March O.Henry 2025

A fresh take on living well.

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March 2025

Billy Ingram

72

83

By Cassie Bustamante

By Ashley Walshe

Here When You Need

MAGAZINE

voluMe 15, no. 3

“I have a fancy that every city has a voice.” www.ohenrymag.com

PUBLISHER David Woronoff david@thepilot.com

Andie Rose, Creative Director andiesouthernpines@gmail.com

Cassie Bustamante, Editor cassie@ohenrymag.com

Jim Dodson, Editor at Large jwdauthor@gmail.com

Keith Borshak, Senior Designer

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Step into Spring

Tanked

A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

by Cassie busta M ante

One of my favorite childhood books is Judith Viorst’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. If you’ve read it, you know that poor Alexander has one of those days where everything goes wrong. And — spoiler alert — it doesn’t even have a happy ending. But what it does have is an assurance to kids far and wide that everyone has days like that. Everyone.

I take a deep breath, preparing myself to make Wilder’s nogood, very bad day even worse by letting him know the fish he’s loved for over a year is no longer.

“Hey, bud,” I say, “I’ve got some bad news.”

“I know,” he answers, suddenly awash with shame. “You got the text.”

Chris, my husband, is away for work, so I’m on my own for a few days with our three kiddos. I pick up Wilder, 5, from his after-school program and we head home for the evening. Shortly after we walk in the door, he comes to me, his blue eyes looking sad and guilty, his cheeks slightly flushed.

“I know you got a text from the school today, Mom,” he grumbles.

A text from his teacher? I check my phone to see if I’ve missed it. Nope. “Why would the school message me?” I ask him.

He looks at his feet, kicking the carpet. “My card was flipped from green to yellow,” he mumbles. In kindergarten-speak, his behavior went from good to “you’ve been warned.”

“Oh, no,” I say. “What happened?”

“I talked when I wasn’t supposed to,” he replies. Welp, he’s definitely my kid. I can’t tell you how many classes I got kicked out of for disruptive chatter.

“Hey, it’s OK,” I say, hugging him. “You made a mistake and you learned from it. I’m sure it won’t happen again.” Though, if he’s like me, it will most definitely happen again. (My math teacher once called me the “Mayor of Math Class” because I had to greet everyone before taking my seat. What some deem disruptive, I call friendly.)

After dinner, I head to his room to snag dinosaur PJs from his bottom drawer. And that’s when I see it.

In the small aquarium sitting atop his dresser, Bluey — his cobalt beta named not for the hilarious Australian cartoon dog, but for his color — is vertical in the tank, pouty-face up, tail down.

Tap, tap, tap. I rap on the plexiglass side. Nothing. His little pectoral fins don’t make a flutter.

I stifle the giggle trying to escape from my lips. Laughing while delivering the news that my son’s first pet has died is not exactly the kind of exemplary behavior I’ve read about in parenting books. Of course, I’ve never claimed to be an exemplary parent.

“No.” I pause. “Bluey died.”

He perks up, the corners of his little mouth even start to turn upwards. Is that a smile forming? This is not the reaction I was expecting.

He trots down the hall to his room, where his sister, Emmy, is ready to help me scoop out Bluey and send him off to a burial at sea, aka the commode.

Wilder stands on his bed and peers into the tank, where Emmy’s fishing around. She finally nabs him and Wilder asks, “Can I see him?”

Emmy holds out her hand, the limp, lifeless beta sitting in her palm.

Shocking both his big sis and me, he raises his hands in triumph. “I have been waiting for this day!” he shouts.

“What?!” I say, startled. “I thought you’d be sad.”

He peers at me sheepishly, then fakes a short-lived whimper. “Well, I am a little sad,” he says. Then his face lights up. “But now I can get a new fish — a glow-in-the-dark fish!”

While I’m relieved that this moment isn’t another page in Wilder’s own tale of woe, I can’t help but pull good ol’ Alexander off the bookshelf as our bedtime story that night.

