region and to receive input on how the federal government can partner with communities in conserving more land and reconnecting American families to nature. The forum will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. today at AB-Tech. But on Wednesday, July 14, area officials gathered at Carrier Park for a preview.

The Green Scene

Paddle trip down the French Broad takes the river's pulse Last Wednesday, Xpress joined French Broad Riverkeeper Hartwell Carson and a group of paddlers organized by the Western North Carolina Alliance on day six of their 11-day trip down the French Broad River. Something fishy going on: River advocates Donna Lisenby, left, and Hartwell Carson, […]

The Green Scene: Aging In Place, Sustainabl­y

Think of it as the greening of aging. The fourth annual Mountain Green Sustainable Communities Conference will bring together building-industry professionals, educators and others interested in exploring best practices in sustainable and green construction, development, planning and design. The event, a project of Warren Wilson College's Environmental Leadership Center, will happen Wednesday, June 23, on […]

The Green Scene

When the Defense Department abandoned its high-security satellite-tracking station deep within the Pisgah National Forest in the mid-1990s, neighbors southwest of Brevard continued to believe there were top-secret government activities continuing at the site. Xpress reporter Susan Andrew visited recently to learn more. Deep space: In 1968, the Cerro Tololo InterAmerican Observatory in Chile captured […]

Disturbing the peace

This is in response to the letter from J. Daley regarding the city’s noise ordinance [“Making a Joyful Noise,” Feb. 6]. I’m a co-author of that ordinance, written in 2000-2001 by a team of citizens, noise-abatement professionals, police and a city attorney. For a year, I also chaired the quasi-judicial board that oversees citations and […]

Coming to America

In light of the recent discussions concerning what to do about illegal immigrants in our community, I am compelled to share the following. Most of us have stories like this in our family histories, if we take time to look them up. The heartbreak and struggle our ancestors endured in traveling to these shores are […]