Mountain Xpress 11.23.22

PUBLISHER & EDITOR: Jeff Fobes

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New City Council should take note of citizens’ concerns

I’d like to thank the local can didates who did not win election for mayor and City Council — Kim Roney, Nina Tovish, Allison Scott and Andrew Fletcher — for run ning campaigns that brought to the fore many issues of concern to our community.

Running for office is very chal lenging work. Our community is fortunate to have such smart, ener getic and dedicated folks willing to throw their hats into the political ring with the intention of serving all of us.

They were up against a lot — the name recognition of incum bency, the Sierra Club’s poorly researched but influential promo tions, established political party restrictions, fundraising.

Yet, each of them ran exciting campaigns and made a great show ing. I hope that they will continue to be interested in being involved in the community.

I also hope that the cur rent Council and our newest Councilperson Maggie Ullman Berthiaume (congratulations to her) will take note that there is a significant number of citizens who want to see a Council that is seri ous about transparency, mitigating local effects of climate change, particularly through sensible and innovative programs, and real commitment to our natural envi ronment, economic equity, sensible “development,” affordable housing and transportation, and diversi fying the tourist economy, among many other issues. Truly, voting does matter, especially locally.

And many thanks to the Buncombe County Board of Elections — its board, staff, poll

workers and volunteers who did such an excellent job in ensuring a free and fair election.

— Anne Craig Asheville

Alcohol sales could fund sidewalk repairs

[ Regarding “Council Approves Close the GAP Plan,” Nov. 2 , Xpress, as mentioned in the Nov. 9 Xpress newsletter: ] “The city would need more than $100 million to make recommended improvements to comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act alone.”

A Nov. 9 Asheville Citizen Times article [ “Asheville ABC Revenues Spike 30% in FY22; What Is Driving Increased Sales?” ] details:

“ABC Revenues for the City of Asheville:

FY19: $2,568,132.21

FY20: $2,422,956.17

FY21: $2,773,557.90

FY22: $3,597,925.12” and

“Overall Asheville ABC sales: FY20: $39.9 million FY21: $44.5 million FY22: $50.3 million”

There’s an info nugget about our civic priorities.

To what fund does all that money go?

Even $3.6 million per year would go a long way toward infrastruc ture. $50.3 million would take care of the ADA requirement in two.

— Cathryn McLeod Asheville

Editor’s note : City of Asheville spokesperson Kim Miller con firms that the city’s share of ABC revenues go into the city’s general fund. According to the state ABC Commission’s website (avl.mx/c6m), Asheville receives 75% of the Asheville ABC’s Board’s net profits, with Buncombe County receiving 25%. The state also gets a cut of ABC stores’ revenues, as laid out in North Carolina’s General Statutes, G.S. 18B-805 (avl.mx/c6n).

Your Rights, Voice, & Future:

Vote Democrat for NC House.” And yet, it was the North Carolina Democratic Party that made the North Carolina Green Party go to court to get ballot access this year. How is that protecting people’s voices and rights?

On the national level, the Democratic Party admitted in a court case in Florida (2017) that it has the right to pick its own pres idential candidate, no matter who won the primary elections. They claim they have the right to rig their own primaries, and I believe they did exactly that in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

That is anti-democratic in my opinion.

But don’t think that the Republican Party is any better! We have spent countless hours and dollars fighting the North Carolina Republicans because of their efforts to create extreme gerrymandered districts. And on the national level, the Republican Party has engaged in repeated attempts at voter suppression.

Add all that to the fact that dark money campaign contributions from corporate interests go to both major parties, which results in greatly suppressed voters’ voices. I believe what we’ve got here in the USA is a great deal of election fraud. The Republican claims of “voter fraud” are totally bogus.

A political party that kicks third parties off the ballot is suppressing people’s voices. It is also anti-dem ocratic. I suppose the ad in the Xpress was referencing abortion rights, and I totally agree that wom en’s uteruses are not state-owned real estate for the government to control. But I have also noticed that Roe v. Wade was decided about 50 years ago, and Democrats have totally failed to codify that ruling into law. They seem to want to keep it as a campaign issue. To put it mildly, that is not helpful.

I am an independent voter, and I don’t feel the Democrats or the Republicans represent my voice, protect anyone’s rights or anyone’s future. I don’t feel we are in danger of losing our democracy — I feel it is long gone because of these behaviors and choices.

On the back page of a recent Xpress , there was an ad from the North Carolina Democratic candi dates for office. It said: “Protect

In the future, I recommend that people vote as if those F-35s were dropping Raytheon bombs on your home — as they have in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria this year (by Israel). Vote as if those F-35s being outfitted in Italy to carry nuclear bombs might actually do that one day soon.

Who is really protecting our rights, voice and future?

CARTOON BY RANDY MOLTON

I voted for Matthew Hoh for the U.S. Senate. He was a candidate from the N.C. Green Party. He was the one person on the ballot who would have tried to stop all our useless war-making, climate destruction and political postur ing. I believed he would have rep resented my voice and my choices and all of our futures.

— Susan Oehler Asheville

Will leaf peepers visit WNC to see kudzu turn gray?

Whether we like it or not, tour ism sustains a quality of life for all Western North Carolina residents. This tourism naturally comes from living in area with a bounty of visual beauty that people come to see and experience. Fall is just one great example of this visual beauty and is also one example of the economic lifeblood that tour ism provides for WNC residents as people visit and spend money to see the fall leaves change.

This makes me wonder: What happens when our beautiful fall colors provided by the hardwood trees are increasingly overtaken and killed off by kudzu? Fall is the

perfect time to see our region’s future, given the exponential growth of kudzu. And what that future looks like is vast expanses of gray, dying kudzu leaves, which is not a pretty sight and hence not a pretty sight for the future of our tourism-based economy.

However, when I mention kudzu to people who live here and peo ple who represent us, I often get a shrug of the shoulders as if it doesn’t matter or that a solution is not possible. Or, even worse from our elected officials, a lack of understanding of how important it is what an area looks like and its crucial connection to tourists wanting to visit an area.

I would like to think that, as kudzu continues to spread expo nentially with no action and over takes views on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Smoky Mountains and Clingmans Dome and other major tourist sights, people will take action. If this is true, then why are we waiting?

Where are the elected represen tatives discussing and teaming up with conservation groups, univer sities, residents and the govern ment to come up with solutions? I don’t see that happening, and I refuse to believe that there are no answers from a country that could engineer a successful coronavirus

vaccine in under a year but can’t invent a kudzu herbicide or some other solution for the visual blight of kudzu.

In closing, I don’t think there will be many people in the future coming to see kudzu leaves change to gray in WNC or drive the future renamed “Kudzu Parkway,” and that spells trouble for the residents of WNC with no action.

— Tim Holloran Sylva

The trouble with single-use developments

[Regarding “Pinned Down? Pinners Cove Residents Blast Process for Proposed Development,” Nov. 9 , Xpress:] Each week, I read about another development in the Asheville region, almost always housing only, or retail only, or hotel only. In every case, there is opposition to proposed projects, often vehement and well organized. Pinners Cove is the latest example.

The opposition is understand able. Why? For centuries prior to World War II, the development of our hamlets, villages, towns and cities happened organically in the form of walkable, complete neighborhoods. A variety of hous

ing types, adequate shopping, numerous workplaces, facilities for education, worship, recreation and civic life. A grid of small streets and alleys. A variety of densities, by street. Mobility options. Many of these great places were built before the automobile, but they accommodate motor vehicles ele gantly today. They are affordable and diverse by design.

After World War II, we have built our cities as subdivisions, shopping centers, office parks and similar, all separated from one another, requiring motor vehicles to perform simple daily tasks. It’s not working.

All the proposed projects being opposed are single-use projects with one mobility option — driv ing. If developers were smart, they would be proposing walkable, complete neighborhoods that also accommodate motor vehicles. They might still get opposition from unreasonable people, but the developers would be stand ing on more solid and defensible ground, philosophically.

If citizens were smart, they would ask their elected officials to require this type of development in order for projects to be approved.

— Rob Dickson Asheville

CARTOON BY BRENT BROWN

Friday night pride

Across WNC, high school football is king

BY JUSTIN M c GUIRE

jmcguire@mountainx.com

Tears flowed freely under the lights of C.E. Weatherby Stadium in Waynesville the eve ning of Oct. 14. The Tuscola High Mountaineers had just earned a thrilling double-overtime victory over the Pisgah Bears, break ing a nine-game losing streak in the so-called Haywood County Championship Game.

Players, parents and cheerlead ers — even the Mountaineers’ 10-year-old bellboy — were caught up in the emotional release of end ing nearly a decade of frustration in one of the South’s fiercest high school football rivalries.

“I was just ecstatic. I mean, I was speechless,” says Katie Arrington , president of Tuscola’s Big T Booster Club. “I jumped up and down, and I felt pride and then joy,

because I knew how bad our side of the county wanted it. But I also knew how bad the players and the coaches wanted it and how hard they had worked.”

The annual Tuscola-Pisgah clash draws crowds of 10,000 or more and is regularly showcased as part of the Great American Rivalry Series, which named it the best rivalry in North Carolina. Neither program has ever produced an NFL player, but locals say no schools in the state produce a more anticipated matchup or electric atmosphere each year.

“I’ve covered games where the turnstiles were still moving after the first quarter was over — people were still coming in,” says Michael Hughes , a free lance sportswriter and author of Stories from the Sidelines: High School Football Tales from the North Carolina Mountains . “One time in Waynesville, I had to park a mile away from the stadium and walked there barely in time for the game to start.”

Most credit the intensity of the rivalry to the fact Haywood County has only two high school football teams, with campuses located less than 9 miles apart. Tuscola sits on a hill outside Waynesville and serves students who live in the western part of the county. Pisgah is on the banks of the Pigeon River not far from Canton’s paper mill, long a major regional employer.

“It’s like a house divided,” says Mark Pinkston , the president of Pisgah’s Booster Club. People from all parts of the county work together at the mill and other places, he points out. They go to the same churches, frequent the same barbershops and eat at the same restaurants. And a victory in the big game, he says, assures a year of bragging rights in every social setting.

“You think about all the people that wear red and black [for Pisgah] or black and gold [for Tuscola] on game day, and they’re working in the same facility together. It’s fun and it brings both communities together,” Pinkston says.

Waynesville and Canton may be extreme examples, but they are not unusual. High school football often serves as the glue that holds

together communities in Western North Carolina.

“Society as a whole is a lot more isolated than ever,” says Patrick Pohl , a broadcaster for A.C. Reynolds High. “But the football thing has pulled through. Everybody can put down whatever else they’re doing in their life, and there’s one thing they can all look to each week in the community. It doesn’t matter what you do, where you’re from or what your story is, you can go out and root for your local sports collective.”

SHUTTING DOWN THE TOWN

Small towns in far western counties outside Asheville’s

immediate orbit offer some of the best illustrations of the sport’s social importance.

BJ Laughter experienced the phenomenon firsthand when he became head coach at Hendersonville High School in 1997. Laughter grew up around the Bearcat program and thought he knew how intense high school football fandom could be.

“My first year, we entered into the Smoky Mountain Conference, and we would go to Robbinsville, and we’d go to Murphy and Swain County,” says Laughter, who coached the Hendersonville team until 2013. “And it’s just different. You go roll into a Murphy, and there’s nothing open. Literally,

THE THRILL OF VICTORY: Tuscola beat archrival Pisgah 35-34 in this year’s Haywood County Championship Game. It was the first time the Mountaineers beat the Black Bears since 2012. Photo by Diana Gates Photography

the town shuts down. And in Hendersonville, that is not the case. It meant so much more to those communities.”

In Graham County’s Robbinsville, says sportswriter Hughes, the whole community revolves around the Black Knights, who have won 14 1A state championships. As you enter the town — population 597, as of the 2020 census — a sign reads “Welcome to Title Town in the Mountains.”

Murphy High School in Cherokee County has won 10 state titles, and Swain County High in Bryson City has earned eight. Many of these communities have experienced plant closings and job losses over the years, leaving local economies on shaky ground. “Football gives them something to hold on to and point to with pride,” Pohl says.

Teams in Buncombe and nearby counties don’t like to travel too far west, Hughes explains, so those western powerhouses often have trouble scheduling nonconference home games. As a result, the teams and their fans spend a lot of time on the road, and they take particu lar glee in beating eastern teams.

“Swain would come to our place and would have more fans in the stands than we did,” recalls Laughter.

BUNCOMBE COUNTY PIGSKIN

But the Asheville area has plenty of high school football tradition of its own. The Asheville High Cougars have been competing for more than a century and have won 22 conference championships and three state titles.

“They’ve had a lot of trouble over the years getting away games because nobody wants to play ’em,” Hughes says. “They have had a couple of bumps in the road in recent years, but they seem to be coming back a little bit.”

And while Buncombe County doesn’t have anything like the Pisgah-Tuscola game, it has plen ty of long-standing rivalries. Pohl, who also serves as treasurer of the A.C. Reynolds Booster Club, says Rockets supporters get particularly excited about two in-county duels.

“When the schedule comes out, everybody points to the T.C. Roberson game and the Asheville game, and everybody says, ’These are the two we’re going to go to, whether they are home or away,’” he explains.

Erwin and Enka high schools also have a long-standing rivalry that flies a bit under the radar, Hughes

says. And in the private school ranks, Christ School and Asheville School have been rivals since 1911. “The Game” between the schools, played at the end of each season, is the oldest high school football rivalry in the Carolinas.

“It’s basically their Super Bowl,” Hughes says. “Christ School has really revamped their program of late, and so they’re starting to dominate.”

“People come in, and they’ll look at the picture and say, ’Hey, that’s my grandpa in that picture’ or ’That’s my daddy,’” Mull says.

The Big T club’s Arrington also believes Tuscola football can serve as an entry point for newcomers to learn about Waynesville’s cul ture and traditions. Many of those people regularly attend games at Weatherby Stadium, especially if they have small children, she says.

100 YEARS OF FOOTBALL

For many communities, part of high school football’s appeal is that its traditions are handed down from generation to generation. As co-owner of Bob’s Sports Store in Waynesville for 51 years, Kenny Mull has watched kids from both ends of Haywood County grow up to play for Tuscola or Pisgah over the decades. And these days, the children and grandchildren of those former kids are suiting up for the Mountaineers or Bears.

The Main Street store, which is closing at the end of the year, displays some old team photos from Waynesville Township High School, the precursor to Pisgah. That team started the tradition of intracounty rivalry in 1922 with a game against the now-defunct Canton High.

North Carolina’s high school football season officially ends next month with the state championship games. But football is never really out of season in Haywood County.

Pisgah fans, after a few days of lying low, are now willing to show their heads at Bob’s Sports

Store. They’re already looking ahead to next year’s game, when the Black Bears will have a chance to end Tuscola’s winning streak at one game.

Mountaineer partisans, mean while, will be savoring their vic tory for the next 11 months. It’s been that way since 1966, when the Black Bears and Mountaineers first met on the gridiron. (Pisgah won, 26-12.)

“Haywood County citizens are respectful of the tradition,” says the Pisgah booster club’s Pinkston. “They’re respectful of the oppor tunities they have, and frankly, thankful that we have this rivalry that we can brag about. I hope it continues.”  X

UNRIVALED RIVALRY: Pisgah and Tuscola have met on the gridiron every season since 1966. Pisgah leads the all-time series, 31-27-1. Photo by Diana Gates Photography

Lost in the archives

BY SARA MURPHY

smurphy@mountainx.com

There’s only one place in the world where you can leaf through Asheville GreenWorks’ 50-year history, listen to a speech Martin Luther King Jr. delivered in Montreat in August 1965 and view a 1764 map of Cherokee land by English cartographer Thomas Kitchin : Buncombe County Special Collections, tucked away on the lower level of downtown Asheville’s Pack Memorial Library.

BCSC has collected, curated and cared for items related to the histo ry of Asheville, Buncombe County and Western North Carolina since 1935, 16 years after Asheville’s first public library opened in 1919. The collection is currently managed by WNC native Katherine Cutshall She fell in love with the archives, she says, while researching her master’s thesis on the history of local tourism at UNC Asheville.

“Things that [a university library such as] Duke would never collect, like [local] T-shirts and bumper stickers, I’m like, ‘Yes, bring it on,’” Cutshall says of the library’s col lection. “It’s nostalgia. That’s what makes our community feel like a community.”

Since becoming BCSC’s manager in March 2020, Cutshall has prior itized diversifying its holdings to better reflect everyone who has lived in and shaped the region. At the heart of this effort is the Black Asheville History Project, which aims to ensure that at least 25% of the collections’ cat alog centers on the local African American experience.

However, Cutshall argues, chron ic understaffing and a lack of funds have jeopardized both that goal and the condition of the collection’s current holdings. Although a ded icated fund to maintain BCSC has existed since 1987, she continues, legal issues have prevented her from accessing it.

“The library’s getting short changed here,” says Philip Blocklyn , a member of the Friends of the Buncombe County Special Collections board of directors.

A COMPLICATED HISTORY

The public library did not have a special collections section until local attorney and historian F.A.

Sondley bequeathed his 45,000-vol ume personal library, as well as thousands of artifacts — rocks and gems, birds’ eggs and nests, paint ings and even firearms — to the city upon his death in 1931. That trove constitutes the core of the modern-day BCSC.

