Mountain Xpress 05.19.21

OUR 27TH YEAR OF WEEKLY INDEPENDENT NEWS, ARTS & EVENTS FOR WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA VOL. 27 NO. 42 MAY 19-25, 2021

City schools superintendent spars with commissioner over budget

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Photo exhibit focuses attention on public lands

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CAUGHT ON CAMERA Do video doorbells make neighborhoods safer?

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C ONTENT S

FEATURE

NEWS

OPINION

FEATURES 8 FUTURE VISION Architect Laura Berner Hudson weighs in on proposed Charlotte Street development

12 BUNCOMBE BEAT Asheville projects higher taxes to support budget priorities

14 ‘POWER OF THE PENNY’ In this week’s Asheville Archives: Community support amid the Great Depression

PAGE 10 CAUGHT ON CAMERA

PUBLISHER: Jeff Fobes

As the popularity of video doorbells soars, local law enforcement agencies are getting into the act, partnering with doorbell vendors and seeking out footage to use in investigations. But do the cameras really make people or their property any safer?

ASSISTANT TO THE PUBLISHER: Susan Hutchinson

COVER PHOTO iStock COVER DESIGN Scott Southwick

4 LETTERS 4 CARTOON: MOLTON 7 CARTOON: BRENT BROWN

A&C

WELLNESS

8 COMMENTARY 18 HEALTH TO YOUR HOME MAHEC community health workers forge trusted connections

10 NEWS 12 BUNCOMBE BEAT 14 ASHEVILLE ARCHIVES 15 COMMUNITY CALENDAR

22 PRESERVATION SOCIETY New art museum photography exhibition spotlights public lands

18 WELLNESS 22 ARTS & CULTURE 24 FOOD ROUNDUP

A&C

28 CLUBLAND 23 CITIZEN ARCHIVISTS Local professor helps digitize a more inclusive history

30 FREEWILL ASTROLOGY 30 CLASSIFIEDS 31 NY TIMES CROSSWORD

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3

OPINION

Send your letters to the editor to letters@mountainx.com.

A gentrified and homogenized Asheville A local restaurateur recently posted his belief that people in Asheville are just lazy (while he was looking for someone to rent his tiny basement for $1,500). It really ticked me off and let me know how out of touch some folks are with the reality in Asheville.

If you need to pay rent in Asheville, you will need to consider this elementary math problem: A two-bedroom rental in this town is $1,500. You might find something slightly lower if you have no pets and fit the landlord’s wishes exactly. You’ll also find opportunists charging $1,500 for one-bedroom basement apartments. Every place wants you to apply (for a fee) and qualify at three times the rent with a long work history proving that.

So, $1,500 times three equals $4,500 per month. Taking a job that pays less than $4,500 a month means we will have to leave town. It’s not a case of the lazies, just people knowing simple math.

Supposedly, the living wage is now at $17/hour, but — $17 times 30 hours (they don’t want to pay benefits) equals $510/week. Not quite to the

C A RT O O N B Y R AN DY M O L T O N halfway mark for the goal of $4,500 for the month.

Let’s say the employer is willing to pay full time, plus benefits: $17 times 40 hours equals $680. $680 times 4.2 weeks equals $2,856. Again, not even close for this single mom to be able to afford even a two-bedroom apartment to share with my two teen sons. For that, I need a full-time job at about $27/hour.

I have a postgraduate degree and over 20 years of work experience.

Jobs pay terribly here. If the ratio of wages to housing cost doesn’t get under control for the creative working schlubs of this town, we will all have to go. Asheville is not gonna stay weird under these conditions — you’re pricing the weirdos right out of town.

— Amy Meier Asheville

City needs to keep camping out of parks Camping in city parks is just not sustainable.

The city of Asheville needs to adopt a zero-tolerance policy on camping in city parks. It is not sustainable, is unsanitary and just plain does not work.

The Blade recently shared a hypedup tale about brutal tourist camper evictions from city parks. Exactly how many ways can this rhetoric be wrong?

The people affected by the Aston Park camp were public housing residents and local “gentry,” which consist of legacy residents who have lived in Southside since redlining, young couples putting in hours of sweat equity to fix dilapidated homes and people fortunate enough to be able to hang up their boots after 50 years working dif4

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ficult jobs with long hours. Residents trying to survive and cope with COVID limitations, dwindling savings, rising taxes and unsafe conditions on the street. This has absolutely nothing to do with tourists.

The Asheville Police Department is unfortunately tasked with the unsavory job of distributing eviction notices; it is their job. The pretend medical table, set up in Aston Park for the photo ops and article, was cute; where has this effort been for the past eight or more years for all the homeless people camping down by the river?

If you want to help the homeless, go to the camps behind the big-box stores and on Murray Hill; they could sure use your help. Take one camper into your home and let them use your shower and bathroom; give them one meal. Maybe drive them to the store to get supplies?

APD arrested some protesters who made a situation where there should not have been one. APD did not rise to their baiting. Residents also helped pick up the trash and needles the following days, but most of the work was done by city employees.

We are grateful to the city of Asheville and the City Council for taking decisive action and trust they will keep their word, not squander the money, and create long-term options and solutions.

— Helen Hyatt Asheville

Demonstrate for peace, justice and a green transition Demonstrations such as the local ongoing Raytheon issue are generally

framed as being a protest. From my viewpoint, it’s much more than that.

They are participating in free speech to fulfill a longing for peace and justice and a sustainable planet for all. It is an effort to inform the public and influence public officials, who have the power and responsibility to make decisions for the public good. If the System shuts us out, how else can we influence it?

The local Resist Raytheon group of concerned citizens has been demonstrating every other Friday, and now plan on an Asheville Walk and Rally for Peace and Justice and a Green Transition, beginning at Pack Square and ending at a rally at Bent Creek River Park on May 22. Mountain Xpress has published several letters on this, and you can get more information at rejectraytheonavl.com.

What can you do? You can call on the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners to rescind the $27 million incentive agreement with Pratt & Whitney, and invest in such things as affordable housing, small businesses and schools, along with commitment to transparency on such major decisions.

If we don’t fulfill our democratic responsibility, something fundamental will die in the United States. We cannot simply hide our patriotic longing that requires more public funding for social issues, including supporting our families, health care, fair wages, environmental concerns and your personal concerns for a more caring society: a way of life that can unite the American people.

The least one can do is the very important activity of informing yourself deeply on your major concerns and hopes for ourselves and the legacy of our children. We cannot merely rely on those in power.

The regeneration of our society cannot be taught by mere words or sermons. We are all connected — interconnected social beings. Our community needs your support to inspire, encourage and instill visions of the true, the good and the beautiful offered in a world of love, kindness and respect for a caring society.

We have the responsibility to guide each new generation to focus on getting the beginning right, trusting that our young will grow and develop as they mature in their own personal creativity, and in the process create a better world. We educate not only our children, but ourselves.

What is required is to not stop trying!

— Ed Sacco Asheville

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Mountain Xpress 27th Annual

X AWARDS

Send your letters to the editor to letters@mountainx.com.

Insist that local government takes the long view 2021

Vote Now

Through May!

OPINION

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Do you love your mother? Most of us will answer yes to such a question. But some, having an honest moment, may struggle with themselves. Perhaps egos get in the way of reality. Or the need for greed. That’s often the case with some of humanity.

But I speak of the Earth as mother.

She is struggling with our continued demands, our taking while never

imagining a need of giving back. Let’s call that giving back conservation. Or self-preservation.

The resiliency of any community matches the resiliency of its environment. “You never miss your water ’til the well runs dry.” The well has run dry in much of the world and is running on empty in much more. Witness that through the movement of masses of millions of refugees. The catalyst of their movement is violence, but the truth of their desperation is environmental collapse. Urban economies are

underwritten by rural soil and water with agrarian sweat.

Every day is Earth Day on this planet from now on. Buncombe County as a whole is actively “paving paradise to put up a parking lot.” The demands upon our elected representative government are tremendous, and those demands are chiefly in the immediacy of everyday pressures.

However, citizens with enough good sense to think forward, should, and I do believe must, insist that the commissioners and all our elected city officials grasp an active long-term view of having plentiful water, good air and rich soil as being who we are — a culture which conserves and thrives upon its ancient and resilient environmental heritage.

Dear Mother Earth, help us save ourselves from the rat race.

— Lawrence Williamson Asheville

Legislators should work on something useful The North Carolina state legislature [has been] considering three bills that would directly — and negatively — affect trans people. One would criminalize providing medical care for trans people under the age of 21 — care that has been shown to be both reversible and also crucial to transgenders’ mental health. (Witness the increase in suicide attempts by trans youth in Arkansas in the wake of that state passing similar legislation.)

Another bill would prevent trans people from participating in sports as their preferred gender, even though studies have shown it makes no difference in the level of competition, and anyway, it seems laughable that someone would go to all the time, effort and trouble it takes to transition just to gain a nonexistent advantage, or (heaven forbid) gain access to the locker facilities of the opposite gender.

Finally, one bill would allow health care workers to refuse to provide medical care … to trans people if it went against their “religious” beliefs. This is utterly ridiculous, given that their first “religious” belief ought to be a commitment to saving people’s lives, not worrying about their own petty, hateful prejudices. This is all nothing more than hate trying to disguise itself as fear, and the sadly ironic part of it is that it is all being pushed by the Republican Party, which likes to claim that it wants to get government out of people’s lives.

Finally, I find it fascinating that nearly all anti-trans sentiment is the product of men. Women don’t get freaked out about trans women using women’s rooms, and they are the only 6

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CARTOON BY BRENT BROWN ones being affected by it. Get your minds off of what might or might not be in someone’s pants, legislators, and work on something useful like expanding Medicaid or increasing teachers’ pay.

— Penelope B. Stephens Asheville Editor’s note: The News & Observer reports that lawmakers have decided not to move ahead with the bills addressing transgender youth sports and gender-affirming health care.

Done right, child care funds will help families, economy North Carolina has an amazing opportunity to improve the lives of children, women and families with the passage of the American Rescue Plan.

This plan will send $1.3 billion to North Carolina to invest in early childhood education and child care programs.

This investment is desperately needed, and we must spend it well.

Even before the pandemic, finding quality child care was extremely difficult in our community. In Buncombe County and across our state, the demand for child care spots far exceeds the supply. I was pregnant six years ago with my oldest son when I started getting on waitlists for child care programs in our area. I am still on some of those waitlists.

The pandemic has made operating very difficult for many programs; some have even made the difficult choice to close for good. Child care is very expensive, and parents cannot afford to pay more. Educators working in early childhood or child care jobs, most of whom are women, make low wages without benefits for very important work.

The N.C. General Assembly members should carefully invest this unprecedented $1.3 billion investment in making child care more affordable for families, expanding access to quality preschool and early childhood programs so that our youngest learners are reading for success in kindergarten, and increase pay and benefits for the child care workforce. Investing in children and families will help the economy. It’s the right thing to do and if we do it right, we will have a better North Carolina.

