The Southern Highland Reader

STATEWIDE–Brian Postelle at the Mountain Xpress has a look at statewide smoking regulations that go into effect in early January, and he focuses on the fact that municipalities will have expanded powers to restrict smoking in outside areas.

It’s an obvious subject in Asheville, where hipsters congregate and smoke in lots of places.

Here’s an excerpt from Postelle’s story:

… unlike enclosed bars and restaurants, where secondhand smoke fills whole rooms, some maintain that outdoor areas do not pose as clear a danger.

“We’re outside. Why wouldn’t we be allowed to smoke?” asks Aerin Moonbourne after lighting up with friends at [Pritchard Park].

[Patrick] Mullen, though, points to mounting evidence of secondhand smoke danger. “I don’t think that it’s any question anymore that it’s a health issue,” he countered. The air in the park, he maintains, is “pretty cloudy most of the time, and there’s cigarette butts all over.”

But Gabriel McKinney, also enjoying a smoke at the park, believes there’s a larger agenda lurking behind the ban. “They do this every year,” he asserts. “It’s just digging up dirt to push the homeless out.”

Read the piece here.

REGIONAL–The southern mountains’ regional daily, the Asheville Citizen-Times, has learned of another round of cost-cutting measures from its corporate owner, Gannett.

Jason Sandford at the Mountain Xpress gives a rundown, here.

Here’s an excerpt:

Gannett cut 10 percent of its workforce in 2008 and slashed another 3 percent this past summer. At the Citizen-Times, that has translated into about two dozen layoffs. Another 60 employees lost their jobs at the newspaper’s printing plant in January when the company closed down its press. The newspaper is now printed in Greenville, S.C.

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.

kingsolver: my meditation is: i knit.

i’ve never had time for writer’s block.

Read the piece here.

NATIONAL–11th District congressman Heath Shuler is the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation over a land-swap controversy in Tennessee, according to the Washington Post, which acquired a leaked memo that discloses the investigation.

Here’s the Post’s lead:

House ethics investigators are reviewing an allegation of “preferential treatment” in a land deal involving Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), a former Washington Redskins quarterback, according to a July committee document obtained by The Washington Post.

Read the Post story here.

The Hendersonville Times News and the Mountain Xpress were the first to report the story in our area.

Our series of posts shown to the left outline the details of the controversy.

STATEWIDE–The Mountain Xpress reports this week that in an effort to improve various emergency services, North Carolina’s state Center for Geographic Information and Analysis will take high-res aerial photos of every square foot of the state this winter.

From the Xpress:

The project … will allow 911 offices to map buildings and structures that cannot be seen in older coarse-resolution, or “leaf-on,” photography. The last statewide “leaf-off” aerial photography was much coarser (2-meter) resolution, conducted in 1998, and funded by a federal program that has since been discontinued.

Blogger Gulahiyi, at Ruminations from the Distant Hills, can run with a much slipperier football than this one, and he’s off to the races.

Here’s a clip:

For a connoisseur of cartography, this is thrilling news. I spend several evenings a month poring over maps, and can hardly wait to see North Carolina in even greater detail. Google Earth just doesn’t provide the high resolution I need for some of my ongoing projects, such as looking for vulnerable spots in the hydroelectric dams of Western North Carolina.

and …

What’ll they think of next to put this data to good use? Ferreting out moonshine stills and marijuana grow rooms? What about the ol’ boys who raise game roosters? You can’t tell me they keep those birds around to hear ‘em sing. This new high-res map should allow us to get a doggone accurate census of game roosters in every county of the state. And you know those people with the gamers are up to no good.

REGIONAL–Mountain Xpress columnist and blogger Anne “Edgy Mama” Fitten Glenn holds forth on the health benefits of beer in her most recent Xpress column here.

An excerpt:

Out of 1,700 women participating in the study (average age was 48), those considered moderate beer drinkers had the highest bone density.

