This has been a quiet but oddly busy time for me. Ann Thoke came for a visit in late July when son Matt was departing on a 12 day outdoor adventure in the mountains all around us. It was Ann's first visit to Asheville and was kind of short but ridiculously busy. Those of you who have been here know how much there is to do and when really there were only a couple days, we really laid it on.

I have also been doing a bunch of things with Jean Anne Rogers and Judy Carver who are the women who manage my rentals. Judy was widowed last year and Jean Ann is married to a really nice guy named Jim who celebrated his 59th birthday last night. From time to time, along with some other friends of theirs, we have been playing a card game called Hand and Foot that is based on Canasta. I haven't played anything but Bridge since I was in high school and barely remembered Canasta from when my grandmother taught me to play when I was probably 9 or 10. This game though, is really fun. You play in teams and the play can become quite spiteful and vindictive. . .gobs of fun. Besides, these folks are all from here and have the best stories and jokes, not to mention that my grasp of North Carolina colloquialisms is improving.

One night we all got together with Judy's brother and sister-in-law who were visiting from Maine, and 3 other friends of Judy and Jean Ann's and all went on the Smoky Mountain Railroad's Gourmet Dinner train from Dillsboro to Whittier. It was a hoot. The food varied from a great appetizer to pretty bad cheesecake for dessert, and while some of the scenery is pretty great, you also pass rusting old trailers out in the woods with toothless banjo pickin' families that wave at you as the train goes by. It is a little strange. You even go by a dump that was recently purchased for a purported $3-million and is being cleaned up for residential development. It is odd to see old Western North Carolina and exploding development side by side.

Last night, at Jim's birthday party, several of their friends brought instruments and played and sang for a couple of hours after everyone had eaten. This was an amazing experience for me. This is a crowd of people with whom I never, in a million years, would have expected to be included, but it also was one of the best birthday parties I think I have ever attended. Besides the food, which several of the guests prepared and was sensational, sitting around afterwards and listening to these people perform was just fantastic. I have never been a fan of country or bluegrass music, and what these folks were playing was kind of a cross between those genres and rock but it was really wonderful. They are good singers and amazing string musicians. There is this one guy named Scotty who apparently is primarily a mandolin player in their band, but was playing both acoustical and electric guitar last night and was incredibly talented. He does very complex and dexterous string picking while the others are strumming and the effect is pretty powerful. I guess they all play together in a band that has a 2 month long gig at a bar in Marshall (about 30 minutes from Asheville) in September and October. I think a bunch of us are going to go watch them perform.

The biggest news is that I may be closing in on a house. I have just about given up on buying land and building from scratch. Property I like and can afford is too far from the center of town for me to feel connected with Asheville, and the lots I have found that are close enough and have great views are either hideously expensive or unbuildbable with the Hillside Development Ordinance. Anyway, a couple weeks ago I started to expand my hunt to include houses. I had hoped to find a read dump on a great lot that I could either gut or tear down, but what I found instead is a fairly strange multi-level 1968 vintage contemporary house. It has a lot of good things going for it but is terminally brown. Virtually every surface in the house that can be, is wood. Paneled walls and ceilings and hardwood floors are everywhere. The master bath is even paneled. What tile there is is mostly brown. I can't stand it.

On the good side, it is the right size for me, 6 minutes from downtown but about 800 feet higher up than where I am now so the temperature will be cooler. It's winter time view will be spectacular and summer views can probably be opened up a bit with some careful tree pruning are removal. It has slightly more than 8/10ths of an acre of land and a really lovely self-contained guest house that even has it's own laundry. Anyway, I am still investigating it and still looking at other places, but if I can't find anything significant wrong with it, I may make an offer.

The other biggy is that I have allowed myself to be nominated to the Planning and Zoning Commission. When I saw Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" it made me angry about the state of things in this country all over again, and in particular about environmental issues. I found myself feeling like I probably should do something active again and decided that this is, at least at this point in my life, probably the best use of my skills in terms of any public sector activities. Who knows, they may even appoint me.

Well, Abner and I are off to hike a stretch of the MTS trail with Spencer and Regie. I hope you are all well. We are.