Art comes in many forms and the newest addition to Southwestern Community College’s Oconaluftee Institute of Cultural Arts is actually old. It’s a letterpress that will be used to print books in the Cherokee syllabary.
“We are bringing back the Cherokee history in true art form,” said Luzene Hill, OICA progam outreach coordinator.
Years ago the Eastern Band published a newspaper called Tsa la gi Tsu lehisanunhi, or the Cherokee Phoenix. This first Native American newspaper was printed on a hot-type letterpress in which each word is put together by hand, combining individual metal letters or characters.
Through a $68,846 grant from Cherokee Preservation Foundation and a $47,792 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, OICA will purchase a metal press and develop a print-making studio at its facilities on Bingo Loop Road in Cherokee.
“It opens up a whole new craft of Book Art for us, including print making, hand papermaking and hand bookbinding,” said Hill. “For our students Book Art will blend fine arts with crafts.”
Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary, recognized that conveying ideas in language was powerful so he spent 12 years developing the Cherokee syllabary, completing it in 1821. Each character represents a syllable, instead of one sound, thus the name syllabary. As in the Phoenix newspaper, the power of the Cherokee language rises through the printed word on the page, transforming from thoughts to art, Hill explained.
“You already feel the power of words but capturing them in a book through individual characters you’ve laid out in hot type and on paper you’ve made from linen or hemp fiber really helps you feel them in an art form, too,” said Hill. “To me, binding a book- accordion-style, for instance, is like producing a piece of sculpture.”
“You already feel the power of words but capturing them in a book through individual characters you’ve laid out in hot type and on paper you’ve made from linen or hemp fiber really helps you feel them in an art form, too. To me, binding a book- accordion-style, for instance, is like producing a piece of sculpture.”
As students learn to produce first the paper and then the books, they will also learn skills such as precision, technique, spacing and artistic layout composition, said Hill, who is consulting with noted instructor Frank Brannon. Brannon, who runs his own letterpress studio SpeakEasy Press in Dillsboro, earned his master of fine arts in Book Arts at the University of Alabama and has recently taught Letterpress at the Penland School of Crafts and Papermaking and Printing at the John C. Campbell Folk School.
“One of Frank’s specialties is the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper,” said Hill. “He has explored and published copies from the original hand impressions of type from the Phoenix, found in a 1954 excavation of the New Echota historic site. He hand printed and hand bound the publications for exhibition.”
“The Phoenix was a bi-lingual weekly newspaper printed in parallel columns in Cherokee and English and one of its biggest subscribers was the British Library,” said Brannon, who also teaches at Book Works in Asheville. “Most folks don’t know that the paper was distributed in Europe, too. The first issue was published Feb. 21, 1828, using the 85 character Cherokee syllabary completed by Sequoyah just seven years earlier,” he said.
The first paper that the Phoenix was printed on came from Knoxville by wagon and it took two weeks to arrive, according to Brannon. The last issue was published in 1834, shortly before the Cherokee removal to Indian Territory in Oklahoma.
“Students will learn the Cherokee history right along with the history of the letterpress,” said Hill.
The Cherokee language will also be incorporated into the course since the books can be published in the Cherokee syllabary, she added.
SYLVA–City Lights Bookstore, a retail anchor in downtown Sylva since the early eighties, is changing hands.
Owners Joyce and Allen Moore are selling the store to longtime employee Chris Wilcox, effective January 1.
Moore informed her customers of the change in a letter written on Monday, in which she wrote, in part:
As I begin my 66th year and a new decade, I feel the need to slow and simplify my own life, but I believe that I am leaving the store in capable hands, well suited to dealing with the evolving complexities of the bookselling world.
The Moores bought the store from local author Gary Carden in 1986, and moved it from Main Street to its current location at the corner of Spring St. and East Jackson St. a few years later.
In her letter, Moore also wrote:
Chris and his employees will also be facing many changes. Some are beginning to affect not only the face of the bookselling world, but even the book itself. It will take hard work, a constant acquisition of new information, flexibility and most of all, your continuing support to carry City Lights into the new decade.
Many independent bookstores across the country are closing in these economic hard times, but you have continued to say with your dollars that having a real bookstore in Sylva is important to you. It is essential that you continue that commitment, not only to City Lights, but to all the independent businesses in downtown Sylva.
JEAN: Why do you feel poetry is important for children?
