Arts + Entertainment
Asheville poet focuses on the ‘Now’
As a practitioner and student of poetry all my life, I’ve noticed that while there is a lot of poetry written well and with talented reach, at the same time, there is little current poetry that I’ve experienced that one would classify as being “wise” or “transcendent.”
Saddle up and take a ride West
It’s the spring of 1873 in the Wyoming Territory, and U.S. Marshal Tim Colter and his grizzled mentor and best friend, mountain man Jed Reno, are hunting down some train robbers when they come across a man dying of gunshot wounds. The victim turns out to be a Secret Service agent who as he breathes his last says, “President Grant … assassination … Dugan … trust nobody.”
Taking the wheel: Following Helene flooding, Canton art collective to reopen
Last Thursday afternoon, dark storm clouds overtook downtown Canton. Sitting on a couch in the Cold Mountain Art Collective on Adams Street, Hannah Burnisky gazes out at the raindrops sliding down the large front windows of the business.
Rain on the scarecrows (concluded)
Several weeks ago, I published an article that dealt with a trip to Tellico Plains with the Principal Chief of the Cherokees, John Crowe. This was back in 1976 and the Tennessee Valley Authority had announced their plans to flood the Tellico Plains.
Thoreau found God in the natural world
“We are not human beings on a spiritual journey,
but rather spiritual beings on a human journey.”
Teilhard de Chardin
— from: “Thoreau’s God”
A little taste of home: Junction Pub opens in Sylva
It’s mid-afternoon and the seats are starting to fill up at the Junction Pub in Sylva. Located along Skyland Drive near downtown, the old-style railroad depot structure is now entering its next chapter.
A look at the 30s glitterati in ‘Rules of Civility’
Having read and relished Amor Towles’ “A Gentleman in Moscow,” I picked up the first novel he published, “Rules of Civility” (Penguin Books, 2012, 368 pages) prepared to enjoy it as well. Unfortunately, some satisfying experiences elude repetition.
Blow the tannery whistle: Scarecrows in the rain
This one is for my old friends, living and dead, in Cherokee. Here’s to you, Trigger Young, Woody Sneed, Bill Young, Darlene Whitetree, Homer Burgess, Wanda Lee Burgess, Darlene Bradley, Ralph Henry, Jean Holt, Ethelene Conseen, Johnson Catoaster, Johnson Lee Owle, Eddie Swimmer Wilber Paul and a hundred others.
Writer dreamed of a mythical Russia
In the early 1900s, in Tsarist Russia, young intellectuals with means would study philosophy and history. Some would feel a longing for their country to become more modern, to become a nation under the rule of law, as other nations in the world had done.
