Every home has a story to tell. A great broker knows every chapter by heart. Whether big or small, we know the details of your life’s story matter. That’s why our brokers work diligently to get to know you and what’s important to you in the purchase or sale of your home. Our full service approach redefines home buying, selling, and ownership by integrating all the elements of the transaction into a seamless real estate experience — allowing you the peace of mind to focus on your happy ending.
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February 2017
Sea Dragon, by Laura Jones Worth
49 Grievance
DEPARTMENTS 11 Simple Life By Jim Dodson
35 True South
14 Short Stories 17 Doodad By Grant Britt
37 The Pleasures of Life Dept.
19 O.Harry By Harry Blair 21 Life’s Funny By Maria Johnson 23 Omnivorous Reader By Stephen Smith 25 Scuppernong Bookshelf 29 Life of Jane By Jane Borden
FEATURES
By Susan Kelly
By Maira Johnson
43 Birdwatch
By Susan Campbell
45 Wandering Billy By Billy Eye
Poetry by Sarah Edwards
50 Doughnut Central
By Annie Ferguson Don’t look now, but the Gate City is on its way to becoming Greensbordough
54 Way To Go By Grant Britt
For the ultimate send-off, hire a funeral band
72 Arts Calendar 89 GreenScene 95 Accidental Astrologer
58 Worthwhile By Cynthia Adams
96 O.Henry Ending
By Ross Howell Jr. Boxwoods need space, in both gardens and hearts
By Astrid Stellanova By Janna McMahan
Artist Lauren Worth’s house of light and fantasy
69 Room to Grow
71 February Almanac
Cover Photograph by Mark Wagoner 6 O.Henry
February 2017
By Ash Alder Love and fairy tales in the time of the Snow Moon
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Art for Eyes | Eye for Arts Fine Eyewear, Artwork and Jewelry 327 South Elm | Greensboro 336.274.1278 | TheViewOnElm.com Becky Causey, Licensed Optician Find us on Facebook
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M A G A Z I N E
Volume 7, No. 2 “I have a fancy that every city has a voice.” 336.617.0090 1848 Banking Street, Greensboro, NC 27408 www.ohenrymag.com Jim Dodson, Editor • jim@thepilot.com Andie Stuart Rose, Art Director • andie@thepilot.com Nancy Oakley, Senior Editor • nancy@ohenrymag.com Lauren Coffey, Graphic Designer Alyssa Rocherolle, Graphic Designer CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Cynthia Adams, David Claude Bailey, Harry Blair, Maria Johnson CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
Lynn Donovan, Amy Freeman, Sam Froelich, Mark Wagoner CONTRIBUTORS
Ash Alder, Jane Borden, Grant Britt, Susan Campbell, Sarah Edwards, Billy Eye, Annie Ferguson, Ross Howell Jr., Susan Kelly, Sara King, Janna McMahan, D.G. Martin, Ogi Overman, Astrid Stellanova
O.H
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©Copyright 2017. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. O.Henry Magazine is published by The Pilot LLC
For more information about Dr. Olin and surgery visit www.GreensboroOrthopaedics.com
8 O.Henry
February 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
AL LEWIS, 36, POLICE OFFICER As an officer on the Greensboro Police Department Bike Team, Al Lewis is responsible for getting to know the downtown community and keeping it safe. Al demonstrated his commitment to these responsibilities when he set out to create a cost-effective prototype for a bike light that would increase officer’s visibility and provide a better tool for identification. “I remember thinking that it would be a lot easier and a lot safer if our bikes had blue lights on them.” Officer Lewis partnered with local community maker’s space, The Forge, and began developing a cost-efficient way to utilize LED light strips on police bikes. “I designed a system using my knowledge of electronics and components and came up with a prototype that fit flush to the bike frame and was visible from all four directions,” Officer Lewis says. “It was controlled by a switch box by the right handle bar so an officer doesn’t have to move or touch anything.” His prototype was approved and installed on all Greensboro police bikes. The newest design also includes white and red lights for further safety. Fire and EMS departments in surrounding areas have expressed interest in the project and Officer Lewis is hopeful that it will catch on.
TORI CARLE, 25, RECYCLING EDUCATOR A hatred for plastic bags and a love for all things Pinterest have led Tori Carle to create Operation Bed Roll. In 2015, Tori joined the City of Greensboro as its Recycling Education Specialist. This is where her passions began to take shape. Not long after starting in her new job, she was angry when she came across old plastic bags in a warehouse, knowing that plastic bags aren’t recyclable. “One night while surfing Pinterest I learned that you can crochet with plastic bags and I knew I had something special.” Operation Bed Roll: Crochet, Conserve, Care was born through collaboration between Greensboro’s Field Operations and Police departments. Tori quickly learned how to crochet plastic bags into bed rolls that can be used by the homeless community as a sleeping mat. These mats are durable and offer much needed warmth and protection for anyone sleeping on one outside. “With each mat, 500-700 plastic bags are kept out of landfills and recycling centers.” Two-hundred bed rolls will keep approximately 1 million plastic bags out of Greensboro landfills.
W
entrepreneurs, the artists, the community builders, the next generation of leaders.
Made in Greensboro celebrates those makers — the
Made in Greensboro is an initiative of Action Greensboro and the City of Greensboro.
e are Greensboro, North Carolina. We are the city of makers. We design, build, create. We roll up our sleeves. We get our hands dirty. We get it done. We make it happen.
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The Path Home
Simple Life
Finding roots among the brambles
By Jim Dodson
Not long after dawn on
ILLUSTRATION BY ROMEY PETITE
New Year’s Day, my wife, Wendy, and I picked our way through a patch of misty briar-choked woods to the base of an Interstate bridge that spans the Haw River in Alamance County.
One hundred fifty years ago, my father’s great-grandfather operated a gristmill on the banks of the Haw, one of the state’s most important rivers. His name was George Washington Tate. As a kid, I’d seen the remains of the long-abandoned mill sitting at the river’s edge below the railings of the bridge, overgrown with weeds but clearly visible. Half a century later, I was curious to see if the ruins of the mill might still be there. George Washington Tate was something of gentrified Jack-of-all-trades — accomplished land surveyor, cabinetmaker, gristmill owner and prominent figure in the affairs of his church and economic development of neighboring Alamance and Orange counties. I grew up hearing that he was the man who officially established the legal boundaries of the state’s central counties following the Civil War. Greensboro’s Tate Street, which borders the campus of UNCG, is reportedly named for him. Bits of family lore hold that old GWT was a circuit-riding deacon or lay minister who helped establish several Methodist churches across the western Piedmont, another that he forged the original bell in the Hillsborough courthouse. The tale that has long fascinated me, however — first told to me by a pair of elderly spinster great-aunts named Josie and Ida, who lived into their 90s on Buckhorn Road east of Mebane — was that my father’s grandmother (Tate’s youngest daughter, Emma) was actually an orphaned Cherokee infant Tate “adopted” and brought home from a circuit ride out West, adding to a family that already included three sons and three daughters. My dad soon confirmed this. As a kid, he’d spent many of his happiest summers as a kid staying with Aunt Emma at her farm off Buckhorn Road near Dodson’s Corners, and often talked about his grandmother’s closeness to the land and keen knowledge of natural medicines made from native plants he had sometimes helped her gather. “To a lot of her friends and neighbors, Aunt Emma was the community’s healer,” he explained to my older brother and me one Christmastime when we went to shoot mistletoe out of the huge red oaks that grew around her abandoned home place. “In those days the only doctor around was over in Hillsborough, 20 miles away.” He added, almost as a wistful afterthought: “She was happiest out in the woods and fields and knew the names of every plant. Local people loved and depended on her.” Aunt Emma died in 1928, when my father was just 13. Aunt Emma was 70. “She was an old lady,” he told me many years later, “but her death was shocking — the way she died. For years it was our family’s darkest secret, the thing nobody spoke about. No one saw it coming.” The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Aunt Emma reportedly hanged herself from a beam of the house she shared with her husband, Jimmy. Years later, my father’s take on this was that she was challenged living with a foot in two worlds. A grieving Uncle Jimmy soon gave up his farm and went to live with relatives in Greensboro, abandoning the family property. He lived another 14 years, passing away in 1942, the year my father enlisted in the Army Air Corps and trained to be a glider pilot for D-Day. Because I heard this part of the story late in life — during a final trip to Scotland with my dad in 1994, when he was dying of cancer — I became more or less obsessed with Aunt Emma’s mysterious death and the colorful stories I’d grown up hearing about her important papa, George Washington Tate. To some in our family — those who never heard this part of the story — my father’s grandmother is simply a tiny name on perhaps the largest family tree anyone has ever seen. I own a copy of this massive genealogical document, boasting a thousand or more family names branching off the taproot of one Thomas Squires and wife, Elizabeth, English settlers who arrived in the state in the late 1760s. Most likely, they were part of the massive migration of Europeans along the so-called Great Wagon Road that brought an estimated half a million Scots, Irish, English and German settlers from Pennsylvania to Virginia and the Carolinas about that time. The Great Wagon Road, which began in Philadelphia and roamed out toward Lancaster and Harrisburg before turning south through Maryland and the valley of Virginia, crossing the Carolinas before terminating at the Savannah River in Augusta, Georgia, at 800 miles, was the most heavily traveled road in Colonial America. Built over ancient Indian hunting routes, it’s the trading road that populated the South and served to open the Western frontier beyond the mountains. Thomas Jefferson’s daddy surveyed and named it. A young George Washington served as a scout along it, and no less than three wars were contested along it — including several key battles during the French and Indian, American Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Today, if you ever travel Interstate 81 north of Roanoke, you’re traveling the path of the Great Wagon Road. The original road veered southeast from there and crossed into the Yadkin Valley, bringing the Moravians to Old Salem and the Quakers to Guilford County, before moseying along rivers toward Salisbury and the city named in honor of Queen Charlotte. After that, it split into two routes as it crossed South Carolina until meeting again in Georgia. Last summer, my dad’s first cousin Roger Dodson, a retired missionary and wise family elder who grew up hearing many of the same stories I did about Aunt Emma, provided me with the only known photograph of the family mystery woman and shared his memories of having Uncle Jimmy live with his family for a time after Emma Dodson’s death. Roger also showed me a magnificent corner cabinet made by George Washington Tate, who operated a carpentry shop at his gristmill on the Haw. The cabinet is a one-piece work of art. George Washington Tate was laid to rest beside his wife, Rachel, in the February 2017
O.Henry 11
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Simple Life
cemetery behind the Lebanon United Methodist Church in the country above Mebane. Aunt Emma rests beside her husband, Jimmy, in the smaller burying ground at Chestnut Ridge Methodist Church, not far from Dodson’s Crossroads in Orange County. Which brings us back to the edge of the historic Haw River on a cold and misty New Year’s morning a month or so ago. Almost every American’s ancestors hailed from someplace else. But an old road, as the saying in the country goes, always brings someone home. At a time when polls show many Americans are thinking anxiously about what direction our frontier democracy may go, I’m planning to spend the next year traveling and researching a book on the Great Wagon Road — the road that brought my people, and quite possibly yours, to this part of North Carolina. It’s a book I’ve been keen to research and write for over a decade and a quest to try to find old George Washington Tate’s lost gristmill seemed like the ideal way to begin such a journey. Unfortunately, time and progress stand still for no man. And part of me feared that the site where I first laid eyes on the foundation of my ancestor’s mill in the late 1960s — a popular river ford dating from the earliest days of the colony — had most likely been subsumed beneath an interstate highway that has doubled in size since I last visited. As we stood on the banks of the river, we saw old trees and a handful of boulders in the slowly swirling eddies but, alas, no trace of the mill’s foundation. I decided to take a couple of photos just the same, as my wife wandered over to a thick patch of brambles and pushed through to a small wooden maintenance bridge that crosses a gully to the base of the bridge. “Oh, my gosh,” she said moments later, quietly adding, “Come here and look.” Below the bridge was the old millrace, the sluice that once turned the wooden water wheel, half hidden beneath a curtain of old vines. The race was deep and still running with water, and we knew it belonged to the mill because foundation stones were also visible where time and water had exposed them. As an expert I’ve been talking to about America’s “lost” roads once said to me, our past lies right before our eyes if we only know what we’re looking at — and where. For this son of the ancient Haw, Aunt Emma and old George Washington Tate, this moment was like finding the start of a long path home. We took a picture and went to find a robust country breakfast to celebrate our discovery, the start of a promising new year. OH If your family came down the Great Wagon Road, Editor Jim Dodson would be pleased to hear about it. Contact him at jim@thepilot.com. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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©2017 An independently operated subsidiary of HomeServices of America, Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate, and a franchisee of BHH Affiliates, LLC. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices symbol are registered service marks of HomeServices of America, Inc.® Equal Housing Opportunity.
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February 2017
O.Henry 13
Short Stories
Thick and Thin
Just as love is a many splendored thing, art is a many layered thing, especially the paintings of N.C. artists Sherry McAdams and Murray Parker. From February 10–March 9 their distinctive works will be on view in Many Layers, an exhibition at Tyler White O’Brien Gallery (307 State Street). See how McAdams achieves a sculptural effect in her canvases, as she adds color after color at a Lunch and Learn on February 10 at noon, and meet the artists at 6 p.m. that evening at a gallery reception. Info: (336) 279-1124 or tylerwhitegallery.com.
Dance Me to the End of Love
Express your amour — with your feet. Get ready to jump and jive with your significant other on the dance floor to some classic swing. Under the baton of Mike Day, Greensboro Big Band blows lively tunes (and kisses, perhaps?) at the Sweet Sounds Valentine’s Concert and Dance on February 12th at Trinity Church (5200 West Friendly Avenue). As part of the Music Center’s OPUS series, the concert is free of charge, but if you can, show a little heart by dropping a little change as a donation to the cause. Info: greensboro-nc.gov.
Popcorn and Twizzler Time
Hog-warts
That would be you, motorcycle enthusiasts. Whether your preferred make is Harley, BMW, Indian or Triumph, affect your best Marlon Brando or Peter Fonda sneer, get yer motor runnin’ and head out to GreenHill (200 North Davie Street) to see M.A.D./Motorcycle. Art. Design (February 3–June 8). Collaborating with UNC-School of the Arts, the gallery has created a multimedia exhibition that salutes the art, design and cultural significance of the motorcycle in the 20th and 21st centuries. Join the kickoff reception on February 3 at 5:30 with live music from Florida transplants, elemeno, or reserve a spot at a Leather and Lace party, on February 11 at 7 p.m. Tickets: greenhillnc.org/leather-lace.
14 O.Henry
February 2017
Arise, Couch Potatoes! And nix Netflix to see movies the old-fashioned way — in a darkened theater. If you missed Airplane!, the first in Wrangler’s Great American Movies series at Carolina Theatre (310 South Greene Street), which kicked off last month about the time Old Man Winter turned us all into shut-ins, you still have plenty of opportunities to catch classic movies on the big screen. This month’s offering on February 21st: the last of the TracyHepburn collaborations, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Spoiler alert: It’s a 1967 comedy/drama that addresses interracial marriage. Next month, relive the Reagan Era with Top Gun; see one of Orson Welles’ best performances in The Third Man in April; and show that frankly, you do give a damn about cinema by sitting through the epic Gone With the Wind in May. June winds up the series with what some have deemed Clint Eastwood’s greatest Western: The Outlaw Josey Wales. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Litter-ati The Defiant One
And no, we don’t mean Tony Curtis or Sidney Poitier, but the titular character of Sophocles’s tragedy, Antigone. The daughter of Oedipus and his mother Jocasta, Antigone is forbidden by King Creon of Thebes to publicly mourn her brother Polynices, who attacked the city and died in battle. In an anti-authoritarian move, she defies the order and suffers the consequences. See soap opera writ large in UNCG Theatre’s production of the ancient play, which runs from February 16–26 at Taylor Theatre (406 Tate Street). Tickets: (336) 2720160; (336) 334-4392 or vpa.uncg.edu.