According to a 48-page report on the history of the Sondley collection compiled by Blocklyn, Sondley’s bequest placed stifling legal stipu lations on the city. The collection could not be broken up and needed its own space and staff separate from the rest of the library. Most significantly, Sondley insisted that only “well conducted white people” be allowed to access the materials.

Library records show staff and trustees citing this proviso as a rea son to delay the integration of Pack Library throughout the 1950s. Only when students from the Asheville Student Committee on Racial

Library’s special collections suffer from funding snag

Equality protested did the trustees vote to integrate the library system on Sept. 15, 1961.

After integration, the legal obstacles continued. The size of Sondley’s collection made it diffi cult to maintain, but library offi cials feared that nothing could be sold without breaking the terms of the bequest. Buncombe County, which assumed full responsibility for the library system from the city in 1980, proceeded to take its own collection to court.

Following a favorable 1986 ruling, 20,000 of Sondley’s volumes, either duplicates or books with no local relevance, were sold to a Chapel Hill bookseller for $375,000. In a subsequent 1992 decision, $25,000 of those proceeds were reserved for improvements to the collection, with the remainder placed in a trust to be managed by the coun ty’s finance director. Each year,

the library board could request up to 75% of the annual income from the trust to maintain and preserve the materials from Sondley’s orig inal collection, as well as acquire additional materials if money was left over.

Thirty years later, in July 2022, that fund had nearly $870,000, according to county spokesperson Kassi Day . But it had not been accessed in nearly 20 years: The only relevant record Cutshall has found dates the last withdrawl to 2003.

ACCESS DENIED

“In my mind, the right way to spend this money is on things that would make Sondley the man deep ly uncomfortable,” Cutshall says. “I want to use this money to hire research fellows to recatalog and

ORIGIN STORY: F.A. Sondley’s personal library, shown in this historical photo, forms the core of the current Buncombe County Special Collections in Pack Memorial Library. Image by E.M. Ball, courtesy of Ramsey Library Special Collections, UNC Asheville

redescribe the papers of enslavers with an eye to the enslaved.”

Despite numerous meetings with library officials and County Attorney Brandon Freeman , how ever, Cutshall has been unable to access the trust fund since taking her job over two years ago. She says the county hasn’t been clear about what entity has the legal right to tap into the money.

The 1992 court ruling establish ing the trust fund states that “the Board of Trustees of the AshevilleBuncombe Library System” must request any disbursement. However, that body was dissolved in 2013, when Buncombe created the Culture and Recreation Authority.

The CRA was itself dissolved the following year after action by the N.C. General Assembly, and a new library board of trustees was established in 2017. That entity was renamed as the Library Advisory Board in 2018; both current board Chair Keely Knopp and Cutshall say they were informed that the group had no control over the Sondley trust fund.

When Xpress reached out to the county in October, its response appeared to support this conclu sion. “The county attorneys and our former library director [ Jim Blanton , who left Buncombe for Roanoke, Va., earlier this year] have been working to evaluate the best process to access and use these proceeds in the manner set forth in the agreement and court ruling,” Day said. “We are hopeful to have a process in place soon.”

In subsequent comment, how ever, county spokesperson Lillian Govus said that the LAB was the correct board. “The library board has, and has had, the right to request those funds. If they were to make the request, our legal and finance would have to work with the library director to direct the best uses for those funds to ensure they comply with the agreement and all of its stipulations,” she told Xpress Nov. 18.

“I’m pleased to learn about this opportunity to help fund special collections,” Knopp said when given this information. “We’ll be discussing how best to take advan tage of the Sondley trust at our next Library Advisory Board meeting in January.”

Accessing the Sondley fund’s income, Cutshall says, grows ever more pressing given the state of many of the materials in her care. As one example, she cites a likely one-of-a-kind manuscript copy of Thomas Dixon ’s novel The

Leopard’s Spots , the first of a trilogy that inspired D.W. Griffith ’s white supremacist film The Birth of a Nation . (Dixon briefly had an office at 61 Haywood St. in downtown Asheville as he attempted to devel op a nearby mountain retreat.)

Written on fragile onionskin paper, the text features Dixon’s own penciled corrections. In a casu al conversation with an appraiser, Cutshall was told that the manu script might be worth as much as $500,000 — in its current condition.

“That pencil mark is going to start to deteriorate, and I don’t know how to deal with that,” she says.

The informal nature of that fig ure highlights another issue: The collection’s holdings have not been appraised since the early 1990s. At that time the gems alone, most of which reside in a bank vault in the downtown Wells Fargo building, were valued at $2.5 million.

KEEPING IT LOCAL

As valuable as the gems are, Cutshall says most of them do not fulfill BCSC’s mission of “actively collecting, preserving, promoting and providing equal access to the history of Asheville, Buncombe County and the surrounding area.” She believes that a new appraisal of the full collection could reveal more items worth selling to make room for materials that do have local his torical significance. The proceeds could also fund the conservation and cataloging of existing items.

“I’m cultivating a garden here, and if there are too many things in the garden, you can’t enjoy it,” she says. “I am denying people access to

this stuff because I do not have the time and the staff and the monetary resources to make this happen.”

Cutshall says a lack of resources and legal uncertainty have already resulted in missed opportunities. Earlier this year, a series of water color portraits of local Black women painted in the 1930s by Emma Clary Webb Peoples , who resided in Asheville for nearly 20 years, came up for auction. Those works include a portrait of Sarah Gudger , a formerly enslaved Buncombe County woman whose oral history is archived in the Library of Congress.

“I tried to find out a way [to purchase them] but got tangled up in red tape before the auction time came,” Cutshall says.

Despite the obstacles facing Cutshall and her staff of two, she says she remains “aggressively enthusiastic” about the archives’ future. Her favorite interactions, she says, occur when people wan der in with no real research ques tion in mind — just a desire to explore their shared history.

“That’s how you build communi ty,” she says.  X

IN THE STACKS: Special Collections manager Katherine Cutshall and her two-person staff constantly balance working with people who visit the ar chives and trying to conserve its wealth of materials. Photo courtesy of Bun combe County Special Collections

Unaffiliated, not unheard

BY DANIEL WALTON

dwalton@mountainx.com

Buncombe County’s biggest voting bloc elected exactly two of its own in this year’s midterm elections. Sara Nichols earned a seat on the county’s Soil and Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors, while Mason Blake was chosen for the Montreat Board of Commissioners.

Those two officials-elect are both unaffiliated; every other winning can didate in a race on the Buncombe ballot is registered with a political party. Although unaffiliated voters make up a plurality in the county — as of Nov. 19, roughly 86,900 voters, compared with about 75,600 Democrats and 46,100 Republicans — state rules and strong party organizations make it hard for independent candidates to gain traction.

Given that mismatch between the county’s population and its represen tatives, Xpress wanted to learn more. With support from the American Press Institute, the paper conducted a listen ing survey to ask about the concerns of Western North Carolina’s unaffiliat ed voters.

Over 140 people responded to the questionnaire. Their answers show that, at least in WNC, the simple label of “unaffiliated” suggests a wide diversity of ideologies and concerns.

TAKING THE PLUNGE

In keeping with statewide trends, many WNC voters have become unaf filiated relatively recently. Of those sur vey respondents who shared the timing of their unaffiliated registration, half listed a date of 2010 or later.

The most prevalent reason, cited by over 40% of respondents, was a lack of agreement with existing party platforms. More than a dozen voters described their political beliefs with some variation of the phrase “fiscally conservative, socially liberal,” a com bination that doesn’t align with either Democratic or Republican ideology. Others described themselves as “mod erate” or “pragmatic” and sought to distance themselves from activists on either side.

Many voters also said they were unhappy with the way the major party platforms had changed in recent years and noted a rise in divisive partisan rhetoric. “The left has become as rad icalized and intolerant as the right,” wrote one former Democrat who became unaffiliated in 2021. Meanwhile,

several erstwhile Republicans cited the 2016 election of former President Donald Trump as their motivation for leaving the party.

For another group, becoming unaf filiated was more a tactical decision than a political one. Over a quarter of respondents mentioned the advantages granted by a lack of party member ship: North Carolina allows unaffiliated residents to cast votes in any party’s primary election, while those registered as Democratic or Republican must take their respective party’s ballot.

That flexibility contributed to a par ticular bump in local unaffiliated reg istration this year. Ten survey respon dents, all former Democrats, said they had become unaffiliated specifically to vote against U.S. House District 11 Rep. Madison Cawthorn in the 2022 Republican primary.

Such voters likely played a key role in Cawthorn’s primary defeat by Chuck Edwards, who went on to win the general election. While most unaffili ated Buncombe voters chose to take a Democratic ballot during early voting in the 2020 primaries, the county’s inde pendents slightly favored Republican ballots in 2022. That increase in unaf filiated voters on the Republican side greatly exceeded Edwards’ margin of victory over Cawthorn.

And some voters just wanted to be left alone. Eight respondents said they went unaffiliated primarily to avoid being targeted by partisan fundraising campaigns or junk mail.

WHAT DO THEY WANT?

The pool of survey respondents, 82% of whom are registered to vote in Buncombe County, skewed older, whiter and better educated than the general WNC population. It’s thus hard to say if their beliefs are representative of all unaffiliated voters in the region.

But of those surveyed, the majority said they tend to pick Democrats in gen eral elections. About a third said they didn’t reliably choose one party’s can didates over another, while just 5% said they favored Republicans.

Some of that lean may reflect the prior affiliation of the region’s unaffiliated voters. Nearly twice as many respon dents were former Democrats than were former Republicans, and of those who said they’d previously been affiliated with multiple parties, the majority said they’d most recently been Democratic.

Many of those voters, however, weren’t particularly enthusiastic about their bal lot choices. “I tend to vote Democrat because they seem like the less bad alternative. But this is wearing on me,” wrote one respondent. Another survey participant wrote about having voted reluctantly for Democrats in recent elec tions “because of the MAGA takeover” of the Republican Party.

When asked to share general thoughts about the political process, survey respondents expressed a yearning for different options. Some thought a strong third party could address increasing polarization among Democrats and Republicans, while others suggested that

Xpress surveys WNC’s independent voters

the way elections themselves are con ducted should change.

Although the survey was anonymous, Asheville resident Diane Silver emailed Xpress after taking it to advocate for North Carolina to adopt ranked-choice voting. In that system, voters list can didates by order of preference, and if no candidate wins an outright majority, those preferences are used to determine the winner.

Silver, who works for a national nonprofit that promotes ranked-choice voting, points to a recent U.S. House elec tion in Alaska that used the method. Over 15,000 voters who had listed Republican Nicholas Begich III as their first choice picked Democrat Mary Peltola as their second choice — even though Republican and former Gov. Sarah Palin was also in the race. Those voters gave Peltola the win after Begich finished behind Palin in first-choice votes.

“It became clear that just because vot ers liked one candidate of Party A didn’t mean they were all in with that party,” Silver explains. “It’s just an example of how our current winner-take-all system presumes a lot about voters’ preferences, while ranked-choice voting reveals the truth about what voters really want.”

No such change is under serious con sideration by North Carolina lawmakers. For now, WNC’s unaffiliated voters will have to navigate a political landscape they find unsatisfying at best and danger ous at worst.

“The party system is a major cause of political dysfunction and social bit terness,” one voter wrote. “As our found ers accurately projected it would be.” X

ON YOUR MIND: This word cloud reflects the local concerns most frequently mentioned by unaffiliated voters in Xpress’ survey. Housing was the clear leader, with over twice as many mentions as any other subject. Graphic generated by Daniel Walton

NEWS

‘A room full of allies’

BY CARMELA CARUSO

carmela.caruso@yahoo.com

They say, “It takes a village to raise a child,” but community involvement can also be crucial for new businesses. Mountain BizWorks recently demonstrated how that approach can work for local startups

On Nov. 17, entrepreneurs presented business ventures to an at-capacity crowd of 200 at Pleb Urban Winery during Mountain BizWorks’ third annual Mountain Raise.

The event, named after the tradi tion of barn raising, brings togeth er investors, community members and local entrepreneurs looking to expand their businesses. Seven companies took to the stage to present a five-minute pitch pro moting their products or services. The purpose of the evening was to network and attract investors.

“Tonight is about dialogue,” said Chris Grasinger, High Country regional manager at Mountain BizWorks and emcee for Thursday’s event. “We want you to engage, talk to each other, ask the hard questions, answer the hard questions.” Presentations were bookended by an hour of networking.

For anyone who’s run or donated to a Kickstarter campaign, the idea of crowdfunding will be familiar, but crowdfunding wasn’t available for businesses until 2016. That’s when a Securities and Exchange Commission decision allowed any one — not just accredited inves tors with $1 million in assets or a $200,000 annual income — to invest in private companies outside stock

exchanges. Investors can commit as little as $250, broadening the pool to include what Grasinger described as “all walks of life.”

COMMUNITY VIBES

Accordingly, the crowd gathered inside Pleb was a mixture of inves tors, community members, friends and supporters of local businesses.

“We’re talking to a room full of allies,” says Luke Peniston , co-founder of North Cove Leisure Club and one of the entrepreneurs who pitched at the event. “They just genuinely care and they’re

Local entrepreneurs pitch business plans during annual Mountain Raise

excited to see local businesses thrive and love to see new entre preneurs show what they’re work ing on. The energy in the room is phenomenal.”

The presenters had completed at least one of two programs offered through Mountain BizWorks: ScaleUp and Invested. ScaleUp, Grasinger says, is for the “most mature” companies — meaning they’re already established and making between $150,000 and $5 million in annual revenue but are looking to expand their businesses. Invested is about “learning what it means to take on an outside inves tor,” said Grasinger, with a focus on crowdfunding.

Not everyone who completes a BizWorks course is invited to par ticipate in Mountain Raise. “There are so many moving targets, things you have to check off the list in order to get to a point where you’re ready to take on investments,” Grasinger told Xpress . “It takes a lot of planning and a lot of time.”

Part of the planning involves meeting SEC requirements, which includes legal and financial docu mentation, and nailing down exact ly what the business stands for and how it will make a return on the investments. After working direct ly with business owners during the five-week Invested class, or three-

month ScaleUp course, Bizworks is able to gauge who’s ready to pitch at Mountain Raise and who needs more time.

“The reason why we are very selective is not only can it be bad for your investors to invest in something that’s not proper ly organized or planned; it’s also going to be very risky for the entre preneur,” explains Grasinger. “So, we’re protecting our community, our entrepreneurs, by making sure that they’re fully prepared to step into this next evolution of the business.”

PITCH PERFECT

This year, seven companies were ready to pitch. Max Runzel , CEO for HiveTracks — an app that allows beekeepers to keep track of the health of their hives — said that as the first to pitch, he “hoped it would land well with the commu nity” and by the end, based on the vibe of the crowd, he “perceived the best feedback.” After taking the Invested course this summer, he says the business felt primed for crowdfunding.

“It’s been a journey,” James Wilkes , founder of HiveTracks, told Xpress . The idea to design an app where beekeepers could col lect information about their hives

PITCH PERFECT: Local entrepreneurs had the opportunity to present their business plans to a crowd at Pleb Urban Winery during Mountain BizWorks’ annual Mountain Raise event. Pictured, from left, are Dominic Taverniti, Max Runzel, Edmund Washington, Tracey Washington, Sheila Shanti, Luke Peniston, Mark Zalme, DeWayne Barton and David Billstrom. Photo by Carmela Caruso

came to him in 2010 while working on his family farm in Boone. Since then, Wilkes says, it has “organ ically spread” and is now used in 150 countries to track 225,000 hives worldwide.

Also pitching an app, Edmund Washington , owner of two No Grease barbershops, presented a personal grooming app that would provide better online booking and inventory management for tattoo parlors, hair salons and barbershops. During the event, Washington said the biggest thing he was looking forward to was net working and building relationships.

David Billstrom , CEO of Kitsbow Cycling Apparel, says he’s been an entrepreneur since he was 14 (as a kid, he loved winning games of Monopoly). He promoted Kitsbow’s “human-centered cloth ing” to the crowd, citing its sus tainability, durability and quality. Before joining the company, he worked as an investor, so he appre ciates Mountain Raise for its ability to bring people together. He attri butes the success of the company to its “resilient workforce” — all but one employee was hired locally when it moved to Western North Carolina from California in 2019. The company is employee owned. As Billstrom says, “Employees profit. Not me, not Wall Street.”

For Sheila Shanti , founder of Adventure Cocoon, the idea to create a travel wrap was born from a need for safety — for her self as she was traveling through India and later for others. The company, which converts upcycled saris into colorful, comfortable, wearable sacks, employs women in India who have survived sex trafficking. Through “education, empowerment and employment,” 98% of survivors who work with the company have been able to avoid revictimization.

Mark Zalme , founder of 828 Labs, and Dominic Taverniti , COO, made up the night’s only co-presenting team as they dis cussed their product Wallwerx — the “high-quality, in-one-place, in-your-face alternative” to home organization. The two set up a product demonstration featuring a pegboard hanging system outfitted with clear plastic jars and append ages meant for holding items such as pots and pans and tools.

Zalme, who grew up in the Midwest but has lived in Asheville for 30-plus years, says he’s grate ful for Mountain Raise because it allows for “tremendous outreach and connection.” Taverniti, who joined the company just three weeks before the event, said it was gratifying to hear the audi ence engage — cheering, whistling and laughing — during the pitch. “Getting that feedback is encour aging,” he noted.

