Mountain Xpress Forums

Shad Marsh for Mayor?

2009-10-05T12:57:26-05:00

What ever happened to that Shad Marsh for mayor thread? Not that i care, because i’m a librul and already voted for bellemy, but i bet some of those God Fearing, anti-graffiti crusaders out there would love to hear more about this man.

Also, according to willard he is “the ” King Gay Guy ” over on Steve Shanafelt’s wimpy rag of a Forum at MtnXpress.”

Way to go Shad!

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/asheville-nc/TE02N7JTH398GSD7R

County Commissioners Don’t Care What You Think

2009-11-13T21:04:36-05:00

The Buncombe County Commissioners will be holding a public hearing on the matter of zoning the county.

November 17, 2009
30 Valley Street in downtown Asheville
4:30 p.m.

Whether I am for or against zoning is not the purpose of this message. The purpose is to point out that the commissioners don’t even want to find out who is for and who is against. We need to protest their disregard toward the people! Please take some time Tuesday to show up and voice your opinion.

I’m convinced that the Commissioners don’t want to take the time to really hear from the people they intend to affect with zoning. I think they are being very dishonest with the county residents, pretending that they want to hear from us at this public hearing. They are merely following formalities, and are actually disingenuous about the whole thing.

They ought to allow for a referendum, even if it is non-binding, because at least they would hear from the voters, and it would be a show of some good faith. Right now they intend to just ride rough-shod over the people, without knowing what they think. In 1999 Buncombe voted NO to zoning. If the matter is going to come up again, they should have another vote. The commissioners CAN get permission from the General Assembly in Raleigh for a referendum, but they don’t want to be bothered to do so. Why not? Are they afraid that they people might actually have something to say—one way or the other? They are supposed to be public servants, not supreme masters over the public.

Chairman David Gantt is definitely NOT inclined to even try to find out what the people want, much less abide by anything they might say. He has his mind made up—and I honestly think they all do—they intend to make the decision no matter what the people think. The following is part of an email Gantt sent me on August 22, where he clearly indicates that he thinks he knows better than the people what kind of intrusions they should have forced upon them by the county government.

One of the reasons Commissions in NC do not have the right to call for referendums on their own power is that our government model relies on the elected reps to make these types of decisions directly. While it is possible to ask the General Assembly for this authority, I do not support the initiative to do so. I also support the need for zoning in Buncombe County for planning and preservation of the nature and character of our neighborhoods and communities.

Agenda:
http://www.buncombecounty.org/governing/commissioners/ArchivedAgenda/20091117/20091117.htm

Public Hearing on Zoning (note that they are merely following formalities; they are not really interested at all in what the people have to say)
http://www.buncombecounty.org/governing/commissioners/ArchivedAgenda/20091117/web_PDF/AgendaCoverSheetPublicHearing.pdf

The amendment is all planned out and ready to go:
http://www.buncombecounty.org/governing/commissioners/ArchivedAgenda/20091117/web_PDF/PlanningBoardRecommendationtoCommissioners.pdf

http://www.letbuncombevote.com

Please send this on, post it on your blog, and tell your friends. Thanks!

Asheville Freak History and Community Proposal

2009-11-17T01:21:57-05:00

My name is Douglas Madaras, a once Asheville artist currently living in Ann Arbor, MI. with wife and muse Angela. I am writing to MntX forum to share something near and dear to me which began several years ago as something “Uniquely Asheville”. It is my hope to share some “Asheville Freak” history and to inspire you to be a part of its creative evolution.

For close to a decade I’ve been developing a concept that provides “outside-the-box” communities of artists, writers, athletes, geeks, activists, merchants, entrepreneurs…a means by which to express and promote their talents, passions, products and community as well as a vehicle from which they can generate revenue and to be of community service. The idea originated from my own needs as a struggling artist/activist followed by inspiration from the infamous Rolling Stone article which declared Asheville as being the “Freak” Capital.

As a self described “freak” in Asheville at the time of the article, I saw a need for an “alternative” community support resource. With the inspiration of using the terms “Asheville Freak” and “FreakinAsheville” to promote the idea, I went to have t-shirts made at Image 420, when co-owner Lane Reid, suggests I turn the ”freakin” concept into a “.com”. I knew little about computers or the Internet, so Lane and James Gaffney of Independent Studios volunteered their time to co-create a web site and help put the vision into form. Friends were made and others joined in the efforts to build upon the ‘”freakin” idea. “FreakinAsheville.com” was born and created a local buzz by way of its quirky name, a few “freakin” events, a calendar and a message board.
My motivation to create websites and file for trademarks came from the realization that by merchandising web domains using the popular vernacular, “freak/freakin”, a revenue stream would be created for the “fringe” community by the Freakin® community. Participants directly benefit by way of posting, marketing and selling that of their unique passion through a community website that they help create. From this a funding base is established to cover operating costs of the .com “collective” through royalties from retail, event sales, ad space and other means to monetize.