Keep the green in Greensboro, by participating in Greensboro Beautiful’s Winter Wipeout. The local nonprofit dedicated to beautifying and preserving the area’s ecology has designated various litter hot spots posted on an online map at greensborobeautiful. org. Groups of community volunteers can then register to clean up a hot spot of their choosing anytime between February 15th and 28th, and GSO Beautiful will provide them with trash bags, gloves, vests, etc. After de-polluting your chosen location, simply toss the detritus with your regular trash, report your efforts and post photos of your work on Facebook to show off what a wonderful world it is.
Time Travel
Beaux Arts, Mid-Century Modern, Brutalist . . . the Gate City and Guilford County are home to a wide variety of architectural styles. In an encore presentation of Preservation North Carolina’s Annual Meeting in September, Benjamin Briggs, executive director of Preservation Greensboro, will discuss the area’s architectural history, and touch on Colonial settlements, as well as early preservation efforts. So come out to the Blandwood Carriage House (400 West McGee Street) on February 23 at 7 p.m. — and discover why our past is worth exploring — and saving. Info: (336) 272-5003 or preservationgreensboro.org.
What’s in a Name?
Say the word, “Midtown,” and glamorous images of New York’s Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Station and Times Square immediately come to mind. Now you can apply the term to Gate City glam: One of Greensboro’s most popular watering holes, 1618 Wine Lounge, (1724 Battleground Avenue in Irving Park Plaza), has officially changed its name to 1618 Midtown. The reasoning behind the new moniker? To keep it consistent with 1618’s sister restaurants identified by location: 1618 Seafood Grille — by its street address on Friendly Avenue — and 1618 Downtown, reflecting its location on South Elm. And then there’s the obvious reason of capitalizing on the newly minted central area of Greensboro, Midtown. Along with the new handle, 1618 Midtown boasts new interior accents — lighting, spiffy flooring by Bradshaw Orrell, swank seating by Level 4 Designs and an easier-to-read menu. Though the name has changed, the wine, beer and craft cocktails still flow freely, and those truffle pomme frites taste just as savory. Info: 1618Midtown.com.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Ogi Sez Ogi Overman There are two ways to look at February. It is either the coldest, dreariest — and, mercifully, shortest — month of the year, or the month of roses, chocolates and romantic dinners. Actually, there is a third. It is prime time to hit the clubs, theaters, coliseums and music halls as hard as you can, and forget what month it is. Let’s go with that one.
• February 18, Blind Tiger:
Mardi Gras, New Orleans Jazzfest and the best jazz/funk ensemble on the planet come to Greensboro in the form of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Better get your tix early for this one, as the fire marshal might have to turn the crowds away.
• February 19, Muddy Creek
Music Hall: I suspect Bill Heath had to pull some strings to get this one, as Albert Lee doesn’t play just anywhere. Yes, that Albert Lee. The one Eric Clapton called “the greatest guitar player in the world.”
• February 23, Carolina
Theatre: He won’t be riding on the City of New Orleans, and he won’t be comin’ into Los Angeleez. And the Carolina definitely ain’t Alice’s Restaurant. But Arlo Guthrie is still Arlo Guthrie.
• February 24, Greensboro Coliseum: If you think country music is made up solely of pretty boys in cowboy hats strumming three chords on a guitar, you haven’t seen Brantley Gilbert. With bandana, leather jacket and two earrings, he looks more like a metalhead, but, trust me, with four straight No. 1’s and sold-out coliseums, he’s the real deal. • February 25, High Point Theatre: If, like me, it’s multipart harmony that makes your world go ’round, your prayers have been answered. Manhattan Transfer and Take 6 on the same bill. I can go gently now. February 2017
O.Henry 15
Same Location. New Name.
What started as a great spot for wine and cocktails has grown into a full-service restaurant.
Irving Park Plaza | 1724 Battleground Ave., Suite 105 ph. 336.285.9410 | www.1618midtown.com
Doodad
Cool Ride The Luxuriant Sedans are a rockin’ throwback machine
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF OWENS DANIELS
M
usicians get asked a lot of questions, ranging from the inane to the bizarre. Interviewers, besotted with their momentary brush with fame, ply them with queries such as, “What’s your favorite color?” “Do you sleep in the nude?” “If you were a car, what kind of car would you be?” Oddly enough, there’s a select group of Winston-Salem players who have a ready answer to this last query: The Luxuriant Sedans. The five-piece outfit, whose new release, Double Parked, drops on February 13th, reconstructs obscure rock and blues tunes into road trips that everybody wants to ride along with. “Might as well call it blues archaeology,” bassist Ed Bumgardner says of the band’s musical GPS. Like a lot of baby boomers, Bumgardner got his first taste of blues from British performers such as the Rolling Stones, Yardbirds and Animals. “It’s one of those conceits of the modern rock era, as it got more commercial. Performers understood they didn’t make as much money if they wrote their own songs rather than looking for songs. For most of the history of recorded music, interpretive singing and interpretive performances were the norm.” But as more artists snatched glowing embers from the blues bonfire, the rekindled campfires glowed less brightly, giving off more sparks than heat before flaming out. “There’s a zillion faceless three-chords-and-hard-times songs out there,” Bumgardner says. But buried under those cold ashes are hot flashes that never got enough air to fan them into flames. That’s what Bumgardner and harpist Mike “Wezo” Wesolowski were raking through the ashes to discover. “I would get on iTunes and just go down a rabbit hole, for two or three days,” says Bumgardner, who honed his musical digging skills working for the WinstonSalem Journal from 1984 –2009, supplementing his income with pieces in Billboard, Rolling Stone and Spin. “Just any band I’d never heard of, pull it up and start listening.” His persistence led to some gems “that represented somebody’s hopes and dreams and cares for the future that had been dashed against the walls of the music business and banished for posterity. But if we can bring ’em back and redo ’em, that’s the thing.” That thing they do has kept most of this quintet in touch most of their lives. “We’ve all known each other forever,” Bumgardner, says. He and guitarist Gino “Woo Funk” Grandinetti were in their first band together when they were 12 and 13. He’s known singer/harpist Wezo since sixth grade, Bob Tarleton, the drummer, since the early ’70s, and knew of but just met guitarist a Rob Slater recently. “We’ve been circling each other for years,” Bumgarnder says. A ridealong with the Luxuriant Sedans pins you back in the seat, buffeting you with soundalike throwback from Exile [on Main St.]–era Stones, strirred up with endless John Lee Hooker-esque boogie as interpreted by a Bad Company/ Free hybrid sprinkled with Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit In The Sky”–style guitar overlaid with Delbert McClinton’s soulful croak then doused with scalding Sonny Boy /Little Walter/Cotton–style harp. You may not recognize the tunes, but the music will touch your soul. “We’re interpreters, not coverists,” Bumgardner insists. “Hopefully people will hear these songs and like our songs.” And be inspired enough to seek out the originals. “Every one of these people we pulled from deserves to be heard.” OH
TWO VALENTINE WEEKENDS for COASTAL LOVEBIRDS
Birds of a Feather Join us Feb 10-12 or Feb 17-19 Celebrate at our beautiful coast with a cozy room, a waterfront view, creative cuisine, and a sunset cruise. This gift for your favorite “fine feathered friend” is really something to chirp about! Photo courtesy of Wilmington resident Jeffrey P. Karnes, named by audubon.org as one of 15 Awesome Instagram Accounts for Beautiful Bird Photos.
blockade-runner.com
— Grant Britt The Art & Soul of Greensboro
February 2017
O.Henry 17
Tonya didn’t believe she could live without a heartbeat. Then her doctor proved it. Take Tonya Moore’s pulse after a few laps around the roller rink and you won’t feel the familiar BA-DUM, BA-DUM. In fact, you won’t sense anything at all. Cone Health is the first non-transplant hospital in North Carolina to offer mechanical heart pump implants and Tonya was the first recipient. Since her breakthrough procedure was performed by Peter Van Trigt, MD, cardiothoracic surgeon and his team, 33 more area residents are living longer lives because of this innovative program.
Learn more at conehealth.com/stories
E X C E P T I O N A L C A R E . E V E R Y D AY.™
O.Harry
By Harry Blair
Heat up those cold winter nights with a new furnace.
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
February 2017
O.Henry 19
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Life’s Funny
Much Ado(e) About Nothing Loving reflections on deer and dears
By Maria Johnson
A dear friend and I were supposed to get
PHOTO FAR RIGHT BY CHAD REHDER
coffee on the morning of Christmas Eve, a pleasant pause in the holiday madness.
She called at 8:30 that morning. Could she get a rain check? She and her husband were having people over for dinner that night. To that end, her mate had put a plastic-wrapped frozen turkey in the refrigerator to thaw several days before. That morning, my friend had opened the refrigerator to find a thawed turkey, all right — and raw poultry fluids leaking all over the refrigerator. The aforementioned spouse had neglected to put the turkey in a dish or bag to catch the runoff. The result was a mess of Scroogian proportions. My friend and I bumped our coffee date ahead a couple of days and ended the call. That’s when the text stream started. “Did I mention that [husband’s name redacted] is at the gym right now?” my pal wrote. “Merry Christmas. Insert hearty laugh here.” I turned to my husband and described the situation. “Uh-oh,” he said, a concise expression of brotherly empathy with . I forwarded the comment to my friend. “OK,” she replied. “That gave ME a hearty laugh. I sent a photo of the inside of the fridge without elaboration. Did [child’s name redacted] take care of the dishwasher last night? Nah. So I can’t even get the damn turkey into the sink. Nay! Do not sink into a foul stew on this merry morn! Isn’t this fun? Virtual coffee.” “Yeah. For me,” I wrote. “I’d be tempted to leave right about now and let them deal with it. Except I think we both know where that would end — with you all eating in a Chinese restaurant tonight.” “Oh, I thought about it,” she texted back. It was clear that she was going to stay and clean up the mess. “There have to be some extra Baby Jesus Reward Club points in here for you,” I assured her. Minutes ticked by. Another text landed. “The muck skirted the vegetable bins below the turkey. It’s on the outside, but not the inside,” she wrote. “Let’s hear it for no salmonella juice in the veggies,” I texted. “I think the damage is contained for the moment,” she replied. “I might make some cranberry sauce and cookies. It makes more sense to deal with the bird when it’s time to put it in the oven.” With a keen sense of story, she joked that she’d just delivered me a column The Art & Soul of Greensboro
for next December. I filed the idea away. You never know. “ ’Preciate your flexibility and companionship this morning,” she wrote. “Here’s the thing: One Thanksgiving a few years back, I put all the potato peels down the garbage disposal. When my dad arrived, had his head under the sink, taking the thing apart. Never said a cross word. So after the cranberry sauce is made, I’ll finish the hazmat project. Grace cuts both ways, right?” I could have waited until next Christmas to tell this story. But somehow I think it makes a better Valentine’s Day story.
**** Several readers emailed me to comment on last month’s column about
Snow White, a young albino deer I saw on the greenway near Lake Brandt in early December. “I saw an albino doe last February on the Guilford College campus near the lake,” wrote Richard Furnas. “Also felt that magical feeling of mother nature letting me see her beauty even though it’s a bit of a chromosome mixup.” Phil Newcomb was just glad to know he wasn’t nuts for seeing a white deer. About two years ago, Phil was driving through his neighborhood when he looked into a clearing for a gas pipeline right-of-way. There was a gleaming white deer standing with a few brown deer. “It kind of gives you goose bumps,” he said. “It could be the same white deer that you saw or an offspring of it. If it’s the same one you saw, it makes me feel good to know that it’s still out there.” Kevin Nabors reported seeing an albino deer while driving through Guilford Courthouse National Military Park one night in 2013. “I saw the albino deer cross in front of me about 40 yards ahead. It took a second to register,” Kevin said. “My first thought was that it was General Greene’s white horse LOL. I slowed, and the deer was in no hurry. It was an amazing sight.” The reader who seems the most likely to have seen the same deer I saw is Chad Rehder. Early one morning just before Thanksgiving, Chad, 43, was riding his mountain bike on the Wild Turkey Trail between the greenway and the Lake Brandt marina when he came up fast on a juvenile white deer standing with some brown deer about 50 feet from the trail. “I was by myself, but I think I said, ‘Wow! Look at that!’ I felt compelled to stop and get my camera out,” he says. “It was so surreal.” The pale deer didn’t startle. As Chad snapped pics, it moseyed away with the others. “There is somewhat of a magical characteristic about it because it is so unique,” he says. Happy Valentine’s Day to all who can hold science and magic in their hearts at the same time. OH Maria Johnson can be reached at ohenrymaria@gmail.com February 2017
O.Henry 21
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Shadow Market A fanciful dealer in dark wares
By D.G. Martin
When Fred Chappell
writes, multitudes of fans stop and read. Now retired, he was for more than 40 years a beloved teacher of writers at UNCG, where he helped establish its much-admired Master of Fine Arts in Writing program. He served as North Carolina poet laureate from 1997 until 2002. He is revered by many for his fiction, especially his early works based on his years growing up in the mountains. But his 30 some-odd books show his determination not to be limited to any genre, geography or time.