SUSAN MARIE: Poetry is part of our cultural legacy. Like visual art, storytelling, music, dance, theater, and other arts, poetry belongs to everyone. Poetry welcomes and challenges us with its rhythms, sounds, and patterns. Reading poems, we can imagine and explore different ways of thinking, feeling, and experiencing the world. Poetry maps the territory of the human heart.
JEAN: Do you have any tips you can share with those of us who are interested in encouraging our children to explore poetry as an art form?
SUSAN MARIE: Invite young children to tell you things and to play with words. Write stuff down for them, without worrying about whether it is a story or a poem or a report or something else. But be open to the thought that their words could be poems.
REGIONAL–Smoky Mountain Times outdoor writer Jim Casada continues his series of columns on literature of the Smokies with a piece about waterfall books.
An excerpt:
For people who find joy in the incredible beauty and majesty of waterfalls, visiting them is an ideal way to find peace of mind. Some may stand in wonder while listening to their music – perhaps the crashing crescendo of a powerful fall or the cymbal-like tinkling of a tiny one dripping and dropping across a rock face.
Recognizing the enduring appeal and magnetism of waterfalls, writers have produced a number of guidebooks to the ones in the Great Smokies as well as surrounding mountains. Have one (or several) of these available when planning a hike, seeking advice on photography, or seeking new destinations.
REGIONAL–Charlotte Observer Associate Editor Jack Betts posts about the season’s first snow.
A clip:
The snow gave up its ghosts around dusk when it thinned, bucked, coughed and stopped. An hour later the clouds parted and a cold luminescence lit up the landscape, giving these old hills an eerie specter until the wind began to pick up, blowing snow devils around like little white upside-down tornadoes. We threw more locust on the fire and poured a wee dram, and wondered briefly and idly if we might be able to salvage a snowed-in call to the office out of this lovely gift of late fall in the Blue Ridge.
CULLOWHEE – Ron Rash, the Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Culture at Western Carolina University, is recipient of the 2009 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction for his fourth novel, “Serena.”
The award is presented annually by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association in recognition of works of fiction that exhibit “creative and imaginative quality, excellence of style, universality of appeal, and relevance to North Carolina and her people.”
Rash will pick up his award at a February meeting of the association in Greensboro. He also won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award in 2006 – that one for his third novel, “The World Made Straight.”
Published in October 2008, “Serena” tells the story of timber baron George Pemberton and his ruthless wife, Serena, who come to the North Carolina mountains to create a timber empire. The book drew widespread praise from critics across the nation after its release. A New York Times reviewer complimented Rash’s “elegantly fine-tuned voice” and listed the book as one of her 10 favorites of 2008, and “Serena” made the “best of 2008” lists of Publishers Weekly, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle. The book also was No. 7 in online retailer Amazon’s list of the 100 best books of 2008.
A native of Boiling Springs, Rash teaches Appalachian literature and creative writing at WCU. His next book, a compilation of short stories titled “Burning Bright,” will be released in March.
REGIONAL–Kay Byer, of Cullowhee, served as North Carolina’s Poet Laureate from 2005 until 2009.
Here, Brian Brodeur, poet and author of the blog How a Poem Happens, interviews Byer. They talk at some length about Byer’s poem “Precious Little”.
From the poem:
I seethed while my student poets,
all of them women, sat waiting for someone
to challenge his vision of literature,
belligerent canon
where warring tribes battle it out
in their epics and blood-spattered novels.
“Miss Welty,” I countered, “stayed
clear of the battlefield, if you recall.
She sat down every day at the same desk
and made language raise the world up
from the grave of our common amnesia.”
An excerpt from the interview:
Byer: “The fiction writer, made much younger and more successful in the poem, actually said that war was the story, expressing his regret that he had never experienced war first-hand. I countered with Eudora Welty’s never having been to war, yet being one of our greatest American writers. My students were appalled by his attitude, and over the next few weeks, we kept spiraling back to this incident in our discussion. The poem began out of my initial irritation and growing frustration at not having spoken more forcefully and eloquently that day.”
SYLVA–One of the most harrowing crimes committed in western North Carolina during the first half of the 20th century is the alleged murder in 1913 of two-year-old Roberta Putnam by her grandmother, Nancy Kerley, known as Nance Dude. Released from prison after 15 years hard labor, Nance Dude lived out her life rejected by her family. But as she never admitted her guilt or testified in court, her side of the story was never heard. In his acclaimed play, Gary Carden imagines what she might have said, combining folklore, some compelling historical evidence, and a playwright’s storytelling art.The much-performed play is now available as a DVD, featuring a performance by Elizabeth Westall.
