Mountain Xpress 04.03.24

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FEATURES PAGE 24

MCCORMICK FIELD AT 100

Asheville’s McCormick Field officially opened 100 years ago this week. To commemorate the anniversary, Xpress takes a look back at 10 of the more memorable moments in the history of the venerable ballpark — including a visit from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and NASCAR races.

COVER PHOTO

Photo of McCormick Field courtesy of the City of Asheville. Other photos courtesy of Buncombe County Special Collections at Pack Memorial Library

COVER DESIGN Scott Southwick

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Why locals get ‘emotional’ about Asheville’s changes

Tourism Development Authority

President and Explore Asheville CEO Vic Isley has a lot of gall reducing the criticisms toward the TDA to just emotional reactions [ “Looking Ahead: TDA President Vic Isley Plans to go Full Speed Ahead in Promoting Tourism,” March 20 , Xpress]. She’s sure got her hands in deep in the tourist-trade money pot in her three short years living here. What does she know of the changes locals have seen in the city they have loved and lived in or nearby for decades? Where does she think those emotions rise from ? I have lived in surrounding areas of Asheville since 1983. Asheville was pretty run-down back then. But it always had a sense of community, creativity and innovation. Indeed, entrepreneurs turned the downtown around. The River Arts District was started by artists setting up studios in abandoned old buildings and warehouses. Now they are forced out by ever-increasing rent.

Can you imagine that in 1983, I commuted from Black Mountain to West Asheville to my job, and there was no rush-hour traffic?!

That’s right. Today it’s a daily crawl on Interstate 240. Didn’t exist back then.

But I watched this little city that I loved transform by the spending of millions on tourism and catering to all things tourist-oriented. So many hotels. Expensive food and boutiques (since rent is astronomical). Back in the day, we had Stone Soup. And funky little shops. It was still affordable. There were great buskers. Those dressed-up human statues, jugglers, musicians. Street art. Mostly gone now.

CARTOON BY RANDY MOLTON

Now I can’t even stand to try to drive in Asheville. The traffic gets gridlocked.

I see wheelchair users on South French Broad have to use the street because the sidewalks are a mess and have been for years. But wherever the tourists go, it’s all swanky and nice! New sidewalks! They just may have to step over a homeless person here and there. Last time I was downtown, however, it looked like the homeless had been pushed out, too. Tourists fill restaurants to overflowing so that locals can’t even eat out. Some thoughtful restaurants/bars started to serve locals only.

So yeah, Ms. Isley is smiling all the way to the bank while she justifies the very fact that the cost of living and gentrification keep soaring in Asheville, while the tourism-related service-jobs paycheck that

neighborhoods block development, it will just be pushed farther out, with much worse environmental consequences: the loss of forests and habitat, and people having to take longer car trips to get to work and services, resulting in more carbon in the atmosphere.

Then there’s traffic. Yes, whenever even a few more houses are built, there will be some more cars on the road. But according to opponents’ own traffic study, the increase will be only about 13%. The state Department of Transportation considers this to be too low to warrant further study of how many cars will be at various points at different times, as the impact is just not expected to be very great.

workers get pretty much blows. And she’s going to justify how even more is better! Reeks of greed.

Yeah, you bet we are emotional. We are pissed.

— Troy Amastar Alexander

Opponents fail to make case against Haw Creek rezoning

Asheville desperately needs more housing. This does not mean that every proposed development is a good idea, but it does mean that those who oppose a development in their neighborhood need to offer solid reasons why it would be significantly detrimental. This the opponents of The Meadows at Haw Creek have failed to do.

They point out that The Meadows does not include low-income housing. But if the rezoning allowing the project is not approved, the housing built on the site will be much more expensive. It will consist of free-standing houses on large lots, rather than the proposed townhomes and medium-size houses clustered close together, affordable to middle-income families.

The opponents complain that trees will be cut down. But if there is no rezoning, those trees will be cut down anyway, as the owner of the property has the right to build on the wooded areas. And opponents seem unaware of broader environmental issues — if close-in

If The Meadows is built, a few people who have been lucky enough to look out at woods on others’ property will instead see yards and houses, like most of the rest of us, and there will be a bit more traffic. But these are simply not good enough reasons to deny 95 middle-income families the opportunity to buy homes near jobs and amenities. As a resident of Haw Creek, I urge Asheville City Council to approve the necessary rezoning.

— Michael Bell Asheville

Reparations Commission deserves more time to do its work

The Community Reparations Commission needs an extension of support from Asheville and Buncombe County. So far, the commission has been told by staff that resources from the government to support the process will cease at the end of June.

Yet there is still significant work in front of the commission, including digesting the recent 168page Cease the Harm Audit and performing public engagement so that the Black community at large understands what the Reparations Commission is doing and can provide feedback.

I have attended recent Reparations Commission meetings, and at every single meeting I have witnessed commissioners asking for more time so that they can get this vital work completed without having to rush the results.

The Reparations Commission should be given the opportunity by the city and county to complete this work on a timeline set by the commission itself, not by city/coun-

ty staff, who wrote unsigned letters telling the commission they would be cut off from support in June.

A solid step toward reducing harm is to put more power and resources in the hands of the Reparations Commission. The city and county should extend the timeline of support so that the commission can do its work. The government should be doing all it can to support the commission in crafting recommendations to repair harm from the centuries of damage done by our government and society to Black people.

— Jensen Gelfond Asheville

Next up: Change Asheville’s name

As Asheville has now prevailed in the legal appeal to keep the Vance Monument destroyed, even after it was recently rehabbed by the mayor’s own law firm and others, the plan must now focus on the city name change.

Like many who’ve been waiting on the result of this ruling, we now should all agree to change

the name of the city of Asheville to a newer, more modern, meaningful name that does not honor a slave owner. With this ruling, we must further the agenda to transform this place as only changing its name will accomplish! It can no longer be known as Asheville, named for a slave owner. The time is now.

So, everyone please be thinking about what sweet favored name you would select and submit it/ them to the City Council. Then let the people vote on the top 10 choices by City Council and the mayor, of course. This can easily be decided and put on the November election ballot!

Can you think of a better way to enhance the image of this racist town than to change the actual racist name? No, you can’t.

Y’all ready? Remember, we cannot give reparations to a city named for a slave owner. Do it.

— Fisher Caudle West Asheville

Mission’s deconstruction has been a team sport

As the new owners of Asheville’s community hospital system, HCA Healthcare’s transitional misplays continue to be a source of outcry and drama.

Would that hand-wringing local and state leaders had been nearly so energetic in researching HCA’s notoriety before throwing this hot potato to the guys with the biggest hands.

In the herdlike rush to condemn the new owners, the old owners, carrying substantial accountability for the mess, have largely escaped scrutiny.

Though reality was hushed, Mission was in serious trouble way before HCA was given the checkered flag. Major hospital systems are rarely discarded because of how well they are run.

Between federal and state authorities passing sweeping health care entitlements without realistic funding; ignored patterns of camouflaged fees and costs; cost-shifting medical service overheads to those with private insurance; open-door border policies; a community of unleashed drug enthusiasts; and a broader culture that likes to eat big and exercise little, Mission has been in a state of overwhelm for years.

HCA knew what it was getting into. They are masters at maneuvering through a hybrid national health care labyrinth of social -

ized medicine — crony capitalism — and remnants of authentic free enterprise.

In spite of the hurdles, they are succeeding — unlike more and more health care management companies — in preserving a mostly functional hospital system with profit for their shareholders.

HCA didn’t create the mess.

But, unlike too many politicians and consumers insisting on health services that are free, exceptional and accessible all at the same time — they are good at keeping things real.

What they are not good at is keeping things nice. HCA has no demonstrated understanding that in health care, high-touch is every bit as necessary as high-tech.

Therein lies their willingness to let attorneys and accountants run their organization; work nurses and staff beyond sustainable capacities; and defend a convoluted emergency service more akin to a house of horrors than a house of help.

Going forward, there will be more clanging and banging but don’t expect things to really change. Mission hospital system is now first and foremost a business.

There will be many good things that go on there, but in the end, the money side of things will prevail.

Though it’s easy to unilaterally place the blame on HCA, the deconstruction of our community hospital system has been a team sport.

— Carl Mumpower Asheville

A vote for increasing parking rates downtown

I just read the article in the Citizen Times about parking rate increases in downtown.

I wanted to say that, as a downtown resident, I heartily support the increases. The current meter rates are too cheap to encourage use of the city parking structures and lots. As an example, directly in front of my apartment is a row of meters. They cost $1.50 per hour. Across the street from me is a privately owned surface parking lot. It charges $5 per hour. So people who are lucky enough to get street-meter parking often stay there all day and feed the meter. If anything, $2 per hour is still too cheap.

Also, contrary to common belief, the parking structures are underutilized. Last summer, the week after the Fourth of July, one

CARTOON BY BRENT BROWN

of the busiest days of the year, I used the city’s parking app to count the number of available parking spaces in structures. Here is the result: Biltmore Avenue, 74; Harrah’s Cherokee Center, 17; Wall Street, 5; Rankin Avenue, 4; Coxe Avenue/Sears Alley, 539; College Street, 335.

Plus, we have the new privately owned structure on Federal Alley in the South Slope, which is basically empty.

So, as you can see, the cityowned structures were pretty full, but the county-owned structures had plenty of parking. I’m not sure why this is, but people seem to not be aware of the county parking structures. Perhaps this is an education issue, but the low cost of the street meters is also an issue. Better signage would probably help.

I also think we should extend metered parking to other areas, such as South Slope, Biltmore and West Asheville. Given the dire need for capital improvements in our current parking structures and the need to expand transportation services in Asheville, this money is desperately needed.

— Dane Barrager Downtown resident and business owner Asheville

Still waiting for justice

On April 15, Junior Chandler, former day care bus driver in Madison County, will have completed 37 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. No one committed it. I believe it was an imaginary crime, a textbook example from the “satanic ritual abuse” moral panic that swept across the country in the 1980s and early ’90s.

Last month, Superior Court Judge Gary Gavenus rejected Chandler’s latest appeal — despite having found that prosecutors withheld favorable evidence and presented interview summaries with “outright fabrications.”

While his lawyers at Duke’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic are readying yet another appeal, Junior Chandler remains in AveryMitchell Correctional, and his family back in Madison — including his fragile 87-year-old mother — continues to pray for his return.

Thirty-seven years!

— Lew Powell Charlotte

Editor’s note : The writer follows the Chandler case and other “satanic ritual abuse” cases at avl.mx/dj2. The Assembly also recently covered the story (avl.mx/dj1).   X

One school’s trash ...

Community members outraged by school-supply dumpster incident

BY JESSICA WAKEMAN

On the evening of March 12, West Asheville resident Sophie Min Mullinax posted eight photos in a neighborhood Facebook group of a dumpster in front of the former Asheville Primary School at 441 Haywood Road. Most of the photos depicted what had been discarded.

“It seems ACS is clearing out the building,” Mullinax wrote, referring to Asheville City Schools. “We are trying to spread the word to save usable items from the landfill: school and art supplies, elementary-sized school furniture, toys, lots of construction paper, etc.”

The Asheville City Board of Education voted to close Asheville Primary following the 2021-22 school year, due to financial woes.

Following the Facebook post, and another post on Reddit, people came to pull out items to take. That is, until an Asheville Police Department officer arrived March 13 to discourage them.

Some parents who spoke to Xpress are angered that, despite ACS’ well-known budgetary issues, usable school supplies were discarded rather than dispersed to other teachers in the district or recycled. Others are upset that APD was deployed, seemingly to guard the dumpster. But the biggest sting seemed to be the timing. The dumpster arrived one day after the school board voted to close Montford North Star Academy and merge it with Asheville Middle School.

“It felt like a real smack in the face,” says West Asheville parent Kari Holloway

“The poor parents of ACS have been through enough,” she continues. “It shouldn’t have been handled that way.”

Following criticism from parents, ACS released a statement March 13. “[W]e acknowledged the

presence of recyclable paper and other unusable products that, for reasons unclear, were not disposed of immediately after the school’s closure,” it read. “This oversight has prompted us to reevaluate our procedures to ensure that all materials are managed efficiently and responsibly moving forward.”

WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED

According to ACS policy, managing a school’s equipment and supplies is organized by the superintendent, and the goals are to extend materials’ useful life through reuse or disposal of property in an environmentally sound manner. That procedure was fol -

Sustainability Series

lowed at Asheville Primary — until it wasn’t, says ACS chief of staff Kimberly Dechant

When Asheville Primary closed two years ago, elementary principals were invited to take any of the kindergarten through second grade materials, and media coordinators were invited to take any books they could use at their own schools, she explains.

Preschool supplies were handled separately, as they were purchased with funds that require their usage only for preschool classrooms, Dechant says. When Asheville Primary closed, preschool education director Susanna Smith and the preschool staff organized and removed some items. But other supplies remained in storage, with the intention of being reallocated in the future. Smith regularly visits 441 Haywood to obtain items from storage to use in existing classrooms, Dechant says.

The Asheville Department of Developmental Services issued a permit for “commercial repair or upfit” on March 11, accord -

ing to Buncombe County property records. Dechant says in early March the ACS operations department asked Smith to clear out Asheville Primary to make room for district offices moving in. Smith and ACS programs operation manager LeAnn Wright “went through all the materials to see if anything was broken, or if there were any missing pieces or whether [materials] met or did not meet the licensing regulations for this state and [federal government].”

Smith and Wright “moved some broken stuff in the hallway, saying, ‘These things need to be discarded,’” explains Dechant, citing a “rotted” whiteboard as an example. When asked how usable items, such as unopened packages of paper, made it into the dumpster, she said she didn’t know. “What I do know is [Smith and Wright] said, ‘Everything that’s on this side of the hallway needs to be disposed of’ and ‘what’s [on the other side of the] hallway needs to stay,’” Dechant explained. “And what I believe — and this is not fact,

SALVAGE STATION: An unknown individual was looking through the dumpster containing school furniture and supplies outside of the former Asheville Primary School on March 13. Photo courtesy of Sophie Min Mullinax

this is my assumption — is that somebody that was not an active listener thought that everything in the hallway needed to go.”

As for technology, the district has a specific procedure for assessing its use elsewhere. Or, if it’s no longer functional, the district has a method for safely discarding it, Dechant says.

The ACS finance department also posts supplies on GovDeals, a government surplus auction website. On March 22, Asheville City Schools auctioned seven toddler chairs, 17 toddler cubbies, nine preschool-sized cots and a preschool kitchen playset from Asheville Primary.

DUMPSTER DIVING

Meanwhile, a friend alerted Mullinax’s family about the dumpster on March 12, and her partner arrived at the former school around 8 p.m. to investigate. He removed items from the dumpster and placed them on the ground for others to take.

According to the couple, items included a dozen student chairs, student-sized chalkboards, white boards, over 30 empty plastic storage bins, calculators, plastic lunch trays, art supplies, children’s clothing and unopened boxes of printer paper and construction paper.

Mullinax says she felt “disgust at the waste produced by a school district that has a lot of financial trouble right now.” Her daughter attended the Montessori preschool -

TRASH OR TREASURE? A desk and several plastic storage bins were among the materials from the former Asheville Primary School that were thrown in a dumpster March 12. Photo courtesy of Sophie Min Mullinax

program at Asheville Primary for one year before the school closed.

“I’m sure there’s a reason that they did it, or maybe they thought it would just be easier, or didn’t want to invite the attention or the mess,” Mullinax says. “But putting a dumpster in front of the school certainly provided a lot of attention.”

Mullinax says she contacted ACS Board of Education member and West Asheville resident Liza Kelly ,

who confirmed to Xpress she shared information about the dumpster with other members of the school board and ACS Superintendent Dr. Maggie Fehrman . Kelly declined to share more information about those conversations.

Some of the items in the dumpster that may have appeared usable actually were not, Dechant says. “It is my understanding that the items that were discarded were broken chairs from the old Issac Dickson

What’s coming to 441 Haywood Road?

The fate of the building at 441 Haywood Road that once housed Asheville Primary School remains in flux.

In November, the Asheville Fire Department advised the Asheville City Schools that it needed to change the building’s usage from a school to commercial occupancy (for storage).

In February, ACS resubmitted the permit application to allow using several rooms as office space for the ACS operations and transportation departments, which are moving into the building, says ACS chief of staff Kimberly Dechant

According to permit forms, the former main office, nurse’s office, teacher workroom, computer lab,

lounge and resource room will be used as office space. Areas used for storage include the cafeteria and multipurpose room. Among the items in storage are tables, bulletin boards, whiteboards, a laptop cart and discarded technology, including some old TVs, Dechant says. There is no timeline for how long ACS operations and transportation will operate from 441 Haywood Road, Dechant says. “We are not really financially in a position to do anything to that building,” Dechant says, referring to ACS. “Really, we’re waiting to see what the county decides as to how they’re going to utilize that space.”

ACS owns the building, but in April 2023, Buncombe County

Board of Commissioners heard plans for a feasibility study to determine how the building could be used as a temporary mobile base for Buncombe County Emergency Medical Services.

According to the commissioners budget work session on March 26, the county still intends to use the space for EMS, and ACS may also use the space in some capacity.

“There are no concrete details we can share at this time,” Buncombe County spokesperson Lillian Govus wrote in an email, explaining a feasibility study is still being conducted. “Any decisions would be made by the Board of Commissioners.”

— Additional reporting by Greg Parlier X

[Elementary School] that had mold on them from a separate storage building that they had been housed in that leaked,” she wrote in an email. “Other items included dried markers, glue, etc.”

Dechant says the situation should not repeat itself at Montford North Star when it closes, as those teachers will have their supplies transferred to their new classrooms.

Another ACS program may make use of any supplies left behind. “I see that as a smooth transition of materials because … the goal is to have the Education and Career Academy coming into that facility,” Dechant says. The Education and Career Academy, a high school-level alternative program, is renting space at the Housing Authority’s Arthur R. Edington Center.

What Dechant does not want to see is families feeling hurt again.

“I hate to use the word ‘optics’ because that seems so callous, but you have to be sensitive to people,” she says. “You’ve got to think about timing and people’s hurt feelings. That [dumpster] was just not good timing for our community.”  X

Sustaining community

A conversation with local candidate Parker Sloan

Editor’s note: As part of Xpress ’ monthlong Sustainability Series, we reached out to all candidates running for Buncombe County Board of Commissioners as well as Asheville City Council. These conversations will appear throughout our four April issues.

Buncombe County Commissioner Parker Sloan will run in an uncontested race for this District 3 seat. Sloan, a Democrat, joined the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners in 2020 and serves as chair of the newly formed Buncombe County Climate and Environment Committee.

The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners meets on the first and third Tuesday of each month. Commissioners vote on policies related to property taxes, zoning, education and more.

Xpress : What misconceptions do community members have about the role of the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners?

Sloan: If I could explain and educate people about one thing regarding local government in North Carolina, it is that the primary source of funding for everything (schools, emergency services, infrastructure, housing, etc.) is property taxes. Many types of local government in other states have layers of other funding for these same things. Meanwhile, the N.C. General Assembly is defunding the state and paying for less and less, leaving the funding up to local governments.

What can local leaders do to promote thoughtful community dialogue about complex and difficult topics such as the opioid crisis, crime, housing and health care?

Housing scarcity is our biggest economic challenge, and the evidence tells me that it is almost exclusively a supply-and-demand problem. There’s a lot of focus on the overall cost of living and the impact of the significant growth our community is seeing from people of means from out of state. What is, however, more important and more in our control is housing supply.

Housing scarcity is a problem from which so many of our other issues come from. It is tied to the existence of the unhoused, the inability of employers to attract and hire enough workers, and the growth of unsustainable suburbs. All of which cost us.

I want to promote a communitywide dialogue with groups like Strong Towns in order to identify where we can grow our housing stock and embrace urbanism without displacing people from neighborhoods.

What can the city and county do to help small businesses thrive?

To me, what the government can do to help businesses thrive is to create a community with a diverse economy, good schools, pre-K access, more housing and good amenities. A place that is not just for tourists or wealthy people from out of state, but a place for

everyone. A place that naturally recruits people to live, work and stay here and feel capable of raising a family here. City and county governments both have a tremendous amount of work to do to show this community that we actually want these things. Two ways Buncombe County is working on this every day is through our early childhood education programming and our increasing commitment to fund affordable housing, including building it on public land.

In your opinion, is it sustainable to operate two school districts? Why or why not?

Both our school systems are fantastic, and I don’t think their accomplishments are highlighted

enough in community dialogue. The staff and teachers show up every day ready to change lives and make our student experience the best it can be. If you follow their news releases or social media, you can see that [these schools] are places of immense creativity, student support and academic achievement.

I’m very interested to see the merger study results, hear the community input and understand what might be gained from a merger. ACS is very small; I do not believe that a merger would result in the significant financial savings some seem to think it will.

Our local school systems are facing an enrollment crisis that is impacting their budgets. The General Assembly is actively working to neglect public education with punitive budgets, eliminating the cap on the quantity of charter schools in our community, not giving adequate teacher raises and encouraging school choice vouchers. This has had dire budgetary consequences on all public schools in North Carolina.

For this reason, I think one of the biggest questions facing the people of this county in the next decade will be: Do we continue to wait on the N.C. General Assembly to fund education appropriately, or do we (using primarily property taxes) do more ourselves for our own children and their future?

To learn more about Sloan, visit avl.mx/dij.

— Xpress Staff X

PARKER SLOAN

Exposure to darkness

School library book bans come to Buncombe

BY GREG PARLIER

gparlier@mountainx.com

Until recently, local school districts had largely avoided the national wave of book bans. Despite some activists making noise in local school board meetings last summer, there had been no formal requests to remove books from school libraries in Asheville City or Buncombe County schools.

But by November, 20 books had been challenged by a group of parents at Enka High School. They wanted the books removed from the school media center because of subject matter ranging from sex and gender identity issues to prostitution, suicide and drug use. Four of those books have been banned from the shelves of Enka High School, one of which was pulled from all Buncombe County schools.

According to comments made at school board meetings and documents acquired from BCS by Xpress , those who want books removed see their presence in school libraries as an example of school staff having too much power in their children’s education.

“School personnel and staff should not be the ones making the decisions on what modern, realworld, social and even local issues that students [and] teenagers should be exposed to, nor how they are exposed to them. That is a parent’s decision. A parent should make those decisions because the parent knows their child better than anyone,” wrote one parent in appealing Enka High’s decision to keep Shine

SCHOOL BANS: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire and Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult are two of four books no longer available at Enka High School. Doing It! Let’s Talk About Sex by Hannah Witton and Tricks by Ellen Hopkins are the others. Books photographed at Pack Memorial Library. Photo by Greg Parlier

by Lauren Myracle on the shelf. Parents’ names were redacted from the appeal documents.

The argument echoes that of the national group Moms for Liberty, a Florida-based conservative nonprofit that seeks to “unify, educate and empower parents to defend and protect their parental rights at every level of government,” according to its website. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a progressive nonprofit legal advocacy organiza-

Liberty and an administrator of the group’s private Facebook page, is one of the parents who is pushing for book removals.

“We are simply asking that parental rights be respected and parents be given the freedom to choose the timing of when their children are exposed to modern, real-world social issues based on their family beliefs, not the beliefs of educators,” she said at the March 7 Buncombe County Board of Education meeting.

After initially saying she was available for an interview with Xpress , Poteat later requested questions via email. She did not respond by press time after multiple reminders.

Per district policy, an initial request to remove materials is reviewed by a media and technology advisory committee at the school level. If a parent or community member disagrees with the school-level decision, it can be appealed to the district level for a review by the district MTAC, which is ultimately voted on by the school board.

For these challenged books, Enka High School agreed to remove three of the books from its media center, and one more was banned districtwide after an appeal of the school’s initial decision brought it before the school board. The rest of the requests were rejected.

tion, has labeled Moms for Liberty as an anti-student, anti-government extremist group.

In a recent episode of newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice spoke about recent book bans in Beaufort County, S.C. “Parents want to partner with their child’s schools,” she said. “But we do not co-parent with the government.”

Kim Poteat , lead organizer of the Buncombe chapter of Moms for

While Doing It! Let’s Talk About Sex by Hannah Witton , Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult and Wicked: Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire can be found at other, non-Enka BCS high schools, Tricks by Ellen Hopkins cannot.

WHO KNOWS BEST?

Those wanting certain books removed frequently noted that

parents are more equipped to determine what their children are capable of processing in written materials than their teachers.

That directly counters the district’s policy on parental objections to materials.

