| Title |
Excerpt |
Author |
Date |
| Edgy Mama: Waste not, want not |
Since this week’s Mountain Xpress is the Green Living issue, I’m tackling the subject of living sustainably. And explaining why both polar bears and you are awesome. I often dish about saving the earth. But really, I’m talking about saving us — homo sapiens sapiens. And saving the polar bears… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
11/16/09 |
| Edgy Mama: The Rocky project |
This is Rocky. He weighs 22 pounds. His litter mate, Houdini, weighs nine. Both cats have been fed the same food throughout their lives. When we rescued the twosome, they were same-sized fur balls. But Rocky is a kibble ho. The neighborhood kids call him Garfield, because he moseys around… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
11/09/09 |
| Brews News |
Local beer lovers, rejoice! Yes, Highland Brewing’s Cold Mountain Winter Ale is out and about. The first batch (there will be two this year) is hitting stores now in one-liter and 22-ounce bottles (find it at Green Life, Bruisin’ Ales, Hops & Vines, Earth Fare, Appalachian Vinters, Asheville Wine Market,… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
11/04/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Babies are cute vampires |
I recently had a conversation with a friend about how much life babies suck out of their mamas. Yes, they suck vast quantities of milk, but also, they suck away our time, energy, sleep and general equilibrium. Babies are cute vampires. The reason babies are so freaking adorable is because… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
11/02/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Trade in the orange for some green this Halloween |
Witches and goblins and ghouls, oh my. Costumes and candy and kids, oh my. The spine-tingling thrill of watching people wandering around dressed up as monsters and villains makes me happy. What makes me less tingly is the rampant consumerism around Halloween. Last year’s pagan holiday spending was predicted to… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
10/26/09 |
| Kids |
Clothing: kids 1. The Littlest Birds 647 Haywood Road, Asheville, 253-4747 An emphasis on local families and all-natural products makes The Littlest Birds a popular West Asheville spot, according to co-owner Sonja Hernandez. She and Allison Walker opened the business 2 1/2 years ago, offering new-and-used, baby-and-kid stuff,… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
10/21/09 |
| Pets |
Animal shelter/rescue center 1. Asheville Humane Society 72 Lee's Creek Road, Asheville, 253-6807 "The Asheville Humane Society is in the process of building a new adoption center to house even more animals and provide them with the best care. They have a compassionate staff and dedicated volunteers. All… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
10/21/09 |
| Edgy Mama: All hail ‘Wimpy Kid’ |
October 12 was a hugely important day for our family. It wasn’t an anniversary or a birthday. Nobody got braces or stitches. Oct. 12 was important because it was the release day for Jeff Kinney’s new book, Dog Days, the fourth in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. My… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
10/19/09 |
| Brews News |
My take on Asheville’s Oktoberfest celebration: I didn’t stay long as I had a sick kid at home, but I saw folks having loads of fun on Wall Street in downtown. Beer games rock, and I commend the Asheville Downtown Association for fostering an appropriately Bacchanalian atmosphere. Two caveats: One,… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
10/15/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Rainy day games to work out the kid-sillies |
Enough already with the ark jokes — yes, we’ve had a helluva lot of rain this fall, and while it’s pulled Western North Carolina out of a five-plus year drought, it’s also caused some problems, including drowned crops, floods, wet basements and hyper kids. I don’t want to diminish the… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
10/12/09 |
| Edgy Mama: The president who stole summer vacation? |
Breaking news: President Obama’s approval rating plummets in elementary schools around the country. Why? He wants to steal summer vacation. Because? Kids get too much vacation already. Luckily, third-graders can’t vote, so who cares if they’re pissed off. In truth, the president says he wants to shorten summer vacation, implement… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
10/05/09 |
| Brews News |
Another good excuse to drink beer: The Asheville Downtown Association’s Oktoberfest party will take place on Saturday, Oct. 10, from 1 to 5 p.m. on Wall Street. Tickets cost $25 and are still available on the association’s Web site. A small but experienced group of local brewers will offer tastings… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
10/01/09 |
| Hopping along |
Cowzilla may be the only local hops lover who didn't make an appearance at the inaugural Hops Farm Tour. The huge feral cow, christened Cowzilla by Julie Jensen, co-owner of Echo View at Landfair Farm in Weaverville, may have been intimidated by the more than 100 growers, home brewers and… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
