ORGANIC GROWERS SCHOOL Hosts New Holistic Crop Management Workshop Series
Asheville, NC: Organic Growers School is launching a new curriculum and training opportunity to Southern Appalachia in partnership with Certified Naturally Grown with funding support from the USDA-Agricultural Marketing Service. Holistic Crop Management is a four-part workshop series led by local farmers and agricultural experts. Growers will gain the tools to manage soil health, weeds, pests and diseases for whole-farm success. Workshops will be held across Northern Georgia, Eastern Tennessee, Western North Carolina, and Southwestern Virginia.
MOUNTAIN OF WORDS An Intergenerational Literary & Art Celebration at the YMI
Free Event, so you are welcome to join us even without a ticket but the RSVP is helpful for our planning.
And, if you need childcare, we ask that you register with the number and ages of children so that we are prepared to provide them with their best experience! CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS
Homeward Bound WNC
We launched a new homelessness prevention program in January 2018, designed to help individuals and families stay in their rental units when they have no other housing options.
Celebrating Jennifer Siebel Newsom and her film, THE GREAT AMERICAN LIE
SIGN UP FOR HEALTH INSURANCE NOW Affordable Care Act’s Seventh Open Enrollment Nov. 1 – Dec. 15
Sign Up for Health Insurance Nov. 1 – Dec. 15, 2019
Free Walk-in Events Happening in November Throughout WNC
Do you have questions about choosing affordable, quality health insurance? Pisgah Legal Services can help with free, unbiased, in-person assistance for the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Seventh Open Enrollment, taking place from Nov. 1 to Dec. 15, 2019.
THE WRITERS’ WORKSHOP of Asheville
Serving writers in the Southeast and beyond since 1985
“The Writers’ Workshop is a community treasure that deserves to be nurtured and supported“ – John le Carre
THE NORTH CAROLINA ARBORETUM Exhibits and Events
For more than 30 years…Cultivating Connections between People, Plants and Places…amid a 434-acre public garden, The North Carolina Arboretum is located within the Bent Creek Experimental Forest just south of Asheville and adjacent to the Blue Ridge Parkway at Milepost 393. Surrounded and crisscrossed by forested coves and meandering creeks in the botanically diverse Southern Appalachian Mountains, The North Carolina Arboretum is set in one of the most beautiful natural settings in America.
Why I train grandmothers to treat depression | Dixon Chibanda
This post is offered by Cynthia Turner
Here’s a wonderful TED Talk on YouTube. Dixon Chibanda is one of 12 psychiatrists in Zimbabwe — for a population of more than 16 million. Realizing that his country would never be able to scale traditional methods of treating those with mental health issues, Chibanda helped to develop a beautiful solution powered by a limitless resource: grandmothers. In this extraordinary, inspirational talk, learn more about the friendship bench program, which trains grandmothers in evidence-based talk therapy and brings care, and hope, to those in need.’ CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE
SHE LOVED HORSES: Thea & The Green Man new CD release
She Loved Horses, by Thea, is a new CD release of heart-opening songs with emotional impact and spiritual roots by an award-winning, singer-songwriter. Thea spent her early childhood barefoot among the Seminole Indians on the banks of the Miami River, and all of her childhood summers in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina where she currently resides in Asheville. These influences, along with her abiding love of nature, weave images of river, ocean, mountain and canyon through her songwriting.
SEASONAL EVENTS in Asheville and WNC
Asheville’s seasons are a palette of colors and experiences, ranging from the enchanting holidays and spring mountains bursting with blooms to the outdoor adventures of summertime and the breathtaking colors of fall. In Asheville, you’ll find plenty to do any time of year. Pick your season for the best of fall, winter, spring and summer! Asheville for every season.
Monitor with health expertise pledges to keep watch on HCA-Mission deal
Gibbins Advisors, the independent monitoring firm just hired to keep HCA Healthcare accountable for the promises it made during its acquisition of Mission Health, says it will keep its ear to the ground, both inside the health system and across the community.