Because I want him to know, “Some days are like that.”

Even for a fish. OH

Cassie Bustamante is editor of O.Henry magazine.

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The Art of Healing

With the dawn of spring, we begin again

by JiM DoDson

If you live long enough, the saying goes, you will discover that healing takes time.

This ancient wisdom is being driven home to me because 15 days before I sat down to write this column, I received a complete left knee replacement.

Friends who’ve been down this path were quick to assure me that the pain and discomfort that accompanies major joint surgery can only be mitigated by time, patience and committing to an aggressive program of physical therapy.

Owing to a lifetime of sports injuries and a fulsome style of landscape gardening my cheeky bride, Wendy, once called a “blood sport with bushes and trees,” I suppose I’ve always downplayed my naturally high tolerance for pain — until now.

“Did you happen to catch the number of the city bus that ran over my leg?” I groaned to my wife on post-op day three, often described as the peak moment of pain during joint recovery.

“Just relax and let your body heal,” was her response. “By March, you’ll be back in the garden and playing golf with a brandnew knee that feels great. It just takes some time to heal, babe.”

Of course, she was right. So, I shut my yap and let my body get on with its healing business without further interference from me.

It proved to be a wise move. Upon completing my second week of physical therapy, not only did I learn that I was a week and a half ahead of the normal recovery rate from knee replacement, but had also begun to regain the ability to walk without the assistance of a cane. The pain was also slowly vanishing — so much so that I did a walking tour of my garden to assess the winter damage.

This adventure got me thinking about how waiting for the pain to stop and the healing to begin is a common experience that touches every aspect of our lives.

As children, we fall down or cut a finger and run to Mom or Dad, who applies the bandage and a kiss that makes the injury soon forgotten.

Every day on the news, however, we learn about children who live in war zones or are victims of child abuse. Their young lives will forever be damaged by the trauma they’ve suffered — a pain that will likely never quite vanish, leaving a wound that may never heal.

On a much larger scale, the recent devastation of homes and lives lost from Hurricane Helene and the raging wildfires of Los Angeles have produced pain and suffering on an apocalyptic scale, something that will take decades for communities to rebuild and heal. The outpouring of love and assistance from complete strangers to our mountain neighbors, however, speaks volumes about our shared human instinct for healing. A similar outpouring is already underway in the City of Angels.

On the scale of normal, everyday life, a lover’s broken heart may only require a few healing months of intense self-care, a good therapist and a new pair of shoes to begin the mending process.

The psychic pain of losing a job, sending a child off to college, ending a close friendship, or saying goodbye to a loved one or special place you may never see again can impose their own unique weight on the human heart. In time, only memory and gratitude for what was may soften the pain.

That, at least, is my hope.

One evening over this past Christmas, as we sat by the fire watching a holiday movie, our beloved cat, Boo Radley, suffered a sudden massive seizure. Boo was a large, gray tiger cat who entered our lives 14 years ago when Connor, Number Two son, brought him home as a tiny feral kitten found at the Southern Pines train depot on a winter night.

Connor named him “Nico” and kept him in his upstairs bedroom for several weeks before he moved on to Boston to accept a new job. At that point, we renamed the inherited young cat “Boo Radley” and watched him quickly take over the house. One minute he was grooming the ears of our big golden retriever, Ajax, the next sleeping in kitchen pots and pans. He was always up to some

amusing mischief that made us all smile.

For some reason, Boo took a particular shine to me, showing up at my desk every morning to playfully tap my computer keys as I wrote. The first time I let him outside, he followed me entirely around the backyard watching me plant roses and mow the lawn.

One summer evening near dusk, I saw Boo bolt across the backyard being chased by a young gray fox. Before I could come to his rescue, I saw the young fox running back the other way — chased by Boo. Crazy as it sounds, their game of tag went on for weeks.