His latest book, A Shadow All of Light, demonstrates the wide scope of his imagination and talent. It is a magical, speculative story set in an Italianate country hundreds of years ago. Chappell asks his readers to believe that shadows are something more than the images people cast by interrupting a light source. These shadows are an important, integral part of a person’s being. They can be stolen or given up. When lost, the person is never the same. In Chappell’s tale, an ambitious young rural man, Falco, comes to a big port city (think Venice), where he attaches himself to a successful shadow merchant, Maestro Astolfo. Over time Falco learns the trade of acquiring and selling shadows detached from their original owners. The business is a “shady” one because the acquisition of human shadows often involves underhanded, even illegal methods, something like today’s markets in exotic animal parts or pilfered art. But Maestro Astolfo and Falco, notwithstanding public attitudes, strive to The Art & Soul of Greensboro
conduct their business in a highly moral manner. Although losing one’s shadow could be devastating, the situation is mollified if a similar replacement can be secured from shadow dealers like Astolfo or Falco. Chappell, in the voice of Falco, explains, “No one likes to lose his shadow. It is not a mortal blow, but it is a wearying trouble. If it is stolen or damaged, a man will seek out a dealer in umbrae supply and the difficulty is got around in the hobbledehoy fashion. The fellow is the same as before, so he fancies, with a new shadow that so closely resembles his true one, no one would take note. “That is not the case. His new shadow never quite fits him so trimly, so comfortably, so sweetly as did his original. There is a certain discrepancy of contour, a minor raggedness not easy to mark but plainly evident to one versed in the materials. The wearer never completely grows to his new shadow and goes about with it rather as if wearing an older brother’s hand-me-down cloak. “Another change occurs also, not in the fitting or wearing, but in the character of the person. To lose a shadow is to lose something of oneself. The loss is slight and generally unnoticeable, yet an alert observer might see some diminishing in the confidence of bearing, in the certitude of handclasp, in the authority of tread upon a stone stairway.” After introducing his readers to the complexities of shadow theft, storage and trade, Chappell takes Falco, Astolfo and their colleague Mutano through a series of encounters with bandits, pirates and a host of other shady characters. Mutano loses his voice to a cat. Bandits challenge Falco’s efforts to collect rare plants that eat human shadows. Pirates led by a beautiful and evil woman battle the port city’s residents for control. Similar to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Chappell’s A Shadow All of Light is fast-paced, mythic, and unbelievably entertaining. OH D.G. Martin hosts North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs Sundays at noon and Thursdays at 5 p.m. on UNC-TV. February 2017
O.Henry 23
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February 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Scuppernong Bookshelf
Welcome to the Year of James Baldwin Scuppernong’s nod to another prominent figure in American letters
Here at Scuppernong Books
we dedicate each year to a particular writer we are fond of. We deemed 2015 “The Year of Herman Melville” and last year belonged to the work of Flannery O’Connor. We couldn’t be happier to announce that 2017 is hereby declared “The Year of James Baldwin.” To be sure, there’s no particular anniversary of Baldwin’s works we’re celebrating; we simply feel that his novels, plays, poetry and essays are worth acknowledging. And reading. Watch for dozens of talks, book clubs, readings, film screenings and lectures throughout the year at Scuppernong. Let’s start it off with an appreciation of the Baldwin oeuvre, along with some associated writers. Go Tell It On The Mountain (Vintage International, $15) is, without question, a classic of 20th-century American literature, but it’s a book most of us probably read too early — usually in high school — to truly appreciate. Blatantly autobiographical, the novel tells the story of John Grimes, a black teenager growing up in the Harlem of the 1930s. All of the themes and methods that Baldwin would sharpen over his career are present here: the brutal clarity, the precise prose rooted in the rhythms of spirituals and the Pentecostal church, plus the unsparing vision of himself and the world around him. We get the flavor and the disquietude of the time and the full-
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
borne struggle of a teenager wrestling with his sense of self while battling the restraints of his family, his culture and his church. Go Tell It On The Mountain culminates with one of the most searing and honest descriptions of a spiritual epiphany we’ve ever read. First published in 1962, The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, $13.95) can be read today with only the slightest shift in context or concession for its time. It is no less cogent and masterful than it was over fifty years ago, and no less pertinent to the situation we find ourselves in today as Americans. Divided into two longs essays, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation” and “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind,” the book is a brilliant act of planting a flag, of staking a personal territory that will be explored for years to come. Baldwin’s flag is ablaze: with anger, with passion, with empathy and with a struggling sense of mercy for all of us. One of the things he wants to do here is to situate what was then The Race Problem squarely in the laps of white people; and to deny the idea that African Americans are somehow responsible for the racism that oppresses them. But, he also wants to offer his nephew, and all of us, some form of hope. For Baldwin, however, that hope can only be claimed after a cold, clear-eyed assessment of the situation. Ta-Nehisi Coates has a thing or two to say about the persistence of institutional racism. His much-lauded 2015 book, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, $25), openly echoes the structure of The Fire Next Time and retains the bold anger and attention to the real problem: the racist attitudes and policies that have resurfaced in certain segments of American society. Coates’ depiction of the tentative place black bodies have in our culture — the constant unpredictable nature of violence aimed at the black body — is powerful and convincing. This book is a thoughtful call to action and an attempt to secure a February 2017
O.Henry 25
Bookshelf safe space for his son’s future. In Who Can Afford to Improvise: James Baldwin and Black Music, the Lyric and the Listeners (Fordham University Press, $29.95) Ed Pavlic explores not only the effects of spirituals, the blues and jazz on Baldwin’s development as a person and a writer, but also how his style began to infuse the rhythms, the repetitions, the spirit, of these evolving genres. Though occasionally overly academic, Pavlic provides a fascinating context for placing Baldwin within his own history and time, and a period of cultural explosion in the United States. In 2014 the University of Michigan released James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination, by Matt Brim ($25.95), which reminds us that Baldwin is the central figure in 20th-century black gay literature. And while Brim acknowledges Baldwin’s important place, he also provides a critique of Baldwin’s use of, and for, a gay community. Lambda Literary Review writes that the “fierce entitlement to self-definition often manifested in Baldwin’s fiction and in his personal life” could present “a disavowal of gay identity and community. In a 1984 interview Baldwin admitted, ‘The word “gay” has always rubbed me the wrong way.’” As you can see, there will be plenty to talk about as our Year of Baldwin progresses. OH This month’s Scuppernong Bookshelf was written by Brian Lampkin and Steve Mitchell. NEW RELEASES FOR FEBRUARY 2017 February 7: Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, by Erica Armstrong Dunbar. A compelling read recounting a little-known chapter in American history. (Atria/37 Ink. $26)
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26 O.Henry
February 2017
February 14: Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense, by Caroline Light. A backward glance at self-defense laws in America. (Beacon Press. $25.95) February 21: Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler. A lovely reissue of what the Denver Post describes as “a powerful story of hope and faith in the midst of urban violence and decay. . . Excellent science fiction and a parable of modern society.” (Seven Stories. $24.) February 28: I Am Not Your Negro: A Companion Edition to the Documentary Film Directed by Raoul Peck, by James Baldwin. The public and private Baldwin emerge in passages from his books, essays and personal notes. (Vintage International. $15)
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Life of Jane
The Shining The spirited life of a holler-back girl
By Jane Borden
ILLUSTRATION BY MERIDITH MARTENS
When I left New York,
I’d intended to return to North Carolina. But love and marriage got in the way, and I followed my new husband to Tennessee, which is at least North Carolina adjacent. He took a teaching job at Sewanee: The University of the South, located in the woods of Monteagle Mountain. Very quickly I decided to make moonshine and open a speakeasy. As one does. Like hundreds of shiners before me, I was living in the woods of Tennessee and in need of money, which led me to discern the obvious choice. I would be like Al Capone, who, legend has it, kept a home in Monteagle — the midpoint between Miami and Chicago — during Prohibition so he could stop for a rest and pick up more hooch along the way. I would be like Hamper McBee, the area’s most famous modern moonshiner and balladeer, who plied his trade at hidden homemade stills during the ’70s, singing of drunkenness while he stirred the mash. I would be like Jasper, the large bearded man I’d befriended at a local farm-
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
ers’ market, who’s fond of camo overalls and agreed to teach me to make wine from peaches. My bar would be classy, with a soundtrack mix of blues and indie rock, and a menu of classic cocktails with modern twists. I investigated demand, which was high since we lived in a semi-dry county, and costs, which were also high as I would largely be reselling store-bought liquor, making my endeavor doubly illegal. Then I drew up a business plan, and was exploring potential locations, when two fiery signs appeared. One, Jasper’s house burned to the ground. Two, the restaurant Pearl’s, which had also burned to the ground three years prior, announced its reopening — and that it would have a liquor license, the only one in town. Fires in the area are common, thanks to rugged DIY architecture, insurance fraud, renegade justice for mountain grudges, and the hundreds of meth labs that have earned Grundy County the status of meth capital of the world. I decided, therefore, that my speakeasy was a phoenix, which perished with Jasper and was reborn inside Pearl’s. And I humbly pointed myself to a lawful path. I stopped by the construction site, with a mockedup cocktail menu in hand, and got myself hired tending bar at Pearl’s, on Highway 41 on the Cumberland Plateau of South Central Tennessee. As the classic-cocktail revival took hold in the early aughts, I was first in line at Manhattan speakeasies, laughing at their pretentious lists of conduct rules, but giving them all of my money nonetheless. Housemade bitFebruary 2017
O.Henry 29
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Life of Jane
ters, shrubs and purées; strangely scented liqueurs from far-flung countries; and top-shelf booze packaged in work-of-art bottles: I was intoxicated. But only as a consumer. There’s no reason to invest in stocking a New York home bar when a mustachioed mixologist is on every corner doing it better than you, and looking smarter in suspenders. But in a small Southern town, if you want something not indigenous to the area — like bagels or racial diversity — you must manufacture it yourself. Within a month of living in Sewanee, thanks to a couple of liquor-store trips to Nashville, I transformed our small wooden stand-alone bar into an amateur mixologist’s dream. My appreciation became a hobby, which is largely why we kept throwing parties. Nathan and I couldn’t consume it all ourselves. And so I began to want my own speakeasy. I knew, however, that simply making drinks — no matter how crafted or unique — would never be enough of a draw, since anyone can google recipes and make his or her own trip to Nashville. But then Jasper mentioned peach wine. Even if no one actually ordered much of it, curiosity about an epicurean moonshine wine might pull them in, like those dancing balloon men outside of car lots that fill with air and then deflate, over and over — except classy. Plus, the process was much less intimidating than building a still and acquiring 50-pound bags of rye. From what I recall, it required lots of pots, several buckets and
My speakeasy endeavor wasn’t just about money and craft cocktails. maybe a bathtub? Jasper detailed the recipe and process for me one morning at the Saturday farmers’ market. It sounded pretty simple. We decided to find a time for me to come to his house and apprentice him. He gave me his number. Then his house burned down. Like the Appalachians to its east, the Cumberland Plateau has been moonshine country for as long as it’s been inhabited. The craggy and unpredictable conglomerate-rock geology of the plateau and its coves makes the land largely impassable and fundamentally unfit for development. The area is a treasure of virgin forest for this reason, and not because of environmental stewardship or a benefactor’s largesse. The University was only founded there, before the Civil War, because a logging company determined it couldn’t move equipment through the land, and dumped the acres on the Episcopal Church for a tax break. In short, there are ample nooks for hiding stills. Shakerag Hollow, a cove at the edge of Sewanee’s property, was named for this tradition. When you wanted a bottle of hooch during Prohibition, so the story goes, you stood at the edge of the bluff, shook a rag in the air, left your money on a rock and returned the next day to collect the bottle sitting in its place. I like to imagine the rag was white, as if customers were surrendering to the booze. “I give up, whiskey: You’re too delicious.” Today, state-park–designated trails frequently pass remnants of stills from the moonshining heyday, the whereabouts of which, at the time, were violently guarded secrets. The practice remained, even long after Prohibition. A friend of ours, Jean, is fond of riding her horse through the cove abutting her property. She recalls coming upon an active still once, decades ago, and meeting the business end of a rifle, which convinced her to turn back and forget where she’d been. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
February 2017
O.Henry 31
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Life of Jane
Today, the trade still flourishes. Nathan and I once saw a makeshift marketplace open for business in a shady corner of Party Cove. Also known as the Redneck Riviera, Party Cove has cropped up in more than a couple of popular country songs. It is a section of Percy Priest Lake — a Tennessee Valley Authority lake, a flooded hollow created by a WPA project during the Depression — in which groups of motorboats anchor and tie buoys to one another, for the purpose of swimming and multi-watercraft partying. Nathan and I were lucky enough to visit Party Cove on occasion, where we turned our life jackets upside down and sat in them like diapers in the water; where sound systems compete and whichever song makes bikini-clad girls dance becomes the winner; and where bottles of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky float along beside you in the water and/or are poured directly into your mouth. One afternoon at Party Cove, we began to notice that people were swimming, one at a time, to and from a corner dense with brush. A pair of binoculars revealed that each swimmer held one hand above the water, clutching cash on the way over, and a mason jar on the way back. And I’d thought New York was lawless. The romance wooed me: homemade whiskey, the black market, the taste of apple-pie moonshine, diluted and sweet enough to sip straight from the jar, which I did in the passenger seat, all the way home from Percy Priest that day. My speakeasy endeavor wasn’t just about money and craft cocktails. It would be a connection to the land, a well that was dug directly into a sense of place, a way for me to finally feel at home in this new and foreign land. Moonshining is so deeply ingrained in the community that getting caught probably wouldn’t even get my husband fired. Plus, if I was making drinks all night, I’d be less likely to consume them. But, as previously detailed, the dream deflated like a dancing man made of air who’s lost his hose. And then the phoenix: Pearl’s. The mountain filled with talk of its fine-dining aspirations and its new head-chef and co-owner, who hailed from the culinary scene in Northern California. She knew the mixology movement. She liked the menu of drinks I brought to my interview. I convinced her I could expand the market for them. She hired me. So began my days of tending bar on the plateau, where change comes as slowly as the erosion of the surrounding mountains that created the plateau to begin with — which is to say that most of the customers ordered beer. OH You can find Greensboro native Jane Borden, author of I Totally Meant To Do That, in L.A. now — or at JaneBorden.com or via twitter.com/JaneBorden. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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O.Henry 33
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True South
Hold the Aioli And don’t even talk to me about sweet potatoes
By Susan Kelly
My first fast food was pineapple
rings served straight from the squatty green Del Monte can alongside Chef Boyardee little pizzas warmed in the toaster oven. This was fast food because my mother was having a dinner party and she needed to feed us fast. I loved that combo of metallic sweet and salty acidic crunch. Today those flavors would have some fancy pants term like “sweet and savory.” My foodie sister-in-law in Raleigh would understand. I don’t even understand her tweets. Catawba rabbit w vibrant pureed cararots, bl trumpets with earthy cihianti….,,,
Long Johnw blubry+ricotta fr@monutsDonuts is my style; NC sweet potato+horchata are destined for my boys’ bfast Jennifer, the sister-in-law, is one of those people who just know culinary minutiae: that adding crabmeat to an otherwise ordinary potato soup will be delicious, or that arugula marries well with watermelon. I have never been part of that cognoscenti. I can, however, use words like cognoscenti with confidence. I can also coin cooking words. Nart, for example. Nart is a verb that describes using a food processor, whose etymology stems from the proper noun Cuisinart. Correct usage looks like this: “I narted the rotten bananas for banana bread.” My family as a whole expends a lot of time and effort — and opinions — on food. When we’re all at the beach together, my sisters take pictures of their lunches. Truly. It’s a competition of plate tastes and appearance. Some three-bean salad at 4 o’clock, crackers with pimento cheese at 5. A half chicken salad sammie, several bread and butter pickles, a wee dab of leftover tomato pie from the night before, ditto the cold shrimp with a light coating of cocktail sauce, some of those suspiciously slick pre-cut knuckle-sized carrots with hummus. “I am so bummed,” one sister will say, studying the other’s plate, because she forgot there was some roasted okra hidden in the far corner of the fridge. When I get home from the beach, the Fig Newtons in the cupboard have gone hard as bullets. I am so bummed. At 9, my youngest sister said, “When I grow up, I’m going to make enough money to buy nice things.” Like what? I asked, expecting cars, clothes, jewels. “Heinz ketchup instead of Hunt’s,” she said. Talk about your worthy aspirations! While other budding scientists were building weather stations, my nephew’s eighth-grade science project was titled “What Method The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Works Best?” It featured various old chestnuts about how to chop onions without weeping: holding the onion under water while cutting (I ask you, who manages that feat?), and holding a wad of white bread in your mouth. The winner was simply to don swim goggles, always a fashionable kitchen look. My question is this: Why not just nart the dang onions? As an adviser for the roundly dreaded college application essay, I was finally rewarded with the perfect prompt one year: What is your favorite comfort food and why? At last, something my students and I could metaphorically sink our teeth into. Why labor over Uncle Jimmy as my Most Respected Person or an Eagle Scout project as my Proudest Achievement when you could write about all the varieties of comfort food? The road trip comfort food of Nabs and a Coke; the getting over the 24-hour throw-ups comfort food of scrambled eggs and grits; the tailgate comfort food of fried chicken; the Christmas morning comfort food of Moravian Sugar Cake; the late night comfort food of cold pizza; the — wait. My pupil has fled. Was it the mention of the throw-ups? Or maybe he divined that leadership qualities can’t really be addressed by writing about barbecue. Well, it’s been said before: College is wasted on the young. I suppose food can only be written about with authority by famous television cooks. Those celebrity chefs, however, are a fraud, and real cooks know it. Real cooks cuss when the gnocchi clots into one big soggy dumpling. Real cooks shuck, silk and shave a dozen ears of Silver Queen for stewed corn to take to a sick friend and cry when they realize the milk they added had gone bad, just as they realize that they accidentally used a candy thermometer instead of a meat thermometer and it melted inside the pork roast. Real cooks have kitchen shelves that look like mine, where the cookbooks are lined up like an exhibit on domestication, representatives of each era of my marriage and culinary efforts. Here are the homely (dowdy, matronly) spiral-bound paperback Junior League volumes, the recipes featuring cream of mushroom soup and Velveeta, and titled “Ladies Day Out Stew,” laughable and tender. Then comes the new wave, the Silver Palates, with charming pen-and-ink drawings, when arugula and aioli were a different language altogether. All those good intentions — Try this! I’ve innocently written in the margins — still captive, still somehow alive, in those cookbooks. But never mind the effort and fuss, here to save us is Martha Stewart’s Quick Cook, proving you can be gourmet and effortless too. Beside Martha are the cookbooks dedicated to a single topic: Pasta Perfect, Soups, Grilling, Desserts. Now, it seems, we’ve returned to the Junior League: fancier hardback versions with enticing, lush color photographs of Kentucky Derby Pickup Supper or Oscar Night Buffet. Still the party menus. Still the names of contributors. And still my hopeful handwritten intentions: Try this! OH In a former life, Susan Kelly published five novels, won some awards, did some teaching, and made a lot of speeches. These days, she’s freelancing and making up for all that time she spent indoors writing novels. February 2017
O.Henry 35
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The Pleasures of Life Dept.
