Ashvegas Hot Sheet: Bomb scare at Asheville Regional Airport

Share
Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

  • 1

More of what’s going around, including a bomb scare at the Asheville Regional Airport on Friday morning.

-A bomb scare at the Asheville Regional Airport on Friday morning shut down the facility and now has police searching for a person of interest, the Asheville Citizen-Times reports. A suspicious package that an airport spokesperson initially said was made to look like an explosive device actually did contain explosive material, an FBI spokesman later said. Asheville police are looking for a white man with graying hair who has been seen along Airport Road recently.

-Warren Wilson archeologist Dr. David Moore is offering a unique tour of Cherokee sites on the campus of Warren Wilson, in addition to an exclusive visit of the college archeology laboratory, from 9 a.m. to noon on Oct. 28, according to a press release. More:

The event includes an easy 90-minute stroll along the Swannanoa River to visit several Cherokee sites, discuss history and culture of the Cherokees, and discover techniques used in archeological research. This tour is a potentially one-time opportunity provided through the collaboration of Dr. Moore and Land & Lore Ecotours.

The event is part of an affordable and family-friendly Fall Guided Hike Series, catering to Asheville locals. Besides the archeology tour, families and friends can join ecologist Dr. Jeff Beacham on Saturday, Oct. 21, to discover the history and natural wonders of our famous Rattlesnake Lodge, home to conservationist Dr. Ambler. Guests will learn about Dr. Ambler’s critical contributions to the establishment of Pisgah National Forest and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. On Saturday, Nov. 4, geologist Mark Hostetter shares untold stories of gold, rubies, and sapphires along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The guide is a professional geologist with over 40 years of field geology and mining experience, and he loves revealing how mines and minerals impacted local history forever!

The Fall Guided Hike Series is FREE for kids, $30/adult, and dog-friendly (minus the archeology lab!) For more information and registration, visit the Fall Guided Hike Series of Land & Lore Ecotours, call 828-476-TOUR, or contact [email protected].

-Speaking of Warren Wilson College, check out this story from InsideHigherEd.com, headlined: College With Liberal Reputation Wants to Recruit Conservative Students.

– Children First/Communities In Schools of Buncombe County has announced an upcoming fundraiser presented by Asheville Lifestyle and United Federal Credit Union and hosted by McKibbon Hospitality to benefit area children and their families, according to a press release. More:

Asheville Lifestyle’s Fall Fashion Show featuring United Federal Credit Union’s Diamond Drop Signature Event will take place at McKibbon Hospitality’s AC Hotel Asheville Downtown, 10 Broadway Street, Asheville, North Carolina, on Thursday, October 12, 2017, from 6 until 9 p.m.

Children First/CIS is a non-profit organization that has been empowering and advocating for children and their families in Buncombe County for over forty years. Proceeds from the benefit will be used to provide services and resources to make sure vulnerable elementary students have the tools they need to succeed in school and thrive in life.

The fashion show will feature fashions from local boutiques and designers in the new space on the ninth floor of McKibbon Hospitality’s AC Hotel Asheville Downtown. Guests are encouraged to wear their freshest white outfits.

For information on tickets to attend Asheville Lifestyle’s Fall Fashion Show featuring United Federal Credit Union’s Diamond Drop Signature Event go here.

-Evergreen Community Charter School in Asheville is hosting the inaugural Evergreen Adventure Demo Day, a family-friendly event that is open to the public, on Saturday, Oct. 7, according to a press release. Here’s more:

We will be showcasing our adventure programs, and we invite everyone to come have fun climbing our climbing wall, exploring the trees on our high ropes course, shredding on our mountain bike trails, enjoying food and gear from local vendors, and enjoying music on our beautiful campus!
Prices per activity vary between $7 and $9 depending on the length and intensity of activities. This is a benefit to help grow and sustain the adventure programs at Evergreen, providing scholarships for students, and supporting the costs of future adventure trips. Come get a taste of our adventure-friendly campus, and try out some activities we love to enjoy at Evergreen, not only in our Adventure Program, but also in our after-school program, EverAfter, which is open to the greater Asheville community.

“Parents should come with their kids, their neighbors, their friends, their neighbors’ kids, their soccer friends, church friends, yoga class friends. Most of anything in this world involves just showing up, then it’s what we make of it,” said Evergreen Adventure Coordinator Doug White.

People can register for the event online the Evergreen website (www.evergreenccs.org) to participate on the indoor climbing wall (which has nine different pitches), participate on the high ropes course (which has nine challenge elements), ride Specialized brand mountain bikes on a newly installed pump track and campus mountain bike trail. The event will have team-building activities for all ages and also wilderness skills courses focused on primitive shelters, knot tying and tarp shelters.

-Asheville playwright David Brenden Hopes’ historical fantasy, Uranium235, will have its world premiere production at The Magnetic Theatre with a three week run from Nov. 2-18, according to a press release. Here’s more:

Hopes is an accomplished playwright with numerous awards for his plays and poetry. The Magnetic Theatre presented the world premiere of another play by Hopes in 2015. Washington Place was a critically lauded production. Uranium235 delves into a tense moment in American history, in the waning days of World War II, as President Harry S. Truman struggles to come to grips with the whether or not to drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan.

David Brendan Hopes is a well-known Asheville-based poet and actor as well as playwright. His plays Abbott’s Dance, 7 Reece Mews, Edward the King, and, most recently, The Loves of Mr Lincoln have been produced in New York. Another play, Night Music was the recipient of the 2017 North Carolina New Play Project Award (an award that Hopes also recieved for his play Saint Patrick’s Well.) His memoir, A Childhood in the Milky Way was a National Book Award and Pulitzer nominee. He teaches creative writing at UNC-Asheville.