“While input from the community may be sought, the board believes professional educators are in the best position to determine whether a particular instructional material is appropriate for the age and maturity of the students and for the subject matter being taught,” according to BCS policy 3210.

Several students who spoke to Xpress for this story said book bans should include their voices since they are the ones actually reading them.

Mitchell Cohen , a junior at Nesbitt Discovery Academy, says teenagers witness a lot of difficult subjects in their everyday lives and deserve the chance to have a say in what literature they can handle.

“There’s this idea of teenagers as stupid and hormonal. People just look at the stupid things we do and think we are too young to understand things. We’re not too young to be exposed to things outside of books. We have to deal with so many difficult things. [Some have] friends who are dying from COVID or suicide. If we are able to cope with those things, we’re old enough to cope with a book,” he says.

Multiple times, books with sexual subject matter have been referred to as pornography at school board meetings by those seeking to ban them. Sometimes, as in the case of Doing It! , the book presents sex matter-of-factly as a sexual education tool. Other times, passages with sexual acts are presented to the board out of context, even though the book is actually about something else, says Liza Porras , a senior at Nesbitt Discovery Academy.

“I just really think it says a lot about how certain people look at teens,” she says. “Sure, we haven’t really been out in the real world and everything, and we don’t know how everything works. But we aren’t these mind drones. Like, if we see like nude drawings, we’re not like, ‘Oh my God, this is so hot.’ … We have critical thinking skills.”

Plus, Porras says, since high schoolers can be assaulted, they should be allowed to read books about the topic. High school is the right time to be exposed to sexual education subject matter, Cohen adds.

The parents seeking books to be removed from schools have said

they do not favor outright bans in public libraries and bookstores, but they don’t think school libraries are an appropriate place for some of this content.

“How is a book with explicit alternate gender ideologies appropriate for a school library? We should only be teaching and encouraging the learning of the basics in education — math reading, writing, science and history — not all of this sexuality and gender ideology trash talk,” writes one parent in an appeal of Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin to the district.

“With these kinds of books in public school libraries, you are hijacking the role of the parent to decide when their child/student is mature enough to handle these ‘modern, real-world social issues,’” the writer continues.

For Paul Curran , another Nesbitt senior, it’s better to read a book about difficult subject matter in school than be exposed to it on television, the internet or worse. At school, you have peers and teachers to discuss difficult themes with, avoiding the dark “rabbit holes” of the internet, he says.

Plus, books provide nuance and context to issues that students might otherwise be exposed to on social media, where explanations for real-world events aren’t always available, he says.

“I feel totally safe talking [about books] at school,” Curran adds.

SLIPPERY SLOPE

Buncombe County school board members, voting together, expressed support for all of the staff responsible for making determinations on each of the 20 books under scrutiny. When it came time to ban Tricks , board member Amy Churchill , the board’s only registered Republican, hesitated. Ultimately, the board voted 7-0 to remove the books from all school libraries.

“I really struggle with this, because I think it’s a slippery slope to start banning books, especially when it’s being used for cultural wars and talking points, political moves and being surfed from the internet to determine what books to be against without actually reading said books to determine what the concern is,” Churchill said at the Feb. 8 meeting. “I really, really have a hard time when we start talking about taking away basic freedoms.” She added that as a Christian, she

GOLD WINNERS: The Blue Ridge TaeKwonDo of Asheville and Black Mountain recently competed in the ATF National Testing and Tournament in Montgomery, Ala. The group took home multiple awards, including eight gold, six silver and seven bronze finishes. Congratulations to the team. Front row, from left, are Cora Rayment, Wren Fields, Lincoln Fields and Isaac Turvaville; back row, from left, are Jake

Durban, Rowan Starks, James McGee, Emma Self Byrd, Meghan Castillo, Logan Anderson and Madison Sings. Photo courtesy of Brittany Mosier

worried that the Bible could someday be challenged using the same logic that the parents were using for other books.

Attached to most of parents’ appeals were references from Booklooks.org, an independently run book review site that highlights portions of hundreds of books that reference “objectionable content.” The reviews include a profanity counter, next to which several local parents handwrote notes.

One wrote: “And we don’t want our children and teens using this language, but we put books in their school libraries that teach them to use it? That’s really messed up!”

Booklooks.org, based in Brevard County, Fla., includes a rating system created by volunteers. The site rates books from zero — “for everyone” — to 5 — for “aberrant content.” It has been cited in book ban attempts all over the country since 2022 and has been connected to Moms for Liberty groups, although the site claims not to actively seek book bans.

Instead, the site suggests “parents can use this information to provide the proper guidance to children reading any of these books. Parents can also use this information to individually, or through groups representing their interests, engage with school boards to determine what works should be made available to their children while under the custodial care of their schools,” according to the site.

Indeed, 19 of the 20 books parents asked to be removed from high school libraries are readily available at Buncombe County Public Libraries. Perfect by Hopkins is available through an interlibrary loan.

But students say making the books unavailable at their schools effectively bans them for those who don’t have transportation to a public library.

BANNED BOOKS BACK: Firestorm Books staff poses at its storage unit with boxes of books that have been banned in some Florida schools and sent to the queer-owned cooperative bookstore. Firestorm packages and sends the books to readers in Florida for free, by request. Photo courtesy of Firestorm Books

Cindy Barukh Milstein , bookseller at Firestorm Books in West Asheville, says the store will order copies of any title for anyone of any age.

Firestorm started a program housing banned children’s books from Duval County, Fla., in 2022 and is now sending them back to students whose right to read is under attack, according to its website.

Firestorm bookseller Libertie Valance says some parents see stu-

dents’ access to some books as a threat to their power.

“Books can be powerful precisely because they allow their readers to explore new ideas and encounter perspectives in a space that’s unmediated by authorities. That’s important for adults, but even more important for folks in a formative stage of life, attempting to make sense of this … broken world they’ve been handed,” Valance says.

PROTECT THEM FROM DARKNESS

In reviewing the appeal requests made to the district Media Technology Advisory Committee, parents express not only a desire for control over what their children have access to but also assumptions about what that access will lead to.

In an appeal of The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas , a book about the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager by a white police officer, the requester suggested that students may adopt a negative view of police officers and increase their use of profanity after reading the book.

“We do not need anything in our libraries to increase racial tensions or turn our kids against police officers. There is enough of that going on in the news,” the person wrote. The book stayed.

“We should not want books in our school libraries for our minor children to read and be encouraged to be more sexually active, steal alcohol from parents’ cabinets, drink underage, do drugs, masturbate [or] curse like a sailor. This is what this book does,” one parent wrote in a request to remove More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera , which remains on the school shelves.

Valance says characters acting out in books provides starting points for adults to talk about how to process certain subject matter.

“Adults owe young people care, not control. We don’t believe that it’s effective or ethical to ban books in schools or homes. What adults can and should do is support young folks in making informed decisions about when they are ready to read challenging books and then how to think critically about what they encounter in those books, if they read them. Kids are safer when they have adults in their lives who they can trust to respond to difficult topics with openness and honesty rather than prohibitions and shame,” Valance says.

Ultimately, for some parents, it comes down to a desire to protect students from some of the world’s more disturbing realities, evident in a request to remove The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

“Children, including teenagers … are given parents to protect them from knowing evil, such as rape of a child, as portrayed graphically in this book, along with the portrayal (graphically) of suicide. We are giving our children a way to this darkness by exposing them to horrible darkness in these books!” wrote one parent.

That book stayed, too.

Sustaining community

A conversation with local candidate Amanda Edwards

Editor’s note: As part of Xpress’ monthlong Sustainability Series, we reached out to all candidates running for Buncombe County Board of Commissioners as well as Asheville City Council. These conversations will appear throughout our four April issues.

Democrat Amanda Edwards announced in October her bid for chair of the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners, where she currently serves as a commissioner for District 3. If elected in November, Edwards would become the first female chair. She is running against former Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan

A longtime resident of Buncombe County, Edwards is the executive director of A-B Tech Foundation, which raises funds for community college students.

The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners meets on the first and third Tuesday of each month. Commissioners vote on policies related to property taxes, zoning, education and more. The chair presides over these meetings.

Xpress: What misconceptions do community members have about the role of the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners chair?

Edwards: That question might most accurately be answered by our chair [Brownie Newman], who has served us since 2016, and by surveying the public about their perceptions and analyzing the responses to determine which interpretations are misconceptions. I’d be interested to know. In general, as a person living through this unprecedented time when people are feeling lonelier and more disconnected than ever — often due to technology replacing the human connections that would ordinarily nourish us — I’m noticing there’s very little information being shared during this so-called “information age.” We seem to have gotten in the habit of skipping the steps of researching authoritative sources, identifying root issues and engaging in thoughtful problem-solving, which requires listening and the will to learn and adjust your position based on new information.

What can local leaders do to promote thoughtful community dialogue about complex and difficult topics such as the opioid crisis, crime, housing and health care?

A thoughtful community dialogue is a respectful exchange of thoughts among people demonstrating a high regard for the dignity of all and demonstrating that they are seeking to listen, to learn and to share knowledge. That is the kind of dialogue through which we recognize common goals and collaboratively choose which ideas to put to use toward achieving our common goals.

I’m known for my inclusive, accountable, transparent leadership and fostering productive and compassionate dialogues. I draw on my lived experiences, my career in human services and education, my years in service as a commissioner, and my drive to deliver real solutions, efficiently and respectfully. As chair of the commission, my responsibility will be greater: It will be my responsibility to facilitate thoughtful communications among commissioners and between the public and the Board of Commissioners. I believe all leaders at all levels bear a similar responsibility in a democracy.

What can the city and county do to help small businesses thrive?

Residents tell me that they want employers to offer high-wage jobs with great health care and retirement packages, family leave policies and good work/life balance through paid time off. Neighbors who are business owners tell me that they struggle to pay a living wage, and many can’t budget for benefits. I want to be supportive of small businesses that employ local people and want their employees to thrive. The

county can ensure that businesses have the tools to bid on procurement contracts. Small businesses thrive when they have an available skilled workforce and when their operating costs are competitive. To that end, we can lobby the N.C. General Assembly to take strategic actions that will decrease the cost of living and increase access to higher wages and industry-specific education and higher education; provide high quality child care; fully fund our pre-K through college public schools; expand affordable broadband internet.

In your opinion, is it sustainable to operate two school districts? Why or why not?

The real question is: Why doesn’t the N.C. General Assembly ensure that all school systems are sustainable by adequately funding and supporting public schools in every community? It is within their power

and budget to fully fund all aspects of our public schools. Instead, the General Assembly consistently underfunds our schools. It hits hard here because our housing costs are rising faster than in other parts of the state. The General Assembly is going to make the decision on whether or not to combine the Buncombe County and Asheville City school districts. We have no say. In the meantime, the topic will be used to pit elected officials, teachers, students, parents, community members and administrators against each other. The General Assembly passed a law requiring the districts to hire a contractor to evaluate what a merger could look like. That report is due Feb. 15, 2025.

To learn more about Edwards, visit avl.mx/dii.

— Xpress Staff X

AMANDA EDWARDS

Under Investigation

BY GRACE VITAGLIONE CAROLINA PUBLIC PRESS

carolinapublicpress.org

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services has suspended admissions to Trails Carolina, a residential therapeutic camp in Transylvania County, after a 12-year-boy died there Feb. 3, according to a letter DHHS sent the camp. The state also removed all attendees from the camp’s care on Feb. 16 and is still investigating the incident.

The program also faces a lawsuit from a former attendee who describes being sexually assaulted at the camp, claiming management failed to take action. The camp settled a 2023 lawsuit in which another past camper made similar claims.

Local social services staff were on-site the day after the camper’s death, but camp management prevented them from accessing the camp until Feb. 6, according to DHHS.

An autopsy conducted Feb. 6 showed the death appeared not to be natural, but a determination of how it happened remains pending, according to a press release from the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office.

Another child in the camp’s care died in 2014 after trying to run away from the camp, according to the state health department’s investigation at that time.

Former attendees said it didn’t feel as if the camp was well-regulated. While state regulators are supposed to conduct yearly surveys and investigate complaints at programs like Trails Carolina, located in the mountains north of Lake Toxaway, DHHS said it doesn’t have enough staff to keep up.

Advocates also pointed to difficulties in adequately regulating the camps.

Meanwhile, some former attendees want the camp shut down.

LAWSUITS AGAINST CAROLINA TRAILS

Gertie Siegel thought she was just going to summer camp in North Carolina for a week, she said. Instead, her three months spent at Trails Carolina in 2016 felt like “a nightmare,” she said.

Former attendees describe ‘nightmare’ at local therapy camp

SETTLEMENT: Clara Mann attended Trails Carolina wilderness therapy camp in Transylvania County at age 14. Mann, who said the experience “had a terrible impact” on her, sued the camp in 2023, later reaching a settlement with Trails Carolina. Photo courtesy of Carolina Public Press

At the time, Siegel was 12 years old and struggling with depression. Her parents chose to send her to Trails Carolina in hopes she would receive help and therapy.

But Siegel told Carolina Public Press that she only spent around an hour with the therapist once a week. Much of her time was spent hiking, eating too-little amounts of food and sometimes drinking from broken water filters, the lawsuit said.

In her first week, Siegel said another attendee sexually assaulted her friend, but the alleged perpetrator was not separated from the others, according to the lawsuit.

The person went on to assault another attendee, who told Siegel and a staff member they were worried the assailant would target Siegel next, the lawsuit said. Siegel told numerous staff members that she was scared of the person who later assaulted her, according to the lawsuit.

Siegel said in the lawsuit that the staffers knew of the situation, but made her sleep next to that person, who then also sexually assaulted

her. When Siegel told her therapist what happened, the therapist said she was equally at fault and made Siegel “take accountability” for not saying “no.”

According to the lawsuit, the incident was never reported.

In an emailed statement, Trails Carolina said it is aware of Siegel’s lawsuit and will defend the program and staff against the allegations. “Trails is a place of healing for young people and their families and we are confident the facts will reveal the truth,” the statement said.

Another former attendee, Clara Mann , also filed a lawsuit against Trails Carolina in 2023 and settled. Like Siegel, Mann’s lawsuit said she was sexually assaulted by another attendee while she attended Trails at age 14. Mann was also sent to the camp to help her depression.

She recounted hiking several miles a day with 50-pound backpacks, drinking muddy water from streams and eating meals that often consisted of peanut butter on tortillas or cold soaked oats.

Mann told a staffer that she was assaulted, but she was then made to spend more time with the alleged perpetrator, according to the lawsuit. Her therapist asked her a list of “rude and blunt” questions about the experience, she said. Eventually, the alleged assailant was put in isolation. Mann’s lawsuit said the incident was never reported.

“The entire experience had a terrible impact on me,” she told CPP Mann’s lawyer, Jenkins Mann , is also her uncle. He said if Trails Carolina had reported the incident when it happened, it could have prevented further harm. He said that’s why following regulations matters.

The group’s capabilities determine the length of daily hikes, and the individual’s ability determines how heavy their backpack is, Trails Carolina said in an emailed statement. The meals Mann described are included because they have carbohydrates and protein, and the program follows the National Outdoor Leadership School’s

approach to nutrition, according to the Trails statement.

If water filters fail, the Trails statement said, each group has two backup methods for filtering water.

DEATHS AT CAMP

The 12-year-old boy who died at Trails Carolina arrived a day before the incident, according to a press release from the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies were called the next morning, and the child “appeared to be deceased for some time,” although camp staff members said they tried CPR, the press release said.

Investigators were granted search warrants for two Trails Carolina locations in the county, according to the sheriff’s office. The medical examiner’s report is still pending, as well as computer forensics on the devices seized under warrants, the office said in a March 19 email to CPP

According to a DHHS statement, all children were removed from the camp and put in temporary care with the local social services. Parents were also notified, the statement said.

DHHS “threatened and intimidated parents” by demanding they travel to pick up their children or the department would take them into custody, Trails Carolina said in an emailed statement to CPP

Locating alternative placements would normally take several weeks, the statement said, and “this negligent and reckless move by the State denied parents the opportunity to continue to care for their children in the appropriate manner.”

Trails also said the state made “reckless decisions based on false and misleading information” from the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office that was contrary to local social workers who said the camp was safe.

The state’s actions were an attempt to avoid fair due process because they likely didn’t have evidence to close the program through judicial review, the Trails statement said.

In an emailed response to CPP about these claims, a DHHS spokesperson said local social services and the health department jointly ensure patient safety in a licensed health care facility. Local DSS agents can remove children from a facility, while the state division of health service regulation can impose penalties, suspend admissions and suspend or revoke a facility’s license, the spokesperson wrote.

“While we cannot comment on the specifics of the investigation, (DHHS) determined that action needed to be taken to ensure the health and safety of the children,” the spokesperson wrote.

The recent death is not the first tied to Carolina Trails. A 17-yearold boy died a decade earlier after attempting to flee the camp, multiple news media reported at the time.

He was found in nearby Jackson County in a creek at the bottom of a gorge with clothes frozen to his body. X-rays revealed his left hip was fractured, consistent with a fall from a height. The cause of death was determined to be hypothermia secondary to the hip fracture.

A DHHS investigation at the time stated that Trails Carolina staffers subjected the client to “neglect and harm” by not following supervision protocol.

WHAT IS WILDERNESS THERAPY?

Trails Carolina’s website describes wilderness therapy as a program that combines residential treatment with “natural healing benefits of outdoor behavioral health care.”

Adolescents and teenagers go to wilderness therapy camps for reasons including mental health issues, risk behaviors and substance use disorders. Wilderness therapy has been reported as feeling like “abuse” to some partly because of a lack of oversight.

Meg Appelgate , founder of the nonprofit Unsilenced, experienced wilderness therapy as a teenager and now raises awareness about issues in the industry. She said red flags include restricting a child’s communication with family and removing a youth’s autonomy under the guise of therapy, as well as longer term stays.

While youth who are a danger to themselves or others may benefit from short-term crisis intervention, that sort of residential treatment is usually no longer than a month, Applegate said. Those patients are under medical supervision and can usually contact their parents, she said.

While at Trails, Siegel said her parents were told to write her a “harsh” letter detailing why they sent her to the camp. She had to read the letter aloud to other campers, and they gave her “feedback” on her behavior, such as snapping at her mother.

Looking back, Siegel said a lot of the behaviors she and other attendees were shamed for were

normal for teenagers, such as skipping school because of bullying.

In an emailed statement, Trails Carolina wrote that students are not required to read their parents’ lettersin front of the group, and the letters are not encouraged to be “harsh.”

“We ask parents to be clear and direct about the impact of a student’s actions and why they decided to have them come to Trails. Our goal is to remove any confusion or mystery about why they are here,” the Trails statement said.

Behaviors like self-harming and suicidal ideation aren’t “normal,” the statement said, and the program asks what needs participants are trying to meet through their behavior. Parents try many alternatives before wilderness therapy, the Trails statement said.

LOOKING AT THE SCIENCE

Experiencing nature and learning survival skills can be beneficial for everyone, but many of

the children sent to the camps have diverse, complex needs, said Corye Dunn , public policy director at Disability Rights NC. A standard treatment for everyone often doesn’t help, she said.

Kate Nooner , a psychology professor at UNC Wilmington, researches how trauma and abuse impact children. She said the “tough love” model that some wilderness therapy programs use isn’t backed by science. Providing structure and setting limits is different from forcing kids to live in harsh conditions, Nooner said.

Consistency and consent are vital in trauma informed care, she said. While involuntary commitment is a part of the treatment system, that’s typically only if a patient is suicidal and needs acute hospitalization, Nooner said. The patient’s stay in the facility is also usually shortterm, she said.

Patients should engage in evidence-based therapeutic activities for most of the day, Nooner said, rather than forcing them to do a physically challenging activity in a harsh environment.

Trails Carolina said in a statement it provides therapy from

Green thumbs & aspiring gardeners alike!

“While we cannot comment on the specifics of the investigation, (DHHS) determined that action needed to be taken to ensure the health and safety of the children,”

— DHHS Spokesperson

licensed professionals and that nature-based activities are therapeutic. Having a patient in therapy eight hours a day would be “exhausting and counterproductive,” the statement said, so this approach helps attendees learn to apply their new skills in a physical environment.

“Tough love” models are no longer used, the statement read. “That online search results and news media reports fail to accurately reflect the safe, outcome-proven treatment options available for children struggling with mental health is reckless and unfair,” the statement said.

The statement pointed to sources including a youth outcome questionnaire from the Outdoor Behavioral Council, in which parents said their kids improved after wilderness therapy.

The council accredits wilderness therapy programs and aims to create best practices in the industry. Trails Carolina is an accredited member.

“We believe Trails Carolina deserves an objective and thorough investigation of the tragic incident that occurred,” the council said in an email. “Trails has been cooperative, and they remain a valued member of the OBH Council at this time.”

Michael Glass , director of the Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare Center, wrote in an email to CPP that effective treatment for teens with behavioral health issues is deeply needed, and wilderness therapy can provide “effective and trauma informed care” if adhering to best practices.

The OBH Council supported creating the center and is one of its funders, although the website said the research is independent of funders.

Glass pointed to two randomized controlled treatment wilderness therapy studies in Canada as recent examples with statistical significance.

In response to whether it’s useful for wilderness therapy programs to isolate attendees from their families, Glass wrote: “Any program that removes youth from their caregivers without the primary focus of having them return when

they reach their treatment goals, is not following appropriate mental health practices.”

As to standardized treatment, Glass wrote that accredited wilderness therapy programs continuously assess a client’s treatment plan and can tailor them as appropriate, but practitioners also need to consider “logistical, safety, environmental, and group dynamics” factors.

INADEQUATE CAMP REGULATION

Laws governing wilderness therapy camps vary from state to state, Appelgate said.

In North Carolina, the programs are licensed as mental health treatment facilities, so state health inspectors are supposed to conduct annual surveys and investigate complaints, according to a DHHS spokesperson.

If they find deficiencies, the facility must submit a plan of correction to address it within 10 days. If the plan is accepted, surveyors are supposed to follow up to make sure the facility is in compliance again, the spokesperson wrote via email.

But there’s not enough staff to complete all these surveys on time, according to the spokesperson, partly because of staff vacancies and turnover. The mental health licensure section has 33 surveyors, while there are over 1,900 licensed residential and almost 1,600 nonresidential mental health facilities in the state, the spokesperson said.

The division’s workload has “increased dramatically” in the past few years, yet there’s insufficient staffing and uncompetitive salaries, the spokesperson wrote.

Gov. Roy Cooper included additional staff for the division in each of his last recommended budgets, but only in the past session did the General Assembly enact four new positions for mental health facilities, according to DHHS.

Surveyors have difficulty seeing the full scope of activities in these programs, Appelgate said, as much of the attendees’ time is spent far from the base facility. For example, it would be difficult to see when water filters break during long hikes, she said.

If participants are at base camp when the inspectors come, they likely would not see all the children, she said.

State health inspectors interview clients and counselors both at base camp and remote campssites, according to DHHS.

Another issue is that many wilderness programs don’t have staff with significant behavioral health training, Dunn said.

North Carolina laws require facilities to have a program director with a minimum of two years’ experience in child or adolescent services specific to the campers’ needs, as well as “educational preparation in administrative, education, social work, nursing, psychology or a related field.”

Facilities must also have at least two staff members on duty for every eight or fewer campers. Staff must be trained to “manage the children or adolescents individually and as a group,” and on alternatives to restrictive interventions. Only staff who have been trained in seclusion, physical restraint and isolation time-out may use those procedures.

Dunn said that level of experience “feels like a low bar.”

SOLUTIONS FOR CARE

The mental and behavioral health system for children and adolescents has gaps, which Dunn said can lead parents to wilderness therapy. That’s why building up the community-based care system is important, she said.

“Fewer people would feel that sense of desperation to try something that requires sending their child away with strangers,” she said.

Appelgate said she recommends professionally assessing children to discover the root cause of their risk behaviors, such as an underlying element of trauma.

Over the past few years, Appelgate said she’s seen a “steep decline” in wilderness therapy. Many programs that used to be long-term are shifting to shorter-term models to escape scrutiny, she said.

Mann said knowing children are still in these camps makes her “angry.”

“As long as these camps are up, America’s youth are going to be hurt,” she said.

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license

Sustaining community

A conversation with local candidate Van Duncan

Editor’s note: As part of Xpress ’ monthlong Sustainability Series, we reached out to all candidates running for Buncombe County Board of Commissioners as well as Asheville City Council. These conversations will appear throughout our four April issues.

In February, former Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan surpassed the 8,295 signatures required to get on this year’s ballot for chair of the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners. Duncan, a one-time Democrat who served as sheriff from 2006-18, is running as an unaffiliated candidate. He faces Commissioner Amanda Edwards .

