This photo in memory of my dear brother, David Leonard Smith, who would this year have been seventy-eight years old.  The photo was made circa 1946. I am in the middle.

Leonard died in a car wreck in 1966.  He was a wonderful big brother, and a day does not go by that I don’t think of him and miss him.  Some anonymous person puts beautiful flowers on his grave every year, year after year after year.    Rest in peace, my beloved brother!

My sister and I have reconciled and (I hope) forgiven one another.  She has been lately very kind to me.

Coming soon.  More family photos.

Hold your horses, folks. Jason Nortz hasn’t been here a year and now he’s leaving. Do you suppose he figured out the running of the city is an ongoing scandal of dishonesty and low morale? I just got an email from him saying he is leaving employment with the city as of Dec. 19. Well, that was quick, wasn’t it? 

Here’s the email:

Jason Nortz

As of December 19 I know longer work for the City of Asheville. If you need immediate assistance please contact DSD Interim Director, Diane Meek at (828) 259-5670.

For specific inquiries please refer to the contact below:

planning/zoning: Ricky Hurley – 828-259-5674
building safety: Mark Matheny- 828-259-5667
stormwater: Sonya Dawson- 828-259-5569
permit center: Russell Roe – 828-259-5671

Try calling Diane Meek.  You won’t get her.   All you’ll get is the voicemail of an underling who doesn’t care whether you live or die and would make a good death panelist.  Someone like Shannon Morgan, for example, who is an incarnation of fraud, deceit, and sloth.

Try calling any of the rest of these numbers listed above.  You will not get a human being.  And if you leave a number, they will not call back.  I remember the time when I could call City Hall and get my neighbor, Roy Trantham, on the phone.  He was the mayor, and a good one.

What I wanted to do was ask Diane Meek if the email City Manager Gary Jackson sent her was what he really wanted her to do, or if, off the record, he advised her to do nothing, which is what Jason Nortz suggested to me is a sleazy practice of Gary Jackson.  Here is the email, and I just received a copy of it today.

to Diane, councilgroup, me, Cathy

The email is in response to my email to City Council and the City Manager Gary Jackson and others bringing to their attention that my neighbor, Martha Grist, is operating an illegal short-term rental, i. e., a motel, under a homestay permit.  She runs her AirBnB ads for $89 per night, then puts up a sign (which you can see on my blawg) in her yard with an arrow pointing to her separate apartment with a hidden rear entrance, a jerry-built mess she cobbled up in her basement without a building permit.

Now not all of the time but with many of her rentals, she has relied on that sign to direct her new “motel” customers to the key-coded apartment with locked separate rear entrance while she has been gone for days, usually on the weekend.  She tries to make it look as though she’s there inside the house by having her old red Kia parked in front with the rear hidden, when she is off traveling in a late-model black Prius.  This she has often done.  The woman is a rollicking example of wanderlust.  And fraud.  And mendacity.  And larceny.   She even has someone like her neighbor, Vanessa Bell, or one of her daughters, April or Rose, come and move the Kia to make it look like she’s there.  These amusing shenanigans of deviousness are easy for me across the street to watch and see.

Now I am tired of having to replace the mailbox here on this side of Aurora Drive, after her customers knock it down.  And we have had drunks come crashing into her premises in the middle of the night singing vulgar songs, yelling and hollering, pretending to brawl, throwing cans and bottles, and waking all of us up.  I’m 72 and Jean Oakes is in her late sixties, so we are too old for this.  And I can assure you the elderly Chalnicks at 198 Aurora get in on the din of noise and commotion too.  What about OUR quality of life?  Isn’t that what zoning laws are for?  The mayor thinks they are there to protect your investment.  Well, that too, but we deserve the quiet enjoyment of this home and a neighborhood of people who are not stressed by the commercial hubbub of noisy transients in and out who don’t give a damn for the neighborhood.

Here is the email I sent City Council, et al.:

to Esther, gwenwisler, cecilbothwell, Julie, gordonsmith, Keith, rcurrin, cball, pfetherston, gjackson, smorgan