A recent letter defending the handing out of Bibles to schoolchildren asks, “What values do spellbooks teach?” Having co-written a Pagan spellbook that’s a popular textbook of magic, I’d answer that spellbooks’ magic teaches values absolutely critical for today’s schoolchildren to learn.

Magic imparts emotional maturity by teaching self-empowerment: To cast an effective spell, you can’t rely on money, popularity, beauty, muscles, drugs, guns — only your own intuition and will, guided by ethics and divination rather than commandment. Intellectually, magic teaches the “art of correspondences” — how to recognize the fundamental patterns that interconnect all things — which develops the skill of creative problem-solving by seeing whole systems rather than isolated parts. Physically, magic perceives the world as animated with spirit — an awareness that teaches students to treat nature and their fellow human souls with compassion, wisdom and love rather than materialism, violence and exploitation. Spiritually, magic embraces many goddesses and gods, teaching respect rather than intolerance for diversity of opinions, cultures, histories — and especially religions.

All in all, I’d argue that handing out Pagan spellbooks — on a Constitutionally equal basis with Bibles, of course — could even be America’s secret key to education reform.

Steve Rasmussen is the co-author with Lady Passion of The Goodly Spellbook: Olde Spells for Modern Problems, and can be reached via http://oldenwilde.org/.

Please join us at a free Interfaith Dialogue panel at UNC-Asheville Thursday Nov. 17, 2011, from 7:00-8:30 PM at the Highsmith Student Union, downstairs in the Grotto. The Dialogue will have two main parts to it, the discussion from 7:00-8:00, and then the question and answer from the audience from 8:00-8:30 PM.

Here is the list of religions and representative  panelists as sent us by the student organizers:

• Catholicism: Father John P. Cahill
• Wicca: Lady Passion and *Diuvei
• Zen Buddhism: Sunya Kjolhede
• Conservative Judaism: Rabbi Robert Cabelli
• Reform Judaism: Rabbi Batsheva Meiri
• Humanist: Ms. Jackie Simms
• Sikhism: Hari Mandar Singh Khalsa
• Bahai: Dr. David Gillette
• Sokka Gakkai Buddhism: Laura Petritz
• Christian Pastor (Paradigm Church): Terry Hollifield
• Muslim: Imam Kamal and Dr. Abdel Mayyas

UNCA students derived the topics and questions. They are:

Major Topic: Is religion relevant to the individual?
Sub-topics:

• Does a religious view of the Afterlife shape the individual? If so, how so?
• Does religion give us the answers to the meaning of life?
• Does religion help individuals navigate the ups and downs of life?
• How does religion affect the individual’s understanding of morality?

Major Topic: Is religion relevant to society? Is religion relevant to politics?
Sub-topics:

• Pledge of Allegiance — “under God” — should we remove this, or keep it?
• Do you believe that Asheville is a “cesspool of sin”?
• Why are places of religious worship important to have in terms of community?
• Does evil exist? How does your religion address evil?
• What is your perspective on war?
• How does religion address secular influences?
• Is religion an opiate of the masses?

SHOULD BE A LIVELY DEBATE, and we hope to see you there!

“Many people who loved this tree and fought for the past two years to save it are outraged that land-owner and former City Councilman and CIBO co-founder Chris Peterson makes money running Magnolia’s Restaurant, yet has the unmitigated gall to kill the beloved Merrimon Magnolia! Talk about showing contempt for the community’s desires!

As of last Thursday, despite promises made, Harris-Teeter had still not contacted Jack Thompson, director of Asheville’s Historic Preservation Society, to coordinate efforts to incorporate architectural relics from the site of the old Pack mansion in their proposed grocery store design.

Karma will out: I caution that everyone enabling this travesty may end up faring as badly as the Merrimon Magnolia.”

It was always a long shot, stymied at every turn by a lengthy history of other people’s environmentally stupid decisions: The car lot for whose sake the Pack mansion was razed some 40 or 50 years ago left the site a brownfield, and Harris Teeter says it’s legally required to grade the entire property, leaving no place on-site for the tree. All the surrounding streets are strung with low-hanging tangles of utility wires because Asheville has never required that they be buried, so the tree could not be transplanted to a nearby park. Our supposed “Tree City USA” has neither rules nor incentives for preserving landmark trees, and local developers in general are astonishingly ignorant about how they could, and why they should, care for them and make them focal points of their projects.

