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 available at the Martin Luther King Celebration office at 74 Patton Ave., or at the door.

The breakfast starts at 7:45 a.m.; beginning at 8:30, Malveaux will speak about how we can apply King’s dream of peace, unity and nonviolence to our changing society. The program will include prayer and singing.

Malveaux writes weekly for the San Francisco Sun Reporter, and monthly for USA Today. She has taught economics, public policy and African-American studies at the University of California-Berkeley. Her research focuses on the labor market and public policy, and how such policy affects women and African-Americans in general. She co-edited the book Slipping Through the Cracks: The Status of Black Women.

The younger set can celebrate King at a youth and teen celebration and award presentation, starting at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 16 at the Montford Recreation Center, 34 Pearson Drive. Admission is free. Three peer-nominated youths who have demonstrated awareness and concern for peace and equality in their community will receive awards.

Step in time to King’s dream of social justice and freedom for all during the annual Peace March, beginning at 11:30 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 19. The march will begin at City/County Plaza and end a short distance away at Martin Luther King Park (located on Martin Luther King Drive, across from St. James Church), where speakers from our own community will offer their perspectives on how to realize King’s dream in the coming millennium. Nonperishable foods will be collected for the needy, and MLK cancellation stamps will be available on site.

The celebration will end at 6 p.m. with a candlelight service at the Nazareth First Baptist Church, 146 Pine St. in Asheville. Candles will be lit for peace, love, unity, justice, nonviolence and freedom from hunger, poverty, drugs and homelessness. Participants are invited to bring their own candles, too. Recipients of this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Awards will be honored during the program. The awards are given to those who serve the causes of equality, justice, freedom and peace in their communities.

Also on Jan. 19, a special convocation is planned at Warren Wilson College, including a 4 p.m. celebration and lecture, a 5:30 p.m. dinner, and a 7 p.m. gospel concert.

For more info, call Oralene Simmons at 253-3714, or 778-1311.

King in Brevard

Brevard College will commemorate King’s civil rights work on Monday, Jan. 19 with Symbols of Struggle. The all-day event will begin at 10 a.m. in the Myers Dining Hall on the college campus, with a prayer breakfast featuring music and reflections on King’s life.

At 7 p.m., there will be a candlelight peace walk from the Transylvania County Law Enforcement Center to the campus, followed at 8 p.m. by a community celebration in the campus’s Dunham Auditorium. The celebration will feature gospel music and a talk by Methodist minister Earl Wilson.

The prayer breakfast costs $3; all other events are free.

To find out more, call (704) 884-8333 or (704) 883-8292, ext. 2290.

Donate, view photos

There are volumes and volumes of photos new and old at Asheville’s Pack Memorial Library, and with your help, their numbers can grow.

“We depend on donations,” says reference librarian Zoe Rhine.

Rhine encourages Asheville residents to take black-and-white photos of their homes and then donate the photos — along with the negatives and whatever information they have about the structures — to the library for documentation. She also encourages the donation of any old photos of Asheville and surrounding areas.

Donated photos join the thousands of others that have found a home at the library. The library makes a copy of each donated photo (and sometimes a negative), then slips the original in a protective sleeve and locks it in a filing cabinet (“We do have to be sort of careful with them,” Rhine explains), before putting the copy on display. If you don’t want to give up your old photos, the library can make negatives from them and return the originals to you.

There are 13 volumes of Buncombe County photos, and six volumes of photos from all over western North Carolina. The volumes sit on shelves beside the North Carolina reference desk. There are also volumes of postcards; photos of Thomas Wolfe, his family and friends; and many volumes of reproductions of old newspaper clippings — some of them 100 years old.

The volumes are arranged according to subject — from aviation to crafts, parades and veterans, the library’s got a picture.

This is the final year of a five-year project concentrating on collecting, storing and cataloging photos, postcards and clippings in a data base. Information about the photographer, date and subject of the photo, as well as possible cross-references, is available for most pictures.

People often use the photo collection when they’re restoring houses or doing research, says Rhine. If you’re browsing through the collection and see a photo you like, you can request to see the original. If you decide you must have a copy for yourself, the library can put you in touch with a photographer who will make you a reproduction for about $10.

To learn more about the collection, or to make a donation, call Pack Library at 255-5203 and ask for the North Carolina desk.

Bele Chere it with each other

Got something to say about this year’s Bele Chere festival? Come to the Bele Chere community forum at 6 p.m. on Jan. 20 in the banquet room of the Asheville Civic Center. Local residents, businesses and any other interested parties are welcome to attend and give their input.

For more information, call 259-5800.

Cable-agreement meeting

Want to know more about Asheville’s proposed cable-TV franchise agreement with Intermedia Cable — especially what provisions it may have for public-access channels? Make plans to attend a meeting at Pack Library’s Lord Auditorium on Wednesday, Jan. 14, starting at 7 p.m. Members of Citizens for Media Literacy and the Public Access Coalition will highlight and explain specific points in the proposed Intermedia contract. They’ll also explore the possibility of assembling a public-access-television steering committee.

For more info, call 252-8569.

Explore genetics of cancer

How do genetics, environment and lifestyle affect your chances of developing cancer? To find out, attend “Cancer Genetics: The Importance of Family History” on Thursday, Jan. 22 at 7 p.m., in the Owen Heart Center’s Glenn Theater at Mission Hospital. The lecture is free, but donations are welcome.

The speaker will be Kerry Crandall, a certified genetics counselor for Mission St. Joseph’s.

All are welcome to attend; registration is required by Jan. 19.

To learn more, call 259-3457.

Celebrate reproductive choice

There will be a ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 22 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville.

The historic decision favored reproductive choice, ruling that state laws prohibiting abortion are unconstitutional (except in the last trimester of pregnancy), because the 14th amendment provides for a woman’s freedom to make a private decision about her reproductive practices.

Call 258-5821 for more info.

Exchange grant

Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte have received a $29,000 grant from the Council of Independent Colleges to support an exchange program between the two schools. WWC, a small private college in the mountains, and JCSU, an urban school with mostly African-American students, have been participating in an exchange program since 1992.

“The exchanges that have occurred have been enlightening, beneficial and enhancing for all participants,” says JCSU President Dorothy Yancy.

Grants for clean streams

The Pigeon River Fund invites nonprofits and local-government agencies with ideas about how to improve the rivers and streams of Haywood, Buncombe and Madison counties to apply for grants. Applications are due by Feb. 17. Through January, you can make an appointment to learn about how to get project funding.

The fund awards grants that promote education or environmental improvements. Ithas supported more than 30 projects over the past two years.

Call Kim McGuire at 254-4960 for more info.

— compiled by Jill Ingram