Mystery Date A love story incognito
By Maria Johnson
Want to hear a cool love story?
OK, but no real names and dates. Because if you see real names and dates, you’re eyes will glaze over and your mind will dash away, and you’ll feel no connection. Which you should. Because there is one — to Greensboro and to life in general. So, here is the story of a couple – we’ll call them Dee and Jim — who were each other’s second loves. Bonus points if you figure out their real identities before the end. If you want to cheat as you go, check the footnotes. Dee was born in Greensboro, in a very religious home. Her family moved away when she was a baby. Eventually, they landed in Philadelphia, where her father went bankrupt. Times were tough, so Dee’s mother took in renters. Meanwhile, Dee married a lawyer, her first husband. He was a good guy. They had two boys. Right after Dee’s second son was born, a nasty illness swept the city (1). People were hurling blood and dropping like flies. Dee’s in-laws died. Then her husband died. Then her infant son died on the same day as her husband. Boom, black hole. Four family members gone. Dee was 25 and widowed, with a toddler son. They went to live with her mother. One of her mother’s tenants, a guy named Aaron, had a friend from college who wanted to meet Dee. So Aaron introduced them. Incidentally, Aaron later shot and killed a dude and somehow avoided going to jail, but that’s another story, maybe even a hit Broadway musical (2). But back to Dee and Jim. They would have seemed like an odd couple to most people.
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Jim was seventeen years older than Dee, and he was generally described as taciturn, which is a nice way of saying he was a cold fish. Dee, on the other hand, was ebullient, which is a fancy way of saying she was full of life. Jim was a little guy, 5-foot-4, maybe 100 pounds soaking wet. A real shrimp. Dee was 5-foot-7, and let’s just say she was a substantial woman. Jim was crackling smart, a well-known writer and thinker (3). Dee didn’t have much schooling, but she had off-the-charts people skills. Both of them had suffered broken hearts. Jim had dated lots of women, and he’d been engaged once, but his fiancée jilted him. Dee hadn’t dated much, but she’d lost half a family. They hit it off. Jim wooed her in writing. Sometimes, he recruited other people to write for him. One time, he got Dee’s cousin to write: “He thinks so much of you in the day that he has lost his tongue, at night he dreams of you and starts in his sleep calling on you to relieve his flame for he burns to such an excess that he will be shortly consumed.” Mmmmhmmm. He had it bad. Jim proposed to Dee in writing. I’m not sure of his exact words, but it was along the lines of, “Will u marry me ?,” only in very nice handwriting. He was double-espresso-and-a-Red-Bull nervous, waiting for her reply, which also came in writing. She was traveling, you know, taking her time. But, of course, she said yes. One can only assume that she didn’t want him to burst into flames. Plus, he was down with adopting her son. But the marriage cost Dee: Her church kicked her out because Jim wasn’t one of them, but she was OK with it. She’d probably had her fill of the church after they tossed her pops for not paying his debts. And frankly, being outside the church freed her up to chuck the grubbies and dress with some flair. She and Jim moved to Washington, and Jim took a big job (4). He traveled February 2017
O.Henry 37
Pleasures of Life Dept.
Globally inspired food from chef Kristina fuller
photos - Todd Turner
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a lot, and met a lot of foreign big shots. Dee was an outstanding hostess, one of those people who remembers everyone’s name and makes you feel at ease no matter where you come from or what you think about politics and such. She entertained a lot, and I mean a lot, mainly because the president and vice president of the company were widowers, and when it came time for soirées, they were like, “Boiled potatoes, anyone (5)?” So they gave Dee control, and she did it right. She threw lavish dinners and weeknight cocktail parties called “squeezes” because everyone wanted to squeeze in. Even Jim, who was a rather uptight fellow, loosened up in her presence, showing off his knowledge of wines and telling funny stories. Like I said, Dee was a live wire, a bit of a rebel. She wore turbans spiked with feathers. She befriended people from different social classes. She gave money to charities. She served ice cream atop little custom-made dishes that looked like urns. She dipped snuff. She was an all-around spunky lass. Jim loved her. And she loved him. They chased each other around the house. Sometimes, houseguests saw her pick him up and carry him around, laughing. In his letters, he sent her “a thousand kisses,” even though she dipped snuff, which is saying something. Maybe because she was liberal with affection — or more likely because other people were gunning for his job — people whispered about her carrying on with the president. The whispers were never proven. You know how people are. Eventually, when Jim got the top job, he and Dee moved to a huge house, and she decked the halls. Called in designers. Hung red velvet drapes. The works (6). Then, just when Dee had the place looking dope, war broke out (7). One day, the shooters stalked Dee’s neighborhood. The security guards at her house split. Jim was off, fighting. Dee was left with a few others (8). They were like, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” And Dee was like, “Not without that painting?” And they were like, “WHHAAAAAAAA?” And Dee was like, “That’s a really important painting on the wall, and we’re not leaving without it (9).” So they tried to take the painting, but it was bolted to the wall. And Dee was like, “Bust up the frame, and take the canvas.” And they were like “What-EVER.” So they busted up the frame and got the canvas, and one of them started to roll up the canvas, and she pitched a fit. “Don’t roll it up, knucklehead! You’ll ruin it!” she said, or words to that effect. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
226 S. ELM STREET, GREENSBORO, NC 336 333 2993 OscarOglethorpe.com
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February 2017
O.Henry 39
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Pleasures of Life Dept. And they were like, “If you weren’t so cool, and we weren’t so afraid of being shot for running, we’d leave your sorry turbaned ass here.” Again, I paraphrase. The enemy set fire to the house a few hours after Dee left. Later, she found Jim and they returned to a roofless, smoldering heap. The acrid smell of smoke clung to Dee, and she never forgave the rat bastards who torched her crib (10). But she and Jim hung in there. They started over again. They found another place to live, and Jim carried on with his career. When he retired, they moved to the country. He worked as a university president for a while (11). He died at age 85. Dee moved back to D.C., mortgaged the farm, and lived a somewhat impoverished life, mainly because her son, the one whom Jim had adopted, turned out to be a gambler and a drunk. You’re welcome, kiddo. Dee died in D.C. at the age of 81. She was buried there, but later, her remains were dug up and moved to a Virginia graveyard, where her spirited bones lie next to Jim’s (12). R.I.P., Dolley and James Madison. Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. If you want to know more about Dee, check out the Dolley Madison Collection at the Greensboro History Museum Admission is free. OH (Endnotes) 1 Yellow fever 2 Aaron was Aaron Burr. The musical is Hamilton. 3 He wrote most of the Federalist Papers and the Constitution, and he wrote and sponsored the Bill of Rights. He’s known as the Father of the Constitution. 4 Secretary of State under Thomas Jefferson 5 The widowers were President Thomas Jefferson; first-term veep Aaron Burr; and secondterm veep George Clinton (no, not the funky one). 6 The house was the first White House. 7 The War of 1812 8 Her assistants and house slaves
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40 O.Henry
February 2017
9 The painting was Gilbert Stuart’s famous portrait of George Washington 10 The British 11 At the University of Virginia 12 At Montpelier, their former plantation, now a National Historic Landmark in Orange County, Virginia. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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Birdwatch
The Gull Next Door
Winter brings ring-billed gulls inland By Susan Campbell
Gulls? Here in the middle of the state? It may
be puzzling but, indeed, you may see a few soaring over the nearby mall or standing around on the local playing fields. Come late November — then through December and reaching their peak sometime in January — the most common species of inland gulls, ring-billed, predictably swells each winter. Highly adaptable, they happily hang out at landfills, parking lots and farm fields. Ring-billed gulls are medium-sized, easy to overlook — unless you are a birdwatcher. Flocks can easily number in the hundreds and, nowadays, are largely unaffected by human activity. Of course, it is the actions of people that have facilitated the species’ winter range expansion over the past century. Ring-billed gulls are characterized by a white head and chest, gray back and black vertical band around the bill. When perched, their black wingtips, with white spots, extend beyond the squared-off tail. The legs, like the bill, are a bright yellow. Wintering adults will exhibit gray-brown flecking on the head. Immature birds will have varying amounts of brownish streaking as well as pinkish legs and bill. It will take three full years for individuals to acquire adult plumage. Ring-billed gulls nest far to the north, on small islands across the northern tier of the United States and throughout much of Canada. They use sparsely
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
vegetated habitat and are often found sharing islands with other species of gulls and terns. Ring-billeds are known to return to their natal area to breed, often nesting mere feet from where they nested the year before. They are also likely to return to familiar wintering grounds as well. They have a highly tuned sense of direction, using a built-in compass as well as landmarks (such as rivers and mountain ranges) to successfully navigate in spring and fall. In the early 1900s, the millinery trade, egg collectors and human encroachment in habitats significantly affected the species’ population numbers. But with the passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1917, ring-billed gull numbers began to stabilize. No longer was it legal to shoot adults for their feathers or collect their eggs for food. Additionally, introduction of fishes such as the alewife and inundation of new habitat in the western Great Lakes increased breeding productivity in the decades that followed. Not only has the increase in garbage dumps and farmlands created more foraging habitat for these birds but also new reservoirs. Although ring-billeds prefer insects, worms, fish, small rodents, as well as grains and berries, they are not picky eaters — and therefore highly adaptable. Reproductive success, thanks to an abundance of food, has been even higher in the last thirty years — especially around the Great Lakes and the Eastern United States. As a result, this species has become a nuisance in some areas. Control measures (scarecrows, noisemakers, materials that move in the wind) have been employed but with very little success. Large flocks of ring-billed gulls are likely to get the attention of birdwatchers come late winter. It is then that other species may get mixed in. It is possible to tease out a herring gull or perhaps a great black-backed gull from the dozens sitting on the pavement or floating on a local lake, if one has good optical equipment — and a lot of patience. OH Susan would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos. She can be contacted by email at susan@ncaves.com, or by calling (910) 949-3207. February 2017
O.Henry 43
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Wandering Billy
Shaving Grace
And new life on South Elm Street
Willie Brooks, owner of Service Barber Shop By Billy Eye
“No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded.” — Yogi Berra
PHOTOGRAPH BY SAM FROELICH
My pal Taylor Bays and Eye had
a notion to visit the old high-rise Hilton Hotel across from Greensboro College, now a luxe residential facility dubbed The District at West Market. I wondered if the folks there read O.Henry magazine’s feature a few months back about Elvis Presley’s experience encamped in their top floor suite during the early to mid-1970s when he thrilled standing room only crowds at the Coliseum.
According to the receptionist that story was indeed quite popular, and it turns out the lady who lives in the penthouse suite resides there specifically because of that Elvis connection. Even more fascinating is the mystery as to what, or who, has, on occasion, been rearranging the lobby furniture in the early morning hours. Consensus is, it’s the restless spirit of Elvis Presley at play. As good a guess as any given that security cameras consistently reveal no one in The Art & Soul of Greensboro
that area when any impromptu redecorating occurs. On a related but sadder note Francine York, Elvis’s co-star in Kissin’ Cousins (1964) quoted in that O.Henry article, passed away a few weeks ago. She was 80. Francine was a sparkling comedienne and dramatic actress known for her roles on Batman, Bewitched, Lost in Space, Columbo and dozens of other classic TV shows and movies. While I’ll miss her upbeat effervescence and imaginative Christmas cards (This year she posed as Wonder Woman), Hollywood has lost a consummate party hostess, the very embodiment of that charm, comaraderie, good humor and, most especially in her case, glamor that defined Tinsel Town’s golden era.
***
The other day as I was passing the 400 block of East Market — a compact shopping plaza constructed around 1951 — the ancient railroad overpass nearby reminded me that decades ago it was the line of demarcation separating blacks and whites. In fact, blacks would pass through one side of the bridge while whites traversed the other, hence the dual tunnels. In an interview conducted a few years ago, longtime downtown restaurateur Minas Dascalakis (Princess Cafe) remembered what that was like back in the 1940s: “You go down East Market Street there is a bridge, you know what they used to call it? The Bullpen. You’re supposed to be like a bull to go through, that’s how rough it was. Always had two police officers. One very big guy was Lt. Mitchum, he February 2017
O.Henry 45
Wandering Billy
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46 O.Henry
February 2017
could pick up a 200-pound man, lift him up and throw him on the ground. There were no questions, no questions. There was another officer, a black man about 350 in weight, on the other side of the Bullpen.” Strolling along the southern side of what used to be the Bullpen, I remember when the area was the erstwhile home to the Eat Well Café and The Sportsman, a pool hall. Today it’s mostly in transition but one storefront is as lively and vibrant as any time before. At Service Barber Shop, proprietor Willie Brooks has been clipping and buzzing for more than forty years, and for a long time before that at his other nearby location. I knew I was in for an authentic experience when he shot me that look one gives when a salty cracker walks in off the street. You know, like, “What’s this jerk selling?” Before Willie Brooks opened in 1975, AfricanAmericans were largely discouraged from owning a business west of the tracks just a few yards away. He operates a traditional barber shop in every sense, from the chrome and leather swivel chairs to the combs soaking in blue Barbicide; undoubtedly a place where community news is disseminated in much the same way it was before the Internet simultaneously connected and separated us. Farther west on the 300 block of East Market, finishing touches are being applied to a cavernous event space christened the 1922 Carolina Cadillac Company Building where Adamson Cadillac Olds sold Fleetwoods and Rocket 88 Coupes before it became the first home of another venerable Caddie dealer. However, as Mr. Brooks tells me, “They wouldn’t sell black people a Cadillac back then.” Ironic given the name of the dealership.