Friday, December 4, City Lights Bookstore in Sylva will host a reception and discussion to celebrate the release.
The evening at City Lights will feature copies of the DVD for sale as well as refreshments and conversation with the playwright. The focus of the discussion will be not only on the play but also more generally on the subject of preserving and celebrating the folklore and heritage of the region. Pam Duncan, Rob Neufeld, and Michael Beadle will join in the discussion, as well.
BRYSON CITY–Jim Casada churns out an amazing amount of outdoors writing for the Smoky Mountain Times, and his current series of book reviews is invaluable.
Ken Wise’s “Hiking Trails of the Great Smoky Mountains.”
Russ Manning’s “100 Hikes in the great Smoky Mountains National Park”
“The Best of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park: A Hiker’s Guide to Trails and Attractions” by Russ Manning and Sondra Jamieson
Danny Bernstein’s “Hiking the Carolina Mountains.”
“North Carolina Hiking Trails” by Allen de Hart
Johnny Molloy’s “Trial by Trail: Backpacking in the Smoky Mountains,”
Michal Strutin’s “History Hikes of the Smokies”
Casada’s closing paragraph:
By all means, seek some armchair adventure through works such as those mentioned above, but the ultimate adventure, whatever the season, comes through being on the trail. Whether it’s a leisurely walk up lower Deep Creek – the sort scores of folks make daily – or one of those strenuous 20-plus mile ventures my brother Don enjoys, to be afoot in the park is to tread paths of wonder.
He says “If you follow these rules, you will be purchasing and eating real, whole food most of the time.”
1. Don’t buy anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. Like anything orange that isn’t salmon, a carrot or an orange.
2. Avoid products containing ingredients that can’t be found in an ordinary pantry. Even better, avoid anything that has more than five ingredients. Better still, if you can’t pronounce most of the ingredients, you don’t want to eat them.
3. Don’t buy anything that lists sugar in its first three ingredients. And NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP! Not even a little.
4. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay away from the middle–that’s where most processed food is shelved.
5. If it came from a plant, buy it (and eat a lot of it). If it was made in a plant, pass it by.
6. If it says lite, low-fat, or non-fat on the package, put it down. You’ll be more satisfied if you eat a little bit of the real thing.
7. Avoid food that is pretending to be something that it is not. This includes soy-based mock meats.
8. Food making health claims on the package is not food you want to buy. Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.
9. Avoid food that is advertised on television. And remember, if it is delivered through the window of a car, it is not food.
10. Get out of the supermarket. Look to farmer’s markets for the majority of your food and snacks.
Pollan collected more rules from readers of the New York Times Magazine, which can be read here.
CULLOWHEE–Dorothy Allison, a major literary voice from the South, talks about her work in an audience participation program, 7:30 p.m., November 19, in the UC Theatre at Western Carolina University. Allison’s novel, “Bastard out of Carolina” is the focus of the show, which will be simulcast with interaction on http://www.Citizen-Times.com. The event is free and open to the public.
The program, called a WNC Read-for-All, begins with a twenty-minute author feature and continues with forty minutes of discussion, emceed by Rob Neufeld. (Several WCU students have read Allison’s book in preparation for the event). See the website, “The Read on WNC” for more details and a Reader’s Guide. Representatives from REACH and The Jackson County Community Table will attend the event, and books will be available for signing courtesy of City Lights Books. The event is funded by the Parris Distinguished Professorship in Appalachian Cultural Studies.
The first member of her family to graduate from high school, Allison attended Florida Presbyterian college on a National Merit Scholarship and studied anthropology at the New School for Social Research.
Bastard out of Carolina contains many remarkable features: the story of a girl who forges a positive identity in the teeth of her stepfather’s abuse; the depiction of a poor, Southern extended family; and great storytelling. Allison received mainstream recognition with this novel, a finalist for the 1992 National Book Award. The novel won the Ferro Grumley prize and became a best seller and award- winning movie. It has been translated into more than a dozen languages.
The expanded edition of Allison’s short-story collection Trash (2002) included the prize winning short story, “Compassion,” selected for both Best American Short Stories 2003 and Best New Stories from the South 2003. Allison’s chapbook of poetry, The Women Who Hate Me, was published with Long Haul Press in 1983. A novel, She Who, is forthcoming.
