Arts Lifestyle

From the Editor

From the Editor Gina Malone

Our April issue is filled with the colors, scents, light, warmth and promise of springtime. Not to mention nature and poetry in celebration of Earth Day (April 22) and National Poetry Month.

Cover Artist Tim Jones (p. 10) shares with all of us the miracles of the season in lovely captured images of our mountain flora and in captivating words born out of his expeditions, camera in hand, through woods and fields. “May your April glow with Spring light opening/ paths of adventure in the spaces ahead of you,” he writes in a poem just for readers of The Laurel.

Spending time on Earth Day doing something for the environment is good; spending a whole month as an eco-activist is even better. Read about WNC for the Planet’s collective efforts to initiate and educate throughout the month of April. Creek clean-ups, hikes, kudzu eradication and workshops are among the many, many activities planned. (p. 54) Poet Wendell Berry says, “The care of the earth is our most ancient and our most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility.”

In 1996, the Academy of American Poets designated April as the month to acknowledge and appreciate poetry in our lives. Our Book Features (p. 56) highlight two Asheville poets, both of whom will appear at Asheville Wordfest 2019 (p. 16), along with North Carolina’s new Poet Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green.

Asheville Gallery of Art celebrates landscape painters, while Contemporaneo Asheville looks beyond our planet to outer space in an exhibit titled I am in Awe. (p. 68) To hold yourself in that state of wonder, visit Burnsville’s Bare Dark Sky Observatory at the Mayland Earth to Sky Park for the Statewide Star Party. (p. 59)

There’s no more room to mention all of the exhibitions, music, drama and special events in this issue. We invite you to peruse every page to find all of the springtime pleasures that await you in WNC this month.

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