DeWayne Barton , found er and CEO of Hood Huggers International, pitched a new proj ect called Blue Note Junction, “a unique real estate commercial project at the crossroads of health and entrepreneurship” commit ted to the wellness of people of color. Barton presented his pitch as a spoken-word performance, describing a “diversity of bodies, activities and opportunities” with “sweet smells from a commercial kitchen” and a “saxophone player at the edge of the artists village.” He urged the audience, “Let’s build community together and let’s heal and deal at the same time.”

Returning for a second year, Peniston, co-founder of North Cove Leisure Club, outlined plans to expand its property and scope. It currently offers disc golf, a restau rant and a wedding venue, and plans to add short-term lodging, expanded wedding facilities, addi tional amenities like mountain bike

trails and a pickleball court and a 3,000-person outdoor music venue.

Not only did Peniston and co-founder Kyle Sims complete the Invested Course, but they also joined Bizworks’ Waypoint Accelerator, a program designed for outdoor entrepreneurs.

“I think it would be fair to say that [Mountain BizWorks] has been integral to us getting where we are, every step of the way,” Peniston told Xpress  X

Culture war comes to Asheville school board

Although the Buncombe County Board of Education has played host in recent years to battles over cul tural issues, including critical race theory and sexuality education, such conversations have largely been absent from Asheville’s school dis trict. That changed during recent meetings of the Asheville City Board of Education.

The school board’s agenda for its Nov. 16 meeting contained nothing on those topics, but two people speak ing during public comment revealed brewing tensions. Craig White, the supportive schools director for the Asheville-based nonprofit Campaign for Southern Equality, said an outof-state conservative activist group was working to foment division in the district around LGBTQ issues.

White claimed that the Arizonabased nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, which the Southern Poverty Law Center identified as a hate group in 2016, disrupts school boards around the country and had now come to Asheville. (According to the ADF’s website, the organization is “the world’s largest legal organi zation committed to protecting reli gious freedom, free speech, the sanc tity of life, parental rights and God’s design for marriage and family.”)

“The activist branch of the ADF works behind the scenes, but I have seen their efforts in Wake County,

Orange County and Loudoun County, Virginia,” White said. “Their pattern is to send in two or more organizers to provide anti-LGBTQ talking points and strategies to the local faith community, targeting the local school board, knowing that the LGBTQ+ community will be drawn

into the conflict. Locally, everybody loses, and the ADF moves on.”

Following White was Ronald Gates, pastor of Asheville’s Greater Works Church of God in Christ, who identified himself as a “local ambas sador” for the ADF. Gates began his comments by asserting that school board member Peyton O’Conner “disrespectfully, unprofessionally ripped up” a document that Gates had shared with the board during the Oct. 10 school board meeting. Gates proceeded to misgender O’Conner, who is a transgender woman, several times while speaking.

“We should be focusing on reading, writing, [arithmetic] and history, true history, instead of sexual immorality or indoctrination or CRT,” Gates said Nov. 16. “The individual that took time to rip up that information is not known, as you reflect it, as ‘Miss.’ I will say ‘Mr.’ if the blood was drawn XY, which is a male.”

“Mr. Gates, I will ask that you refrain from bigotry and hate speech. That is not my gender,” O’Conner responded, moments before board Chair James Carter asked Gates to cease his comments.

Speaking with Xpress after the meeting, O’Conner confirmed that she did rip up a letter provided by Gates after he’d finished speaking Oct. 10. She shared a photo of the document, which asked that parents, school board members and local cler gy be informed if teachers plan to allow “indoctrination” through “gen der-person/unicorn sex education targeting K-3rd grade” or gender-af firming therapy for trans students.

O’Conner said that, as a trans woman married to a woman, she found Gates’ comments to be “noth ing short of bigotry and hate speech, particularly given that they invali dated not only myself but the entire LGBTQIA+ community within Asheville City Schools. … I felt that it was important that LGBTQIA+ constituents did not watch Mr. Gates’ acts of structural violence simply pass without reaction or response.”

Gates’ letter said that at least 80 churches and associations are col laborating with the AFD and that he was one of two ambassadors for the organization. It did not clarify how many of those organizations and peo ple were based in Asheville; Gates did not return an Xpress request for comment.

White, meanwhile, told Xpress after the meeting that he was unsure of the extent of ADF’s local presence in Asheville or what other faith lead ers may be working with the organi zation. However, he maintained that the AFD’s aim is to “sow discord in communities” around issues involv ing LGBTQ youth.

“My intention [Nov. 16] was to help the school board and commu nity understand who this far-right extremist group is and remind my own neighbors that we are able to work through our local issues here locally,” White explains. “We don’t need outsider groups like ADF forc ing an extreme conservative ideology around LGBTQ students and inclu sion here.”

— Brooke Randle

HEAD TO HEAD: Craig White, left, works for the Campaign for Southern Equality. Ronald Gates is pastor of Asheville’s Greater Works Church of God in Christ. Screen capture courtesy of ACS

$2.5M city grant approved for 153-unit East Asheville complex

It’s been a busy year for Asheville’s land use incentive grant program, a city initiative that aims to entice developers to include affordable units in their projects by offering property tax rebates.

With a unanimous vote during their Nov. 15 meeting, Asheville City Council members approved the fourth such grant of 2022. The roughly $2.5 million award to South Carolinabased Orange Capital Advisors LLC brings the city’s spending on the pro gram this year to nearly $5.4 million. In each previous year since the pro gram’s 2015 implementation, the city has awarded just one or two LUIG subsidies to eligible developers.

As presented by city staffers Sasha Vrtunski and Will Palmquist, the developer’s 153-unit rental housing project in East Asheville plans to offer 31 units to people earning at or below 80% of the area median income ($45,000 for an individual; $64,250 for a family of four). That affordability would be guaranteed for a minimum of 20 years, with the city rebating about $146,000 to the developer for 17 of those years. The resulting subsidy, an estimated $80,000 per unit, is the maximum recommended under cur rent city policy.

Of the 31 affordable units, 16 will also accept federal housing choice vouchers or rental assistance, and one would house someone who is cur rently homeless. Vrtunski noted that Asheville residents currently have 85 housing vouchers that are going unused due to lack of supply.

Council also unanimously approved a conditional rezoning for the proj ect’s 110 River Hills Road location. Before that vote, member Kim Roney praised the developer’s inclusion of solar panels in shared areas and elec tric car charging stations.

“I’m really glad to not have to ask for solar panels,” Roney said.

Council updates committee structure

Council also voted unanimously in favor of reconfiguring the structure of its committees. These six groups each include three Council members and are tasked with managing specif ic policy areas, such as housing and community development.

DOWN BY THE RIVER HILLS ROAD: A South Carolina-based developer will receive nearly $2.5 million in city subsidies to bring a 153-unit rental complex to East Asheville. Graphic courtesy of the city of Asheville

According to a staff report, the duties of those committees had not been updated since 2006. Council members requested a realignment during their retreat in March to better match current city goals.

Under the new configuration, two existing committees — Governance and Finance, along with Human Resources — will be merged into a new Policy, Finance and Human Resources Committee. A new Equity and Engagement Committee will be created to address the city’s reparations efforts and “neighbor hood resilience.”

The Public Safety Committee will be rebranded as the Environment and Safety Committee and consid er environmental issues alongside concerns such as the management of the Asheville Police Department. The remaining three committees will remain unchanged: Boards and Commissions, Housing and Community Development, and Planning and Economic Development.

A farewell to Wisler

Words of thanks and goodbyes for outgoing Council member Gwen Wisler were interspersed throughout the meeting, culminating in a formal resolution of appreciation presented at the end of the evening.

Wisler, who said that the Nov. 15 meeting would be her last, was first elected to Council in 2013 and served as vice mayor from 2015-20. She will be succeeded by former city sus tainability director Maggie Ullman Berthiaume, who was elected Nov. 8 and will start her term in December.

“It’s been an honor to serve the city,” Wisler said, holding back tears. “I’m proud of all the Council’s work during my tenure. I’m humbled every day by the tenacity, creativity and resourcefulness of our staff. … Thank you, Asheville. You stretch staff and electeds, and you make us better for it.”

— Brooke Randle X

Buncombe tests and tweaks Code Purple plan

A couple of cold October nights have already put this year’s Code Purple program to the test.

The initiative, a joint effort of local governments and nonprofit organizations, makes emergen cy shelter options available for Buncombe County’s homeless population on nights when the weather is forecast to drop below freezing. As presented to the coun ty Board of Commissioners Nov. 15 by Jennifer Teague , Buncombe’s aging and adult services program manager, the Asheville-Buncombe County Homeless Coalition called the first Code Purple of 2022 on Oct. 15 — the first day this year’s program went into effect.

After evaluating the results of that first night, Teague said, the coalition decided to extend entry times for Code Purple shelters. While the original plan only allowed people to enter from 4-6 p.m., the revised rules allow entry until 8 p.m., with later entries accepted from hospitals, law enforcement, paramedics and nonprofit out reach programs.

Teague said the coalition also tweaked its approach to transpor tation access and medical clear ance after the program’s first nights. A coordinating team will continue to meet and evaluate the plan to address any other concerns that arise.

The Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry is currently providing all 105 emer gency beds available through Code Purple. Although the local Salvation Army had originally pledged to operate 16 beds, Teague said the nonprofit is no longer participating in the program due to a lack of capacity.

ABCCM alone is still providing more beds this year than the 78 available last year. Asked by board Chair Brownie Newman whether that number was adequate to meet the community’s need, Teague responded that the program did not max out capacity on either of its first two nights.

Another 40 emergency beds, which will be operated by four area churches, are anticipated to come online in December. Those spaces, along with an additional 30 beds at ABCCM’s Costello House, will be

available every night throughout Code Purple, not just on nights with predicted freezing tempera tures. The program is currently scheduled to run through the end of April.

New faces coming to reparations work

During her quarterly update to the board on the Community Reparations Commission, Assistant County Manager DK Wesley intro duced a new project manager for the commission’s work and asked for input on filling vacancies among its members.

The group will now be man aged by Christine Edwards of Charlotte-based consulting firm Civility Localized. She will take over from TEQuity, the consul tants hired by the city of Asheville for $365,000 last September; a

city staff report from Nov. 15 said TEQuity was leaving the project “due to capacity constraints” after its president, Debra Clark Jones , accepted a new position. Edwards stressed to the county board that the commission’s work groups will

continue in the same direction but with a greater emphasis on effi cient organization.

“We’re going to take the work that they’ve done over the past sev eral months and set some structure around these recommendations that they are going to be put ting together,” Edwards said. She plans to create standard process es around the commission’s data requests and work group recom mendations, as well as encourage more frequent communication.

In addition to new management, the reparations commission will see new members appointed by the county. One of the group’s six county-appointed seats and both county-appointed alternate posi tions are currently vacant following several resignations. Buncombe will readvertise the vacancies, and the Board of Commissioners will select appointees for all three openings at a future meeting.

Wesley described the reparation commission’s current phase as “storming,” which she explained as a step in the team-building pro cess that involves conflict as a group comes together. She said the reparations commission had spent about five or six months in this stage so far. “Though painful, especially played out in a some times public way, it’s necessary,” Wesley said.

These changes come amid the departure of county’s first chief equity and human rights officer, Rachel Edens . Edens was hired last November, and among her listed duties was implementing the county’s August 2020 reparations resolution. According to the Citizen Times , Edens was “separated from her employment” Oct. 27; county spokesperson Lilian Govus did not provide further explanation for the move.

— Nikki Gensert X

WELCOMING SIGHT: Of the 105 Code Purple beds currently available, 50 serve women and children at Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Minis try’s Transformation Village. Photo by Jessica Wakeman

Q&A: Mary Crowe on the community effort to rename Clingmans Dome

Since 2015, Mary Crowe has watched as mountain peaks across the country have been renamed. That year, Mount McKinley in Alaska became Denali, an Athabascan word meaning “the great one.”

Later, in 2021, Squaw Mountain in the Colorado foothills was for mally recognized as Mestaa’ ė hehe, named after a prominent Native woman in Colorado history.

And more recently, Doane Mountain in Yellowstone was renamed as First Peoples Mountain.

Inspired by these changes, Crowe put out a message on Facebook calling to rename Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The current name honors Thomas Clingman , a North Carolina native who served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate; he was also a Confederate general in the Civil War.

Lavita Hill , a Cherokee activ ist and treasury specialist for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, joined Crowe in her mission and suggested reclaiming the name, Kuwohi, which means “the place of the mulberries.”

In July, Crowe and Hill wrote a proposed resolution and present ed it to the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Tribal Council. The tribe supported the resolution, as did other local governments, includ ing the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners and Asheville City Council.

Crowe sees this endeavor as a way to heal. She says, “By having

this conversation now, we can talk about [our historic trauma]. It’s still lingering today. And we’re trying to break the trauma cycle.”

Xpress sat down with Crowe to discuss her personal history, the next steps in the renaming process and her favorite activities when visiting the sacred mountaintop.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited.

Can you speak to the history of Kuwohi and your personal connection to it?

The prophets met at Kuwohi and prophesied that our people would go west. The old settlers [Cherokee who left WNC before the Indian Removal Act led to the expulsion of an estimated 16,000 Cherokees in 1838] picked up the fire from Kituwah [the original Cherokee settlement] and went to Oklahoma first. They were there at least two years before the rest of the Cherokee Nation was moved there after the Indian Removal Act.

But some of us did what we had to do to stay here even after the Civil War. We had to work to stay here in North Carolina.

My dad used to work for the [National] Park Service. He was a trailblazer — walking and keeping the trails clean for the hikers. And I would go with him, as would my brothers and sisters sometimes, though not all of us at once. But one or two of us would go with him, and we would hike from Kuwohi all the way down to Deep Creek.

My dad also was a tower watch man. He was up in the smoke towers in the mountains where he

IN IT TOGETHER: Earlier this year, Mary Crowe, right, and Lavita Hill began a campaign to restore the name of Clingmans Dome to Kuwo hi. Photo by Steve Reinhold

watched out for forest fires. And I was up there in those towers with him. We had them on Mount Noble and up here on Dobson Ridge.

To be able to walk to Kuwohi, to be up there with my father and my brothers, to sit up there and look for smoke and to give them coordinates and stuff — that was growing up.

What would renaming the peak mean to you?

This is real for us. Because [his torically] if we participated in any of our traditional ways, we would be condemned to hell. Christianity was used against us, to make us feel

condemnation by God himself, let alone the community or the church. And that was forced assimilation and acculturation. We had to learn the dominant white way. And so, by having this conversation now, we can talk about it. It’s still lingering today. We consider it historic trau ma that gets passed down through generations. And we’re trying to break the trauma cycle.

Talk to me about the process of getting the peak renamed.

First of all, we’re grateful for the incredible support that we got from our local community. My sister, Lisa Montelongo, and I got a dona tion from Friends of the Earth to get T-shirts made. We bought 200 shirts with “Kuwahi” on them, and they went like wildfire.

So, we used those funds to open up the conversation. Though a lot of our people had heard [about the renaming effort], some had not. The shirts opened the door for us to learn, to understand and to just transition back to who we really are as Aniyunwiya, which is what we originally called ourselves — it means “the principal people.”

These funds also enabled us to then go to our Cherokee Elders Council who check the language, and they corrected us. Kuwa is a mulberry, and Kuwohi is a mulber ry place. We had to allow ourselves to understand.

So, when we look at what we’re doing right now, all Lavita and I did was present it to council and made it more public. From there, everyone else has stepped forward and has more or less volunteered and provided their support for this change. We’ve got [support from] a couple of businesses, especially The Appalachian Adventure Co., and Drew Reisinger , the Buncombe County Register of Deeds. We also have the support from Cherokee Nation relatives.

We plan to go back to the tribal council with an official resolution to have the Eastern Band, as our nation, forward it directly to the U.S. Board of Geographic Names in D.C.

When you visit Kuwohi, what do you like to do?

If I have the energy to make it all the way to the top of the dome part, I say my prayers because when I look out, I’m looking at where my people went — my mom, my moth er’s mother, my family. Some of them are still out there. They want to come home.

For more information on the Kuwohi initiative, visit kuwohi.org.

For a full list of community calendar guidelines, please visit mountainx.com/calendar. For questions about free listings, call 828-251-1333, opt. 4. For questions about paid calendar listings, please call 828-251-1333, opt. 1.

WELLNESS

Zumba Gold for Adults

50+

This free class helps work on mobility while moving to the beat to burn off calories. Every Wednesday and Friday.

WE (11/23, 30), FR (11/25), 11am, Linwood Crump Shiloh Community Center, 121 Shiloh Rd

American Red Cross Mobile Blood Drive

Bus will be located in the parking lot behind the food court. Donors are asked to register in advance by visiting RedCrossBlood.org/ give and entering the sponsor code AshevilleOutlets.

FR (11/25), 10am, Asheville Outlets, 800 Brevard Rd

Yoga in the Park

Asheville

Join together alongside the French Broad River for this all-level friendly yoga class based on Hatha and Vinyasa traditions.

SA (11/26) & SU (11/27), 1:30pm, Carri er Park, 220 Amboy Rd

Dementia Partners Support Group AVL Providing a social setting for individuals to meet and discuss coping techniques, share experiences, and present resource speakers from a variety of agencies.

