Amy Sedaris is coming back to Asheville

So who doesn't love North Carolina born Amy Sedaris? First let me just state that besides our alternative weekly magazine, Mountain Xpress bringing us all the goods each week, they ALSO keep their awesome, newsworthy website updated. You can sign up and comment there as well. And that's where I saw this article on Amy Sedaris. (via)

Amy has a new book out: Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People and, according to her book tour dates she’ll be at Malaprop’s on Friday, Nov. 12. Yay!

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Asheville Free Book Exchange

ALL BOOKS ARE FREE!

Greetings book lovers of Buncombe County and beyond. You are now welcome and invited to experience one of the latest installments to the Asheville River Arts District. We are the "Asheville Free Book Exchange," an experiment in the art of shepherding literature by the community and for the community.

Here, on location, we are housing and displaying books for visitors to peruse. Enjoy a comfortable space here to sit while reading or surfing via wi-fi. If you have books you are ready to let go, bring them in. Recycle your books here so others may enjoy them. Find some books here that you would like to bring home.

Asheville Free Book Exchange is also hosting a variety of functions, activities, group meets, film screenings, art and craft showings, and celebrations. Would you like to schedule an event at the Asheville Free Book Exchange? Write us an email, call us direct, and/or meet with us here during the week.

Asheville Free Book Exchange
191 Lyman Street, Suite 320
Asheville, NC 28801 USA
tel: 404.933.9173
email: info@freebookexchange.org

Cruel Summer - The Attack on Camp Summerlane

What does Paul Krassner have in common with North Carolina's Camp Summerlane in 1963?

Plenty.

Read the excellent investigative piece in this week's Asheville's Mountain Xpress by Jon Elliston.

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Gay Asheville Online

Asheville
The New San Francisco of the Southeast

Known as “The Land of the Clouds” since 1876 from a book by the same title, Asheville is quickly becoming touted as a favored spot for both visitors and new residents of the gay and lesbian community. Renowned for its tolerant and diverse attitudes, Asheville has become a gay Mecca of the twenty-first century while maintaining the ambiance of another era. Referred to as the “happiest place in the United States” by author Eric Weiner in his 2008 publication The Geography of Bliss, Asheville is enjoying a resurgence of energy in both professional and leisure opportunities that make it a major contender for gay-friendly cities on the rise.

[A new to me Gay Asheville website. Good business and services links and content. Welcome, Gay Asheville Online! Also, clicking on the GayAsheville label below will take you to more Gay Asheville websites.]

Amy Goodman In Asheville

Amy Goodman to speak May 23 in Asheville, NC

Award-winning journalist Amy Goodman will speak at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 23 at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College as part of a national tour for her new book, "Standing Up to Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times."

The talk will be held in AB-Tech's Ferguson Auditorium on the Asheville campus. Admission is $10, with proceeds going to support the nonprofit Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN) and its radio station, WPVM, 103.5 FM.

Advance tickets can be purchased at Malaprops Bookstore or by calling MAIN at 828-255-0182.

Pangea Day

It's Pangea Day
Local time: May-10-2008 14:00 EDT

4 Hours. 24 Films. A New Way To See The World
Thousands of people around the world will gather before their computers Saturday to view four hours of "Pangea Day" programming, brought to you by independent filmmakers, celebrities and the folks that organize the annual TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference.

...for the past two years, Pangea Day was planned as a way to bring the global community together. Over 2,500 independent films were submitted and the organizers picked out 24 short pieces that will be aired. There will also be music and celebrity talks, given by the likes of Queen Noor of Jordan, CNN's Christiane Amanpour, musician/activist Bob Geldof, and Iranian rock phenom Hypernova.

PANGEA DAY | LIVE FEEDS

**CELEBRATING IN DOWNTOWN ASHEVILLE @ 2:00 PM EST** ALSO AT THE FLOOD GALLERY AND AT FIRESTORM CAFE--48 Commerce St**

2-4pm, May 10th, 2008
Firestorm Cafe & Books
48 Commerce Street

On Saturday May 10th, Asheville will join thousands of cities around the world for Pangea Day, a program of powerful films, visionary speakers and uplifting music. The program will be broadcast live to the world through the Internet, television, digital cinemas and mobile phones in seven languages. In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, Pangea Day plans to use the power of film to bring the world a little closer together.

