“Get on the ground,” my friend and neighbor Odell Irby often says, referring to the importance of in person encounters. And he means it. Frequently sitting on the corner in front of his house, Odell knows all of his neighbors’ names (and their dogs’ names), and is always greeting passers…

Embracing multiple truths is not easy in a culture that prefers binaries, that tends to simplify complex realities into good/bad, right/wrong, etc. Yet multiple truths exist. We find them woven throughout the story of the Montford Park Players and their $1/year lease of the Hazel Robinson Amphitheatre with the City…

Hill Street was a historically Black neighborhood in Asheville, NC. Have you heard of it? Likely not. Its story, like the homes which once stood there, has been lost. It’s a story I’ve been studying deeply, wanting to fill in as many details as possible and to find and interview…

The onset of the pandemic and quarantine in 2020 inspired a deeper awareness of my relationship with my neighborhood, leading me to extensively research its history. On the land of the Anigiduwagi (Cherokee) is Asheville’s census tracts 2 and 3, most of which is now called Montford. Tract 2, where…

A few years ago, our friend Damion “DJ Supaman” Smith called to see if my sweetie Jason Krekel could take some boxes of records that were his father’s, Cleo “Mooseman” Shivers. He did not have room in his apartment, and did not want to throw them away. Having been to…

When I last wrote, it was wonderings on water. Today, I am examining earth; specifically the patch of soil upon which I live. The rooted love I feel here. My spirit holds so many stories of this place, stories I’ve lived and stories I’ve only learned about. All within a…

In 1998, I made a decision that would greatly shape my life — I bought a small bungalow in the Montford neighborhood. …