Posted on 04/25/2023 7:14:27 AM PDT by Perseverando
Beautifully put. Brief and concise.
“Perhaps, “
Not perhaps. Asheville is Antifa SE headquarters.
Evan Scott runs the store, but he goes by Liberty Valance. ‘He’s a male-to-female transgender. He runs the Center for Participatory Change. He got grant money for that nonprofit from … (George) Soros, foundations, etc. It’s like a huge, big umbrella.
“It goes all the way back to James McClure Clarke (a former Democratic state congressman). Elbeth was his wife. There was a trust and then all these properties went to all these projects, such as Firestorm Books.”
Oh well.
My “perhaps” was not meant as argument or disagreement, but agreement with the caveat it was a long time in the making. As in:
“We’re now living in the age of computers.”
“Perhaps, but the first proto-computer, the comtompter, was patented way back in 1887. It’s been a long time in the making.”
Sorry I was confusing by neglecting to add “it’s been a long time in the making” and hope we’re all good now :)
Asheville is a homosexual tourism spot, same for homeless, and they travel to Greenville to change the scenery once in a while.
Greenville was a pretty town 7 years ago, now it is micro brewery filled, homeless run, meth addled troubled spot.
real small main street, higher than cheap resturants, a few to avoid
Sad.
BTW, good info and good addition to this thread. Thanks!
We are good. I am just reinforcing that Ashville is much worse than a liberal “haven”.
“BTW, good info and good addition to this thread. Thanks!”
Wife and I were planning to go to the mountains this August. Looked for places to stay in or near Ashville last night.
Lead article on my homepage this morning was Asheville crime.
Oh, it most certainly is! The seeds were planted some forty years ago and now it is most certainly a hive of the most extreme of extreme progressives and commies, no question (with Black Mountain being perhaps even worse in a way).
At the risk of sounding loony, a very wise and deeply spiritual older Episcopal priest pointed put to me the spiritual history of Black Mountain when I was aghast at the new Circle of Light retreat center the New Age Children of Light had erected there and their weird a d creepy rocks (and right after some Satanists had cruelly murdered my beloved cat on the night before Halloween). He said the area had always attracted spiritual seekers, for good or ill.
Before you brand me as a crazy, I could see why. There was a very special golden quality to the sunlight there which is hard to describe. I saw it occasionally in Wear’s Valley on the Tennessee side, but often in Black Mountain. It was uncanny, as if you had been transported into Heaven.
And in the fall, the wind would sweep through in measured gusts, like the Breath of God. You could watch the wind bend the gold-ripened hay fields and the trees on the slopes above in a grand sweep of your field of vision, from here to there, then grow still again. Repeat. It was so beautiful and mesmerizing.
And all of this in that special golden sunlight. The black salamanders in your spring were flecked with the most amazing bright shiny gold and had the appearance of being rather magical on first sight, too. Yeah, I could see it. And watched it happen.
Too bad the “for ill” crowd won out. For now.
(Mind you, I am not saying the area really is some sort of spiritual node, but can see why many generations thought it to be one.)
Yes, a familiar emotion, difficult to describe. Which you did quite well!
I always loved the shrimp and grits at Sunny Point Cafe. The standard by which I compared all others. But too much wokeism and leftist virtue signaling has put them on my personal boycott list. That list is getting so long, it might be better just to work from the short list of nonwoke companies. Don’t these woke folk ever have to answer to shareholders? Well, at least one is answering to one customer, me😀
Aw, thanks (blush). It is difficult to describe. I loved to watch the autumn winds sweep through the Swannanoa Valley. And loved the strange salamanders in my spring, black with flecks of metallic gold, not the yellow spots seen on common black salamanders but little flecks of shimmering gold, kind of like glitter,but somehow classier. I never saw salamanders like those anywhere else. And I loved Black Mountain back when it was still the old Black Mountain with its resident colorful characters (but changing fast even then, what with the New Agers and their weird rocks and crystal shops).
I knew a famous Cherokee healer there (who was also a WWII vet), and he attracted a strange crowd — even he thought them strange. Black Mountain was even then becoming a magnet for weirdos. It had long been a favored location for mainline Protestant church camps and retreat centers (and Billy Graham lived in bordering Montreat), so it was an odd sort of invasion where the locals and old timers were both amused and horrified at the strange newcomers at the same time.
There were still some old time Hard Shell Baptists in the area and you could hear some good shape note type singing coming out of their little country churches (and no, you didn’t need to go inside — you could hear it as you drove by with your windows down, including the tiny old church in Black Mountain). My neighbor who grew up in the sticks there was a shape note singer and she could also clog up a storm, the real old time clogging where your upper body does not move and intricate footwork to sound out the rhythm.*
Once you got outside Asheville or Black Mountain, even a few miles, say, in little settlements like Leicester (properly pronounced “Lester” by the locals, same as in England, but pronounced “Lee-sester” by outsiders and tourists), the Tarheel accent became so thick it was difficult for even me to understand at times, and I was fluent in East Tennessee Hillbilly. I knew a “poke” was a sack and a “spider” was a skillet already, but was sometimes left totally clueless as to what these these people were saying at first (with occasionally hilarious results). Yes, I did catch on pretty quick and became fluent in Tarheel. It’s really fun to “talk Tarheel”.
No shrimp and grits in Asheville back then, as it did not become trendy until the 90s and never found in restaurants, not even in the Low Country where it originated back then. It started out as a slave dish because they could easily catch shrimp in the tidal creeks of South Carolina’s Low Country, and add them to their ration of corn ground to grits. Some claim the dish originated in Africa but I laugh at that because corn is a New World crop, unknown in Africa back then. It’s quite possible that shrimp and millet was a thing in coastal West Africa, though, and slaves in the Low Country simply substituted grits for millet. Anyway, it was once a humble home dish, often made with just shrimp and gravy over grits — the gravy flavored with simply onion, garlic, salt and pepper and the luscious shrimp juice.**
Anyway, the first time I ever heard of shrimp and grits was from an elderly Gullah gentleman on Edisto Island who said it was a good day because he had eaten it for breakfast. This was when I was a teenager in the late 1970s. I happened to meet him because I love to go crabbing in the tidal creeks using the stick and string method (which I think is great fun) and so did he. He spoke Gullah style and smoked a corn cob pipe and I adored him. Gullah culture was even then starting to die out, and I suppose it’s in dire peril of disappearing now.
A couple of decades later, and what do you know, shrimp and grits starts showing up in trendy restaurants as an “in” thing, but all fancied up with crazy additions that would have baffled my old Gullah crabbing buddy. Really, the only other thing you might rightfully add to it is a little sliced okra if you happen to have some, but better saved for shrimp and it okra or gumbo unless your garden is overflowing with okra at the moment and the neighbors pull down their shades when they see you coming with yet another basket of okra.
Well, my, how I’ve gone on about the history of shrimp and grits, which you certainly did not ask for. Yikes.
Anyway, anyone who is interested in the Asheville area’s history and culture might want to check out Wilma Dykeman’s books The Tall Woman and The French Broad (about the French Broad River, not some tart from France). The first is a historical novel set in a fictional hamlet in what appears to be the Swannanoa Valley, the second is part of The Rivers of America series and includes lots of local color and history.
*Real old time Blue Ridge clogging like my neighbor could do:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cs2j8f7H2WY
Southern Appalachian shape note singing:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FyrUhdBHOg8
No, you really don’t need to be inside the church to hear it, as demonstrated here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=STtz7ZhEC6U
**Proper Gullah shrimp and grits:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iP0laZ7DAjI
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.