— Rachel Shelton Asheville

Correction In our May 5 story “Bin There, Done That: Local Stores Take Different Tacks to Pandemic-era Bulk Sales,” we should have identified Mason Gardner as spokesperson for the Toe River Health District, which serves Avery, Mitchell and Yancey counties.

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MAY 19-25, 2021

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OPINION

Future vision

“Every neighborhood has a responsibility to accept its share of new, denser residential projects.”

101 Charlotte St. deftly balances conflicting priorities

BY LAURA BERNER HUDSON Drive through North Asheville these days and you can’t miss the bright red yard signs urging passersby to “Save Charlotte Street” or vaguely saying, “This is a terrible idea.” Upon closer inspection, you see that the signs are sponsored by the Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe County, which is leading the charge against a proposed development at the northeast corner of Charlotte and Chestnut streets.

Frantically waving its red-feather logo across Grove Park lawns, the Preservation Society is sounding the alarm: Our city’s very identity is changing as developers offer a “new vision” of Asheville.

Perhaps they’re right. Asheville is continuing to grow, with the 2020 Bowen Report projecting 3,254 additional households in the city by 2024.

This will put measurable pressure on the existing housing stock and drive increased urbanization, requiring sociocultural changes if we’re to accommodate our new neighbors.

Asheville is changing, and since affordable housing is already in short supply, every neighborhood has a responsibility to accept its share of new, denser residential projects, despite the inevitable protests by vocal citizen groups.

PROGRESS VS. PRESERVATION Much of the new multifamily housing built here in recent years has been blandly suburban and located on the city’s periphery, especially in South Asheville, along Brevard Road or clustered near the interstate exits in Weaverville. With limited access to public transportation, this decentralized development makes households increasingly car-dependent, exacerbating traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions amid a global climate crisis. Additionally, low-density expansion requires extending municipal services into rural areas, destroying natural habitat rather than upgrading the city’s current infrastructure.

The academically accepted counterpoint to this type of urban sprawl is building more units per acre along established transportation corridors close to the urban core. Private developers are essential to increasing the housing supply, because they have the resources to build close to downtown, 8

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where land costs are higher. Urban density actually reduces traffic congestion by promoting walkability; it also creates the critical mass needed to support better transit options. This lowers carbon emissions and fosters the face-to-face social interaction and engagement that Jane Jacobs championed in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. These positive planning goals build social capital and local resilience, reconnecting people with one another and with the place where they live.

The proposed 101 Charlotte St. development would occupy a prominent corner in the Chestnut Hill Historic District. A partnership between the Killian family and RCG, it envisions a series of mixed-use, three- to five-story buildings spread over 7 acres purchased

by Dr. Killian in the 1980s. Located a half-mile from downtown, the site offers easy interstate access. The project promises about 180 new residential units (18 of which would be deeded affordable), roughly 45,000 square feet of office and retail space, structured parking for 400 cars, and rehabilitating 56 existing workforce housing units in the admittedly banal Asheville Arms Apartments.

Mindful of the neighborhood’s present character, the new building facades respectfully take their architectural cues from the adjacent older brick buildings, with just enough contemporary detailing to declare their 21st-century provenance. The expanded streetscape would provide pedestrian connectivity and opportunities for social interaction where an impassable 5-foot-high wall now sits.

The Charlotte Street Corridor Plan, written over 20 years ago, calls for mixed use, an improved pedestrian experience and medium- to high-density residential development. The current project proposes structures taller than the plan’s suggested two-story height limit in order to provide 35 units per acre while preserving 1.3 acres of open space in the form of pedestrian plazas.

In exchange for mixed-use, multifamily housing, activated streetscapes, ample parking and increased economic investment, however, 13 aging, single-family houses built at the turn of 20th century would be torn down.

So begins a battle between progress and preservation, where the need for increased urbanization collides with a historic district that sees this type

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LAURA BERNER HUDSON of development as an “inappropriate” intrusion into an established neighborhood — or, worse, an existential threat to Asheville’s alleged “character.”

BLENDING OLD AND NEW

Over the last 50 years, historic preservation has evolved from a special-interest group formed to protect specific, architecturally significant structures such as New York’s Grand Central Terminal into an entrenched cultural institution that seeks to influence all aspects of the built environment.

Thanks to local preservation efforts, exceptional buildings in Asheville have been granted protected status, safeguarding their long-term cultural legacy: Douglas Ellington’s art deco City Hall, Charles Parker’s Grove Arcade and Richard Sharp Smith’s YMI, the heart of Asheville’s African American business district.

But today’s preservationists no longer focus on simply saving such treasures.

Instead, they fight to protect entire districts whose mishmash of low-density development patterns reflects a world that no longer exists. More troubling, this inclination to preserve the past now extends to the design guidelines for new buildings, imposing an architectural hegemony of revanchist nostalgia, comfort and imitation to impose a static “character” on a place that, in reality, is continually evolving.

While not as ornate as the Victorian and Queen Anne confections in Montford’s historic district, the existing houses along Charlotte Street are well-proportioned and illustrative of Asheville’s early 20th century building boom. The Preservation Society advocates leveraging available tax credits to restore them, at least aesthetically.

Federal rehabilitation standards provide guidance on how to renovate such structures while preserving their histor-

ical, cultural or architectural value, but those repairs are costly.

Inevitably, these houses would be sold or rented at a much higher rate than what current tenants pay. This is precisely how historic districts drive up the price of housing, often turning them into exclusive enclaves of the wealthy, educated and white. With so much of the Chestnut Hill district already protected (including the Von Ruck House, which was previously restored by the Killians), isn’t there room to weave contemporary ideas into the existing fabric, marbling the old and new into something that honors history while acknowledging the present?

A MORE INCLUSIVE VISION

Cities must be allowed flexibility to adapt to broad economic changes, which may be incremental or abrupt.

The oldest neighborhoods are typically located closest to the urban core, where equitable transit-oriented development is desperately needed. By arguing that large mixed-use projects destroy those neighborhoods’ character, preservation is often used as cover to stop development altogether. But limiting development hinders cities’ long-term success, which is why Portland and Minneapolis have completely abandoned low-density, single-family zoning.

Asheville’s leaders should not support policy that prioritizes the needs of the few who already “have theirs” at the expense of those who don’t. Allowing historic districts to protect their interests without regard for nonhomeowners and renters directly conflicts with an inclusive commitment to localism.

In economist Edward Glaeser’s book Triumph of the City, he reminds us, “The strength that comes from human collaboration is the central truth behind civilization’s success and the primary reason why cities exist. We must free ourselves from our tendency to see cities as their buildings and remember that the real city is made of flesh, not concrete.”

Let’s consider a new vision of Asheville that balances preservation with progress to create a more inclusive and sustainable city, ensuring that we aren’t preserving the past at the expense of the future.

Asheville native Laura Berner Hudson spent 15 years on the West Coast before returning home in 2014. She’s an architect and the former chair of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission. X

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9

NEWS

Neighborhood watch

Residents, law enforcement explore video doorbells for fighting crime

BY BROOKE RANDLE

But crystal-clear images don’t always result in the recovery of stolen belongings or the identification of wrongdoers.

“There’s limitations to any surveillance system that you buy,” Aardema says. “It’s hugely beneficial to corroborate that a crime did happen.

Occasionally, it does capture a pretty good image of the suspect’s face, which is absolutely helpful to us, especially if we have no more leads as to their identity.

“But it’s not always a guarantee that a crime is going to be solved just because there’s surveillance of it,” Aardema warns.

brandle@mountainx.com With the COVID-19 pandemic keeping many at home for work, school and recreation throughout the past year, the popularity of video doorbell systems like Amazon’s Ring has soared, with nearly 8 million doorbells sold globally in 2020. According to market research firm Strategy Analytics, the systems offer “a simple and effective way to minimize disruptions during the day and keep tabs on deliveries of goods.”

Many video doorbell users also leverage the systems for home security.

Local law enforcement agencies have also gotten into the act, inking partnership deals with various providers and using the footage in investigations.

While local detectives express enthusiasm about adding the video footage captured by the cameras to their crime-fighting arsenal, they also note the limitations and privacy concerns of the technology.

EYES ON THE STREET

Lt. Sean Aardema, who heads the Criminal Investigation Division at the Asheville Police Department, says he’s noticed a significant increase in the use of security cameras of all types during his nearly 22 years with the agency.

“I remember when I was a patrol officer, you would regularly go into businesses that had been broken into or robbed, and it was not at all uncommon that they would have no surveillance system whatsoever,” Aardema recalls.

“And the ones that did, it was usually VHS tape that was not terribly great, because they would just use the same tape over and over again every day.”

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TRENDING SKYWARD: Lt. Sean Aardema, who leads the Criminal Investigation Division at the Asheville Police Department, says he’s noticed a significant increase in the use of security cameras during his nearly 22 years with the agency, but there are limitations to the technology. Photo courtesy of the Asheville Police Department Video surveillance technology has come a long way since then, with the latest products from Ring, Google Nest and more offering cloud-based data management and high-quality video footage that streams directly to a user’s smartphone. Aardema says the new user-friendly technologies, combined with lower costs, are driving increased uptake in residential settings.

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Asked whether the systems actually reduce crime, however, Aardema says it’s difficult to know for sure.

He’d like to think that awareness of the growing prevalence of cameras serves as a deterrent but notes that the APD usually only sees footage when “a crime has been committed on that property — so take from that what you will.”

APD spokesperson Christina Hallingse adds that while APD doesn’t have the numbers to show whether security cameras deter crime, they do “help with people’s sense of security.”

The cameras can aid officers in investigations after crimes are committed, Aardema says. He cites a string of 2019 package thefts as an example in which video footage, provided by multiple residents, led to the identification and arrest of a suspect. “She would wait until [United Parcel Service] or someone would make a delivery and she would come up and steal the packages,” he recalls. “And we were able to identify her by using residential surveillance.”

PARTNERING UP

Police departments can choose to work directly with companies that manage surveillance camera systems.

In 2018, Ring launched its Neighbors app, which enables camera users to share information about safety concerns, suspicious behavior and other information. The app also allows participating law enforcement agencies to push emergency information out to users and provides a direct feed of public user activity to connected police departments.

Across the country, more than 1,800 police departments and 347 fire departments had entered into partnerships with Ring as of May 13, including the Woodfin Police Department, which joined in January 2020, and the Hendersonville Police Department, which joined in November.

“We began using the Ring’s Neighbors Public Safety Service to offer the community another method of engaging with our team in addition to the options already offered, [such as] calling the dispatch phone number, email, website, social media, HPD app,” says Lt. Bruce Darrah of the Hendersonville Police Department.

“The department can post photos and videos on the app when investigators are attempting to locate or identify suspects. Information like crime prevention tips, safety events and other information can be shared with the public. The reverse is also true that community members can share crime information with our detectives.”

Darrah explains that the video footage his department receives is provided voluntarily by app users — not Ring.

