listening to the old folks tell their stories. When Sam became a nurse, she began collecting stories patients told her, jotting down notes and keeping them on the night stand for their children, who were usually misty-eyed and grateful. Turning the kindness into a livelihood started somewhat surprisingly when, at a business meeting, Uhl said she wrote life stories for a living. Two people pulled out their checkbooks. Uhl had been working out of her Cary apartment until she met Joe Kaplan at a memoir-writing workshop she was conducting last year. He has now finished his book and is almost ready to publish it, but he told Uhl she needed to go into business for real, with a location where people could find her. Kaplan’s business sense complemented Uhl’s passion, and they established a studio below Black Bear Coffee in downtown Hendersonville. Services offered include recording sessions, from which the users can receive an mp3 or USB file, heirloom and life-story books, memoir coaching, workshops on life story preservation, and digital conversion of obsolete recordings. Products range from a $30 recording session to over $30,000 for a leather-bound, archival-quality book. Uhl said a lot of people will want the top-of-the-line book for their vanity collections, but most
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the old north state
national & world
clients are children wanting to capture their parents’ stories.
Meticulously Compiled jackson
Retiring Clemson University professor Timothy Spira just completed a new field guide, Waterfalls & Wildflowers in the Southern Appalachians: Thirty Great Hikes, published by the UNC Press. It was featured at a presentation and book signing at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva during May. Spira explained he wanted people going to the waterfalls in this region, celebrated for its rich biodiversity, to tune in to the floral displays all along the way. There are over 1,000 waterfalls in North Carolina alone, and the Southern Appalachians are home to 2,500 species of flowering plants, not including mosses and ferns. A variety of microhabitats are made possible by ranges in altitude and disparate average annual rainfall, which varies from 42 to 90 inches. Known for being meticulous, the author wanted readers of his guide to be able to track down their favorite flowers when they were in bloom. Spira hiked each trail in the book ten or more times to get perspectives on the vegetation at
carolina in the west
different times of the year. Striving for accuracy and detail, he hiked over 800 miles and racked up more than 20,000 miles on his car. He took all the photographs, wrote all the narratives, and drew all the structural diagrams. Detailed maps with GPS coordinates are another feature that makes this guide stand out. Spira also co-authored Wildflowers & Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains & Piedmont with George Ellison.
Asheville’s IT Guys Are Up & Out buncombe
Lab Escape is the second high-growth Asheville IT startup to be acquired w ithin a matter of months. Last November, DoctorDirectory, a provider of online marketing and branding strategies for healthcare professionals, was purchased for $65 million by EveryDay Health in New York. Lab Escape’s CEO and founder, Trevor Lhorbeer, sees this as the shape of things to come in Asheville. His company had been in the business of helping businesses discover and visualize data twelve years before
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Asheville’s Full Service Fly Shop
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828 665-7730 | 1103 Brevard Rd. | Asheville NC 28806 | frameittoat.com
Exit 4c off I-240 • Guided Fly Fishing trips 29 Montford Ave, Asheville • Fly Fishing Classes 1-800-227-6732 • Fly Tying Classes www.HunterBanks.com June 2015 | capitalatplay.com
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