Asheville, NC Has Gotten All Hipped-Up

Dogwood tree in Bloom, April 2012

For the last 200 or so years, my family has been living in the hills around Asheville, N.C. This means I've been going to Asheville ever since I was a baby. While there, I've visited my family, driven through downtown, then visited some more family.

In the late 80's, I started insisting that I be taken to the occasional interesting event in Asheville while I was there. Sometimes it was a poetry reading, sometimes a pottery exhibition. Usually the "interesting thing" turned out not to be so interesting after all, which is good because I usually needed to take one of my great-aunts to the grocery store while I was in town.

A few years ago, I figured out that something was afoot in Asheville. Back in Austin, I was wearing a T-shirt from the Early Girl Eatery which has the words "Asheville, NC" on the reverse side, when I was stopped by a couple of women. They wanted to know what Asheville was really like, because they were thinking about moving there.

Then the couple who used to live across the street from me in Austin up and moved to Asheville, saying that it was a lot like Austin was 30 years ago.

Over this past Easter weekend, I went to Asheville for the first time in a couple of years. Since I've been gone, the city has hit hipster critical mass.

Damn Girl! playing at the Altamont Brewing Company, West Asheville

In less than a week in Asheville--and without disturbing my family activities--I did a lot of things that I never thought I'd do in Asheville. I ate at a Korean BBQ Taco Truck. I went to a Brewery Co-op. I even bought a tiny hat that's the sort of hat that passes for high fashion in the Burningman-ish community.

Time Travel Weekend Party

In many ways this past weekend in Austin has felt like a stop on the time travel train.

I'm convinced that sometime in the future, time travel is a functional thing, much the way air travel is today. However, in this future, all time travel trips must be meticulously planned: your clothing, money and vocabulary must all be perfectly synced to the time you are visiting. (You wouldn't want the people in the past to know that you were a time traveler, as then everyone would want stock tips and investment advice and other such self-serving nonsense.)

An exception to this planning rule is that there are a few "free" stops on the time-travel train. These are places where it doesn't matter much what you do, say, or wear. There is nothing you can get wrong, because there are no right or wrong answers. One of these free stops on your time travel tour package is the annual rite of spring, known as Eeyore's Birthday in Austin, Texas.

The backstory behind the party indicates that the event grew out of an attempt by the English department at the nearby University of Texas at Austin to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday, and give the students a chance to blow off some steam before finals. It has turned into something much more than that.

So, when you see someone at Eeyore's birthday in an outfit that seems far better suited to hunting elk in 19th century Germany--what you've probably found is a time-traveler returning home from a 19th century elk-hunting trip. Same with the Viking priestess you saw at Eeyore's, or the person with the perfect 80s hair. They were all on their way to/from their time-travel destination--they just decided to pop into Eeyore's birthday because they know a good party when they see one.

Sex and the Secret Service

I suspect that you've heard about the Secret Service sex scandal where President Obama's advance team in Cartagena, Colombia allegedly hired prostitutes, then failed to pay at least one of them.

While the investigation of the events in question grinds on, and the televised political discourse tries to blame the president for this, one big aspect of this story has been missing from the coverage.

If the Secret Service wasn't a total boys club, this wouldn't be an issue.

I am not in the Secret Service. I am far too lazy to even bother applying. As far as I know, my entire interaction with the Secret Service has been when I used to see Lady Bird Johnson's security team guarding her, back in the days when we used to share a manicurist at a small salon in Austin.

Looking at the Secret Service from the outside, one thing is clear.
You don't have multiple people allegedly hiring prostitutes on a work trip if your work culture is one where women are respected as people.

According to this NYT article, 25 percent of the people who work in the Secret Service are women. No data is given for what percentage of these women are field agents.

Then again, as parodied on Jon Stewart earlier this week, the idea that women are people is having a rough time right now.

Update: Another Jon Stewart clip

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Downtown Abbey and Cough Syrup

As I sit on my sofa, chilling with my post SXSW cold, while watching Downton Abbey, I'm really grateful for modern medicine.

I so would not want Lady Grantham in charge of my healthcare at the village hospital!

After all, it would really suck to have no antibiotics at a time when heroin was the best cough medicine to be had.

Book Club: Why it's easy to fall in love via letters.

 

Late in January my book club at Southwestern University had possibility the most sprinted book club discussion I’ve ever witnessed.

The book we were discussing was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.

The action in the book is set just after World War II, and is focused on the recounting of events that occurred during the (real-life) Nazi occupation of the island of Guernsey. The island is located in the English Channel, and it’s so close to France that it was where a lot of exiles ended up during the French Revolution!

The novel is centered around Juliet, a journalist whose light articles made people laugh during the war, and whom I had a soft spot for. (The depiction of funny women in literature who read on a regular basis is awfully sparse, and it’s always good to have another one.) Thus, I identified with Juliet a little more than some people might.

Apparently several members of my book club had a hard time getting into the book, because it’s an epistolary novel, constructed entirely of letters. 

On the other hand, I was all excited when I first started reading the novel, because I was excited that, maybe, the epistolary novel was making a comeback.

When the novel turned out to be a somewhat unconventional love story, I wasn’t in the least surprised. That’s because I’ve found it easier to fall in love via letter than almost any other way.

The intimacy, the detail, and, often the confessional are all part of the appeal of a real-life epistolary romance.

Then again, in real life, there’s always the part where the letter never comes, the in-box never pings, and one ends up writing vague blog posts about the experience.

Your mileage may vary.

I’m against spoilers, but it won’t be much of a spoiler if I tell you that I saw the end of this book coming a mile away. No one else in my book club did.

The again, maybe Arcade Fire explained the magic of falling in love via letters way better than I'll ever be able to.