09/30/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Beer’s good for mama’s bones |
There’s more good news on the health benefits of beer, especially for women. A recent study reveals that those of us who drink beer regularly have stronger bones than those who don’t. Out of 1,700 women participating in the study (average age was 48), those considered moderate beer drinkers had… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
09/28/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Soccer mom? Hell, yeah! |
A critic of my Edgy Mama column recently remarked that I’m “just another North Asheville soccer mom.” Dude, that expression is so 1996. The term “soccer mom” entered national lingo when Bill Clinton was running for president against Bob Dole. One of Dole’s media advisors, Alex Castellenos, was quoted as… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
09/21/09 |
| Beer City USA's first and most famous beer festival returns |
The 3,500 beer lovers lucky enough to have tickets will descend on the 13th annual Great Smokies Craft Brewers Brewgrass Festival this Saturday, Sept. 19, at Martin Luther King Jr. Park; hopefully on foot. Here's some of what's new with our Western North Carolina breweries and what to expect from… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
09/16/09 |
| Brews News |
• Spring beer festival: If you missed out on Brewgrass tickets, you may have the chance to attend another locally run beer festival this spring. The Asheville Brewers Alliance has committed to hosting a spring beer festival, according to alliance spokesman Mike Rangel. The festival will be similar in scale… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
09/14/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Autism Society of North Carolina helps families cope |
I met 13-year-old Zoe Silvey when she answered the front door of her home. Zoe didn’t look directly at me, but stared past my left shoulder, then said something I couldn’t quite understand and turned away. Zoe has autism. When Zoe was 4 ½, she was “completely non-verbal and almost… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
09/14/09 |
| Edgy Mama: BPA in bottles is bad, bad, bad |
Here we go again. We’ve cleaned out the “bad” plastics from the cupboard. We’ve taught our kids not to use plastics or plastic wrap in the microwave. We’ve replaced sippy cups and plastic water bottles with metal drinking bottles. But wait. Those metal drinking bottles that have been marketed as… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
09/07/09 |
| Brews News |
Hi y’all. Here are a few recent tidbits about Western North Carolina’s hopping and happening beer scene. Hops Farm Tour: Last Saturday, I attended part of the Hops Farm Tour organized by the Buncombe County Cooperative Extension Office. The inaugural tour started at Landfair Farms in Weaverville, then stopped at… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
09/03/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Preparing swine flu ‘survival kit’ can ease worries |
Pandemic flu, global climate change, hurricanes, antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections — these are some of the life-changing phenomena that haunt me as a parent. Last week, the Buncombe County Health Center offered me one way to prepare for the coming flu season. Health officials are predicting a double-edged sword of Damocles… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
08/31/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Back-to-school nightmares |
While us parents are wandering around humming, “School, glorious school,” our kids are caught up in a state of what I call “dreadcitement.” They’re both dreading and excited about, anxious over and anticipating the start of a new school year. Unfortunately, “dreadcitement” can result in back-to-school nightmares. We’ve all had… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
08/24/09 |
| Edgy Mama: When mom gets sick |
Parenting when you’re sick or in pain can be difficult. Most of us have to just muddle through the burden of taking care of kids while trying to heal ourselves. Part of the challenge includes comforting kids, whom, the moment mom gets sick or hurt, become convinced she’s going to… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
08/17/09 |
| Edgy Mama: How much screen time is too much? |
National Public Radio recently reported that American kids average seven hours a day interacting with some type of screen. Seven hours per day? That’s an average? That’s like a full-time job playing video games and watching movies and television. Who are these kids whose days are equal parts school, screen… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
08/10/09 |
| Outdoors |
Gary Eblen calls himself a gateway drug to the outdoors. "I take people on walks, then they get excited and want to do more walks, then we start doing hikes," says Eblen, community outreach director for Diamond Brand Outdoors. The company has been in Western North Carolina since 1943, but… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
08/05/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Life lessons learned from pets |
