Asheville groove, part 3: Cherishing our sense of place

Posted on by Jeff Fobes

For well over a century, Asheville has attracted creative people. So, whatever good deeds have been done in the recent past should be seen as growing out of the incredible mountains around us and as gifts from prior generations, the Cherokees and hard-scrabble Southern Appalachian settlers and Asheville’s new urbanists from the mid-19th century onward.

Xpress continues its coverage of Asheville’s evolution, this week seen from the point of view of an historian, an urban planner, a financial planner, an activist, an urban planner, a drummer and a poet.

If you would like to contribute your views to Xpress‘ ongoing retrospective,  please email publisher@mountainx.com or add your comments to any of the many articles in our coverage online at mountainx.com. — Jeff Fobes

Here’s a list of stories featured in the third week of our Asheville Groove series:

“How Asheville Became (and Continues to Be) the Most Exciting Small City,” by Milton Ready

“Remember When, Asheville?” by Joyce Harrison

“It Takes a Village,” by Leslie Anderson

“A Call to Drums,” by Sunny Keach

“Saving the Red Maple,” by Margaret Williams

“Asheville: Where I Found Myself,” by Glenis Redmond

You might also be interested in our celebration of 20 years since Mountain Xpress launched its first issue.

 

 

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About Jeff Fobes
As a long-time proponent of media for social change, my early activities included coordinating the creation of a small community FM radio station to serve a poor section of St. Louis, Mo. In the 1980s I served as the editor of the "futurist" newsletter of the U.S. Association for the Club of Rome, a professional/academic group with a global focus and a mandate to act locally. During that time, I was impressed by a journalism experiment in Mississippi, in which a newspaper reporter spent a year in a small town covering how global activities impacted local events (e.g., literacy programs in Asia drove up the price of pulpwood; soybean demand in China impacted local soybean prices). Taking a cue from the Mississippi journalism experiment, I offered to help the local Green Party in western North Carolina start its own newspaper, which published under the name Green Line. Eventually the local party turned Green Line over to me, giving Asheville-area readers an independent, locally focused news source that was driven by global concerns. Over the years the monthly grew, until it morphed into the weekly Mountain Xpress in 1994. I've been its publisher since the beginning. Mountain Xpress' mission is to promote grassroots democracy (of any political persuasion) by serving the area's most active, thoughtful readers. Consider Xpress as an experiment to see if such a media operation can promote a healthy, democratic and wise community. In addition to print, today's rapidly evolving Web technosphere offers a grand opportunity to see how an interactive global information network impacts a local community when the network includes a locally focused media outlet whose aim is promote thoughtful citizen activism. Follow me @fobes
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