At this news, I jumped up and danced a little happy dance, during which I spilled some of my medicinal Scottish ale. I love beer and luckily, I live in Beer City, USA, where I could drink a different locally crafted beer every day for a month without quaffing the same brew twice. Hurrah!

The researchers, from the University of Extremadura in Caceres, Spain, found that regular drinkers tended to have better bone density than those who never consumed beer. While they only tested women, I assume this holds true for the male persuasion as well. Men get osteoporosis too, especially as they age.

Read the whole pint here.

SYLVA–Local fans of Asheville’s popular Vertigo Jazz Project can catch the band tonight at Sylva’s Soul Infusion Tea House.

For those who haven’t made the bands acquaintance, VJP bridges gaps between multiple musical genres, but always keeps sight of its emphasis on jazz, soul jazz and world elements.

“I never knew jazz could make me feel this alive, this free and this sweaty!” wrote Mountain Xpress’s Jason Bugg, in this review.

During a brief electronic exchange yesterday, band keyboardist Justin Wesley Powell told us about three influential acts that are topmost on his playlist these days:

1. Umphrey’s McGee: they are the tightest prog rock band on the national scene right now.

2. Medeski Scofield Martin and Wood: a huge inspiration for Vertigo Jazz Project. (Read about Scofield separately here).

3. Michael Brecker’s last album (Pilgrimage): a who’s who of modern jazz heavyweights.

Vertigo Jazz Project’s show at Soul Infusion starts at 8pm. $5 cover. All ages.

CULLOWHEE–The Mountain Xpress’s Kent Preistly offers a review of George Masa’s enigmatic life and of the current exhibit of some of Masa’s work at the Fine Arts Museum at Western Carolina University.

An excerpt:

Masa, a Japanese immigrant who died on June 21, 1933, blazed a singular path through the North Carolina mountains. He was, among a number of things, a photographer of rare skill and sensitivity, a dogged advocate for the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a key figure in the identification and naming of the park’s natural features, and a chief engineer of the North Carolina portion of Appalachian Trail.

This year, the celebration surrounding the 75th anniversary of the dedication of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has stirred to life what might be described as the year of George Masa. Earlier this summer, Masa’s landscapes were featured in an exhibit at the Asheville Art Museum; another exhibit of Masa’s work is ongoing at Western Carolina University, in Cullowhee. The late photographer has been the subject of recent features in the regional and national press, including WNC Magazine and National Parks magazine. And next month, Masa’s life and achievements will reach their widest audience yet, as part of Ken Burns’ new documentary on PBS, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.

Another:

Despite all the attention, Masa remains an elusive figure. He is a knot of contradictions: a socialite of scant means, a stranger with a thousand friends. He was an intensely private man who nevertheless managed to leave behind stacks of correspondence and handwritten records. As a businessman, he was shrewd but constantly in need of money. Trusted by many of the region’s most powerful men and women, he was once suspected of being nothing less than an international spy.

A quote from museum director Martin DeWitt:

“People think of our mountains and the words ‘divine inspiration’ come to mind,” says Martin DeWitt, director and curator of Western Carolina University’s Fine Art Museum. “Well, Masa achieved that feeling by capturing a precise atmospheric moment. You can imagine him out there waiting for a sunrise, having left Asheville at probably three in the morning, sitting out in the cold and rain and finally, here it comes—the moment that he’s been waiting for. There’s more than just an artistic vision at work in his photographs; there’s a tremendous sacrifice there as well.”

Read the piece here.

REGIONAL–Xpress writer Hunter Pope, a Waynesville native, does a bang-up job bringing to life the roots of the Asheville music scene, circa the early nineties.

That scene has local ties a plenty, and there is a reunion event forthcoming.