When a Neighbors user shares a video of something suspicious caught on camera, investigators see it. And when investigators are looking for leads in a certain place at a certain time, he

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“If [people] feel comfortable sharing footage to help solve a crime in their neighborhood, we absolutely would appreciate that and would encourage them to do so.”

— Lt. Sean Aardema, Asheville Police Department continues, the app requests footage from users who were on the spot.

However, users are under no obligation to respond, and police don’t know which users received the request.

So far, community feedback to HPD’s presence on the Neighbors app has been positive, Darrah says, and the department has identified suspects and brought charges that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

While the APD had planned to enter into a similar partnership with Ring — and Chief David Zack used the same arrangement at his previous department in Cheektowaga, N.Y. — the department recently learned of a different approach that doesn’t favor one technology provider over others, Hallingse says.

“During those initial conversations, our evidence management system (Axon) began offering the ability for community members to upload footage from any platform directly into our system, through a link ... provided by an officer. This existing system is already accessible to officers and provides APD with the capability to accept any footage, rather than only brand-specific footage (Ring),” she explains.

For his part, Aardema acknowledges the potential for privacy concerns.

“If [people] feel comfortable sharing footage to help solve a crime in their neighborhood, we absolutely would appreciate that and would encourage them to do so,” he says. “But we also appreciate concerns people may have regarding us seeking wholesale data collection in the name of public safety.”

NEIGHBOR TO NEIGHBOR

While sharing video footage among neighbors may be the modern-day neighborhood watch, Hendersonville’s Durrah notes that there are downsides.

His department uses video footage in investigations, but detectives recognize that suspects may be misidentified by residents viewing the images.

“Especially with low-quality videos or pictures, of course some tips we receive are off the mark,” Durrah says.

“It’s important to realize that getting a name from a member of the community does not end an investigation. Any lead developed in this way is further investigated and is either corroborated or invalidated.”

Aardema adds that video footage could introduce problems into the eventual prosecution of a crime.

“If we’re able to identify the suspect with actual evidence, and there’s basically a social media page where you’ve got a lot of other people saying that ‘No, it’s this other person,’ that could be problematic to the case,” he explains. “But at the same time, it’s their footage, and at the end of the day, they’re entitled to do with it what they will.”

Durrah says residents should also take proactive steps to help secure their homes and vehicles by locking doors and windows, hiding valuable items and keeping landscaping maintained — all free or inexpensive ways to improve security.

HEIGHTENED AWARENESS

West Asheville resident Brandi Harvey recently had her own experience sharing Ring video footage as part of a crime report to the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Department.

While she was away from home on the morning of April 15, Harvey’s Ring app alerted her to motion. She watched as a stranger entered and passed through different rooms. All the while, her son worked on a computer in a back bedroom, unaware that he wasn’t alone.

The visitor exited without taking any items or doing any damage, but the incident left Harvey with a lingering sense of alarm. She posted the video footage with the intruder’s face clearly visible on social media, where it sparked an active discussion.

After weeks of investigations, Harvey says that officers determined that the incident was a misunderstanding rather than a home invasion.

Still, Harvey says she’s planning to beef up her surveillance system in light of the scare.

“Since then, I’ve installed a camera on my fence line in the back. And I’m about to put another one in,” she says.

The Neighbors app and other social media sites create heightened awareness of crime in her area, and that doesn’t necessarily make Harvey feel safer. But unlike her neighbors who do not use cameras, she’d rather be aware than caught off guard.

“Ignorance is bliss, you know?”

Harvey says. X

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BUNCOMBE BEAT

Asheville projects higher taxes for budget priorities

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Asheville City Council has big ideas: community reparations, better transit, stronger neighborhoods. But without higher property taxes on city residents, said City Manager Debra Campbell, those ideas won’t become reality.

“We just couldn’t make the numbers work without it,” Campbell said.

During a May 11 work session, Council members heard a presentation by city staff outlining how an effective tax hike of 3 cents per $100 of assessed value would help fund a list of priorities for fiscal year 2021-22. The proposed tax rate of 41.3 cents appears lower than the current rate of 42.89 cents, explained Director of Finance Tony McDowell. However, the median tax bill will still go up from $995 to $1,215 — more than 22% — due to the 27% increase in median property value for city residents assessed by this year’s Buncombe County revaluation.

Budget manager Taylor Floyd noted that not all of the $9.9 million in new funding requests would be paid for through the property tax increase, which is projected to raise $5.7 million beyond a revenue-neutral rate.

The city would tap its reserves for a one-time $1.2 million allocation toward its yet-unsupported reparation fund.

And $1.7 million in spending would be funded by money that would otherwise be earmarked for vacant positions in the Asheville Police Department.

“We currently have 67 sworn [officer] vacancies. Based on the hiring plan and the turnover rates, we know we can’t fill all those positions next year,” added McDowell. “So we wanted to utilize some of the savings from those vacant positions to do some other things within the Police Department budget and also within some of the other areas of reimaging public safety.”

Other proposed expenses include $7.9 million to boost compensation for city employees as recommended by a recent salary study, $1.1 million to extend bus service hours in line with phase one of the 2018 Transit Master Plan and roughly $1.1 million to fill some of 100 unspecified nonpolice positions currently under a hiring freeze.

Campbell will present a final budget recommendation during the next Council meeting on Tuesday, May 25.

A public budget hearing follows on Tuesday, June 8, with the final budget vote scheduled for Tuesday, June 22.

MONEY TALKS: Tony McDowell, the city’s new finance director, explained to Council members how a property tax increase of 3 cents per $100 of assessed value would help fund a list of priorities for fiscal year 2021-22. Photo courtesy of the city of Asheville

IN OTHER NEWS

During its regular meeting held later on May 11, Council voted to implement increases to fees and charges, including a 6% boost to water consumption fees for all users except wholesale customers. Base fees for water customers will also go up based on meter size, with larger meters paying more.

Although the average residential user will pay about $2 less bimonthly than in fiscal year 2019-20, further increases are likely in coming years to recover lost revenue from the discontinued water capital fee.

Council members also voted to continue a public hearing to consider changes to homestay rules until May 25. The proposed zoning amendment would allow homestays to include components of a kitchen — a stove, full-size refrigerator or sink — which are currently banned in an effort to prevent long-term housing from being converted into short-term rentals. The new rules would also prohibit the use of detached accessory structures for homestays and require that nonresident property owners be listed as co-hosts on homestay applications.

— Brooke Randle X

County commissioners, city schools clash over fiscal management

school board’s next scheduled meeting is Monday, May 24.

IN OTHER NEWS

Although the traditional parade of county fire chiefs making their budget cases before the commissioners was put on hold this year due to COVID-19, Buncombe’s fire districts still shared their funding plugs for the next fiscal year in a presentation to the board. Of 20 districts, 12 are requesting effective tax increases to cover higher salaries, updated facilities and new equipment.

Dennis Fagnant, chief of the West Buncombe Fire Department, said he hoped to hire six new employees and purchase two new trucks to keep up with increased demand. As his district’s population grows, he continued, his firefighters are often responding to three or four calls for service at a time.

County Manager Avril Pinder supported all 12 of the proposed increases, which will be voted on as part of the overall budget. A public hearing on the budget is scheduled for Tuesday, June 1.

— Daniel Walton X TALKING IN CIRCLES: The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners and Asheville City Schools administrators met on May 11 to discuss the district’s budget challenges. Screen capture courtesy of Buncombe County The ongoing discussion of the Asheville City Schools budget has been defined by a shortage of funding. But patience appeared to be a potentially more limited resource as the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners questioned ACS leaders during a May 11 work session.

“The last three superintendents we’ve had here, including you, have not brought anything but mayhem to the school system,” declared Commissioner Al Whitesides to Superintendent Gene Freeman, referencing the disparity between the district’s worst-in-state racial achievement gaps and its eighth-highest per-student spending.

Whitesides, a former member of the Asheville City Board of Education, proceeded to accuse Freeman of giving him “smoke and mirrors” in earlier talks about school finances.

Freeman denied that charge while doubling down on criticisms of the Asheville community he’d previously shared with Xpress in March. “When the staff that’s trying to bring the facts are criticized — y’all have gotten the emails, every step we make — no wonder superintendents don’t stay here,” he said. “If we don’t do something that is going to make

some group angry, and if people don’t let us do our job, I don’t know what’s going to happen. … I’ve had it to about here.”

The exchange came as ACS administrators requested more county money and higher taxes to balance their books, a change from a previously outlined plan to use the remaining $2 million of the district’s dwindling financial reserves. The May 11 proposal asked for over $13.8 million from the county general fund, a $716,000 increase from the budget presented to the school board on May 6.

The system also asked Buncombe leaders to keep a supplemental property tax rate of 12 cents per $100 of assessed value for residents living in the ACS district. Because property values increased throughout the county after a revaluation completed in February, maintaining that rate would lead to a median 13% increase in taxes compared with the revenue-neutral rate of 10.62 cents and raise an extra $1.45 million. (Both the county and city of Asheville are also budgeting double-digit percentage increases in their median tax bills.)

Brownie Newman, the Buncombe board’s chair, did not look with favor upon the school system’s entreaties.

“These are the neighborhoods getting creamed the most in terms of inflation of property values and people’s tax burden,” he said regarding the district’s boundaries, which include rapidly appreciating areas such as Southside and West Asheville. “I’d be much more inclined, as a starting point, to think of it as a revenue-neutral rate.”

No formal votes were taken at the work session. The commissioners will next meet regarding the county’s budget on Tuesday, May 18; the Mountain Xpress 27th Annual

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F E AT UR E S

ASHEVILLE ARCHIVES

by Thomas Calder | tcalder@mountainx.com

‘Power of the penny’ Community support amid the Great Depression, 1931

On Jan. 11, 1932, the Asheville Associated Charities — an organization that served local individuals and families in need — held its annual meeting in the Grove Arcade. On that day, several reports were presented, including one by the organization’s executive secretary, E. Grace Miller.

The Asheville Citizen ran a transcript of Miller’s speech in the following day’s paper. In it, the executive secretary recapitulated the previous year’s economic troubles, painting a grim picture of the city’s ongoing financial woes amid the Great Depression.

“Last year when your executive secretary made her annual report she said that 1930 had been the most exacting year that the Asheville Associated Charities had ever known,” Miller began, referring to herself in the third person. “It is evident that when that remark was made, 1931 had not yet appeared upon the horizon. Every condition that made 1930 a difficult year was increased and intensified in 1931. As the curve of national and local prosperity has gone down, the load carried by this organization has consistently gone up.”

According to Miller, 1,147 families “were cared for” in January 1931. The numbers fell over the next several months, dropping as low as 386 in July.

But the following month, demand rose and continued to climb, reaching 837 families by December.

“A number of these [cases] continued, of course, from month to month,” Miller explained, “but altogether there were 1,956 different families cared for during the year.”

Thorough and detailed, Miller enumerated the many ways the organization served these families. In total, 12,190 grocery orders were delivered; 1,429 fuel orders made; 1,304 prescriptions filled; 3,445 garments donated; 672 pairs of shoes provided; 97 rents paid.