TH (12/1), 6pm, Scenic View Terrace Clubhouse, 60 Fallen Spruce Dr

Old School Line Dancing

Featuring instructor-led dances with video backup.

TH (12/1), 6:15pm, Ste phens Lee Recreation Center, 30 George Washington Carver Ave

ART

Place and Wonder

Featuring five American artists whose work explores the things we know and cannot entirely know about a place - real, imagined, or rememberedaccessing humor, amazement, mood, and narrative to poetic representations of landscape and direct observation. Exhibit through Jan. 8, 2023. Gallery open 10am (11am Sunday), closed Monday. See p33 Tyger Tyger Gallery, 191 Lyman St, Ste 144

Natural Collector |

Gifts of Fleur S. Bresler

Features around 15 artworks from the col lection, which include important examples of modern and contemporary American craft including wood and fiber art, as well as glass and ceramics. Open 11am, closed Tuesday.

Asheville Art Museum, 2 S Pack Square

Rebel/Re-Belle: Explor ing Gender, Agency, and Identity Combines works, primarily created by women, from two significant collections of contemporary art to explore how artists have innovated, influ enced, interrogated, and inspired visual culture in the past 100 years. Through Jan. 16, 2023. Open 11am, closed Tuesdays.

Asheville Art Museum, 2 S Pack Square

Jazz '22 Story Walk

This outdoor exhibit of informational panels about NC jazz greats is designed to share the history of jazz. Open daily 7:30am.

Stearns Park, 122 E Mills St, Columbus Matewan as Metaphor by Jean Hess

Mixed-media artist Jean Hess creates a personal story by combining real and imagined resources with the intention of healing her own memory and transcending limits on what is possible and allowed in creative and scholarly endeavors as well as in visual art.

Open Monday through

Friday, 11am.

Flood Gallery Fine Art Center, 850 Blue Ridge Rd, Black Mountain

With Gratitude

An interactive exhibit, through Nov. 30. Jot down what you are grateful for on one of the paper snippets and pin it to the board on the easel. Open daily 10am.

Trackside Studios, 375 Depot St

North Carolina Works by Martin Pasco Paintings from Bar nardsville-based artist.

Open daily 11am.

Asheville Gallery of Art, 82 Patton Ave

Explorations in Heritage & Nature: Paintings by Lelia Canter

A unique and colorful collection of over 25 years of work that illustrate Cherokee, Celtic, Appalachian, and various cultural legends. Open 8am, closed Sunday.

Zuma Coffee, 7 N Main St, Marshall

Winter Magic Annual group exhibition with over 20 local artists participating.

Open daily 11am.

Asheville Gallery of Art, 82 Patton Ave

Nov. 26,

BFA Portfolio Exhib tion Reception

This exhibition highlights the work of undergraduate students from WCU's School of Art and Design.

TH (12/1), 5pm, WCU Bardo Arts Center, 199 Centennial Dr, Cullowhee

Homesick

A multi-media sculpture aiming to tell the sto ries of those affected by the housing crisis. Daily through Nov. 30. See p32 Pack Square Park Day With(out) Art

An international day of action and mourning held each year on World AIDS Day.

The new film, Being & Belonging, will be shown on a continuous loop in the museum’s multipurpose space on Level 1. The film features seven short videos centering the emotional reality of living with HIV today.

TH (12/1), Asheville Art Museum, 2 S Pack Square

LITERARY

Poetry Open Mic

Hendo

A poetry-centered open mic that welcomes all

kinds of performers every Thursday night. Arrive early to sign up for ten minutes. 18+ TH (11/24 & 12/1), 7:30pm, Shakedown Lounge, 706 Seventh Ave East, Hendersonville

Stories of Christmas Holiday stories from award-winning storytell er Donna Marie Todd. SU (11/27), 2pm, Black Mountain Center for the Arts, 225 W State St, Black Mountain

THEATER & FILM

Be Here Now

A quirky, unexpected romantic comedy about Bari, who has always been a bit of an angry, depressed misanthrope - and losing her job teaching nihilism in New York to work at the local fulfillment center in her rural hometown has sent her into despair. Mature language and content.

WE (11/23, 30), FR (11/25), SA (11/26), TH (12/1), 7:30pm, SU (11/27), 2pm, NC Stage Co., 15 Stage Ln

Miss Bennet: Christmas At Pemberley

A family comedy that takes place two years after the events of Jane

Nov. 27,

Grassland Mountain Observatory, 2890 Grassland Parkway, Marshall

Scrabble Club

All gear provided, just bring your vocabulary. Every Sunday.

SU (11/27), 12:15pm, Stephens Lee Recreation Center, 30 George Washington Carver Ave

Game Designers of North Carolina (GDoNC) Meetup Meet local designers, give feedback, and dis cover your next favorite game as you playtest board game prototypes with other players.

TU (11/29), Well Played Board Game Café, 162 Coxe Ave

Punch Club

NC Craft Beverage Museum and plēb urban winery talk about the history, art, and sci ence that is punch, with a tasting. Donations encouraged.

TU (11/29), 6pm, The Aventine, 95 Page Ave

Mammalogy

An educator from the NC Arboretum EcoExplore Program will bring a variety of animal artifacts and fun mammal-related activities. For school age kids.

WE (11/30), 4pm, Leicester Library, 1561 Alexander Rd, Leicester

meat, cheese, bread, pastries, and more.

SA (11/26), 9am, 52 N Market St

Little River Arts District Pop-up Art and Gift Sale

Artists will show and sell unique, handmade art and gift items. SA (11/26), 12pm, Little River Arts District, 4 Mulvaney St

Small Business Satur day Holiday Market

A rotation of local artists, makers and merchants of delight. SA (11/26), 12pm, Brevard Lumberyard, 200 King St, Brevard Frost Moon Bazaar

A rotation of local artists, makers and merchants of delight. SA (11/26), 12pm, Catawba Brewing South Slope, 32 Banks Ave

Sip & Shop

Over 20 local vendors with organic body products to jewelry, artisan bread to home decor. Beverages by UpCountry Brewery and Distillery and food and drinks from 185 King. SA (11/26), 2pm, The Rhu, 10 South Lexington Ave

Gladheart Farm Fest Market

3 p.m.

Changing Feathers, Changing Seasons, Changing Climate

Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Featuring a cast of Asheville actors. Also Sunday, Nov. 26 at 3pm. FR (11/25), SA (11/26), 7:30pm, SU (11/27), 3pm, BeBe Theatre, 20 Commerce St

No Man's Land Film Festival

Join MountainTrue this Giving Tuesday for a screening of No Man's Land Film Festival (NMLFF), back in the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains for a fifth year.

TU (11/29), 6:15pm, New Belgium Brewing Co., 21 Craven St

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Adapted from Charles M. Schulz’s timeless story and featuring the music of Vince Guaraldi. Various times through Dec. 4. See p32 TH (12/1), 7:30pm, Flat Rock Playhouse, 2661 Hwy 225, Flat Rock

MEETINGS & PROGRAMS

Public Star Gaze Open to everyone, reg istration is not required. Visit astroasheville.org for more information. FR (11/25), 5pm,

Simon Thompson, an international expert on birding, will compare the behaviors of birds that spend the colder months around Western North Carolina with birds that are now spending the winter further north due to increasingly warmer temps.

TH (12/1), 7pm, avl.mx/977

LOCAL MARKETS

RAD Farmers Market

Winter Season

Year-round access to fresh local foods, with 25-30 vendors selling a variety of local wares. Handicap parking available in the Smoky Park lot, free public parking available along Riverside Dr. Also accessible by foot, bike, or rollerblade via the Wilma Dykeman Greenway.

WE (11/23, 30), 3pm, Smoky Park Supper Club, 350 Riverside Dr North Asheville Tailgate Market

The oldest Saturday morning market in WNC. Over 60 rotating vendors.

SA (11/26), 8am, 3300

University Heights

Asheville City Market

Over 50 vendors and local food products, including fresh produce,

Food, music and goods, all sold on an organic farm. See p30 SU (11/27), 11am, 9 Lora Ln

North Slope Art Market

With a collection of local artists selling a range of crafts includ ing art, mugs, clothing and jewelry.

SU (11/27), 12pm, DSSOLVR, 63 N Lexington Ave

YMCA Mobile Market

Bring your grocery bags and get fresh food for your family. Distribu tions are free and all community members are welcome.

WE (11/30), 12pm, Enka-Candler Library, 1404 Sandhill Rd, Candler

HOLIDAY EVENTS

Giving Thanks at Thanksgiving

An entire Thanksgiving meal will be given to 800 families in need. WE (11/23), 9am, Ingles Market, 780 Hendersonville Rd

Vegan Thanksliving Potluck

Bring a vegan dish to share; as well as your plate, utensils and beverage. RSVP on Meetup: avl.mx/c6l TH (11/24), 2:30pm, Weaverville Center for Healthy Living, 60 Lake shore Dr, Weaverville

MARY CHRISTMAS: The Multiverse Theatre Collective will bring back last year’s production of Miss Bennett: Christmas at Pemberley, which takes place two years after Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice, and centers on the character of middle sister Mary as the heroine. The play will be performed by Asheville actors Friday, Nov. 25, and Saturday,

at 7 p.m. and Sunday,

at

at The BeBe Theatre at 20 Commerce St. Photo courtesy of The Multiverse The atre Collective

Meadowlark Motel

Annual Thanksgiving Dinner

Turkey, ham, Boyd’s elk chili and all the traditional sides as well as Joseph’s pineapple upside down cake and Barber Orchard fruit pies. Mike Ogletree, former drummer of Simple Minds, will be playing Scottish and Irish folk songs.

TH (11/24), 5pm, Meadowlark Motel, 2878 Soco Rd, Maggie Valley

Photos with The Grinch Donate a new, unwrapped toy to Western North Carolina Toys for Tots and enjoy free selfies with the iconic Dr Seuss character. Located in the food court.

FR (11/25), 10am, Asheville Outlets, 800 Brevard Rd

Holiday Market

Twenty plus local vendors.

FR (11/25), 11am, Highland Brewing Co., 12 Old Charlotte Hwy

Hard Candy Christmas

One hundred local and regional artisans, a mountain holiday tra dition, with live music from Ronnie Evans of Franklin.

FR (11/25) & SA (11/26), 10am-5pm, WCU Ramsey Center, Cullowhee

Hendersonville Christ mas Tree Lighting

A live band warms up the crowd prior to the arrival of Santa Claus, who flips the switch to illuminate the tree and twinkling lights along Main St, followed by horse-drawn carriage rides.

FR (11/25), 5pm, Historic Downtown Hendersonville, 145 5th Ave, Hendersonville

SA (11/26), 11:30am, Frog Level Brewery, 56 Commerce St, Waynesville

Hickory Holiday Bash

Local artisans, photos with Santa, pony rides and cotton candy. Garage BBQ available. SU (11/27), 12pm, Hickory Nut Gap Farm, 57 Sugar Hollow Rd, Fairview

Grove Park Inn Gingerbread House Competition

A longstanding tradition, on display from Nov. 28-Jan. 2. See p31 Omni Grove Park Inn, 290 Macon Ave

Tryon Drive-Thru Christmas Light Show

Sixth

Annual Mingle and Jingle: Holiday Craft Market

Local vendors selling handmade goods, arts, and crafts to holiday tunes. Food and beverage available for purchase from the Taqueria.

SA (11/26), 10am, The Grey Eagle, 185 Clingman Ave

Small Business Satur day Makers Market

Over 20 vendors, offering everything from locally sourced honey to custom leatherworks, as well as live music from JR, a folk singer based out of Waynesville.

Photos with Santa Visitors receive one free 4” by 6” photo and digital download of a single image (while supplies last). Located in the food court.

SU (11/27), 12pm, Asheville Outlets, 800 Brevard Rd

Santa Paws

Santa will be taking pictures with pets, kids, families, friends, and anyone interested in raising money for the pets in need in Buncombe County. Presented by Asheville Humane Society and Four Seasons Plumbing. MO (11/28), 6pm, Down Dog, 51 Sweeten Creek Rd WE (11/30), 5pm, Whistle Hop Brewing Co., 1288 Charlotte Hwy, Fairview

Featuring a two-mile display that dances along to the music in your car. Open nightly 6-10pm, tickets sold per vehicle. MO (11/28), 6pm, Tryon International Equestrian Center, 25 International Blvd, Mill Spring

Winter Lights

An open-air, walkthrough light show in the gardens, featuring live performances, a model train, educa tional exhibits and food and beverages available for purchase. The Arboretum's larg est annual fundraiser. Visit ncarboretum. org for more info on tickets and pricing. Daily 6pm through Jan. 1. NC Arboretum, 100 Frederick Law Olmsted Way

WELLNESS

Building a case

Forensic nurses play key role after assaults

BY JESSICA WAKEMAN

jwakeman@mountainx.com

Few crimes are more personal than sexual assault. Unfortunately, collecting evidence that may lead to a conviction of an attacker can be traumatic and invasive as well. That’s where trained forensic nurses can make a difference. And now there are more of them in Western North Carolina, due to a new team at Harris Regional Hospital in Sylva.

Until this summer, residents in Western North Carolina who were assaulted had to travel up to two hours to Asheville-area hospitals that have nurses who are special ly trained in gathering biologi cal evidence.

Otherwise, if they visited their local emergency rooms, they would be seen by a physician or nurse who isn’t specially trained in forensic evidence collection — and who also

has to respond to other emergencies. A third option was no exam or evi dence collection at all.

Katie Miller, director of women’s services at Harris Regional Hospital, trained as a forensic nurse in 2018 and began researching how to imple ment a forensic nurse team at Harris Regional Hospital in early 2022. Five registered nurses from Harris’ staff completed 45 hours of online train ing and two days of clinical learn ing with live models in Columbia, S.C., from a program approved by the International Association of Forensic Nurses. “We’re lucky to be close to a place where we could do vaginal exams on live models and do as many as we needed to complete our training,” Miller says. After earning certificates in May, the program went live Aug. 1.

Also called a sexual assault nurse examiner, or SANE, forensic nurses provide “nursing care and assess ment while preserving and collect ing evidence,” explains Jacqueline Maillet, forensic nurse team super visor at Mission Health. “We’re spe cially trained to look for specific injuries after episodes of violence,” she explains. This training means forensic nurses “make for more credible expert witnesses if the case goes to trial and they need to testi fy,” according to the N.C. Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

Trained forensic nursing ser vices are primarily grouped around Asheville. Forensic nurses are avail able around the clock at Mission Health and from 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. at the Buncombe County Family Justice Center, a social services organization assisting survivors of sexual assault and physical abuse.

Pardee UNC Health Care has had a forensic nurse program for 15 years and has three on staff, says Bridget Barron, nursing ser vice director of Psychiatric and Addictions Therapeutic Healing Services at Pardee. AdventHealth Hendersonville has had forensic nurses since 2017 and has five on staff, according to spokesperson Victoria Dunkle

AN EMOTIONAL EMERGENCY

A medical exam and assault evi dence collection can take two to five hours, depending on the extent of a patient’s injuries, explains Miller.

REAL LIFE: Unlike in Hollywood, where “you get results in under an hour,” crime labs can take six-nine months to test the DNA evidence in a rape kit, says Mission Health forensic nurse team supervisor Jac queline Maillet. Photo courtesy of Mission Health

And this can be tricky in busy emer gency departments, she adds. “It’s very stressful for ER nurses to get a sexual assault patient because, of course, they want to be there for that person,” but ER nurses also must respond to more acute medical emergencies as they arise, Maillet explains.

Harris Regional Hospital’s new forensic nurse team, which consists of registered nurses employed else where in the hospital, relieves some of this stress, Miller says. When an assault patient comes into the Harris ER, the staff contacts the forensic nurse on call, who assumes care of the patient. The assault exam and evidence collection take place separately and privately from the ER, which can be loud and busy, Miller explains. The forensic nurse can focus on the assault patient, treat injuries and spend as much time as needed.

Following the exam and evidence collection, patients can take a warm shower — which some have not done since the assault in order to preserve DNA evidence on their bodies — and put on clean clothing provided by local nonprofits.

Harris Regional Hospital’s foren sic nurses have collected evidence

for 16 kits since the program began, Miller says. Volume “varies widely,” she continues; one week the team collected five kits, while other weeks have had only one. (Nancy Lindell, spokesperson for Mission Health, did not respond to Xpress’ inquiry on the volume of rape kits at Mission Hospital by press time.)

Miller says she anticipates more patients coming in for evidence collection around the holidays and end-of-school parties. “A lot of our cases that we’re seeing from Western [Carolina University in Cullowhee] involve parties as a setting,” she says.

NOT LIKE ON TV

Biological evidence collection is a slow, deliberate process that involves “a light swabbing-over to pick up any cells or DNA that might be there,” Maillet explains.

The kit is composed of envelopes, each dedicated to a specific part of the body. Dry skin will be gone over with a wet swab, then a dry swab to pick up the DNA. Inside the mouth, nose or genitalia, which has mucous membranes, the nurses use dry swabs.

Evidence can be collected any where DNA may be found, like from genitalia, under a patient’s fingernails or in body hair. The patient’s description of the assault guides which parts of the body the forensic nurses swab for evidence. Crime lab guides recommend that oral swabs be completed within 24 hours, rectal swabs within 48 hours and vaginal swabs within five days, Maillet explains.