Asheville residents are invited to participate in this historic event locally at Firestorm Cafe & Books, a new community event space located at across from the downtown Post Office on Commerce Street.

For more information on Pangea Day, contact Laura Galloway at (212) 260-3708. For more information on Firestorm Cafe & Books, contact info@firestormcafe.com. link

Dennis Kucinich @ Malaprops

Malaprops - Sunday, November 11

6PM: Dennis Kucinich, Congressman and Presidential Candidate, will offer a public address at our store. We are honored and excited to host Dennis Kucinich, and expect this will be very well-attended, so please come early. Kucinich’s book, The Courage to Survive will be available at this event. We hope to have signed copies available, and we recommend calling or emailing ahead to reserve your copy.

The United States of Appalachia Jeff Biggers

Activist/US of Appalachia author Jeff Biggers will be at Malaprops Bookstore in Asheville on Sunday, November 11th, 1-3pm

"Read it and your faltering hopes will rise." --Studs Terkel

"Biggers has fashioned a masterpiece of popular history . . . revelations abound." --Citizen-Times

Appalachia has long been a vanguard region in the United States, a cradle of freedom and independence and a hotbed for the arts, ranging from the American Revolution to the abolitionist, labor and civil rights movements, and groundbreaking literary and musical inventions. Far from being in the backwash of American history, Appalachia has produced some of our country's most important innovators, including Cherokee inventor Sequoyah, Black History Month founder Carter Woodson, folk, jazz and country music legends Bessie Smith, WC Handy, Nina Simone, the Carter Family, Stanley Brothers and Loretta Lynn, NY Times publisher Adolph Ochs, legions of authors including Pearl S. Buck, Thomas Wolfe, Edward Abbey, Cormac McCarthy, Henry Louis Gates, James Still and Rebecca Harding Davis, and social activists John Rankin, Martin Delany, Myles Horton and Walter Reuther, to name only a few. With humor, intelligence, and clarity, Jeff Biggers shows that to understand American history it is essential to know Appalachian history.

"Biggers tells his story with verve and vivid detail, a story that will at once provoke and inspire." --Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek and Brave Enemies

"Biggers' book educates us as to just how biased and ignorant we really are about this region and its rich legacy of cultural, political, and intellectual pioneers.."The United States of Appalachia" is full of historical insights..." --San Antonio Express-News

Jeff Biggers has worked as a writer, radio correspondent, and educator across the United States, Europe, India, and Mexico. His award-winning stories and programs have aired on NPR and PRI and have appeared in various magazines and newspapers. Author of In the Sierra Madre, he also coedited No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems of Don West, which won an American Book Award.

For more information, visit his website: www.jeffbiggers.com

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Ecoheroism and John Cram

"Ecoheroism and the Beaucatcher Overlook, by James Dye"

The term ecoqueer, sporting an entirely superfluous hyphen, slipped into the language a few years ago. It is applied to intrepid environmental activists, incidentally gay, whose sexual orientation is somehow linked to social responsibility, in this case to ecology. As Australian documentary filmmaker Pip Starr, himself an ecoqueer, noted, “[N]ature created people to be queer for good reason...we tend to become artists, storytellers, and spiritual guides or leaders.”

Among the ranks of the ecoqueer is Stephanie Hillman, who, in a very visible protest, camped for several days in the pouring rain on a ledge high above the city of Rio de Janeiro, in the company of large, Amazonian rats. Or there is Eric Heijselaar, who leapt onto a derelict storage rig from a helicopter and spent six days on the platform, nursing a broken ankle but thereby compelling Shell Oil not to dump the rig into the ocean. The contributions of Hillman and Heijselaar are in every sense heroic, the stuff of books and film. But Asheville has her own ecoqueer, a quiet, soft-spoken, and modest hero who has, through his efforts, saved thirty forested acres within the city limits for use as a public park.