Dorothy Allison was Emory University Center for Humanistic Inquiry’s Distinguished Visiting Professor, Spring, 2008. In 2006, she was writer in residence at Columbia College in Chicago. This fall, Allison is the McGee Professor and writer in residence at Davidson College in North Carolina.
CULLOWHEE – Tickets go on sale Monday, Nov. 30, for an appearance at Western Carolina University by Garrison Keillor, host of the popular public radio show “A Prairie Home Companion.”
Garrison Keillor
An acclaimed author, storyteller, humorist and musician, Keillor will take center stage in WCU’s Fine and Performing Arts Center at 7 p.m. Monday, March 8. Reserved seat tickets for “An Evening with Garrison Keillor” are $25.
“We are starting ticket sales much earlier than we do for most other events because we thought many of our patrons might be interested in purchasing tickets as a holiday gift for that Garrison Keillor fan in their lives,” said Paul Lormand, Fine and Performing Arts Center director.
Keillor hosted the first broadcast of “A Prairie Home Companion” in St. Paul, Minn., on July 6, 1974. The show ended in 1987, resumed in 1989 in New York as “The American Radio Company,” returned to Minnesota, and in 1993 resumed the name “A Prairie Home Companion.” More than 3 million listeners on more than 450 public radio stations now hear the show each week.
Keillor’s most recent role included playing himself in the movie adaptation of his show, “A Prairie Home Companion.” He also is the author of 12 books, including “Lake Wobegon Days,” “The Book of Guys,” “The Old Man Who Loved Cheese,” “Wobegon Boy,” “Me: By Jimmy ‘Big Boy’ Valente as Told to Garrison Keillor,” “Love Me” and “Homegrown Democrat.” His newest novel, “Pontoon,” was released in the fall of 2007.
Keillor has received numerous awards, including a Grammy Award for his recording of “Lake Wobegon Days.” He also has received two Cable ACE Awards and a George Foster Peabody Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and recently was presented a National Humanities Medal by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame at Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications in 1994.
REGIONAL–Jean Van’t Hul writes Asheville’s Artful Parent, and in an interview with the author of the popular blog Quince and Quire, she gets at the essence of children, home and art.
An excerpt:
My two exuberant children inspire me to bring these disparate interests together in a way that shapes their learning and informs their lives. I want craft to be a daily necessity; I want the shape of letters to be apparent as art; I want the weight of history to feel like a blanket at their feet; I want the urgency of peace to find its form in their creations. I want them to be rooted at home while investigating the traditions of faraway places.
BALSAM–Blogger “Gulahiyi” holds forth on whether the internet is storytelling’s bane. His references, as always, are broad-ranging.
An excerpt:
I know it is tempting to blame the Internet for the death of narrative. But is it really that simple? Any loquacious blowhard can satisfy the desire to tell stories…without the assistance of new technologies. But for a soft-spoken recluse such as myself the Internet provides an opportunity to share stories that would otherwise go untold. If it weren’t for this computer screen, I’d just be talking to the walls. Some might count that reason enough to condemn the Internet. It’s not for me to say.
SYLVA–The 5th Great Smoky Mountains Book Fair takes place Saturday, Nov. 14, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Christian Life Center of the Sylva First United Methodist Church.
More than 50 authors will be on hand to greet book lovers and discuss their works. The fair will have activities for all ages, including storytelling, bookmaking and poetry writing. Author presentations will cover a wide variety of interests, as well as how to get published. A panel discussion will focus on a writer’s sense of place.
Authors scheduled to appear include: Ron Rash, Pamela Duncan, Vickie Lane, Alan Wolf, Bob Plott, Fred Chappell, Jim Casada, Sheila Kay Adams, Ed Schubert, Terry Taylor, Wayne Erbsen, Doug Elliot and North Carolina Poet Laureate Katherine Stripling Byer.
Adams, who is also a musician and storyteller, will perform with Wayne Erbsen, a radio show host and musician who tells stories in song. Following their presentation, Wolf, an Asheville performance poet, will read the winning poems from a contest for students from first through 12th grades in Jackson, Swain, Macon and Haywood counties.
“This year we have a program that will excite everyone, from school children to their grandparents,” said Joyce Moore, one of the organizers and owner of City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. “I can’t wait to see the book making demonstrations and listen to the storytelling and folk songs or hear the panels.”