The Nashville, Tenn.-based health care consulting firm, which provides restructuring and financial advisory services to clients across the industry, will serve as the independent monitor, mandated by the N.C. Department of Justice as part of the HCA-Mission deal. CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE
PENLAND SCHOOL of CRAFTS – Workshops Offered
Penland is a national center for craft education dedicated to helping people live creative lives. Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Penland offers one-, two-, and eight-week workshops in books & paper, clay, drawing, glass, iron, metals, photography, printmaking and letterpress, textiles, and wood.
JUST SAY NO! To Protect Open Greenway Space on the French Broad River
By Karen Cragnolin
What is Jettie Rae’s Seafood Restaurant?
Jettie Rae’s is a proposed new seafood restaurant in the middle of the new greenway and sidewalk project along Riverside Drive, across from the Cotton Mill Studios and directly on the river in the *riparian area. The proposed new restaurant is 5,500 square feet, has 36 parking spaces, a pavilion and open lawn and a public restroom that will be only open when the restaurant is open.
Why are concerned citizens raising red flags and voicing concerns about this proposed restaurant?
NORTH CAROLINA POLICY WATCH – Legislators close to cobbling together major sexual assault reforms
The N.C. General Assembly meets in the State Legislative Building in Raleigh. A conference committee is currently working on a package of sexual assault reforms that would go to lawmakers for an up-or-down vote. Frank Taylor / Carolina Public Press
Two loopholes in North Carolina’s sexual assault laws could close as legislators hammer out last-minute changes to three bills in a bipartisan conference committee this week.
If someone continues with sexual activity after a partner withdraws consent, it is currently a crime everywhere in the United States — except in North Carolina, thanks to a judge’s precedent-setting ruling 40 years ago.
“The General Assembly did not put this into statute,” said Skye David, an attorney for the N.C. Coalition Against Sexual Assault. “With that being said, the General Assembly has had 40 full years to change it.” Click here to continue
ADRIENNE RICH on the Political Power of Poetry and Its Role in the Immigrant Experience
One summer evening not long ago, on a rainy Brooklyn rooftop, a friend — a brilliant friend who studies the cosmos and writes uncommonly poetic novels — stunned me with an improbable, deceptively simple yet enormous question: “What does poetry do?”
I fumbled for Baldwin: “The poets [are] the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t. Statesmen don’t. Priests don’t. Union leaders don’t. Only poets.” And then I mumbled something about how poetry gives shape to our experiences through language, thus conferring validity and dignity upon them, enlarging our access to our own humanity. CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE
Men Are Not Big Babies
by Shannon Ashley in Medium/Equality
“They are trapped and they don’t even have the language to talk about how they feel about being trapped, because the language that exists to express the full range of human emotion is still viewed as sensitive and feminine.” – Michael Ian Black
For whatever wrong reason, I have in the past been guilty of perpetuating the myth of the “man cold” and commenting that “men are babies.” As I get older, it’s one type of sentiment that I have nixed from my vocabulary.
When we talk about toxic masculinity and mainstream culture, it seems to me that both men and women have been subject to different and varying degrees of infantilization.
The World’s Happiest People Have a Beautifully Simple Way to Tackle Loneliness
in Pocket Worthy
QuartzJenny Anderson
Sometimes a place for people to come together is what’s needed most.
Toad, a 20-year-old Danish woman living in Copenhagen, has been lonely her whole life. She is autistic, and as a child, did not have any friends. When she moved from the country to the city, not much changed. “They says it’s a phase, but a phase becomes a life,” she says, surrounded by six other young adults in a cozy apartment in Copenhagen—all of whom are working on becoming less lonely.
THE MYTH OF SOULMATES: Advice from someone who’s been married for 10 years
by Jessica Valenti in GEN
Ten years ago today, I got married in an upstate New York ceremony that I planned down to the dinner napkin placement and band’s song order. I wore gray instead of white — I had just written a book decrying America’s obsession with virginity — and had spent the two previous nights meticulously punching out leaf-shaped pieces of paper with my then fiancé, pasting them on seating cards. It was a lovely and love-filled day.
COPING WITH GRIEF – Good Ideas from Women Who Have Been There
Working with women through the loss of a spouse or partner has, unfortunately been a predictable occurrence at Starks Financial. Like many, we struggle with wondering what we can say or do to be helpful.