***
Alarmed that a “For Lease” sign was tacked to the front of Glitters on the corner of South Elm and West Washington. I stopped in to talk with Desiree Brooks about what I hoped wasn’t another business closing in the city center. Her father Gary Barskey opened what was once euphemistically known as a “head shop” in the former Silver’s Five and Dime a quarter century ago. “Downtown is not very retail-friendly,” she told me. Desiree expressed what a lot of people are saying these days: “Restaurants and bars are all that’s down here now. But after you eat, or before you eat, you like to wander around where there are shops you can go in. There needs to be more of a balance.” The good news is that Glitters is moving farther down South Elm to where Coe’s Grocery sold produce beginning in the 1930s, close to The Railyard off of Lewis Street, where all the action is right now. OH Billy Eye would love to hear any suggestions you might have as to where he should wander next, write to him at billy@tvparty.com. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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February 2017
Grievance
The winter wind is searching for a love To love her like one loves the fall, spring, summer, seasons better thought of Than her silent biting chill, her pall. Forgotten, crystal blooms on bare-branched trees, Crisping air that skates on glassy lakes Wakes the spirit, opens sleepy lungs to breathe While snowflakes choose their own design to make. Now she hisses sleet through blizzard teeth, Love me for who I am and what I bring. There is no resurrection without death, Without a sleep, no dreams, no notes to sing. Hear my lonely recitative, Say you love me. Say it to me, please.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
— Sarah Edwards
February 2017
O.Henry 49
50 O.Henry
February 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Doughnut Central Don’t look now, but, the Gate City is on its way to becoming Greensbordough
T
By Annie Ferguson • Photographs by Mark Wagoner
he second coming of Dunkin’ Donuts to the South was well-timed in my little corner of Greensboro. The year was 2008, and less than a mile from my office — where I was working on United Airlines’ inflight magazine with a talented — and doughnut-obsessed — group of editors, I could suddenly find a Double Chocolate doughnut. What?! I hadn’t had one so easily accessible since childhood, when family and friends would convene at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Salisbury after Sunday Mass. What’s more, I was pregnant. If anyone was more deserving of a serving of Dunkin’ Donuts in the land of Krispy Kreme, it was me. After all, I was eating for two. My fellow editors acknowledged my, er, delicate condition by occasionally delivering my favorites right to my desk. But the coming of Dunkin’ Donuts was just a foreshadowing of what became a veritable donut renaissance. Forget the multinational chains with their big-buck advertising campaigns. It was small, enterprising family-owned businesses that turned Greensboro into a mecca for the deep-fried, sugary confection that I still crave. Competing against one another to see who can come up with the most innovative and over-the-top treat, these mom’n’pop shops produce doughnuts that are anything but run-of-the-mill. All are homemade with love — and some with the haute cuisine flourishes reminiscent of the cupcake revolution of the early 2000s (but being doughnuts, not nearly as precious, and a lot easier to bite into). In 2010 — when I was back to eating for just one, dontcha know — Lian Ly and her family opened Donut World on West Market Street. Since then they’ve opened locations on Battleground Avenue and Gate City Boulevard. That was followed by the opening of the trendy Rise Biscuits Donuts in Friendly Center. Then, I heard news outlets heralding the arrival of the Outer Banks institution Duck Donuts. So as not to begin waddling like a duck, I enlisted a little help from my friends to serve as a sort of elite product testing unit to separate the best from the rest. But I reserved the universal favorite for myself and my husband. With a trio of shops in Greensboro, Donut World has quickly become nothing short of a pilgrimage site. The cinnamon roll donut combines two of my favorite pastries, and it lived up to my sugary dreams. My husband swears by the apple fritter, emphasis on apple, with lots of butter contributing to the confection’s sticky splendor. My ultimate preference is probably their sugar-raised donut, (meaning, an extra dose of sugar used in crystalized form as a topping), but most folks seem to get in touch with their inner Homer Simpson and go for the salty-sweet, the less conventional bacon maple bar. All the donuts are substantial and filling, yet contain no egg. Although there’s nothing fancy about the shops themselves, the service is fast and cordial. Rise Biscuits Donuts opened its first store in Durham at Southpoint in 2012. If you want unconventional flavors (New School menu) or classic types (Old School Menu) the new Friendly Center location is the place to go. My friend Ellis Harman surprised herself when she discovered she liked the Cheerwine iced donut with a cherry on top. Kari Smith’s favorite is the quirky Fruity Pebbles creation. Cheri Timmons, who still swears by warm Original Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts, branched out with the Pineapple Basil with Pistachios (filled with basil cream and topped with pineapple glaze and chopped pistachios). This is also a great donut shop to visit if you’re wanting something savory. And just in case you know someone who, perish the thought, doesn’t like doughnuts, they can eat one of the shop’s iconic biscuits. The first Duck Donuts opened about ten years ago when Russell A. DiGilio and his family realized something was missing from where they vacation in the Outer Banks: fresh doughnuts. Yet DiGilio’s approach took this concept further with custom-made donuts served warm. The Greensboro shop opened last month in The Shops at North Elm, and there are locations up and down the East Coast as well as Ohio. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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At Duck Donuts, customers are invited to choose from a variety of coatings, toppings and drizzles made warm and fresh to order. “Eating one of their freshly made-to-order masterpieces is like waking up wrapped in a warm doughnut dough blanket,” says Lynn Gianiny, who is partial to the blueberry powdered sugar concoction. One of my former coworkers, Jason Gamble, well known for his discerning taste, used to bring Duck Donuts to Greensboro after vacations in the Outer Banks. They’re that good. I’m sure he finds the Greensboro location a little more convenient, where he recommends the chocolate with chocolate sprinkles. Perhaps Greensboro’s vibrant doughnut scene is a result of the relative donut repression in our neighboring Twin City. Well, at least as far as variety is concerned. Gamble, a Winston-Salem resident, claims there are no decent nonchain doughnut shops in the city. That’s probably just smart business since Winston is home base to some pretty famous doughnuts — Krispy Kreme Original Glazed. A man named Vernon Rudolph bought a secret yeast-raised recipe from a New Orleans French chef, rented a building in what is now historic Old Salem in Winston-Salem and began selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts to local grocery stores in 1937. The tantalizing scent wafted into the streets, and passers-by stopped to ask if they could buy hot doughnuts. Rudolph decided to cut a hole in an exterior wall so he could sell hot Original Glazed doughnuts directly to customers on the sidewalk. No longer relying on scent alone, in 1992 Krispy Kreme added the red neon sign outside Krispy Kreme shops that beckon to passersby, “Hot Now,” making a stop almost irresistible. Watching doughnuts roll right out of the oven at the Stratford Road location in Winston (one of the earliest) is a local pastime, and residents swear the goods here taste better than anywhere else. The city — indeed all of the Triad — takes its glazed doughnuts so seriously, they teach ’em young to appreciate the treat: At the Children’s Museum of Winston-Salem, kids can play Krispy Kreme Doughnut Factory so as to learn cooperative play while sending play doughnuts through a conveyor belt. In general, doughnuts are most often made with a soft dough leavened with yeast (Krispy Kreme) or baking powder (Dunkin’ Donuts), shaped into a ring and deep fried then sprinkled with sugar — and sometimes filled with crème or jelly. What’s great about the family-run shops in Greensboro is that you
can often find all three under one roof. In the United States, the first mention of doughnuts in print occurred in the early 19th century when Washington Irving wrote about Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (New York): “The table was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called dough nuts, or oly koeks.” The oly koeks (oil cakes) did not have holes. The same is true for similar pastries found all over Central Europe, where they are often associated with saints’ days and festivals. Around the mid-19th century, doughnuts started featuring the characteristic hole we know today. The Pennsylvania Dutch are often credited to be the first to make donuts with holes in the center, perfect for tunke (dunking). To add an international flair to your donut connoisseurship, try a zeppole, a warm doughnut sans hole, made fresh at restaurants such as Elizabeth’s Pizza’s seven locations. These confections, sprinkled with cane sugar, are traditionally enjoyed on Saint Joseph’s Day (March 19) in Italy. The recently opened ZC Hawaiian BBQ in Golden Gate Shopping Center has cinnamon-sugar malasadas, originally a pre-Lent treat in Portugal and introduced to Hawaii by Portuguese immigrants in the late-19th century. Once upon a time, they were reserved for Fat Tuesday to use up the lard and sugar on hand before the season of abstaining from such pleasures. In Greensboro, it can be difficult to come by Israeli sufganiyah, which is a jelly-filled donut made for Hanukkah. However, they are sometimes sold at synagogues and temples as fundraisers during the holiday season. But rejoice! The new Rise Biscuits Donuts at Friendly Center sells a raspberry jelly –filled sufganiyah. Frying foods in oil — usually sufganiyah and latkes — is symbolic of one of the miracles Hanukkah honors in which a small amount of oil lasted eight days (although chef/rabbi/and cookbook author Gil Marks asserts the prevalence of sufganiyah is attributable to a job-creating program for the Israeli baking industry in the 1920s). But you don’t have to be Israeli to be meshuggana for shugga. Just line up at any of the Gate City’s new doughnut emporiums and beat the cold with a sweet treat that’s hot. Now. OH Thanks to her friends’ help eating donuts, Annie Ferguson managed to not put on any pounds during the research for this article.
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“Eating one of their freshly made-to-order masterpieces is like waking up wrapped in a warm doughnut dough blanket . . .�
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Way to
Go
For the ultimate send-off, hire a funeral band By Grant Britt Photograph by Sam Froelich
I
’m gonna blow you away. I made good on that promise in Florida many times, playing trumpet in the Key West Funeral Band in the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. That’s not so unusual in itself, but the fact that I’m a white boy born in North Carolina — and was the only band member of that persuasion — gives my accomplishment a little different perspective. The 150-year-old Key West Funeral Band was the only one of its kind outside of New Orleans, and some of the grandsons of the founders are still current band members. I first found out about the band when they came marching by the house where I was living in The Conch Republic. I came running out and stood gaping as they passed by in all their ragged splendor, then followed them all the way to the graveyard. I finally worked up enough courage to approach the man I assumed to be the bandleader because he was wearing a captain’s hat, and asked him what the joyful noise was about. Thinking I was just another tourist inquiring about the quaint native customs, he gave me the short version. “It’s a funeral, white folks!” he snapped before turning back to the graveside festivities. After the service, however, I convinced him that I wasn’t a tourist and in fact lived right around the corner from him and had a genuine interest in the proceedings. That’s when he relaxed and opened up a bit. It helped that I was familiar with the music. I am a confirmed backslid Baptist, a condition brought on by my abiding disrespect of authority of any kind, secular and especially ecumenical. I also have a healthy appetite for alcohol. Though estranged from the church, I have retained both a love and admiration for the hymns. The Baptists can’t abide drinking or dancing, but they’ve got some catchy rhythms suitable for either activity, and I recognized a few of them being played that afternoon. In the course of the conversation, the bandleader mentioned that they were looking for a trumpet player. I was in my late 20s at the time, and although I hadn’t played since the fifth grade, I told him I was the man and he set up an audition for the following week. I went back to the trailer my wife and were renting in Key West’s Old Town in a neighborhood settled by the island’s black Bahamian residents and dug out the tarnished, battered horn I had ever since I was thrown out of band for smoking cigarettes. I commenced to drive the neighbors, dogs and family to the brink of madness with my horrendous bleating. By the time of the audi-
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tion, I had re-familiarized myself with The Broadman Hymnal, that great Baptist musical celebration of blood and salvation, and had honed my bleating to a semiprofessional level. I passed the audition and was inducted into the band. This consisted of the consumption of a bellyful of beer, frenzied backslapping and the eliciting of a couple of promises — that I could perform under the influence and could get Sunday afternoons off, as that is the popular planting time in those parts. There was one other condition. I had to assemble a uniform — white shirt, black pants and black shoes. Simple enough — for most people. But this was the mid-1970s and I was in favor of an alternative lifestyle, and, being of the hippie persuasion, had thrown out all my corporate togs before relocating from Carolina to Key West. I owned nothing that was the least bit respectable, so I’d have to make do. Let’s see — here’s a pair of blue pants — that’s close to black, and maybe my fellow band members won’t notice the 2-inch-wide red stripe running down the outside of the leg. And as for shoes, these boots ought to work. So what if the sides are green, red and blue tapestry with 4-inch Cuban heels? The pants will cover them — most of the time. And as for a white shirt, why I’ll just pull out the guayabera, the ornate shirt worn by barbers and Cubans that somebody gave me as a joke. I looked like a Cuban executive or an escapee from a Haitian disco, but it’ll work, I thought. The other band members thought otherwise and rode me for about six months. They finally gave up when I told them it was a marketing technique to add a little color to the band and that it was good PR. They thought I was crazy, but since I could play the horn and showed up on time, I guess they figured that dressing a little funny could be overlooked, and they finally left me alone. Now it’s time to get down to business. There you are, all laid out in your Sunday best, looking natural, or as natural as a dead person can look. But looks don’t matter when you’re in the situation you’re in. You’d get a pretty good sendoff even if we weren’t there, because in this part of town, people down here turn a funeral into a celebration. But this is your lucky day. Somebody in the family has scraped together a few extra bucks and hired the funeral band to see that you go out in style. But first we’ve got to loosen up a little. We usually gather in Regular Fellows, a little club with the coldest A.C. and the hottest jukebox this side of Nassau to have a few tall, cool Ballantine Ales. For the uninitiated, Ballantine is a greenish malt beverage with the odor of kerosene and a kick like a booster rocket.
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About five of these bad boys running around in your system will have you speaking in tongues. In short, it’s a quasi-religious experience, just the thing for a funeral warm-up.
D
on’t infer from this that we got blind before a job. We just needed a little lubrication, as this stuff was thirsty work, and it’s warm down there. We’re ready. We plant ourselves on your front porch if you got one, or in front of your house if you don’t. Here you come out the door feet first, in the hands of six strong men, and we blow at you until they load you in the hearse. It’s a good-sized blow. Depending on the stature of the deceased in the community, which determines how many people will come out and line the streets to see us strut our stuff, there can be as many as ten of us who have rolled out for the occasion. With a bass, drum, a snare, a pair of tenor saxes, a clarinet, a couple of ’bones and as many as three trumpets on a good day (and only me on a bad one), we could stir up quite a breeze. Now that we’ve got you tucked away for your last limo ride, we line up in front of you and behind the flower car. We used to follow the hearse, but the exhaust fumes nearly laid all of us to rest, so we spoke with the undertaker and he made other arrangements. We always try to follow Satchel Page’s admonition about never looking back, because something might be gaining on you, and because the last time we did, something was. On that memorable outing, the hearse stalled and couldn’t be restarted. The pallbearers took the coffin out and put it on rollers for the few final yards into the graveyard. Unfortunately, the hearse had stalled at the top of the only hill in Key West, Solares Hill, which is all of 6 feet above sea level. To complicate matters, the deceased was of considerable bulk. What’s more, the rollers in the hearse were well oiled, and before the pallbearers could get a good grip on the casket, it had gotten away and was headed straight for the band. We turned around when we heard the pallbearers shout, then commenced the fastest double-time in band history, still blasting away. When the pallbearers finally caught up with their charge, we were already in the graveyard hiding behind the biggest tombstones we could find. We all stayed put until they lowered that gentleman in the ground, for as somebody in the crowd remarked, he just wasn’t ready to go yet, and we wanted no part of any more escape attempts. But that was the exception. Most of the jobs were routine, with the only danger being of a dental nature. As any marching band brass section member can The Art & Soul of Greensboro
tell you, the meeting of enamel and brass when you step in a pothole and your mouthpiece gives you a good rap in the choppers is not a good thing. It hurts like hell, it plays hob with the rhythm and it’s messy — you get blood all over your nice white shirt. But there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. You just spit out the teeth, wipe your mouth and keep playing, because we’re just getting started. We’re going to church now, and this is the toughest part of the job. Since we don’t have a lot of material, we compensate by playing each tune five times. That’s not too bad if it’s a small funeral, but you’ve got a whole lot of friends, you rascal you, and so once we’ve marched to the church, we’ve got to stand outside and blow until the whole funeral procession, including all the mourners have gone in. When we’ve blown the chorus of “Nearer My God To Thee” twentyfive times in a row and the people are still lined up on the sidewalk with no end in sight, we start to get a little edgy. All that Ballantine Ale we loaded onboard earlier is starting to back up in our throats, the sweat is pouring into our eyes and our lips are swollen to the size of truck tires. Finally all your friends, lovers, family and insurance agents have straggled in and the wailing begins. This is where we break off. All of the services down here are of the open casket variety, and I don’t care how natural you look, none of us wants to be looking at your ugly puss for two and a half hours while the preacher whoops and testifies, and the professional mourners your family paid for are screaming and falling out of the pews and rolling in the aisles. It’s not that we’re disrespectful, but doing this two or three times a week, all that concentrated grief can makes us a little crazy. So we take a serious break and go down on the strip to pass the time. We know you ain’t going anywhere. After a few more tall cool ones or maybe a little man, as a half pint of hooch is known around here — and maybe a game of dominoes in Bop Brown’s Jazzy Spot — we’re rested and ready to roll once again. This is the best part of the day. All we’ve got left to do is the home stretch, and just like they do in New Orleans, we’re gonna strut. The city in its wisdom had banned us from rocking out on the way back home from the graveyard because it causes too much commotion and ties up traffic, so we’re gonna do our strutting on the way to the bone yard. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
We’ll have plenty of company, and they’re in high spirits as well. Most of the congregation has sneaked out of the church at some point during the two hours the service had been going on and has been doing the same thing we have. The Ladies Auxiliary Choir has been warming up in church during the proceedings, and they’re going to be right behind us. The streets are lined with well-lubricated participants, and we trot out our zestiest stuff for this part of the journey.
