Hi Friends!
Here is the content from our most recent newsletter, in blog post form. If you would like to receive our mostly-monthly newsletter, filled with cake specials, community news, holidays, and pretty pictures of cakes, then sign up here. If you are already on our list, but have not been receiving the emails, check your spam filter and add the email address to your safe sender list. Cheers, thanks, and love!
Happy Mother’s Day!
When Duncan and I moved to Asheville from Georgia (by way of Boston) in 2001, we didn’t move here for the mountains, although they are lovely. We didn’t move here for the food, and we didn’t move here for the weather (though that was a big plus, too). We moved to Asheville because of the community we felt that we could build with others here.
Last week, my friends Peter Parpan and Hannah Dansie decided to collaborate on a mural project on an abandoned storefront two doors down from the Cake Shop. The inspiration for the design was an educational poster printed in the 1970′s, which Hannah, like many others, remembers from her childhood. With minimal investment of time and materials, they were able to create a very beautiful work of art on a large scale. It was so beautiful to witness the process, and all of the cheesy things you may have heard people say about the transformative and magical nature of art in community cannot be underestimated, and, I have come to understand, are very true. Very special thanks is due to Lucy, Jeremy, and Duncan for helping out on the hottest day of the year to get ‘er done. (photo gallery after the jump)
Piece of Cake
by Kathryn Stripling Byer
(written for Poet Laureate installation, 2005, at the state capitol)
When the young woman calling from
Charlotte to interview me for her radio program
asked, “What is a Laureate, anyway?”
I heard my voice hem and haw
like a bad line of poetry. I thought I heard all of the Old
North State holding its breath while I struggled
to say something clever, but all I could think of
was “lariat.” Then in a moment
of quiet desperation, I thought of Laurette,
who lives just down the road
from my childhood home, hands busy sculpting
the icing on each of her Milky Way cakes
as she stands in the heart of her kitchen,
the sun sliding into the cornfields, another June
day disapearing, another night kindling
its Milky Way stars,
and at long last I know how to answer
that question. A Laureate
lassoes the Milky Way,
word after luminous word of it,
holding it out in her hands
like a piece
of Laurette’s chocolate cake
saying,
Try this!
Believe me,
You’ll like the way poetry tastes!
(Kay Byer. ps: Nice tights!)
Last week, I had the pleasure of being invited to speak at a conference at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina called “Okra to Opera: The Conference on Southern Culture.” The conference started in the early 1960′s, when Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty were featured as speakers. I knew that I had been asked to participate on a panel discussion on the shifting landscape of Southern foodways, but what I didn’t know is that I would get to meet, and be inspired by, an abundance of gifted Southern women; professors and artists and writers and farmers and musicians.
This past Tuesday, the Cake Shop celebrated our third birthday with a Mardi Gras party with live music and a raffle to benefit Green Opportunities’ Kitchen Ready Program. Heinzelmannchen Brewery in Sylva donated the beer (and stuck around to pour it!) and Sour Grapes donated the wine. The raffle included amazing gifts from Harvest Records, Honeypot, Marco’s Pizzeria, The Village Witch, and Mark Rosenstein. Also, Emilou made a pie, and Hannah donated a handmade apron. Our neighbors that play bluegrass came over and played for us, and there was singing, dancing, drinking and cake. It was a beautiful evening!
