Curtis Buchanan was 5 years old when the sea of Christmas trees in his father’s front yard first urged him out on a frosty morning to inhale their balsam fragrance and feel their soft, blue-green needles brush against his face. Today, Buchanan walks among his own crop of organically grown Fraser firs as often as … Read more
Before I began interviewing piano tuners, I didn’t have the vaguest idea about the profession. The blind piano tuner, I recalled, was a second-string stock character in novels and films about wealthy families in the late 19th century, but sightlessness seemed an unlikely prerequisite for the profession as a whole. At any rate, the tuners … Read more
A week after the Asheville City Council passed a new anti-soliciting ordinance that bans begging, blocking sidewalks and sleeping in public, Downtown Commission Chair Carol King asked Council to establish a task force to study “social issues” (including homelessness and addiction). “It is no news to you that this is a very complex issue,” King … Read more
Contrary to the claims being spread by “wise-use” corporate-front groups, the U.N.’s Global Biodiversity Assessment characterized as “simple and perhaps over-ambitious” the Project’s “controversial” 1992 proposal to “expand natural habitats and corridors to cover as much as 30% of the U.S. land area.” Far from being the centerpiece of a U.N./environmentalist conspiracy to violate sovereign … Read more
It’s come down to just $500,000. That appears to be all that’s keeping Asheville and Henderson County from putting an end to their long-running water wars — provided, that is, that the two sides can cut a deal before the new Henderson County commissioners take their oaths of office in early December. At a special … Read more
In the wee, cold hours, with my wife’s warm body spooned against me, I pined with desire. And what began as pure physical hunger soon boiled over into a fundamental spiritual craving. And so I made my move — up out of the bed and into the kitchen to begin a batch of soup. Yes, … Read more