T
he ’bones are wailing, their slides hooking unwary onlookers if they lean in too close to the band. My whole body is vibrating from the blowback from my horn and the others around me. The bass drummer is pounding so hard that the beats are coming back off the walls of the buildings we pass and slamming us in the heart. There ain’t nothing finer — it’s like walking with the King. As one blissful mourner once shouted as we passed by, “Man, you guys sound so good I wish I was dead!” When we hit the graveyard, it gets even better. All that marble acts like an echo chamber and you can hear the notes running around seconds after you’ve played ’em. We march over to the grave and play one more chorus of “Lead Me To Calvary” as the family gathers around us. The sun is setting, the choir is humming softly in the background, and we finish up in a circle, playing softly as the coffin is set down for the last time. That’s it for us. We don’t stay for the last rites for the same reason we don’t go in the church. It’s just too much. But still, the day is not over for us. All of us have full-time jobs, for the death rate in this little town won’t allow us to make a living as a band. But that’s fine too — we couldn’t take a lot of this, and at the prices we charge, there’d have to be an epidemic for us to make a killing at this. So that’s it for you. Everybody said they had a good time. Sorry you missed it. Tell all your friends — well, maybe not. But the word’ll get around anyhow. If you want the best, the Key West Funeral Band is the only way to go. After all, it’s your funeral. OH Grant Britt is still blowing O.Henry readers away, but with his keyboard, not a trumpet. February 2017
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Story of a House
Worthwhile Artist Lauren Worth’s house of light and fantasy By Cynthia Adams Photographs by Amy Freeman
L
auren Worth makes her way to the back of her sunny house. Like the rest, it is uncluttered and peaceful. As she walks, she chats about how she and her husband, David, bought it after a “premature” downsizing to Ascot Point. They discovered they were too young to move into that situation, she explains, with a half-grin, half-grimace. Neither retired nor seriously contemplating doing so, they soon exited Ascot Point. And yet, she adds, downsizing was a good exercise. Having gotten rid of most of their furniture in that prior, premature move, the Worths found the current, larger home. It is not a McMansion but a house of wonderful scale, occupying a quiet street in Irving Park. They furnished it largely with things taken from a mountain home. Worth laughs. “We were too practical to go buy all new furniture just because we had gotten rid of everything.” With a shake of her head she adds, “We would never do that.” The house itself is open and modern, but it is the back half of the Worth dwelling that makes the statement. So she likes that this new house (built in 2006) suggests a vacation home, in Worth’s mind at least. That has something to do with the interiors being shot-through with light, and also the nearby pool, a languid, liquid piece of art. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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“I guess you could say that all our artworks have become a collection of sorts because most of the works are by artists with an N.C. affiliation,” 60 O.Henry
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It is a nice counterpoint to the large cook’s kitchen that opens onto a den with a dramatic, two-story fireplace. The den, with a wall of glass, in turn, opens onto the rectangular-shaped — and dazzling — pool. It’s the sort that suggests a famous someone just left one of the lounge chairs to call her broker or agent. The pool occupies most of the backyard. It is flanked by a fireplace and outdoor living room at one end and a bar at the other. The sum of this means easy entertaining for a crowd of a hundred or more — or even their son’s recent engagement party. The smooth marriage of the house and pool exudes California Cool, a vibe that says, “Let me entertain you.” As the afternoon sun moves, the pool’s surface becomes a silky trampoline, playfully bouncing light back to the interior of the house. Yet the cultivated sparseness of the architecture and interiors also makes for a perfect canvas. The neutrally decorated walls become the perfect backdrop for the art that Worth collects. Or rather, as she explains, art that she has gathered. Pausing, Worth says she especially feels fortunate to find herself here, in such a sunny space — especially given she also works here in an upstairs studio; serendipitously, it already existed when she and David moved here two and a half years ago. She stops to point out pieces of artwork the couple have collected, lingering to explain why she loves the particular artist. (Worth has been long involved with The Public Art Endowment through the Community Foundation, and has been a hard-working advocate for public art.) “I also buy art from artists I respect and know personally, and it gives me great joy to stroll by their work every day in my home. I buy mostly 2-D work but also ceramics and sculpture.” Worth is a working artist herself, which is why it all becomes so personal. “I basically buy art because I like it, and I’m not consciously building a collection or buying it as an investment,” Worth told me in an email. “I guess you could say that all our artworks have become a collection of sorts because most of the works are by artists with an N.C. affiliation,” she wrote. “N.C. has a rich history is supporting artists and offering nurturing, educational and highly creative environments for artists (such as GreenHill, N.C. School of the Arts, Penland School of Crafts, The Governor’s School, Weaver Education Center).” Worth well knows how difficult it is for artists to make a living selling their artwork. “That’s another reason I want to keep supporting other artists and add to the work we have.” The artistic impulse must feel like a genetic imperative. Worth’s uncle, Marshall Bouldin, and his son, Jason Bouldin, are artists. “They are outstanding portrait painters, and I’ve learned a great deal from both of them over the years,” Worth explains. Personally, however, she especially likes contemporary, nonrepresentational works. In an artist statement, Worth once wrote: “I am a gardener of strangeness in the true sense of Baudelaire. For me, art is a puzzle, each piece beautiful, strange and unique, slowly forming a larger image as we begin to The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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understand its logic and intoxicating beauty. My engagement with the natural world has led me to believe that we can be sustained through playful care, reverence and stewardship of the world around us. It is my goal as an artist to cultivate curiosity and encourage the discovery of beauty in the strangest of places.” Inside her studio, she says, “I live with my own art on a daily basis in the studio, which is a blessing and a curse: I love what I do, it challenges me, but I sometimes just get sick of staring at it all the time,” she admits. Worth takes the conversation upstairs, and moves about her studio describing where she buys the handmade papers she uses in her work (usually at Penland) and how she makes the oversized stencils she uses from her own enlarged photographs taken in the deep woods in order to create mixed medium collages. Using acrylic paint, acrylic gel medium, handmade paper, photographic images, magazine clippings and handmade templates, Worth builds the multi-layered collages. Austrian painter Gustav Klimt and Swiss-German surrealist Paul Klee are inspirations to her. “There is a natural metamorphosis of the painting itself. I try to make sure that proportion, scale and composition is right,” Worth says of her artistic process. She has shown in the last year in Aspen, Colorado, the Semans Gallery in Durham and in New York. Her work is sold in New York through the Walter Wickiser Gallery, and at the Tyler White O’Brien Gallery in Greensboro and online. She has three paintings that were chosen for GreenHill’s Collector’s Choice this winter. While Worth inhabits an otherwise orderly life and home, she protests the
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studio is a mess (it isn’t) as she points to works in progress. Pausing before a 28 x 48 commission underway, she gestures to details she has created that blend paint with her own, manipulated photographic images. Her technique was developed as a result of a desire to break out of her old art forms. “I woke up one night and thought of it, seven or eight years ago. I was trying to think of something different that would capture the feeling of a tree but give me room to manipulate it. There were a lot of branches, for example,” she says, pointing to a collage, “and texture.” She chooses what to leave in, or out. Then, Worth says she further abstracted the branches “so there is a semblance of it . . . a combination of representational images and abstract geometric forms. I want there to be something left of mystery in a painting. I like to put fish in trees . . . although fish do move in trees in Alaska, where salmon spawn.” For Worth, art is a portal into a fey world where each tree branch, wisp or willow is not exactly as it appears. There is a bit of mystical, magical witchery, wonder, even quantum physics in each composition. “My paintings have a mind of their own,” she says and laughs. The outcome is beautiful and fantastical: Feathers and coral grow in trees. Using magazine clippings, for example, Worth fashioned coral to portray it as a parasite on the tree. “It is about metamorphosis. We go into the woods for the stillness we find there, but under the quiet there is all this universal flux, this constant change. “There is a semblance of a branch,” she says, pointing to a detail, “but it is a combination of representational image and abstraction.” She accepts commissions on occasion, saying that her collectors “know what The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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they like — not like what they know.” When a work is done, Worth steps away. In one titled Gossamer Delight, she painted over what was originally there because it didn’t quite please her. The ghost of the original painting bleeds through. “This is called pentimento,” she explains. “It comes from the Italian for ‘repent.’ It’s almost like we try to get rid of our sins but can never quite do it.” Now, Worth accepts, even likes, the painting that the former one has become. “Each piece skirts the border between the real and the imagined like a memory that may have been a dream,” she once said. Nor does it pierce her heart when someone is critical of her efforts, Worth says. At one of her shows, a man told her he did not care for her work. “I wondered if he would have liked more space,” she muses. Not personal space — just space within the art itself. Worth absorbed the criticism, trying to find its meaning and use. She had already been trained in the art of handling criticism in her prior life as an artist working for years at Wind Rose, a long-standing Greensboro business. (The owners have since deceased.) It was there, working in an atelier, that Worth learned to take all in stride. Wind Rose artists created unique works of art from furniture and accessories, hand painting the imported European pieces — sometimes to withering criticism of designers who reviewed the pieces designated for trade only. “It was great, really great,” Worth says of Wind Rose. It was a true artists’ studio; the years working at Wind Rose gave her confidence. There could be strangeness in beauty, she discovered. “Ned, an owner, said, keep painting balanced but asymmetrical. This gives it rhythm and tension.” It also led her to desire that things around her be beautiful, she says, and accept her own self-creation. “I consider myself a late emerging artist.” OH Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O. Henry and writes for various magazines and publications. While working in the Netherlands, she tried her best to visit all 300-plus museums there and solidified a love of art and artists.
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Left: Fly Away 48x28 2016 Above: Sunny Side Up, 36X48, 2016 Below: Juggling Act, 36X48, 2015
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
— Botanicus —
Room to Grow Boxwoods need space, in both gardens and hearts
A
By Ross Howell Jr.
pril Westerberg’s love for boxwoods goes back generations. The owner of a business that repurposes unwanted things for new uses, Westerberg and her husband, William, sell her items at the Chartreuse Barn in Thomasville and at the Holiday Show Made 4 the Holidays at the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, along with Christmas wreaths, roping and trees. Last December, my wife, Mary Leigh, had just bought boxwood roping and a fir wreath from April’s stand. I was collecting the greenery as Mary Leigh wrote a check. “You might want to wet the boxwood down before you hang it,” April said to me. “Boxwood can be a little . . . prissy.” Recognizing a kindred spirit, I launched into my tale of woe, how I’d just transplanted boxwoods from our front yard to the back, hoping to stop the depredations of a willow oak that had left the boxwood bordering our front walk in a hopeless condition of misshapen dissonance. “When you plant them,” April said, “think of a little girl, twirling in place with her arms outstretched. They need a little room. People sometimes plant them too close to other plants.” Then she looked me in the eye: “Boxwoods need to have their hair and nails done. They crave attention,” she said. “But I love them. They’re beautiful year-round. You can keep them in a pot. You can trim them into a hedge. I used boxwood in my bridal bouquet, with gardenias and Baby’s Breath.” April inherited her love of boxwoods from her great-grandparents, immigrants from Italy and Sicily. “My great-grandfather was a gardener who liked to give what he grew to others,” she said. “He loved boxwoods, and growing them became his specialty. In the spring he’d have us kids set 2-inch clippings in little plastic cups. I remember carrying egg cartons with those clippings all over the place.” In fact, it was her great-grandfather who suggested her name: “He said April was the most beautiful time of year, and that’s what my name should be. Not ‘Aprile [ap-reel-eh],’ his native Italian, but ‘April,’ because he was proud to be an American.” So “What’s in a name?,” asked the poet and playwright Shakespeare. In April’s case, it was her destiny. “The day my parents found out they were going to have me, they went out and bought a nursery in upstate New York. You could say gardening’s in my blood. My father had been mowing lawns and doing landscaping. So he bought a nursery business. It turned out well. Later he moved to Nashville, where he developed gardens for some of the country music stars. I remember riding around in his pickup with him. We’d pull up at these nurseries, with great expanses of boxwood and Fraser firs, and it really made an impression on me. “Later we moved to Galax, Virginia. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, Joyce, because my father was always on the road with his business. She had a little warehouse where she sold greenery. How she loved growing her boxwood! She taught me so much. She used to say, ‘April, if you get into this business, I want you to remember me, but don’t blame me when your hands hurt.’ “Not long ago, I had a couple tell me about a place where they used to buy Christmas decorations. ‘It was a lady who sold greenery,’ they said. ‘We’d stop by every year, but this time, everything was shuttered up. It was near Galax.’ When I realized they were talking about my grandmother, I started to cry. In my booth I had a picture of my grandmother and me when I was a girl, and I showed it to them.” Turning reflective, April said, “Christmas Day was also my grandmother’s birthday. When she passed away in 2010, it was devastating. So the Christmas season is bittersweet for me. Obviously, it’s important to our business. But when I think of my grandmother Joyce, well, it’s hard.” But then, hearts always hurt more than hands. OH Ross Howell Jr. is the author of the novel, Forsaken. The boxwoods he transplanted to the bed in front of his backyard cabin are happy for the moment. He tends to them assiduously and admits to encouraging them often, telling them how beautiful they are. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
February 2017
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
By Ash Alder
February, a form Pale-vestured, wildly fair,— One of the North Wind’s daughters, With icicles in her hair. – Edgar Fawcett, “The Masque of Months” (1878)
The Snow Moon
Perhaps no poem paints a more fitting portrait of this time of year than Thomas Hardy’s classic verse about a “blast-beruffled” bird whose joyful song pierces the silence of a dark and desolate eve like an arrow through autumn’s last apple. Read: February is here. Behold the first glorious explosion of golden daffodils. Although “Darkling Thrush” is set at the cusp of a new year (and century), its haunting image of “tangled bine-stems” slicing the sky “like strings of broken lyres” invokes, at least for this nature lover, the bleakest yet most beautiful days of winter. Since the heaviest snows tend to fall this month, the full moon on Friday, Feb. 10, has long been called the full snow moon. The Cherokee called it the bone moon because, well, food was so scarce that supper was often marrow soup.
Say it with Flowers
Violet and primrose are the birth flowers of February. The old folk poem calls the flower blue, but violets bloom mauve, yellow and white, too. Gift a lover a violet on Valentine’s Day and they’ll read: I’ll always be true. As for the primrose, a pale yellow perennial that thrives in cool woodland glades, the message crackles like an ardent fire: I can’t live without you.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind Speaking of soup, now’s time for root vegetable stews and chowders thick with heavy cream and gold potatoes. Make enough and you can eat from it all week — a quick and hearty fix after a cold evening spent pruning the rose bush and deadheading pansies. Through the kitchen window, a brown thrasher gently swings on the suet feeder before disappearing with twilight. It’s cold, but daylight is stretching out a little further every day. The soup simmers on the stovetop. Spring will be here soon.
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love’s mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste. And therefore is love said to be a child Because in choice he is so oft beguiled. – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A Grimm Fellow
Wilhelm Grimm, younger of the Brothers Grimm, was born Feb. 24, 1786, in Hessen, Germany. Perhaps that’s why National Tell a Fairy Tale Day falls just two days later, on Sunday, Feb. 26. In addition to publishing a hefty collection of folk tales — “Hänsel and Gretel,” “Der Froschkönig” (“The Frog Prince”), “Dornröschen” (Sleeping Beauty), “Schneewittchen” (“Snow White”), and on and on — the brothers started writing a definitive German dictionary in 1838, but never did get around to finishing it. Add a little extra magic to this month of love by spinning a tale about fairies or mermaids, or, in the spirit of this bleak wintry season, perhaps something a bit darker. Like the one where the evil stepsisters cut off their toes to make the glass slipper fit.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
February 2017
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February 2017
Shake a Leg 2/
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Home of the Dave
February 1 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Melody Warnick, author of This Is Where You Belong. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
February 1–19 A MILLER’S TALE. Four people examine their past as they convene at a Manhattan brownstone, about to be demolished in Arthur Miller’s The Price. Performance times vary. Triad Stage, 232, South Elm Street, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 272-0160 or triadstage.org.