After I got the bad news today I made a mournful pilgrimage to a Hecate crossroads a mile or two from our Covenstead. As I walked home I noticed I was following the course of a stream running half-hidden through that neighborhood’s backyards. No matter how many parts of it developers had covered over with fill or pavement down through the decades, that stream still flowed, unstoppable. When I got to the main road, I realized the stream’s source was a small spring that bursts stubbornly through a crack in the asphalt driveway of a commercial parking lot.

We humans prate loudly at our podiums about our absolute rights to private property, but Nature just sits in the back row and smiles at our arbitrary claims to own and control and commodify Her. She’s the only real property owner, and She wins every argument in the end.

– *Diuvei

Volunteers at Coven Oldenwilde's wristband booth. (All photos by *Diuvei.)

Good company! Bele Chere is the Southeast’s biggest annual street festival, and for the first time ever the city of Asheville invited us Witches to help out. On Friday and Saturday, July 29 and 30, 2011, volunteers from Coven Oldenwilde clad in bold Witchy t-shirts staffed a booth by the Battery Park Stage, selling $2 permission-to-party wristbands (which some term Bele Chere’s cheapest souvenir). It was hot, hard work, but a lot of fun and a great chance to meet and do a little magic for some 2000 folks who stopped by from all over the world.

This QR code on a sign we hung on our booth opens www.oldenwilde.org on a smart phone.

Count on Witches to look at QR codes and see magic sigils! (“Quick Response” codes are those square bar codes you scan with a smart phone to link to a website or capture contact information.) We used them at Bele Chere to draw tips and tell fortunes.

"Spin the tip jar and scan your fortune": The QR code closest to the person spinning the jar contained a divination for them.

*Diuvei translated nine divinations written by Lady Passion into QR codes. We attached a big bean jar to a lazy susan, and affixed the nine codes (each identified with a color) around the edge. At our booth, we invited wristband-buyers to drop a donation in, spin the jar, then look at the QR code that ended up closest to them. If they scanned it on a smart phone, the QR code would give them a fortune — such as “Love yourself and the world will follow” or “Stop worrying and start dancing” — along with Coven Oldenwilde’s website and contact information. If they didn’t have a smart phone, we would have them tell us the QR code’s color and we would read them their fortune from a translation key.

By the time we rolled up the Coven banner and headed home Saturday night, we’d performed hundreds of divinations — uncannily accurate, by all accounts. The QR-code fortunes even ran in patterns — for example, “Eat, drink and be merry” turned up constantly on Friday, but Saturday’s theme was “Love the one you’re with”.

Victory (and peace) at the conclusion of two exhausting but exciting days.

Although we heard many complaints about the bullhorn-wielding street preachers who rant at attendees every year, we had no trouble from them or any other intolerant ilk. Indeed, we received nothing but interested questions and enthusiastic compliments about the Witches’ presence at Bele Chere 2011.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Saving the Merrimon Magnolia and George Pack’s stone wall

A large heritage magnolia on the former site of George W. Pack’s
mansion — now slated for a new Harris Teeter grocery store — could
be picked up and moved by a California company that claims the
Guinness World Record for the largest tree ever moved. The old tree is
in need of a new home, however.

An architecturally unique feature of the massive retaining wall that
once bounded Pack’s “Manyoaks” property will unfortunately be
demolished for the new store. Its stones will be incorporated into an
expanded bus stop at the site at 136 Merrimon Ave., which will include
a memorial to Pack. But anyone who wants to see the impressively
built, brick-paved carriage entrance to Manyoaks had better hurry,
because it will soon be added to the ever-lengthening roll of
Asheville’s lost historic treasures.

1) The magnolia tree

Asheville residents have been urging Harris Teeter to save the stately
magnolia at Merrimon and Chestnut through a Facebook page
(http://www.facebook.com/merrimon.magnolia), letters to the editor,
and a postcard campaign directed toward Harris Teeter’s president,
Fred Morgenthall, a resident of Charlotte
(http://oldenwilde.org/blog/93/take-action/send-a-postcard-to-save-the-merrimon-magnolia/).

At the final Technical Review Committee meeting last week that granted
the city’s approval to the development, Harris Teeter’s
representative, Garland Hughes, noted that grading requirements
related to the site’s brownfields status would not allow the magnolia
to remain in place. He assured concerned citizens, however, that the
company is interested in relocating the tree (as well as planting many
more trees on the site), had spoken about it with the city’s arborist,
Mark Foster, and would be open to proposals for doing so.

