"Shared Miracles," a new book about the 90-year partnership of the DAR and Crossnore School.

This is a book about history, a 40-page e-book, that stems from a meeting I had with Dr. Phyllis Crain, head of The Crossnore School late in 2011. She very much wanted to pay tribute to the Daughters of the American Revolution, an organization whose support for the school began in the twenties and continues today. A year in the making, the book traces key events, gifts and sea changes via a richly illustrated story, a kind of American heritage piece with spreads as theatrical as designer and friend Ann Baker and I could make them. I hold tremendous gratitude for the opportunity that Phyllis Crain gave me to craft this history and I am especially pleased it is being published after her death in July, 2012, from a long, long battle with cancer. Many thanks to Ann and to the Crossnore and DAR communities for helping make this book such a pleasure to craft. Copies will be available, beginning in December 2012, through Blurb books.

Thirty years ago, when Asheville teetered on the edge of Paris.

It may have been leaning in that direction but it took vision and planning to materialize the city's far-reaching renaissance of art and culture. This remembrance focuses on one part of that larger inspiration. June, 2012, The Laurel of Asheville.

For The Laurel Magazine, a short piece about a small revival in a Swannanoa neighborhood

The house on the hill is not THAT old, after all, built in 1976 when its current owner moved in.

Even so, 35 Appalachian winters can take a serious toll and, for Mrs. K., who didn’t want to move from the place that’s been home for so very long, the future was looking grim.

“Rack and ruin is more like it,” she says.


That’s her description of life around the next bend if Mountain Housing Opportunities hadn’t responded to her call and brought her into its Rural Home Rehabilitation program.

Beginning in the latter part of November and well into February of this year, “rack and ruin” has shifted to “rehab and revive.” In that time frame, experienced contractors have restored plumbing, re-graded her yard, put up a deck with hand rails, insulated crawl spaces, caulked windows, re-aligned gutters and replaced roofing, updated fixtures and baths, painted walls, installed siding and generally brought the entire home up to federal housing standards.

“I’m excited,” she says. “My house was the best Christmas present I could have had. But then, I’m trying not to get too excited. Not until everything is finished!”

When Mrs. K. (who prefers not to use her full name) first applied for assistance, living alone and disabled and with a freakishly high water bill, she had reached a point of desperation.

“I was taking care of my mom and the house stuff was overwhelming,” she remembers. “What would I ever do to fix this?”

Following her mom’s death, she networked her way into a connection with Mountain Housing Opportunities (MHO)--making an initial phone call to “211.” Through its Emergency Home Repair program, the agency immediately tackled her plumbing line breaks. Then she applied for structural repairs, working with Mike Lauff, MHO’s rehab specialist, in a program developed for Buncombe County called Rural Home Rehabilitation.

“Funding for rehabs takes place in cycles,” Mike Lauff reports. “To get an authorization, we have to get down the whole world of everything that needs doing, including all the pieces and parts of things that need to be replaced. It can be pages and pages of lists. Then we put the project out for public bids, which can be extremely competitive.”

Underwriting flows from Community Development Block Grant funds distributed by the NC Department of Community Assistance. Since 1991, when the Rural Home Rehabilitation program went to bat for low-income families, there have been more than 138 structural rehabilitations in rural Buncombe County administered by MHO.

“This is taxpayer money,” says Mike Lauff. “So there’s a ton of due diligence involved. What’s cool is the dollars are re-invested right back into the community where the work happens. It goes to a very useful purpose.”

“Useful” would be a major league understatement for Mrs. K.

“I had to wait a long time,” she says, “but I’d sure do it again. With all they’ve done around here, all the energy savings, I’m not planning to go anywhere. I love my house.”

Encapsulating the 100-year life and legacy of a revered boarding school in dimensional panels

Many, many thanks to Phyllis Crain, Rachel Deal, Kathy Dellinger, Ann Baker, Howard Covington, Rachel Hoilman, Bobby Crenshaw, the Historical Museum of Avery County, and so many others who have chipped in ideas and helped us find the actual objects that distinguish this exhibit for The Crossnore School. Each panel (shown is the second in the series) focuses on a roughly twenty year period within the linear history, ending with the first student production in the new Hayes Fine Arts Building. We're honoring a centennial: 100 years of offering a safe place for children to learn, grow and move beyond remarkably hard and generally abusive circumstances. Connie Aridas: Design.

Living lightly

Thanks to Sarah Davis of Biltmore Farms for the opportunity to collaborate. Connie Aridas, design.