When we moved to the old neighborhood where I grew up in the Gate City, Boo really found his stride. He supervised as I re-landscaped the entire property and faithfully came to sit under the trees with me every afternoon when the day’s work was done. Likewise, for over a decade, he never failed to appear from his nighttime rounds to sit together under the early morning stars while I sipped coffee and had a friendly chat with the universe. He usually snuggled up in my lap as the Almighty and I sorted things out. On most afternoons, he napped in the golden-hour sun in his favorite part of the garden, which I eventually named “Boo’s Garden.”

Like the original Boo Radley, he particularly didn’t care for strangers, and proved to be fiercely territorial, ready to chase off any feline intruder foolish enough to get too close.

Wendy liked to say Boo was simply guarding his turf — and his best buddy.

I do believe this may be true.

On the fourth night after my knee replacement, however, during the deepest pain of my recovery, Boo suffered his sixth seizure in five weeks. The promising medication he’d been on for a month simply didn’t work, proving the art of healing is as much mystery as it is science.

Following a sleepless night, we made the painful decision to end Boo’s suffering. Hours later, a lovely vet from Lap of Love came and put my best pal to sleep on his favorite blanket. I don’t think I’d ever felt such emotional pain. Over a cat, no less.

Every moment of this life, as my late Grandmother Taylor liked to say, someone is waiting beneath a clock for a birth or a death or a chance to begin again.

The return of spring brings winter’s long wait to an end. It’s nature’s moment to heal and begin again.

With my brand-new knee, I can’t wait to get out into the garden.

But my best friend is gone, a pain that will probably take years to heal. OH

Jim Dodson is the founding editor of O.Henry. His 17th book, The Road That Made America: A Modern Pilgrim Travels the Great Wagon Road, will be published by Avid Reader Press and is available for pre-order on Amazon. Find his weekly writings and musings at jwdauthor.substack.com.

Sage Gardener

Sazerac

"A spirited forum of Gate City food, drink, history, art, events, rumors and eccentrics worthy of our famous namesake"

I love raw onions so much I’ve devised a stratagem so that fast-food employees don’t get my hamburger order wrong. (“Extra onions” is often misconstrued as “no onions.”) So, I tell the clerk, “I’d like an onion sandwich . . . and it’s OK if you leave the hamburger on it.” Whether baked, fried, chargrilled or caramelized, onions are, as the Egyptians believed, a gift from the vegetable gods. But the Sage Gardener’s sagacity on the subject of onions does not extend much further than knowing there are two basic types, branching (or green) onions and bulb onions. And I hereby confess that I’ve never been able to grow a bulb onion any larger than a small lime, but I may have finally figured out why. Sure, some sources say growing onions is as easy as poking a hole in the dirt with your finger and dropping in a seed or a set, but a friend convinced me the seed route is not for me. After he ordered a number of enticingly named varieties such as cipollini, big daddy and red zeppelin, my permaculturistic pal nursed what few seeds germinated, misting them with water and even encouraging them with some baby talk, only to watch almost every single one of his transplants wither and die. Me? For years, I’ve been lured by the sets that pop up in garden section of big-box stores in the spring. But then I read about “long-day,” “intermediateday” and “short-day” onions. “Long-day onions are not recommended for our area,” writes Lisa Rayburn,

an agent with the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service. “Unfortunately, the onion sets sold in big-box stores are usually long-day onions and will not form properly in our area.” Duh! While onion maps show that the Northern U.S. has long days, the Tar Heel landscape is in the shortday territory or intermediate-day range. Rayburn says if you plant long-day onions in the state, “They will produce only greens or very small, if any, bulbs.” Further research, however, revealed that “recently, long-day and intermediate-day-type onion varieties have been developed that are well-adapted to North Carolina conditions.” That, according to Chris Gunter, a former prof and vegetable specialist at N.C. State. Browsing the Burpee catalog that just came in the mail, I see that they have several different varieties of sets hybridized for intermediate and short-day climates.

