Welcome to the Church of Holy Chaos
From Duke Faith and Leadership
On a cold, rainy day in early March, a 30-something man walked into the sanctuary at the Haywood Street Congregation for the Wednesday midday service with a shaggy mixed-breed dog on a leash. Dark-haired and bearded, dressed in a brown T-shirt and army-green painter’s pants, the man looked like a dozen other young guys you might encounter in downtown Asheville, North Carolina.
But he wasn’t just another guy. He was the pastor, the Rev. Brian Combs, and the dog was Penny, the Haywood Street “church dog.” As the two made their rounds, greeting congregants, organist Edward Smith launched into “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.” Moments later, assistant pastor Darryl Dayson -- young, dreadlocked and wearing jeans -- stepped up onto the chancel and welcomed everyone, inviting them to “join in creating community.” Read more here.
Carolina Memorial Sanctuary: Natural Burials
From The Asheville Citizen-Times
Once choked with invasive plants, a long, narrow stretch of rolling land in Mills River is undergoing a surprising restoration.
Carolina Memorial Sanctuary is a peaceful place, but its aim is a bit revolutionary: to bring back age-old burial practices that reframe death as a natural part of life and nurture respect for the environment. It’s the first conservation burial ground in North Carolina and one of only a handful nationwide.
The result of over a decade of planning, the sanctuary is a passion project for Caroline Yongue, an ordained Buddhist teacher. Around 20 years ago, she began aiding her Asheville Soto Zen community in the preparation of bodies for burial according to Buddhist tradition. By helping to guide families and friends through the process of tending to a deceased loved one and organizing home funerals, she developed an expertise in facilitating the sensitive decisions surrounding death. Read more here.
Homage to a hell-raiser: Film on acclaimed journalist Molly Ivins has Asheville connection
From the Asheville Citizen-Times
ASHEVILLE - For news junkies of a certain age, there’s a kind of nostalgia watching the documentary “Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins.”
Although it’s been just 12 years since the legendary columnist died of cancer at age 62, her singular brand of whip-smart commentary and sharp-but-civil humor seem to come from a time long distant from today’s street-fighting media landscape. Her death coincided with swift decline of in-depth print journalism, but her staunch defense of press freedom couldn’t be more timely today. Read more here.
Booksellers, Authors Help Shape Book Market
from The Asheville Citizen-Times
An estimated 350,000 books are published each year in the U.S., according to the American Association of Publishers. Which ones make it onto the shelves of America’s 10,000-plus bookstores and in what quantity is largely the result of a complex process that’s part strategy, part influence and part serendipity.
From Sunday through Feb. 11, publishers, booksellers and authors from across the U.S. are meeting at the Omni Grove Park Inn to shape that process during the American Booksellers Association annual Winter Institute.
The Winter Institute is the smaller of two big book industry events held by the ABA each year, the larger of which is Book Expo America, held each spring in New York. While expo is more of a major industry sales event, the Winter Institute is more educational in focus, with daily workshops on the business of selling books. Read more here.
book tells of first woman to hike the appalachian trail
from the Asheville Citizen-Times
In the early 1950s, Emma Gatewood was leafing through a National Geographic at the doctor’s office when she came across an article about Earl Shaffer. He was the first person to thru-hike the entire Appalachian Trail in 1948.
The Ohio farmer’s wife and mother of 11 was already in her 60s, her children grown, but “on a lark” she decided to do it too. In 1955, at age 67, she told her children she was going out for a walk, and she started out on the 2,184-mile trail.
One hundred forty-five days later, she completed it, only the sixth person and first woman ever to do so. Tampa Times reporter Ben Montgomery tells her story in “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail,” released last month. Read more here.
College Bound: How (and When) to Start College Planning
WNC Parent
They’re often the subject of jokes in movies and TV shows: overly ambitious parents who start trying to get their children into the “right” college before they’re even gotten to preschool. But how soon is too soon to start preparing your child for the college admissions process and what is the competition really like?
“It’s never too early to have conversations about college and career options with our students and to design plans for reaching those goals,” says Lee Tobin of Asheville High School’s counseling staff. Those conversations could include individual meetings, counseling groups and classroom guidance. The high school’s counseling office has myriad resources to help students and their parents get started, he adds, including information about summer programs, internships and community and service opportunities that can make them more competitive for college admissions and scholarship selection.
Last year, Asheville High hosted representatives from 67 colleges and universities and the school maintains close relationship with Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College (A-B Tech), but Tobin encourages parents of high school students to use weekends, spring breaks, and some days of summer to visit colleges to make the idea of continuing education more concrete. Read More here.
Holiday Ephemera from the “Golden Age of Postcards”
from Book and Paper Fairs
Americans have always wanted to stay in touch with one another, and with the introduction of the one-cent stamp in 1898, the practice of sending postcards exploded. At first, messages weren’t permitted on the address side and were written over the images on the front of the cards. When postal regulations changed in 1907, the back of a postcard was divided into two sections, one for the message and one for the address, thus heralding the so-called Golden Age of postcards.
Why call it the Golden Age? Two reasons: volume and illustration quality. In American Holiday Postcards, 1905-1915, postcard expert Daniel Gifford speculates that between 200 and 300 billion postcards were produced and sent during that ten-year-period, many of these during the post-1907 “divided back period.” To fuel the boom, stores exclusively selling postcards opened in American cities. Collecting postcards developed as a hobby and collecting clubs were advertised in local newspapers, according to George and Dorothy Miller, authors of Picture Postcards.
Most U.S. holiday postcards were sent by rural women who were now more literate than ever before. As Americans became increasingly mobile and the middle class grew, sending postcards was a pastime that kept people connected.
Much of the holiday imagery we consider iconic today hails from the turn of the 20th century: picture a plump Santa with a sprig of holly in his cap delivering wooden horses and porcelain dolls to eager children. These aspirational pictures often appeared on postcards and either reflected idyllic scenes of country life or illustrated a changing and modern society: a Thanksgiving turkey hitching a ride to the table on a newfangled airplane, Santa arriving in a motorcar or riding in a zeppelin instead of a sleigh. Social and cultural values spread through America via this art, which was often created by well-known illustrators such as Ellen Clapsaddle and Little Women illustrator Frances Brundage. Read more here.