“The various causes which have sent people to us in the past have continued to take their toll as in years gone by, but the factor which made this year one of unprecedented and unparalleled difficulty has been the problem of unemployment,” Miller declared. “People who have never had to ask for help before have been forced to our doors during the year.

Of course, unemployment has always 14

MAY 19-25, 2021

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HARD TIMES: In a January 1932 report, the Asheville Associated Charities provided a detailed look at the financial challenges families faced throughout the previous year. In total, the organization assisted nearly 2,000 homes, providing groceries, gas, clothing and other essential items. Photo from the George Masa collection, file F615-11M, courtesy of Buncombe County Special Collections, Asheville been one of our problems, but in 1931 it assumed gigantic proportions.”

Yet amid these hardships, opportunities did arise. Miller highlighted several positive developments, including the establishment of work programs such as the community wood yard and the community garden project, which combined to employ hundreds of workers. (See “Asheville Archives: City Confronts Unemployment, 193032,” Xpress, Oct. 11, 2020) Additional programs included the establishment of the community cannery in August 1931. Spotlighting its success, Miller noted, “Interested friends were very generous in donating surplus crops, sugar and cans for this work.” She went on to share an anecdote about a late-night delivery of perishable produce to the site. Rather than allow the donations to spoil, the crew worked through the evening.

“After a long, hot, hard day, these men and women of their own accord elected to work until morning so that even

this fractional part of the minter’s food supply might be saved,” Miller stated.

Near the end of her address, Miller thanked the community for its support and offered this reminder to those attending the meeting: “Never before have the people of Asheville realized to such an extent that the problem of the unfortunate people of this community are their problems too. As individuals and as organizations they have given of their money, and of their time and service in countless ways. … Each one who has contributed even in a very small way has made possible a measure of relief which could not have been achieved without it. Only lately we have had a very striking practical demonstration of the collective ‘power of the penny’ as an agency in relieving human suffering.”

Editor’s note: Peculiarities of spelling and punctuation are preserved from the original documents. X

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In-Person Events = Shaded All other events are virtual

ART Heart of Brevard: Art is in the Air Celebrate the tradition of outdoor painting by welcoming 25 artists from across the region TU (5/25), 12pm, 175 East Main St, Brevard Desire Paths Exhibition Register to attend a virtual tour of this exhibition. In-person visitors have access to unguided visits and tours.

FR (5/28), Registration required, Center for Craft, 67 Broadway St, avl.mx/9f4

LITERARY LGRWC Public Readings: Rick Bragg, Silas House and Paisley Rekdal Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference faculty, Rick Bragg, Silas House and Paisley Rekdal give public readings.

FR-SA (5/21-22), 7pm, Registration required, Free, avl.mx/9ew Jeremy Jones Launches Bearwallow in Paperback, in conversation with Ronni Lundy Hosted by Malaprop’s.

Jeremy B. Jones is the author of the memoir Bearwallow, named the 2014 Appalachian Book of the Year.

TU (5/25), 6pm, Registration required, Free, avl.mx/9eu Kevin McIlvoy presents One Kind Favor, in conversation with Steve Almond Hosted by Malaprop's.

Based loosely on a tragic real-life incident in 2014, One Kind Favor explores the consequences of the lynching of a young black man in rural NC. WE (5/26), 6pm, Registration required, Free, avl.mx/9ab David Swinson presents City on the Edge, in conversation with Ryan Gattis Literary event hosted by Malaprop's. City on the Edge is the story of Lebanese innocents caught within the American net of espionage.

TH (5/27), 6pm, Registration required, Free, avl.mx/9ev

THEATER Montford Park Players: A Comedy of Errors Shakespeare production directed by Mandy Bean.

FR-SA (5/21-22), 7:30pm, $10, Hazel Robinson Amphitheatre, 92 Gay St, avl.mx/9aL Magnetic in the (Smoky) Park Variety show.

TU (5/25), 7pm, $18, Smoky Park Supper Club, 350 Riverside Dr

FILM Student Film Screening Seating is limited and socially distanced. No tickets required, but seats are first come/first served.

TH (5/27), 4pm, Free, Asheville Pizza & Brewing Co., 675 Merrimon Ave

ANIMALS “Lend a Paw” Adoption Event Pet adoption event.

SA (5/22), 10am, Pet Supermarket, 244 Tunnel Rd Blue Ridge Humane Society: Drive-Thru Pet Food Giveaway Cat and dog food distributed first come, first served to those in need.

SA,TU (5/22,25), 10am, Boys & Girls Club of Henderson County, 1304 Ashe St, Interfaith Assistance Ministry, Hendersonville & 310 Freeman St, Hendersonville

BENEFITS Carolina Resource Center for Eating Disorders: Fundraising Breakfast Livestreamed fundraiser open to the general public in support of NC non-profit.

TH (5/20), 7:30am, Registration required, avl.mx/9ex/ Kiwanis Club of Hendersonville: Sneaky Scavanger Hunt Benefit Proceeds benefit the Shoes and Socks program for Henderson County youth. Open to teams of four, children ages 5+ and adults.

SA (5/22), 10am, $35, Berkeley Park, 69 Balfour Rd, Hendersonville

Virtual 25th Anniversary Celebration & Benefit Featuring internationally renowned artist, Magdalene Odundo, Craft Futures Award Honoree, Michael Sherrill, and the opportunity to hear from craft artists and scholars.

WE (5/26), 6am, $25, avl.mx/9dn

Hendersonville Farmers Market Local produce and artisans.

SA (5/22), 8am, Historic Hendersonville Train Depot, 650 Maple St ASAP Farmers Market Local produce, artisans and knife sharpening.

SA (5/22), 9am, A-B Tech Campus, 340 Victoria Rd

BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY

North Asheville Tailgate Market Full range of local, sustainable produce.

SA (5/22), 8am, UNC Asheville, 3300 University Heights

Tax-Saving Strategies for Small Businesses Informational webinar on reducing taxable income, led by Don Nalley.

WE (5/19), 11:30am, avl.mx/9ez SBCN: How to Strt a Business 101 Start-Up Assistance webinar with Holly Yanker. Registration required, TH (5/20), 10am, Free, avl.mx/9b2 The Collider & Color of Science: Celebration of Science Speaker Series TH (5/20), 5pm, Free, avl.mx/90f

CLASSES, MEETINGS & EVENTS Explore Asheville: Community Discussion Explore Asheville is charting a new course for the tourism community aligned with broader community goals. WE (5/19), 12pm, Registration required, avl.mx/9bb Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy: Virtual Lunch and Learn SAHC land protection team discusses why conservation easements are important and share examples of past projects.

TH (5/20), 12pm, Free, avl.mx/9cz Craft Research Talks: The New Politics of the Handmade Virtual discussion with authors and Craft Research Fund recipients Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch about their latest book, The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art, & Design.

TH (5/20), 3pm, Registration required, Free, avl.mx/9dh Expand Your Circle: Speed Connecting Event for Womxn Entrepreneurs Free and casual speed connecting event.

TH (5/20), 5:30pm, Registration required, Focal Point Coworking, 125 South Lexington Ave “Discovering my Paternal Family Using DNA Tools” Diana Norton presents AncestryDNA ThruLines™ and some of the connections she has found.

SA (5/22), 2pm, Registration required, avl.mx/9ey

HER STORY: Ellen Holmes Pearson’s UNC Asheville class will present “Digitizing WNC’s African American History,” a presentation that focuses on the life and impact of Lucy Saunders Herring and several related topics. Herring was a black educator who worked as a teacher, reading specialist and community leader in Asheville from 1916-1968. Monday, May 24, 10:30-11:45 a.m. Register at avl.mx/9co. Photo courtesy of the Swannanoa Valley Museum and History Center WNC History Café: Digitizing WNC’s African-American History (online) Dr. Ellen Holmes Pearson’s UNC Asheville “Out of the Archives: Adventures in Digital History” class helped make Western North Carolina’s African-American history more accessible. Registration required.

MO (5/24), 10:30am, $12, avl.mx/9co Sunrise Asheville Monthly Hub Meeting Connect with other hub members and hear the updates on what we're working on and what's going down in Asheville.

MO (5/24), 7pm, avl.mx/9ep BPR Presents: Waters & Harvey Live - Reparations and Its Connection to Racial Justice Dr. Darin Waters, Dr. Marcus Harvey and a distinguished panel of civic leaders discuss the relationship between reparations for African Americans and racial justice. Registration required.

WE (5/26), 7pm, avl.mx/9ea Annual Small Business Awards Ceremony Virtual celebration and networking event will recognize small businesses for their contributions to NC’s economy during Small Business Month.

TH (5/27), 8:30am, Registration required, $15, avl.mx/9ek Money Visioning & Goal Setting OnTrack Financial Education & Counseling WNC hosts a webinar.

TH (5/27), 12pm, Registration required, Free, avl.mx/9b5 WNCHA Lecture Series: Tuberculosis & Tourism Featuring local historian Kieta Osteen-Cochrane on Asheville's Von Ruck Sanitarium.

TH (5/27), 6:30pm, Registration required, $5, avl.mx/98h

FARM, GARDEN & OUTDOORS Farm Fam Fun Day The Usual Suspects Food Truck serving, Joker's Trade performing.

SA (5/22), 10am, Ross Farm, 91 Holbrook Rd, Candler 2021 Arboretum Plant Sale & Tailgate Market North Carolina Arboretum’s annual outdoor Plant Sale.

WE-TH (5/26-27), 10am, NC Arboretum, 100 Frederick Law Olmsted Way Extension Gardner: Woody Ornamentals Class Topics include choosing plants, planting, mulching, fertilizing, watering, and tree and shrub identification.

TH (5/27), 10am,

Registration required, $10, avl.mx/9f0 Lecture Series: “Bonsai at The North Carolina Arboretum: More Than Meets the Eye” A six-part series of online lectures led by Bonsai Curator Arthur Joura and special guests.

TH (5/27), 4pm, Registration required, avl.mx/99x

FOOD & BEER West Asheville Tailgate Market A variety of local vendors and makers.

TU (5/19), 3:30pm, 718 Haywood Rd River Arts District Farmers Market Small outdoor market displaying plants, produce and more.

WE (5/19), 3pm, Pleb Urban Winery, 289 Lyman St Flat Rock Farmers Market Local produce and artisans.

TH (5/20,27), 3pm, Flat Rock Farmers Market, 1790 Greenville Hwy, Hendersonville

Westside Creative Market Local handmade goods and artwork.

SA (5/22), 11am, Haywood Quick Stop, 495 Haywood Rd

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS Asheville City Council: Proposed Budget Presentation City Manager's proposed budget.

TU (5/25), 5pm, avl.mx/9eo

WELLNESS The Mental Health Challenges of the Pandemic Mental health challenges resulting from COVID-19 and how the All Souls Counseling Center addresses these challenges. Open to the public.

TH (5/20), 12pm, Registration required, avl.mx/9da Steady Collective Syringe Access Outreach Free naloxone, syringes and educational material on harm reduction.