B-I-N-G-O! Of course, all this is something I’m sure I would have learned in a Master Gardener class if I weren’t too bull-headed to take one. So this month, I’ll be poking a hole with my finger in the still frigid soil and dropping in a Georgia Queen hybridized set or a Snow White. (Warmer climes, by the way, produce sweeter onions.) And later in the summer, when I top a big, bad sizzling burger with some freshly picked butter-crunch lettuce and a fat, juicy slice of Cherokee tomato, I’ll weep from joy — and onion juice — as I slice up my first huge homegrown onion and plop a ring or two atop the stack. — David Claude Bailey

Window on the Past

Since 1905, a lot has changed in the Greensboro Fire Department. For starters, we’re no longer relying on horses and steam engines. And, these days, women are wading into the smoke and putting fires out alongside men. What hasn’t changed is the epic heroism of the GFD. Read all about it on page 58.

PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE GREENSBORO HISTORY MUSEUM

Taking Flight

William Mangum, Greensboro resident and North Carolina’s artist, is accustomed to high-flying success. But, not long ago, he soared to new heights by winning an international competition to come up with the livery on the fuselage of Boom Supersonic’s Overture aircraft.

How Mangum managed to snag one of the competition’s most coveted awards over more than a thousand entries from across the globe is a tribute not only to the artist’s famous versatility, but also a prime example of how traditional art form can still fire the imagination in a highly digital world.

We recently sat down with Mangum at his downtown studio on a quiet winter afternoon to get the details.

It started, he explains, when a notice in Triad Business Journal caught his eye. It announced a competition to design the outer skin — aka the “livery” — of Boom’s forthcoming supersonic jet.

“It really excited me because as a kid I was enthralled with building model airplanes,” he says. “The problem was that submissions were due the following Monday, less than 48 hours away. After pondering the opportunity for about 30 minutes, I called my wife, Cynthia, and told her I really wanted to give it a shot, but would have to spend two nights at the studio to make the deadline.”

Mangum’s approach was to produce a painting of the aircraft and graphically transfer it to a model of the plane. “My idea was to imagine an American flag draped on the plane moving at Mach-speed, shearing it off against the fuselage.”

To accompany his submission, he included a note describing his participation in North Carolina’s aviation history, specifically his work celebrating the centenary of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk.

A short time later, he received the good news in an email from the sponsors.

“By dang, out of 1,100 international submissions, I won the top prize of ‘Most Original Design.’ It was incredible. Their email said they were going to take my design and put it on a working model of the project.”

He’s not sure if his imaginative rendering will grace the skin of Boom’s first supersonic jet, expected to roll out sometime in 2029, but he plans to stay in touch with the company.

“I’d love to be one of the first folks to fly in it,” he admits. “The plane will have only 80 seats, all business class, and will fly to London in just three and-a-half hours. That would be a big thrill for sure.”

In the meantime, he has a major Earthbound commission to paint portraits of High Point University’s 41 campus buildings. That project will take flight over the next 18 months.

“I’m very excited about that, too,” he says. “It has a much easier deadline.”

Just One Thing

If you are a fan of Gossip Girl, chances are, you’ve spied a Marilyn Minter piece. Frostbite hangs in the bedroom of Blake Lively’s character, Serena van der Woodsen, honing in on a determined blue eye that dazzles with shimmering silver shadow and dewy lashes. And then there is the iconic Stepping Up, which hangs in the van der Woodsen family’s hallway and features a grime-covered ankle and heel in a sleek, rhinestone-covered stiletto. It’s no wonder that during the show’s last season, Minter created a piece entitled Gossip. Born in 1948 in Shreveport, Louisiana, Minter has worked for more than a half-century, challenging standards around sexual imagery. In this C-print, Minter plays with bokeh, and we see a blurred-out, redlipped mouth, slightly open as if whispering. Droplets of water that look as if they’re on the camera lens seem to suggest gossip, true or not, is being broadcast. Purchased by UNCG’s Weatherspoon Art Museum with funds from the Burlington Industries Endowment and the Lynn Richardson Prickett Acquisition Endowment, Gossip is part of the current “Embodied” exhibit, curated by students in Art History 490 and running through March 29. Info: weatherspoonart.org/exhibitions/ current-exhibitions.