The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners meets on the first and third Tuesday of each month. Commissioners vote on policies related to property taxes, zoning, education and more. The chair presides over these meetings.

Xpress : What misconceptions do community members have about the role of the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners chair?

Duncan: It will be the chair’s responsibility to outline not just their responsibility but the responsibilities of the commission as a whole. Clearly outlining the commission’s duties may help to avoid any misconceptions the public may have. There are certain issues facing Buncombe County that are not the direct responsibility of the commission but directly affect the well-being of the citizens of the county. One example would be Mission Hospital. Even though it is not a direct duty of the commission to regulate the hospital, that does not mean that the commissioners should not communicate with those regulating bodies to make sure that Mission offers the best patient care possible.

topics such as the opioid crisis, crime, housing and health care?

I believe that the most impactful thing a county commission can do to support all local businesses is to make sure efficient and effective infrastructure is in place. This would include water, sewer and trash pickup at a basic level, as well as core services such as fire, EMS and law enforcement. These not only impact public safety but can also affect the insurance rates that businesses pay. By identifying the best core services, the county would not only better support all our current businesses but would provide a pathway for sustainable business growth in our community.

In your opinion, is it sustainable to operate two school districts? Why or why not?

Merging the city and county school systems is a complicated issue, and that is why it has been debated for many years. While there would be cost savings by hav-

ing only one administration, there would be other hidden costs that would quickly negate these savings. It is my understanding that there is a school tax that requires Asheville City to spend more per student on average than the county currently spends. The county would have to bring the average cost per student up to the current level the city spends if the schools merged. The total cost of matching the per-student expenditure would be enormous. Buncombe County is currently using a consultant to evaluate the cost of a possible merger. After we thoroughly understand what the possible savings and cost would be from a merger, we could then make the best decisions around sustainability and success of all Buncombe County schools.

To learn more about Duncan, visit avl.mx/dik.

— Xpress Staff X

AROUND THE REGION

What can local leaders do to promote thoughtful community dialogue about complex and difficult

Do

Creating thoughtful, effective dialogue in a divided community can be a major task for any leader. My goal would be to address all these issues through transparent and open conversations around available options, what their cost and effectiveness would be and the best outcomes for the community and the individuals who are directly involved. All four issues evoke strong emotions within our community. Because these are very emotionally charged issues, elected leaders and county staff would have to be skilled as effective facilitators in drilling down on community concerns and possible solutions they may offer. Being able to create that environment where thoughtful dialogue can be freely expressed could then be applied to other issues that the county will face in the future. After these conversations, the leaders would have the responsibility to apply resources to solutions that are effective and reflect the communities’ concerns.

What can the city and county do to help small businesses thrive?

VAN DUNCAN

Council greenlights Ferry Road mixed-income development

Hundreds of units of mixed-income housing are coming to a Ferry Road property, resolving years of uncertainty over the use of the land.

During the March 26 meeting of Asheville City Council, members voted unanimously to approve conditional zoning that allows the property’s owner, Buncombe County, to implement its plans for a mixed-income community.

The 137 acres, adjacent to the French Broad River and Interstate 26 and southwest of the Asheville Outlet mall, is in city limits. The county’s $210 million plan includes building roughly 645 housing units, though the number of units could be as high as 935. At least 20% of the units will be designated affordable to those earning between 30% and 80% of the area median income (between $17,500 and $47,600 for an individual) for 20 years. All of the affordable units will accept Housing Choice vouchers. Seventy acres of forest will be conserved, providing a buffer for French Broad tributaries and protecting an ecologically significant wetland.

The property has changed ownership and planned uses several times. It was once owned by the City of Asheville but was traded to Henderson County as part of a water deal. Henderson County planned to develop a sewage treatment plant at the site, but those plans fell through after the City of Asheville and Henderson County couldn’t agree on terms.

Buncombe County bought the property in 2015 for $6.8 million in an effort to lure Oregon-based Deschutes Brewery. Deschutes later decided to build its brewery in Virginia, leaving the property in the hands of Buncombe County, which tried for years to sell

it. That led the county to work with the UNC School of Government’s Development Finance Initiative to develop new plans for the land.

“I’m just kind of glad that Deschutes fell apart, I guess,” said Council member Sage Turner. “We weren’t really glad when it happened, but I’m glad now.”

Buncombe County Commission Chair Brownie Newman was one

of several speakers representing the county and said the project was an opportunity to make significant progress on both housing and conservation.

“First, approval of the project will result in the preservation of a significant forested natural area along the banks of the French Broad River so that it can be accessed and enjoyed in perpetuity by the present and future generations,” Newman explained.

“Second, approval will allow one of the most significant developments focused on affordable housing proposed in Asheville and Buncombe County in recent years to move forward.”

In other news

Council unanimously approved increases in the fiscal year 2024-25 fees and charges for city services, including a $1 increase to on-street parking meter fees from $1.50 per hour to $2.50 per hour starting Monday, July 1. Metered parking will remain free after 6 p.m. and all day on Sunday.

Parking for city parking garages will be capped at $15 per day, down from $20. Garage parking will remain free for those who park for less than one hour.

Other approved fee increases include $12 more per year for solid waste services; $5.64 more for stormwater management; and $2.34 more for water services, for a total of about $20 more per year on average per property owner.

— Brooke Randle X

CHANGING HANDS: Buncombe County bought the property in 2015 for $6.8 million in an effort to lure Oregon-based Deschutes Brewery, but that effort failed. Rendering courtesy of the City of Asheville

County begins 3-month budget approval process

As economic indicators show slowing growth in segments of the local economy, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners began the annual task of prioritizing next year’s spending at the first of several work sessions March 26.

County staff reported sales tax revenue growth continues to slow from a peak in 2022 and occupancy tax collections are down 3% yearto-date compared with last year.

That, along with expiring funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, has the county projecting essentially a no-growth budget. The county expects to have only $200,000 more to spend in a $412.5 million budget, despite increasing property values.

Commissioners voted last year to increase the tax rate by 1 cent to 49.8 cents per $100 of property tax value to help pay for raises for local teachers.

Assuming the same tax rate, staff is projecting a 3.5% bump in tax revenue from a property tax base worth $52.9 billion. Property taxes comprise 64% of the county’s budget.

Meanwhile, sales tax revenues are projected to come in about 7% less what was budgeted for last June, leading to a more modest overall projection in 2024-25, which starts July 1.

On the expenditures side of the ledger, staff is requesting 45 new positions across the county. Employees will receive a 4.89% cost of living boost in 2025, based on the county’s formula comparing the last two years’ consumer price index.

Overall, the county is projected to spend 5.4% more in 2024-25 than the current year’s projections. The county’s largest expense, education, was not discussed at the March 26 meet-

NO GROWTH: Due to slower-than-normal sales tax revenue growth and expiring federal COVID relief funds, Buncombe County budget staff project next year’s revenue to be about the same as last year, despite increasing property values. Screenshot courtesy of Buncombe County

ing, as a separate meeting focused on education and fire district funding is scheduled for May 9. Education spending is projected to remain flat in this early version of the budget.

By state law, County Manager Avril Pinder must present a balanced budget when she recommends adoption at the board’s May 21 regular meeting. If expenditures exceed revenues at that time, the county will have to use reserves to cover the difference, said Budget Director John Hudson.

County staff earned praise from commissioners for its proposal to change how the county pays for large capital projects, including critical technology upgrades, major renovations and infrastructure maintenance.

Staff aims to fund more of its capital projects using cash on hand, rather than relying on debt service, according to a staff presentation. Finance Director Melissa Moore said the goal is to work toward a 70/30 split for debt service to cash, which may take a few years to achieve. As proposed, the fiscal year 2024-25 budget pays for 93% of capital projects with debt service, Moore said.

Staff also proposed incorporating the county’s comprehensive plan into its long-term financial planning. Currently, the county looks five years out in its capital improvement planning, but is looking to extend that to a seven-year plan, Hudson said.

“In the past, we’ve operated too much day to day. We need a plan. This is what taxpayers want to see,” said Commissioner Al Whitesides “You’ve created a road map for where we want to go. That’s what I want to see as a taxpayer, not even as just a commissioner.”

The next budget work session is 9 a.m. Tuesday, April 23, at 200 College St. A balanced budget will be presented to commissioners May 21, with a public hearing on the draft budget June 4. Commissioners are scheduled to adopt the budget at their regular meeting June 18.

— Greg Parlier X

Key takeaways from Buncombe’s ‘first pass’ budget

Commissioners gave approval to move forward with two new programs next fiscal year:

• $180,000 for a beautification program to supplement litter pickups on roads and highways.

• $75,000 for a code enforcement pilot program to provide repairs to properties at risk of condemnation. Permits and inspections director Bob Haynes said the program aims to bring services to people who, if condemned, may become homeless.

Information Technology and Capital funding projects currently in the fiscal year 2024-25 budget:

• $350,000 to revamp the county website. The new website would empower each county department to update its section of the website, rather than relying on a team of webmasters to handle everything, thus clearing a monthslong bottleneck currently in place, said Lillian Govus, communication and public engagement director.

• About $800,000 for design of a local Emergency Medical Services

base in West Asheville. Buncombe County is working with Asheville City Schools to determine the feasibility of using the former Asheville Primary School campus on Haywood Road for this base.

• About $1.8 million for land and design of a regional EMS base in the southern part of Buncombe County.

• $2.3 million for the first phase of a shelter resiliency generator project. The county plans to establish emergency shelters at four schools around the county with generator backup. The entire cost of the

project will cost $4.8 million, said Budget Director John Hudson

• $1.2 million for renovations at the county administration building at 200 College St.

• $2.5 million for renovation and repair of roofing and parking decks around the county.

• $10 million to replace the county’s public safety information technology system. The new system will connect all public safety entities in the county.

• $4.1 million for more solar panels on county buildings and schools. X

Panel promotes collaboration for missing middle housing reform

“I’m here with you tonight, talking about missing middle housing instead of being with my 3 1/2-year-old son,” said Geoffrey Barton, president and CEO of Asheville-based nonprofit Mountain Housing Opportunities.

“And I think that’s an expression of how important this conversation is.”

On March 28, Barton was one of five panelists who discussed how increasing middle housing could positively impact a number of different social and environmental issues in Asheville. The event was held inside A-B Tech’s Ferguson Auditorium.

MYTHS ABOUT DENSITY

The forum follows the November release of a more than 150-page report from Opticos Design, a Californiabased company. The report found that Asheville’s existing zoning ordinances and other regulations encourage the construction of single-family housing over other types of housing, such as townhomes, duplexes and triplexes.

The report also recommended a number of zoning and policy changes that aim to promote middle housing, such as reducing parking requirements, changing or removing minimum lot size standards and allowing the construction of accessory dwelling units in more areas of the city.

Tonya Jameson, a consultant with the Charlotte-based economic mobility nonprofit Leading on Opportunity, moderated the Thursday evening event. Each of the forum’s five speakers addressed the issue through a unique lens: the historical context of zoning; environmental consequences of single-family housing; housing’s impact on local educators and students; older adults and the desire to age in place; and myths about density and multifamily housing and strategies for change.

Andrew Paul, who teaches history at A-B Tech and is the co-founder of the housing nonprofit Asheville for All, spoke about the impact of former segregation laws on today’s modern zoning ordinances.

“If you make [multifamily housing] illegal to build in the neighborhoods you want to protect … you can keep poor people out. If you’re segregated by class, you can at least segregate by race somewhat as well,” Paul asserted. “There is no mention of race in the zoning code itself. But I think we can

say that this national trend of exclusion, of segregation, created norms and models, and those ideas are certainly with us today.”

Susan Bean, who serves as the housing and transportation director of regional environmental nonprofit MountainTrue, noted that transportation is the single largest contributor to human-made greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. She suggested that increasing housing density within city centers rather than building out could encourage residents to drive less. She also explained that larger homes require more energy for heating and cooling, which accounts for roughly 50% of all energy use. Multifamily homes are naturally more efficient due to size and shared interior walls.

Shanna Peele, a special education teacher and president of the Buncombe County Association of Educators, explained the lack of affordable housing perpetuates a cycle of instability for students and their families, which can take a toll on academic performance and emotional well-being. She also noted how teachers and school staff members struggle to afford housing.

“Imagine, for a moment, being a teacher who spends hours each day commuting to and from work because affordable housing is out of reach. Picture the stress and financial strain of trying to make ends meet on a meager salary while grappling with the exorbitant cost of housing,” Peele said. “It’s a

tough reality that far too many of our educators face each day.”

Making the case that middle housing not only helps younger people who are seeking affordable options, Rebecca Chaplin, who works for AARP North Carolina Mountain Region, said that older adults often prefer smaller and more affordable homes as they age. She noted that 42% of people 50 or older live within the 28801 ZIP code and that that number is expected to grow. Increasing the availability of housing types, such as accessory dwellings, allows parents and grandparents to reside near family members, which contributes to better health outcomes for both older and younger generations.

Meanwhile, Barton reflected on the importance of including a wide range of perspectives and expertise when it comes to creating sustainable zoning and housing policies.

“We’re really excited to be part of this conversation with environmental organizations, educators and AARP just to show that there’s a broad coalition and there’s broad interests … in bringing more housing to our community,” Barton said. “It’s really time that we diversify our housing options in the community, and missing middle housing reforms in our zoning ordinance are a great mechanism to do just that.”

UPCOMING MEETINGS

About 50 people attended the event. Once the speakers finished their

presentations, they took questions from the audience and offered next steps for the missing middle housing recommendations.

One commenter asked if additional middle housing would directly increase the number of affordable homes available within the city. While the two types of housing share many of the same goals, speaker Paul maintained that strategies for creating more middle housing are different from a city policy perspective.

“This is one of the things that’s most confusing. Because when we hear the word affordable, everyone has a different definition of what it means,” Paul explained. “They are two different programs: ones that could work together symbiotically [on] things that we need. But missing middle reform is really about a particular set of policies that [the city] can pose without having to spend any money [on affordable housing subsidies].”

A presentation on the proposed zoning changes will be made at the Wednesday, April 3, meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission, starting at 5 p.m. Members of Asheville City Council will review phase one of proposed middle housing reform during their regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, May 14.

— Brooke Randle

HOUSING STRATEGIES: Five panelists spoke at A-B Tech’s Ferguson Auditorium March 28 about how increasing middle housing could positively impact a number of different social and environmental issues in Asheville. Photo by Brooke Randle

McCormick Field at 100

10 memorable moments at the historic stadium

BY JUSTIN M c GUIRE

In May 1923, when Asheville officials approved the construction of a municipal athletic field near Biltmore Avenue, they weren’t thinking about minor league baseball. In fact, the city didn’t even have a team.

The main use of McCormick Field, everyone agreed, would be for Asheville High School athletics.

“This board has gone on record and is most heartily in favor of an athletic field to aid in the physical development and enjoyment of the schoolchildren of Asheville,” city commissioners stated in a resolution, according to accounts in the Asheville Citizen-Times . “Today Asheville is the only city in North Carolina without a field where the schools may engage in athletic sports.”

But by the time the stadium celebrated its official opening in April 1924 — 100 years ago this week — its main tenant was the Asheville Skylanders, a South Atlantic League baseball team enticed to the city by the brand-new ballpark. A year later, the team became the Tourists.

Over the past century, McCormick Field has served as the home turf for a succession of baseball teams, ranging from various versions of the Tourists to the Asheville Orioles. Additionally, it hosted allBlack semipro teams, notably the pennant-winning Asheville Blues, in the days when Major League Baseball and its affiliated minor leagues were all white.

But while baseball has been the lifeblood of McCormick Field, the stadium often lived up to Asheville officials’ original vision of a place that would provide “enjoyment and pleasure” to citizens and visitors alike. In the 1930s, it was the stomping ground for Asheville’s long-running Mountain Dance and Folk Festival. The powerhouse Asheville High School Maroons football team of the early 1940s used a devastating running game to demolish opponents on the field.

Over the years, the ballpark witnessed bone-rattling NASCAR races, rocked out to concerts and rolled out the red carpet for movie stars and a president. Through it

all, it has sustained itself as one of Asheville’s most iconic gathering places.

“The history there is just unbelievable,” says ESPN ’s Ryan McGee , author of Welcome to the Circus of Baseball: A Story of the Perfect Summer at the Perfect Ballpark at the Perfect Time , which details his 1994 internship with the Tourists. “And it’s not just white dudes playing baseball.”

In honor of the 100th anniversary of Asheville’s venerable ballpark (it’s the third-oldest stadium in Minor League Baseball), Xpress takes a look at 10 of its more memorable moments.

APRIL 3, 1924: TY COBB HOMERS

Ty Cobb was 37 and nearing the end of his legendary baseball career when he stepped into the McCormick Field batter’s box as

the player-manager of the Detroit Tigers. Just a few months earlier, in September 1923, the Georgia Peach had become baseball’s alltime hit leader, a record that stood until 1985.

The Tigers were in town to officially christen the new stadium in an exhibition game against the Skylanders, and locals buzzed with anticipation at the prospect of hosting one of the nation’s premier athletes. “The greatest ball player that ever lived,” proclaimed the Asheville Times that day. Advertisements in the paper highlighted the opportunity for locals to witness a legend in action.

Cobb didn’t disappoint the crowd of 3,199, launching a home run and scoring two runs as his team fell to Asheville, 17-14. Cobb even pitched the final inning of the slugfest.

Numerous future Hall of Famers, from Babe Ruth to the newly elected Todd Helton , have seen action

at McCormick Field over the last 100 years. But Cobb was the first.

SEPT. 10, 1936: FDR SPEAKS

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt embarked on a tour of Western North Carolina during his first reelection campaign. His itinerary included stops in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cherokee, Waynesville, Canton and Candler before he was greeted by thousands of excited onlookers in Asheville on Sept. 9, 1936.

The following morning, the president spoke from his automobile to a crowd of about 20,000 at McCormick Field. During the brief address, which was heard by thousands more via radio station WWNC and three affiliates, FDR praised the region’s natural beauty, according to an account in The Asheville Citizen : “I am carrying out a prom-

HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE: McCormick Field, home of the Asheville Tourists, celebrates its 100th anniversary this season. Photo by Alyssa Quirk/ Asheville Tourists

ise to myself made nearly 30 years ago, because it was nearly 30 years ago that I was last in Asheville, and in those days I said to myself I wanted to come back — I wanted to see all this marvelous country. ... I am quite sure that millions of other Americans are going to come down here … and spend more time.”

FDR’s words proved a hit with local tourism boosters. “The speech that President Roosevelt made at McCormick field Thursday morning was one of the finest pieces of travel appeal this section could hope for,” the Chamber of Commerce proclaimed in the Sept. 12, 1936, edition of the newspaper.

NOV. 14, 1942: CHARLIE JUSTICE’S EPIC RUN

“Never before and never since has Asheville, nor indeed the state of North Carolina, seen a high school football team like the 1942 Asheville High Maroons,” longtime Citizen-Times sportswriter and columnist Bob Terrell wrote in 2008.

Playing its home games at McCormick Field — the gridiron ran from the third base line to right field — Asheville went 9-0 that season, racking up victories by such preposterous scores as 94-0, 67-0 and 60-0. The team outscored its opponent 441-6 on the season. Leading the way was Charlie Justice, who would go on to star

at UNC Chapel Hill and play in the NFL under the nickname “Choo Choo” Justice. The sensational tailback gained 2,385 yards on 128 runs that year.

Before a capacity crowd of 4,500 screaming fans on Nov. 14, 1942, Justice scored three touchdowns en route to a 27-0 victory over Knoxville (Tenn.) High. One play in particular became legend.

After Knoxville lost the ball on downs just 1 foot short of its goal line, the Maroons set up in punt formation. But Justice received the snap and, rather than punt, galloped 99 2/3 yards for a touchdown without a touch from the opposition. Glancing over his shoulder as he reached the goal line, he noticed not a single Knoxville player standing upright, Terrell writes.

“He was provided with excellent blocking on the first part of the journey, but he eluded a pair of one would-be tacklers around midfield with some of the niftiest hip-shaking the customers could hope for,” Paul Jones of the Citizen-Times wrote the next day.

APRIL 8, 1948: J

ACKIE ROBINSON TAKES THE FIELD

An estimated crowd of 5,500 braved the rain to see the Tourists

PIONEER PLAYERS: Asheville’s minor league baseball team took on the Detroit Tigers in the first official game at McCormick Field in 1924. The stadium’s wooden grandstand is visible in the background. Photo courtesy of Buncombe County Special Collections, Pack Memorial Library

host the Brooklyn Dodgers in a preseason exhibition game on April 8, 1948. The defending National League champion Dodgers featured a star-studded lineup that included future Hall of Famers Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges. But much of the attention was focused on Brooklyn’s second baseman.

“Jackie Robinson, the first Negro ever to play in the major leagues, received a resplendent ovation from the left field bleachers [the area reserved for Black patrons],” the Asheville Citizen reported. “The fact that he flied out to deep left field in his first appearance made little difference to the approximately 2,000 Negro fans attending. He showed his blinding speed in his second time up but Russ Rose, Asheville shortstop, came up with a neat bare-hand catch and nipped him before he could reach the initial sack.”

C.L. Moore, owner and manager of the Asheville Blues, was in charge of entertaining the Dodgers’ small contingent of African Americans, which included Robinson and catcher Roy Campanella. The Blues, who also called McCormick Field home, had been champions of the Negro Southern League the previous two years.

“Moore ... assures us the boys will long remember their visit to Asheville,” Asheville Citizen columnist Red Miller wrote.

STAYING ON TRACK: From 1956-58, McCormick Field Raceway hosted weekly stock car races, a pair of NASCAR Convertible Series races and one Grand National race. Photo courtesy of Buncombe County Special Collections, Pack Memorial Library

JULY 12, 1958: NASCAR’S LEE PETTY CRASHES

From 1956-58, Asheville was without a professional baseball team, ushering in one of the most colorful eras in McCormick Field’s history. Jim Lowe of North Wilkesboro leased the stadium from the city and shoehorned a quarter-mile oval

track around the tight confines of the baseball diamond. For three years, McCormick Field Raceway hosted weekly stock car races as well as two races in the NASCAR Convertible Series.

Sportswriter Terrell dubbed races at the track “demolition derbies in the round.” Turns out having 25 cars compete on a converted baseball field, with the start/finish line at the hairpin “home plate corner,” made for some chaotic racing.

“Fans were often attracted to the races at the baseball park by the possibility of one or more cars ending up in the first base dugout, a not unusual occurrence,” wrote author Dan Pierce in Mountain Thunder: Stock Car Racing in Buncombe County 1949-1999 .

That’s exactly what happened on July 12, 1958, the only time McCormick Field hosted a race in NASCAR’s top series (then called the Grand National, now known as the NASCAR Cup Series). During a heat race that day, legendary driver Lee Petty (father of Richard Petty) “came speeding toward home plate, slipped wildly and went crashing into the first-base dugout,” according to an account from writer Tom Higgins, who was covering the race.

Miraculously, Petty’s team repaired his car in time for him to finish fourth in the main event later that day.

“If you go up in the woods, on the hillside down the left field line, there’s still chunks of the racetrack up there,” says ESPN ’s McGee.

1972: CAL RIPKEN JR.’S CLOSE CALL

Cal Ripken Jr. played in 2,632 straight games for the Baltimore Orioles from 1982-98, establishing himself as baseball’s all-time Iron Man. But in the summer of 1972, he was an 11-year-old batboy spending lots of time at McCormick Field because his father was manager of the Asheville Orioles.

Before a game that season (the exact date is unknown) Ripken was playing catch with Asheville Orioles player Doug DeCinces when a teenager in a nearby house broke into his parents’ gun closet and fired several shots into the air from his porch, according to Mark McCarter , author of Never a Bad Game: Fifty Years of the Southern League

“We’re halfway up the first baseline and I threw a ball and I heard this pop,” DeCinces told McCarter. “All of a sudden there was a whiz and the ground exploded next to me, maybe 10 feet away. I could hear the bullet go by. I was in the Air National Guard and had gone through boot camp and everything registered with me. Like ‘Holy crap, that was a rifle shot.’ And

just as that happened I turned and I grabbed Cal on his uniform right at his neck and started to run off the field. I hear another bang and this time the bullet went about four feet in front of me. It was so close. I don’t think Cal Junior ever touched the ground. I went flying into the dugout.”

Ten years later, Ripken replaced DeCinces as starting third baseman for the Baltimore Orioles.