But Maillet emphasizes these time frames shouldn’t dissuade survivors from getting examined. “If you come in and it’s not 24 hours, it’s 48 hours [since the assault], you didn’t do any thing wrong,” she says. “We can still [try to see] what we can get.” She’s adamant about collecting whatever evidence is still present on the body.

“If it’s hour 121 [since the assault], I’m going to do the kit,” Maillet says.

Photographing injuries like bruises, abrasions, scratches and lacerations is a key component of evidence collection. Called “photo documentation,” the images support the record of the injuries captured in the patient’s medical chart.

Mission Health and the Family Justice Center have Cortexflo cam eras to photograph bruising below the skin’s surface, says Maillet. Very light skin and very dark skin don’t photograph bruises well, but Cortexflo cameras have an LED ring light circling the lens, which adjusts the flash automatically, and a con trast filter that takes a photograph

LEADER OF THE PACK: Katie Mill er, Harris Regional Hospital’s di rector of women’s services, helped establish the six-person forensic nursing team at her hospital. Photo courtesy of Harris Regional Hospital

resembling a negative, she explains. “With Brown or Black skin, where bruises are hard to pick up or photo graph, this will capture it,” she says.

Unlike in Hollywood, where results are completed in under an hour, in real life, processing rape kits takes a long time, says Maillet. Crime labs may have thousands of rape kits to test at a time, and she estimates it takes six to nine months for a rape kit to be tested. It starts with the forensic nurses logging the kit onto an online tracking system, which Maillet says informs the crime lab that it should be tested. If the patient chooses to file a police report, the kit must be received by the crime lab within seven days.

State law prohibits medical facil ities from billing survivors of sexual assault for a rape kit. Those exams are paid for by the N.C. Department of Public Safety’s Rape Victim Assistance Program.

Paulina Mendez, family justice program manager at the Family Justice Center in Buncombe County, says forensic nurses “go above and beyond to offer nonjudgmental, com passionate care during what can be a very raw and stressful time in some one’s life. The evidence they collect, the education they provide and their expert witness testimony are invalu able for survivors seeking justice.”

ANONYMOUS OR NOT

A critical component of the evi dence collection process is getting the patient’s consent for each step. “The patient has control over every part of the exam,” Maillet empha sizes. “We can take a break; [the patient] can say, ‘I don’t want that part.’ … It’s important to give them back control because control was taken away.”

Maillet emphasizes that filing a police report isn’t mandatory for patients ages 18 and older. “We can collect that evidence anonymously” without involving law enforcement, she says. For patients under age 18, medical providers must file a report with the Department of Children and Family Services, which handles interaction with law enforcement, Maillet explains.

Forensic nurses also dispense medication as needed, such as antibiotics for sexually transmitted infections, the morning-after pill or the HIV post-exposure prophylaxis PEP, Maillet says.

Forensic nursing is emotionally heavy work for practitioners, Maillet says. “It’s hearing everybody’s worst day over and over again,” she says.

But it’s rewarding work, too. “Our goal is to let the patient leave a little better than when they came in,” she says. “A lot of our patients will say, ‘Thank you, I feel so much better’ … You’re really helping somebody.” X

Comedians offer ways to survive Thanksgiving with your family

BY MORGAN BOST

Welcome back to “Best Medicine!” Xpress’ new(ish) month ly comedy column and your holiday endurance guide (remember it’s a marathon, not a sprint). If you’re read ing this, it means you’ve successfully survived the season thus far. Yes, I realize it’s still early. Nevertheless, preparation is key.

And Best Medicine has you covered! This month I’ve called on musi cian Page Ragan along with stand-up comedians James Harrod and Katy Hudson to see how they’re planning to persevere this Thanksgiving follow ing an election AND a blood moon. (Side note, the amount of times I’ve mentioned the blood moon in profes sional correspondence this month is … troubling.)

In addition to tips for maintaining domestic tranquility, one of my col leagues presents a hell of an invest ment opportunity for those seeking something new — though, admittedly, the pitch feels a tad old.

Morgan Bost: The election is over (well, almost), and politics can be a tricky topic for families. What are local stories you plan to bring up at the Thanksgiving table to keep your family from talking politics?

Page Ragan: Some people think that honesty is the best policy, but at a family holiday? I think not. Personally, I can’t recommend lying enough!

“I heard they’re removing all the lanes from Merrimon Avenue and turning it into an autobahn-style freefor-all” is a great jumping-off point.

It’s less about being believable and more about starting a conversation.

“Did you hear they’re turning the Innsbruck Mall into The Lion’s Dentures — Asheville’s first 65 and up nightclub?” Now you have a thrill ing discourse that gets Grandma in the mix! (And, upon further reflec tion, not a bad concept to pitch to potential investors.)

When the inevitable lull occurs, throw out a “Did you know that 95% of the ocean is unexplored? What’s

that about? You think there’s any thing scary down there?”

If everything fails, and politics still come up, ask each of your family members what a comptroller does. Make a rule that only those who are familiar with the duties of a comp troller can discuss politics.

Katy Hudson: My family is full of people so rude and rambling that we must consider each other to be eccentric geniuses, or else we end up like the Donner Party. There isn’t a single topic that won’t inevitably send someone into a sermon about the Oxford comma or the history of knockwurst.

Consequently, we have a family tradition of how to shut down some one’s monologue: Simply add the

phrase “in your colon” to the end of someone’s sentence. Anything vague ly political becomes a poop joke!

“I’ve had it up to here with this inflation!”

“... in your colon?”

“The workers are restless — I’ve heard rumblings of a mas sive movement.”

“... in your colon.”

“Can you pass the turkey?”

“In YOUR colon? No, that’s impos sible, but I expect to pass the turkey in my colon just fine.”

If someone is upset by the bath room humor, kindly remind them that their dietary privilege is show ing. Some lucky few can forget about the other end of their body’s food tube while eating. That’s nice for them, but the rest of us have IBS. We are the silent (but deadly) majority, and we will no longer hold back!

James Harrod: At times when politics come up at the holiday din ner table, I’ve found an easy way to defuse the situation is to start talking about fictional politicians and see if anyone notices. You can slide state ments into the conversation like: “I just think Selina relies far too much on her team to get her out of making the big decisions!” Then my Dad will be like: “Son, are you talking about ‘Veep?’” And then I’ll go: “Also, can you imagine the complications of being mayor while having a cheese burger for a head?”

A family that is discussing Mayor McCheese is a family that is not fighting. If they demand you discuss real politics, start talking about your budding appreciation for long-form, experimental psychedelic rock. In my experience, this usually reveals you to be someone who can’t be trusted, and no one will bother you on tricky conversational topics mov ing forward. Then you are free to listen to King Gizzard & the Wizard Lizard in your room for the rest of the holiday.

Bost: As a West Asheville resi dent making the long journey to the east side of town to visit my chosen family, I will likely avoid the topic of the recent mayoral election. While I don’t want tensions to boil, I’ll still want to keep things spicy. What’s a holiday

a little

meal without

spirited

THE GRATEFUL BUNCH: Local comic Morgan Bost, top left, is back for her latest conversion with fellow funny folks, clockwise from top right: Page Ragan, James Har rod and Katy Hudson. Photo of Bost by Cindy Kunst; all other images courtesy of Bost

debate? I’ll likely steer the conversa tion toward mounting tensions with in the pickleball and tennis commu nities. Though I have relatively little interest in sports, something tells me that my chosen family, middle-aged residents of Haw Creek, likely have a vested interest in netted competition.

Bost: This holiday season, where are you taking visitors looking for the “authentic Asheville experience?” What are the hidden gems that’ll never make any national list?

Hudson: I highly recommend watching your local turkey flock proudly strut about North Asheville. Behold the terrifying majesty that is the turkey — a beast of tawny irides cent wings and an imposing aura. These birds must know that they trot on borrowed time in November, yet they nobly persist in their quest to scratch up only that one part of the garden you worked on all morning.

This awe-inspiring creature is clearly the McRib of dinosaurs — we’re not sure how the original bones turned into this maroon monstros ity, but it’s tasty and available on Merrimon Avenue (which I hear the city is turning into an autobahn-style free-for-all). How do I know these creatures are tasty if it’s illegal to hunt turkey in city limits? Well, it’s not technically hunting if the critter finds your outdoor selfie mirror and pecks its own reflection to death.

Harrod: Every year I go with a group of friends to the Eliada Corn Maze, and I think this would really work for a family outing as well. You don’t have to hang with your family because, hey, let’s face it, you’re lost in a corn maze. Which means you don’t have to worry about discussing your future because you all have bigger issues on your plate — like the fact that you’ve passed by that same rock at least 50 times.

Ragan: What if I were to tell you that the true Asheville experience hasn’t yet arrived ... but could be with your help! Imagine a nightclub that opens at 2 p.m. and closes by 9 p.m. Serving a variety of expired soda, hard candy and warm milks, The Lion’s Dentures will be Asheville’s first exclusive senior citizen night club. And with your help, this future authentic experience could become a reality as early as Thanksgiving 2027! Investors inquire within.

Bost: I hesitate to mention the Haywood Road Ingles for a second time in this column’s brief history out of fear they may either sue or sponsor me, but my mom is visiting this holiday season, and if I want to show her my authentic Asheville

experience I have to start with a classic 6-inch Ingles sub (that maybe I’ll get for free with my rewards points!). We’ll also grab some cat food and cold brew to really get the party started.

Next stop? Fiesta Laundries on Merrimon Avenue. (By the way, have you heard the rumor that the city plans to turn Merrimon into an auto bahn-style free-for-all?) While I may have recently graduated to coin-op erated laundry inside my apartment building (brag), it’s important to remember my roots. Many a joke were written to the soothing sounds of the machines and unattended chil dren screaming at the site.

And since we’re on the north side of town, my mom might as well join me for a tour of the MerriMAN CVS — my favorite place to run into exes in sweatpants and no makeup, while buying cat food and a frozen pizza.

What should residents of Western North Carolina be most grateful for this year?

Hudson: Let’s be grateful for find ing ourselves in this place to begin with. Mountain life has never been easy with the geographical isolation requiring us to be resilient general ists and harsh winters forcing us rug ged loners to make peace with our most crotchety, annoying neighbors.

Take some time to value what it really means to be at home in this place. Be grateful for the idiosyncra sies of your old bungalow, 50-plusyear-old apartment or charming treehouse in the woods. Cherish this place for reasons beyond “it’s techni cally a shelter and some people don’t have that.” We’re in a place built for all types to discover and carve out their niche, and this is a powerful time to do so.

Harrod: I am grateful I can live in a town where I can mention Tim

Curry’s breathtaking performance as Long John Silver in the Muppet Treasure Island and most people will know what I’m talking about. Seriously, though, in Asheville, the creative communities are so support ive and bristling with talent that, often, when I travel to other cities, I forget how good I have it. And it is always nice to know that every hol iday, no matter what you are doing, somewhere there is a comedy open mic going on where an overly con fident man is demanding a better reaction from an audience. Definitely feel grateful for that!

Bost: Socializing in Beer City can be tough for those who don’t drink, especially for those of us in recovery. As a comic, I’m still often in bars late at night and despite my best efforts, I haven’t gotten fully comfort able dry-dogging conversations with drunk people without a little liquid courage. Luckily, most of my favorite bars, venues and restaurants now carry nonalcoholic options. And for that I’m truly grateful. While NA drinks and mocktails may not give you a buzz, they can certainly create a nice placebo effect. After two NA beers, I will often start to feel looser and wonder if the drunk

person spilling a beer on me is actu ally getting more interesting or if it’s all in my head (it’s always the latter). Plus, when I’m holding a mocktail, strangers assume the weird com ments I make are a result of booze and not just my personality!

Ragan: We should all be grateful to live in the beginning of a new age: Nightclubs for the elderly. I really think this is the next big thing, peo ple, and this is your chance to get in on the ground floor!

I promise you, dear investor, this will be nothing like my last failed startup, Kitty Cosmetics (turns out they don’t really wear makeup). Personally, I’m grateful that PETA has upgraded me from “national threat” to “regional nuisance” and that we’ve reached a settlement on most of the lawsuits. If you’ve never been in legal trouble, I can assure you that that is something to be grateful for!

One of the greatest feelings in the world is the absence of a toothache, and while I may be out millions of dollars, I really believe that The Lion’s Dentures will turn things around. Be grateful for the opportu nity to invest! Now! X

Dream a mountain dream

BY EDWIN ARNAUDIN

earnaudin@mountainx.com

Mike Poggioli has long heed ed the call of the wild, but he never thought it would result in his first book.

A native of the greater New York City area, Poggioli subsequently lived in Chicago and Cincinnati. Surrounded by asphalt and other urban sights, he sought out green spaces whenever possible.

“Even from early on, I always felt more connected to nature, as cliché as that sounds,” he says. “I would always make efforts to go to botan ical gardens in the cities and find places to go in upstate New York.”

Those same cityscapes, howev er, also set him on the path that led to the Asheville transplant’s debut photography collection, Blue Ridge Dreaming , out Tuesday, Nov. 29, through Chicago-based Trope Publishing Co.

INSPIRATION STRIKES

In 2015, Poggioli was teaching first grade in an inner-city Chicago school, and while he knew that his work was meaningful, it wasn’t ful filling. Furthermore, the demands of the job left the self-described introvert feeling physically and emotionally drained at the end of each day. As he sought a creative release outside of work, inspiration struck on his commutes aboard the L train.

“Something I love about Chicago and the trains is it kind of weaves

you through downtown — it’s like a little built-in architecture tour,” Poggioli says. “So, I would just step out, take pictures with my iPhone and then start sharing them [on Instagram].”

In the process, he discovered a community of fellow Windy City photographers likewise posting their urban images online. Though Poggioli took a basic film photog raphy elective in college, he also initially majored in architecture as an undergraduate freshman at Stony Brook University before switching to psychology. His intro ductory-level design classes helped

him develop an eye for compel ling compositions, but he credits group photography outings around Chicago with truly elevating his skills — and an approach that soon became defined by cityscapes at sunrise or sunset.

“We’d be in the same place, shooting the exact same thing at the exact same time. But then we would post photos that looked very different,” he says. “There was a very healthy, almost competitive element. That pushed me to grow but also opened me to different per spectives, different ways of work ing with light — things like that.”

MOUNTAIN MOTIVATION

Poggioli continued to pursue photography in Cincinnati while earning his doctorate in clinical psychology from Xavier University. And in July 2019, he relocated to Asheville for a yearlong predoctor al internship at the Charles George VA Medical Center. The move marked his first encounter with the area.

“It was this discovery process,” he says. “I challenged myself to try something completely new and take my same style and how I like to bring out certain colors in my photos, and the Blue Ridge Parkway was kind of a playground for that.”

As his internship wound down, Poggioli wasn’t sure where he would be placed for his postdoctor al fellowship. Figuring he wouldn’t be in Asheville the following year, he made a point to spend at least one morning each weekend on the parkway, shooting sunrises while he still could. Though he didn’t get paired with the Charles George VA for the fellowship, he landed in Roanoke, Va., at the Salem VA Medical Center, which allowed him to continue documenting the region.

“Photography-wise, it was anoth er really nice way to see a different area of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the parkway,” he says.

COMPLETING THE PUZZLE

Setting his professional sights on Asheville, Poggioli’s wish came true when he joined The Pisgah Institute in 2021 after completing his year in Roanoke. All the while, he continued to photograph and share his images of the Blue Ridge Mountains online.

Though he had no intentions of publishing his work as a collection, his shots soon caught the attention of Trope Publishing Co.

“They basically said, ‘Mike, not sure if you’re going to continue with all this Blue Ridge photogra phy, but if you do, keep us posted,’” he recalls. “So, I kept taking those pictures, and then they said, ‘I think we might have a book here. Could you share some of your favorites?’”

By then, Poggioli had spring, summer and fall imagery. The Trope team suggested adding win ter shots to round out all four sea sons. Poggioli agreed but quickly discovered challenges capturing the mountains’ colder months.

“I had this dinky 2005 Toyota Corolla, and it basically was out of commission in the winter and at

OH, SNAP: Local photographer Mike Poggiolli’s debut photography collec tion, Blue Ride Dreaming, comes out Tuesday, Nov. 29. Author photo courtesy of Poggiolli

Mike Poggioli’s photography book captures the Blue Ridge at sunrise

ALL IN ONE: “This shot captures so much of what I love about the area,” says Mike Poggioli. “Snow-covered pine trees, the colors of red vegetation in the foreground and blue mountain layers in the background, and beautiful vistas from the higher elevation.” Photo by Poggioli

higher elevations because of snow and ice,” he says. “For a while, I’d seen people going up to Roan Mountain and getting these winter wonderland scenes. And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh — I need to get up there, but I don’t trust my car.’”

Monitoring weather forecasts, Poggioli (and his car) braved the

parkway a few days after a win ter storm. By then the roads were clear enough to safely travel, land ing him the final shots for Blue Ridge Dreaming

POET LANDSCAPES

The book’s final version features over 70 photos, whittled down from over 120 options. Poggioli hopes that the variety of cloud inversions he captured as fog rolled through the ancient mountains resonate with readers. Along with his pho tography, poetry by notable writ ers — including Rachel Carson , Hamlin Garland and Regina McIntosh — round out the clothbound coffee table book.