Unsolicited Advice

Sure, we’ll take a pint o’ green beer on St. Paddy’s Day, but why stop there when you can celebrate Irish American Heritage Month all March long? We’ve got the craic to make the Emerald Isle shenanigans last. Erin go Bragh!

1. Binge Bad Sisters. Set in Dublin and filmed in Ireland, this Apple TV+ series follows the five Garvey sisters as they navigate the sudden, mysterious death of one of their husbands. If you’re into murder and mayhem, but in a pretty, pastoral setting, hit play — it’s gas.

2. Hozier, U2, The Cranberries, Ed Sheeran, Van Morrison, The Pogues. What do they all have in common? They’re on our “Irish I Was There Right Now” playlist. Make yourself one for hours of nonstop Irish-made music that’ll have you shamrockin’ a’round the clock.

3. Crank up the corned beef-and-cabbage crockpot. Irish American immigrants originally cooked up this concoction based on the homeland’s baconand-cabbage dish, substituting more affordable meat. While we prefer the salty, savory scent of bacon to broim — which is what this dish reeks of — we’ve got no other beef with this meal.

4 Don your woodensoled clogs, cue up “Riverdance” and go mad yoke. Not recommended for apartment dwellers. Or anyone whose neighborhood has a noise ordinance, for that matter, because the jig will surely be up.

5. Indulge in an Oreo Shamrock McFlurry. There’s nothing particularly Irish about this, but, hey, at least it’s green. And delicious.

Chad Waclawczyk, Megan Johnson, Tom Hyde

Kathy Haines, Patsy Arriaga

In the Market

I attended an event recently where half of the folks were talking about this guy, “Chad,” and his amazing spices. One lady raved about a pie she’d just made with what I found out later was his King Blossom Apple Pie blend. The very next Saturday morning, I set out in search of this suddenly illustrious spice meister.

Chad Smith sets up a booth where he peddles his Guilford Hill Spice Blends (most) Saturdays at the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market downtown, where I asked about his line of

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seasonings. I wanted to know where the inspiration sprang from. “I couldn’t find a Cajun that didn’t have so much salt, so I decided to make my own,” he answers. After Smith created a palate-pleasing blend, he shared the results. “At first I gave my Two Step Cajun to friends and family and they all told me I should sell it. So I developed a whole collection that I’ve been selling now for five years and it’s all natural.”

The most popular seasoning is his Painted Lady Garden. “It has rosemary and basil out front, then blended with sage, thyme and oregano on the back end,” Smith says. “The idea behind all of my recipes is that you won’t taste any one ingredient at a time — everything works together for one big flavor.”

For an added boost, his Scotch Bonnet Pepper is mixed with a little bit of brown sugar and cinnamon. “As your meat cooks,” Smith explains, “that brown sugar makes a nice glaze over everything. The Fitz Roy Adobo I use for my taco meat, whether it’s chicken, pork or beef. Fantastic. We’ve been using this lately with burgers as well.”

Selling 1.9-ounce jars for $10 each, Smith named his spice line after the neighborhood he lives in, Guilford Hills. “It’s a nice community with lots of families, and families need a way to

make their meals easier. Where Mom and Dad can put dinner together and it’ll be flavorful, everyone will be happy, and the blend does most of the work for you.” Plus, he notes that because his blends are salt free, customers can add salt to fit their personal taste. The first ingredient in his Green Stone Greek is tomato powder, “and you have garlic, black pepper, onion, oregano, sage, beet powder, coriander, cinnamon and nutmeg.” Delish!

Chad Smith creates these proprietary small-batch mixes in Out of the Garden Project’s shared-use kitchen, a commercial grade facility that allows local entrepreneurs to produce prepackaged food products for the marketplace in a safe and sanitary environment. “This time of year, the Chihuahua Chili Powder sales increase because it’s made with smoked, dried jalapeño,” Chad tells me. “The smoke will deliver a bold flavor to anything you cook it with — a big bowl of chili or just do some nice bean dip. The Eighteen Arms Chinese is also popular; we just did a stir fry with that the other night.”