The cast for Uraniun235 includes Asheville area actors Mike Yow, Mary Katherine O’Donnell, Jim Weyhenmeyer, Bettina Holmes, Hannah Williams-Beaver, Kiran Bursenos, and Eugene Jones. The creative team includes Kayren McKnight (Scenic and Costume Design), Abby Auman (Lighting Design), Mary Zogzas (Sound Design), Kristi DeVille (choreography), and Ginger Haselden (music and vocal coach). The play will be directed by Andrew Gall, a prolific regional theatre veteran with extensive local and national credits. (Gall is also currently serving as Interim Managing Artistic Director for the Magnetic Theatre). Marissa Mello is the production stage manager.

Uranium235 will be presented at Magnetic 375 (375 Depot Street in the River Arts District) Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 PM, November 2-November 18, at The Magnetic’s newly announced popular prices, $12 for previews, $16 for all other performances.

 

Tags::
Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

  • 1

10 Comments

  1. Curious October 10, 2017

    Big Al, do these colleges meet your test of a REAL College?
    https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/most-conservative-colleges/s/north-carolina/

    Reply
    1. Big Al October 11, 2017

      Campbell (with a 74% conservative acceptance score) is no surprise, although it is where Baptist theologians go when they are purged from SBC seminaries, so I doubt most conservatives would agree that Campbell is conservative enough. Wingate (70% score) gave us Jesse Helms, but it is small fry as a college. The remainder on this list scored 68% or less on the conservative acceptance scale, so I would argue that they are NOT truly conservative colleges.

      Again, I am NOT arguing that we need MORE conservatism in colleges, I am arguing that schools like WWC look desperate when they try to make themselves “more diverse” by pandering to conservatives when what they really want is more money, not more diverse viewpoints.

      The argument that there are any significant number of “conservative” colleges who should seek diversity by likewise pandering to liberals is ludicrous. Most colleges are liberal and their biggest problem is competing with each other for the available supply of liberal students and their tuition.

      Reply
    2. Big Al October 12, 2017

      Only WFU is of any note, and it only gets a 29% acceptance by conservatives, so I don’t know why it made the list except that they needed ten for a round number, The rest of these schools are small fry.

      Campbell, the highest at 74%, is where theologians who have been kicked out of Southern Baptist seminaries go, so clearly they are Liberal by the standards of conservative, evangelicals.

      Wingate, at 68%, would be virtually anonymous outside of conservative circles except for the dubious distinction of educating Jesse Helms.

      The schools that matter are all liberal, and I have no problem with that. But it really is silly for a college to whine about not having enough conservatives when what they really want is more money and all of the liberal students are being hoovered up by other colleges.

      Reply
      1. Curious October 19, 2017

        You make good points.

        Reply
    3. chris October 14, 2017

      The problem is that one would be hard pressed to find a conservative college anywhere that is actually a “real college.” Like, one that actually teaches to reality, and not to some Randian fever dream.

      Reply
  2. Big Al October 6, 2017

    Warren Wilson College’s trolling for “conservative” students sounds to me like an act of desperation by an institution whose self-inflicted political correctness has reduced its’ attendance and limited its’ income.

    No small irony that a school that embraces Socialism and rejects Capitalism would find itself imperiled by market forces that it neither accepts or understands. They could probably do with some market-oriented young minds.

    BUT if I were a conservative, I would avoid any campus that self-identifies as “liberal” for one reason: no freedom of speech. The first time a conservative vocalizes an unpopular opinion, he or she will be immediately accused of hate speech or “triggering”.

    Reply
    1. Barry Summers October 7, 2017

      Warren Wilson College’s trolling for “conservative” students sounds to me like an act of desperation

      Really? Sounds to me like an act of wanting to hear differing views & help liberal students learn how to interact with people who don’t agree with them. Society needs this right now. We’re too polarized. WWC should be applauded, IMO.

      Be honest, you’d slam WWC for not doing this.

      BTW, how many local conservative schools are reaching out to potential students on the left? *crickets*

      Reply
      1. Big Al October 8, 2017

        Name a school in (or out of) NC that can truly be called “conservative”. None of the five (2 public and 3 private) that have accepted me would fit that description. Moderate-to-Liberal, maybe. And if such schools exist, they probably don’t have much competition and therefore don’t need to pander to the left for their children’s tuition.

        The REAL problem is that so many colleges are claiming the left ground that there are more seats than there are students. WWC does not really want more conservative views for the sake of diversity, they just want more money and they have run out of hard-left-leaning families and alumni. It is simple pandering. If they could afford it, they would stay hard left and that would be fine with me. I want every viewpoint to have a “safe space”, but just like everybody else, they have to pay their way.

        Reply
        1. Barry Summers October 10, 2017

          You’re kidding, right? 10 miles away, Montreat College. They take tons of money from the Billy/Franklin Graham clan, recently forced all staff and faculty to sign a pledge against same-sex marriage and abortion, and two years ago made the list of the “The 10 Most Conservative Presbyterian Colleges in America”.

          They’re driving out students and staff that don’t pass the conservative purity test.

          Reply
          1. Big Al October 10, 2017

            Montreat College is a tiny religious school on the verge of bankruptcy and dissolution. Name one REAL college that is “conservative”.

            Reply

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.