TU (5/25), 2pm, Firestorm Books & Coffee, 610 Haywood Rd

SPIRITUALITY Baha’i Devotional: Joy in Times of Hardship This Devotional will include prayers and music, connecting with spiritual nature.

WE (5/19), 7pm, Registration required, Free, avl.mx/9d9 Recipe for Serenity: Journey of Self Discovery How to reconnect with your inner joy and peace using the "Emotional Freedom" technique. Registration required.

TH (5/20,27), 6pm, Free, RSVP: anancy08@ gmail.com Groce UMC: A Course in Miracles Group Study Register: 828-712-5472.

MO (5/24), 6:30pm, Free Faith in Arts: A Conversation with Charles Hallisey A Faith in Arts conversation with Charles Hallisey, Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures at Harvard Divinity School.

WE (5/26), 1pm, Registration required, avl.mx/9el

VOLUNTEERING Asheville Outlets Hosts May American Red Cross Blood Drive The donation drive will be held in Suite 348 located across from RH Outlet.

FR-SA (5/21-22), 11am, Registration required, Asheville Outlets, 800 Brevard Rd Edible Park Community Work Day Mulching, pruning and clearing invasive plants.

FR (5/28), 2:30pm, Dr. George Washington Carver Edible Park, 30 George Washington Carver Ave.

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BY MOLLY HORAK mhorak@mountainx.com In fall 2019, the nonprofit Mountain Area Health Education Center and regional community organizations began considering one key question: What would it look like if, by 2025, every Western North Carolina resident experiencing the impacts of structural racism and systemic poverty had access to community health care services?

MAHEC formally launched its WNC Community Health Worker Initiative soon after, bringing together a coalition of 24 organizations to advance the community health worker model locally. Workers, many hailing from the neighborhoods they served, fanned out across the region, embedding themselves as community fixtures to offer support and resources for people in need.

And when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, that support was at the ready.

For Laura Zapater Urrea, a MAHECsupported community health worker recently hired to work with McDowell County’s Centro Unido LatinoAmericano, no two days are the same.

She and her team do whatever’s needed to help people stay healthy, whether that’s sharing COVID-19 resource materials with local Latino-run restaurants or helping unemployed workers find money to cover late rent payments.

“That’s all part of what we as community health workers do,” she says.

“When someone calls and needs help, we help them find resources and we keep checking in to make sure they’re doing all right.”

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The American Public Health Association defines a community health worker like Zapater Urrea as a “front-line public health worker who is a trusted member and has an unusually close understanding of the community served.” Many don’t have traditional medical backgrounds, instead serving as boots-on-the-ground links between existing health systems and underserved groups. All actively work to build trust and improve health outcomes through repeated interactions.

Inspired by their early success, MAHEC and its partners decided to grow the community health worker network again in 2020, this time with an emphasis on COVID-19 outreach,

MOUNTAINX.COM

MEETING THE NEED: Yvette Singleton, left, a community health worker for MAHEC and the Asheville Buncombe Institute of Parity Achievement, shares fresh food, plus COVID-19 prevention, vaccination and other health information, with residents of a downtown Asheville neighborhood. Photo courtesy of MAHEC explains Evan Richardson, MAHEC’s director of community health integration. With roughly $900,000 in support from the Dogwood Health Trust, hospital legacy foundations and state funds, Richardson and her team launched the WNC COVID Community Health Worker Initiative to hire additional personnel to fight the pandemic in underserved communities.

“Community health workers are critically important to successful public health outreach efforts,” says Dr. Susan Mims, DHT’s interim CEO and former chair of MAHEC’s community and public health department. “We are proud to support the Community Health Worker Initiative with MAHEC and the legacy foundations. We are seeing how this important role is helping people get COVID-19-related care and stay connected to other needed health services, including preventive and chronic disease care.”

Thus far, the partnership has hired nine community health workers to work in 17 of the 18 westernmost counties in North Carolina, Richardson says. MAHEC is actively working to identify sustainable long-term funding options; additional funding opportu-

nities may arise after North Carolina transitions to a Medicaid managed care system beginning on Thursday, July 1.

“Part of the long-term impact of COVID is about all of the underlying conditions that have contributed to the virus’s disproportionate impact,” Richardson says. “This is a workforce who has that trust, connection and inherent knowledge of what people are experiencing and are trained and equipped to address individual and community health. This is a workforce that can really make an impact.”

A PERSONAL CONNECTION

Candy Crowe grew up in Snowbird, a community in rural Graham County.

A member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, she moved to Cherokee 35 years ago. Several children and grandchildren later, she remains an active member of the community.

Crowe has worked as a certified nurse’s aide, a drug elimination coordinator for Qualla Housing and in various roles for more than a decade at the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

She knew she wanted her next job

A FAMILIAR FACE: Laura Zapater Urrea, a community health worker with McDowell County’s Centro Unido Latino-Americano, helps register community members for COVID-19 vaccines at Grace Community Church in Marion.

Photo courtesy of Zapater Urrea to involve working with the tribe, but the pandemic struck just as she was preparing to go back on the job market.

So she waited. In October, she saw a job posting for a community health worker through MAHEC on Facebook and instantly knew it was a perfect fit.

“I read the job description and kept thinking, ‘That’s me,’” Crowe recalls.

After being hired in November, Crowe was stationed with Tsalagi

Public Health and the Public Health and Human Services Department for the EBCI. Early on, her days were filled with phone calls to COVID-19 patients in Jackson and Swain counties, making sure they had enough food at home to last the duration of a two-week quarantine and matching

CONTINUES ON PAGE 20

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MAY 19-25, 2021

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WEL L NESS them with public health resources to help stop community transmission.

Now, her focus has shifted to the coronavirus vaccine rollout. She shares information about the shot and answers questions from tribal members who are hesitant to roll up their sleeves — a mentality she fully understands.

“I was very hesitant at first when I had [the vaccine] offered to me and I wanted to know more,” Crowe says.

“So I understand the uncertainty and see how important trust is. People have to trust you, and that’s where we can play a part.”

Zapater Urrea of McDowell County is also a regular face at the vaccine clinics held every Friday in Marion.

The language barrier can be a major challenge for distributing vaccines to Spanish speakers, she says, and her presence can help overcome some linguistic and cultural obstacles.

“When [Spanish speakers] see that there’s someone there who can understand them, they feel more relaxed, like someone will be able to help them,” she says.

SHE GETS IT: Candy Crowe, a community health worker hired through MAHEC’s WNC COVID Community Health Worker Initiative, spends a day working at a vaccination event for front-line workers in the Cherokee community.

Photo courtesy of Crowe Richardson says, and is likely to last long after the current pandemic ends.

From encouraging people to seek out preventive health care to providing resources for chronic conditions like diabetes, community health work is uniquely positioned to address the systemic health disparities that

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caused the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on communities of color.

Workers are trained to focus on the full range of social determinants of health, placing equal emphasis on economic stability, access to education, a safe neighborhood and built environment, social support and quality health care.

That comprehensive look at differing needs could have big implications for the region, says local entrepreneur J Hackett. The co-owner of the GRIND AVL coffee shop and former executive director of the nonprofit Green Opportunities became involved with community health work in 2019 and now serves as a mentor for MAHEC’s WNC Community Health Worker Initiative.

“The pandemic, as with most crises, exposed the weaknesses in our society and the disparities among certain groups and neighborhoods and demographics,” says Hackett, who is Black. “It forced many people to pay attention to what’s going on. There was an effort to do something innovative, but you can’t do that without the people who are directly impacted.”

Last year, Hackett launched the first community health worker apprenticeship to be approved by the Apprenticeship NC program, managed by the state’s community college system. Participants work for Jordan Peer Recovery, a organization led by Hackett that trains peer specialists to assist drug users with reentry and recovery, and take courses from Catawba Valley Community College.

MAHEC serves as the employment partner, Hackett says, and three apprentices are currently enrolled in the program.

The model is easy for other organizations to replicate, he says, and provides yet another outlet for residents to transition into community health work. Paired with MAHEC’s monthly community health worker mentorship meetings, members working across the community health spectrum are developing best practices and working through challenges.

“At its core, community health work focuses on health and education, but that transcends into pretty much any topic — COVID, diabetes, hypertension, tobacco use, you name it,” Richardson says. “By going into communities, we’re able to come together and create lasting solutions that will hopefully overcome significant inequities.” X

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ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSIONS: Community health workers, mentors and MAHEC staffers meet up for a coffee hour at Grind AVL. The mentors for the WNC COVID Community Health Worker Initiative recognize the importance of relationship building and gather once a month for support and guidance.

Photo courtesy of MAHEC

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MAY 19-25, 2021

21

ARTS & CULTURE

Preservation society

New art museum photography exhibition spotlights public lands

BY EDWIN ARNAUDIN earnaudin@mountainx.com At the intersection of her professional and personal convictions, Hilary Schroeder has what she calls “broadly, an interest in the way that fine art can serve as a tool for environmental engagement, contemplation and activism.” The assistant curator for the Asheville Art Museum has explored that area of focus to some degree in past projects, but it wasn’t until her workplace received a gift of photographs taken by Robert Glenn Ketchum that she began contemplating an exhibition centered on the preservation of public lands. “[I was] thinking about the way that he was looking at this natural beauty at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park [in northern Ohio],” Schroeder says. “But also underneath this beauty was the knowledge

NATURAL WONDER: Robert Glenn Ketchum’s Cibachrome print “CVNRA #397” and others from his “Overlooked in America: The Success and Failure of Federal Land Management” series helped inspire the latest Asheville Art Museum photography exhibition, “Public Domain.” Image courtesy of the artist of ways that the land had been managed and mismanaged both before it became a National Park Service entity and after. That led me to look at other works in the collection that were from a similar perspective, thinking about natural land.”

The result is Public Domain, which opens Wednesday, May 19, and will be on display through Monday, Aug. 30. The show’s timeline spans the 1920s work of Asheville-based photographer George Masa, which played a major role in the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, to that of contemporary Georgia-based artist Timothy McCoy, whose Long, Long Journey to the Sea portfolio tracks the path of a drop of water from the mountains to the ocean. But while these and other images are likely to prove inspirational for viewers, it was the Ketchum photos, including some from his Overlooked in America: The Success and Failure of Federal Land Management series, that helped set the tone for the other selections.

“There is this sort of beauty and etherealness that is present in [Ketchum’s] works,” Schroeder says. The absence of people, she adds, “allows the viewer to immerse into these landscapes.”

“The photographers are standing behind their camera, looking at it from their artistic perspective, but

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also identifying scenes that sort of serve their goal of inspiring conservation and environmentalism,” Schroeder explains.

INSPIRING ACTION

Also prompting the timing of Public Domain is the 75th anniversary of the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management. In hopes of fostering and strengthening patron interest in environmental activism, the museum will offer public programming around the exhibition, including an event with local photographer Benjamin Dimmitt. A longtime nature and wetlands photographer, Dimmitt is currently documenting “ghost forests” — areas of gray, lifeless trunks created when rising ocean water begins to flood woodland areas that contain freshwater-dependent trees.