“I didn’t necessarily think I was at risk, but Doug grabbed me and put me in the dugout,” Ripken told The Winston-Salem Journal . “Then I paid him back by taking his job.”

OCT. 5, 1987: CRASH DAVIS COMES TO TOWN

Most of the action in the acclaimed 1988 baseball movie Bull Durham takes place in, well, Durham. But one of the final scenes of the flick shows veteran catcher Crash Davis, played by Kevin Costner , breaking the fictional minor league home run record at McCormick Field as a member of the Tourists.

Director Ron Shelton picked McCormick Field “because of its look and because [Shelton] saw the park and fell in love with it,” co-producer Mark Burg told the Asheville Citizen-Times in 1987. The stadium still had its original wooden grandstand from 1924 at the time.

A 40-man crew spent about six hours at the ballpark shooting the scene, and about 75 locals, including Citizen-Times reporter and later Xpress writer Tony Kiss , were on hand to portray fans and vendors. Shelton wanted members of the baseball teams at UNC Asheville and Western Carolina to act as players in the scene, but NCAA rules at the time forbade such an arrangement.

One more note: Shelton says he conceived of one of the movie’s most famous scenes — the “church of baseball” speech delivered by Susan Sarandon ’s character — while driving from Durham to Asheville.

“I went right by Black Mountain College, where all these great artists had once taught,” Shelton told Literary Hub in 2022. “And I dictated that first quatrain: ‘I believe in the church of baseball. I’ve worshiped all the major religions, as well as the minor ones.

…’ About an hour later, I wrote another couple paragraphs. By the time I got to Asheville, I had that in my briefcase.”

ASHEVILLE GOES HOLLYWOOD:

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Bull Durham in 2018, the Tourists gave away a Crash Davis bobblehead. Photo by Justin McGuire

APRIL 17, 1992: A WHOLE NEW BALLPARK

Following the 1991 baseball season, Buncombe County spent $3 million to tear down McCormick Field’s rotting wooden grandstand, along with the rest of the ballpark, and replace it on the same site with a brick-framed concrete structure. Among the features of the new stadium were more comfortable and

less obstructed seats, expanded concession areas, brighter lighting, a large plaza area, nine 22-foot arches over the plaza walkway and a cantilevered roof covering the middle portion of the grandstand.

On April 17, 1992, more than 4,000 fans showed up on a rainy night to check out the changes. An additional 2,000 or so people were turned away.

“A bluegrass band playing atop the visitors dugout helped create a festive pregame party atmosphere,” the Citizen-Times reported the next day. “The hot dogs were hot, the beer was cold, and the familiar long lines at the improved concession stands formed early.”

SEPT. 30, 2006: INDIGO GIRLS PERFORM

The odd bluegrass band aside, McCormick Field had not seen much in the way of live music since the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival left the venue in the 1940s. That changed on Sept. 30, 2006, when about 4,000 people came out to see a performance by Grammy Awardwinning duo The Indigo Girls.

The concert marked the first time the stadium hosted a live music concert, the Citizen-Times reported.

“The Indigo Girls show is the first of what we hope will be many concert events, trade show, festivals and local entertainment,” Mike Bauer told the newspaper at the

time. Bauer was an official with Palace Sports & Entertainment, which owned the Tourists.

JUNE 22, 2014: CONCERT DRAWS RECORD CROWD

Despite such promises in 2006, concerts did not become a regular attraction at McCormick Field. A notable exception occurred on June 22, 2014, when the unlikely pairing of country duo Florida Georgia Line and rapper Nelly drew 12,000 fans to the venue. It was reportedly the largest ticketed crowd for a concert in Asheville history (and the second-largest ticketed event of any kind, according to an account in the Citizen-Times ).

The stadium squeezed that many people in by allowing 8,500 or so fans on the field, with the rest sitting in the grandstand seats.

“The crowd at McCormick Field had ample opportunities to shake its tail feathers — an unprecedented amount of which were (barely) covered in jorts and framed by cowboy boots,” Xpress reporter Jake Frankel wrote in a review of the show. “It was McCormick Field’s first experiment in hosting a major concert event, and it seemed to go off without any major disasters.”

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

MAKING MUSIC: More than 12,000 fans came together to see Nelly and Florida Georgia Line perform at McCormick Field in 2014. Photo by Jake Frankel

Ballot Categories

In 2024, Xpress is marking its 30th year of reporting on all things local. Help us celebrate by voting in the Best of WNC poll. What better way to recognize all the wonderful people, businesses and attractions that make our region such a special place to live!

Don’t get your party hats and streamers out just yet! Before we toast to 30 years, we’ve all got to do our part and vote. Each year, thousands of residents and visitors alike partake in our annual Best of WNC survey to evaluate what stands out and shines in this wonderful place — Western North Carolina.

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Celebrate your local passions and knowledge today. We’ve got hundreds of topics and issues to consider, but don’t worry — you can skip categories that you’re either unfamiliar with or uninterested in. Of course, we do ask that all participants complete at least 30 questions.

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• Green/SustainabilityFriendly Restaurant

• New Restaurant (Opened in the Last 12 Months)

• Restaurant Still Needed in Asheville

Restaurant Type

• Restaurant With a View

• People-Watching Restaurant

• Outdoor Dining

• Romantic Dining

• Fine Dining/Upscale

• Kid-Friendly Restaurant

• Diner/Homestyle

• Late-Night Eats

• Food Truck

• Catering Company

Neighborhoods

• Restaurant in Downtown (including South Slope)

• Restaurant in the River Arts District

• Restaurant in West Asheville

• Restaurant in South Asheville

• Restaurant in East Asheville

• Restaurant in North Asheville

Once you’ve completed your vote, be sure to keep an eye out for this year’s winners. We’ll announce them in August. We’ll also be hosting our annual Best of WNC party then as well. That is when the celebrations truly begins!

Restaurant Offerings

• Breakfast

• Brunch

• Lunch

• Quick Meal

• Restaurant Wine Selection

• Restaurant Cocktail Selection

• Pub Grub

• Takeout

• Local Meal Delivery Service

• Best Value

• Best Service

• Barbecue

• Ribs

• Burger

• Veggie Burger

• Biscuits

• Wings

• French Fries

• Fried Chicken

• Hot Bar/Buffet

• Hot Dogs

• Pasta

• Pizza

• Sub Shop

• Sandwich Shop

• Taco

• Burrito

• Sushi

• Ramen

• Salad

• Seafood

• Special Diet Options (Gluten-Free, LactoseFree, etc.)

• Vegan

• Vegetarian

• Locally Made CBD Treats

• Local-Food Emphasis

• Healthiest Food Cuisine

• French

• Italian

• Greek

• Middle Eastern

• Mexican

• Latin American

• Japanese

• Thai

• Indian

• Chinese

• Southern

• Restaurant Comfort Food Desserts & Sweets

• Desserts

• Ice Cream

• Frozen Treats Other Than Ice Cream

• Chocolate Bakeries

• Doughnuts

* Cookies

• Bakery (Sweets/Desserts)

• Bakery (Bread)

• Bagels

Miscellaneous

• Fresh Meat Seller

• Fresh Fish Seller

• Cheesemaker/Cheese Dairy

• Local Food Product

• Chef

• Pastry Chef

* Server

• Local Food Festival or Event

• Nonprofit Helping With Hunger Issues

Farm, Yard & Garden

• Tailgate/Farmers Market

• Roadside Farm Stand

• Farm to Visit

• Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Farm

• Orchard

• Community Garden

• Garden Supply Store

• Mulch Supplier

• Tree Service

• Nursery (Trees, Shrubs)

• Landscaping Service (Other Than Lawn Care)

• Lawn/Yard Care

• Nonprofit Supporting Farms/Farmland Preservation

Health & Wellness

• Physician (General Practice)

• Physician (Specialist)

• Pediatrician

• Family Medical Practice

• Women’s Health Center

• Maternity Care/Service

• Therapist or Counseling Center

• Psychologist or Psychiatrist

• Health & WellnessFocused Nonprofit

• Hospital

• Urgent Care/Walk-In Clinic

* Emergency Room

• Place to Get Medical Care

When Under- or Uninsured

* Membership Health Care Provider

• Place to Center Yourself

• Dental Practice

• Dentist

* Nutritionist

• Eye Care Specialist/Service

• Assisted-Living Community

• Hospice

• Mortuary/Funeral Services

Alternative

• Holistic Medical Practice

• Chiropractor

• Acupuncturist

• Acupuncture Clinic

Physical Therapy

• Physical Therapist

• Massage Therapist

• Physical Therapy Clinic

Fitness

• Gym or Place to Work Out

• Fitness Studio With Classes

• Physical Trainer

• Yoga Teacher

• Yoga Studio

• Martial Arts Studio

Stores

• Pharmacy/Drugstore

• Place to Buy Supplements, Vitamins & Herbs

• Place to Buy CBD Products

Kids

Schools & Classes

• School (Precollege)

• After-school Program

• Preschool

• Child Care or Day Care Service

• Art Education Program

• Music Teacher

Places

• Daytrip for Kids

• Kid-Friendly Hike

• Overnight Camp

• Day Camp

• Place for Indoor Fun

• Place for Outdoor Fun

• Playground

• Museum

• Place for Birthday Parties

• Bakery for Birthday Cakes

• Place to Make Art

• Parents Night Out Program

Skill-Building

• Dance Studio

• Gymnastics Program

• Martial Arts Program

• Team-Sports Program

Shopping

• Kids Clothes

• Toy Store

Medical

• Pediatric PracticeGeneral Medicine

• Pediatric Practice - Dentistry

• Orthodontist

Media

• Local Radio Station (commercial)

• Local Radio Station (noncommercial)

• Local Radio Personality/ Announcer

• Local TV Personality/ Announcer

• Local Print Publication Other Than Xpress

• Local Print Reporter

• Local News Source

• Local Events Information Source

• Local Social Media Page to Follow for Local News, Events and Local Happenings

• Favorite Feature in Xpress

• Local News Website

• Local Podcast

• Most Important Local News Story (in the Last 12 Months)

• Most Overreported Story (in the Last 12 Months)

• Most Underreported Story (in the Last 12 Months)

Outdoors

Hiking

• Backpacking Trail/ Overnight Hike

• Day Hike Trail

• Easy Hike Trail (For Kids, Elders, Limited Mobility)

• Hiking Club or Group

• Picnic Spot

• Waterfall

• Walk - In or Near Asheville

Biking

• Mountain Bike Trail

Running

• Running Event/Race - Road or Trail

Camping

• Camping Spot

Water & Rivers

• Place to Relax on the Water

• Rafting Company

• Swimming Hole

Other

• Canopy Tour/Zip Line

• Place to Roller Skate or Skateboard

• Ski Resort

• Outdoor Gear and Apparel Shop

• Environmental or Conservation Nonprofit

When does voting start and end?

Voting officially begins April 1 and continues through April 30.

mountainx.com/bestofwnc

Personal Services

Cosmetic

• Hair Salon

• Barbershop

• Hairstylist

* Barber

* Eyebrow Shaping

• Esthetician

• Nail Salon

• Nail Technician

Tattoo & Piercing

• Piercing Studio

• Tattoo Parlor/Studio

• Tattoo Artist

Other

• Spa

• Local Body-Products Maker

Pets

Medical

• Veterinary Services

• Veterinarian

• Alternative Pet Health Care Provider

Services

• Animal Shelter/Rescue Organization

• Grooming Service

• Trainer/Training Center

• Pet Kennel

• Pet Day Care Facility

• Pet Sitting/Dog Walking Service

Places & Shops

• Outdoor Place to Take Your Pet

• Pet Supply Store

• Pet-Friendly Bar or Brewery

• Pet-Friendly Restaurant

Professional & Home Services

Financial

• Accountant/CPA Firm

• Place to Have Your Taxes Prepared

• Financial Advisor

Law

• Law Firm

* Estate Planning Attorney

• Family Law Attorney

• Real Estate Attorney

In how many categories must I vote in order for my ballot to be counted?

Each ballot must have votes for at least 30 categories to be counted.

Why do voters have to vote for 30 categories?

We want meaningful results from people who are invested in and knowledgeable about the Asheville/ WNC area.

Home

• Real Estate Agent

• Real Estate Company

• Insurance Agent

General

• Web Development Firm

• Computer Repair

• Car Repair

• Place To Get Your Oil Changed

• Bike Repair

• Construction Firm (Design and/or Build)

• Green Builder

• Alternative Energy Sales and Installation

• Plumbing Company

• Electrical/Electrician Company

• Heating/Cooling Company

• Home Inspection Service

• Pest Control Service

• Moving Company

• House Painters

• Roofing Company

• Flooring, Carpet or Tile Company

* Home Restoration/ Improvement/Renovation

• Junk Removal Service

• Handyperson

• Equipment Rental Services

• Cellphone Service Provider for the WNC Mountains

• Print Shop

• Home Cleaning Service

• Dry Cleaner

Shopping

Fashion

• Clothing: Used or Vintage (for-profit store)

• Clothing: Used or Vintage (nonprofit store)

• Asheville-Style Clothes

• Shoe Store

• Jewelry Store

• Clothing: Dress-Up/Stylin’ Food

• All-Round Grocery Store

• Budget-Friendly Grocery Store

• Health Food Store

• International/Specialty Food Store

• Convenience/Corner Store

• Local Grocery Delivery or Curbside Pickup

Home

• New Furniture Store

• Used Furniture Store (for-profit store)

• Used Furniture Store (nonprofit store)

• Bed and Mattress Store

• Picture Framer

• Antique Store

• Refurbished Or Upcycled Goods

General &

Miscellaneous

• Store That Best Represents the Spirit of Asheville

• Mall-Style Market

• Pawn Shop

• Florist/Plant Shop

• Bookstore - New

• Bookstore - Used

• Comics & Collectibles Store

• Game Store

• Record/CD Store

• Musical Instrument Store

• Gift Shop

• Head Shop

• Adult Toys, Lingerie & Naughty Things Store

• Bike Shop

• Automobile Tire Store

• Auto Dealer - New and/or Used

Uniquely Asheville

• Neighborhood

• Street for a Stroll

• Local Asheville Attraction

• Local Fundraising Event

• Place to Take Your Eccentric Friends

• Place to Connect With Nature Within Asheville City Limits

• Historic/Interesting Building

• Holiday Event - Summer/Fall

• Holiday EventWinter/Spring

• Local Hero

• Place to Pretend You’re a Tourist

• Local Villain

• Local Politician

• Bumper Sticker or Slogan About Asheville

• Thing Downtown Asheville Needs

• Thing the River Arts District Needs

• Thing West Asheville Needs

• Thing South Asheville Needs

• Thing East Asheville Needs

• Thing North Asheville Needs

• Worst Thing to Happen to Asheville in the Last 12 Months

• Best Thing to Happen to Asheville in the Last 12 Months

• Project You’d Like to See Local Government Do

• Biggest Threat to Asheville’s Uniqueness

• Biggest Opportunity for Asheville’s Uniqueness Nonprofits

• Nonprofit That Improves Asheville

How do I get a category added or changed?

The categories are set for this year, but to suggest a change for next year, email: bestofwnc@mountainx.com

How are the votes counted?

Mountain Xpress tallies the votes by hand, taking great care to understand each voter’s intent. We reserve the right to reject any ballot with inappropriate responses.

• Nonprofit That Serves the Underprivileged

• Activist Group for Civic/ Political Action Hospitality

• Local City Tour

• Venue to Book for a Party or Event

• Event/Wedding Planner

• Place to Get Married

• Hotel

• B&B or Small Boutique Hotel Work & Business

• Business That Best Represents the Spirit of Asheville

• Employment Sector to Work in

• Business That Gives Back to the Community

• Co-Op/Employeeowned Business

• Bank

• Credit Union

• Bank/Financial Services for Small Business

• Support Organization for Entrepreneurs and New Businesses

Regional Questions for the following regions: Brevard Burnsville

Hendersonville/ Flat Rock/Mills River Hot Springs Marshall/Mars Hill Swannanoa/ Black Mountain Cullowhee/Sylva Waynesville/Maggie Valley/Canton Weaverville/Woodfin

• Business That Best Represents the Spirit of Your Town

• Breakfast Restaurant

• Lunch Restaurant

• Dinner Restaurant

• Coffee & Sweets

• Local Bar/Brewery/ Watering Hole

• Music/Entertainment Venue

• Retail Store

• Art Gallery

• Cultural or Historical Landmark

• Cultural or Arts Event

• Local Place to Enjoy the Outdoors

• Local Cause to Support

• Best Thing to Happen to Your Town in the Last 12 Months

How do you prevent voter fraud? Ballots are examined for telltale signs of voter fraud or ballot stuffing. We disqualify all ballots that appear to be fraudulent.

I hope my business wins. How do I get voting promotional materials? Call us at 828-251-1333. We can provide you with printable and digital materials, or contact your sales representative for information.

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.

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WELLNESS

Tai Chi Fan

This class helps build balance and whole body awareness. All ages and ability levels welcome. Fans will be provided.

WE (4/3, 10), 1pm, Dragon Phoenix, 51 N Merrimon Ave, Ste 109

Healthy Brain, Healthy Body & Healthy You

This program is for anyone who is interested in the latest research on brain health as we age. It focuses on key factors of exercise, diet, cognitive activity and social engagement. Registration required.

TH (4/4, 11), 1pm, Haywood County Library-Canton, 11 Pennsylvania Ave, Canton

Qi Gong for Health

A part of traditional Chinese medicine that involves using exercises to optimize energy within the body, mind and spirit.

FR (4/5) , TU (4/9) , 9am, SA (4/6), 11am, Dragon Phoenix, 51 N Merrimon Ave Ste 109

Trails Less Traveled: Big Ivy Hike

Embark on an 8.2-mile hike exploring Big Ivy in this moderate to

challenging terrain. There is a 20 participant limit.

SA (4/6), 8am, Swannanoa Valley Museum & History Center, 223 West State St, Black Mountain

Yoga for Everyone

A yoga class for all ages and abilities that is led by alternating teachers. Bring your own mat and water bottle. Registration required.

SA (4/6), 9:30am, Black Mountain Presbyterian, 117 Montreat Rd, Black Mountain

Yoga in the Park

Yoga class alongside the French Broad River, based on Hatha & Vinyasa traditions and led by certified yoga instructors. All experience levels welcome for a sliding scale fee.

SA (4/6), SU (4/7) 11am, Carrier Park, 220 Amboy Rd

The Gamble

This course is a 1.67 mile loop and a roll of the dice at the start determines how far everyone goes. Distance will be anywhere from a 5k to 20 miles. Register at avl.mx/djc.

SU (4/7), 9am, Jackson Park, 801 Glover St, Hendersonville

LIVING IN COLOR: Short Stories, an exhibition of abstract paintings by Asheville artist Linda Gritta, will run from Saturday, April 6 to Tuesday, April 30 at Bender Gallery. Gritta will be present for an opening reception at the gallery on April 6, starting at 5 p.m. Photo courtesy of Bender Gallery

Wild Souls Authentic Movement w/Renee

Trudeau

An expressive movement class designed to help you get unstuck, enjoy cardio movement, boost immune health, dissolve anxiety/ stress and celebrate community.

SU (4/7), 9:30am, Dunn's Rock Community Center, 461 Connestee Rd, Brevard

Spring Flow w/Jamie Knox

Prepare your body for warmer weather with a yoga practice

designed to release toxins and heaviness left over from winter. Walk ins welcome. No need to pre-register, but bring a mat.

SU (4/7), 10:30am, One World Brewing West, 520 Haywood Rd

Barre Fusion

A high energy low impact practice that shapes, sculpts, and tones the body like a dancer. No experience necessary, open to all levels.

MO (4/8), 10am, Dragon Phoenix, 51 N Merrimon Ave Ste 109

Tai Chi for Beginners

A class for anyone interested in Tai Chi and building balance, whole body awareness and other health benefits.

MO (4/8), 11:30am, Dragon Phoenix, 51 N Merrimon Ave Ste 109

Mett ā Meditation

In-person guided meditation focused on benevolence & loving-kindness. Held in the Black Mountain Library's community room.

MO (4/8), 7pm, Black Mountain Library, 105 N Dougherty St, Black Mountain

Qi Gong for a Healthy Back

Find ease of movement and improve overall well-being with the ancient art of Qigong. See p 36 TU (4/9), 10am, Black Mountain Center for the Arts, 225 W. State St, Black Mountain

Weekly Zumba Classes

Free in-person Zumba classes. No registration required.

TU (4/9), 6:30pm, St. James Episcopal Church, 424 W State St, Black Mountain

yoga instructor Carrie Myers

WE (4/10), 11:30am, AmeriHealth Caritas, 216 Asheland Ave

Tai Chi for Balance

A gentle Tai Chi exercise class to help improve balance, mobility, and quality of life. All ages are welcome.

WE (4/10), 11:30am, Dragon Phoenix, 51 N Merrimon Ave Ste 109

Zumba Gold

Fitness program that involves cardio and Latin-inspired dance. Tips for the instructor are appreciated. For more information please call (828)

350-2058.

WE (4/10), noon, Stephens Lee Recreation Center, 30 George Washington Carver Ave

Therapeutic Recreation Adult Hiking Club

Get your steps in while making new friends. Participants need to pack a lunch, water bottle, and clothes comfortable to move in. Open to individuals with disabilities ages 18 and over.

TH (4/11), 9am, Oakley Community Center, 749 Fairview Rd

Nia Dance Fitness

Therapeutic Recreation Adult Morning Movement

Active games, physical activities, and sports for individuals with disabilities ages 17 and over. Advanced registration at avlrec. com required.

WE (4/10), 10am, Tempie Avery Montford Community Center, 34 Pearson Ave

Community Yoga & Mindfulness with Inspired Change Yoga!

An hour of yoga, meditation, & mindfulness with local

A sensory-based movement practice that draws from martial arts, dance arts and healing arts.

TH (4/11), 9:30am, Dragon Phoenix, 51 N Merrimon Ave Ste 109 Dharma Talk w/Paul Linn

Meditation followed by a dharma talk on Buddhist principles applied to daily life. Beginners and experienced practitioners are welcome.

TH (4/11), 6:30pm, Quietude Micro-retreat Center, 1130 Montreat Rd, Black Mountain

ART

Sov·er·eign·ty:

Expressions in Sovereignty of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

This exhibition educates visitors about the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ autonomy, its relationship with the federal government, and how the tribe has defined its own relationship with its land, people, and culture. Gallery open daily, 9am.

Exhibition through Feb. 28, 2025.

Museum of the Cherokee People, 589 Tsali Blvd, Cherokee American Art in the Atomic Age: 1940–1960

This exhibition features works created during the 1940s–1960s. Much of the art during this time expressed the uncertainty of the era, often relying on automatism and biomorphic forms. Gallery open daily, 11am, closed Tuesday.

Exhibition through April 29.

Asheville Art Museum, 2 S Pack Square

Asheville’s Naturalist:

Watercolors by Sallie Middleton

This exhibition features a selection of botanical and wildlife prints by renowned watercolor artist Sallie Middleton. Gallery open daily, 11am, closed Tuesday.

Exhibition through June 10.

Asheville Art Museum, 2 S Pack Square

Mandala Madness III

A third biannual showcase of Mandala artwork that features collections of hypnotizing, meditative and geometric pieces. Open daily, noon.

Exhibition through May 5.

Foundation Studios, 27 Foundy St

Western North Carolina Glass: Selections from the Collection Western North Carolina is important in the history of American glass art. A variety of techniques and a willingness to push boundaries of the medium can be seen in this selection of works. Gallery open daily, 11am, closed Tuesday. Exhibition through April 15.

Asheville Art Museum, 2 S Pack Square

Daily Craft Demonstrations

Two artists of different media will explain and demonstrate their craft with informative materials displayed at their booths, daily. These free and educational opportunities are open to the public. Open daily, 10am. Demonstrations through Dec. 31. Folk Art Center, MP 382, Blue Ridge Pkwy

Making Changes

Exhibition

Echoes the sentiment that growth is universal, whether planned or spontaneous, material or spiritual.

Red House Studios invite all mediums to contribute to a collective exploration of the unawakened and unknown. Open daily, 10am. Exhibition through May 13.

Red House Gallery & Studios, 101 Cherry St, Black Mountain

Please Bug Me

An exhibition that celebrates the importance and beauty of insects while educating the community about what each of us can do to protect bug populations.

Gallery open Monday through Friday, 10am. Exhibition through April 26.

Black Mountain Center for the Arts, 225 W State St, Black Mountain

This exhibition celebrates the legacy of Lambert Wilson, a passionate collector of contemporary Native American art. Gallery open Tuesday through Friday, 10am. Exhibition through June 28.

