Asheville City Council yesterday approved a living wage — calculated by the local Asheville/Buncombe Living Wage Campaign as $10.86 per hour for employees without health-insurance benefits or $9.50 an hour for those with benefits — for all of the city’s full- and part-time employees. The rub, you ask?
The May 15 meeting of the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners led off with a bit of news. To those present, Chairman Nathan Ramsey read the text of an e-mail from Ken Maxwell, community relations manager for Progress Energy, which was addressed to County Manager Wanda Greene. The power company has been involved in a … Read more
Asheville City Council agreed at its May 15 session to begin the process of annexing three areas abutting city limits. The law won: Asheville City Council may boost the police budget by $1 million, providing for more personnel and additional tools to combat drugs and other crimes. photo by Jonathan Welch Unlike recent Council meetings … Read more
Appalachian Offsets: A grassroots version of carbon trading As consumers and businesses try to lessen their environmental impact, pursuing “carbon neutrality” is growing increasingly popular. Attaining zero-emissions status begins by calculating one’s own “carbon footprint”—the amount of carbon dioxide generated by day-to-day activities—then “offsetting” the rest. Offsetting typically means writing a check to a third … Read more
Sparking some local protest, the UNC Asheville Foundation is poised to begin construction of Pisgah House, a new chancellor’s residence that has been planned over the past eight years. Running out of woods?: Critics assert that UNCA shouldn’t site a new chancellor’s residence in the school’s wooded South Campus. A university spokesperson says the home … Read more
For just more than a decade, Future Visions, at 37 Wall St. in downtown Asheville, has provided statues, candles, incense, artwork and other items from around the globe. But at the end of May, the store will close its doors forever. “She loved that store”: Future Visions, a shop on Wall Street for more than … Read more
According to media-watchdog organizations including Accuracy in Media and Free Press, six corporations control most of the news presented to most Americans: TV, cable, radio, newspapers, magazines, books and bookstores are increasingly dominated by a handful of businesses. At the same time, major corporatations are pressing for relaxation of rules limiting ownership of newspapers and … Read more
“We can’t all camp out in old-growth forests, lying down in front of the bulldozers,” reads a press announcement for Josh Dorfman‘s new book, The Lazy Environmentalist: Your Guide to Easy, Stylish, Green Living (Stewart Tabori & Chang, 2007). “And it’s not only that we’re too busy: Some of us just don’t want our fabulous … Read more
There’s an old gag about the relationship between technology and music, which goes something like this … This appropriately mercurial photo of Dig Shovel Dig is a still from their URTV show “Mount Dungeon.” A man goes into a fancy electronics store to buy a new stereo. The salesman explains that they only carry top-of-the-line … Read more
There’s a pretty logical starting point for an article about a band with an unpronounceable name—in this case the California-cum-Brooklyn based !!! (which they verbalize as any repetition of a monosyllabic word or sound, such as “pow-pow-pow,” or more commonly “chk-chk-chk,” the clicking sound made by the Australian tribespeople in the film The Gods Must … Read more
