An 8-year-old kid gapes from the stands as the great George “Meadowlark” Lemon stomps over courtside to hurl a bucket of water on the ref — that intolerable striped-shirted thorn in Meadowlark’s side! The ref promptly ducks. And then that wide-eyed boy — and all the other expectant spectators in those San Antonio, Texas, bleachers … Read more
When Irishman Michael Leahy landed on Canadian shores in 1825, he brought with him a well-worn fiddle and a long memory for jigs. But surprised he might be if he knew that five generations later, his DNA would spawn the band Leahy — the Canadian Celtic group made up entirely of Leahy brothers and sisters. … Read more
One of the Asheville music scene’s best-kept secrets happens not in a funky unmarked alley behind an art gallery, but on top of a prominent hill just south of downtown. Go past the National Historic Register plaque outside, walk through the cheery red wood doors, pass rows of gleaming wood pews, approach an altar carved … Read more
What do the 1964 World’s Fair, the TV show Malcolm in the Middle and a piece of dirt have in common? All are the subjects of songs by They Might Be Giants, an independent and prolific rock duo that’s hit the big time after 20 years. “For 10 years, we basically toured our brains out,” … Read more
The county cutbacks have also hit local nonprofit agencies hard, especially since they typically operate on shoestring budgets anyway. The county manager trimmed 10 percent from the county’s allocations for human-service agencies and 25 percent from the funding for agencies that serve other needs. The county had allocated about $2 million to 56 nonprofits in … Read more
While the snow turned to slush on Asheville’s streets, City Council members got wind of a lawsuit: Henderson County has sued the city, Buncombe County and the Regional Water Authority over a tangled property exchange that all parties had agreed to back in the mid-1990s. The lawsuit, which made the front page of the March … Read more
Susan Fisher‘s hair may be a tad grayer than it was when she became chair of the Asheville Board of Education in 1998. And her younger child, Alex, now headed for the ninth grade, “was in kindergarten when [my first term on the board] started in 1993,” Fisher recalled during a March 2 interview. But … Read more
High-tech heaven? by Lisa Watters The Industry Standard, a news magazine covering the Internet economy, has rated Asheville as the number-three place in the U.S. for companies to locate if they “want to get away from it all — but still be part of the action.” That’s good news, says Dave Porter of the Asheville … Read more
Remove nuclear warheads now President George W. Bush said in a May 23, 2000 campaign speech, “For two nations at peace, keeping so many weapons on high alert may create unacceptable risks of accidents or unauthorized launch.” In fact, we know that in January 1995, the U.S. and Russia came within four minutes of a … Read more
In response to widespread concern about educational mediocrity and the performance of the state’s public schools, the N.C. General Assembly passed legislation in 1996 authorizing charter schools — no more than five in any local district and no more than 100 statewide. This year, a bill has been introduced that seeks to remove the cap … Read more