“I think combining poetry with images is one of the most powerful ways to get messages across. And it’s all writing about the beauty of the mountains and going into nature,” Poggioli says.

Mindfulness, he continues, also factors largely into his overall goal for the project. He hopes the work inspires readers to get out and immerse themselves in nature — something the photographer con tinues to do.

CONNECTED: During a fall hike near Catawba Falls, Mike Poggio li captured early morning sunlight cutting through the water streams and autumn leaves. “This was one of those mornings I felt exceptionally connected to the beauty of nature,” he says. Photo by Poggioli

“I just went to the Chimneys in Linville Gorge and felt a sense of regret. Like, ‘Why didn’t I get here sooner to put them in the book?’” he says. “But then I thought to myself, ‘Don’t be silly. The Chimneys aren’t going anywhere. You can just enjoy them for their beauty.’”

To learn more, visit avl.mx/c66. X

by Edwin Arnaudin | earnaudin@mountainx.com

Insiders assess the local art scene

THEATER DANCE

Chelsey Lee Gaddy is the senior artistic director at Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre. She also serves as the director of the Mars Hill University musical theater pro gram and has performed in produc tions at SART, Asheville Community Theatre and on other area stages.

Xpress: Is there an upcoming the ater production in Asheville that you’re looking forward to seeing?

Gaddy: There are many holiday shows to check out in Western North Carolina. I’ll be working on a new Christmas musical [ A Southern Appalachian Christmas] opening at Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre, so I’ll miss out on seeing A Christmas Story at Haywood Arts Regional Theatre. Director Erin McCarson might just be the most unsung artist in our area. I’m hoping folks have time to check out both HART’s and SART’s holiday shows, as both theaters are about a half-hour away from Asheville and definitely worth the drive.

Outside of theater, is there an upcoming local arts happening that you’re looking forward to?

The Asheville Plays entertain ment group is presenting the Winter Wonder Walk over at the Adventure Center of Asheville [Dec. 9-11 and 15-18]. They just completed their Haunted Trail event, and my son [Cyrus] and I had the best time expe riencing some lightly spooky fall fun. This year, they sponsored a senso ry-friendly night with Camp Lakey Gap, a local nonprofit that specializes in programs for autistic folks, like my sweet son. We usually need special accommodations to make events like

this a successful adventure for our family, and they did such a wonder ful job.

What current project are you working on that you’re especially excited about?

We just announced SART’s 49th season, and I’m especially excited about my friend Amanda Ladd’s one-woman show, The Azure Sky in Oz. This play by William Leavengood really speaks to my heart. As a moth er of an exceptional child, who is also an artist, I have an interesting balancing act in life that most don’t fully understand. It’s very important to shed some light on the lives of caregivers and educators. This play does exactly that. X

Melvin AC Howell is the owner of Heart & Soul Dance Co. In addi tion to his choreography, perfor mance and educational work, he’s also an actor and playwright.

Xpress : Is there an upcoming dance performance in Asheville that you’re looking forward to seeing?

Howell: Throughout these final months of 2022, there isn’t too much going on in the realm of dance, out side of the traditional Nutcracker performances and maybe a few pop-up shows and performances.

However, moving into the year 2023, there are many great shows and productions planned — and some from my favorite dancing and performance groups here in Asheville, Stewart/Owen Dance. Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen are beautiful dancers and creators who are sure to move everyone who witnesses their work. They’ll present their mainstage series next year on April 21-22 at the Wortham Center for Performing Arts, and I’m thrilled about it.

Outside of dance, is there an upcoming local arts happening that you’re looking forward to?

There are a plethora of plays directed by Stephanie Hickling Beckman of Different Strokes Performing Arts Collective that I’m really stoked about seeing. The plays she directs and presents always include a meaningful mes sage — that’s the important aspect that makes these plays art. All of these plays present their audiences with important questions and con versations to generate a movement

that vibrates throughout every member of every community that gets to witness them. They always bring awareness, cause reflection and encourage transformation. These are presentations you do not want to miss.

What current project are you working on that you’re especially excited about?

I am currently in the process of working on writing and creating a play in partnership with Different Strokes. It will be presented next year, and I’m superenergized about it. I can’t give many details right now, but I can say it’s one for the books. X

Photo by Teresa Buckner

Photo by RBY Creations

Joshua Overbay is an Ashevillebased filmmaker and the program director of the film and television pro duction program at Western Carolina University. His work includes the 2018 feature-length drama Luke & Jo.

Xpress: Is there an upcoming film event happening in Asheville that you’re looking forward to seeing?

Overbay: The Controlled Chaos Film Festival happens near the end of every April inside the stunning Bardo Arts Center on Western Carolina University’s campus. This festival fea tures the best work from the film and television students at WCU. I’m a bit biased, as I teach there, but over the past six years, the quality of filmmak ing has continued to improve. And I can confidently say that if you can attend, you’ll be surprised by how engaging, entertaining and empathetic the films are.

Outside of film, is there an upcoming local arts happening that you’re looking forward to?

Probably the Winter Lights at the North Carolina Arboretum. It’s always beautiful and a perfect way to kick off the holiday season with family and friends. We went last year and were blown away by the light artists’ imag inativeness and the coherence of the overall aesthetic. It was very immer sive. Plus, the food and beverages were excellent.

What current project are you working on that you’re especially excited about?

My feature film, The Revelation, is my life’s passion project. My friend Nate Glass and I conceived the idea while

Photo by Kristen Glass

our film As It Is in Heaven was playing at LA’s Downtown Independent. As we shared stories over hookah, we realized we had eerily similar upbring ings, marked by religious trauma, a long-standing fear of hell and mothers who betrayed us in the name of God.

Vulnerability can often lead to creativity, and over four hours, we mapped out a terrifying cautionary tale about the horrors of religious funda mentalism. And while it’s taken longer to finance than expected, the script has benefited from the extra time, becom ing more poignant, politically relevant and, hopefully, insightful. We hope to film it in the middle of 2023. X

Rachel Weisberg is an Ashevillebased fashion designer whose col orful clothing, jewelry and acces sories promote ethical production and sustainability.

Xpress : Is there an upcom ing fashion event happening in Asheville that you’re looking for ward to seeing?

Weisberg: I’m a big fan of The Booth Fairy Project. Elle Erickson hosts huge, ridiculous vintage popups with amazing vintage clothing and accessories. She does these pop-ups multiple times through out the year, and it’s a weekend guaranteed to be filled with all the fashion fun you can imagine.

Outside of fashion, is there an upcoming local arts happening that you’re looking forward to?

I love all the holiday markets — I find them incredibly inspiring. Asheville has such a range of tal ented makers and unexpected art. What current project are you working on that you’re especially excited about?

and sizes. I’m also developing a collection for Embellish Asheville of hand-dyed long scarves. X

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What’s new in food

Vinnie’s Neighborhood Italian rolls out new lunch food truck

For years, Eric Scheffer, owner of Vinnie’s Neighborhood Italian, says regulars have asked him about expand ing the restaurant’s hours to include lunch. Now, in collaboration with sister company Cielo Catering’s food truck, fans will have the opportunity.

Vinnie’s lunch, which launched Nov. 21, operates Mondays and Tuesdays, 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m., in the parking lot of the restaurant’s origi nal 641 Merrimon Ave. location. The menu, notes Scheffer, will offer both staples from Vinnie’s regular menu (fried calamari, mozzarella marinara and Greek salad, among others) and new spins on classic Italian favorites.

“All of my recipes come from generations past and my experience working in small Italian joints as a teenager,” says Scheffer, originally from Brooklyn. “The food truck will deliver some of the existing foods we serve but will also allow us the oppor tunity to deliver new flavors and new approaches to our existing concepts.”

Recipes usually served as large plates with pasta, such as chicken parmesan or Italian sausage, peppers and onions, are now transformed into hot heroes with portability in mind. “That’s the beauty of a food truck: you can be flexible and creative and offer a multitude of cuisines,” says Scheffer.

Cold sandwiches like Fat Pete’s (capicola, ham, mortadella and genoa salami piled high with vegetables and cheese) and the Tony “No Neck” (fresh mozzarella, beef steak tomatoes, arugula, olive oil and fresh basil) round out the classic Italian menu.

“We are very lucky to have such a strong and loyal following in Asheville. We are always enthusiastic and grateful when we have the opportunity to deliv er new experiences that create new fans and welcome them as members of our restaurant family,” says Scheffer. Visit avl.mx/aeg for addition al information.

Open wide

Asheville has a new contest of con sumption for all you glory-seeking gluttons: the PIE.ZAA 28 Inches In Your Mouth Challenge. Sounds pretty self-explanatory, right?

“Since we first opened, I have been wanting to do an eating challenge because of the size of our pizza,” says PIE.ZAA founder and owner Tyler Kotch. “We hope to get people from all over the world to attempt our challenge.”

The rules are simple: Individuals have 28 minutes to woof down an entire 28-inch cheese pizza. The massive pie, normally costing $44, will cost nothing to those who complete the challenge. Additionally, those who reign supreme will be entered into the PIE.ZAA Hall of Fame. But be warned: No mere mortal has yet to pass the tasty test.

“No one has successfully completed the challenge yet,” says Kotch. “We had two employees try the challenge, and while they came close, they did not fin ish. We wish the best of luck to everyone who attempts this challenge, and we look forward to getting more massive, delicious pizza into people’s mouths.”

PIE.ZAA is at 46 Millard Ave. Follow the pizza shop on social media and visit avl.mx/c65 for additional information.

Gladheart, full stomach

Winter may be drawing nearer as the days get shorter, but the Gladheart Farm Fest Market continues to pack as much food, music and activity as you can handle before sundown every Sunday from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. through Dec. 11.

Held on an organic community farm, this market is revered for its eclectic mix of local purveyors offering homegrown organic produce, freshly made heritage grain bread, crafted jewelry and more.

In addition to the many provisions available to take home, Gladheart Farm features a number of tasty treats to enjoy while perusing, including wood-fired spelt pizzas and other seasonal goods.

Gladheart also recently introduced tours, hayrides and guided visits to the farm’s goat barn for those looking to experience all of what the farm has to offer.

Gladheart Farm is at 9 Lora Lane. Visit avl.mx/c68 for additional infor mation, including how to become a future vendor.

Coffee for a cause

Since Counter Culture Coffee’s founding in 1995, the company has maintained a tradition of dropping everything, if only just for a moment,

LUNCH AT LAST: Vinnie’s Neighborhood Italian and sister company Cielo Catering have debuted a joint food truck serving fresh Italian lunches. Photo courtesy of The Scheffer Group

to enjoy a cup of coffee together and deepen interpersonal connections. Over time, what once was known as Friday Morning Cuppings evolved into a new tradition named Shift Drink.

Launched in 2022 as an answer to the distance dictated by the pan demic, Shift Drink makes space for both curiosity and generosity through monthly pay-what-you-want pop-ups aiming to raise awareness and funds for nonprofit organizations.

The latest Shift Drink happens to fall on Giving Tuesday, Nov. 29. From 11 a.m.-2 p.m., a portion of all Counter Culture proceeds will go toward The WOW Center: an adult day training center supporting over 200 adults with developmental dis abilities ranging in age from 21-83.

Counter Culture Coffee is in the Center for Craft building on the second floor at 67 Broadway. Attendance is free, but registration is recommended. Visit avl.mx/c67 to reserve your spot.

’Tis the season

What signifies the arrival of the holiday season to you? Is it the cool ing temperature? Trees stripped bare of their festive foliage? The looming arrival of in-laws and second cous ins at the dinner table? For some in Asheville, the Omni Grove Park Inn’s annual Gingerbread House Competition marks the true begin ning of end-of-year revelry.

Each year, dozens of artists from around the country debut their confec tionary creations for a shot at cash priz es and national recognition. Beginning Monday, Nov. 28, through Monday, Jan. 2, all entries will be on display for hotel guests and residents alike.

Those not staying at the inn are invited to view the display after 6 p.m. Sundays and anytime Monday through Thursday. Fridays and Saturdays are reserved for resort guests only.

If you’re unable to make it to the display in person, the top 12 finalists

of the competition will be revealed, one by one, on the hotel’s Facebook and Instagram pages through “The 12 Days of Gingerbread” from Dec. 1-12.

The Omni Grove Park Inn is at 290 Macon Ave. Self-parking at the inn is available for $25 and valet for day guests is $35; a portion of parking pro ceeds will benefit local nonprofits. Visit avl.mx/a8y for additional information.

Local chef goes big

Local chef J Chong, formerly a sous chef at Cúrate and most recently known for her Cantonese cuisine popups and presence at tailgate markets, is one of 10 chefs competing on the HBO Max cooking show “The Big Brunch.”

Each chef was selected by host and executive producer Dan Levy (known for his role on “Schitt’s Creek”) for their creativity in the kitchen and commitment to community service.

At the end of the eight-episode series, one chef will go home with a grand prize of $300,000.

All episodes of “The Big Brunch” are currently streaming on HBO Max. Follow J Chong on Instagram at avl.mx/c6e.

A dream come true

Orale’s Bar & Grill, a new Mexican restaurant from owners Salvador and Teresa Garcia, is tentatively set to open in early December.

After Happy Cinco De Mayo closed in late October, the Garcias saw an opportunity to make a lifelong dream a reality by purchasing the vacant restaurant and making it their own.

“It has always been a dream of my dad’s to have his own restaurant,” says Bryan Garcia, son of Salvador and Teresa, who will serve as the restaurant’s general manager. “My whole family has always worked in restaurants, so the restaurant life has always been part of our life.”

Bryan says Orale’s menu will be composed of authentic Mexican dishes and California-style Mexican cuisine. A large dining area with tables and booths will accommodate a family-friendly atmosphere on one side of the restau rant; on the other side, a large bar with flat-screen TVs will be available for those looking to catch a game while sipping a margarita or cerveza.

Orale’s Bar & Grill is at 800 Fairview Road #5C. Stay tuned for updates on an official website and social media presence.

Made in the South Awards

Garden & Gun and partner Explore Asheville recently announced the win ners of the magazine’s 13th annual Made in the South Awards at a special ceremony and celebratory dinner held in Asheville.

“We are honored for Asheville to be home to the Made in the South Awards this year and applaud the passion and talent in all participants,” says Vic Isley, president and CEO of Explore Asheville, in a press release. “As a des tination nurtured by nature, Asheville’s creative spirit is deeply rooted and ever

evolving. From crafted art to craft beer and a thriving culinary scene, we never stop creating who we are.”

These awards celebrate Southernmade products across six distinct cat egories: home, food, drink, crafts, style and outdoors. Over 800 total entries across all categories were received. Biscuit Head took home top honors in the food category for its buttermilk biscuit mix. The local restaurant’s cathead biscuit mix topped 60 sub missions. Another Asheville business, Poppy Handcrafted Popcorn, was named runner-up in the same catego ry for its chai masala popcorn collabo ration with Spicewalla.

“Yet again the winners of the Made in the South Awards proved that tal ent, creativity and passion are alive and well in the region,” says David DiBenedetto, Garden & Gun senior vice president and editor-in-chief, in the same press release. “And there’s no better place to celebrate those admirable qualities than the great city of Asheville.”

Read about Made in the South Awards recipients in Garden & Gun’s December 2022/January 2023 issue, on newsstands now. Visit avl.mx/c6k for additional information.

— Blake Becker X

Like her parents before her, Lauren Rogers Hopkins grew up watching “A Charlie Brown Christmas” each holiday season. Now, her 6-year-old son has likewise developed a love for the animated classic.

“It’s a great show for all gener ations,” says Hopkins, education programs manager for the Flat Rock Playhouse. “It brings together every one in the family, from little kids to big kids to adults.”

The Flat Rock Playhouse will pres ent a live production of A Charlie Brown Christmas on the main stage from Thursday, Dec. 1-Sunday, Dec. 4. The shows will be produced by the playhouse’s Studio 52, which offers year-round classes and camps in the ater and musical theater.

The actors in the production range in ages from 10-19 and come from all across Western North Carolina. Most have participated in Studio 52 classes and performed in previous family productions at the playhouse.

The show stars Cyrus Hardin as Charlie Brown, Cassidy Bowen as Snoopy, Caroline Frampton as Lucy and Zach Shaduk as Linus.

The production is directed and cho reographed by Anna Kimmell with musical direction by Lenora Thom.

The stage adaptation will run about 55 minutes and include some song-and-dance numbers that were not in the TV special, which first aired in 1965. It also will feature the show’s classic Vince Guaraldi songs, including “Christmas Time Is Here” and “Linus and Lucy.”

The production marks the first time a Studio 52 show has been on the playhouse’s main stage since COVID hit in 2020.

“Our students and families stuck with us during the pandemic,” Hopkins says. “Through virtual classes, outdoor programs, and eventually our regu larly scheduled in-person classes and camps, we worked to keep theatrical experiences accessible to young people when they most needed meaningful connection and a creative outlet.”

The shows will be Thursday, Dec. 1, and Friday, Dec. 2, at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 3, at 2 and 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, Dec. 4, at 2 p.m. Tickets range from $20-$33. Student prices as low as $10 are available for ages 18 and younger.

The Flat Rock Playhouse is at 2661 Greenville Hwy., Flat Rock. For more information, go to avl.mx/c6b.