Moving big trees is not something many, if any, area arborists and
landscapers are equipped to do. So I followed a tip from local
landscape contractor Steve Ambrose and contacted the Senna Tree
Company in La Crescenta, Calif. Senna’s website, www.sennatree.com,
shows the company transporting an 80-ton oak to a new site (I don’t
know if that is the tree that won them the world’s record!).

Surprisingly, the California company knows a lot about moving large
magnolia trees, I learned from president John Mote in an April 25
phone conversation, since they are a popular landscaping feature for
antebellum-style homes in the West. Based on the measurements and
photos I gave him (see
http://oldenwilde.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=89), he informally
estimated his company could send a few men out here and relocate the
tree for about $25,000 to $30,000. [NOTE: $25,000 is just 1/100th of what Harris Teeter President Fred Morganthall makes in 1 year, and he is not even the company's highest-paid executive. So this should be quite affordable! -- S.R.]

Where to move the tree to, however, has not been decided. To survive,
the tree will need some 74 cubic feet of water twice a week without
interruption for months after transplanting, till it recovers from the
shock. One possibility I am suggesting to officials might be a nearby
public park or city greenway, where Parks and Recreation personnel and
citizen volunteers could ensure that it receives the regular attention
it needs during that period (and where it’s not likely to be uprooted
yet again by yet another building project).

2) The stone wall

In the late 1800s, several years before making his famous donation of
Pack Square to the city, George W. Pack built a grand mansion on
Merrimon Ave. that he named “Manyoaks.” The mansion was, sadly,
demolished in the 1960s or 1970s around the time the last Pack
descendant living in the house died, and the property became the Deal
Motor Company lot. [NOTE: After the last local Pack owner died, the mansion became a funeral home, and then was demolished when Deal Motor Company bought the lot, according to a longtime neighbor. -- S.R.]

But the massive stone retaining wall along Chestnut and Holland
Streets was left in place, along with two stone pillars and a section
of wrought-iron fence next to Merrimon. (Now only one pillar, thanks
to an auto accident last fall.)

As can be seen from the photo gallery at
http://www.oldenwilde.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=29, a carriage
entrance graces the wall on Chestnut near Merrimon. The carefully
curved stonework of the entrance that terminates in two pillars is
unusual.

In response to public and official requests, Harris Teeter designed
its site plan so as to keep as much of the wall as its engineers
deemed possible. The stretch along Holland will remain intact
(although it will be penetrated by a pedestrian entrance), as will
much of the wall along Chestnut Street, which will not be widened
owing to neighborhood traffic concerns. However, the company will
install a large parking-lot entrance where the carriage entrance
stands now.

Harris Teeter is working with the city and the Asheville-Buncombe
Preservation Society to design an expanded bus stop at the present
stop on Merrimon by Chestnut, which will incorporate portions of the
demolished wall and possibly the iron fence and pillar on Merrimon. It
will likely include a historical plaque commemorating Pack’s former
residence here.

For more information:

Garland Hughes, Harris Teeter representative: (704)367-5003,
(704)622-5855, ghughes@mpvre.com

John Mote, Pres., Senna Tree Company: (818)957-5755, (818)279-3054,
www.sennatree.com

Jack Thomson, Director, Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe
County: (828)254-2343, director@psabc.org

Julia Fields, City Planning staff: JFields@ashevillenc.gov

Photos and information about the Manyoaks site:
http://www.oldenwilde.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=29 and Montford
Newsletter article “Elegant Relics on a Car Lot: George Pack’s Lost
Merrimon Avenue Mansion”, http://montford.org/?p=953

– Steve Rasmussen
(828) 335-2486
(828) 251-0343

Tomorrow [March 22, 2011] City Council has a chance to prove why government matters. You can show the doubters on both right and left that the city of Asheville’s regulatory function is neither burdensome to the free market nor corrupted by special interests. Good government acts as a referee to ensure that the rules are applied fairly to all — no matter how wealthy, no matter how popular they may be.

Ingles has wisely agreed to abide by the city’s rules concerning parking-lot landscaping and pedestrian access at both Smoky Park Highway and Brevard Road. But the company still wants to install lights that are far brighter, and signs that are much larger and more numerous, than city ordinances allow — and, as city staff reports show, considerably brighter and bigger than the lights and signs of their law-abiding competitors.

No one can question the admirable legacy of generosity to Asheville that Bob Ingle Sr. left with his passing, both in contributing to charity and in creating local jobs. But it would tarnish that legacy for Council to treat it as though it implied a trade-off for special favors that aren’t granted to other, less influential businesses.