WCU Bardo Arts Center, 199 Centennial Dr, Cullowhee

Gallery Mélange

Grand Opening

Enjoy live music, refreshments, fine art, and jewelry while you discover Gallery Me lange. Featuring artwork from Mark Bettis, Victoria Pinney, and Jeffrey Burroughs.

FR (4/5), 4pm, Gallery Mélange, 67 Biltmore Ave, Ste 20

Open Reception for Martin Pasco

An open reception for Martin Pasco’s latest art installment, the Water Exhibition.

FR (4/5), 5pm, Asheville Gallery of Art, 82 Patton Ave

Glass, Metal, and Clay Day

Members of the Southern Highland Craft Guild come together to demonstrate a variety of handcrafted processes of glass, metal, and clay.

SA (4/6), 10am, Folk Art Center, MP 382, Blue Ridge Pkwy

Counter/Balance:

Gifts of John & Robyn Horn

A presentation of important examples of contemporary American craft, including woodworking, metalsmithing, fiber and pottery by renowned American artists. Gallery open daily, 11am, closed Tuesday. Exhibition through July. 29. Asheville Art Museum, 2 S Pack Square

Community Day: The New Salon Community Day highlights include public tours of The New Salon, hands-on activities, nail art,

a documentary film screening of Automorphosis, and tunes by DJ Lil Meow Meow.

SA (4/6), noon, Asheville Art Museum, 2 S Pack Square

The Soil's Gaze

An exhibition of plein-air watercolor paintings by Chris Jehly, unveils the artist’s serendipitous moments painting outdoors where nothing ever stands completely still. Gallery open Tuesday through Saturday, 10am, and Sunday, 11am. Exhibition through April 14.

Tyger Tyger Gallery, 191 Lyman St, Ste 144

Focus Gallery Exhibit: Art of Detailing

The Southern Highland Craft Guild opens its first focus gallery exhibition of 2024 with Art of Detailing, featuring both traditional and contemporary craft by five members of the Guild. Open daily, 10am. Exhibition through May 20.

Folk Art Center, 382 Blue Ridge Pkwy

Agony & Ecstasy: Images of Conscience

These linoleum prints show the agony and ecstasy of human life. The love, sorrow, conflict, beauty, enjoyment of nature, contemplation of what is, was and could be and political commentary. Gallery open Monday through Saturday, 11am and Sunday, 1 pm. Exhibition through May 31.

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

Conceptually Crafty : Elevating Art for All Skill Levels

Asheville native Calypso Renata is bringing a new dimension to the art world with an all ages art class that redefines crafting for individuals of all skill

levels.

TU (4/9), 7pm, Phil Mechanic Studios, 109 Roberts St

The New Salon: A Contemporary View

A modern take on the prestigious tradition of the Parisian Salon with the diversity and innovation of today’s art world. Gallery open daily, 11am, closed Tuesday. Exhibition through Aug. 19. Asheville Art Museum, 2 S Pack Square

Tot Time w/Kylie Brown

An express tour of our galleries, then go on an adventure with art, music, or storytelling in the Museum’s interactive Art PLAYce. For children ages 0-5 years old and their families or caregivers. Register online.

WE (4/10), 11:30am, Asheville Art Museum, 2 S Pack Square

Lil’ Picasso’s Toddler Art: Pet Rock Painting

Help little ones, ages 3-5, embrace their imagination and creativity to develop problem solving, refine motor skills, and creatively to express emotions.

WE (4/10), 1:30pm,

Tempie Avery

Montford Community Center, 34 Pearson Ave

Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts

Exhibition

Featured in this exhibit are Arrowmont’s nationally and internationally recognized practicing artists and university workshop instructors. Open daily, 10am. Exhibition through May 1. Folk Art Center, 382 Blue Ridge Pkwy

Of Chaos & Peace, Beauty in Both Fumberg's most recent exhibit portrays darkness to see the light and the contrast of things. The Human heart beats, in and out, creating the

contrast that it needs to sustain life. Gallery open daily. Exhibition runs through May 5. Pink Dog Gallery, 348 Depot St

Stellar Picks : A Community Choice Exhibition

This exhibition is for everyone who has a favorite piece of art in the WCU Fine Art Museum collection or would like to discover one.

TH (4/11), 10am, WCU

Bardo Arts Center, 199 Centennial Dr, Cullowhee

Vera B. Williams: Stories

This retrospective will showcase the complete range of award-winning author and illustrator Vera B. Williams' life and work. It will highlight her time at Black Mountain College, her political activism in addition to her work as an author and illustrator. Gallery open Monday through Saturday, 11am. Exhibition through May 11.

Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center, 120 College St

Public Tour: Discovering Art in Asheville A volunteer educator led tour of the Museum's Collection through the featured exhibition, Intersections in American Art. No reservations are required.

TH (4/11), 6pm, Asheville Art Museum, 2 S Pack Square

COMMUNITY MUSIC

Music To Your Ears

Series: Abbey Road

In this installment of his monthly discussion series, local musician and NPR composer BJ Leiderman joins author and journalist Bill Kopp for unknown insights into The

Beatles' Abbey Road .

WE (4/3), 7pm, Asheville Guitar Bar, 122 Riverside Dr

S ō Percussion: A Celebration of John Cage

This percussion quartet performance will feature music by John Cage,Dan Deacon, Matmos, Pauline Oliveros and others.

WE (4/3), 7pm, Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center, 120 College St

The Brother Brothers

An indie folk duo created by identical twins Adam and David Moss from Peoria, Illinois.

TH (4/4), 7pm, Citizen Vinyl, 14 O Henry Ave Asheville

The HawtThorns KP and Johnny Hawthorn, have had celebrated careers that started in LA’s singer-songwriter and alt-country scenes.

TH (4/4), 7:30pm, Asheville Guitar Bar, 122 Riverside Dr

Billy Jonas Band: Welcome Spring Family Concert

Whether performing for adults, families, school groups, faith communities, or a mix, Billy Jonas strives for a musical excellence that inspires, entertains, and moves people literally and figuratively.

SU (4/7), 3pm, The Grey Eagle, 185 Clingman Ave

Calefax Reed Quintet Amsterdam based woodwind quintet performs arrangements of various classical pieces.

MO (4/8), 7:30pm, Tyron Fine Arts Center, 34 Melrose Ave, Tryon Carolina Celtic w/ Sue Richards & Robin Bullock

A blend of ancient and magical tones of the Celtic harp and the powerful resonance of the steel-string guitar, cittern and mandolin.

MO (4/8), 7:30pm, Black Mountain Center for the Arts, 225 W State St, Black Mountain

Singing For Catharsis Saro Lynch-Thomason teaches easy-to-learn songs that have provided people with spiritual experiences for thousands of years.

TH (4/11), 6:30pm, The Well, 3 Louisiana Ave

LITERARY

Poetry by Emöke B’Rácz & Glenis Redmond

Listen to new poetry by Malaprop’s Founder Emöke B’Rácz and fellow poet Glenis Redmond from Greenville, South Carolina. See p49 WE (4/3), 6pm, Malaprop’s Bookstore & Cafe, 55 Haywood St

Kids Book Reading & Sing-along Children's authors

Fred Small and Shannon Hitchcock will read—or sing—their books for kids ages two to ten, and beyond.

SA (4/6), 3pm, Firestorm Books, 1022 Haywood Rd

Madness, Utopia, and Revolt

Minneapolis-based author Sasha Warren will give a presentation on his new book Storming Bedlam about radical histories of psychiatry and antipsychiatry.

SA (4/6), 6pm, Firestorm Books, 1022 Haywood Rd

THEATER & FILM

Dolores

A one-act drama about two sisters drawn together by domestic violence. The two actors cast for each role will rotate throughout the run, resulting in four

distinct acting pairs.

TH (4/4), FR (4/5), SA (4/7), 7pm FR (4/5), 2pm, SU (4/7), 4pm , Lamplight AVL's Residency at 821, 821 Haywood Rd

Jen Silverman: Witch A charming devil arrives in the quiet village of Edmonton to bargain for the souls of its residents in exchange for their darkest wishes. See p42

WE (4/3), TH (4/4), SA (4/6), 7:30pm , FR (4/5), SU (4/7), 2pm, NC Stage Co., 15 Stage Ln

Ivy Rowe (from Fair and Tender Ladies )

This off-Broadway production follows a spunky mountain woman on a journey through life “livin’ on love.” Adapted and performed by actress Barbara Bates Smith and musical accompanist Jeff Sebens.

TH (4/11), 7pm, Tina McGuire Theatre, Wortham Center for the Performing Arts, 18 Biltmore Ave

MEETINGS & PROGRAMS

Spring Migration

Through the Southeast

Speaker Pam Torlina of Conserving Carolina will discuss the annual cycle of spring migration by songbirds through the southeast. After the presentation, guests will be invited to get an up-close look at nests, feathers and even bird specimens.

WE (4/3), 10:30am, Etowah Public Library, 101 Brickyard Rd

Eightfold Path Study Group

A group will gather to study the Eightfold Path Program. Kris Kramer will host the group as a fellow participant and student.

WE (4/3, 10), 3pm,

Quietude Micro-retreat Center, 1130

Montreat Rd, Black Mountain

Healthcare, Medical & Wellness Professionals Networking Event Five presenters will give short speeches about topics pertaining to their own ventures in healthcare and wellness. Professionals will have the chance to network with each other throughout the event.

WE (4/3), 6pm, pl ē b urban winery, 289 Lyman St

Wine Down Wednesday

Discover a new selection of wines every Wednesday at this weekly tasting event.

WE (4/3), 6pm, Haiku AVL, 26 Sweeten Creek Rd

Astrology Class at The Well Experienced psychic medium and spiritual advisor Joette Shaffer covers birth chart readings and other astrology topics in this class.

WE (4/3), 6:30pm, The Well, 3 Louisiana Ave

Electrify ABC Program

The Federal Inflation Reduction Act aims to make electric living affordable. Sophie Mullinax of Electrify Asheville-Buncombe will introduce ways we can all benefit.

WE (4/3), 7pm, OLLI/ Reuter Center, UNCA, 300 Campus View Rd

Music Together: Black Mountain Make music an exciting part of your child’s life! Each week in Music Together classes, babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and the grownups who love them come together for 45 minutes of fun-filled family time.

Ages 0-5 with a parent or trusted caregiver.

TH (4/4),

Black Mountain

Center for the Arts, 225 W State St, Black Mountain

Kids & Teens Kung Fu

Learn fighting skills as well as conflict resolution and mindfulness. First class is free to see if it's a good fit for you.

TH (4/4), 4pm, Dragon Phoenix, 51 N Merrimon Ave, Ste 109

French Broad River Series: Native Brook Trout Conservation in NC

Learn about efforts to help conserve North Carolina's native Book Trout with a presentation by Jacob Rash, Coldwater Research Coordinator for the NC Wildlife Resources Commission.

TH (4/4), 6pm, Transylvania County Library, 212 S. Gaston St, Brevard

Relational Mindfulness w/Deborah Eden Tull

This session is about healing the myth of separation through our relationship with self, one another, and our planet.

TH (4/4), 6:30pm, Quietude Micro-retreat Center, 1130 Montreat Rd, Black Mountain

Transcend w/Tarot

A three-part series to learn about the world of tarot from a professional teacher. Advance registration required.

TH (4/4), 7pm, Harvest House, 205 Kenilworth Rd

Brew & Taste

Learn coffee brewing science using only locally roasted coffees with a Specialty Coffee Association certified Pro Brewer.

FR (4/5), SU (4/7), TH (4/11), 9:30am, Coffee Curious Workshops, 45 S French Broad Ave

Postpartum Posse

This is a free opportunity for new mothers for to gather

in community and support one another through the walk of motherhood, every first Friday of the month.

FR (4/5), 10am, Temple Chiropractic, 10 B E Market St, Black Mountain

Bingo on Grove Street

Join on the first and second Friday of the month for a fun and friendly game of bingo. Additional bingo cards available for purchase.

FR (4/5), 10:30am, Grove St Community Center, 36 Grove St

Permanent Jewelry w/Honey Koshka

Personalize your own clasp-less, custom fit jewelry that’s micro-welded to create a seamless flow. Registration required.

FR (4/5), 5pm, Ignite Jewelry Studios, 191 Lyman St, Ste 262 Trivia & Game Show Fun

Calling friends, couples, families, and community for themed fun that changes monthly. Every first and second Friday of the month.

FR (4/5), 6pm, Linwood Crump Shiloh Community Center, 121 Shiloh Rd

Black Out Friday A chance for like-minded BIPOC professionals, entrepreneurs, musicians, and artists to connect over drinks, small bites, and music.

FR (4/5), 6:30pm, Haiku AVL, 26 Sweeten Creek Rd

Let's Plant Trees Workshop w/T.J Dutton & Chardin

Detrich

Certified arborists and tree whisperers will lead a workshop on planting techniques, with a focus on soil and root health.

SA (4/6), 9am, Botanical Gardens at Asheville, 151 W T Weaver Blvd

Brunch & Bingo

Start your weekend right with pancakes, sausages, and brunch sides while playing everyone’s favorite game.

SA (4/6), 10am, Burton Street Community Center, 134 Burton St

Recreate Asheville Open House

This drop-in open house community meeting features the opportunity to participate in hands-on budgeting activities and speak directly with City of Asheville Parks & Recreation staff.

SA (4/6), 10am, Carrier Park, 220 Amboy Rd

Popcorn Creation Bar

Start with freshly-made traditional popcorn and then make every kernel a work of art. Craft your own popcorn delicacy with an array of gourmet toppings and seasonings.

SA (4/6), 11am, Asheville Art Museum, 2 S Pack Square

The Great Bird Adventure

An expertly guided educational tour that gently leads you through five magnificent exhibits, showcasing rare and endangered birds from every continent of the world.

SA (4/6), 11am, MO (4/8), WE (4/10), 10am, Carolina

Avian Research and Education, 109 Olivia Trace Dr, Fletcher

Bid Whist

Make bids, call trumps, and win tricks. Every Saturday for fun competition with the community.

SA (4/6), 1pm, Dr Wesley Grant, Sr. Southside Center, 285 Livingston St

Southern Highland Craft Guild: Virtual Guild Application Workshops

This online guild application workshop takes you step-by-step through the process. Participants have the option of requesting someone to assist with and review their Guild application. Register at avl.mx/djd.

SA (4/6), 1pm, Online

DSRF Master Recreation Plan: Public Information Drop-In (PIDI)

This event is the public’s opportunity to be informed about the consultant’s recommendations for DuPont State Recreational Forest. Planning consultants will display posters to share their research, data and recommendations for the DSRF master plan.

SA (4/6), 1:30pm, Glenn Marlow Elementary School Gym, 1985 Butler Bridge Rd, Mills River

Stitches of Love Meeting Stitches of Love is a small group of stitchers who create a variety of handmade items which are donated to local charities. New members are always welcome to join.

MO (4/8), 3pm, Panera Bread, 1843 Hendersonville Rd

Black Men Monday

An opportunity to step up in the community and advocate for and mentor students through academic intervention. MO (4/8), 5:30pm, AmeriHealth Caritas, 216 Asheland Ave

Financial Starters Get a better understanding on how money, credit, and banks work and why they are essential in securing your financial future. Ages 16-30. MO (4/8), 6pm, Dr Wesley Grant, Sr. Southside Center, 285 Livingston St

Pigeon Community Conversations w/ Storytellers Series

This curated series will showcase award-winning storytellers from Western North Carolina’s African American, Latinx, and Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian communities.

Adama Dembele, storyteller from Ivory Coast, West Africa will start off the series.

MO (4/8), 6pm, Pigeon Community Multicultural Development Center, 450 Pigeon St, Waynesville

Keys to Being Loan

Ready

Learn the key things you need to know and prepare before you seek a loan for your small business. Featuring keynote speaker Ron Fisher. Register at avl.mx/dje.

TU (4/9), noon, Online

Tango Tuesdays

Argentine Tango lessons and social for beginner to advanced levels. Cash bar and light snacks will be provided, TU (4/9), 6pm, Urban Orchard Cider Co. S Slope, 24 Buxton Ave

Native Bees and the Habitats they Require

This workshop offers gardening approaches that make a huge difference to the bees and other beneficial wildlife around you.  In person or on Zoom.

TU (4/9), 7pm, OLLI/ Reuter Center, UNCA, 300 Campus View Rd

Crafting with Cricut Workshop

Make a new craft each month using your Cricut. For more information, call 828-350-2058 or email kkennedy@ashevillenc.

gov.

WE (4/10), 6pm, Stephens Lee Recreation Center, 30 George Washington Carver Ave

Oasis Presentation: Strategies & Tools to Navigate Aging & Health Care

Learn how to arrange

home health care, access health or safety equipment or choose a long-term care facility. Lisa Laney, owner of Mountain Area Premier Care Navigation will help navigate you through the maze.

WE (4/10), 6pm, Grace Lutheran Church, 1245 6th Ave W, Hendersonville Toddler Craftin' Through the Season

Make toddler-friendly crafts designed for spring days. Light snacks provided. Advance registration required.

WE (4/10), 6pm, Tempie Avery Montford Community Center, 34 Pearson Ave

National Speakers Association of WNC Meeting (NSA-WNC)

A meeting hosted by ACNC featuring professional keynote speakers, coaches, trainers, facilitators, and consultants who cover a broad range of topics, skills, & knowledge.

TH (4/11), 10:30am, AmeriHealth Caritas, 216 Asheland Ave

Art Park

Adults ages 50+ are called to join Asheville Parks & Recreation in Carrier Park to create art inspired by nature and our community.

TH (4/11), 2pm, Carrier Park, 220 Amboy Rd

Understanding Homelessness Learning Series

This 3-part learning series is presented by the Homeless Strategy Division of Community & Economic Development. Please register online prior to the event.

TH (4/11), 4:30pm, AmeriHealth Caritas, 216 Asheland Ave

Pride Sports Asheville: Dodgeball

A free open-play dodgeball event for participants over the age of 21. All skill levels are welcome.

See p36-37

TH (4/11), 7pm, Stephens Lee Recreation Center, 30 George Washington Carver Ave

Green Drinks: Hendersonville Water and Sewer Update

An informative session led by Hendersonville Utilities Director Adam Steurer, who will present a summary of the town's utility history, operations, project updates, and initiatives.

TH (4/11), 5:30pm, Trailside Brewing Co, 873 Lennox Park Dr, Hendersonville Black in Asheville Film Screening

A must-see documentary that shows the black history and cultural heritage of the Black community in Asheville.

TH (4/11), 6pm, Black Wall St AVL, 8 River Arts Pl

WNC Past & Present: 100 Years of Grovemont-on-Swannanoa

Learn about the history of Grovemont-on-Swannanoa, see how it developed, and what the neighborhood consists of today. Register on website.

TH (4/11), 6pm, Swannanoa Valley Museum & History Center, 223 West State St, Black Mountain

Carolina Shag Dance Class Classes will be led by Karen Workman and Roger Carr.

TH (4/11), 6:30pm, Tyron Fine Arts Center, 34 Melrose Ave, Tryon Nerd Nite

A monthly gathering for all those fond of drinking and learning things at the same time.

TH (4/11), 7pm, The

River Arts District Brewing Co., 13 Mystery St

Women's Intention Circle

Exploration of fellow women’s experiences through themes, archetypes, meditative tools, and lived experiences led by Rachael and Emily Grace.

TH (4/11), 6:30pm, Alchemy Yoga & Reiki, 900 Hendersonville Rd 101-A

LOCAL MARKETS

Bounty & Soul Latino

Wednesday Market

Produce to the People provides equitable access to nutritious, culturally relevant food through weekly community markets. Come enjoy Latinx staples and help create a healthy experience of community connection.

WE (4/3), 3:30pm, Swannanoa United Methodist Church, 216 Whitson Ave, Swannanoa

Friday Market

Providing equitable access to nutritious, culturally relevant food through weekly community markets. Come enjoy local staples as well as a live cooking demo and kids activities.

FR (4/5), 3:30pm, Bi-Lo, 205 NC-9, Black Mountain

White Squirrel Artisans Market

A pop-up market featuring local artisans & musicians.

SA (4/6), 5pm, Deerwoode Reserve, 395 Riversedge Rd, Brevard

Pierogi House Brunch w/Friends and Neighbors Botanist &Barrel welcomes Chefs Erin and David of Friends and Neighbors to take over the bar for a special brunch. Walk-ins are welcome,

but reservations are strongly suggested.

SU (4/7), 11am, Botanist & Barrel Tasting Bar + Bottle Shop, 32 Broadway St Ste 110

FESTIVALS & SPECIAL EVENTS

Citywide Dementia

Symposium

An event to bring together people affected by dementia to learn, support, and advocate. Listen to a panel of quest speakers from dementia-related organizations local to the Asheville area.

SA (4/6), 8:30am, Courtyard by Marriott Asheville Biltmore Village, 26 Meadow Rd

Gabba Fools: Sopranos Party

Secret Sopranos themed beverage release party featuring DJ Bridal Parti Bucardi.

SA (4/6), 6pm, Dssolvr, 63 N Lexington Ave

Psychic Holistic Insights Expo

Join the 28th Premier

Psychic Arts Expo of the Southeast, providing quality readings for only

SU (4/7), 10am, Blue Ridge College, 49 E Campus Dr, Flat Rock

A Hobbit Affair

An afternoon of live music and vendors to celebrate springtime. Costumes are highly encouraged.

SU (4/7), 3pm, Sweeten Creek Brewing, 1127 Sweeten Creek Rd

Wine Wednesday

Discover a new selection of wines every Wednesday at this weekly tasting event.

WE (4/10), The Monte Vista Hotel, 308 W State St, Black Mountain

BENEFITS & VOLUNTEERING

Alexis' Drag Race

An afternoon full of drag performances. All proceeds go toward Arms Around ASD, a non-profit that provides support for individuals on the autism spectrum.

SU (4/7), 1pm, pl ē b urban winery, 289 Lyman St

Family Friendly Fundraiser Event: Friends of Mine Preschool

This event will help raise funds for Friends of Mine Co-op Preschool. This local non-profit preschool is owned, operated, and maintained by the parents and is funded by the cooperative. Featuring live music, face painting, and raffle prizes.

SU (4/7), 2pm, Urban Orchard Cider Co. S Slope, 24 Buxton Ave

Tails & Ales Adoption Mountain Pet Rescue will have adoptable dogs on hand.

SU (4/7), 1pm, New Belgium Brewing Co., 21 Craven St

Public Hearing Rally: The 2024 Carbon Plan

Clean Aire NC hosts an organized rally and press conference at the public hearing for Duke Energy's updated Carbon Plan. The hearing will take place in Courtroom 1-A.

TU (4/9), 7pm, Buncombe County Courthouse, 60 Court Plaza

Beers that Build Release Event w/Beer & Loathing

Acoustic duo plays originals and covers at this special beer release event. Benefit for Asheville GreenWorks. Featuring live music from acoustic duo Beer & Loathing.

TH (4/11), 5pm, Wicked Weed Brewing, 91 Biltmore Ave

HEALTH ROUNDUP

by Xpress Staff

AdventHealth announces hospital location in Weaverville

On March 19, AdventHealth announced the purchase of 25 acres in Weaverville to construct a new hospital. The property is located off U.S. 70E, across from the apartment complex Retreat at Weaverville.

In 2022, the N.C. State Medical Facilities Plan, which determines the number of hospitals statewide, advised that Buncombe, Graham, Madison and Yancey counties would need 67 additional acute care beds. That plan is released annually by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services Division of Health Service Regulation. In fall 2022, AdventHealth received approval to build a new, 67-bed hospital through North Carolina’s certificate of need application process.

HCA Healthcare/Mission Health, which competed with AdventHealth and Novant Health for the approval, appealed the NCDHHS’ decision. A trial took place in 2023, and according to AdventHealth spokesperson Victoria Dunkle, the company is waiting for an administrative judge to rule on the appeal. “We’re confident the judge is going to uphold the state’s decision,” she says.

AdventHealth announced the Weaverville site, she says, because “we wanted to be able to take the next steps as soon as we could.”

In the two years since the 2022 State Medical Facilities Plan advocated for 67 beds, NCDHHS has cited a need for 26 additional acute care beds by 2026. Dunkle says AdventHealth is filing an additional certificate of need application before a June deadline. She says the intention is for all 93 beds to be at the Weaverville location, pending the judge upholding its approval.

AdventHealth anticipates opening the new hospital in two to three years, Dunkle says.