Fair and square

Many of the people who visit down town Asheville and Pack Square are tourists who have little understand ing of the housing crisis the city faces, says Liz Trader Williams. With that mind, she and two fellow artists cre ated a project they hope will shine a light on skyrocketing housing prices, gentrification and homelessness.

“Homesick” is a multimedia sculp ture designed and created by Williams, Leslie Rosenberg and Ethan Schultz for the city of Asheville’s Art in the Heart rotating public art exhibition. It is on display in Pack Square through Wednesday, Nov. 30.

“Our aim is to tell the stories of community members whose voices have been erased from the narrative of Asheville — those forced out of their homes and forced out of the city they call home,” she explains. “We envision a Pack Square in the future where everyone is welcome and can afford to enjoy this beautiful area no matter their income.”

The sculpture is made up of 12 large, floating house structures. The houses are tightly composed and staggered in height reaching upward of 15 feet with panels of canvas attached to the outside of the houses.

Nearby chalkboards invite view ers to answer the questions: “What defines home?” and “What memories does home conjure?”

On Saturdays from 7:30-9:30 p.m., the houses light up with dynamic video projections playing in unison with audio samples of testimonials from Asheville residents discussing their housing experiences. The pro jections run on a 40-minute loop.

“We wanted to give people from all areas of life a chance to speak for themselves, instead of assuming we understand their experience,” Williams says.

For more information, go to avl.mx/c6g.

A friend indeed

When Asheville bluegrass band Supper Break broke up a few months ago, guitarist/songwriter Andrew Wakefield was left with an unreleased recording of a song he wrote, “My Friend.” So, he decided to release the recording as solo single, complete with an animated music video.

“I’d been wanting to get the song out for quite a while as people always enjoyed it live, and some of my friends and musical peers consider it their favorite composition of mine,” he explains.

CHRISTMASTIME IS HERE: The Flat Rock Playhouse’s production of A Char lie Brown Christmas will feature actors ranging in ages from 10-19. Photo courtesy of the Flat Rock Playhouse.

The song is about a person who finds some success, chooses greed over friendships, starts stealing from people and ultimately is exiled from peers as a result. Wakefield labels it “indie-grass.”

“The current phase of songwriting style I’m doing doesn’t quite fit the blue grass category, according to most grass aficionados,” he says. “I debated calling it ‘jamgrass,’ as I do have some songs that fit into that category, and there is certainly a psychedelic aspect to it.”

The song was recorded earlier this year at Sprouse House Studios in Weaverville with Nick Dauphinais at the production helm. In addition to Wakefield on guitar and locals, the musicians were Cam Williams on bass, Jeremy Rilko on banjo, Adam Bachman on dobro, Zach Dyke on mandolin and James Schlender on fiddle.

Wakefield is working with Dauphinais on an album he hopes will be out early next year.

For the “My Friend” video, Wakefield turned to freelance motion designer Daniele Arcuri. “The ani mation was all just his strange and beautiful expression of what the song made him feel,” Wakefield says.

To stream the song, visit avl.mx/c6c. To see the video, go to avl.mx/c6d.

The wonder of it all

Place and Wonder, an exhibition featuring the works of five artists, will run through Saturday, Jan. 8, at Tyger Tyger Gallery in the River Arts District.

The works in the show “explore the things we know and cannot entirely know about a place — real, imagined or remembered — accessing humor, amazement, mood and narrative to poetic representations of landscape and direct observation,” according to a press release from the gallery.

The featured artists are Barbara Friedman of New York, Barry Hazard of Brooklyn and local artists David Skinner, Selene Plum and Melanie Norris

Tyger Tyger is at 191 Lyman St., No. 144. The gallery is open TuesdaysSaturdays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., and Sundays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. For more information, visit avl.mx/c6i.

Snow is glistening

The Adventure Center of Asheville will host the second annual Winter Wonder Walk, which takes guests on a quest through the kingdom of Winterland to find Jack Frost and stop a blizzard while meeting various characters along the way.

The event runs Friday-Sunday, Dec. 9-11, and Thursday-Sunday, Dec.

15-18, and features a holiday market, a kids play area and a festival tent with local vendors, food and activities.

Part of the proceeds from tick et sales will go to support MANNA FoodBank. Tickets are $18.

Doors open at 5:30 p.m. daily, with the Winter Wonder Walk and Glow Trail starting at 6 pm. The last entrance to the Winter Wonder Walk will be at 8:30 p.m.

For more information or to buy tickets, go to avl.mx/c6h.

The bridges of Henderson County

Eight Henderson County students had their artwork chosen by a panel of judges to adorn piers of eight bridges that cross Interstate 26 in Henderson County.

N.C. Department of Transportation officials awarded plaques to Sofia Fernandez Rojas , Berit Raines , Sophie Thomas , Alexis Donald , Ryan Bartlett, Viesna Mao, Sophia Beck and Ashlyn Webb

The art will complement other features of the bridges upon com pletion of the interstate widening project. Images will be 3-feet-by-3feet emblems on each of the recently built bridges, which carry an average of more than 60,000 vehicles per day.

— Justin McGuire X

MOVIE REVIEWS

Local reviewers’ critiques of new films include:

THE MENU: Ralph Fiennes is at his subtly sadistic best in this darkly funny thriller, playing a celebrity chef who invites a group of privileged guests to dine at his exclusive island restaurant. Grade: A-minus

— Edwin Arnaudin

SHE SAID: The fact-based tale of the female New York Times reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse story deserves a more ambitious telling than this safe, boilerplate chronicle. Grade: B-minus

— Edwin Arnaudin

Hispanic Grocery • Taqueria Butchery • Bakery

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

CLUBLAND

For questions about free listings, call 828-251-1333, opt. 4.

WEDNESDAY,

NOVEMBER 23

ALLEYCATAVL

Karaoke Nights, 8pm

ASHEVILLE BEAUTY ACADEMY

Beauty Parlor Comedy: Will Foskey, 7pm

ASHEVILLE MUSIC HALL

Disclaimer Stand-Up Lounge Comedy Open Mic, 8pm

BLACK MOUNTAIN BREWING Jay Brown (roots), 6pm

BLUE GHOST BREWING CO. Rooster (Americana), 4pm

BOLD ROCK ASHEVILLE Survey Says, 7pm

BOLD ROCK MILLS RIVER Trivia Night, 6pm GRATEFUL ORGANIC DINER Open Mic, 6pm

HI-WIRE BREWING RAD BEER GARDEN Game Night, 6pm HIGHLAND BREWING CO.

Well-Crafted Wednesdays w/Matt Smith (Americana, singer-songwriter), 6pm

MILLS RIVER BREWING Kayla Mckinney (country), 7pm

OKLAWAHA BREWING CO. Nick Mac & The Noise (blues rock), 7pm

OLE SHAKEY'S Sexy Tunes w/DJ Ek Balam & DJ Franco Niño, 10pm

ONE WORLD BREWING WEST Latin Night Wednes days w/DJ Mtn Vibez, 8pm

RIVERSIDE RHAPSODY BEER CO. Open Acoustic Jam, 5:30pm

SILVERADOS

Wednesday Night Open Jam hosted by Hamza Vandehey, 6pm

SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN BREWERY Jazz Night w/Jason DeCristofaro, 6pm SOVEREIGN KAVA Poetry Open Mic w/ Host Caleb Beissert, 8pm

SWEETEN CREEK BREWING Witty Wednesday Trivia, 6:30pm

THE BARRELHOUSE Open Mic Hosted by Kid Billy, 8pm

THE FOUNDRY HOTEL Andrew Finn Magill (acoustic), 7pm

THE GREY EAGLE Asheville All-Stars: The Last Waltz Anniversary, 8pm

THE SOCIAL Wednesday Night Karaoke w/LYRIC, 9pm TOWN PUMP Buffalo Kings (blues country, soul, rock), 6pm

TWIN LEAF BREWERY Wednesday Open Mic, 5:30pm

WHITE HORSE BLACK MOUNTAIN Traditional Irish Music Session, 7pm

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER

24

DOUBLE CROWN Gospel Night w/The Highway QCs, 9pm

GIGI'S

UNDERGROUND

Mr Jimmy (blues), 10pm

JACK OF THE WOOD PUB

Bluegrass Jam w/Drew Matulich & Friends, 7pm

RENDEZVOUS Albi (vintage jazz), 6pm

THE BARRELHOUSE Trivia w/Po' Folk, 8pm

THE FOUNDRY HOTEL

The Foundry Collective ft Pimps of Pompe (jazz, acoustic), 7pm

THE GETAWAY RIVER

BAR Rum Punchlines Come dy Open Mic, 6pm

FRIDAY,

NOVEMBER 25

185 KING STREET

Umpteenth Annual Mike & Mike Home town Holiday Jam ft Steve McMurry, Travis Book & Jeff Sipe, 4pm

ALLEY CAT SOCIAL CLUB

Latin Nite Salsa Dancing, 9pm

ASHEVILLE MUSIC HALL

The Throwback w/DJ Deacon (90s), 9pm

BLUE GHOST BREWING CO. Ashley Heath (country, blues), 6pm

BOLD ROCK ASHEVILLE Black Friday Karaoke, 8pm

BOLD ROCK MILLS RIVER

Gin Mill Pickers (Amer icana, Piedmont blues, ragtime), 2pm

CORK & KEG

The Heavenly Vipers (honky tonk, jazz, rockn-roll), 7pm

DIFFERENT WRLD

THE BLVCK OUT w/ DJ Audio, Gene got da Juice, & Ohhnohoney (hip hop, twerk, Afrobe at, Latin), 10pm

FROG LEVEL BREWERY

Nick Mac & the Noise (country rock), 6pm

GIGI'S

UNDERGROUND

AVL Underground

Comedy: Paul Hooper, 7:30pm

HIGHLAND BREWING CO.

• The Get Down Junkies (funk), 1pm

• Auragami (eclectic rock/jam band), 6pm

A GRAND FUNK RAILROAD: Asheville-based freestyle band Granola Funk Express, also known as GFE, will perform at Sal vage Station’s indoor stage on Saturday, Nov. 26, at 8 p.m. The band, which is celebrating 25 years together, will have support from bands RBTS WIN and Super Bassic. Photo courtesy of GFE

HIGHLAND

DOWNTOWN TAPROOM

Life Like Water (con temporary folk), 2pm

MAD CO. BREW

HOUSE

Greg Speas (tradition al), 6:30pm

OKLAWAHA BREWING CO. Raditude (rock), 7pm

ONE STOP AT ASHEVILLE MUSIC

HALL JLAD (Doors tribute), 5pm

ONE WORLD BREWING WEST

• Afro Latin Flamenco, 5pm

• Josh Clark's Visible Spectrum (soul, funk, rock), 8pm

SOVEREIGN KAVA

Nige Hood and Kata Lite (hip-hop), 8pm

THE GREY EAGLE

David Wilcox's Annual Thanksgiving Homecoming Concert (singer-songwriter), 7pm

THE ODD

Perversions: Black (and Blue) Edition, 8pm

THE ORANGE PEEL

Jeremy's Ten: A Pearl Jam Tribute, 9pm

TOWN PUMP Motel Pearl (rockabilly, indie), 9pm

WXYZ BAR AT ALOFT

Susie Copeland (rock, pop, blues), 7pm

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26

185 KING STREET

Andrew Thelston Band presents a Fleetwood Mac Tribute, 8pm

305 LOUNGE & EATERY

Old Men of the Woods (folk, pop), 1pm

ALLEYCATAVL Karaoke Nights, 8pm

ASHEVILLE BEAUTY ACADEMY

Beauty Parlor Comedy: Reena Calm, 7pm

ASHEVILLE CLUB Mr Jimmy (blues), 8pm

ASHEVILLE GUITAR

BAR MGB (covers, sing er-songwriter), 7:30pm

ASHEVILLE MUSIC HALL

Somatoast w/Push/Pull, Cuddlefish, & Oragami (edm), 9pm

BATTERY PARK BOOK

EXCHANGE

Dinah's Daydream (Gypsy jazz), 5:30pm

BIG PILLOW BREWING

Andrew Wakefield (folk, rock, bluegrass), 5:30pm

BLACK MOUNTAIN BREWING

Ryan Furstenburg (acoustic roots), 6pm

BOLD ROCK ASHEVILLE

• Bluegrass Brunch, 10am

• Melissa McKinney (blues, soul), 8pm

BOLD ROCK MILLS RIVER

80's Themed Laser Light Show w/Gossip Party Band, 5pm

CONTINUUM

Monthly Blues and Fusion Dance, 6:15pm CORK & KEG Zydeco Ya Ya (Cajun), 8pm

FROG LEVEL BREWERY

Aunt Vicki (acoustic/ electric folk duo), 6pm

GUIDON BREWING Two Step Too (Ameri can acoustic), 6pm

HIGHLAND BREWING CO. Funk'N Around (funk), 6pm

HIGHLAND DOWNTOWN

TAPROOM

East Coast Dirt (rock), 7pm

HOMEPLACE BEER CO.

Old Sap (folk, Ameri cana, folk rock), 6:30pm

ISIS MUSIC HALL & KITCHEN 743

• Bob Sinclair and the Big Deals (Americana, swing, classical), 7pm

• The Clam Chowder

Experience (vintage jazz), 8:30pm

JACK OF THE WOOD PUB

Nobody’s Darling String Band, 4pm

MILLS RIVER

BREWING

• Izzy Hughes (eclectic), 2pm

• The Grass Cats (bluegrass), 7pm

OKLAWAHA BREWING CO. Pink Beds (indie rock), 8pm

ONE WORLD BREWING

Christina Chandler (folk, soul, Americana), 8pm

ONE WORLD BREWING WEST

• Pink Mercury (all improvised emo pop/ rock), 4pm

• Different Light (rock), 8pm

RIVERSIDE

RHAPSODY BEER CO. Rudy's Rhythm Review, 5pm

SALVAGE STATION GFE (hip-hop, funk, rock), 8pm

THE GREY EAGLE

Acoustic Syndicate's Annual Thanksgiving Homecoming (rock, jam), 8pm

THE ROOT BAR

Ashley Heath (country, blues), 8pm

WXYZ BAR AT ALOFT

DJ Molly Parti, 7pm

WHITE HORSE BLACK MOUNTAIN

Mac Arnold & Plate Full o' Blues, 8pm

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27

185 KING STREET

Open Electric Jam w/the King Street House Band ft. Howie Johnson, 5pm

ALLEYCATAVL

Danksgiving w/Acklen Walker & Yawni and Karaoke w/KJ GibbZ, 8pm

ASHEVILLE GUITAR BAR

Mark's House Jam and Beggar's Banquet, 3pm

BLACK MOUNTAIN BREWING

Dark City Kings (outlaw country, rock), 3pm

BOLD ROCK ASHEVILLE Bluegrass Brunch, 10am

BOTANIST & BARREL TASTING BAR + BOTTLE SHOP

Jesse Harman (bluegrass), 2pm

FLEETWOOD'S Live Local Country Music & Dance Night w/Alma Russ, 6pm

HIGHLAND BREWING CO. AKITA (funk), 2pm

HIGHLAND DOWNTOWN TAPROOM

Mr Jimmy Duo (blues), 1pm

ISIS MUSIC HALL & KITCHEN 743

Hellcrab: Contem porary Jazz Octet, 7:30pm

JACK OF THE WOOD PUB

• Bluegrass Brunch, noon • Traditional Irish Jam, 4pm

LITTLE JUMBO

Casey Driessen's Sunday Experiment (folk), 7pm

MILLS RIVER BREWING

Jon Cox & Bridget Gossett (outlaw country), 2pm

OKLAWAHA BREWING CO.