It would be both unfair and unsafe to grant Ingles a 400% increase in lighting over what the UDO allows for its fuel canopies. City staff’s lighting study shows other, competing gas stations are operating in compliance with our light-pollution ordinance (which is based on national standards). Those canopies are already extremely bright: Consider the dangerous night-blindness the lighting level requested by Ingles would induce in motorists.

It would also be unfair for Council to continue granting Ingles exceptions to our sign ordinance. Many small businesses already complain about imbalanced enforcement of the ordinance — remember how much flak the city caught for cracking down on Picnics’ chicken man? There’s a lot of resentment surrounding sidewalk-sign enforcement, too, as I’m sure you’re aware.

Consider how much more anger and disgust Council and staff will justifiably be subjected to if Council is seen to suspend the sign rules for Ingles while enforcing them on everyone else.

Stand fast by our city’s rules. Be the fair and consistent referee that Asheville’s businesses and residents want city government to be, to keep the playing field even for all. If Ingles feels that these rules are unfairly restrictive, then they should have come and sat at the table with the other stakeholders when these ordinances were drafted. They can still follow the proper process for requesting that the city consider amending the UDO — but for all players, not just for Ingles.

– Steve Rasmussen

FOR MORE INFO: Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods Wiki at http://174.129.0.226/Issues/Conditional_Zoning/CZ_Ingles_Smoky_Park_Hwy

Google Earth view of the Merrimon Magnolia

Send a photo postcard to Harris Teeter CEO Frederick J. Morganthall and his wife Judy via cardstore.com. It costs less than $2 per postcard ($1.27 from Asheville).

It’s easy. Here are the steps: 1) Download one of the images posted here (right-click or option-click, then choose “Save Image As…”). 2) Go to http://www.cardstore.com/photo-postcards.html. 3) Choose “Make a Small Postcard.” 4) Customize your card on the front with the image you chose, and 5) on the back with a message (you can copy the one I wrote, shown below, or write your own). 6) Instruct cardstore.com to send it to this address:

Frederick J. Morganthall
7625 Stonecroft Park Dr
Charlotte, NC 28226-5583

7) Check out and pay.

Magnolia blossom

PLEASE KEEP IT FRIENDLY!! These folks are not “bad guys”. The Morgenthalls are Charlotte residents who often visit our mountains, and the Harris Teeter corporation has a great “sustainable design” policy for their stores. We just need to remind them that sustainability includes preserving Asheville’s heritage trees.

Here’s what I wrote them on the postcard I sent:

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Morganthall,

Please don’t cut down the grand old magnolia that graces the future site of a Harris Teeter on Merrimon Ave. in Asheville. This heritage tree may be a century old, and could well have been planted by Asheville’s great benefactor George W. Pack. It cannot be replaced, and seedlings do not substitute for the loss.

Merrimon Magnolia in the moonlight

I know H-T is an environmentally conscious company, and I’m very grateful you are saving the Pack mansion relics on the site. But we Ashevilleans deeply love our trees, as you can see from letters to the Mountain Xpress about this one and from the city’s successful battle to save City Hall’s magnolia.

Please preserve this tree and incorporate it into your store’s design, or consult with a skilled arborist about transplanting it nearby. If Harris Teeter saves the Merrimon Magnolia, the people of Asheville will repay your business many times over! (Just ask Stewart Coleman!)

– Steve Rasmussen
www.oldenwilde.org
srasmus@oldenwilde.org

Council should say no. Development standards are meaningless if they are not enforced consistently and evenhandedly.

Ingles is not claiming that following the existing standards would cause it undue hardship — the usual grounds for granting what city planners call a “variance” from the rules governing developments. Rather, Ingles representatives say the company simply doesn’t want to change its prototype superstore design: a highly visible storefront with a very bright gas-station canopy. 

Ingles Markets is applying for the variances under the controversial legal procedure called “conditional zoning.” Despite other virtues, CZ has the serious flaw of not requiring a developer seeking the variance to show a hardship or technical difficulty. Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods activists say this is a case of a developer exploiting conditional zoning as a loophole to allow City Council to practice normally illegal “spot zoning” — changing the rules arbitrarily for one development, but not another.

