Asheville Citizen-Times from Asheville, North Carolina • Page B3

Product: ASHBrd PubDate: 09-07-2013 Zone: ACT Page: Local-A User: jmatsick Time: 09-06-2013 21:53 Color: Kl MOUNTAINS ASHEVILLE CITIZEN-TIMES SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2013 B3 WEEKEND PLANNER WATER: Oct. 14 deadline Catch the fair, plays on stage Spectators at the Mountain State Fair on Friday watch as Chachi Valencia shoots out of a cannon at 55 mph and travels more than 150 feet, dillon do," he said. Petersen, Schofield and Summers said Manning focused much of his attention Friday on whether a state law passed earlier this year mandating the transfer is a "local" law. The state Constitution says the General Assembly cannot pass laws that affect only a few parts of the state relating to health, sanitation and non-navigable streams. The new law does not name Asheville, but was written in such a way that Asheville's water system is the only one affected.

The city argues that means it is a prohibited local law. Attorneys for the state disagree, saying that the relationship of the law to health, sanitation and non-navigable streams is not strong enough to invoke the constitutional prohibition. "Manning zeroed in right away (and said) that if he found that this is a local bill everything else would stop," Schofield said. "He could find that the whole thing would be unconstitutional and everything would be null and void." Manning heard from attorneys representing the state and the city, but not MSD, which has not taken an official position on the water system transfer. State Department of Justice attorneys typically do not comment on ongoing litigation.

Continued from Page B1 will grant a preliminary injunction to prevent the transfer while the city's lawsuit works its way through the court system and whether he would grant a motion by the state to dismiss the city's complaint. Manning has given himself an Oct. 14 deadline to rule on those questions. Even if Manning were to rule in the city's favor on both points, the lawsuit would proceed until there is a decision on the merits of the case itself. Local activist Barry Summers, who opposes the transfer, and Rob Schofield, director of research and policy development at left-leaning think tank N.C.

Policy Watch, both said they do not expect Manning to let the transfer to the Metropolitan Sewerage District go ahead before the case is decided. But Summers noted Manning had made comments sympathetic to Asheville's position during a court battle a few years ago over other state laws affecting the water system only to ultimately rule against Asheville. Stephen Petersen, a Raleigh attorney who was also present representing MSD, declined to speculate on what may happen. "I have learned better than to guess what Judge Manning might tribute show. The marker at the corner of Battery Park Avenue and Haywood Street honors the the time in 1927 when Rodgers was performing in Asheville.

The unveiling ceremony is at 2 p.m. Sunday, followed buy the 4 p.m. show at the Asheville Music Hall. At the movies "Riddick" starring Vin Diesel is playing at the Carolina Asheville, Biltmore Grande and Beaucatcher. "Blackfish," a documentary about a performing what that killed its trainer at Sea World, is showing at the Carolina Asheville.

Reuter Center at UNC Asheville. Afropop band Zansa is shaking the house at 9 tonight at the Isis Restaurant and Music Hall, 743 Haywood Road in West Asheville. Singers and songwriters Ben Bedford and Tim Grimm play a Mountain Spirit Coffeehouse show at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 1 Edwin Place. Country music legend Jimmie Rodgers "the singing brakeman" will be honored with the unveiling of a historic marker and a Sunday By Tony Kiss tkisscitizen-ti mes.com This is the weekend for cotton candy, cattle, corn dogs and carnival rides as the 20th annual N.C.

Mountain State Fair lights up the midway at the WNC Agricultural Center. For details on what's going on today at the fair, see Page A1. Meanwhile, "Cats" is on the prowl at Flat Rock Playhouse's Henderson-ville theater, an afropop band rocks the Isis in West Asheville and Asheville is honoring a pioneering country music legend who once lived here. The Broadway blockbuster "Cats" is on stage through Oct. 6 at Flat Rock Playhouse's cozy downtown Henderson-ville theater, 125 S.

Main St. The thriller "Deathtrap" is playing on the mainstage, 2661 Greenville Highway in Flat Rock. Weekend performances for both are 2 and 8 p.m. today and 2 p.m. Sunday.

Call 693-0731. www.flatrockplay-house.org "A Few Good Men" finishes at 7:30 tonight at Parkway Playhouse, 202 UNITED Continued from Page B1 United Way donors have bought into the change in focus, Bailey said, recognizing the connections between health, income and education. "We believe these are the building blocks of a good life," he said. "United Way challenged experts in our community to identify the components of a good life, along with the barriers to achieving them and solutions to overcome those barriers. "Today, we invest the dollars we raise in our annual giving campaign in community partners working on all of these solutions and demonstrating results," Bailey said.