Dimmitt’s diptychs showing the same place in different years, illustrating the impact of elevated sea levels, were used in oceanographer Matt McCarthy’s 2018 study, Rapid Coastal Forest Decline in Florida’s Big Bend. And, according to Dimmitt, McCarthy is contributing his research to Dimmitt’s fall 2022 book, An Unflinching Look: Elegy for Wetlands, which will be published by the University of Georgia Press.

“Through programming and conversations with the artists who are actively working outside of the visual arts field and actually engaging in interdisciplinary work, we hope that visitors will be able to make a connection about the visual impact of the arts upon the back-end scientific side of things,” Schroeder says.

AAM staffers are also optimistic that prospective attendees’ enhanced relationship with nature during COVID-19 will lead to a stronger bond with the exhibition. Like many people who’ve been unable to congregate much indoors since mid-March 2020, Schroeder notes that she’s spent a lot of time outside this past year. She believes people who’ve similarly found greater solace outdoors amid the pandemic will find significant value in Public Domain’s diverse imagery as well.

“Of course, you’re looking at really lovely, stunning photographs,” Schroeder says, “but also hopefully thinking about how one has a personal responsibility to make small changes in your own life and also think about broader impacts of the ways that we move through the world.”

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit ashevilleart.org. X

Citizen archivists No matter the subject, the shelf life for most student research papers is short, says Ellen Holmes Pearson, professor of history at UNC Asheville. “They submit the paper to their professor, the professor reads it, comments on it, gives it a grade, and it goes no further,” she says.

But since 2015, Pearson has worked to change the model through her biennial course, Out of the Archives: Adventures in Digital History. Every other spring, she and her students collaborate with Gene Hyde, university archivist and head of its special collections; together, they conduct research on local history and create individual websites.

“With these projects, our undergraduates’ research becomes public-facing,” Holmes Pearson explains.

On Monday, May 24, at 10:30 a.m., the Swannanoa Valley Museum & History Center invites Holmes Pearson and her class to present their latest findings as part of the museum’s virtual WNC History Cafe series. Tickets are $8 for museum members and $12 for general admission.

COMBING THROUGH BOXES

Topics for the upcoming event include the life and impact of Lucy Saunders Herring, an early 20th-century Black educator; the Phyllis Wheatley branch of the YWCA; and the Asheville Housing Authority’s Montford Project, which involved acquiring property and displacing individuals and families in the Hill-Cherry Street neighborhood of Montford during urban renewal.

For participating UNCA junior Lauren Callaghan, whose group will discuss the housing authority, the sheer abundance of available documents inside the university’s special collections was initially overwhelming. “It’s one thing to just comb through a box of 20-something folders, but it was another thing to actually process all the stuff we were reading and figure out what to include,” she says.

In addition to identifying a narrative thread, Callaghan notes the added pressure that comes with the project’s visibility. “One thing we had to remember throughout the whole project was how public-facing this website will now be and that members of the greater Asheville area can and will see our [work].”

Local professor helps digitize a more inclusive history

HISTORY FOR ALL: Ellen Holmes Pearson, UNC Asheville professor of history, recently helped launch 828 Digital Archives for Historical Equity. She says the project aims “to develop an immersive digital museum that will tell an inclusive history of Asheville and its environs.” On Monday, May 24, she and some of her students will offer a virtual presentation on recent research included in the archive concerning local Black history. Photo courtesy of UNC Asheville Fellow junior Haley Davison echoes Callaghan’s final point. As a member of the only research team presenting on the life of an individual rather than an institution, Davison says it was important to properly honor Herring’s contributions and legacy, which includes establishing reading clinics for Black students across North Carolina.

LONG WAY TO GO

In addition to the upcoming presentation, the class’s research will be featured in an ongoing project Holmes Pearson and UNCA colleague Sarah

The group is also currently in conversation with the organizations My Daddy Taught Me That, Hood Huggers International, Word on the Street/La Voz de les Jovenes and the Asheville City Schools Foundation “about programs that would involve high school students as ‘citizen archivists,’” Holmes Pearson adds.

These efforts, Holmes Pearson believes, are a positive step in creating a more complete picture of Asheville’s history. “We are fortunate to have people like Katherine Cutshall at the Buncombe County Special Collections, Anne Chesky Smith at WNCHA, artist Andrea Clark and others who are actively involved in gathering materials for researchers and for leading the way toward more inclusive histories,” she says. “But we still have a long way to go.”

To register for the Monday, May 24, presentation, visit avl.mx/9co.

— Thomas Calder X

Judson launched this year with architect Jim Samsel: the 828 Digital Archives for Historical Equity.

The new endeavor is a collaborative effort with several community partners and individuals, including the Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe County, Western Regional Archives, Western North Carolina Historical Association, the Museum of the Cherokee Indian and local historian Sharon Fahrer. Its mission is to digitize archival records “in order to make them more widely accessible, and to develop an immersive digital museum that will tell an inclusive history of Asheville and its environs,” Holmes Pearson says.

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ARTS & C U L T U R E

FOOD ROUNDUP

What’s new in food As chefs do, Andrew McLeod bonded with Ashleigh Shanti over food. Specifically, the house-made (by McLeod) miso mustard on the griddled house-made (also by McLeod) bologna sandwich, which also included American cheese, pickles, red onion, Duke’s mayo and shredded lettuce on Geraldine’s Bakery white bread. Shanti ordered it from the twice-weekly, delivery-only Trashalachian sandwich pop-up McLeod — who is executive chef at Avenue M — hosted with his own venture, King Salumi Meats, through Chop Shop Butchery earlier this year. Shanti says she has been a fan of McLeod’s since his days in several of Sean Brock’s Husk kitchens and was excited to see he had moved back to Asheville. Because of COVID closures, Trashalachian was her first local opportunity to have his food.

“She gave the mustard a shoutout on social media,” says McLeod. “I saw it and reached out to her to see how I could get her a jar of mustard. We started talking about the bologna and other food, and we became friends.”

That friendship goes public Sunday, May 23, when Avenue M revives its monthly Sunday Supper Series with a collaborative five-course dinner led by Shanti.

Previously chef de cuisine at Benne on Eagle, Shanti departed her post late last fall and has been traveling, cooking and exploring future plans and options since. The SSS event is welcome news for all who have been following the intoxicating food photos on Shanti’s Instagram account @Foodordeath.

The Sunday Supper will be the first time since leaving Benne that Shanti will be cooking for Asheville diners. “Andrew and I both share ASHEVILLE-AREA

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Sunday Suppers, strawberries and SnoBalls spring into May

a love for old school foodways and the newness it brings to fine dining and I think guests will enjoy experiencing that from our two different lenses,” she says. “The menu for the evening is unmistakably Southern and will feature all the lovely produce Asheville is seeing right now and highlight some of our favorite farmers. ” Tickets are $90 per person; beverage pairing by Avenue M owner/sommelier Ralph Lonow is also available. To purchase, email contact@ avenuemavl.com.

Avenue M, 791 Merrimon Ave., avl.mx/91w

Buckets o’ berries The time is ripe for local strawberries, and Beth Frith, marketing specialist for the WNC Farmers Market on Brevard Road, says the fresh, sweet orbs from North and South Carolina farmers are abundant and available throughout the sheds and inside the two enclosed buildings on the 36-acre site, open daily 8 a.m.-5 p.m. She reports they’re priced from $14-$22 a gallon, but you’d better get there before she does. “I’ve probably purchased 4 or 5 gallons since they started coming in,” she says.

Sarah Hart, communications coordinator for Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project, writes in her weekly ASAP newsletter that the seasonal berries have begun their 2021 limited engagement at many weekly tailgate markets, notably from Lee’s One Fortune Farm and Ivy Creek Family Farm. For dates, times and locations of neighborhood markets, visit avl.mx/5uh.

WNC Farmers Market, 570 Brevard Road, avl.mx/0vl

Snow day

Emily Freeman says it was love at first bite when she and her husband, Jacob Freeman, visited a Pelican’s SnoBalls store in Charlotte, where the Madison County couple were then living. “We had always wanted to open a store of some kind, and when an opportunity came up to open a Pelican’s franchise in Woodfin, we grabbed it,” she says.

They signed the lease on the 800-square-foot building in February, and after a test run with family and friends, opened officially May 6 to a line of eager customers on their patio.

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Jacob is holding onto his day job, but customers will find Emily at the order window, happy to explain the difference between Pelican’s New Orleans-style shaved ice snoballs and the snow cones traditionally found at county fairs. “Snow cone is a bad word here,” she says with a laugh. “That ice is gritty, and most of the flavor goes to the bottom of the cup. Our ice is soft and fluffy like snow and absorbs all the flavors.”

There are over 100 to choose from — the most popular is Tiger Blood — and four sizes, from kiddie to the supersized Avalanche.

Pelican’s SnoBalls of Woodfin is open Monday-Saturday, noon9 p.m., and Sunday, 1-9 p.m. 235 Weaverville Highway. avl.mx/prvw

Dinner for eight What’s the difference between a squid and an octopus? The round-headed octopus has eight appendages, while a squid has 10 and a triangular head. Squid roam the open sea, while octopuses lurk about the ocean floor. And only the octopus gets star billing in the Cúrate Spanish Wine Club’s May virtual cooking demo and wine tasting.

In My Octopus Dinner, chef Katie Button will demonstrate how to prepare and grill a whole octopus, with papas arugadas (salted potatoes) on the side. The round-headed cephalopod is available at La Bodega by Curate, which is also stocking fully cooked octopus tentacles for those who’d prefer to just eat and watch.

Felix Meana will discuss the Canary Islands wines to be quaffed. The live demo is Thursday, May 20, at 8 p.m., but a link to the recorded class will be sent to ticket holders the day after for later viewing or replay. Half of the $20 ticket price will be donated to Southside Kitchen in support of its free community meals program. To purchase a ticket, visit avl.mx/9d7.

Meat and greet

After more than a year of taking online orders from behind closed doors and bringing packs of handcut chops, steaks and ribs to the curb, Chop Shop Butchery is again open to walk-in customers. On May 4, co-owners P.J. and Sharon Jackson and Matt Helms greeted customers from behind the counter and fully stocked cases of meat and fresh catch seafood at their

SUNDAY SERVICE: Chef Ashleigh Shanti is first up for the return of Avenue M’s monthly Sunday Supper Series of collaborative, multicourse dinners planned by chef Andrew McLeod. Photo by Bax Miller corner shop on Charlotte Street. A smaller selection of online orders of local meats, cheese, eggs, deli condiments and prepared foods will remain available for delivery and curbside pickup.

Chop Shop Butchery, 100 Charlotte St. avl.mx/9d0

Farm hands

“Willingness to get your hands dirty” is one of the qualifications High Meadows Mountain Farm and Creamery in Clay County is looking for in an apprentice to help expand its agritourism-based business specializing in artisan cheeses, educational tours and how-to workshops. Goat milking is also part of the unique hands-on learning experience.