February 1–26 JAPONICA. It’s your last chance to see In Falling Snow:
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Woodenheads 2/
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Japanese Prints from the Lenoir C. Wright Collection. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 334- 5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
February 1–April 9 IT’S A DRAW. Line drawings are the focus of two exhibits, Hoping to Help — Danica Phelps: Falk Visiting Artist, and Joan Tanner: donotellmewhereibelong. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 3345770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
February 1–April 28 INSIGHTFUL. Need a break from the dreary winter landscape? Then check out unusual color photographs of landscapes — devoid of human beings — in Lucinda Devlin:
Raising the Barbera 2/
23 & 25
Sightlines. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 334- 5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
February 3 SWARM UP. Catch a buzz with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Boulevard, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 907-3600 or gsoswarm.com or ticketmaster.com. O’ KAY! 7:30 p.m. Get aboard the Love Train for McDonald’s “Rhythms of Triumph” concert, featuring 1970s hit makers, the O’Jays, with Midnight Star and Dru Hill. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Boulevard, Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
SHAKE A LEG. 10 p.m. The floor is yours for the taking at Pop-Up Dance Club. Print Works Bistro. 702 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 379-0699 or printworksbistro.com.
February 3–June 18 A M.A.D., M.A.D. WORLD. Motorcyle. Art. Design. Say no more. GreenHill, 200 North Davie Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org.
February 4 SCUPP AND RUNNING. The Gate City’s favorite independent bookstore is a hive of activity, with two WFDD Book Club discussions of Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., the store’s third anniversary party at 6 p.m., and music by The Difficulties and Kong Must Dead at 9 p.m. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. LOVE POTIONS. 2 p.m. The menu for Family Cooking Class is a Valentine’s lunch of heart-shaped polenta, “I love you” salad with raspberry vinaigrette and chocolate cupcakes — and hand-made Valentines, to boot. Greensboro Children’s Museum 220 North Church Street, Greensboro. To register: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com SWARM UP. Catch a buzz with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Boulevard, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 907-3600 or gsoswarm.com or ticketmaster.com. MOORE MUSIC. 7 p.m. As in, Justin Moore alongside Lee Brice, who will bring the house down on their “American Made” tour. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Boulevard, Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 7453000 or ticketmaster.com.
February 4 & 5
February 6
9126 or contact Lee Healy at lheely@qwrh.com.
AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Timothy Tyson, author of The Blood of Emmett Till. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
February 10–28
February 7 ART FOR ALL. 11:30 a.m. Advocate Janet Kagan of Arts-Force, a nonprofit whose mission is to align creatives, businesses and civic leaders to create arts programs in distressed communities, discusses the importance of public art. String and Splinter Club, 305 High Street, High Point. To reserve: (336) 882-8191. SPENDER BENDER. 5 p.m. It’s a lethal combination: libations and credit cards, but so worth the risk if you’re purchasing works of N.C. artists. Come to Sip & Shop. GreenHill, 200 North Davie Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org. BOOK TALK. 7 p.m. Saundra Westervelt leads the Bryan Series discussion of Just Mercy. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
February 8–12 THE RING. Check out the last and totally rad Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus presents Circus Xtreme, featuring BMX trick riders, human cannonballs, aerial bungee skydivers and more. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Boulevard, Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
February 9 URBAN ART. 6:30 p.m. Arts-Force consultant Janet Kagan continues a public discussion about the importance of art in revitalizing inner cities. High Point Arts Council, Centennial Station, 121 South Centennial Street, High Point. Info: (336) 889-2787.
SHORTS FOR SHORT-STUFFS. 2 p.m. The Drama Center’s Children’s Theatre presents “Short Tales for Children.” Caldcleugh Multicultural Arts Center, 1700 Orchard Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2729 or greensboro-nc.gov.
AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Ken Massey, coauthor of The Skeleton Code: A Satirical Guide to Secret Keeping. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
February 5
February 10
SILLY LILY? 2 p.m. Not a chance! Learn about the oh-soserious flower at “Daylily: The No-Nonsense Perennial,” courtesy of Triad Daylily Fans Garden Club. Council of Garden Clubs, 3104-A Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Info: (336) 456-4509.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
VIN-VIN SITUATION. 7 p.m. Duck, veal and Iberico ham are the cornerstones of Chef Leigh Hesling’s four courses that pair with Bordeaux-style wines from Napa Valley’s Trinchero Vineyards at “Build Your Own Bordeaux,” a wine-blending dinner. Proximity Hotel, 704 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. To reserve: (336) 478-
TALENTED TRIO. Check out the works of local artists Dot Forsyth, quilter; Brittany Sondberg, sculptor; and Adele Wayman, painter at Fabric, Metal Paint. The Creative Center Gallery, 900 16th Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 617-3328 or thecreativecenter.net.
February 10–March 9 STRATA-GY. Catch Many Layers, featuring the works of Sherry McAdams and Murray Parker, known for applying multiple layers of paint to canvas. On 2/10 you can learn the technique yourself at a Lunch and Learn at 11:30 and mingle with the artists at a reception at 6 p.m. Tyler White O’Brien Gallery, 307 Tate Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 279-1124 or tylerwhitegallery.com.
February 11 PALMER PEEPS. Noon. Actors assume the roles of musicians — such as Nat King Cole and Walter Booker, who formed ties to the Triad historic site — at “Palmer Personalities: Musical Connections to PMI.” Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum, 6136 Burlington Road, Gibsonville. Reservations recommended. Info: (336) 4494846 or chb@ncdcr.gov. AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Rose Senehi, author of Carolina Belle. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. SWARM UP. Catch a buzz with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Boulevard, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 907-3600 or gsoswarm.com or ticketmaster.com.
February 11–August 6 SEEING DOUBLE. Pairings of paintings that reveal similarities in form, structure and colors or reflect artists reacting to other artists’ works in Affinities & Variations. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 334- 5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
February 12 THE PAST SPEAKS. 3 p.m. Staff from the Heritage Foundation will explore the roots history of a family who settled in High Point just after slavery ended. Morgan Room, High Point Library, 901 North Main Street, High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org.
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Arts Calendar OPUS CONCERT. 6 p.m. Music is the food of love at Greensboro Big Band’s Sweet Sounds Valentine’s Concert — and dance. Trinity Church, 5200 West Friendly Avenue, Greensboro. Info: greensboro-nc.gov.
February 14 SWARM UP. Catch a buzz with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Boulevard, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 907-3600 or gsoswarm.com or ticketmaster.com. HOME OF THE DAVE. 8 p.m. He strums! He blows! He tickles the ivories. The multi-talented Dave Bennett performs a repertoire of everything from Benny Goodman to Elvis at one of GSO Symphony’s Tanger Pops concerts. Westover Church, 505 Muirs Chapel Road, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 335-5456, ext. 224 or ticketmaster.com.
February 15 MENDENHALL MEMORIES. 10 a.m. A museum Guild meeting focuses on slavery and its effects on Jamestown’s Mendenhall family. High Point Museum, 1859 East Lexington Avenue, High Point. Info: (336) 8851859 or highpointmuseum.org.
through the “Shut the Folk Up and Listen Tour.” Carolina Theatre, 310 South Greene Street, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.
February 18 HIGH NOTE ROLLERS. 7 p.m. Hit the blackjack table or spin the roulette wheel to James Bond theme songs at “Name that Tune: Casino Royale,” a fundraiser for Greensboro Symphony. Greensboro Country Club, 410 Sunset Drive, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 335-5456, ext. 229 or greensborosymphony.org.
February 19 1,000 WORDS. 2 p.m. Or less. Learn how to paint pictures with words, minus the clichés, courtesy of Sisters in Crime. High Point Library, 901 North Main Street, High Point. Info: murderwewrite.org. AUTHORS, AUTHORS. 3 p.m. Meet poets Kathryn Troxler (Turnings) and Kathleen Coe (Cumulae). Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
February 20 PRESERVING THE PAST 10:30 a.m. Learn conservationists’ secrets at “Conserving Because We Care,” a discussion by Museum Guild discussion by its director Carol Ghiorsi Hart. Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Avenue, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2042 or greensborohistory.org.
February 21 HERBANITES. 6 p.m. Learn harvesting and culinary applications of herbs in a series of classes. The herb of the month: Thyme. Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 North Church Street, Greensboro. To register: (336) 5742898 or gcmuseum.com. MEET THE PARENTS. 7 p.m. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn play a couple whose progressive views are tested when their daughter introduces them to her fiancé, who is black, in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967). Carolina Theatre, 310 South Greene Street, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.
PAST PRESENTER. 6:45 p.m. Meet Ron Staley, a contractor who has worked on preservation projects that include the Virginia state capitol and GSO’s Cascade Saloon at Preservation Greensboro’s annual meeting and dinner. The Public, Morehead Foundry, 433 Spring Garden Street, Greensboro. Reservations: (336) 272-5003 or email Judith Kastner at jkastner@preservationgreensboro.org.
February 16–26 GREEK WEEK. Meaning, the theatrical run of UNCG Theatre’s production of Antigone by Sophocles. Performance times vary. Taylor Theatre, TK Tate Street, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 272-0160 or (336) 334-4392 or vpa.uncg.edu.
February 17 FUN AND GAMES. 5 p.m. Literally. Board games, card games, scavenger hunts, Pokemon Go and the High Point Challenge are the evening’s entertainment, along with snacks, prizes and more. High Point Museum, 1859 East Lexington Avenue, High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org. WOODENHEADS. 8 p.m. Acoustic cool rules with Leo Kottke and Keller Williams, strumming their way
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Arts Calendar February 23 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Heather Lende, author of Finding the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons from a Small-Town Obituary Writer. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. ARLO SHOW. 8 p.m. There’s only one: Arlo Guthrie brings his folk stylings to town. Carolina Theatre, 310 South Greene Street, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.
February 23 & 25 RAISING THE BARBERA. 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Rene Barbera (UNCSA alum and recent star of GSO Opera’s Carmen) is the star of “The One-Tenor Concert,” part of GSO Symphony’s Masterworks Concert series. Dana Auditorium, 5800 West Friendly Avenue, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 335-5456, ext. 224 or ticketmaster.com.
February 24
Business & Services
YOUR KINDA CRAZY. 7 p.m. Country sensation Brantley Gilbert cranks it up on his “Devil Don’t Sleep” tour.
February 28
Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Boulevard, Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com. DUBLIN YER PLEASURE. 8 p.m. Forget Riverdance: It’s The Rockin’ Road to Dublin that wows by combining high-stepping Irish dance with rock ’n’ roll. Carolina Theatre, 310 South Greene Street, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com. SWARM UP. Catch a buzz with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Boulevard, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 907-3600 or gsoswarm.com or ticketmaster.com.
February 25 RESEARCH RECAP. 1 p.m. Richard Cox of UNCG Libraries demonstrates how to use the Digital Library on American Slavery in conducting historical research. High Point Museum, 1859 East Lexington Avenue, High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org. BEST STRESSED. 7 p.m. Alt rockers Twenty One Pilots of “Stressed Out” and “Ride” fame land in GSO. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 West Gate City Boulevard, Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
STROKES OF GENIUS. 3 p.m. Turn your little one into a budding artist at Messes and Masterpieces, which teaches kids about line, form, color and technique — and the joy of getting messy while creating works of art. Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 North Church Street, Greensboro. To register: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com.
WEEKLY HAPPENINGS Mondays BUZZING. 10 a.m. Your busy little bees engage in a Busy Bees preschool program focusing on music, movement, garden exploration and fun in the kitchen, at the Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 North Church Street, Greensboro. Preregistration: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com. CHAT-EAU. Noon. French leave? Au contraire! Join French Table, a conversation group. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
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O.Henry 77
Arts Calendar Tuesdays READ ALL ABOUT IT. Treat your little ones to story times: BookWorms (ages 12–24 months) meets at 10 a.m.; Time for Twos meets at 11 a.m. Storyroom; Family Storytime for all ages meets at 6:30 p.m. High Point Public Library, 901 North Main Street, High Point. Info: (336) 883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com. PAGE BURNERS. 3:30 p.m. Literature feeds the body as well as the soul at Book and Cook, classes using children’s books as inspiration for meals (February 7 and 14 only). Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 North Church Street, Greensboro. To register: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com.
MUSSELS, WINE & MUSIC 7 until 10 p.m. Mussels with house-cut fries for $15, wines from $10–15 a bottle and live music by AM rOdeO — at Print Works Bistro, 702 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 379-0699 or printworksbistro.com/live_music.htm. ONCE UPON A TIME. 2 p.m. Afterschool Storytime convenes for children of all ages. Storyroom, High Point Public Library, 901 North Main Street, High Point. Info: (336) 883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com.
PICKIN’ AND GRINNIN’ 6 until 9 p.m. Y’all come for Songs from a Southern Kitchen — live music featuring Laurelyn Dossett and friends at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen, 1421 Westover Terrace, Greensboro. Info: (336) 370-0707 or lucky32.com/greensboro_music.htm.
Thursdays TWICE UPON A TIME. 11 a.m. Preschool Storytime convenes for children ages 3–5. Storyroom, High Point Public Library, 901 North Main Street, High Point. Info: (336) 883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com.
Wednesdays
ALL THAT JAZZ. 5:30 until 8 p.m. Hear live, local jazz featuring Dave Fox Neill Clegg and Matt Kendrick and special guests. All performances are at the O. Henry Hotel Social Lobby Bar. No cover. 624 Green Valley Road,
PAGE BURNERS, CHAPTER TWO. 10 a.m. Books continue to nourish at Book and Cook, classes using children’s
Wine and More!
books as inspiration for meals. Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 North Church Street, Greensboro. To register: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com
Greensboro. Info: (336) 854-2000 or www.ohenryhotel.com/jazz.htm. JAZZ NIGHT. 7 p.m. Fresh-ground, fresh-brewed coffee is served with a side of jazz at Tate Street Coffee House, 334 Tate Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 275-2754 or t atestreetcoffeehouse.com. OPEN MIC COMEDY. 8–9:35 p.m. Local pros and amateurs take the mic at the Idiot Box, 2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Info: (336) 274-2699 or idiotboxers.com.
Fridays THE HALF OF IT. 5 p.m. Enjoy the hands-on exhibits and activities for half the cost of admission at $4 Fun Fridays. Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 North Church Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com.
Fridays & Saturdays NIGHTMARES ON ELM STREET. 8 p.m. A 90-minute, historical, candlelit ghost walking tour of Downtown Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 905-4060 or carolinahistoryandhaunts.com/information.
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78 O.Henry
February 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Arts Calendar Saturdays TO MARKET, TO MARKET. 7 a.m. until noon. The produce is fresh and the cut fleurs belles. Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville Street, Greensboro. Info: gsofarmersmarket.org. THRICE UPON A TIME. 11 a.m. Hear a good yarn at Children’s Storytime. Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. JAZZ ENCORE. 6:30 p.m. Hear contemporary jazz cats and enjoy seasonal tapas at O.Henry Jazz series for Select Saturdays. O.Henry Hotel, 624 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 854-2000 or ohenryhotel.com.
MISSING YOUR GRANDMA? 3 p.m. Until it’s gone, tuck into Chef Felicia’s skillet-fried chicken, and mop that cornbread in, your choice, giblet gravy or potlikker. Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen, 1421 Westover Terrace, Greensboro. Info: (336) 370-0707 or lucky32.com/fried_chicken.htm.