In truth FreakinAsheville.com struggled from the beginning through the emerging blogging culture and unrefined technologies. The grass roots site spun out of control on a number of learning curves which took its toll on its creators. Both FreakinAsheville.com and AshevilleFreak.com exists today, but as shell sites, with basic merchandising.

It is my desire to activate both online resources so to fulfill their purpose. I wish to forward the opportunities within the Freakin® network concept and related assets to those who can best serve the Asheville community through them. The “assets” being: established URL’s, trademarks, name value and potential sponsors such as the Carolina Cinema, who desires to support Asheville Freak™ and its activities through its advertising venue.

Other asset’s are within trademark applications which have been filed, most prominent being for FreakinBeer™, a natural fit for Asheville, considering its nationally recognized beer market. To add to the pool of potential, both Asheville Freak sites are part of a larger network: “FreakinUniverse.com” a portal to over 400 Freakin® domains available to the public for same use. I intend to promote Asheville as the original model for the Freakin® network concept.

By way of this blog I am publicly making available both Asheville “Freak” domains, together or apart, to individuals and/or groups within the Asheville community at no cost.

Conditions are as follows:
• Both domains stay true to the original “freakin” concept.
• 15% royalties on sales derived from using Freakin® and Asheville Freak™ are paid to FreakinCompany Inc. 1/3 of the 15% will be returned, with interest, after 1 yr of active participation and a 1 year renewal commitment. Percentage to be used for community related “do good” projects.
• Link/icon to FreakinUniverse.com to be located per working page and within related meta files.
• Content, actions, and affiliations must be legal and do no harm.
• After 1 year of free lease, terms to be negotiated. (minimal registration fee)

Details can be discussed further.

I invite your thoughts, comments, and questions by which “FreakinAsheville” and “Asheville Freak” can effectively support and promote local fringe communities and those who embrace their inner “freak”. You may contact me by way of http://www.freakinupdate.blogspot.com.

Both your time and energy are deeply appreciated in actively joining me in creating a local collective of creative minds and in expanding the “Freakin®Universe”.

Separated at Birth? (Local version)

2009-03-10T13:15:31-05:00

WLOS morning anchor Victoria Dunkel and high maintenance Mayberry sheriff girlfriend Helen Crump?

ACT: Asheville Christian Academy’s male-only board policy unusual

2009-11-18T10:50:59-05:00

I thought this was worth sharing ...

Asheville Christian Academy’s decision to maintain bylaws forbidding women from serving on school’s board of directors makes it highly unusual among Christian schools in the region and nationwide.

... Other local religious schools — including Asheville Catholic School and Veritas Christian Academy — have men and women serving as board members.

Members of Asheville Christian’s corporation overwhelmingly voted Monday night to uphold 37-year-old bylaws dictating that only men may serve on the 15-member board.

Monday night’s vote went against recommendations from a special committee that had been formed at the request of the head of the school.

The six-member committee, which included two women, unanimously recommended changing the bylaws to either allow a mixed-gender board or permit women to join the board with a majority male membership and a requirement that a male be the president or chairman.

http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20091118/NEWS01/911180319

It’s kind of weird that Asheville Christian Academy would have a policy like this, which is practically begging for negative media coverage, not to mention that it seems like it would be lawsuit bait.

ACT: Asheville homeless camp cleared

2009-11-18T10:57:10-05:00

This is a really short “staff reports” (that is, rewritten press release) story, but there’s one sentence in here that gets me ...

City crews on Tuesday moved a homeless camp in a city park on Beaucatcher Mountain.

A parks maintenance crew was at Beaucatcher Park removing large debris and other items associated with a homeless camp, City of Asheville spokesperson Dawa Hitch said.

“It is our responsibility as the property owner to ensure the park is free of debris and safe for public use,” Hitch said.

No arrests were made. The people camping there were asked to move along, Hitch said.

http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20091118/NEWS01/91117086

I get that the City is trying to discourage homeless people from camping in public parks, but the phrasing of this makes it seem like they don’t count the homeless as part of the public. I mean, the “crime” here is basically having a tent, right?

Cyclists Beware Crossing The Streets!

2009-11-17T20:54:56-05:00

See video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q222pxuB78

Hottest local commercial spokestron

2009-03-10T13:05:12-05:00

Sure, we all know and love Jamie Simpson and her bombastic Rug & Home pep rallies as well as her more plaintive, drawn out dissertations on the benefits of buying your next car at McKinney Dodge on Sunday mornings, but what about the other talking heads that are regionally employed to draw our attention to the products and services they shill by virtue of their arguable attractiveness alone?