High Meadows is one of the agricultural businesses in the paid food and farm work-and-study apprenticeship program offered through the Center for Environmental Farming Systems’ EmPOWERing Mountain Food Systems project. Other opportunities to get down and dirty-handed are offered by Wehrloom Honey, Shaka Alpaca Farm and KT Orchards.

Eligible applicants should be students in qualifying secondary education institutions, including rising freshmen. To apply, visit avl.mx/9cx.

Regional food and farming businesses interested in hosting and mentoring paid internships can apply at avl.mx/9cy.

— Kay West X

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MAY 19-25, 2021

25

ARTS & CU L T U R E

ROUNDUP

Around Town Nina Simone Archive breaks ground The Nina Simone Project broke ground on the long-awaited Nina Simone Archive on May 1 in Tryon.

The late, great soul singer’s younger sister, Frances Waymon Fox, attended the event at 65 S. Trade St., nearly a year after the $2 million capital campaign was announced and after nearly 15 years of planning. The event also featured a surprise concert by jazz/R&B artist Ledisi, one of two vocalists selected to perform at the 2019 Nina Simone Prom at Royal Albert Hall.

The archive will house rare recordings, scores, set lists, manuscripts, contracts, personal diaries, letters and more from throughout the Tryon native’s life, and will feature a rooftop performance stage, ground-level gallery space and two residential spaces for visiting artists. These holdings were recently enhanced by the addition of the Dr. Sylvia Hampton Collection, which NSP founder and chair Crys Armbrust describes as consisting of “correspondence, concert posters, photos and other ephemera” from the earliest era in Simone’s career. Also new to the Archive is the Aaron Overfield Collection, composed of what Armbrust calls

“one-of-a-kind items, such as photos, film footage, contractual materials and other unique Simoniana.”

Armbrust says there is “no setin-stone date for the archive’s completion,” but that construction will ideally begin in early 2022. He adds that the NSP will strive to continue hosting significant events on either Simone’s birthday (Feb. 21), the Celtic festival of Beltane, a nod to her “Keeper of the Flame” cover (May 1), or Juneteenth (June 19). For more information, visit avl.mx/9dw.

3-2-1 Contact

The Asheville Area Arts Council encourages Buncombe County residents to contact their local officials and request that federal stimulus funding from the American Rescue Plan go toward the local creative sector. Buncombe County is slated to receive $50.6 million, and the city of Asheville has been allocated $26.1 million. Katie Cornell, executive director of the AAAC, says that an “investment in the arts is crucial for small-business and jobs recovery and to foster community healing from the trauma we have experienced over the past year.” To learn more, visit avl.mx/9e2.

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HIGH PRIESTESS HONORS: Crys Armbrust, left, Frances Waymon Fox, center, and Darren D. Lynch break ground May 1 on the Nina Simone Archive in Tryon. Photo by Robert Lange

The champs are here

The Historic Resources Commission’s annual Historic Resources Champion Award will be given to South Asheville Cemetery Association founders George Gibson and George Taylor in a private event on Saturday, May 22. The recipients were nominated by HRC member James Vaughn, who says they “both embody the spirit of the award to

be champions who draw people into historic preservation work in their efforts to save, preserve and restore the South Asheville Cemetery in the Kenilworth neighborhood.”

As a child, Gibson worked alongside George Avery, a former slave who served as the cemetery’s primary caretaker until his death in 1938 at age 94. When Gibson revisited the site in 1986, he was disturbed to see it in poor condition and vowed

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to restore the grounds to its former glory. Gibson and Taylor, the latter of whom will receive the award posthumously, rallied the community to accomplish that goal, though Vaughn notes it’s “an ongoing battle” to keep the property clean.

“Gibson, age 93, still serves on the [SACA] board and maintains an active interest in seeing [the cemetery] get through the next critical steps of securing National Historic Register status so it can pursue grants to restore the headstones and markers and create a permanent fund to care for the cemetery,” Vaughn says. Discover more at avl.mx/835.

The ties that bind Asheville-based painter Patricia Hargrove’s exhibit, Connection, is currently on display at Spotlight Gallery, located on the second floor of Wedge Studios. According to the artist, the works reflect on “connections in relationship[s], nature, meditation and in painting itself,” and are accompanied by poems from local poets. Hargrove’s abstract and conceptual abstract creations may be viewed Tuesdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m., or by appointment.

The exhibit will be up through Monday, May 31. Masks and social distancing are required. For more information, visit avl.mx/9e3.

Granted Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center has received $50,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a pilot project creating online access to the museum’s Permanent Collection.

Digitization of the BMCM+AC Permanent Collection began in 2017 with funding from the Luce Foundation, and support from the NEH will make it possible for the organization to develop long-term, sustainable strategies for sharing its historic resources.

Kate Averett, outreach manager for BMCM+AC, says it was “selected for this award on the basis of a highly competitive and rigorous review process” and that the project will include research, digital strategy growth and software development.

To learn more, visit avl.mx/9e4.

of shows begins Thursday, May 20, at 7:30 p.m., with Brevard-based string band Pretty Little Goat and Tryon-based virtuoso violinist Jamie Laval. Other performances include Charleston, S.C.-based jazz drummer Quentin E. Baxter and poet Marcus Amaker (Thursday, May 27, at 7:30 p.m.); Asheville-based singer-songwriter Christopher Paul Stelling (Thursday, June 3, at 7:30 p.m.); and Asheville-based children’s artist Billy Jonas (Saturday, June 12, at 10 a.m.).

Masks are required, and parties will be spaced out according to current state guidelines. In the event of inclement weather, all performances will move indoors. Free to attend, but registration is required. To secure your seats, visit avl.mx/9ds.

Silver crafts

The Center for Craft kicks off a yearlong celebration of its 25th year on Wednesday, May 26, with its inaugural virtual benefit. The event runs 6-7 p.m., and features celebrated ceramics artist Magdalene Odundo and local potter Michael Sherrill as guest speakers, plus testimonials from craft artists and scholars who’ve benefited from the Center for Craft’s assistance. Tickets are $25 and may be purchased online at avl.mx/9dt.

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— Edwin Arnaudin X

MOVIE LISTINGS Bruce Steele’s and Edwin Arnaudin’s latest critiques of new films available to view via local theaters and popular streaming services include: PROFILE: A British journalist attempts to trick a terrorist recruitor into revealing his secrets in this tense, fact-based thriller.

It’s also by far the best in the “Screenlife” series, all of which take place entirely on a computer screen. Grade: B-plus. Rated R SPIRAL: The ninth (?!?) film in the Saw series squanders the freshness of casting Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson in favor of more tired torture scenes.

Grade: C-minus. Rated R

Polk County tunes The Tryon Fine Arts Center will present a series of free live performances in its outdoor amphitheater throughout the summer. The slate

Find full reviews and local film info at ashevillemovies.com patreon.com/ashevillemovies MOUNTAINX.COM

MAY 19-25, 2021

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CLUBLAND WEDNESDAY, MAY 19 SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN BREWERY Jazz Night at SAB w/ Jason DeCristofaro (jazz), 5:30pm HIGHLAND BREWING CO. Well Crafted Wednesdays w/Matt Smith featuring Taylor Martin (Americana), 6pm OKLAWAHA BREWING CO. French Broad Valley Mountain Music Jam, 6pm SWEETEN CREEK BREWING Witty Wednesday Trivia, 6:30pm

THURSDAY, MAY 20

RABBIT RABBIT Rooftop Standup Comedy Show, 7pm

OKLAWAHA BREWING CO. Stipe Brother w/Dan & Joel ( classic rock covers), 3pm

WHITE HORSE BLACK MOUNTAIN Anya Hinkle and Julian Pinelli (Appalachian string, bluegrass), 7pm

THE GREENHOUSE MOTO CAFE Tools on Stools (acoustic blues duo), 3pm

TYRON FINE ARTS CENTER Pretty Little Goat & Jamie Laval (grassroots), 7:30pm

SWEETEN CREEK BREWING Old Sap (singer songwriter, banjo), 4pm

FLEETWOOD’S Sham/Thick Paint (indie), 7:30pm

THE GREY EAGLE George Trouble & The Zealots (Bob Dylan tribute), 4pm

FRIDAY, MAY 21

RIVERSIDE RHAPSODY BEER CO. Thinkin’ & Drinkin’ Trivia w/Allie, 5:30pm

ONE WORLD BREWING Phuncle Sam (Grateful Dead tribute), 6pm SWEETEN CREEK BREWING Mr Jimmy Power Trio (Chicago blues), 6pm WXYZ BAR AT ALOFT Lyric (funk, rock, R&B), 7pm

ALL IN THE FAMILY: Asheville native Leeda “Lyric” Jones started out as a downtown street performer before catching the attention of Lizz Wright, an internationally-known jazz musician — who subsequently helped her make her way to the pinnacle of the local music scene. Lyric will play her own unique style of funk, rock and R&B, joined by her bass-playing father, Dave Matthews. Friday, May 21, 7 p.m., W XYZ Bar, 51 Biltmore Ave. Photo courtesy of Lyric

HAZEL ROBINSON AMPHITHEATRE Charley Crockett (country), 6pm

FLEETWOOD’S Skunk Ruckus w/JD Pinkus (punk rock/ bluegrass), 7:30pm

SWEETEN CREEK BREWING Open Mic Night, 6pm

FLEETWOOD’S Fantømex w/Tombstone Poetry (indie, post punk), 8pm

OKLAWAHA BREWING CO. Bag O'Tricks (Americana duo), 8pm

THE GREENHOUSE MOTO CAFE The Lads AVL (acoustic, electric covers), 8pm

OKLAWAHA BREWING CO. Billy Litz (multi-instrumentalist), 7pm

ODDITORIUM Grendel's Mother, Mountain Bitters (rave, folk), 8pm

SLY GROG LOUNGE Noise Florist, NaturalBlkInvention, Salamander Sam (dance), 8pm

WHITE HORSE BLACK MOUNTAIN Asheville Jazz Orchestra (jazz), 8pm

SATURDAY, MAY 22 BATTERY PARK BOOK EXCHANGE Dinah's Daydream (jazz), 5pm ISA'S FRENCH BISTRO James Hammel (solo acoustic), 5pm ODDITORIUM Party Foul Outdoor Drag Show, 7pm SLY GROG LOUNGE The New Rustics (rock, folk, country), 7pm

THE GREENHOUSE MOTO CAFE Unpaid Bill and the Bad Czechs (acoustic blues, swing), 7pm WXYZ BAR AT ALOFT - DJ Phantom Pantone & Friends (dance), 1pm - DJ LYRIC, 7pm OKLAWAHA BREWING CO. Sumsun (electronic), 8pm

SUNDAY, MAY 23 BOLD ROCK HARD CIDER Mr Jimmy at the Bold Rock Cidery (blues), 3pm

WEDNESDAY, MAY 26 SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN BREWERY Jazz Night at SAB w/ Jason DeCristofaro (jazz), 5:30pm HIGHLAND BREWING CO. Well Crafted Wednesdays w/Matt Smith featuring Amanda Anne Platt (roots), 6pm

SLY GROG LOUNGE Sly Grog Sunday Open Mic, 7pm

OKLAWAHA BREWING CO. French Broad Valley Mountain Music Jam (folk), 6pm

WHITE HORSE BLACK MOUNTAIN Talking with Trees (three-piece band), 7:30pm

SWEETEN CREEK BREWING Witty Wednesday Trivia, 6:30pm

THURSDAY, MAY 27

MONDAY, MAY 24 HIGHLAND BREWING CO. Totally Rad Trivia at Highland Brewing, 6pm

FLEETWOOD'S Terraoke! Karaoke with Terra, 6pm

OKLAWAHA BREWING CO. House of SYNth, 6:30pm

SWEETEN CREEK BREWING Open Mic, 6pm

THE JOINT NEXT DOOR Blue Monday w/Mr Jimmy, 7:30pm

TUESDAY, MAY 25 MAD CO. BREW HOUSE Team Trivia, 6pm OKLAWAHA BREWING CO. Team Trivia, 7pm

RABBIT RABBIT Rooftop Standup Comedy Show, 7pm TYRON FINE ARTS CENTER Quentin E. & Marcus Amaker (jazz), 7:30pm HARRAH'S CHEROKEE CENTER - ASHEVILLE Bela Fleck & The Flecktones (bluegrass), 8pm

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FREEWILL ASTROLOGY ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries playwright Samuel Beckett wrote the play Waiting for Godot.