Besides the farmers market, Guilford Hill Spice Blends can be found at the Extra Ingredient in Friendly Center and online at Guilfordhillspice.com. Get it while it’s hot. — Billy Ingram

Pisces

(

February 19 – March 20)

In case you need the reminder: Yellow does not mean gun it. And only a Pisces needs to hear that it doesn’t mean drift into oblivion, either. Proceed with caution, yes. But stay the course. Be aware of your surroundings and navigate accordingly. When Venus goes retrograde on March 27, it’s time to tend a karmic wound before it festers. In other words: Identify the pattern so you can break it. When in doubt, a salt bath ought to help.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

Scrap the old story.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Opt for the silk ones.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Steady your hand.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Keep on keeping on.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Don’t miss your cue.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

Too much salt will wreck the meal.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Cast a wider net.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Get some fresh air.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Try washing behind your ears.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Fix your gaze on the horizon.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Plant the seed, then let it be. OH

Zora Stellanova has been divining with tea leaves since Game of Thrones’ Starbucks cup mishap of 2019. While she’s not exactly a medium, she’s far from average. She lives in the N.C. foothills with her Sphynx cat, Lyla.

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Contact Sport

Con-text-ualizing a comedy of errors

by M aria Johnson

Fourteen neighbors? A couple

of dozen cupcakes? A Friday afternoon?

Sure, I tell my mom, I’ll help her throw a small celebration of her 92nd birthday, a custom in her neighborhood, where the residents let each other off the hook by proactively reminding each other of the occasion and hosting their own to-dos.

It’s yet another example of something that’s gauche at a young age morphing into something that’s graceful, for all concerned, at a later age.

We draw up a guest list.

In her day, my mom would’ve inked the invitations in her distinctive hand using a fountain pen. She also would have served the cupcakes on her best gold-banded china.

Well, here she is, in her 10th decade, stuck with a daughter whose favorite pattern is “Compostable” by Chinet and who conveys her deepest emotions by text, usually with GIFs from TV comedies.

Finally, my mom agrees to text invitations — sadly without a video snippet of Tina Fey gorging on tres leches cake on “Weekend Update.”

My mom loves it when thumbs up and hearts blossom on the electronic string.

A week later, only a couple of people haven’t responded.

That’s when I learn from one of my mom’s neighbor’s, Amy, that two other neighbors, Ginny and Kathy, whom she was pretty sure would have been invited, have not received my text.

Amy guesses I might have sent the invite to Ginny’s home number instead of her cell number, which she rarely gives out. So Amy supplies the elusive number, and I zap a fresh invite to Ginny’s cell.

I should say “a Ginny’s cell.” And yes, in literature class, this would be called foreshadowing.

Next, I retrace my steps with Kathy.

Voila. I’ve sent the invite to another Kathy, so I tap out a new message to Neighbor Kathy, who responds with a heart.

I think about texting Another Kathy to say, “Never mind,” but she hasn’t responded so I let it go. (Insert suspenseful music.)

Meanwhile, Ginny replies with a conditional “yes” because she

is recovering from chemo.

Wow. I am not aware that Ginny has cancer. I text her back, suggesting that she walk over to the party if she feels like it that day. No advanced notice required.

She pins a heart to my message.

To close the loop, I let Amy and Kathy know that Ginny plans to come if she recovers from chemo in time.

Amy and Kathy’s eyebrows shoot up. Ginny does not have cancer.

We all sleep on the unfortunate news of . . . someone’s cancer.

The next morning, feeling that something is off, I review my text to Ginny.

Oooooo.

Turns out I’ve texted a tennis friend named Ginny, who indeed is waging a successful battle against cancer.

She lives in Thomasville.