To add an event, email us at ohenrymagcalendar@gmail.com by the first of the month prior to the event.
IMPROV COMEDY. 10 p.m. on Saturday, plus an 8 p.m. show appropriate for the whole family. The Idiot Boxers create scenes on the spot and build upon the ideas of others, creating shows that are one-of-a-kind — at the Idiot Box, 2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Info: (336) 274-2699 or idiotboxers.com.
Sundays HALF FOR HALF-PINTS. 1 p.m. And grown-ups, too. A $4 admission, as opposed to the usual $8, will allow you entry to exhibits and more. Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 North Church Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com.
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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O.Henry 79
GREENHILL INVITES YOU TO
Leather & Lace party FEBRUARY 11, 2017
Arts & Culture
FROM 7 TO 11 PM J o i n u s a s w e k i c k - o ff M.A.D | Motorcycle. Art. Design with live music, heavy hors d'oeuvres and cash bar
“Many Layers!” featuring new work from
Sherry McAdAMS & MurrAy PArker Artist Reception
Friday Portrait “Asher” • February 10th • 6-8pm
Lunch & Learn with Murray Parker • Friday February 10th • 11:30am-1pm
TICKETS
$45 in advance | $50 at the door
FINE ART & UNIQUE GIFTS Tyler White O’Brien Gallery 307 State Street, Greensboro (336) 279-1124 www.tylerwhitegallery.com
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80 O.Henry
February 2017
Oil on Canvas
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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The Italian Girl in Algiers A girl who uses her noodle. Arts & Culture Abducted by pirates, looking for her lover, soon to be forced to become part of an Arab’s harem, Isabella is someone who has the right to sing the blues But, as a strong women of opera, she reminds us that no man, however powerful, could possibly out-wit an intelligent woman.
March 17th, 19th & 21st The Stevens Center of the UNCSA 336.725.7101 or Piedmontopera.org
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
February 2017 OHenry17.indd 1
O.Henry 81 1/10/2017 12:16:09 PM
Arts & Culture
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82 O.Henry
February 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
February 2017
O.Henry 83
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84 O.Henry
February 2017
The Shops at Friendly Center 3334-123 W. Friendly Ave. Greensboro, NC 27410 P: 336.272.2555 www.simplymegs.com
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Sometimes it’s smarter to lease than to sell your home. Call us when you think you’re there! Michelle will be pleased to discuss how Burkely Rental Homes can help you. -Sterling Kelly, CEO Burkely Communities
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“AFTER HOURS” 6th Annual Guilford County ART TEACHERS Show
Join us “AFTER HOURS” for an eclectic art exhibit featuring 31 of Guilford County’s most talented ART TEACHERS showing off their works. Partiipating teachers range from elementary through high school.
OpEning REcEpTiOn Friday • February 10th from 5:30-8:30 PM
2105-A West Cornwallis Drive • Greensboro, NC irvingparkartandframe.com • 336.274.6717 Mon.-Fri. • 9:30am - 5:30pm & Sat • 10am-4pm
511 S Elm St. | Greensboro NC 27406 | 336.370.1050 areamod.com The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Think Local • Buy Local • Be Local February 2017
O.Henry 85
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86 O.Henry
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delivered to your home! —$45in-state,$55out-of-state— Call 336.617.0090 O.Henry Magazine P.O. Box 58, Southern Pines, NC 28388
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February 2017
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88 O.Henry
February 2017
1616-H BATTLEGROUND AVE • GREENSBORO, NC 27408 • 336-282-9572
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
GreenScene
Stacey Long, Nick Wilson
Courtney Barnhill, Russell Love
1618 Midtown
Reveal Party Sunday, January 15, 2016
Photographs by Lynn Donovan
Marin Burton, Kip Corrington
Chris & Abby Young
Kathryn & Ziad Fleihan
Emily & Bobby Fitzsimons
Brigetta Johnson, Corinne Finamore, Emma Smith Donna & Burch Carr, Barbara Palmer, Jonathan Baynes
Katy Bromley, Scott & Mary John Minter
Cecilia Thompson, Penny, Sarah & Jay Poole
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Ellyn & Jerry Steinhorn
Lina Urmos, Dunia Fleihan
February 2017
O.Henry 89
GreenScene
Betty Grantham, Jenny Kendall
Chris & Pat Skene
Greensboro Newcomers Club 60th Annual Holiday Luncheon Tuesday, December 13, 2016 Photographs by Lynn Donovan
Anne Hall, Karla Dye Nan Hall, Mary King Lila North, Lynda Forrest, Carmen Wood
Jan McDiarmid, Vicky Pollice, Alta Potter Peggy Smith, Arline Aalfs
Mary Anne Rohr, Julie Leik
Denise May, Georgetta Denhardt Jean Rayvis, Barb Graf
Natalie Mapu, Amy Siller, Kit Siller
Julie Leik, Mary Anne Rohr, Nancy Love, Donna Daniels, Patty Gusler
90 O.Henry
February 2017
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
We can open many doors
Chesnutt - Tisdale Team Xan Tisdale 336-601-2337
Kay Chesnutt 336-202-9687
Xan.Tisdale@bhhsyostandlittle.com Kay.Chesnutt@bhhsyostandlittle.com
Š2017 BHH Affiliates, LLC. An independently operated subsidiary of HomeServices of America, Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate, and a franchisee of BHH Affiliates, LLC. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices symbol are registered service marks of HomeServices of America, Inc.Ž Equal Housing Opportunity.
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Not your average thrift store.
Donate. Shop. Make a Difference. 3 2
3610 N Elm St Greensboro, NC 27455 www.SalvationArmyofGreensboro.org 336 235 2662 1 1. Tory Burch 2. Tommy Hilfiger 3. Anne Taylor 4. Talbots
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
February 2017
O.Henry 91
Inspired by the centennial anniversary of World War I, UNCG and Triad community partners present artists, authors and intellectuals in a year-long series of events, exploring war and peace through the arts and humanities over the past century.
SPRING 2017 FEATURED EVENTS: BILL T. JONES/ ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY
FOR THE END OF TIME: HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL CONCERT
1917: ILLUSIONS OF PEACE, REALITIES OF WAR, lecture
UNCG JAZZ ENSEMBLES I & II Prayer, Protest, Peace: Jazz in the Civil Rights Movement
part of University Performing Arts Series Feb. 3, 8:00 p.m. UNCG Auditorium
Feb. 26, 3:30 p.m. School of Music Recital Hall
Feb. 16, 4:00 p.m. Moore Humanities and Research Administration
Feb. 26, 7:30 p.m. UNCG Auditorium
TIKVAH, a multi-arts event Mar. 7, 7:30 p.m. UNCG Auditorium
ANTIGONE
Opens Feb. 16, Various times Taylor Theatre
CHRIS ABANI, author
REFLECTIONS ON CAPTIVITY, lecture
Feb. 20, 4:00 p.m. Elliott University Center Auditorium
Mar. 22 p.m. Elliott University Center, Cone Ballroom
SPRING DANCES
Apr. 21 & 22, 8:00 p.m. Apr. 22, 2:00 p.m. Dance Theatre
GIUSEPPE VERDI: REQUIEM Feb. 24, 7:30 p.m. UNCG Auditorium
EXPLORE. ENGAGE. ENVISION. DOWNLOAD THE APP!
Scan the QR Code with your phone or visit http://guidebook. com/guide/70506 to download the full schedule or build your own and enjoy the series! POWERED BY
for more information about events, visit:
warandpeace.uncg.edu
Phoebe Meadows, Kira Arauz
GreenScene Gala Nutcracker
Greensboro Ballet Saturday, December 10, 2016
Photographs by Lynn Donovan Dominique, Mac & Elidia Eason Jadie Ruth Wehe, Matza Storen
Katie Smith, Elisa Arauz, Sarah MacKenzie Lin
Glenda Arredondo, Heather Coghill
Hunter Arnett, Kirt Austin Tiffany & William Stiles
Ava Freyaldenhoven, Ava Enochs Marcie Laird, William Indermaur, Kaitlynn Mann, Jacky Draughon
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Megan LeCrone, Yury Yanowsky Journy & Anna Wilkes-Davis
Ginna & Ava Freyaldenhoven
February 2017
O.Henry 93
Irving Park
dressing childhood.
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94 O.Henry
February 2017
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
The Accidental Astrologer
Risky Biscuits
Mule-headed Aquarians: about to bust with a new sense of direction By Astrid Stellanova
Aquarians are in fine fettle this year. Everybody calls them visionary — which
in my opinion means: They are stubborn as mules, but much better-looking. Aquarians are true to themselves, having mule wisdom that makes them unlike any other Star Child. The Aquarian nature is naturally smart and everybody knows it. They’re ready for the New Year and busting with a sense of direction. And they’re bent upon getting there first and plowing a new field — except when they positively cannot get out of their own way. — Ad Astra—Astrid
Aquarius (January 20–February 18) Oh, there’s something you want so flipping much you can just taste it but you are holding back. But you would die if anybody knew, wouldn’t you? Birthday Child, you gotta risk it for the biscuit. When you see what you want, don’t hold back until the biscuit is cold and stale. Pick it up, and slather it with some butter.
Virgo (August 23–September 22) If you hear yourself saying you are the voice of reason, then you know that everybody else is screwed. Baby, you have got to be kidding. Somebody cares about your future and you haven’t given them the time of day. Revisit, revise and renew yourself.
Pisces (February 19–March 20) It ain’t a story till you tell it. . . and you have got to tell it before you bust wide open, Honey. Who did what to who is the narrative that has kept you on edge for waaaay too long. You know who buried the body, dontcha?
Libra (September 23–October 22) Honey, when is “old enough to have learned something about life” going to kick in for you? You have allowed some issues to recycle themselves — old lessons still waiting. They ain’t going away. They are just going to hide in the closet until you invite them inside.
Aries (March 21–April 19) Jay-zus, take the wheel, because you do not have a clue where you are going. And, to the alarm of us all, you are going 100 miles per hour like you are Richard Petty at the Indy 500. For godsakes, let somebody else be the pace car.
Scorpio (October 23–November 21) You may not exactly hate your new situation, but let’s just say it feels like the Monday of your life is rolling 24/7. As a matter of fact, you did get a raw deal, Honey. But rolling in everybody’s sympathy ain’t going to help you. Put some steel in your backbone and Tuesday will come.
Taurus (April 20–May 20) Opportunity has knocked twice. If you ignore it again, you will have to wait until the next astral cycle for a big opportunity like this one, Baby. Your heart has been pounding like wet sneakers in the drier. Ignore your fears. Open. The. Door. Gemini (May 21–June 20) Smug, ain’t you? There are so many ignorant people, and, in your not-so-humble opinion, they seem to be procreating in record numbers. If you don’t learn anything else, you might just try a little checking that attitude and making your sense of humor your bigger goal. Cancer (June 21–July 22) To those closest to you, your life is about as bewildering as a dumpster fire. Sugar, when you threw your troubles out the window, you threw something valuable with it. Reassess what you deleted. There are some friendships that you can still restore, and still need, Sugar. Leo (July 23–August 22) Your best friend in life, your mirror self, only had two things when you met. Their past and their future. Somehow, you overlooked just how much you two have in common. But if you surrender the past — both of you — there is so much waiting in the present. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Sagittarius (November 22–December 21) Now, I’m not saying you don’t have the big picture, but Child, if you were a bird you would know exactly who to dump this one on. Repeat after me: It ain’t your fault. And it ain’t yours to fix. The mess you have been cleaning up on Aisle 5 was never your fault. Capricorn (December 22–January 19) Somebody in your life tests your last nerve with their endless complaining. And then, to set you off, they do an eye roll. Which suggests they are gonna find a brain back there in that numb skull one day. Sugar, there is a reason this crazy maker is still in your life. They are not here to teach you eye calisthenics, either. OH
For years, Astrid Stellanova owned and operated Curl Up and Dye Beauty Salon in the boondocks of North Carolina until arthritic fingers and her popular astrological readings provoked a new career path.
February 2017
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O.Henry Ending
Painted Lady
By Janna McMahan
I’m a Southern
woman with a daily makeup habit. I strive for the subtle illusion of perfection, no garish lipstick or dark slashes for eyebrows. I don’t want to look as if I’m trying too hard, just healthy and awake.
I was a pretty teenager who never had a problem getting dates, so I was stunned the day my mother suggested I might want to consider wearing makeup. While I was partial to sour grape Lip Smackers, all the Avon samples she passed along sat untouched in a drawer. After her comment, I examined my face closely, wondering if my life could indeed be better with a little blush. After all, I certainly didn’t want to be the girl who doesn’t care. So, I bought a vanity mirror and began to put on my face every day before school. Sparkly blue eye shadow and mascara became a necessity. I contoured my thin cheeks into hollows. I spent hours in our hometown pharmacy looking at products and magazines for application tips guaranteed to make me popular. In my 40s, I was sitting in front of my collection of tinctures, creams and color palettes teaching my own daughter about makeup when I suddenly questioned my ritual. I grew up in the South in a time when women were heavily judged on their appearance. Shouldn’t that be changing? Was I instilling in my beautiful daughter a sense that she was somehow incomplete without the façade? A student at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Madison saw makeup as an art form. She says, “Doing your hair is like sculpture and makeup is like painting. It’s how I express myself.” Where I had scoured Seventeen, Madison watches YouTube tutorials where makeup application is an elevated form of entertainment. To wear or not wear makeup has become an interesting social phenomenon of late. This summer, while Olympic athletes sported bright red nail polish and lipstick, popular entertainers decided to go barefaced. Long terrified of being caught in public sans eyeliner, stars started posting no makeup selfies to thwart paparazzi who shame them for looking normal. Even Miss North Carolina pageant contestants got into the act, posting au naturel selfies in defense of one contestant who was singled out for a fresh-faced photo.
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February 2017
In general, most men I asked said women look better without makeup and that too much makeup was off-putting, particularly foundation and overdone eyeliner. But when shown photos with and without makeup, men waffled. One even pointed to the before and after shots and said, “If you went to bed with that and you woke up with that . . . well, wow.” It seems men like just the right amount of undetectable enhancement, but they also don’t seem to look too hard. Once, a male friend and I were served by a waitress with obvious heavy false eyelashes, but as she walked away he said, “She has the most amazing eyes.” On the other hand, women seemed more accepting of makeup in all forms, although in the spirit of full disclosure, most I spoke with were Southern women. My sister-in-law, a diehard makeup lover, says if she goes out without makeup people ask her if she feels well. My niece, who is in nursing school, says putting on makeup is one of the few times during the day she has a contemplative moment. A girlfriend, who is a master gardener, says she enjoys seeing herself transform from dirty overalls and baseball cap into a lady. I noticed when I started hanging out in Colorado that few women there wear makeup and it made me wonder if makeup (and sunscreen) were a Southern thing. But later, in New York, I saw plenty of women who could give a Texas woman pause. Obviously, Southern ladies aren’t the only ones who like a little war paint. I’ve seen women on the treadmill at 7 a.m. in full makeup, but I’ve also watched super buff gals lifting weights without a thought about their lack of lip gloss. I admit it, I fall somewhere in between and rarely go to the Y without spending a few minutes in front of the mirror. Is it habit or vanity? Are we makeup mavens simply victims of social expectations or amazing trompe l’oeil artists? I admire confident women who go into the world barefaced, but I feel better artificially enhanced. Lately, I’ve been adjusting my routine and reading the over-40 magazines for tips on aging skin. I’ve started to dye my eyebrows and Botox suddenly holds appeal. As an author, I fear the social media photos people post from book signings, so you’ll never see a barefaced selfie of me. I need my lipstick. And I make no apologies for my ritual. OH Janna McMahan is the author of numerous novels, short stories and personal essays. Follow her writing life at www.facebook.com/jannamcmahan. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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