For the birds and others There will be a number of special homes for sale this weekend, when the Bountiful Cities Project hosts its Fourth Annual Birdhouse Auction. Donated by some 50 local artists and craftspeople, the creative and/or functionally crafted abodes for feathered friends will be up for bid, with local auctioneer Noel Cost […]

Campaign Calendar • Primary registration deadlines: If you are not already registered to vote in Buncombe County, you must register by Friday, April 7, in order to vote in the May 2 primary election. Only contested seats are on the primary ballots, which are distributed by party affiliation (Democrat, Republican or Unaffiliated). Changes in party […]

Madison Commissioners green-light Wolf Laurel development The Madison County Board of Commissioners narrowly approved zoning changes March 13 that pave the way for Wolf Laurel Ski Resort to develop about 300 acres in the Laurel Valley for vacation homes and retail businesses. Siding with the evident sentiments of most county residents in attendance, Commissioners Dyatt […]

Man with a plan Asheville is riding high these days, with development, redevelopment, in-fill projects and sprawl all figuring into the mix. Neighborhood activists are advocating smarter growth, new urbanism, walkable shopping and human-scale design. These are heady days for the Paris of the South, and a time when it might be useful to consider […]

Civic Center task force wraps up mandate The Asheville Civic Center Task Force will gather for its potentially final meeting on Wednesday, March 15, to try to place the last large piece into the puzzle on their table. Following a mandate from City Council to produce two recommendations for the Civic Center’s future, the task […]

Buncombe’s Bookmobile In 1939, before public libraries had branched out of Asheville into the county, books came to the people on wheels. For 60 years, Katherine Case piloted the Bookmobile along rutted dirt roads to make sure that books were available to people in outlying rural locations. “For many people, this was their first contact […]

Everything’s coming up dollars Farmers and gardeners eager to wring a little more green from their agricultural endeavors might consider attending the Marketing Opportunities for Farmers Conference planned for Saturday, Feb. 25, at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa. The daylong event will bring attendees face to face with some of the region’s (and the state’s) […]

Changing the world one bumper sticker at a time In a world that can seem unfriendly at times, or even downright threatening, reminders to be kind to one another can’t hurt. That’s the idea behind a kindness-bumper-sticker contest that asks folks to come up with a slogan of eight words or less. “When you’re sitting […]

Lost in Transmission Homegrown talk radio in the mountains took a knock last month when Asheville-based WZNN (AM 1350) traded its news-and-opinion programming for an all-sports format. The change from public affairs to play ball acknowledged sagging fortunes at the right-leaning station, which went on-air in 2004. WZNN was hobbled from the outset by technical […]

Left out of the lottery When the North Carolina General Assembly passed legislation instituting a state lottery with profits earmarked for education, it overlooked the 30,000 students enrolled in the state’s 100 charter schools. The formula approved for distributing the gambling money leaves the charter program high and dry. In response, educators and parents associated […]

For the kids The Children’s Collaborative of Buncombe County, a coalition of agencies with child-related missions, sent a query to County Manager Wanda Greene concerning Buncombe’s mental-health funding, particularly for children’s needs. The questions, first raised by longtime mental-health activist Jerry Rice, revolved around assets that the county obtained following the dissolution of Buncombe Madison […]

Council hosts goal-setting forum The Asheville City Council will stage a community goal-setting forum Thursday, Jan. 12, in the Randolph Learning Center (90 Montford Ave.), starting at 6 p.m. Council members will use citizen input to help determine goals and priorities during the upcoming budget process. After an introduction by Mayor Terry Bellamy, city residents […]

New frontier for bookworms First the library ditched those tedious (though now very retro-cool in secondhand shops) card catalogs that could be accessed only by patrons armed with the Dewey decimal system. And from the computerized card catalogs, it was only a short leap to online services. That’s right — your library is now online. […]

Readers Xpress themselves Amid all the sound and fury over the supposed “war against Christmas,” at least one local newspaper is willing to ask, in good faith, “What does the holiday season mean to you?” This was the question posed to applicants of the 2005 Mountain Xpress Holiday Guide Cover Contest. The response was a […]

The art of local art buying If your holiday shopping list is still uncomfortably long, this Saturday, Dec. 17, provides a handy means to shorten it in one fell swoop — and pump some money into the local economy along the way. From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., the members of the Mountain Microenterprise Fund’s […]

The weather up here Just how odd is the weather this year? Wouldn’t it be great to have an easy reference to turn to that would make local weather trends clear and understandable? For 21 years, Alex Huang, chair of UNCA’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, has compiled just such a resource: an annual calendar that […]