"And we also support them through advocacy and vol-unteerism." Last year, United Way invested $2.5 million in 79 community partners through its Community Investment Fund, all with a focus on health, income or education, he said. The agency expected 59,000 residents to see direct improvements in their lives in ways ranging from accessing quality child care to meeting basic needs to prevention and recovery from vio GET INVOLVED To learn more about the programs of the United Way, to donate or to see the 2013 Giving Campaign video, visit www.u-nitedwayabc.org, or call 255-0696. Green Mountain Drive in Burnsville. Call 682-4285. www.parkway playhouse.com "Hamlet" gets free performance by the Montford Park Players at 7:30 tonight and Sunday at Hazel Robinson Amphitheatre the Montford Community, www.montfordpark players.org.

And the comedy "Mary, Mary" gets readers theater performances by the Autumn Players at 2:30 this afternoon at 35below at Asheville Community Theatre and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the lence. "At the end of the year, what we found was truly amazing," Bailey said. "More than 71,000 people had improved their lives a 120 percent return on investment. And there aren't many other investments that produce results like that." United Way donations also support the 2-1-1 health and human service call line; Hands On Ashe-ville-Buncombe volunteer center and, Middle School Success to keep ninth-graders on track to graduate from high school.

Greg Mosher, who with his wife, Erin, owns Office Environments in Asheville, is so impressed with the United Way's model that he runs a "Trailblaz-er" campaign for the agency each year, seeking donations before the official campaign begins. "United Way's focus now is on results, and as a business owner I can really appreciate the way they run the campaign as well as disburse the funding, always with a focus on results," Mosher said at Friday's kickoff. "They look at each program individually, then look at the link to the largest need, then fund them to address those needs, and at the end of the year the results get measured," campus. "I doubt it seriously," Townsend said. "But I guess there are stranger things." Question: Almost every state university in the nation is closed for Labor except UN-CA.

There was no explanation, and this is the first year that the university hasn't observed the holiday. Students are distributing lemonade to university staff in recognition of the day. It seems very odd." My answer: Lemonade? Wait, LEMONADE? Indeed, the state's education is crumbling. Real answer: Given the way the calendar fell this year, preserving Labor Day as a holiday would have meant starting classes a week earlier on Aug. 12, or delaying commencement until Dec.

21, forcing staff in several university offices to work until Dec. 23. "The decision to make Labor Day a regular day for students, faculty and staff at UNC AsheviUe came when the academic calendar was planned and approved by the Faculty Senate back in SMOKIES Continued from Page B1 The website should be up by early next year, she said. Fariello said increasingly libraries have been digitizing their primary source materials that had been buried in archives. The process involves scanning the photos and documents, tagging them with metadata and uploading them to the Web.

"What we often do is to digitize the most vulnerable materials that are rather fragile to the touch," she said. "By making them available online, that means researchers or the public don't have to paw through this material. Also, people don't have to actually travel to a remote archive to be able to see these historical documents or photographs." Fariello said Hunter Library undertakes a major digitization project each year. Previous efforts include the history of craft in Western North Carolina, Cherokee Indian traditions and a collection of Civil War letters. Last year's project is called "Picturing Appalachia." The latest initiative will include images relating to the initial ideas for the park and its construction.

The materials will focus on a group of North Carolinians who promoted the concept of a national park in the region as early as 1899. Highlights include journals owned by the library that Horace Ke-phart, a big park promoter, kept in preparation for his book, "Camping and Woodcraft," which was published in 1906 and is still in print today. Also featured will be photographs of the park's construction by the Civilian Conservation Corps and CCC camps as well as newsletters about life in the camps. "The Great Smoky Mountains National Park has an amazing collection, but they don't have the funding or the staff to really do anything more than take care of it," Fariello said. Another partner in the project is the state Division of Archives and History, which has a collection of documents about the work of the Asheville-based Appalachian Park Commission to promote creation of the park.

The grant funding pays for staffing of the library's digital production team and the purchase of a scanner that can handle items as large as 2 feet by 3 feet. Fariello said interest in the park has grown with the recent celebration of its 75th anniversary and the success of the documentary film series "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" by Ken Burns. Wehrli. "The United Way is our charity," he said. "We all want to participate in helping our community, and the United Way is a great way to do it.