Admission is free, and 20 percent of all book sales go toward the new Jackson County Public Library Complex. The Fair is sponsored by City Lights Book Store, the Friends of the Jackson County Main Library, the Jackson County Public Library and the Downtown Sylva Association.
A special feature this year is called “The Poet Is In.” For a donation to the library, folks can receive a poem written on the spot by Byer, who is in her fourth year as N.C. Poet Laureate.
On Friday evening, Nov. 13, Gary Carden’s play, “The Prince of Dark Corners” will be staged at the First United Methodist Church. The play begins at 7:30 p.m. and stars Franklin actor Steve Brady. Tickets for the play are $10 for adults and $5 for children.
REGIONAL–Author Barbara Kingsolver spoke to 800 or so folks at Asheville High School last night, and the Mountain Xpress pulled together a tableau of tweets to honor the occasion.
An excerpt:
kingsolver says she loves criticism from her braintrust during revision process. Revision is my favorite part of writing. It’s where the art happens. The best thing is that nobody sees first drafts. For me, writing fiction feels like being in love, kingsolver tells asheville audience.
More:
kingsolver on who she reads: doris lessing… steinbeck, dickens, jane austen, george elliot.
GSMNP–Great Smoky Mountains National Park managers have announced that the Park’s cooperating partner, Great Smoky Mountains Association, has just published and released its newest book, Smoky Mountain Magic, a novel by Horace Kephart.
Horace Kephart
Although completed in 1929, two years before the author’s death, the novel was never published until now.
Cathy Cook, Chief of Resource Education and Science at the Smokies said, “We had no idea that a Kephart novel even existed. The unpublished manuscript for Smoky Mountain Magic was handed down within the Kephart family until it was finally brought to the attention of park superintendent, Dale Ditmanson, by Libby Kephart Hargrave, the author’s great-granddaughter, at one of this year’s 75th Anniversary celebrations.
The typewritten manuscript was complete, having gone through numerous drafts and revisions over the course of the eight years that Horace Kephart labored over it.”
Smoky Mountain Magic’s fictional story takes place during the summer of 1925, mostly along the Deep Creek watershed in the Great Smoky Mountains, but also in a thinly-disguised Bryson City (called Kittuwa) and the Cherokee Indian Reservation. Characters include a mysterious stranger (who resembles the author in his youth), a greedy land baron, a cadre of mountain folk ranging in constitution from stalwart to conniving, a beautiful botanist, a Cherokee chief, and a witch. The novel fits the adventure story genre of the day with a bit of romance interwoven.
The famed author and outdoorsman first came to the Great Smoky Mountains in 1904 looking for a fresh start in life. He moved into an abandoned cabin on a tributary of Hazel Creek, a remote area even by early 20th century southern Appalachian standards. There Kephart befriended his independent and self-reliant neighbors and pursued his passions for hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, and generally living off the land.
The result of his time in what Kephart described as the “back of beyond” were Our Southern Highlanders, the classic work on the people of the Smokies, and Camping and Woodcraft, the definitive work on enjoying the out of doors. Both works are still in print and continue to nurture an enthusiastic following.
During the 1920s, Kephart and his friend and fellow hiker George Masa began a vigorous campaign to have the Great Smoky Mountains protected as a national park. Kephart wrote letters, articles, and a booklet championing the cause, and Masa contributed his breath-taking landscape photographs.
Together they raised awareness of the significance and beauty of the Smokies and sounded the alarm over the devastation being caused by unsound, industrial logging operations. Both Kephart and Masa figure prominently in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park segment of a new 12-hour documentary series by Ken Burns entitled “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” which will begin September 27 on PBS.
For their successful effort, both Kephart and Masa have neighboring mountains named for them. A stream, trail, and camping shelter in the national park also bear Kephart’s name.
The 248 page Smoky Mountain Magic is now available in both paperback ($12.95) and hard cover ($19.95). All proceeds are being donated to the Horace Kephart Foundation (in support of the annual Horace Kephart Days Celebration in Bryson City), Great Smoky Mountains Association, and Friends of the Smokies.
SYLVA-Horace Kephart is well known for his explorations in what is now the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and for his writings about the area and its people. The new Ken Burns documentary on our National Parks features Kephart’s significant role in the creation of Park.
Now, a long-lost novel by Kephart has been found and just been published by the Great Smoky Mountains Association, 80 years after Kephart completed the manuscript in 1929.