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about pets and death. Perhaps because I’ve had a number of friends who’ve recently lost long-time family pets. Perhaps because Biscuit (our dorkie-poo mutt) recently used our canoe as a springboard to jump the fence and follow us down to Asheville Pizza & Brewing.… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
08/03/09 |
| Edgy Mama: ‘Mom, can you…?’ |
My 10-year-old girl darted up and said, “Mom, can you make me dinner?” Even though I was holding my 19-month-old niece, who’d been fussy, the girl assumed I’d immediately drop the baby to fix her dinner. She assumed wrongly. I blinked at her, astonished. “Your dad’s making dinner right now.… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
07/27/09 |
| Edgy Mama: The swine flu cometh to summer camp |
My girl will attend overnight camp for a week near Brevard in August, and I’m concerned about an unwanted visitor. When she went last year, visions of natural disasters, girl-eating bears, and murky ponds freaked me out. This year, it’s the interloper otherwise known as the swine flu. The H1N1… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
07/20/09 |
| Edgy Mama: My Shuler-inspired favorite kid movie choices |
On my recent flight between Atlanta and Stockholm, the only movie choices were kid movies (Hotel for Dogs, Powerball Revolution). On my return trip, the offerings were adult films, albeit with an “adult content” warning preceding them (Duplicity, He’s Just Not That Into You). This experience made me think about… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
07/13/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Lost child found |
The day I lost my child in the Atlanta airport was the worst day of my parenting life thus far. For 15 hellish minutes, my world collapsed. He was 4 years old, and we were returning from a family vacation in New Hampshire. Our flight from Atlanta to Asheville was… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
07/06/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Fun and free (or almost) summer kid activities |
Now that the joy of no school has faded into that perpetual, annoying chorus of “Mom, what are we going to do today?”, I’m searching for entertainment. Preferably the low-cost, expend-lots-of-kid-energy kind of entertainment. Here are a few local options that are fun and free (or relatively inexpensive). Inside (where… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
06/29/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Budget cuts to education bite hindquarters |
Proposed state budget cuts to our educational system will mean fewer teachers in schools and more students in individual classrooms. I’m all for trimming fat, but our schools are in danger of becoming Jack Sprat. The cuts would take more than a pound of flesh — the process would harm… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
06/22/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Grocery store blues |
I often refer to laundry as the Sisyphean stone of parenthood. It’s the number one never-ending chore of parenting. Number two, after laundry, comes grocery shopping. I don’t remember much about grocery shopping when I was single or coupled but childfree. It was something I did quickly, after work, maybe… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
06/08/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Babies grow up — thank goodness |
Seems like yesterday I was changing diapers, while today I’m explaining the term “suicide bomber.” The thrilling part, that no one explains to you before you produce offspring, is that it’s a constantly changing challenge. As your kids metamorph, so must your parenting. At first, parenting is oh so physical.… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
06/03/09 |
| Kids play hard at MSF |
Kids adore adventures, and this year’s Mountain Sports Festival will deliver a variety of kid-centric outdoor adventures and activities. “Every kid should go, because it’s fun and you get to be outdoors.” So says 8-year-old Flat Rock resident Samuel Ray-Alverson, a first-time participant in several events at last year’s MSF.… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
05/27/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Fatter, but wiser |
“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country,” wrote Kurt Vonnegut. I recently walked into a party full of folks I went to high school with and experienced a similar epiphany, though without too much terror. The party came… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
05/25/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Tending shoots, leaves and children |
My kids are veggie-challenged, green-phobic, liable to screech annoyingly before letting a sliver of broccoli touch their lips. The irony of this is that they’re both vegetarians. While I’ve never offered them meat, neither have I kept them away from it. The result is that they don’t much like it,… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
05/18/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Chicken education |