She doesn’t know my mom.

Yet she has pinned a heart to the invitation to walk down to my mom’s house.

What the . . . ? I admit my blunder to Tennis Ginny, who cops her own confession.

“I admit I didn’t know where I was going to walk to find a cupcake soiree,” she says.

Incidentally, this is why I love Tennis Ginny. She’s always game for fun, even if she’s not sure where to find it.

Resolving to wear glasses while texting, I call Neighbor Ginny, hoping for a voice on the other end.

These days, I know, calling someone in real time indicates either a dire emergency or an extremely juicy nonemergency with more details than two thumbs can handle.

This isn’t either, but Neighbor Ginny picks up without a hint of wariness. God Bless the Greatest Phone-Answering Generation.

She laughs her hearty New Englander laugh when I explain the situation.

I’m relieved at her forgiveness, which I find that older people grant easily, maybe because they need it themselves — as if the rest of us don’t.

Cupcake Day arrives.

The weather is perfect.

My mom’s neighbors stream through her door. I greet them

and thank them for coming. A car pulls up.

“Who’s that?” someone asks.

I crane my neck.

“I don’t know,” I say, watching an elegantly dressed lady emerge with a potted flower.

She smiles as she steps through the door.

For the life of me, I cannot retrieve a name.

“I’m so glad . . . you could come!” I say, taking the amaryllis from her.

My mom lights up at the sight of her, hugs her and introduces her to her neighbors.

“This is my friend, Kathy, from church.”

Of course. Another Kathy is Church Kathy, who sometimes shuttles my mom to a prayer retreat. We communicate by text from time to time.

As it turns out, Church Kathy also used to live in my mom’s neighborhood and knows a couple of party guests. She wades in and charms the throng.

I find Neighbor Kathy in the kitchen.

“This just keeps getting better,” I whisper.

She snickers and shrugs: “It seems to be working out.”

Indeed. If Church Kathy thinks it’s odd that she was invited to “walk over” for a cupcake — from wherever she lives now — she never lets on.

If anyone else thinks it’s odd that a nonneighbor — albeit a former neighbor — is stirred into the mix, they never let on.

If my mom thinks she’d better lobby for handwritten invitations next time, she never lets on.

If I think that my husband, who makes fun of me for having more than 1,000 contacts in my phone, might be onto something, I never let on.

Surrounded by friends who are happy to be together, no matter how they got there, my mom is in heaven.

Surrounded by grace — some of it selfadministered — I am, too. OH

Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry magazine. Email her at ohenrymaria@gmail.com.

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With two top national awards as culinary artists, Executive Chef Jolie Shafer and Director of Dining Arts Erin Perkins bring creativity and variety to every meal at Arbor Acres. Shafer and Perkins are excited to dazzle with a wine and caviar dinner, delight with classic fried chicken, or re-imagine a resident’s favorite recipe. Winning the highest national recognition for excellence in their industry while always putting the needs—and taste buds—of our residents first, Jolie Shafer and Erin Perkins exemplify The Art of Living.

life in all its shining

Executive Chef Jolie Shafer and Director of Dining Arts Erin Perkins

Coin of the Realm

The history of Rome in loose change

By Stephen e. Smith

If you believe the ancient Romans had little to do with your life, look at your feet. They gave us the concept of left and right footwear. They also left us their checkered history, of which there’s too damn much. If you’ve tackled Gibbon’s unabridged The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, you know that a manageable history of ancient Rome requires a framing device that places events and characters in perspective.

Historian/numismatist Gareth Harney has devised an agreeable gimmick. He has selected what he believes are the 12 most significant coins minted during the Empire’s 800-plus years, and he’s written A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins, connecting the coinage to the emperors and events that influenced their minting.

Roman coins were struck from alloys of gold, silver, bronze, orichalcum or copper — materials that gave them resilience — and they are discovered still in Welsh fields and Polish barnyards. You can buy a pile of uncleaned Roman coins on eBay for $30.