At one point in the tale, the character named Estragon suggests it might be possible, even desirable, to “dance first and think afterwards.”

In response, the character named Pozzo says, “By all means, nothing simpler. It’s the natural order.” With that in mind, and in accordance with astrological omens, I am going to encourage you to dance first and think afterwards as much as possible in the coming weeks. In my opinion, your ability to analyze and reason will thrive to the degree that you encourage your body to engage in enjoyable free-form play. Your power to make good decisions will grow as you take really good care of your physical organism and give it an abundance of pleasure and release.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): As you enter a phase when gradual, incremental progress is the best progress possible, I offer you the concluding lines of Taurus poet Adrienne Rich’s poem “From a Survivor”: “not as a leap, but a succession of brief, amazing movements, each one making possible the next.” I especially want to call your attention to the fact that the small steps can be “brief, amazing movements.” Don’t underestimate the power of minor, subtle, regular breakthroughs.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Here’s a public service announcement for you Geminis from the planet and god Mercury: You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were three years ago, or six months ago, or last week — or even five minutes ago, for that matter.

Mercury furthermore wants you to know that you have been authorized to begin a period of improvisation and experimentation, hopefully guided by a single overriding directive: what feels most fun and interesting to you. In the coming weeks it will be more important to create yourself anew than to know precisely who you are.

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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): My friend Jenny’s Swedish grandmother used to say to her on a semi-regular basis, “Åh tänk om vi vore korkade, vi skulle vara så lyckliga,” meaning, “If only we were stupid, we would be so happy.” In the coming weeks, I am asking you to disprove that folk wisdom. According to my analysis of the astrological potentials, now is a favorable time for you to explore ways in which your intelligence might enhance and deepen your enjoyment of life. Your motto should be: “The smarter we are, the happier we will be.”

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Sometime soon I invite you to speak a message similar to what poet Kenneth Rexroth once delivered to a special person in his life. He wrote, “Your tongue thrums and moves / Into me, and I become / Hollow and blaze with / Whirling light, like the inside / Of a vast expanding pearl.” Do you know anyone who might be receptive to hearing such lyrical praise?

If not, create a fantasy character in your imagination to whom you can say it. On the other hand, maybe you do know a real person who would appreciate an earthier, less poetical tribute. If so, please convey it; something akin to this: “Your influence on me amplifies my ability to be my best self.” Now is a perfect time to honor and extol and reward those who move you and excite you.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Author Aldous Huxley said, “I can sympathize with people’s pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.” To that I reply, “Other people’s pleasure and happiness bored you? Maybe you were suffering from raging narcissism and an addiction to cynicism.” In any case, Sagittarius, I hope you won’t be like Huxley in the next few weeks. I believe you could glean useful insights and derive personal benefits from knowing about and appreciating the joys of others.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): As a Zen Buddhist priest for 47 years, Kōshō Uchiyama was knowledgeable about the power that illusions can wield over our imaginations. “If we’re not careful,” he said, “we are apt to grant ultimate value to something we’ve just made up in our heads.” I won’t tell you the examples from my own life that prove his point, because they’re too embarrassing. And I’m happy to report that I don’t think you’re anywhere near granting ultimate value to something you’ve just made up in your head. But I do advise you to be on the lookout for milder versions of that phenomenon.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Capricorn businessman Howard Hughes (1905–1976) had great success early in his life. Working as a film director and aviation pioneer, he became a wealthy philanthropist. But as he aged, he became increasingly eccentric and reclusive. For the last 10 years of his life, he lived in expensive hotels, where he placed strict and often absurd demands on the hotel staff. For example, if he called on room service to bring him a meal that included peas, he would measure the peas with a ruler, and send back any he deemed too big. I do hope that you Capricorns will also have an intense focus on mastering the details in the coming weeks — but not as intense or misguided as that nonsensical obsession.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Leo-born professor Sibelan Forrester is an expert on charms, spell, and incantations in Russian folklore. She wrote, “An empty place where no one can see or hear what one says is the proper locus for working magic.” Spells often start with these words, she added: “I rise up, saying a blessing. I go out, crossing myself, and I go to an open field.”

Whether or not you have Russian heritage, Leo, I see the immediate future as being a good time for you to perform magic in an open field with no one else around. What might be the intention of your magic? How about something like this: “I ask my guides and ancestors to help me offer my most inspired largesse so as to serve the health and inspiration and liberation of the people whose lives I touch.”

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Aquarian author Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was famous and popular. Audiences packed the halls where he did public lectures and readings. His favorite way to prepare for these evening events was to spend the day drinking a pint of champagne, as well as generous servings of rum, cream and sherry with eggs beaten into the mix. I don’t have a problem with that — whatever works, right?

— but I suggest a different approach for your upcoming appointments with greater visibility and prominence. Like what? How about sexy meditations on the gratitude you feel for your expanding possibilities? How about fun fantasies focusing on how you’ll use your increased clout?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Spiritual author Stephen Russell wrote, “Don’t mask or deny your vulnerability: It is your greatest asset.” That’s an exaggeration, in my opinion. Vulnerability is a greater asset than your intelligence, compassion and creativity? Not in my view. But I do recognize the high value of vulnerability, especially for you Virgos during the next three weeks. “Be vulnerable,” Russell continues. “Quake and shake in your boots with it. The new bounty and beauty that are coming to you, in the form of people, situations and things, can only come to you when you are vulnerable — open.”

MAY 19-25, 2021

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In his upcoming book The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig proposes that we begin using “monachopsis,” a word he coined. He defines it as follows: “the feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your surroundings as a seal on a beach — lumbering, clumsy, easily distracted, huddled in the company of other misfits, unable to recognize the ambient roar of your intended habitat, in which you’d be fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home.” Even if you have spent too much time lately experiencing monachopsis, my dear, I predict this malaise will soon dissipate and give way to an extended phase of being fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home.

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NEWS REPORTER WANTED Mountain Xpress is seeking an experienced reporter to join our team. You should have the chops to cover a wide range of issues of community concern, including local government and politics, the environment, community activism, education, economic issues, public safety, criminal justice and more. You must be able to craft stories that convey important, timely information and empower readers to take part in meaningful civic dialogue and effect change at the local level.

Qualified applicants will have experience in news-writing, have social-media skills, write efficiently and enjoy a fast-paced news-gathering environment. Must have knowledge of Asheville and WNC, be community-minded, have a keen sense of fairness with respect for differing points of view and be committed to Xpress’ mission of community-based journalism. Flexible availability required to cover some after-hours meetings and weekend events. This is a full-time position with benefits. Send cover letter, resume and clips/links to xpressjob@mountainx.com.

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LEGAL STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA COUNTY OF BUNCOMBE NOTICE TO CREDITORS State of North Carolina County of Buncombe IN THE GENERAL COURT OF JUSTICE SUPERIOR COURT DIVISION BEFORE THE CLERK FILE NO.: 21 E 644 In the Matter of the Estate of Jann Morton Nance, Deceased.

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1 Some G.I. wear, in brief

13 Dish that may be eaten with either chopsticks or a spoon

16 “The Barber of Seville,” e.g.

5 Barton of the Red Cross

14 What may raise a big stink?

18 Before now

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17 Medicare section 19 Completely exhausted

edited by Will Shortz 21 Financial guru Suze 23 Bae 24 Kind of clef preceding notes usually played with the right hand on a piano 25 Tylenol alternative 29 Objects 31 President Garfield’s middle name 32 What a good Samaritan offers 33 What the giant Argus has 100 of, in Greek myth 36 Rich soil 37 Expensive Italian car, informally 38 One-named rapper with the 2015 #1 album “The Album About Nothing” 39 Sub at the office 40 Director Kazan 41 Smart society 42 Makes frescoes or murals 44 Kind of sauce 45 Trims

No. 0414

47 Start of a giant’s chant 48 Shoulder muscles, for short 49 Cry upon arriving 55 Bad thing to have on a record, in brief 56 Send 58 Hues that rhyme with “hues” 59 One followed by nothing?

60 & 61 Advice for an insomniac … or what you can do 12 times in this puzzle, reading across and down (not including this answer) 62 Spanish attentiongetter 63 Byes 64 Ally in Super Mario games

DOWN 1 Guitar accessory 2 End of a blessing 3 Slight

puzzle by Nathan Hasegawa 4 Impulsively 5 Congressional hearing airer 6 King quoted as saying “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child!”

7 Amiss 8 No longer active: Abbr.

9 Shady alcoves 10 Attentiongrabbing 11 ___ Cinemas (theater chain) 12 Observe Yom Kippur 13 Apt name for a thief 20 Ages and ages 22 One extending a library book loan 24 This cluue has one, apparently 25 Order at an ice cream parlor 26 Double-reeded aerophone with keys 27 Spring recreation?

28 Castle wall

29 One round at a tournament 30 Actress Jessica 32 Cry before “Who goes there?”

34 Disney queen who sings in an ice palace 35 Burn 37 Magnifier, e.g.

41 Actress who said “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough” 43 One putting out feelers?

44 Golf hole starter 45 Supplement 46 ___ Decimal System 47 Stews 49 ___ monde (fashionable society) 50 Sicilian spewer 51 Comeback 52 Specialty 53 Regretted 54 Medium power?

57 Mauna ___ Observatory

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS NY TIMES PUZZLE H A J J A N A I H O R N G E C H O R O O I A N T S M Y S L E C O T S O U R M U R I A R E A A G E D M E D S

I T S E E D T E O R D I B O S Y A R I N U K O N E S E L B O O I D N E

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