An excerpt from the long feature story:

Asheville’s music scene in the early ’90s was a lot different than today’s band-on-every-street-corner, band-in-every-bar land of plenty. Downtown was gritty; the bars raw. “When we were starting bands, adults pretty much frowned on it,” says Carter in an interview from his home in New York.  “When we were in our early teens we would go see any band that played at the Spiders Web, or Fine Arts theater and later Squash Pile (the defunct venue on Riverside Drive that now houses Curve studios).”

He adds, “It was fun. We wanted to be rock stars and the world was our ashtray.”

An overflowing ashtray: The DIY grit-rock and punk scene of that era (born in reaction to the bluegrass and hair bands that dominated early ’90s Asheville) spawned two CDs plus one cassette tape anthologizing (then for kicks; these days for posterity) the sounds of bands like the Mathmatics, Biltmore Forest Overdrive (BFO) and Tripod under the “Decline of WNC” umbrella. The cover art parodied, appropriately, the classic L.A. punk compilation The Decline of Western Civilization.

Equally fitting: The idea for a Decline reunion came about from a drunken conversation between Carter (who now owns a T-shirt company in New York City) and Bailey, now a local filmmaker. This weekend, July 24 and 25, some of the Decline bands will play again at Broadways and Stella Blue (two of the clubs where it all began). Maybe for the last time.

Read the whole piece here.

REGIONAL-As Asheville writer Stewart David wraps up his column in the most recent Mountain Xpress, he argues this:

There are definitely good reasons to support local farms. It’s great to do business with our neighbors, keep more money and jobs in our community, minimize “food miles,” eat fresher and tastier food, preserve local farmland and avoid supporting corporate agribusiness. And local farms are generally far less cruel than their industrial counterparts when it comes to raising animals.

But let’s not serve up their products with a side of greenwash. Plant-based agriculture is clearly much healthier for the earth, and thinking locally is only part of the equation: We also need to act globally. Nostalgic calls for a return to the perceived quaintness of days gone by are unrealistic, given the population explosion we’ve experienced.

David was responding, in part, to the notion that locally-raised meat is “green”. He argues, generally, that no meat is particularly green, and that that includes locally raised and consumed meats.

Another excerpt:

Compared with factory farms, family farms do employ some environmentally beneficial practices. Yet in some ways they’re actually less eco-friendly.

Animals allowed to move around expend more calories and thus consume more resources than those crammed into tiny crates and cages. Chickens not pumped full of antibiotics and genetically manipulated to reach optimal slaughter weight at 6-1/2 weeks take longer to raise — and consume more food in the process. Cows raised on pasture produce more methane (a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide) than those crammed into feedlots.

The column sparked a lively argument online, worth reading. Here’s the link again.

GSMNP/REGIONAL–Among the nation’s national parks, the Great Smoky Mountains park is most often rode hard and put up wet. Perpetually under-funded and over-used, the park, due to its proximity to major urban areas, maintains its long-standing honor as our most visited national park.

A couple of recent news notes are worth circling with the sharpie for this very reason:

One, the park is the happy recipient of $64 million in federal stimulus money, a windfall that will create up to 1,500 new jobs, according to the park superintendent. Two, the park saw an April jump in visitation that lifted it above the 2008 numbers. This might be a little deceiving because of a calendar quirk, but it remains good news for the tourism industry.

As a bonus feature, we offer Tobias Miller, Dillsboro resident, a man of many hats with the park service, all of them sweaty. Miller was featured in last week’s Mountain Xpress.

CULLOWHEE–It’s no secret that goats are a safe and efficient way to control kudzu, multi-flora roses and other hyperactive groundcover. Of course the downside is that goats are indiscriminate about what they control.

Still, they’re a net plus, and Melanie Bianchi at the Mountain Xpress tells us why.