UNC Health Pardee opens pharmacy

In March, UNC Health Pardee opened Pardee Rx, a community pharmacy adjacent to the Pardee BlueMD –1027 Fleming St. primary care practice in Hendersonville.

Pardee Rx offers generic and brandname drugs, as well as over-the-counter medications and common medical supplies. It serves Pardee patients, staff and community members; through its affiliation with Pardee BlueMD, which

ON THE MAP: AdventHealth recently announced the purchase of 25 acres in Weaverville to construct a new hospital. The company seeks to build a hospital with 93 acute care beds that would open in two to three years. Image courtesy of Victoria Dunkle

is a federally qualified health center, the pharmacy serves all patients regardless of their ability to pay.

Pharmacists Bryce Caldwell and Kenesha Smith joined the team and are available for consultations. Pardee Rx is open Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-6 p.m. For more information, call 828-435-8142.

Food stamps for veterans

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services is contacting veterans who are newly eligible for Food and Nutrition Services benefits, also known as food stamps, due to Medicaid expansion. The state estimates 14,000 veterans and their families who were not eligible before now qualify.

NCDHHS and Benefits Data Trust, a nonprofit that assists people with obtaining public benefits, will reach out via letter and text message to veterans who are enrolled in Medicaid but not in FNS.

For more information about FNS, visit avl.mx/dix, and to apply for benefits, visit avl.mx/d3e.

Autism training for early childhood educators

Autism specialist Catherine Faherty will offer training for early childhood educators to better understand children who are described as autistic or awaiting a formal evaluation. The training will address the autistic way of thinking and processing, and how to provide stability in a classroom environment.

Buncombe Partnership for Children is hosting the training Thursday, April 11, 6-8 p.m., at 53 Asheland Ave., Suite 102A. Tickets are $10, and registration is at avl.mx/diz.

Qigong for a healthy back

Black Mountain Center for the Arts, 225 W. State St., Black Mountain, is hosting workshops on qigong for a healthy back Tuesdays, April 9-30, 10-10:45 a.m. Qigong is an ancient Chinese meditation incorporating breathwork and slow movement. Under the guidance of certified qigong instructor Kare Strong, participants will engage in movements to release tension in the spine. Workshops are $15 each or $40 for the series. Register at avl.mx/dip.

Community kudos

• The N.C. Institute of Medicine recognized state Sen. Julie Mayfield on Feb. 26 for completion of the 2024 Health Policy Fellows program. The sessions addressed state health policy, including certificate of need, mental health and Medicaid. The NCIOM program is open to all state legislators.

• UNC Health Pardee added four providers to Pardee BlueMD. Family medicine physician Dr. Aaron Patzwahl will join Pardee BlueMD – Pisgah; family medicine physicians Drs. Parker Leland and Emily Sawyer, and physician assistant Wren George, will join Pardee BlueMD – 1027 Fleming St. in Hendersonville. PardeeBlue MD practices serve Buncombe, Henderson and Transylvania counties. As federally qualified health centers, they provide health care to all patients regardless of ability to pay.

• Mission Hospital chief of electrophysiology Dr. Jason Lappe is the first person in the state to perform an ablation procedure for atrial fibrillation (a form of arrhythmia) with Farapulse technology.

• UNC Health Pardee has welcomed board-certified general and colorectal surgeon Dr. Coen Klos to Pardee Surgical Associates. To schedule an appointment, call 828-693-7230.

• Luna Britt is the new education and outreach coordinator for the Generation Plus community with Blue Ridge Pride. Generation Plus is a community-building group for LGBTQ+ people ages 55 and older.

• Janet Shelton joined All Souls Counseling Center in operations and finance support.

• Sunrise Community for Recovery and Wellness Executive Director Sue Polston was selected as the Western Region Recovery Champion at the N.C. One Community in Recovery Conference. The Northwest Area Health Education Center and the Wake Forest University School of Medicine held the conference in March.

Mark your calendars

• Jess Hana, mountain biking coach and content creator @JessTheMaker, will do a meet-and-greet Thursday, April 4, 6:30 p.m., at Motion Makers Bicycle Shop, 878 Brevard Road.

• Pride Sports Asheville is hosting a free open-play dodgeball event Thursday, April 11, 7 p.m., at Stephens-Lee Recreation Center, 30 George Washington Carver Ave. Participants must be over age 21. All skill levels are welcome. Learn

more about Pride Sports Asheville at avl.mx/diq.

• Adult Children of Aging Parents Hickory/Foothills is hosting a free conference on caregiver stress management Friday, April 12, 8 a.m.noon, at Catawba Valley Community College, West Wing Commons, 2550 U.S. 70 SE in Hickory. To RSVP visit avl.mx/din. For more information, contact info@acaphickory.org.

• The Street Dog Coalition Asheville

What Would What Would You Do You Do Without Without

Neuropathy Neuropathy Pain Pain

and pet food at Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry, 24 Cumberland Ave., on Saturday, April 13, 9 a.m.-noon. Dogs should be on leashes and cats should be in carriers. For more information, contact asheville@thestreetdogcoalition.org or visit avl.mx/dio.

• NCCARE360, a coordinated statewide network of health care and human services organizations, will hold an information session for food

p.m., on Zoom. NCCARE360 is a public-private partnership between NCDHHS and the Cary-based nonprofit Foundation for Health Leadership and Innovation. Register for the session at avl.mx/diy.

• Asheville Parks and Recreation, Mission Health, Bounty & Soul, Asheville Community Yoga and numerous other groups will hold a Healthy Earth, Healthy Kids festival Saturday, April 20, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.,

St. Children ages 1-10 are welcome for yoga, dancing and other activities. The festival is free, and no registration is required.

• The Woodfin 5K will be Saturday, April 27, 9 a.m., at Woodfin Elementary School, 108 Elk Mountain Road. All Woodfin Elementary School students may run for free but must register; entrance fees are $20-$35 for all other participants. Register at avl.mx/dir.

Several years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer and underwent chemotherapy treatments. I'm now in remission and have felt blessed to be here except for so much pain. My feet and hands were constantly burning – a tingling sensation, almost like when your leg is falling asleep," shares Barbara of Biltmore Forest.

Barbara was suffering from Chemotherapy Induced Peripheral Neuropathy or CIPN. While chemo kills cancer cells, it also causes much bodily damage. Nerves, especially those far from the brain, are among the first to be harmed. 30-40% of cancer patients treated with chemotherapy experience peripheral neuropathy.

"Standing all day was not just a challenge, and it caused me physical agony. Keeping up with my busy schedule – forget about it. I couldn't even go for walks in my neighborhood."

Barbara, like so many others, was prescribed Gabapentin help with the pain and told there was nothing anyone could do. In Doctors’ words, 'there is no treatment for neuropathy.'

Then Barbara found Dr. Autum Kirgan, DACM, C.SMA, L.Ac of South Slope Acupuncture & Wellness. By blending the time–tested science of acupuncture with more modern medical technology, Dr. Kirgan has designed a natural solution for peripheral neuropathy.

"Acupuncture is incredible at restoring blood flow and stimulating damaged nerves, preventing them from dying off," says Dr. Kirgan. "We take our treatments a step further by integrating FSM Therapy which targets specific nerves in the body using microcurrent. FSM Therapy is like watering a plant. This treatment will stimulate the blood vessels to grow back around the peripheral nerves and provide them with proper nutrients to heal and repair.

After only four weeks of treatment, Barbara is already seeing incredible improvement. "I've taken the handicap placard off my rearview mirror and I am finally back to walking my neighborhood. I can't wait to see how I feel at the end of my program! I used to think that this pain was just the price I had to pay for still being alive. Dr. Kirgan has really given me hope for a better life!"

The number of treatments needed to allow nerves to recover fully will vary from person to person and can only be estimated after a detailed neurological and vascular evaluation. If you or someone you love suffers from peripheral neuropathy (of any origin), call 828-575-5904 to schedule a consultation with Dr. Kirgan and her South Slope Acupuncture & Wellness team. They are waiting for your call.

The mountains are calling

Asheville Art Museum honors early 20th-century landscape painters

BY ARNOLD WENGROW

a.wengrow@yahoo.com

The 19th-century naturalist John Muir famously wrote, “The mountains are calling, and I must go.”

As it turns out, he was not alone. Landscape artists are also among those who have answered the call.

In its latest exhibit, Honoring Nature: Early Southern Appalachian Landscape Painting , the Asheville Art Museum spotlights several early 20th-century painters who captured the soaring vistas of the Great Smoky Mountains.

“ Honoring Nature is the perfect title because that’s what they were doing,” says the exhibition’s guest curator, Andrew Glasgow . “This was at a time when the rest of the art world was going toward abstract expressionism.”

But the exhibit, which runs through October, would not have been possible without loaned works from a Hickory-based couple dedicated to preserving many of the featured paintings on display.

A GROWING OBSESSION

Since the 1970s, Barry Huffman and her husband, Allen , have devoted much of their free time to collecting art. Initially, the couple focused on North Carolina folk artists. Later, they pivoted to landscape painters.

“I was raised in the flatlands of North Carolina,” Barry Huffman says. “When I was in the Girl

Scouts, we made a trip up to the mountains on a camping trip. I fell in love ... and that’s only grown over these decades.”

Rudolph F. Ingerle, Huffman says, was one of the first landscape artists she gravitated toward. Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1879, Ingerle’s family migrated to the United States in 1891, settling in Burlington, Wis. By the 1920s, he

tion to being a painter, he was a reporter for the Asheville Citizen “Red Maple,” which the Huffmans donated to the Asheville Art Museum in 2018, was a foundational purchase, notes Barry Huffman, and one of the first in the couple’s expansive collection.

FUELING NATIONAL PRIDE

Steve Cotham , a Tennesseebased historian, provided written research for Honoring Nature According to Cotham, landscape paintings were tremendously popular in the 19th century. At the time, traveling exhibitions featured room-sized paintings celebrating the American wilderness. These works drew large crowds and fueled national pride as the U.S. expanded west. They also helped win support for the fledgling conservation movement and the creation of the National Park Service in 1916.

regularly visited the Great Smoky Mountains. His obsession with the area led him to become known as the “Painter of the Smokies.”

“It just took my breath away,” Huffman says of his work, which she first saw at an exhibit at the Hickory Museum of Art. “It was just so, so wonderful. That started my interest in paintings of the North Carolina mountains. Tidbits I learned along the way just increased my curiosity.”

Huffman quickly discovered that Ingerle was not alone in his obsession. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, there was a large cohort of trained artists frequenting the region by way of Chicago and New York City to capture the area’s landscape with paint, brush and canvas. Many of these artists — including John Adams Spelman, Leo Meissner and Ruthven Byrum — are among those featured in Honoring Nature.

Also featured in the new exhibit is “Red Maple” by C.R. Sumner. Unlike many of the other artists, Sumner lived in Asheville. In addi -

What is special about the painters in Honoring Nature , Cotham says, “is that they were drawn to the Great Smoky Mountains when the region was new to the nation at large. They saw it and depicted it with new eyes.”

While 19th-century landscape paintings contributed to the American expansionism of Manifest Destiny, contemporary works have taken on very different meanings, according to Leisa Rundquist , professor of art history at UNC Asheville.

“Landscape is a subject that is alive and well for artists that consider it not as a scenic location but as place conceptually,” she says.

These artists, she continues, tie the practice to sovereignty, colonialism and ecology. “Indigenous artists, in particular,” she notes, “have engaged with the topic for the past 20 years or so.”

For Glasgow, the curator for Honoring Nature , landscape paintings are less political.

“I think they’re calming and beautiful,” he says. “All those things are desirable in my life at the moment, having had 2 1/2 years of treatment for cancer. That’s enough for me.”

LOCAL TALENT: Among the artists featured in the Asheville Art Museum’s latest exhibit, Honoring Nature, is C.R. Sumner. His work “Red Maple” is one of several pieces on display through October. Painting by Sumner; courtesy of Barry and Allen Huffman

Fresh Dish

BY ANDY HALL

When California-native Mike McCarty moved to Asheville in 1997, he washed dishes and cooked at the Parkway Restaurant, a former Greek establishment in East Asheville. The job, he says, “ignited a spark” in him to pursue his culinary career. Shortly thereafter, he entered and graduated from the culinary program at A-B Tech. From there, he relocated to Charleston, where he put his culinary skills to use.

In 2006, McCarty returned to Asheville and landed a gig cooking at The Lobster Trap. What he anticipated as a short-term stint ultimately turned into 18 years. “It’s funny how that happens,” he says.

When Amy Beard , founding owner of The Lobster Trap, decided to sell the business, she and McCarty “had a serious discussion,” he recalls. McCarty initially came on as a co-owner in 2018. More recently, in July, he took over as sole owner.

Xpress sat down with McCarty to talk new trends in tinned fish, the local Greek community and kumquats.

Xpress: What is a current item on The Lobster Trap’s menu that isn’t getting the attention it deserves?

McCarty: Our tinned fish board. We had it on for a brief period but took it off and decided to take a step back and look at it — what we could change, what we could do better. Sometimes something can play really well on paper, you test it in the kitchen, and it can be great — but then it loses translation on the menu to the customer.

We also learned it takes work and effort and explaining and showcasing what the product is — as opposed to just throwing it on the menu, thinking that everyone is going to just love what you put out there. But once [the customer] catches on, they’ll enjoy it.

Why do you think this particular item required such an effort?

I think the stigma is that so many people get this image of a greasy, oily can of sardines that they remember from childhood and being grossed out by it. But what we have today are products that are being made really well, and it’s all sustainable. Tinned fish is sort of trending right now. We use a company called Nuri, out of Portugal. It’s an amazing small business, and everything is prepared by hand since 1920. The fish are cleaned by hand and steam

Mike McCarty on what chefs eat on their days off, and his first trip to the Crescent City

cooked. We currently serve the sardines with chow chow, house pickled vegetables, bread from City Bakery and mustard.

Tell us about a local dish that you’ve had recently that blew you away?

Honestly, on my days off, as with most chefs, we just want a really good burger. And wings. And a beer.

Loott House has really good food. The burgers and the wings knocked me out. They have a great smash burger. And it’s a real smash burger. It’s not like these big, fat patties that some people are calling smash burgers. That’s what I love about smash burgers.

[Co-owner] Jake [Whitman] is a really good chef, a talented guy. He’s been in town cooking around for a long time.

What is a seasonal ingredient that is underrepresented in home cooking?

Kumquats — they are my favorite citrus. I was working at a restaurant years ago, and we made a kumquat chutney. That was my first exposure to it.

They’re available between November and March, sometimes April, but that’s pushing it. I have found them at Earth Fare and Whole Foods.

My favorite is candied kumquats. They’re great on a really nice piece of toast [or] on a salad. We’ve done it here paired with a fish. It goes really well with a delicate piece of white fish. It gives it that umami. You’ve got the sweet and the butter — it’s really tasty. Sometimes I’ll just slice them and just eat them.

What cuisine would you like to see more represented in our area?

Greek. Asheville still has a large Greek community, but a lot of people might not realize in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s we had dozens of Greekrun restaurants.

Every Sunday [at Parkway Restaurant], they would do this Greek feast ... and that’s when I really fell in love with that cuisine.

And every September is the Greek Festival in Montford when the whole community just comes together and you get the best, most authentic Greek cuisine you could ask for. And the Greek coffee is really awesome. Every time I’m at the festival, I think, I wish they could all just open up a restaurant and we could have this food all the time.

What’s a favorite food destination within driving distance of Asheville that readers should add to their list?

I just went to New Orleans for the first time in December, so it’s really on the forefront of my mind. You can technically drive there [laughs]. We went there the day after Christmas. And, unbeknownst to me, that was their quiet time. Because they began celebrating and preparing for Mardi Gras about the week after I left.

We ate a lot of seafood and a lot of Vietnamese. There’s a large Vietnamese and Asian population down there. We ate at a neighborhood French restaurant called N7 in the Bywater and at Mopho, which had incredible pho and some of the best wings I’ve ever had in my life. We ate po’boys at Parkway [Bakery & Tavern]. I wanted oyster, but they weren’t serving it at that time, so I got shrimp. You can’t go wrong with shrimp.

We saw a lot of great music down there, too. I can’t wait to go back.

Who would you like to see us dish with next month?

Trevor Payne at Tall John’s. He’s a good guy and a really talented chef.

REELING IN THE YEARS: Mike McCarty, owner and chef of downtown’s The Lobster Trap, got his passion for cooking when he moved to Asheville in 1997.

Photo by Andy Hall

Devious as ever

BY KAI ELIJAH HAMILTON

There’s a familiar tale we’ve all heard of an old witch who lives out in the country casting spells, healing the sick and scaring little children. Jen Silverman ’s play Witch , now showing at N.C. Stage Company through Sunday, April 7, takes that legend in a whole new direction.

Witch is very loosely based on the 1621 English play The Witch of Edmonton by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford. In Silverman’s version, none other than the Devil himself finds his way to Edmonton. The Devil is neither man nor woman but a shape-shifting spirit wearing different skins. This time, he appears in the form of a man using the alias Scratch (played by Arusi Santi ). Devious as ever, he’s on a quest to collect souls. When townsfolk are at their most vulnerable, Scratch offers them a bargain to make their darkest wishes come true.

First, Scratch tempts Cuddy Banks ( Daniel Henry ), who wants to inherit the status, land and fortune of his father, Sir Arthur Banks ( Philip Kershaw ). Because Cuddy is a closeted homosexual, his family fears he won’t have children to carry on their name. Cuddy sees his future being cruelly taken away from him by the handsome but impoverished Frank Thorney ( Anthony Johnson ). Although not a blood relative, Frank worked for the Banks family, gained Sir Arthur’s trust and is now under consideration to be the sole heir. With both Cuddy and Frank will -

N.C. Stage Company production takes a traditional tale in a devilish new direction

ing to do anything for the inheritance, Scratch is poised for an easy soul nabbing. That is, until he pays a visit to the cottage of Elizabeth ( Callan White ), a peculiar woman whom the townsfolk have deemed their token witch. An unexpected energy between the two poses a threat to the Devil’s cunning plans.

While this production has a lot to love, there is also a lot of room for improvement. It does not help that Silverman’s script feels rushed to publication. It wants so badly to be relevant and modern with on-trend dialogue blended in. Certainly, there was a masterpiece

ingly, he plays the audience for laughs. While the Devil is known to be charming, Santi’s portrayal would have benefited from a touch of internal fury and frightening coldness. Eventually, Santi catches a wave of seriousness and rides it to the end. This is in large part thanks to his firelit scenes with White. It is there that the audience can see flickers of truth in his performance.

brewing here with terrific ideas, but they never quite reached their full potential. Missing scenes, particularly in the latter part of the play, plague the far-too-ambiguous ending.

Director Angie Flynn-McIver does her best to walk the tightrope between drama and comedy, but overall, the combating genres just don’t mesh well. Flynn-McIver has a knack for humor, but had she guided the actors into a more serious realm, the play’s written shortcomings might be less apparent.

The production’s lack of homosexual nuances is also utterly heartbreaking. For example, a scorching opportunity was missed in the well-choreographed fight sequence by Bill Muñoz . FlynnMcIver could have included within it an element of homoeroticism — reminiscent of the famed fireplace brawl in the 1969 film Women in Love . It would have shaken the audience in the best of ways. Still, this scene and others were powerful, given the assertive pacing.

What an exciting and thought-provoking character the Devil would be for an actor to play, and Santi clearly has a lot of fun with the role. However, his performance has a major underpinning of bravado, and distract -

White’s acting is far and away some of the best in the region, and she lives her character to the bone. Many actors are fearful to inhabit their roles in such a way, but once the connection is made, the feeling is beyond rewarding to both the performer and the audience. It takes talent, persistence and ingenuity to foster this style of acting. Unfortunately, as the role is written, we never get the chance to feel Elizabeth in a manipulative push-pull with the Devil. Such scenes oscillating like a pendulum would have incorporated a dramatic thrill. Still, White’s honest portrayal effortlessly steals the show, elevating it to another level.

Johnson is also memorable as the power-seeking rogue who appears possessed by the Devil’s charm and promise of a better life. His riveting climactic scene with Gabrielle Story as Winnifred is the production’s best.

The marriage of Julie K. Ross ’ scenic design and Victoria Depew ’s edgy costume design cleverly places the audience in a dissonant world that feels like a fable. Witch wants us to ponder what it would take to change such a world, or if we are better off making peace with the story we are already in. If we were given the chance to make such a choice, how careful would we be?  X

WHAT Witch WHERE

N.C. Stage Company, 15 Stage Lane, ncstage.org

WHEN

Through Sunday, April 7.

Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m.;

Friday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. $10-$48

DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND: In N.C. Stage Company’s Witch, the Devil, portrayed by Arusi Santi, second from right, meets his match in the title character, played by Callan White, right. Also pictured, from left to right, are Gabrielle Story, Daniel Henry, Anthony Johnson and Philip Kershaw. Photo courtesy of N.C. Stage

Lights, camera, consent

Laura Rikard on intimacy coordination in film, TV and theater

BY EDWIN ARNAUDIN

earnaudin@mountainx.com

It took the #MeToo movement in 2017 for film, TV and theater industries to recognize the need for intimacy coordinators and choreographers. By then, Laura Rikard, an Ashevillebased screen and theater professional and co-founder of Theatrical Intimacy Education, had been sustaining such work for nearly a decade.

“I think people originally thought this work was very prescriptive and that the intimacy coordinator or intimacy choreographer comes in and sets every move and tells the actors exactly where they’re going to put their hands. That intimacy coordinators were there to police people if they were doing something wrong but we are really there to be a resource for positive solutions,” Rikard says.

“The job is to be a good collaborator. You come in, and if folks aren’t sure how to speak up or ask for what they need, they can come to you no matter what. And you give them the tools to ask for what they need or you ask for them.”

In February, Rikard spoke at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival about intimacy coordination and her work in spearheading these efforts in the entertainment industry. According to Rikard, she is the first intimacy coordinator invited to present at the film festival.

Before hopping on a plane to Europe, Rikard spoke with Xpress about her work in a rapidly evolving field and the differences it’s making.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When did you start exploring intimacy coordination?

It really started in 2008, when I was a graduate instructor at the University of Virginia, where I was getting my MFA in acting. When I got to be the leader of the classroom, I started noticing that students were intimidated by me, just because of the setup of the power dynamics modeled in the industry. I wanted to start developing tools that may help them feel more empowered as they were training as actors.

Originally, I was calling this work “instilling self-care in actor training.” And then that transitioned, and what I was doing was actually looking at broad consent-based practices. Then

I became an acting and movement professor, and I would be asked to come in and work on the movement scene for shows, and I would show up, and it would be the intimate scene. And so I started putting together the consent-based practices along with the choreographing of intimacy.

I met my research partner in 2014 who was really honing in on the physical choreography aspect of it. We combined our research to form Theatrical Intimacy Education a venue for what we were discovering. We didn’t have a plan for where this work would lead. We would present on it at conferences and support folks when they reached out. And then after the #MeToo movement, the industry got really interested in the work.

What’s an example of a regular day on set?

In staging intimacy, that’s different depending upon the actor you’re working with. Some actors want to have a lot of say and really want to talk it through with you. Some actors just want you to tell them where to put their hands. Most of the time, it’s a collaboration where you have ideas, they have ideas, and you’re double-checking that everything’s working for everybody’s boundaries.

I think in the beginning, people thought this was a role to come in and double-check that everybody was on their best behavior. But now people are understanding we’re collaborators that help move this process along.

One of the most important things that we do is that we are a mediator that helps manage the power dynamic. Sometimes just wearing the title of director can be intimidating to other people. Being able to come to me and say, “How many more times are we going to do [this scene]? I don’t know if I want to take my top off that many more times.”

And then I can be the one that says [to the director], “For the sake of the actors there is a request for only a few more takes, how do you feel about that?” And usually the director wants what’s best for talent and they hear the request. One of our most important roles is being a calm voice that can mediate concerns.

Generally, how prevalent is intimacy work within the acting field?

SAG-AFTRA has recommended that all productions seek one out and if an actor requests an intimacy coor-

TRAILBLAZER: Asheville resident Laura Rikard, who’s been at the forefront of intimacy coordination for over 15 years, presented at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival in February. Photo by Dana Patrick

dinator that production hires one. But no production has to have one. SAG-AFTRA has lent its voice to saying, “We think they’re a good idea,” but mainly for scenes that go beyond basic kisses and handholds.