My vote (next my beloved Jamie, of course) for being visually appealing and personally engaging enough to prevent me from pressing the SKIP feature on my DVR or channel surfing to another cove is either the spa lady from Recreational Warehouse or the enchanting Jennifer Bullman for Bullman Heating. I know, this comes as a shock since I bemoaned the departure of Candice Little from WLOS and now she can be seen hawking autos for Hunter, but it seems that what works behind a news desk does not push my buttons when in front of a green screen of prices-slashed GMs, Hyundais and Subarus.

Under the guise of equality, I won’t restrict the discussion to just female spokesbots and will gladly entertain any heartfelt endorsements of respondents who feel that the lantern-jawed guy who is Jamie’s carpet counterpart has qualities that they also find resplendent (although the elder Bullman doesn’t draw my attention to his heating service as much as his daughter/trophy wife but could be nonetheless effective for others).

In the appliance store front, I have watched Ballard’s struggle with obtaining a walker/talker/stovetop pointer who transgressed the admittedly subjective line between homely and comely, but I think they have finally found purchase with the latest girl in the pleather pants. Jeff Lynch appliance has admirably stuck with the same pixieish pointer through her many hair experiments and I think their commitment has paid off.

Bob Caldwell? Still dashing but played out.

Artists: A Reason to Live

2009-06-09T11:40:20-05:00

Artists take time to read this…

By Garrison Keillor
June 4, 2009

The driest May in Minnesota since the Dust Bowl. Venerable GM slides into bankruptcy and you shudder for the old Pontiac dealers and the retirees in Michigan. In the middle of the night, an Airbus drops out of the air into the Atlantic Ocean, and the veteran traveler shudders to think of it. And the posthumous John Updike appears in the bookstore, a book of short stories and his last poems, written by “my right hand ... faithful old five-fingered beast of burden ...

its labors meant

to carve from language beauty, that beauty which

lifts free of flesh to find itself in print.”

In the midst of these ominous rumblings, I went to a lovely party Saturday night. A big brick manse on a quiet street, 30 people, half of them under 25, on a deck out back, hamburgers, fried chicken, chips, beer, wine, the usual repartee, and a lot of youth going on around us.

A boy and a girl with eager eyes, in the shadows, like badgers at a campsite. Three boys holed up with a video game. A beautiful, coltish 16-year-old girl leaning around in a black strapless evening gown, trying out different personas (Dorothy Parker, Nancy Drew, Ava Gardner), who struck me as a reincarnation of Anne Frank. A teenage boy sitting with his nose in a book, making a great show of isolation. And an intensely quiet blond girl, a math whiz, who, with no reluctance, sat down at the piano when I asked her if she played piano, squared her shoulders and played the exquisite Chopin Prelude No. 2 in A minor, the notes of the slow movement like raindrops on birch leaves, smoke drifting by, an anguished old man pacing in the grass, and played it so beautifully it transformed the entire evening.

Transformation is no easy trick: it’s what art promises and usually doesn’t deliver. But she did. It was a difficult piece, and what she showed us was the intense poetry underneath her calm Lutheran exterior. She borrowed Chopin’s passion and made it her own, an astonishment, and then she stood up awkwardly and we all clapped and whooped. It was so much more than what we deserved to hear, which is true of art, a lavish gift of the heart that shames pretense by its outrageous generosity.

I went back to the crowd on the deck and had a piece of rhubarb pie with ice cream, feeling buoyed up by the performance, and still feel buoyant days later. The plane falls, the company slides, the good man is gone, the lawn turns brown, but with Chopin you come back to basics: Do I regret this life? Is it, despite all our brave words, a cheat and a waste? Does it make any slight difference to the universe that we are present?

Playing the Prelude No. 2 in A minor is not a step on a career path. There is only one Emmanuel Ax, and he has the Chopin chair for now, and there are plenty of dead pianists around on CDs. I suppose that you could argue for a correlation between mastery of the Prelude No. 2 and scholastic achievement leading to opportunities in computer programming, but meanwhile, it simply is an extravagant gift from the heart of a girl to the hearts of whoever is standing nearby. Life is good, no matter the disappointments. Just square your shoulders and give them your utter best. As the late, great Marilyn Monroesaid, “I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.” Life is insurmountable, but we mount up every morning and ride forward. Thanks for being wonderful, dear heart.

Ghost Town in the Sky: The End?

2009-11-11T21:06:51-05:00

Ghost Town has looked like a ghost town..Could be one of the first casualties of the economic down turn..

http://www.wlos.com/shared/newsroom/top_stories/wlos_vid_1213.shtml

Ghost Town in the Sky employees say they are still owed money for hours worked. Amusement park management tell News-13 there was a meeting with workers before the end of the regular season. They were offered the option to stay open but were told there could be financial problems. The employees voted to stay open. Ghost Town has been unable to pay employees in full for hours worked. That’s caused a hardship for most. Water and electric service were also cut at the park due to unpaid bills. Park management says those bills will be paid.