Jason Merritt (covers, Irish folk), 4pm

ONE WORLD BREWING WEST

Sunday Jazz Jam Brunch, 1pm

SILVERADOS Karaoke Sunday Nights w/Lyric, 9pm

THE FOUNDRY HOTEL

Daniel Shearin (singer songwriter), 6pm

THE GREY EAGLE WellSpring (sing er-songwriter), 6:30pm

THE ODD

At the Heart of the World, Kangarot, NOIZ SRNZ (metal), 7pm

WHITE HORSE BLACK MOUNTAIN Altamont Jazz Project, 7pm

ZILLICOAH BEER CO. Sunday Bluegrass Jam Series, 4:30pm

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28

27 CLUB Monday Night Karaoke hosted by Ganymede, 9:30pm

GREEN MAN BREWERY Old Time Jam, 5:30pm

HIGHLAND BREWING CO. Totally Rad Trivia, 6pm

JACK OF THE WOOD PUB Quizzo! Pub Trivia w/ Jason Mencer, 7:30pm

LITTLE JUMBO Pavel Wlosok Quintet (jazz), 7pm

NOBLE CIDER DOWNTOWN Freshen Up Comedy Open Mic, 6:30pm

ONE WORLD BREWING WEST Mashup Mondays (funk, soul, jazz), 8pm

SILVERADOS Bluegrass Jam Mondays w/Sam Wharton, 7pm

THE GREY EAGLE C.Shreve the Professor and ILe Flottante w/ Mike Martinez & Houseplantz (hip-hop), 7pm

THE JOINT NEXT DOOR

Mr Jimmy at and Friends (blues), 7pm

THE SOCIAL Line Dance Mondays w/ DJ Razor, 9pm

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29

185 KING STREET

Travis Book & Friends ft Jim Lauderdale, 6:30pm

5 WALNUT WINE BAR

The John Henrys (jazz, swing), 8pm

ASHEVILLE MUSIC

HALL

Tuesday Night Funk Jam, 10:30pm

BOLD ROCK MILLS

RIVER CIDER Bingo, 6pm

BREVARD MUSIC CENTER

Krüger Brothers (blue grass, pops, classical), 7:30pm

HAYWOOD COUNTRY CLUB

Taylor Martin's Open Mic, 6:30pm

LITTLE JUMBO Jay Sanders, Zack Page & Evan Martin (jazz), 7pm

ONE STOP AT

ASHEVILLE MUSIC HALL Early Tuesday Jam (funk), 8pm

ONE WORLD BREWING WEST

Grateful Family Band Tuesdays (JGB, Dead tribute, rock, jam), 6pm

SOVEREIGN KAVA Weekly Open Jam hosted by Chris Cooper & Friends, 8pm

THE GREY EAGLE Nikki Lane (country), 6pm

THE SOCIAL Travers Freeway Open Jam Tuesdays, 7pm

TWIN LEAF BREWERY Tuesday Night Trivia, 7pm

WAGBAR Tuesday Night Trivia with your Dog, 6pm

WHITE HORSE BLACK MOUNTAIN Open Mic Night , 7pm

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 30

ALLEYCATAVL Karaoke Nights, 8pm

ASHEVILLE BEAUTY ACADEMY

Andy Sandford's Atlan ta Comedy Invasion, 7pm

ASHEVILLE MUSIC HALL Disclaimer Stand-Up Lounge Comedy Open Mic, 8pm

BLACK MOUNTAIN BREWING Jay Brown (roots), 6pm

BOLD ROCK ASHEVILLE Survey Says, 7pm

BOLD ROCK MILLS RIVER Trivia Night, 6pm

FLEETWOOD'S North By North, The Smokey Mountain Sirens, The Hi Helens (punk, indie), 8pm

GRATEFUL ORGANIC DINER Open Mic, 6pm

HI-WIRE BREWING

RAD BEER GARDEN Game Night, 6pm

HIGHLAND BREWING CO.

Well-Crafted Wednesdays w/Matt Smith (Americana, singer-songwriter), 6pm

OKLAWAHA BREWING CO.

French Broad Valley Mountain Music Jam Session, 6pm

ONE WORLD BREWING WEST Latin Night Wednes days w/DJ Mtn Vibez, 8pm

RIVERSIDE RHAPSODY BEER CO. Open Acoustic Jam, 5:30pm

SILVERADOS Wednesday Night Open Jam hosted by Hamza Vandehey, 6pm

SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN BREWERY Jazz Night w/Jason DeCristofaro, 6pm

SOVEREIGN KAVA Poetry Open Mic w/ Host Caleb Beissert, 8pm

SWEETEN CREEK BREWING Witty Wednesday Trivia, 6:30pm

THE BARRELHOUSE Open Mic Hosted by Kid Billy, 8pm

THE FOUNDRY HOTEL Andrew Finn Magill (acoustic), 7pm

THE GREY EAGLE Travis Book Happy Hour ft Jim Lauderdale (Americana), 7pm

THE ODD John Kirby Jr. & The New Seniors, Pinkeye, Snakesnakewhale (alt, indie, punk), 7pm

THE SOCIAL Wednesday Night Karaoke w/LYRIC, 9pm

TOWN PUMP Lucky James & the High Rollers (blues), 7pm

TWIN LEAF BREWERY

Wednesday Open Mic, 5:30pm

THURSDAY, DECEMBER

JACK OF THE WOOD PUB

Bluegrass Jam w/Drew Matulich & Friends, 7pm

1

185 KING STREET Congdon & Co. w/ Hope Griffin (covers), 7pm

ASHEVILLE GUITAR BAR

Robert Thomas Band (70s classic rock jazz fusion), 7:30pm

BLUE GHOST BREWING CO. Winter Axe Throwing, 5:30pm

BOLD ROCK ASHEVILLE Trivia Night, 7pm

FRENCH BROAD RIVER BREWERY

Jerry's Dead (Grateful Dead & JGB Tribute), 6pm

GIGI'S UNDERGROUND

Mr Jimmy (blues), 10pm

ISIS MUSIC HALL & KITCHEN 743

Jaco Pastorius Birthday Celebration ft bassist Shannon Hoover (jazz), 7pm

MAD CO. BREW HOUSE

Open Mic Night, 6pm PULP Katie Hughes (comedy), 7pm

RENDEZVOUS Albi (vintage jazz), 6pm

SHAKEDOWN LOUNGE Poetry Open Mic Hendo, 7:30pm

THE BARRELHOUSE Trivia w/Po' Folk, 8pm

THE FOUNDRY HOTEL

The Foundry Collective ft Pimps of Pompe (jazz, acoustic), 7pm

THE GETAWAY RIVER BAR

Rum Punchlines Come dy Open Mic, 6pm

THE GREY EAGLE The Greybirds & Friends (rock, folk, roots), 6pm

THE ODD Flamy Grant, 7pm

THE POE HOUSE Mr Jimmy (blues), 6pm

TWIN LEAF BREWERY Thursday Night Karaoke, 8:30pm

MARKETPLACE FREEWILL ASTROLOGY BY

ARIES (March 21-April 19): One of your callings as an Aries is to take risks. You’re inclined to take more leaps of faith than other people, and you’re also more likely to navigate them to your advantage — or at least not get burned. A key reason for your success is your keen intuition about which gambles are relatively smart and which are ill-advised. But even when your chancy ventures bring you exciting new experiences, they may still run you afoul of conventional wisdom, peer pressure and the way things have always been done. Everything I have described here will be in maximum play for you in the coming weeks.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Your keynote comes from teacher Caroline Myss. She writes, “Becoming adept at the process of self-inquiry and symbolic insight is a vital spiritual task that leads to the growth of faith in oneself.” Encouraging you to grow your faith in yourself will be one of my prime intentions in the next 12 months. Let’s get started! How can you become more adept at self-inquiry and symbolic insight? One idea is to ask yourself a probing new question every Sunday morning, like “What teachings and healings do I most want to attract into my life during the next seven days?” Spend the subsequent week gathering experiences and revelations that will address that query. Another idea is to remember and study your dreams, since doing so is the number one way to develop symbolic insight. For help, I recommend the work of Gayle Delaney: tinyurl.com/InterviewYourDreams

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The TV science fiction show Legends of Tomorrow features a ragtag team of imperfect but effective superheroes. They travel through time trying to fix aberrations in the timelines caused by various villains. As they experiment and improvise, sometimes resorting to wildly daring gambits, their successes outnumber their stumbles and bumbles. And on occasion, even their apparent mistakes lead to good fortune that unfolds in unexpected ways. One member of the team, Nate, observes, “Sometimes we screw up — for the better.” I foresee you Geminis as having a similar modus operandi in the coming weeks.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): I like how Cancerian poet Stephen Dunn begins his poem, “Before We Leave.” He writes, “Just so it’s clear — no whining on the journey.” I am offering this greeting to you and me, my fellow Cancerians, as we launch the next chapter of our story. In the early stages, our efforts may feel like drudgery, and our progress could seem slow. But as long as we don’t complain excessively and don’t blame others for our own limitations, our labors will become easier and quite productive.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Leo poet Kim Addonizio writes a lot about love and sex. In her book Wild Nights, she says, “I’m thinking of dating trees next. We could just stand around all night together. I’d murmur, they’d rustle, the wind would, like, do its wind thing.” Now might be a favorable time for you, too, to experiment with evergreen romance and arborsexuality and trysts with your favorite plants. When was the last time you hugged an oak or kissed an elm? JUST KIDDING! The coming weeks will indeed be an excellent time to try creative innovations in your approach to intimacy and adoration. But I’d rather see your experiments in togetherness unfold with humans.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In her book Daughters of the Stone, Virgo novelist Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa tells the tale of five generations of Afro-Cuban women, her ancestors. “These are the stories of a time lost to flesh and bone,” she writes, “a time that lives only in dreams and memories. Like a primeval wave, these stories have carried me, and deposited me on the morning of today. They are the stories of how I came to be who I am, where I am.” I’d love to see you explore your own history with as much passion and focus, Virgo. In my astrological opinion, it’s

ROB BREZSNY

a favorable time for you to commune with the influences that have made you who you are.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In accordance with astrological omens, here’s my advice for you in the coming weeks: 1. Know what it takes to please everyone, even if you don’t always choose to please everyone. 2. Know how to be what everyone wants you to be and when they need you to be it, even if you only fulfill that wish when it has selfish value for you. 3. DO NOT give others all you have and thereby neglect to keep enough to give yourself. 4. When others are being closedminded, help them develop more expansive finesse by sharing your own reasonable views. 5. Start thinking about how, in 2023, you will grow your roots as big and strong as your branches.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Even if some people are nervous or intimidated around you, they may be drawn to you nonetheless. When that happens, you probably enjoy the power you feel. But I wonder what would happen if you made a conscious effort to cut back just a bit on the daunting vibes you emanate. I’m not saying they’re bad. I understand they serve as a protective measure, and I appreciate the fact that they may help you get the cooperation you want. As an experiment, though, I invite you to be more reassuring and welcoming to those who might be inclined to fear you. See if it alters their behavior in ways you enjoy and benefit from.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z has stellar advice for his fellow Sagittarians to contemplate regularly: “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with the aim; just gotta change the target.” In offering Jay-Z’s advice, I don’t mean to suggest that you always need to change the target you’re aiming at. On many occasions, it’s exactly right. But the act of checking in to evaluate whether it is or isn’t the right target will usually be valuable. And on occasion, you may realize that you should indeed aim at a different target.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You now have extra power to exorcise ghosts and demons that are still lingering from the old days and old ways. You are able to transform the way your history affects you. You have a sixth sense about how to graduate from lessons you have been studying for a long time. In honor of this joyfully tumultuous opportunity, draw inspiration from poet Charles Wright: “Knot by knot I untie myself from the past / And let it rise away from me like a balloon. / What a small thing it becomes. / What a bright tweak at the vanishing point, blue on blue.”

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In accordance with current astrological rhythms, I am handing over your horoscope to essayist Anne Fadiman. She writes, “I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things, but where edges meet. I like shorelines, weather fronts, international borders. There are interesting frictions and incongruities in these places, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one.”

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Over the course of my life, I have been fortunate to work with 13 psychotherapists. They have helped keep my mental health flourishing. One of them regularly reminded me that if I hoped to get what I wanted, I had to know precisely what I wanted. Once a year, she would give me a giant piece of thick paper and felt-tip markers. “Draw your personal vision of paradise,” she instructed me. “Outline the contours of the welcoming paradise that would make your life eminently delightful and worthwhile.” She would also ask me to finish the sentence that begins with these words: “I am mobilizing all the energy and ingenuity and connections I have at my disposal so as to accomplish the following goal.” In my astrological opinion, Pisces, now is a perfect time to do these two exercises yourself.

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EMPLOYMENT DRIVERS/DELIVERY

MOUNTAIN XPRESS

DELIVERY Mountain Xpress is seeking an energetic, reliable, independent contractor for part-time weekly newspaper delivery. The contractor must have a safe driving record, a reliable vehicle with proper insurance and registration, and be able to lift 50 lbs. without strain. Distribution of papers is on Tuesday mornings and afternoons and typically lasts about 3-5 hours per week. Occasional Wednesday morning delivery is is sometimes needed or can be an option. E-mail distro@ mountainx.com

SKILLED LABOR/ TRADES

CITIZEN VINYL - PRESS OPERATOR - 2ND SHIFT $500 sign on bonus (rewarded after a successful 90 days). **$15/hr starting pay, raised to $17/hr after successful completion of press training.** Weekend coverage needed. Send resume to: jobs@ citizenvinyl.com

HUMAN SERVICES

candidates for a Communications Specialist position. This is a full-time position, with excellent benefits. We are looking for an individual that is interested in working with a creative and energetic team at FPCA, including staff and church members. The purpose of the position and primary work of the Specialist is engaging our congregation and community with the image, mission and news of FPCA. A job description is attached. To learn more about our mission, work and activities, please visit www. fpcasheville.org. The position will remain open until filled. Any questions regarding the position should be directed to lthurston@fpcasheville.org

SERVICES

AUDIO/VIDEO

DISH TV SPECIAL $64.99 For 190 Channels + $14.95 High Speed Internet. Free Installation, Smart HD DVR Included, Free Voice Remote. Some restrictions apply. Promo Expires 1/21/23. 1-866-566-1815 (AAN CAN)

BUSINESS

NOTARY PUBLIC PROFESSIONAL - WNC AND NC STATEWIDE Chalk Notary provides professional, prompt and reliable notary services. Document certifications: in person, remote and e-Notary. Fees vary depending on day/time and area. Call 828-551-1197. Email Chery@ chalkNOTARY.com

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TRANSPORTATION

PART TIME DRIVER NEEDED Looking for a ride from Old Lee Walker Heights apartments to Ingles Distribution, Swannanoa. Couple times a week. Mid-afternoon 1.30pm pickup, 10pm evening dropoff. Pay negotiable. Contact Tom on 828-712-3403

ANNOUNCEMENTS

ANNOUNCEMENTS

BATH & SHOWER UPDATES In as little as ONE DAY! Affordable prices - No payments for 18 months!  Lifetime warranty & professional installs. Senior & Military Discounts available. Call: 1-866-370-2939. (AAN CAN)

BATHWRAPS IS LOOKING FOR HOMEOWNERS We update bathtubs with new liners for safe bathing and showering. Specialize in grab bars, non-slip surfaces and shower seats. All updates are completed in one day. Call 866-531-2432. (AAN CAN)

BCI WALK-IN TUBS ARE ON SALE Be one of the first 50 callers and save $1,500! Call 844-514-0123 for a free in-home consultation. (AAN CAN)

DON'T PAY FOR COVERED HOME REPAIRS AGAIN American Residential Warranty covers all major systems and appliances. 30 day risk free$100 off popular plans. Call 855-731-4403. (AAN CAN)

DONATE YOUR VEHICLE TO FUND THE SEARCH FOR MISSING CHILDREN Fast free pickup. 24 hour response. Running or not. Maximum tax deduction and no emission test required! Call 24/7: 999-999-9999 Call 855-504-1540. (AAN CAN)

LONG DISTANCE MOVING Call for a free quote from America’s Most Trusted Interstate Movers. Let us take the stress out of moving! Call to speak to our Quality Relocation Specialists: Call 855-787-4471. (AAN CAN)

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SPECTRUM INTERNET AS LOW AS $29.99! Call to see if you qualify for ACP and free internet. No Credit Check. Call Now! 833-955-0905 (AAN CAN)

WATER DAMAGE TO YOUR HOME? Call for a quote for professional cleanup & maintain the value of your home! Set an appt. today! Call 833-664-1530 (AAN CAN)

YOUR CAREER STARTS HERE WITH MHC! Get paid to do good! Assessment/ Youth Counselors are needed to support at-risk youth in our residential facility in Asheville. We offer paid training and excellent benefits. Apply at bit.ly/MHCCareers 919754-3633 vpenn@mhfc.org mhfc.org/opportunities

COMPUTER/ TECHNICAL

COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST First Presbyterian Church Asheville (FPCA) is a dynamic, progressive church in the heart of downtown Asheville which has many important ministries in the local community. We are currently searching for qualified

TENANT & EMPLOYEE

BACKGROUND CHECKS - $50 Credit, Criminal, and Eviction - King Background Screening has been serving the needs of business owners and the rental industry since 2006. Quick results! Denise Anderson (owner) call/text 941-2844612 KingScreening@ gmail.com See web site for full details and prices. www. kingbackgroundscreening. com

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ACROSS

1 Game pieces in Othello and Connect Four

Provocative … like this answer’s position in the grid? 10 Q: What happens when the ___ clears over Los Angeles? A: UCLA!

Beer brand whose name translates to “morning sun”

Looney Tunes bunny

Cézanne or Gauguin

“You cooked this? It’s disgusting!” said Tom ___

Gumbo, e.g.

One foot in “the grave,” poetically speaking

Festoon

Bugle call at lights out

Support group associated with the Twelve Steps

“What do you mean there are no PlayStations left in stock?” asked Tom ___

“Peace out”

“Well, ___ be!”

Lip

Spot for a sojourn

Charge for tardiness

Grief-stricken state

Scorch on a stovetop

Brewery vessel

Pastry dough used in crullers and beignets

“I’m worried I may have anemia,” said Tom

Had an inclination

Kind of column

Specialty of clerics, druids and paladins, in Dungeons & Dragons

Flat, for short

Assistant

“You guys are supposed to be ‘Wise Men’ and these are the gifts you bring a newborn?!” asked Tom, ___

With 54-Down, back to fighting

Gumbo ingredient

Het (up)

“That’s terrible!”

Hammer’s end

___ of the state

DOWN

Spot for a speech

“Who ___?!” (“That’s true of everyone!”)

Relief pitcher’s success

Target of a canine’s canines, maybe

Ben Kingsley or Ian McKellen, e.g.

“West Texas town” in a classic country song

Gloom’s partner

Formless mass

Common word in pirate-speak