And the 2-1-1 call center is very important to all of us as well." Bailey said support from the community is critical, noting that for several years the United Way has received $1 million more in requests for funding than it has to give. "That's where the community comes in, to help us bridge that gap. We believe we all have a stake in our neighbors' success, and what happens to them matters to us," Bailey said. "When they have the vocational skills to earn a living wage and support their family, when they access health care and support their children's education, they become more productive, healthy employees in our workplaces and neighbors in our communities," he said. "And their children are on track to have a better life and contribute to society as well." the water sculpture near Vance Monument in Pack Square.

Is something going on with these? Why are they off sometimes and on others? My answer: Apparently the city had to cut them off to save money, until the governor's office recently found a few million dollars under a Western Residence couch cushion to restart them. Real answer: The fountain in Pritchard Park has occasionally been off this summer. "Earlier this spring it was due to an electrical connection that needed repair," said Debbie Iv-ester, assistant director of the city's parks and recreation department. "Other times there are random trips in the electric system when it needs to be reset. Usually the reset occurs within the first 24 hours of the trip." The fountain in the west end of Pack Square Park near the Vance Monument had fencing around it in July during special events, she said.

"This was done for public safety when the number of people in this area was very heavy," Ivester said. Contact Casey Blake at 232-2922 or he said. "Knowing this, I can stand in front of my employees and, when I ask them to donate their hard-earned money, I can look them in the eye and tell them that their money is being well spent." United Way Community Investment Director Lance Edwards said the past few fundraising campaigns have been a challenge because of the recession, "But we've seen tremendous generosity from individuals and companies in our community." "We've been able to hold funding from our Community Investment Fund steady for the last three years despite an economy that was far from stable during that time," he said. "And we hope to increase dollars directed to the fund this year so we have even more to grant to partners achieving results in the focus areas." Employees from Eaton Corp. are among the most generous United Way donors each year, with more than 700 already on board in this campaign, according to plant manager Jon January 2012," university spokesman Steve Plever said.

The committee formulating the calendar must include a minimum of 75 instructional and exam days, and works to have 15 Mondays, 15 Tuesdays, each semester, so that class schedules can be balanced, without adding an extra week to the semester, increasing housing and other costs. "Factors specific to UNC Asheville are that the university has a two-day fall break, suspends classes for a full day for its Undergraduate Research Symposium, and gives students a reading day on the last weekday before final exams begin," Plever said. As compensation for Labor Day, staff will receive a holiday on Nov. 27, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. "And as was noted in one of the university's many social media notices reminding everyone about the change, in November, we will be extra thankful," Plever said.

Question: It looks like the beautiful water art in Pritchard Park has been off most or at least a lot of the summer, and I've noticed fencing around ANSWERS: Fountain dry iNDLESS SUMMER SALE "HOME OF THE SELF-CLEANING, SALT WATER, AND CARBON NEUTRAL 1478 DELLWOOD RD. WAYNESVILLE, NC 28786 LOCALLY OWNED Continued from Page B1 the '70s and maybe into the '80s used to have a live cougar at some of its games. Are there any photographs of that, where did the cougar come from and when did it stop? My answer: Historically this cougar came from LSD, and it stopped about six to eight hours after ingestion. Real answer: No one currently with the high school could vouch for a live cougar history, and there are no such photos in the Citizen-Times archives. Greg Townsend, principal with the School of Inquiry and Life Sciences at Asheville High, said that as of 1984, only proverbial cougars were present for games.

"I can't speak definitely for the years prior to that, but prior to 1981 or '82 the school's stadium wasn't even on campus, so that would have been tough," Townsend said. The school used the Memorial Stadium above McCormick Field before Asheville High's current stadium was built on HOT TUB" SEE OUR SWIM SPA DISPLAY TRY ONE OUT! SAVE UP TO $6,000 CASH DISCOUNTS SERVICE MOST BRANDS 4i 'Z7' SERVICING WNC SINCE 1994 JV LARGEST SELECTION IN WNC "fTsjP'F tfdffll s'7. i Safe J- person HOT TUB PreSSg'SLjEl i I I STARTING AT $2988 rgpT. 7 SaSjKg DELIVERY jjjjlgSWIMSPAS mon sat 9-s LAY AW AY AVAILABLE lllVT1v ArBTKEklT 12 MONTHS SAME AS CASH ANYTIME BY APPOINTMENT with approved credit BUY ONE, YOU KNOW YOU WANT ONE! WWW. THETUBSTORE.COM 828.926.8484.