A THANK YOU LETTER TO ASHEVILLE: The Traveling Bonfires bade goodbye, The Indie struggles on‏

IN BEHALF of all the beautiful bodies and wonderful spirits that comprise the Traveling Bonfires and Loved by the Buffalo Publications (publisher of The Indie, among others), me—and my ever-dedicated comrade and friend Marta Osborne—extends our sincerest and deepest thank-you to one and all for your support and help in the last six (almost) seven years of our life and love in Asheville.
The Traveling Bonfires – mother and parent of the “Bonfires for Peace at Pritchard Park,” and instigator of countless shows and events in pursuit and celebration of global peace and multicultural community in Western North Carolina and elsewhere – travels on to a new community in the West Coast.
It has been really unbearably hard for us to financially sustain our physical existence in this ethereal mountain city. The sad signs started appearing following my son’s near-death experience in Manila almost three months ago – the question that most of us, new immigrants from poorer countries, have to confront like a cat’s blank stare: Pursue the romantic, quixotic madness or solve a practical, food-to-mouth reality.
I am heading to the West Coast (Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where most of my relatives and people are) and focus on stabilizing the financial life of all these what I call, “sublime madnesses,” as well as deal with the “legality” of my immigration situation in America.
Despite the departure of the Traveling Bonfires—and its partner women project, Third World Asheville—The Indie will, hopefully, just have a two or three months break or sabbatical. I will still continue to publish this little stubborn paper in Asheville—in absencia, while I hunt for budget where they usually are—and have a local friend distribute it in our usual outlets in the community. So all ad contracts will be honored and continued possibly by Jan or Feb 2008.
The start of our scheduled long road trip is on Oct 15—so I am still here in Asheville till then, to attend to other personal and organizational matters, and fundraise to beef up travel money, in the next two weeks or so.
My body will leave Asheville but my spirits will stay. The “fire” that we built will hopefully continue to burn – because the spirit never ceases to be. It is so hard leaving after seven years of struggle, in the midst of fear and indifferences, me being probably the oddest madman in Asheville – what my (Filipino and Cherokee/Lakota) people say, “Why in a white community? You will never be accepted there.” But that is wrong—Asheville has taken me in as its own like how my hometown barrio in a small island in the Philippines took me as their own little son and brother and friend and comrade.
In my life—I never saw white, black, yellow, red, or brown in people’s skins, or communism, socialism, buddhism, christianity, islam , or paganism in my spirit—it’s all the same, it’s all one. I only see one human being.
GRACIAS. MARAMING SALAMAT. TOKSA AKE.
--Pasckie Pascua
founder-executive director, TRAVELING BONFIRES
editor-publisher, THE INDIE
homeless for the meantime