Jonathan Walker, a senior computer-science major at UNCA, is tinkering with his robot. It’s a shoebox-sized contraption made of gray, green and yellow Legos, mini-motors and a tiny camera, and Walker looks a bit like a kid on Christmas morning as he lines it up with an assortment of neatly spaced glass lenses. But this … Read more
Janice Birchfield doesn’t ruffle easily. The washtub-bass player for the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers even seems nonplussed about the day the Sex Pistols spent at her family’s homestead in Roan Mountain, Tenn. “They were very nice,” she says of Johnny Rotten, the late Sid Vicious and company. The same goes for Boy George, who, according to … Read more
While Western North Carolina harbors many pockets of great artists, for beauty bare, no region matches the Toe River setting in the northern Black Mountain range. The art bug got a solid grip on the region 75 years ago, with the founding of Penland School of Crafts (see Xpress, March 17, 2004), and the burgeoning … Read more
“You can ask any old friend of mine: I’m a f••ing comedian, a fun guy, and that’s what most people thought I’d become; not Old Misery Guts,” British singer/songwriter Beth Orton recently confessed to Believer magazine. It’s true that every interviewer claims the 6-foot-tall musician is almost punchy, always cracking jokes and telling crazy stories. … Read more
“One of my Romanian teachers says, ‘People in the circus are way more crazy than other people, and the people who go up in the air are the craziest of all,’” reports Lisa Clayton, hula-hoop artist, ring mistress and aerialist with local act Surreal Sirkus. But even a lifetime of experience cannot ensure safety. “A … Read more
Listening room (CD reviews) 99 Years, 99 Years (99 Years, 2004) Giving bad reviews to people with good intentions sucks. Just because you respect a group’s goals, though, doesn’t mean you can stomach their music. But let’s back up. 99 Years, you see, was once a cover band. They played the typical WNC bar circuit, … Read more
Gardening is a community effort. Even the most dedicatedly solitary gardener knows, deep down, that it takes a village to raise a crop. It may not involve other humans, of course, but it is definitely a team sport. I think this really came home to me during my post-chicken period. For several years I kept … Read more
After two of the most momentous and unpredictable weeks in the history of water politics in Western North Carolina, observers had become almost habituated to surprise by the time the Regional Water Authority of Asheville, Buncombe and Henderson met to pass its budget on May 27. What transpired that day was nowhere near as earthshaking … Read more
After a month of bargaining, jockeying and pleas for unity, City Council members remain sharply divided on how to combat drug trafficking. But at least this time they came away with a decision of sorts. Despite Vice Mayor Carl Mumpower‘s repeated attempts to sell his colleagues on a $1 million law-enforcement blitz in Asheville’s public-housing … Read more