I think the big mistake folks made in the beginning was they thought we would be the fixers of the #MeToo movement. The wound of the #MeToo movement is going to take a lot more than only hiring an intimacy coordinator, but we’re definitely a good conversation starter — and I think it has reached a point where it’s normal to hire an intimacy coordinator, particularly on anything with a larger budget. I don’t think it will be long before the cultural response is, “Yeah, of course we hire an intimacy coordinator.”

Does your work involve a lot of travel?

I’m also a tenured professor at the University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg, so I travel all the time. Intimacy coordinator work has been a little slower since the SAGAFTRA strike, but it’s picking back up again since the strike ended in November. I go to Wilmington a lot. I go to New York [City] quite often — every now and then LA, Pittsburgh and New Orleans. Often, once people work with you, if they like working with you, they will call you again and again, even if they have to fly you in from somewhere.

I have also started doing a lot more local theater work. I head up the intimacy work for the University of North Carolina School of the Arts [in Winston-Salem] and I travel to Europe once or twice a year. I’ll be heading back over again this summer to train the coordinators in Europe.

How did the opportunity to speak at the Berlin festival arise?

About four years ago, the German Actors Union did a study of the different organizations that were training people to be intimacy coordinators. And from that study, they were going to pick who they wanted to come to Germany to train intimacy coordinators, and they picked Theatrical Intimacy Education. I, along with one of our team member, Kim Shively, have been to Germany twice to train the intimacy coordinators from Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

That led to me actually being invited to speak at the festival last year over Zoom. After that, they were like, “We want you in person this year.” Productions have had a good experiences with the intimacy coordinators I’ve trained.

What’s the personal significance of getting to present at Berlin?

It’s a big deal because it’s one of the most important film festivals in the world — and maybe the most important one in Europe. I’m part of a part of the festival that’s called “Power to Transform” that homes in and focuses on women and nonbinary people that they feel are transforming the industry. So, it’s not just an honor to get to go to the film festival itself, but it’s an honor to be uplifted in this particular subpocket of the festival.

What do you hope attendees take away from your talk?

Interview the person that they hire and make sure that they’re the appropriate collaborator for that story and for the production team. Because not every intimacy coordinator is the right intimacy coordinator for every film — just like every director isn’t the right director for every script.

I also hope they see the positive and really useful aspects [of this work] and how this role can help alleviate stress for the leaders on set. To have the opportunity to share this research that I’ve spent, gosh, almost 15 years working on, is in itself humbling and an honor.

To learn more, visit avl.mx/prxv. X

Unsolved mysteries

BY EDWIN ARNAUDIN

“One of my big guilty pleasures is true-crime stuff,” says John Garland Wells. “But the way they describe [the details] on podcasts and on those TV shows that Netflix puts out every 10 minutes is very clinical — to the point where it sounds kind of exploitative.”

The Asheville-based author avoids such trappings in his novella Hinterkaifeck, which uses prose poetry to tell the still-unsolved 1922 murder of the Gruber family in rural Bavaria.

Wells first heard about the case on the “Generation Why” true-crime podcast in October 2015. Hosts Aaron Habel and Justin Evans started their program in 2012 — two years before the launch of Sarah Koenig’s “Serial,” which is often cited at the first major true-crime podcast.

On March 31, 1922, farmers Cäzilia and Andreas Gruber, their daughter Viktoria, two young grandchildren and servant Maria Baumgartner were murdered with a mattock. The intruder then stayed on for three days to keep a fire going, attend to the animals and generally make passersby think that the Grubers were still alive.

“I like that kind of psychological, human-horror stuff,” Wells says. “So I kind of went down a rabbit hole and felt like I could apply my sensibilities to this superdark story and flesh it out.”

The combination of an isolated German setting in a snowy winter gave the story “a dark fairy tale aspect,” says Wells. But little did he know that in undertaking the project, a journey awaited.

MIND HUNTER

Since the crime remains unsolved and theories abound regarding the killer’s identity, Wells traced each possibility to see which one resonated most with him. Over the course of seven months, he read multiple books on the case and — with help from Google Translate — German magazine articles that feature interviews with multiple

generations of families based in the surrounding villages.

“I wanted to get a little bit of insight into how [the murders are] viewed amongst the people that live near that place and how that had changed over the years,” Wells says. “They kind of tell it like a boogeyman story — except it’s real.”

Wells also watched several documentaries on YouTube but stayed away from self-published works by what he calls fellow “armchair detectives.” Instead, he sought out peer-reviewed articles.

“They’ll interview forensic psychologists about what kind of person would do this,” Wells says. “With [my] book, I wanted to take on each different persona of the people involved, and I wanted to at least be somewhat on track with how that could have looked — their inner psychology.”

Wells ended up landing on the idea that neighbor Lorenz Schlittenbauer was probably having an affair with Viktoria Gruber and fathered her 2-year-old son, Josef. The proximity to his child likely drove Schlittenbauer to kill, as did rumors that Josef was the

“I wanted to get a little bit of insight into how [the murders are] viewed amongst the people that live near that place and how that had changed over the years,” Wells says. “They kind of tell it like a boogeyman story — except it’s real.”

— John Garland

John Garland Wells explores century-old murder in new prose poetry novella

product of incest between Viktoria and her father.

“It was kind of like the darkest, reallife soap opera you can imagine — and I’m kind of sucked into trash TV,” he says. “Those melodramatic relationships I thought were supercool.”

BODY COUNT

Wells has enjoyed a prolific creative output through his self-described “punk-poetry band” Bad Ties. But other than his 2021 debut novel, Maxie Collins Dreams in Wretched Colors: A Story of Murder in Poems, he often struggles with longer works.

“Part of the problem I’ve had with being a younger writer is getting halfway through something that I’ve completely made up and then finding it’s hard to figure out where I’m going with it,” says the 26-year-old.

The Grubers’ story presented him with an appealing writing exercise: Wells had the basic details of the event — “a skeleton of facts that you can fill in the gaps with your own imagination,” as he calls it.

“I thought it had a lot of potential to still stick to a through line — just the beginning, the middle, the end — but at the same time being able to apply my own thing to it,” he says. “[Hinterkaifeck] is loosely based on a true story. I would never say they should read this in, like, a forensic crime class, you know?”

With help from the peer-reviewed articles, Wells added personal details for each family member and explored what he calls their “weird dynamic” through poetic inner monologues, capturing their mindsets leading up to and during the grisly incidents. He also inhabits the unknown assailant, whom he dubs The Phantom, and describes the figure in a chilling, detached manner.

Initially, Wells envisioned the work as a novel wherein each chapter was told by a different character, similar to George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. But he soon abandoned that plan.

“I realized at a certain point that when you write a novel, it’s all about concrete detail. You want to put in all of these specific details: What were they wearing? What did it smell like? All this stuff. And, to be honest, I thought, ‘Well, I don’t know if I have enough to fill 200300 pages of that,” Wells says.

“For one, it’s pretty unpleasant. It’s a big ask ... to get someone to read 300 pages of absolute misery and these kind of perverse dynamics.”

Wells then considered going in the opposite direction and presenting the tale in poetry chapbook form. But he decided that 35 pages — the typical length of such publications — was too short.

“I wanted to get more than just the crime,” he says. “Otherwise, it’s just torture porn in the form of a poem.”

GATHER ’ROUND

Landing somewhere in the middle of those two options, Wells told the tale as a long poem. And though he was generally satisfied with the novella’s progress, finding the proper framing device eluded him.

After a few drafts, it dawned on him that his poetry style came across almost like someone telling a dark lullaby — one with significant repetition. And being a longtime movie fan, a vision worthy of the big screen soon appeared in his mind.

“I had this cinematic image of this old woman by the fire and her wrinkles being illuminated with the flicker of the fire. And all these people kind of coddling around her and she tells them the darkest story they’ve ever heard in their whole life — this haunting memory that she has,” Wells says.

“I like that idea that it would be passed down with oral tradition in these taverns. And also the wicked irony of going into a tavern to get warm and hearing this really cold story from this old woman.”

Wells then sent the finished tale off to multiple publishers and Portland, Oregon.-based Corpolailiac Press agreed to put it out. The author notes that it was the publisher’s idea to include original artwork and photos from the crime scene “to break it up so it’s more immersive and not just one long train into the dark.”

Speaking of transportation, Wells describes himself as “an aspiring dark tourist” who’s fascinated by the prospect of visiting places with tragic histories. When he was a teenager, he told his parents he wanted to join the Peace Corps so that he could go to the site of the Jonestown massacre in Guyana — which he admits is “so morbid and ridiculous.” But he would love to eventually visit Hinterkaifeck.

“If I ever went, I would probably update the book,” Wells says. “I think the publisher would be down to do revisions or a little postscript.”

To learn more, visit avl.mx/dc7. X

MURDER BALLADS: Asheville-based author John Garland Wells also fronts the punk-poetry band Bad Ties. Photo by Claire Barratt

What’s new in food

Pop Bubble kicks off second Asian tea tour

Bubble tea — or boba, the Taiwanese drink with tapioca pearls — is fun, refreshing and trendy. But Pop Bubble Tea co-founder Eva Peterson has also found a way to make it educational and community-building. After a successful 2023 debut, Peterson is set to launch the second Poppy’s Asian Tour, a monthly bubble tea series, on Thursday, April 4.

On the first Thursday of each month through Aug. 1, Pop Bubble will release a new bubble tea flavor highlighting an Asheville-based individual, business or organization with ties to an Asian country. The April 4 release is a lemongrass-ginger black

milk tea with toasted rice powder, celebrating Laos and Tou and Chue Lee, owners of Lee’s One Fortune Farm. The toasted rice powder is made from rice grown on the Lees’ farm. “And lemongrass-ginger is a very common tea in Laos,” Peterson explains. The 2023 tour featured local groups associated with Peterson’s native Hong Kong plus other Asian locations she had visited on her travels. But this year, the partnerships were inspired by her work with the Western North Carolina Asian American and Pacific Islanders community and its inaugural AVL Asian Culture Festival in January.

“I was a guest speaker for the festival, so I had more opportunities to meet different, amazing people and learn their stories and what they are doing,” says Peterson. “So this year for Poppy’s Asian Tour, we wanted to focus on some of those people and their businesses and organizations and feature their perspective on what food and drinks make them feel connected to their homeland.”

The next stops on the 2024 tour will be: the Philippines with community activist Stephanie Harper in May; Korea with Tracy Hopkins of Dare to Rise and CoThinkk in June; the indigenous Montagnard people of Vietnam with Rich Enuol of Across the Sea Foundation in July; and India with Meherwan Irani of Chai Pani Restaurant Group in August.

As with any international adventure, customers who journey on Poppy’s Asian Tour receive a special passport whereby they can track their stops with stamps commemorating each drink they’ve sampled. “I was a social worker in Hong Kong for a long time, and I always did a lot of public education,” Peterson says. “I hope through this process, people can learn more about the countries and these local organizations and businesses.”

Pop Bubble Tea is at 640 Merrimon Ave. For more information, visit avl.mx/bk5.

POP CULTURE: Pop Bubble Tea co-founders Eva Peterson, right, and Ashley Garrison, left, pose with Chue Lee of Lee’s One Fortune Farm, whose farm and native Laos are highlighted with a special drink on Poppy’s Asian Tour this month. Photo courtesy of Pop Bubble Tea

New rooftop brick-oven pizza restaurant

Soprana Rooftop Cucina opened March 27 on the rooftop of downtown’s new Embassy Suites by Hilton hotel.

Soprana’s menu focuses on brick-oven pizzas featuring ingredients from local farms and food businesses. The Asheville Pizza, for example, is made with pepperoni from The Chop Shop Butchery, and A Smokin’ Hot Honey Pie highlights products from Asheville Bee Charmer.

“Our local ranchers, farmers and makers are part of what makes the Asheville food and beverage scene so special, and we wanted that to come through with every bite at Soprana,” says executive chef Jeffrey Stanford in a press release.

The Italian-inspired menu also offers soups, salads and small plates with wine, local craft beers and cocktails made with locally distilled spirits. Soprana joins E’Terie, the hotel’s lobby-level bar and grill, which has a menu of snacks, burgers, sandwiches and entrées.

Soprana is open daily for dinner 5-10 p.m. at 192 Haywood St. For more details, visit avl.mx/dim.

A new spin on an old favorite

On Sunday evenings in April and May starting April 7, Cultura executive chef Eric Morris will deliver his unique take on the breakfast-for-dinner concept. Waffle Home, the latest installment in the restaurant’s ongoing Cease and Desist dinner series, will riff on the offerings of a familiar U.S. diner chain with a special fourcourse menu.

An iceberg lettuce garden salad and pecan waffle with chicken butter and blackened maple syrup are the prelude to the main course of pork chops, T-bone steak or eggs, and hash browns made to order with toppings of choice — options ranging from cheese, onions or grilled tomatoes to sausage gravy and chili. Dessert is a Dr Pepper ice cream float, and the menu also includes the coffee- and rum-based Road Map to Happiness

cocktail (which can also be made without alcohol).

Past Cease and Desist concepts have included The Melting Cauldron, P.J. Chong’s, Pizza Shack, Panda Excess, Fred Lobster and Cook-N among others.

Cultura is at 147 Coxe Ave. For more information, visit avl.mx/dih.

Lowcountry boil at Hickory Nut Gap Farm

Hickory Nut Gap Farm will host a Lowcountry boil Sunday, April 7, 3-7 p.m., in its Big Barn event space. Food will include fresh Outer Banks shrimp and a raw oyster bar from Locals Seafood, Hickory Nut Gap pasture-raised sausages and desserts from Mount Patisserie. Wine pairings will be provided by plēb urban winery. Live music will be performed by Jones Boy Trio. Tickets are $85.

Hickory Nut Gap Farm is at 57 Sugar Hollow Road, Fairview. For tickets and more information, visit avl.mx/dif.

Downtown tour and cooking classes

In March, AVL Mountain Kitchen and AVL Free Walking Tours announced they will collaborate to offer a downtown Asheville culinary experience that includes a two-hour guided tour ending with a onehour cooking class and lunch on Eagle Street.

The tip-based tour highlights Asheville history and culture with stops at breweries, distilleries, cafés and historic sites. The cooking classes, which can be booked with or without the tour, cost $35 each and happen at 11 a.m., noon, 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., Thursday-Saturday. All food is scratch-made with a rotating menu that includes items such as fresh pasta with pesto or marinara sauce, Alfredo pork dumplings, vegetarian gyoza, falafel and chicken shawarma, pad thai, butter chicken with basmati rice, fried chicken with collard greens and more.

For more information, visit avl.mx/dil.

New horizons for chef Elliott Moss

After 17 years in Asheville, chef Elliott Moss has announced plans to move elsewhere in the Carolinas for new adventures. On March 19, the chef shared on social media that after the end of April he and his wife, Jennifer, will relocate to begin a “new job, new career and new life.” The post provided few details but shared that Moss will continue to work with whole-hog barbecue and will also be learning some new skills. Further information, it said, will be coming soon.

Originally from South Carolina, Moss moved to Asheville in 2007 to help open The Admiral in West Asheville. In 2015, he partnered with Chai Pani chef and owner Meherwan Irani to open whole-hog concept Buxton Hall Barbecue, then left the restaurant in 2022 to launch Little Louie’s and Regina’s, both of which he left in 2023. Moss has twice been nominated for the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef Southeast award.

— Gina Smith X

Around Town

Story Parlor reflects on upcoming anniversary

On Saturday, April 27, the West Asheville cooperative arts space Story Parlor will celebrate its second anniversary with an evening of local comedy and performance acts. Story Parlor will open the stage to any artist interested in performing an original, five-minute set, with the theme of “toasts, traditions and trips around the sun.”

For the past two years, Story Parlor has served as a center for multidisciplinary artists to collaborate and share their work. It has provided an outlet for community partners including Asheville Creative Arts, Asheville Fringe Arts Festival, Bilingual Birdies, The Campfireball, the Great Smokies Writing Program, Jazz Hybrid Presents, Listen to This, Lit Local, Lonesome Station, Misfit Improv & Acting School and Speakeasy Improv.

“The most exciting aspect of bringing Story Parlor to life has been forming it alongside the community,” says Erin Hallagan Clare, Story Parlor’s founder and artistic director. “Aside from our monthly Story Mixers, just about everything else that comes through the space is dreamt up, proposed and put on by folks here in Asheville, which has made for a really enlivening look into the creative pulse of this town. We exist for and by the community and, in the span of two short years, have been so moved by the meaningful relationships and ideas that emerged out of the collective efforts that define who we are today.”

In conjunction with its anniversary, Story Parlor is opening applications for two of its signature programs: the Story/Arts Residency and the Creative Facilitator Training.

The Story/Arts Residency, which takes place the final three Thursdays of July, aims to support narrative artists from historically marginalized communities. “Stories are ripples,” says Clare. “Though we are a small listening room space, we have a platform that I have seen, time and again, make a profound impact on people’s lives. Last year, our artist-in-residence Shunyu Huang’s mission was to ‘Strive for Unity in Diversity.’ This is a beautiful representation of what we hope to emulate in this program.” In addition to showcasing their work, the residency provides artists with a stipend, professional headshots and coaching sessions.

The Creative Facilitator Training, an 18-week program running Tuesday, May 14-Tuesday, Sept. 24, offers a foundation for creative facilitation focused on psychology and personal narrative. “The program really came to light as a response to two main things: first, how hard it can be to make a living in the arts, and second, the number of students I’ve encountered over the years who have come to class with a deep belief that they were not creative,” says Clare. “The training exists to counter both of these — debunking the myth that creativity is for a select few while paving entrepreneurial paths for creatives looking to engage with meaningful work.”

Ten facilitators were certified by the Creative Facilitator Program in 2023.

Story Parlor is at 227 Haywood Road. To apply for the programs or for more information, visit avl.mx/dit.

LEAF expresses gratitude

LEAF Global Arts has released its annual Gratitude Report, highlighting the community work and outreach programs it funds throughout the year to facilitate arts and cultural exchange.

LEAF is a nonprofit organization that sponsors experiences, education and cultural preservation programs designed to cultivate a global community through the arts. In 2023, the organization hosted 31 field trips for kids, 48 musical classes, and seven summer camps. Among its programs are LEAF ONEmic Studios, which provides musical production studios to youth and teens in Tanzania, Rwanda, Haiti, Costa Rica and Asheville; the Legends of the Americas project;

and the LEAF Schools & Streets Program, a youth arts education initiative that focuses on cultural exchange. The program offers workshops and performance opportunities to schools, particularly in high-need communities. Other programs include LEAF Global Field Trips, 18 international exchanges and a mobile arts lab. The LEAF organization has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Chorus America.

“I want to express my deepest gratitude to each of you for the incredible journey we’ve shared in promoting community through the sharing of culture and connection through world music, art education and meaningful experiences,” says Jim Diaz , outgoing president of LEAF’s board of directors, in the Gratitude Report. “It has been an honor to serve alongside such dedicated individuals who believe in the power of cultural preservation. LEAF embodies connection.”

The LEAF Global Arts Center is at 19 Eagle St., Suite 120. For more information or to read the full gratitude report, visit avl.mx/diu.

SMALL BUT MIGHTY: “Stories are ripples,” says Erin Hallagan Clare, Story Parlor’s founder. “Though we are a small listening room space, we have a platform that I have seen, time and again, make a profound impact on people’s lives.” Photo by Matt Peiken

Malaprop’s founder shares new poetry

Malaprop’s Bookstore is hosting a hybrid in-person and virtual reading event featuring new poetry from Emöke B’Rácz and fellow poet Glenis Redmond on Wednesday, April 3, 6-7 p.m.

B’Rácz is the founder and former owner of Malaprop’s. She is an accomplished artist and translator and is the author of Every Tree Is the Forest and Hopscotch on the Riverbank While Waiting.

Redmond is the first poet laureate of Greenville, S.C., and was selected as 2023 Poet Laureate by the Academy of American Poets. She has published six books of poetry and speaks for the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

The event is free, but due to limited seating, online registration is required.

Malaprops is at 55 Haywood St. Visit avl.mx/a8m to reserve a seat.

Downtown After Five returns

The Asheville Downtown Association has posted its 36th annual Downtown After Five lineup. The summer concert series takes place 5-9 p.m. on Lexington Avenue on the third Friday of each month from April-September and typically draws between 5,000 and 6,000 people, transforming the city block into a festival. A portion of each concert’s proceeds will go to the designated nonprofit sponsor for that event. Each concert will take place in collaboration with these local organizations and will center on a theme. Food, drinks and locally made goods will be available at the event, which is free to the public.

The series kicks off with a psychedelic funk theme on Friday, April 19. Empire Strikes Brass will headline the event, and Magenta Sunshine will open. Comedian Kim Richardson will emcee. This event will take place in coordination with the Mosaic Art Walk, which supports 15 nonprofit organizations through the United Way.

The rest of the lineup runs as follows:

May 17: Yacht Rock Schooner will headline, Lazr Luvr will open, and DIVINE the Bearded Lady will emcee, for a Yacht Rock event in collaboration with Blue Ridge Pride.

June 21: Sierra Green & the Giants will headline, and Lyric will

open for a Juneteenth celebration in collaboration with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Asheville and Buncombe County.

July 19: Caitlin Krisko & The Broadcast will headline, and the Greenliners will open. The event will support Asheville FM.

Aug. 16: Tito Puente Jr. will headline, and the LEAF Kono Band will open, in collaboration with LEAF Global Arts.

Sept. 20: Oliver Hazard will headline, and Paul McDonald will open for an Outdoor Rec Fest in collaboration with Riverlink.

For more information, visit avl.mx/div.

The Village Potters announces featured artist

The Village Potters Clay Center has announced its first featured artist, Caroline Reneé Woolard , according to a press release. An exhibit featuring Woolard’s work opened in the Feature Gallery at The Village Potters Clay Center on

March 20 and will run through the end of May.

The exhibit features some of Woolard’s most popular forms such as mushroom mugs and “curvaceous lady vessels.” On Saturday, May 4, The Village Potters Clay Center will host its annual Multi-Kiln Opening Celebration, where Woolard will demonstrate surface design techniques and will be available throughout the day for questions.

The Village Potters Clay Center is at 191 Lyman St. For more information, contact Lori Theriault at lori@ thevillagepotters.com

Local poet releases new work

Local author Tina Barr has just released Pink Moon, winner of the inaugural Editor’s Choice Award at Jacar Press. The book of poetry explores themes of powerlessness and the environment, ranging from the Cherokee plight and the Tuskegee Experiment to the Ku Klux Klan, transgressive love and familial patterns. Barr has received fellowships from the National Endowment

for the Arts, The Tennessee Arts Commission, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The MacDowell Colony and others. This is her seventh work of poetry.

For more information, visit avl.mx/diw.

— Oby Arnold X

MOVIE REVIEWS

GODZILLA X KONG:

THE NEW EMPIRE: Go see this big, dumb, fun action movie on the biggest, dumbest, funnest screen possible (in 3D) and thank me later. Grade: B-plus

— Edwin Arnaudin

HIGHLAND BREWING CO.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3

ASHEVILLE MUSIC HALL

Stand-Up Comedy Open Mic, 8pm

BARLEY'S TAPROOM & PIZZERIA

Trivia Night w/ PartyGrampa, 7pm

FLEETWOOD'S Scott Yoder w/Puppy & the Dogs & Juniper Willow (glam rock, punk, indie), 9pm

FRENCH BROAD

RIVER BREWERY

Saylor Brothers & Friends (jamgrass), 6:30pm

HI-WIRE BREWING

BIG TOP Trivia, 7pm

Well-Crafted Music w/ Matt Smith, 6pm JACK OF THE WOOD PUB

Old Time Jam, 5pm

OKLAWAHA BREWING CO.