Here’s an excerpt – a quote from Huff of Cullowhee:

“They’re great; definitely more eco-friendly than keeping a lot of other farm animals. They don’t require [commercial] feed, and they don’t hang out all the time in one place, leaving their mess. It’s a wonderful thing”—as long as they’re kept within bounds, that is. “They’re perfect for clearing a big old field,” Huff explains. But folks hiring them for home use must understand that goats don’t discriminate. “You wouldn’t want one eating a prize JFK yellow rose or anything,” Huff notes, laughing. “That wouldn’t be too awesome for the lady of the house.”

ASHEVILLE–The Asheville Citizen-Times, hot on the heels of the closing of its Asheville printing facility and a couple of rounds of layoffs, has announced that it will cease publication of the entire “Living” section of its paper come January 6.

Read more from Ashvegas here.

Also, the Mountain Xpress, a longtime independent weekly based in Asheville, will cut salaries 5-10% across the board.

CULLOWHEE–Asheville independent weekly the Mountain Xpress this issue runs a well-developed story by Nelda Holder on the implications of a large gift to Western Carolina University from BB&T. The grant is a fountainhead with strings attached.

STATEWIDE-A strong perception – the residue of stories from the depression, mostly – is that local banks are in a weaker position than the the national and international institutions.

Hal L. Millard of the Mountain Xpress explains why this isn’t necessarily so.

REGIONAL/NATIONAL–Few fans of americana music are unfamiliar with dobro player Jerry Douglas — nicknamed “Flux” by Ricky Skaggs — and his extraordinary musicianship. And those who don’t know his name have still heard him.

Three-time Country Music Association Musician of the Year and twelve-time Grammy winner Douglas has played regularly with Allison Krauss and Union Station since 1998, and has played with a diverse list of talents that includes Ray Charles, Peter Rowan, Béla Fleck, Emmylou Harris, Phish, Dolly Parton, Paul Simon, Skaggs, Bill Frisell, John Fogerty, Nanci Griffith, Tony Rice, Elvis Costello, and James Taylor.

Jason Bugg of the Mountain Xpress has a look at Douglas here, in advance of his performance in Asheville on the 14th.

Resonator Guitars
The Great Dobro Sessions (album)

QUALLA-Catt and Joseph Redcloud, of Qualla, are part of a sustainable agriculture movement that is gaining traction in the mountains. And more specifically, they’re one of a few farms that is again producing sorghum molasses, called by Mountain Xpress writer Melanie M. Bianchi “the ultimate slow food”.

“We work almost exclusively with native plants,” says Catt. “And we show people that sometimes using the old ways is at least as good, if not a better, way of doing things.” When making sorghum syrup, for instance, the Redclouds use a horse, harnessed to a renovated mill that’s been in Joseph’s family for many generations.

Read the story here

SYLVA-Hitch up the horses and tug out the welcome wagon for blogger Jason Bugg, a Mountain Xpress music writer who recently relocated to Sylva. The Smoky Mountain News’s Chris Cooper hangs his hat here, too, so now we’ve got two hip music writers amongst our young townies and we can but wonder: is there room?

Bugg’s personal blog, So Much for Tact, can be found here. He has a recent piece about Ric Flair. He writes a good bit about music, and offers downloads. He’s also enamored of Sylva, which is nice, and he uncorks sharp turns-of-phrase.

He gets credit from me for his apparent two-year pissin’ contest with Citizen-Times staffer Tim Rawal, whose mug shot alone is enough to make my forehead hit the desk.

The Mountain Xpress distributes here and points west, of course, but for those unfamiliar, the Xpress is Asheville’s independent weekly newspaper. Which makes it, in real terms, Asheville’s only newspaper, since the daily Citizen-Times is in the headlock (complete with indian burns) of the Gannett Corporation.

Unlike the Citizen-Times, which sends reporters west of Balsam for blood and football alone, the Xpress will occasionally wander this way for something less predictable. Here are a few Mountain Xpress stories about our neck of the woods:

A review of the show Fragile Earth at Western Carolina University.
A review of Guadalupe Cafe
A column on development (from Cullowhee’s Mark Jamison)