The Asheville Planning and Development Department professional staff and the Technical Review Committee are recommending that City Council deny Ingles Markets these variances. The planners say granting such substantial and unnecessary departures from city safety and environmental ordinances would undercut the intent of the standards and set a bad precedent for future developers to demand exceptions for convenience rather than hardship or other difficulty. They also point out that other recent big-box developments — Walmart on Swannanoa River Road and Hendersonville Road, and Target off Tunnel Road — have met the requirements without any problem.

The staffers and a rapidly growing number of concerned community groups and citizens point to three areas where Ingles, they say, is intent on disregarding city environmental and safety rules that were developed with broad community input and that meet reasonable, national standards:

• Light pollution: Extremely bright light canopies such as many gas-station chains are installing to grab attention are widely considered dangerous because they distract and blind motorists at night. Ingles wants to install a canopy that would emit between 290% and 400% more light than the city’s light-pollution ordinance allows. Asheville’s ordinance, notes Bernard Arghiere of the Astronomy Club of Asheville, conforms to moderate national standards and is not even a more restrictive “night-sky” ordinance such as Waynesville and Brevard enforce.
• Tree shade in parking lots: Along with the discomfort and danger of hot car interiors, large, unshaded asphalt parking lots are major causes of the “urban heat island” effect that makes cities much hotter than surrounding countryside, and that “cooks” an assortment of common air pollutants to create the “red” and “orange” levels of ozone pollution that keep kids, asthmatics, and the elderly from going outside. Ingles wants to plant only 40% of the city’s required number of trees for a large parking lot.
• Pedestrian safety in parking lots: Large, busy parking lots, packed with cars unexpectedly backing out of spaces with little peripheral vision for the driver, can be very dangerous for pedestrians to negotiate — especially if they are elderly or have kids and a shopping cart in tow. Although the city requires big boxes to install a landscaped walkway for pedestrians down the center of a large parking lot, Ingles wants to install a sidewalk around the outer perimeter of the 846-space lot, and none down the center.

 

Our city councilmembers have repeatedly stated they want Asheville’s development rules to be fair, objective and predictable. We’ll find out if they really mean it this Tuesday.

For more information: 

• “Asheville City Council to decide Ingles supermarket proposal,” Feb. 19, 2011, Asheville Citizen-Times. (Has several quotes by Steve Rasmussen.)
• http://wiki.ashevillecan.org/Research_and_Information/Conditional_Zoning/CZ_Ingles_Smoky_Park_Hwy”>Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods wiki on Ingles Smoky Park Hwy.

To take action:

• Email Asheville City Council at: AshevilleNCCouncil@ashevillenc.gov
• Speak out at City Council’s public hearing on the Ingles conditional-zoning request on Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011, starting at 5 pm, fifth floor of Asheville City Hall.

 

Steve Rasmussen is a development activist who lives in West Asheville and shops regularly at Ingles. He can be contacted at stevencrasmussen@gmail.com.

Developers plan to destroy this large, old magnolia, which was likely planted by George W. Pack at the site of his mansion.

Merrimon magnolia under the aegis of the Moon.

Charlotte developer group Merrifield Patrick Vermillion plans to destroy this century-old evergreen companion tree of the twin magnolias Coven Oldenwilde and supporters saved in front of Asheville City Hall in 2008, and plant “small” (spindly) trees instead when it builds a new Harris Teeter grocery store on Merrimon Avenue. The store is to be built on the former site of Asheville benefactor George W. Pack’s mansion “Manyoaks.” This mature, healthy tree appears to be old enough to have been planted by Pack, who also once owned the land where the City Hall magnolias stand.

Please act now to help save the Merrimon Magnolia!
Complain to the company directly:

• E-mail via: http://www.merrifieldpartners.com/contact-us/
• Tel: 704-248-2100 or Fax: 704-248-2101
• Snail-mail: Merrifield Patrick Vermillion, LLC
  521 E. Morehead Street, Suite 400
  Charlotte, NC 28202

Read and add your comments to these local residents’ calls to action in the Mountain Xpress:

• “Save the Merrimon Magnolia”, by Dennie Hill (http://www.mountainx.com/opinion/2011/020911call-me-a-tree-hugger-but-save-the-merrimon-magnolia)
• “Another plea for the Merrimon magnolia”, by Reavis Eubanks Jr. (http://www.mountainx.com/opinion/2011/021611another-plea-for-the-merrimon-magnolia)

Please act today — for according to its website’s About Us section, the “strong financial relationships this “ethical” “corporate commercial real estate firm” has “enable [it] to move quickly to execute [its] vision.”

— Lady Passion, Magnolia tree defender