What day of the week do chickens hate? Fry-day! The lowly chicken has been big news around town lately. For one, the Asheville City Chickens movement pushed through changes to the city’s animal control ordinance governing urban chickens last week at Asheville City Council. Now those of us with houses… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
05/04/09 |
| Celebrating the active and the reflective |
Poets from Western North Carolina and the world will re-converge on Asheville this weekend for Asheville Wordfest. Word up: Asheville-based poet Allan Wolf performs at the Green Door Retrospective at last year’s Wordfest. Photo special to Xpress. “At the heart of Wordfest is our desire to draw communities together at… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
04/29/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Time to thank teachers |
We never forget our best teachers. But do we remember to thank them for what they’ve done for us? I need a reminder to thank the teachers in my life, as well as to thank those currently teaching my elementary-school-aged kids. Tuesday, May 5, is National Teacher Day, which offers… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
04/27/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Parenting through climate change |
In honor of Earth Day, I talked to Enviro-spouse about his work on climate change with the Sustainability Institute and how it affects the kids of today and tomorrow. My questions were: “How do we parent through climate change? How do we prepare our kids for the changes they’ll live… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
04/20/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Stick family car stickers: creepy or cool? |
I’ve been seeing lots of those stick family car stickers around town, mostly on the back windows of mommy vans and stud-daddy SUVs. Driving to and from Charlottesville, Va., last weekend, practically every van I passed contained a traveling family boldly advertising their family/pet configuration on the rear windshield. What’s… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
04/13/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Cussing kids |
My angel-faced son was not quite 2 years old when the director of his church preschool called to tell me my boy had dropped a wooden block on his foot, then yelled, “S**t!” While an understandable use of profanity given the situation, his outburst clearly wasn’t appropriate to the setting.… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
04/06/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Goodbye Edgy Mama, hello well-lit place |
Big news here in Edgy land. This is my final Edgy Mama column. I’m traveling a new career path, one that other Ashevillians have taken, though I’ll be the first female to dip my big toe into the vat o’ hops. Yes, I’m going to open another brewery in Asheville-number… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
04/01/09 |
| Move over, mommy. It’s dad’s turn. |
A typical day in the life of Matt Buys includes driving, cooking, laundry, cleaning, volunteer work at an elementary school, and when the weather’s bad, indoor soccer games with his four kids. Stay-at-home dad Michael Queeney with his kids, Annie, 8, and Ricky, 7, at Chimney Rock Park after a… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
03/25/09 |
| Edgy Mama: Are you a Mata Hari parent or a sunshine parent? |
My girl and her best buddy are taking a spy class together. Yes, a number of Asheville parents are paying for their kids to learn how to spy. The way our kids do it, spying involves them sneaking quietly around the house and spending hours writing notes to each other… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
03/23/09 |
| A document of love |
Nishima Kaplan’s business began with a wedding gift she made for friends in 1998. Today, ArtKetubah enables Kaplan to support her family while making couples happy worldwide. Ancient tradition meets modern art: A design for a “ketubah” (Jewish marriage certificate) by Nishima Kaplan, who creates them in her West Asheville… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
03/18/09 |
| To the moon and beyond |
How many manufacturers can say their products have been to the moon? That question may be hard to answer, but it seems a fair bet that AB Emblem is the only Weaverville-based company that can make that claim. Ready to fly: Judy Baldwin sews a NASA mission logo patch while… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
03/18/09 |
| Mr. Potter goes to Tanzania |
For most of us, updating computers and setting up a network would be plenty daunting, but it becomes doubly complex when the power goes out several times a day, sometimes for hours at a stretch. Reconnected to the world: IMA World Health staffer Suzanne Chimaliro in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
03/18/09 |
| Functional art for the world |
Well-crafted art that you can eat with might just be recession-proof. That’s what metalsmith Alex Austin hopes, anyway, as she peddles her handmade stainless and silver flatware to companies around the globe. In demand: Alex Austin of Austin Creations displays some of her silver pieces. Companies in Italy and Australia… |
Anne Fitten Glenn |
03/18/09 |
