Good day and welcome to DKos Asheville. This is the weekly DKos Asheville Open Thread for Saturday, April 8th, 2023.
This space appears each weekend to give readers a variety of links to local and regional news of interest, and open the floor for comment and discussion. Wishing all a good day from beautiful Western North Carolina.
“Daily Kos fights for a progressive America by empowering its community and allies with information and tools to directly impact the political process.”
Please jump the fold for some local goodness, including a short interview with my friend and fellow performing artist, Keith Shubert.
Mountain Express, Edwin Arnaudin, 4/7/2023
Is there an upcoming puppetry event happening in Asheville that you’re looking forward to seeing?
Shubert: I’m very excited about the prospect of new venues in the area, especially those that cater to more nontraditional performances and acts that are a little different or outside the box. Story Parlor has been hosting a variety of very cool events, including puppetry, comedy, storytelling and even clowning. Toybox Theatre is working on producing a semimonthly, all-ages, Saturday morning puppetry program at The Magnetic Theatre to feature our own productions and bring to town amazing guest artists who are the best in the region — and even the world.
Outside of puppetry, what other upcoming local arts happening intrigues you?
I recently attended a “crankie” performance [in which a series of boxes that hold a scroll of drawings or paintings move across the “screen” to help tell a story] at Lamplight AVL and was very impressed with the community support and level of excellence in the performance. Lamplight is hosting residencies for all sorts of visual and performing artists who meld genres and perspectives. And, of course, I’m very excited to see my beloved Sly Grog Lounge on the mend after the tragic fire a few months ago. They’re hoping to be ready to open back up in October.
What current project are you working on that you’re especially excited about?
Toybox Theatre will be producing a massively fun Family Circus Celebration on Easter Sunday [April 9]. The event will include games, comedy, an egg hunt and guest artists, including a traveling aerial acrobatic troupe. (Visit avl.mx/ci4 for more details.) We also hope to bring back Monthly Monster Maker, which was an all-ages, community art game that ran for a year and a half before the COVID-19 pandemic.
(We get to work together in early May at LEAF!)
WLOS, Kimberly King, 4/7/2023
Asheville City Manager Debra Campbell has officially informed Major League Baseball that a plan is in place to upgrade McCormick Field to keep the Asheville Tourists minor league baseball team.
The official letter was mailed March 25 laying out the improvements and plan contingent on $5 million in funds coming from hotel lodging tax dollars. Those dollars are approved by the Tourism Board. But News 13 has also learned millions could come from state coffers, which would ease the burden of millions coming from Asheville taxpayers.
MANY CHEER FOR HOME TEAM AS ASHEVILLE APPROVES MCCORMICK FIELD IMPROVEMENT PLAN
“$25 million will go into a pot of money,” said state Sen. Julie Mayfield (D-Asheville). “What we’re hoping is we could try to get about $5 million, which would be a fifth of it.”
The pot is approved by House leaders in the state budget but the Senate will still have to review and approve the amount.
Citizen-Times, James Crabtree-Hannigan, 4/6/2023
There was never any doubt that the Asheville Tourists' 2023 Opening Day game Thursday against Bowling Green would sell out.
Some of that age showed Thursday, when the stadium's power went out 10 minutes before first pitch, causing the scoreboard and pitch clock to be nonoperational for the entirety of the game, speakers and radio broadcasts to be intermittent and leading to a play stoppage of about 15 minutes when all of the lights went out in the fifth inning.
But the sellout crowd of 4,271 (lively, friendly and some a bit intoxicated) fans were undeterred throughout Asheville's 10-0 loss, an indication of why the city's decision-makers believe the Tourists are worth paying for.
"It becomes part of an identity of the town," McGee said. "As much as Asheville has changed ... there's a couple of things that don't. The Biltmore never changes. The Grove Park never changes. And McCormick Field, even though they've redone and will redo it, this doesn't change. And that's important. That's super important.
WLOS, Matthew Yates, 4/7/2023
Millions of people from all over the globe visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park each year. Many of those visiting the park pass through the Oconaluftee entrance with no idea they're driving or walking past an overlooked piece of history.
The parking area for the Mingus Mill, Mingus Mill Creek Trail and other amenities is roughly two miles from the park entrance as travelers pass from Cherokee, North Carolina. The trails are marked as well as the short path to the mill, but across the parking lot a worn trail can be seen by those looking even just a little closer.
The path leads up a small hill to a little clearing in the woods and it's apparent that there’s something different about the area. Small mounds are raised from the ground. Rocks lay still nearby, marking the area. Coins have been placed on top of the rocks, many spilling to the surrounding ground.
“We’re at the Enloe Slave Cemetery,” Park Ranger Antoine Fletcher explains. "It’s one of the few cemeteries that we have that we know that enslaved people were buried here."
Citizen-Times, Francis Figart, 4/8/2023
About this time last year, I was asked to be involved with designing the first-ever conference for writers to be held within the boundary of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The inaugural Tremont Writers Conference is the coordinated effort of two educational park partners: Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont and Great Smoky Mountains Association.
Now that the applications are flowing in, it’s exhilarating to see this unprecedented event becoming a reality. From Oct. 25-29, some 20 writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry will arrive in Townsend, Tennessee, and make their way to Tremont’s breathtaking campus tucked away beside the glorious Middle Prong of the Little River. They will be immersed in an intensive retreat of brainstorming and fine-tuning their work while learning about nature and writing in small groups led by three inspirational author workshop leaders.
“I’m most excited about getting out of the city and being in the Smoky Mountains in the fall,” says Frank X. Walker, who will lead the poetry cohort. “Nothing resets my internal clock and fuels my creativity like being surrounded by so much majestic beauty.”
I remember being thrilled when Walker became the first African American poet laureate of my original home state, Kentucky. A native of Danville and professor of English, African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets.
Thank you for reading and contributing, I hope you have a fine weekend.
Stay safe (and dry) out there!