Bluegrass Jam w/ Derek McCoy & Friends, 6pm

ONE WORLD

BREWING WEST

Latin Night w/DJ Mtn Vibez, 8:30pm

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

SALVAGE STATION Christone “Kingfish” Ingram (blues), 8pm

SHAKEY'S Sexy Service Industry Night, 10pm SOVEREIGN KAVA Poetry Open Mic, 8pm

THE DRAFTSMAN BAR + LOUNGE Trivia Nights, 7pm

THE JOINT NEXT DOOR

Lefty (Americana, folk), 7pm

THE ONE STOP UniHorn, 10pm

THE RAILYARD BLACK MOUNTAIN

Dan's Jam (bluegrass), 7pm

URBAN ORCHARD CIDER CO. SOUTH SLOPE Trivia, 6:30pm

THURSDAY, APRIL 4

ASHEVILLE MUSIC HALL

Steely Dead (Steely Dan & Grateful Dead tribute), 9pm

EDA'S HIDEAWAY

Karaoke, 8pm

EULOGY

Seriff, Wolf & Sipe w/ Rebekah Todd (jazz), 8pm

FRENCH BROAD RIVER BREWERY

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

HI-WIRE BREWING

BIG TOP Survey Says, 7pm

JACK OF THE WOOD PUB

Bluegrass Jam w/ Drew Matulich, 7pm

LOOKOUT BREWING CO. Music Bingo Thursdays, 6:30pm

NEW BELGIUM BREWING CO. Dungeons n' Drafts, 5:30pm

NEW ORIGIN BREWING CO. Flimflams & Shenanigans Comedy Night, 8pm

ONE WORLD BREWING Will Hartz (Appalachian), 8pm

ONE WORLD BREWING WEST Anon Trio w/Lemon City Trio (multigenre), 8pm

PULP

Slice of Life Comedy Open Mic, 7pm

SALVAGE STATION

MoonTricks (electro-folk), 8pm

SHILOH & GAINES

Karaoke Night, 8pm

THE GREY EAGLE

• Patio: Kimberly Morgan York (Appalachian, country), 5:30pm

• Birdtalker (pop, indie-folk), 8pm

THE JOINT NEXT DOOR

Soul Blue (soul, blues, R&B), 7pm

BISCUITS & JAM: On Thursday, April 11, trance fusion juggernauts The Disco Biscuits take The Orange Peel stage for their Why We Dance tour, starting at 8 p.m. Photo courtesy of Tara Gracer

THE ODD

Belushi Speed Ball, The Deathbots & Bongfoot (thrash, punk, stoner metal), 9pm

THE OUTPOST

Kevin Daniel w/Mama & the Ruckus (blues, rock, country), 8pm

THE RIVER ARTS

DISTRICT BREWING

CO.

Peggy Ratusz & Kelly Jones (blues), 6pm

THE STATION BLACK

MOUNTAIN

Mr Jimmy (blues), 6:30pm

URBAN ORCHARD

CIDER CO. SOUTH

SLOPE

Bachata Thursdays, 8:30pm

FRIDAY, APRIL 5

ASHEVILLE BEAUTY

ACADEMY

Friday Night Karaoke, 9pm

ASHEVILLE GUITAR

BAR

Mr Jimmy's Friday Night Blues, 7:30pm

ASHEVILLE MUSIC

HALL

KLL SMTH w/Cut

Rugs, Ghost Lotus, & Ginseng (bass, EDM), 9pm

BOLD ROCK

ASHEVILLE

Friday Night Karaoke, 7pm

CATAWBA BREWING

CO. SOUTH SLOPE

ASHEVILLE

• Comedy at Catawba w/Rob Christensen & Will Abeles, 7pm

• Comedy from the Future, 9pm

EDA'S HIDEAWAY

Steelin' Time (country), 8pm

EULOGY

Rosali w/ Verity Den (indie), 7pm

GINGER'S REVENGE

CRAFT BREWERY & TASTING ROOM

Color Machine Music (folk, blues), 6pm

HIGHLAND BREWING CO.

Lady and The Lovers (disco, pop), 7pm

HIGHLAND BREWING DOWNTOWN TAPROOM

Em & The Innocent Mischief (Americana), 6pm

JACK OF THE WOOD

PUB

• The Peacemakers (modern folk), 5pm

• My New Favorites (Americana), 9pm

LA TAPA LOUNGE

Open mic w/Hamza, 8pm

MAD CO. BREW

HOUSE

Jim Hapmton & Darryl

Wilson Duo (country), 6pm

RIVERSIDE RHAPSODY BEER CO.

Ionize (reggae), 5:30pm

SALVAGE STATION

Alejandro Escovedo w/James Mastro (rock, alternative), 8pm

SHAKEY'S

• Friday Late Nights w/ DJ Ek Balam, 12am

• Big Blue Jams (multi-genre), 9pm

THE GREY EAGLE

• Patio: Shed Bugs (jam band), 5pm

• Slaughter Beach, Dog w/ Erin Rae (indie, acoustic), 8pm

THE JOINT NEXT DOOR

The Midnight Aces (Blues), 7pm

THE ORANGE PEEL

Big Bubble Rave, 9pm

THE RIVER ARTS

DISTRICT BREWING CO.

TJ Stacy & Team Awesome (funk), 7pm

THE STATION BLACK MOUNTAIN

Vaden Landers (country, blues), 6pm

URBAN ORCHARD CIDER CO. SOUTH

SLOPE

Trippin' Up the Stairs (celtic, old time), 6pm

SATURDAY, APRIL 6

27 CLUB

Systematic Devastation, Nihilect, Final Punishment & Krvsade (metal), 9pm

ASHEVILLE BEAUTY ACADEMY

Vinyl Travelers: Hip Hop Dance Party, 10pm

ASHEVILLE CLUB

Mr Jimmy (blues), 6pm

ASHEVILLE GUITAR

BAR

Miami Gold w/ special guest Matt Elandt (rock, punk), 7:30pm

BATTERY PARK BOOK EXCHANGE

Dinah's Daydream (jazz), 6pm

BOLD ROCK

ASHEVILLE 5J Barrow (folk), 7pm

BOLD ROCK MILLS RIVER

Iggy Radio (Southern-rock), 6pm

EDA'S HIDEAWAY

Resonant Rogues (old time, country, soul), 8pm

EULOGY

Disco is Dead w/ Phantom Phantone (disco, house, soul), 9pm

FLEETWOOD'S Port City Blitz Punk Fest, 4pm

GINGER'S REVENGE

Eyes Up Here Comedy, 7pm

GINGER'S REVENGE

CRAFT BREWERY & TASTING ROOM

Eyes Up Here Comedy, 6:30pm

HIGHLAND BREWING CO.

The HeadTones (funk, soul), 6pm

HIGHLAND BREWING DOWNTOWN TAPROOM

Hazel (piano), 6pm

JACK OF THE WOOD PUB

• Nobody’s Darling String Band, 4pm

• Cast Iron Bluegrass, 9pm

LA TAPA LOUNGE

Karaoke Night, 9pm

SALVAGE STATION

Yo Mama's Big Fat

Booty Band w/Abby Bryant & The Echoes (funk, soul), 7pm

SHAKEY'S

DJ RAB!D RON!E, 10pm

SIERRA NEVADA BREWING CO.

Below the Bassline (jazz, reggae), 2pm

THE GREY EAGLE

• Patio: The Discs (power pop, new wave, punk), 5:30pm

• LowDown Brass Band w/Big Fur (soul, reggae, funk), 9pm

THE JOINT NEXT DOOR

Perry Wing Band (Americana, rock, bluegrass), 7pm

THE ORANGE PEEL

The Emo Night Tour, 8pm

URBAN ORCHARD CIDER CO. SOUTH

SLOPE

70's 80's and 90's Dance Night w/DJ Free Range, 7pm

SUNDAY, APRIL 7

CATAWBA BREWING CO. SOUTH SLOPE

ASHEVILLE

Comedy at Catawba: Nick Murphy w/Elliot Weber, 6:30pm

EDA'S HIDEAWAY

Heavenly Vipers (classic country, Western swing), 8pm

EULOGY

Drag Me To Brunch, 1pm

FLEETWOOD'S

Best Ever Karaoke, 6pm

FRENCH BROAD

RIVER BREWERY

Reggae Sunday w/ Chalwa, 3pm

GINGER'S REVENGE

CRAFT BREWERY & TASTING ROOM

Jazz Sundays, 2pm

HIGHLAND BREWING CO.

The Marshall Brown Brown Bluegrass Band, 2pm

JACK OF THE WOOD PUB

Traditional Irish Jam, 3:30pm

RIVERSIDE

RHAPSODY BEER

CO.

Drinkin' N Thinkin' Trivia, 5:30pm

S&W MARKET

Mr Jimmy (Blues), 1pm

SALVAGE STATION

Sold Out: The Crane Wives w/ Rachel Bobbit (indie, Americana), 8pm

SIERRA NEVADA

BREWING CO. No Games (funk), 2pm

SOVEREIGN KAVA

Cosmic Appalachian

Soul Sundays, 7pm

THE DRAFTSMAN

BAR + LOUNGE

Karaoke Night w/ Lyric, 7pm

THE GREY EAGLE

• Outpost: Dirty Dead (tribute band), 4pm

• Patio: Ladies in the Round w/Alexis Jade, Alma Russ, Sierra Bryan (acoustic, country, folk), 5:30pm

Reasonably Priced Babies Birthday Bash (comedy), 7:30pm

THE ORANGE PEEL

Flipturn w/Richy Mitch & the Coal Miners (indie), 8pm

THE RIVER ARTS DISTRICT BREWING CO.

• Dungeons n' Drafts, 12pm

• Mike Hollon (roots, Americana), 4pm

MONDAY, APRIL 8

27 CLUB

Karaoke Monday, 9pm

5 WALNUT WINE

BAR

CaroMia w/ Rahm & Friends (soul, jazz, Americana), 8pm

HI-WIRE BREWING

RAD BEER GARDEN

Hot Mic w/Taylor Knighton, 6pm

HIGHLAND BREWING CO.

Geeks Who Drink Trivia, 6pm

JACK OF THE WOOD PUB

Quizzo! Pub Trivia w/Jason Mencer, 7:30pm

OKLAWAHA BREWING CO.

Takes All Kinds Open Mic Nights, 7pm

ONE WORLD BREWING

Open Mic Night, 7:30pm

PULP

¿WATCHES? w/ Impending Joy & Rob Robinson (indie, punk, psychedelic), 8pm

THE JOINT NEXT DOOR

Mr Jimmy and Friends, 7pm

THE RIVER ARTS DISTRICT BREWING CO. Trivia w/Billy, 7pm

TUESDAY, APRIL 9

27 CLUB

Smile More: DJ Night, 9pm

ARCHETYPE BREWING

Trivia Tuesday, 6:30pm

FRENCH BROAD RIVER BREWERY

Robert's Totally Rad Trivia, 7pm

HI-WIRE BREWING

Themed Trivia w/Not Rocket Science Trivia, 7pm

LAZOOM ROOM BAR & GORILLA

Don't Kill Yourself

Yet: A Comedy Solo Show w/Kenice Mobley, 7pm

LOOKOUT BREWING CO. Team Trivia Tuesdays, 6:30pm

MAD CO. BREW HOUSE Team Trivia Tuesdays, 6pm

NEW BELGIUM BREWING CO. Musical Bingo, 5pm

OKLAWAHA BREWING CO. Team Trivia, 7pm

SHAKEY'S Booty Tuesday w/ DJ Tamagatchi, 9pm

SHILOH & GAINES

Tuesday Night Open Jam, 8pm

SOVEREIGN KAVA Open Mic, 7pm

THE GREY EAGLE

Madison McFerrin (R&B, soul, indie), 8pm

THE JOINT NEXT

DOOR

The LADS (rock, blues), 6pm

THE ORANGE PEEL

Owl City w/ Augustana (indie pop, electronica), 7:30pm

THE RIVER ARTS

DISTRICT BREWING CO.

Open Mic w/Jenny Bradley, 7pm

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10

ASHEVILLE MUSIC

HALL

Stand-Up Comedy Open Mic, 8pm

BARLEY'S TAPROOM & PIZZERIA

Trivia Night w/ PartyGrampa, 7pm

CITIZEN VINYL

Citizen Swing w/ Connor Law & Patrick Lopez (jazz), 6pm

EDA'S HIDEAWAY

Jeremy Rilko (bluegrass), 8pm

EULOGY

Daikaiju w/Rocky

Mtn Roller & Cam Girl (surf rock, punk, rock’n’roll), 7pm

FRENCH BROAD

RIVER BREWERY

Saylor Brothers & Friends (jamgrass), 6:30pm

HI-WIRE BREWING

BIG TOP Trivia, 7pm

HIGHLAND

BREWING CO.

Well-Crafted Music w/ Matt Smith, 6pm

JACK OF THE WOOD

PUB

Old Time Jam, 5pm

OKLAWAHA

BREWING CO.

Bluegrass Jam w/ Derek McCoy & Friends, 6pm

PULP

Julia Sanders Band (indie, folk, Americana), 8pm

SHAKEY'S

Sexy Service Industry Night, 10pm

SOVEREIGN KAVA

Poetry Open Mic, 8pm

THE DRAFTSMAN

BAR + LOUNGE

Trivia Nights, 7pm

THE GREY EAGLE

• Patio: Shake a Leg (rock, folk, blues), 5:30pm

• Pony Bradshaw w/ Rachel Baiman (country, rock, folk), 8pm

THE JOINT NEXT DOOR

Bill Altman (blues), 7pm

THE RAILYARD BLACK MOUNTAIN

Dan's Jam (bluegrass), 7pm

URBAN ORCHARD CIDER CO. SOUTH SLOPE

Trivia, 6:30pm

THURSDAY, APRIL 11

27 CLUB

Skyway 61, Beard Cult, Hex Wizard (rock, psychedelia), 9pm

ASHEVILLE GUITAR

BAR

Singer Songwriter Showcase w/Peter Tart, Patrick French, & Donny Brazile, 7:30pm

ASHEVILLE MUSIC HALL

Official Disco Biscuits

After Party w/DJ Brownie, 11:30pm

BATTERY PARK BOOK EXCHANGE

Mike Kenton & Jim Tanner (jazz), 5:30pm

EULOGY

The Sadies (indie, Americana), 7pm

FRENCH BROAD

RIVER BREWERY

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

HI-WIRE BREWING

BIG TOP

Survey Says, 7pm

JACK OF THE WOOD PUB

Bluegrass Jam w/ Drew Matulich, 7pm

LAZOOM ROOM BAR & GORILLA

Comedy Roast of James Harrod & Allison Shelnut, 7:30pm

LOOKOUT BREWING CO.

Music Bingo Thursdays, 6:30pm

SHILOH &

Karaoke Night, 8pm

•

THE

THE

MARKETPLACE FREEWILL ASTROLOGY BY ROB BREZSNY

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries author Eric G. Wilson claims, “Darker emotional states — doubt, confusion, alienation, despair — inspire a deeper and more durable experience of the sacred than contentment does.” I disagree. I know for a fact that an exquisite embrace of life’s holiness is equally possible through luminous joy and boisterous triumph and exultant breakthroughs. Propagandists of the supposed potency of misery are stuck in a habit of mind that’s endemic to the part of civilization that’s rotting and dying. In any case, Aries, I’m pleased to tell you that in the coming weeks, you will have abundant opportunities to glide into sacred awareness on the strength of your lust for life and joie de vivre.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Will humans succeed in halting the decimation of the environment?

Will we neutralize the power of fundamentalism as it fights to quash our imaginations and limit our freedoms? Will we outflank and outlast the authoritarians that threaten democracy? Sorry I’m asking you to think about sad realities. But now is an excellent time for you to ponder the world we are creating for our descendants — and resolve to do something in loving service to the future. Meditate on the riddle from Lewis Carroll’s book Through the Looking Glass: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The genius polymath Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) contributed much treasure to science and engineering. One encyclopedia sums up his legacy: “He was the father of observational astronomy, modern-era classical physics, the scientific method, and modern science.” Unfortunately, many of Galileo’s ideas conflicted with the teachings of Catholicism. The church fathers hounded him for years, even arresting him and putting him on trial. The Vatican eventually apologized, though not until 350 years after Galileo died. I expect that you, too, will generate many new approaches and possibilities in the coming months, Gemini — not Galileo level, of course, but still: sufficiently unprecedented to rouse the resistance of conventional wisdom. I suspect you won’t have to wait long to be vindicated, however.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Now would be a perfect time to prove your love. How? You might begin by being extra considerate, sensitive, sweet, and tender. I hope you will add sublime, scintillating touches, too. Maybe you will tell your beloved allies beautiful truths about themselves — revelations that make them feel deeply understood and appreciated. Maybe you will give them gifts or blessings they have wanted for a long time but never managed to get for themselves. It’s possible you will serenade them with their favorite songs, or write a poem or story about them, or buy them a symbol that inspires their spiritual quest. To climax all your kindness, perhaps you will describe the ways they have changed your life for the better.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Leo naturalist and ornithologist William Henry Hudson (1841–1922) said, “I am not a lover of lawns. Rather would I see daisies in their thousands, ground ivy, hawkweed, and dandelions with splendid flowers and fairy down, than the too-well-tended lawn.” I encourage you to adopt his attitude toward everything in your life for the next few weeks. Always opt for unruly beauty over tidy regimentation. Choose lush vitality over pruned efficiency. Blend your fate with influences that exult in creative expressiveness, genial fertility, and deep feelings. (P.S.: Cultural critic Michael Pollan says, “A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.”)

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): I praise and celebrate you for your skills at helping other people access their resources and activate their potentials. I hope you are rewarded well for your gorgeous service. If you are not, please figure out how to correct the problem in the coming months. If you are feeling extra bold, consider these two additional assignments: 1. Upgrade your skills at helping yourself access your own resources and activate your own potentialS. 2. Be forthright and straightforward in asking the people you help to help you.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I don’t regard a solar eclipse as a bad omen. On the contrary, I believe it may purge and cleanse stale old karma. On some occasions, I have seen it flush away emotional debts and debris that have been accumulating for years. So how shall we interpret the total solar eclipse that will electrify your astrological house of intimate togetherness in the coming days? I think it’s a favorable time to be brave and daring as you upgrade your best relationships. What habits and patterns are you ready to reinvent and reconfigure? What new approaches are you willing to experiment with?

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): At your best, you Scorpios are not invasive manipulators. Rather, you are catalysts. You are instigators of transformation, resurrectors of dead energy, awakeners of numb minds. The people you influence may not be aware that they long to draw on your influence. They may think you are somehow imposing it on them, when, in fact, you are simply being your genuine, intense self, and they are reaching out to absorb your unruly healing. In the coming weeks, please keep in mind what I’ve said here.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In my astrological opinion, it’s prime time for you to shower big wild favors on your beautiful self. Get the fun underway with a period of rigorous self-care: a physical check-up, perhaps, and visits with the dentist, therapist, hairstylist, and acupuncturist. Try new healing agents and seek precise magic that enhances and uplifts your energy. I trust you will also call on luxurious indulgences like a massage, a psychic reading, gourmet meals, an emotionally potent movie, exciting new music, and long, slow love-making. Anything else, Sagittarius? Make a list and carry out these tasks with the same verve and determination you would give to any important task.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The coming days will be a favorable time for you to wrestle with an angel or play chess with a devil. You will have extraordinary power in any showdown or collaboration with spiritual forces. Your practical intelligence will serve you well in encounters with nonrational enigmas and supernatural riddles. Here’s a hot tip: Never assume that any being, human or divine, is holier or wiser than you. You will have a special knack for finding compassionate solutions to address even the knottiest dilemmas.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Your featured organ of the month is your nose. This may sound beyond the scope of predictable possibilities, but I’m serious: You will make robust decisions and discriminating choices if you get your sniffer fully involved. So I advise you to favor and explore whatever smells good. Cultivate a nuanced appreciation for what aromas can reveal. If there’s a hint of a stink or an odd tang, go elsewhere. The saying “follow your nose” is especially applicable. P.S.: I recommend you take steps to expose yourself to a wide array of scents that energize you and boost your mood.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): When is the best time to ask for a raise or an increase in benefits? Can astrology reveal favorable periods for being aggressive about getting more of what you want? In the system I use, the time that’s 30 to 60 days after your birthday is most likely to generate good results. Another phase is 210 to 240 days after your birthday. Keep in mind that these estimates may be partly fanciful and playful and mythical. But then in my philosophy, fanciful and playful and mythical actions have an honored place. Self-fulfilling prophecies are more likely to be fulfilled if you regard them as fun experiments rather than serious, literal rules.

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GUITARS! 1920-1980 Gibson, Martin, Fender, Gretsch, Epiphone, Guild, Mosrite, Rickenbacker, Prairie State, D'Angelico, Stromberg. And Gibson Mandolins / Banjos. 877-589-0747. (AAN CAN)

UNCLAIMED PROPERTY The following is a list of unclaimed property currently being held at the Weaverville Police Department. Electronics, personal items, tools, weapons (including firearms) and other miscellaneous items. Anyone with a legitimate claim in the listed property has 30 days from the date of publication to contact the Weaverville Police

Department, M-F 9AM - 3PM, 828-645-5700. Items not claimed within 30 days will be disposed of in accordance with North Carolina General Statute.

WATER DAMAGE CLEANUP & RESTORATION A small amount of water can lead to major damage and mold growth in your home. Our trusted professionals do complete repairs to protect your family and your home's value! Call 24/7: 1-888-290-2264 Have zip code of service location ready when you call! (AAN CAN)

YOU MAY QUALIFY For disability benefits if you have are between 52-63 years old and under a doctor’s care for a health condition that prevents you from working for a year or more. Call now! 1-877-2476750. (AAN CAN)

FOR MUSICIANS

MUSICAL SERVICES

MUSIC FOR YOUR SPECIAL EVENT Local experienced musician available for your celebrations, birthdays, anniversaries, wedding rehearsal dinners, or any special event. Playing pop, rock, R&B, Motown, and classic vocal jazz. dancnshoes7@ gmail.com

SALES PROFESSIONAL

Work for a local company that has covered the local scene for 30 years! This is a full-time position with benefits in a supportive, team-oriented environment in a community-service, locally-owned business. Ideal candidates are personable, organized, motivated, and can present our company with confidence. Necessary skills include clear and professional communications (via phone, email, and inperson meetings), detailed record-keeping, and self motivation. While no outside sales experience is required, experience dealing with varied and challenging situations is helpful. The position largely entails account development and lead generation (including cold-calling), account management, assisting clients with marketing and branding strategies. If you are a high energy, positive, cooperative person looking to join an independent media organization, please send a resume and cover letter (no walk-ins, please) explaining why you are a good fit with Mountain Xpress to: xpressjob@mountainx.com

Rocky Top

• Removal • Stump Grinding

• Landscaping • Retaining Walls

• Lawn Service • Snow Removal

• All Types of Fencing • Excavating

• General Handyman Services

26 years in business! Insured!

@rockytoptreeservice

edited

ACROSS

1 What Professor Moriarty was a professor of

5 Some lunchbox sammies

9 Abrasive

14 “O.G. Original Gangster” rapper

15 McFlurry flavor

16 Walled city near Madrid

17 Just like ___

18 Grant consideration, sometimes

19 Hell of a guy?

20 Things with hardware and software components

23 Quickly join a call, with “on”

24 Infantry members, in brief

25 In the style of

26 Bunny first appearing in “Space Jam” (1996)

28 Bit of attire that sends the message “I mean business!”

33 Someone terrorizing kids in a 1986 Stephen King novel

36 Big letters in home security

37 Methods

38 One of the Mannings

39 Societal troubles

40 Many a Monopoly property: Abbr.

41 Participation dance in which you “turn yourself around”

44 Diego ___, one of two joint winners of the FIFA Player of the 20th Century award

47 Captain von Trapp’s betrothed, in “The Sound of Music”

48 Rapper Lil ___ X

49 Cause of wear and tear

50 Command centers, for short

53 The main takeaway … or, when considered in three different senses, a description of 20-, 33- and 41-Across

59 Entered speedily

60 Ending of “The Bachelor”?

61 “___ you vera much!” (punny valentine)

62 Standing up

63 Suit material?

64 “I’ll ___”

65 Full of the latest

66 Features of some cruise ships

67 Nailed DOWN

1 Comedian Hedberg

2 Allergic reaction

3 One who works well with others

4 Start of many URLs

5 Firebird maker

6 2020 N.F.L. retiree who leads all QBs with 123 regular-season games of 300+ passing yards

7 Taunt

8 Repairs, as a golf green

9 Big inconvenience

10 “___: The Way of Water” (2022 film)

11 Bar mitzvah, e.g.

12 Major dis

13 Franz’s partner in old “S.N.L.” sketches

21 Nasty

22 [What a snoozefest!]

27 Surgery sites, for short

28 Many a Weird Al Yankovic medley

29 Boo-boo

30 One may dominate a conversation

31 Not doing anything

32 Place to order handmade goods

33 Took a lap, perhaps

34 Spanish sparkling wine

35 Soul singer Bridges

39 Apple devices run on it

41 Parasite’s place

42 “We totally should!”

43 “Help me, ObiWan Kenobi,” e.g.

45 Buffoonery

46 Like food served at a tea party

49 Michelob ___ (light brew)

51 Car dealer’s offering

52 Knight’s “trusty” companion

53 Small songbird

54 Fabled slacker

55 All over again

56 Makeup of a match

57 Straddling, say

58 ___ ghanouj