Video from the Great Smoky Mountains Association:
City Lights will host a reading from the novel by Kephart’s great-granddaughter, Libby Kephart Hargrave, on Tuesday, October 20th at 7:00 p.m.
Hargrave wrote a foreword for the book, detailing how it came to be published after having laid so long only in manuscript form. George Ellison wrote the introduction, which gives further background and places the novel in the full context of Kephart’s legacy. Elizabeth Ellison’s watercolor is featured on the book’s cover, and Ron Rash’s praise also appears on the cover: he calls the book “a remarkable and illuminating read.”
As Ellison points out in his introduction, Kephart was an excellent listener, and in his time in the Hazel Creek community, he listened to residents tell about their lives. Both his ear for dialogue and his appreciation for a good story are revealed in the novel, which is set in Deep Creek, near Bryson City.
The story features Cherokee lore, as well, and some fantastical elements. too. According to Ellison, “Creating a dreamscape is not the sort of stylistic device a reader familiar with Camping and Woodcraft and Our Southern Highlanders would have expected from Kephart, not even in a novel.”
But at its heart, Smoky Mountain Magic is a story of both romance and adventure.
At the City Lights program devoted to the book, Hargrave will talk about bringing the manuscript to publication and will read selections from it. She will also take questions from the audience.
Bryson City Book Premiere and Signing to be Hosted by Kephart Family
In honor of the recently rediscovered and published novel Smoky Mountain Magic, the Kephart family and the Swain County Chamber of Commerce
invites the public to a premiere party that will feature readings from the novel as well as an opportunity to have your copy signed by a relative of the famed author.The event, which will be held at the historic Calhoun House Hotel located indowntown Bryson City, is scheduled for Sunday, October 18, 1 – 5pm. After a short program that will include naturalist George Ellison, GSMNP Superintendant Dale Ditmanson, representatives of the Great Smoky Mountains Association which is responsible for the publication of the novel, and great-granddaughter Libby Kephart Hargrave, family members will be available for signing and conversation. Music will be provided by the talented Lee Knight, and refreshments will be provided.
Loretta Womack’s toy store “Lily’s Treasures”, open for about two years now at the corner of Main and Spring, is closing.
It’s a loss for Main St., in that it will leave a big hole at a prominent location, it’s a loss for the Downtown Sylva Association, of which Womack was president-elect, and it’s a loss for local families who like a step up from the standard fare, toy-wise.
“Almost all of the toys I carry have an underlying social or educational value, and they require interaction on the part of the child,” Womack told me recently. “Our kids need to explore and develop their own superheros and princesses,” she added. “Where is the imagination if all that is done for them?”
A nurse by trade, Womack has hired on with WestCare.
Spring Street Cafe
When most recent owner Lisa Agee closed Spring Street Cafe in late summer, it ended a 15-year stretch during which an eatery filled the spot beneath City Lights Bookstore.
Ownership of the restaurant has reverted to founder Faye Holliday, but the space still belongs to bookstore owners Joyce and Allen Moore.
The three are still considering possibilities, but clearly would like to see another dining establishment in the Spring Street space — one that’s as complementary as possible to a bookstore, Joyce Moore emphasizes.
HIGHLANDS–California actor Lee Stetson will take on the likeness of John Muir in a performance Friday at the Highlands Playhouse. The show, called “An Evening With John Muir”, is sponsored by the WNC Alliance and the Jackson-Macon Conservation Alliance.
Tuckasegee writer Thomas Crowe previewed the performance in the most recent issue of the Cashiers Crossroads Chronicle; here’s an excerpt:
While the Sierras were [Muir's] preferred stomping grounds, he did travel, throughout his lifetime to many areas of the country, including the western N.C., mountains.
As if by some kind of time-warp or reincarnation intervention, Muir will be returning to the mountains of western N.C., for the first time since his visit in 1867 as part of his now-famous 1,000-Mile Walk.
As a walk (in to the body of California-based actor Lee Stetson) Muir will be giving talks in Asheville and Highlands that relate some of his most remarkable adventures in the wild, including a remarkable “tree ride” in a windstorm, a “sleigh ride” on a snow avalanche, his “interview” with a bear, and a face-to-fang encounter with a rattlesnake. Muir’s true wilderness tales are liberally salted with his wilderness philosophy–all around the theme of the health and invigoration one acquires when one fully and joyfully engages wildness.
But even more important to us, here in the Smoky Mountains, he will be talking about his time spent here in the western Carolina mountains.