John Cram’s name is synonymous with Asheville’s renaissance. With his Blue Spiral 1 Gallery and the Fine Arts Theatre, he breathed new life into the city’s decaying downtown. His New Morning Gallery and Bellagio have done the same for Biltmore Village. That he has an eye for art is unquestioned, and it is doubtless this visual sensibility, perhaps combined with that gay Frodo-environmentalism of the 1970s, that drives his campaign to save western North Carolina from itself.

Asheville Green Drinks

Every Friday Night at 6:30 pm at Bobo Gallery (22 Lexington Ave) a group of people interested in the environment meet for networking and a micro-forum (http://www.ashevillegreendrinks.com). The micro-forum has had good programming including these topics and featured guests:

Cathy Holt - Green Roofs Presentation (for civic center)
Rebbecca Bowe - The Gray Area Between Green and Greenwashing
Paul Gallimore - On his book Healing Appalachia
Wally Bowen - Media Reform (and saving URTV)

In conclusion I would like to invite you out tonight for "Bioregional Issues: Katúah Then and Now" with featured guest David Wheeler to see what we are about. AGD starts at 6:30, forum starts at 7:30. Hopefully it will be exciting enough that you are inspired to participate. Bobo serves organic/local beer and wine so come on and join the fun.

Much appreciation,
AGD Organizers

P.S. Please forward this on to your Green friends if you can!



Asheville

ACRC - Asheville Community Resource Center

The ACRC houses many organizations dedicated to social change. They include:

The Asheville Prison Books Program - free literature and materials
The Women’s/Transgendered Health Project - information and support
The Asheville Free School - Free classes and workshops
The Asheville Global Report - news under- or unreported by mainstream
Katuah Earth First! - local chapter of the environmental movement
The Re-Cyclery bicycle collective - workshops on maintenance and repair
The Jab Jab Self Defense Collective - share skills and create awareness

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HOWL!

A Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Allen Ginsberg's book as well as the American book launch for the 2005 publication of The Baby Beat Generation (The 1970s San Francisco Renaissance)

• What: A celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl.”
• When: 8 p.m. today
• Where: Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center, 56 Broadway, Asheville, NC
• Tickets: $7, $5 center members and students
• Also: The American book launch of “Baby Beat Generation”
• More: 350-8484, bmcmac@bellsouth.net
• On the Net: Read the poem at www.pangloss.com/seidel/Ramble/howl.shtml

See link for poets that will be reading tonight and add'l info.
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Psychedelic 60s - Black Mountain Poets

Asheville: The Top 25

How do we love North Carolina's favorite mountain town? Brad Tuttle counts the way in no particular order. For Example---

6. The banned-book list at Malaprop's

In addition to titles of gay, lesbian, and transgender interest--and separate sections for graphic novels and local writers and poets--this very independent bookstore has several shelves of books currently banned by schools and libraries around the country. Gone With the Wind, Lord of the Flies, Hamlet, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and a few of the Harry Potter titles are all on someone's no-no list. Several times a week, the bookstore-and-café hosts author readings and live music. The bulletin board where locals post events, jobs, and solicitations is absolutely worth a look. One recent flyer read: 2chix lawn care--support the women's movement. 55 Haywood St., 828/254-6734.

I found this list to be quit handy for both visitors and natives.

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After debunking right-wing propaganda in his bestselling books, Al Franken took the fight to America's airwaves on Air America Radio. Now he's bringing his fearlessly irreverent commentary, comedy, and interviews to Asheville.

On Wednesday, November 30th, The Al Franken Show will be broadcast live from Thomas Wolfe Auditorium here in Asheville, NC.

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Asheville Poetry Review

Asheville Poetry Review is a biannual literary journal that publishes 160–200 pages of poems, interviews, translations, essays, historical perspectives and book reviews. Nicely done.