First introduced in the third century BCE, Roman coins were used well into the Middle Ages, and during a denarius’ existence, it would likely have passed between millions of hands. Many of the coins are worn smooth, obscuring the profile of the emperor or god whose likeness was meant to ensure political stability and economic security.

In crisp, energetic prose, Harney opens each chapter as if he were writing historical fiction. “The vision was surely his alone,” he writes of Constantine’s moment of conversion. “Yet the confused shouts of his soldiers seemed to claim otherwise. As the marching column ground to a halt before the spectacle, men raised their arms to the clear sky, calling out to their em-

peror to witness the unfolding miracle. It took shape, by all accounts, in the rays of the midday sun. A glowing halo surrounding the solar disk, sparkling with additional rival suns where it was intersected by radiating horizontal and vertical beams — all shimmering like jewels with spectral color.”

Harney guides the reader through the history of Rome from Romulus, suckled by a wolf on an early Roman coin, to the last emperor, who was deposed by the German general Odoacer in 476 CE. In the early years of the Empire, coins illustrated mythical scenes and various gods and goddesses, but that changed, as did much of Roman life, when Julius Caesar issued coins bearing his likeness. “Even in an age of giants — Pompey, Cicero, Antony and Cleopatra — Caesar would tower above all,” Harney writes, “bestriding the world like a colossus.” The appearance of Caesar’s profile on the Roman denarius in 44 BCE is acknowledged as a transformative moment in Roman history. The new coin violated ancient law, tradition, and the sacred delineation between military and civic authority. Caesar went so far as to order the minting of a denarius with the likeness of the defeated Gallic leader Vercingetorix, an enemy of the Roman Republic.

The Julio-Claudian dynasty receives its due — Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, et al. — and Harney explains the events leading to the coinage produced by each emperor. Bits and pieces of Roman excess and debauchery are reviewed in tolerable detail, and readers are occasionally treated to new depravities, of which there was no shortage in an empire populated with leaders who were murdered almost as quickly as they took power.

For many of these upstart emperors, assassination was often a merciful escape. In 260 AD, for example, the emperor Valerian was defeated by King Shapur I and was taken prisoner. He lived out his years in slavery, falling to his hands and knees to act as a step for Shapur to mount his horse. The emperor of Rome had become a human footstool for an enemy king who later had him skinned,

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Harney’s discussion of the various currencies makes the constant shuffling of Roman emperors slightly less confusing, but the devaluation of Roman coinage is his most significant and timely lesson. The emperors, unable to pay for Rome’s defense, lessened the amount of silver or gold in each coin. “By 270, the ‘silver’ coins of Rome held less than 2 percent precious metal. Nothing more than crude scraps of copper rushed out of the mint, without a thought of quality control. A thin silver wash on the coins only served to insult the intelligence of the Roman people, and quickly wore off to reveal the depressing base metal below.” Any belief in a reliable gold or silver standard vanished from the monetary system. As coinage ceased to hold its value, Romans returned to barter as a method of exchange. When new coins were issued, they dulled more quickly, and they felt light in the hand, signaling debasement. Each degraded coin is part of the puzzle whose final piece reveals the complete collapse of the Roman state.

A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins will appeal to a broad audience. Excluding the rare reader who has a comprehensive knowledge of Roman history and the numismatist specializing in Roman coinage, the majority of readers (those who saw an episode or two of I, Claudius or the movie Gladiator) will find Harney’s history well-written, informative and sophisticated — high-end Monarch Notes for Gibbon’s six-volume Decline and Fall. They may even feel inspired to start collecting Roman coins.

Harney doesn’t claim that his research offers profound insights into our contemporary political divisions or the teetering state of our democracy, but readers will likely infer whatever lesson appeals to their politics. One truth, however, is inescapable: Empires rot from the inside out. OH

Stephen E. Smith’s most recent book, The Year We Danced: A Memoir, is the recipient of a 2025 Feathered Quill Book Award.

By tom m axwell

Dropping In Return of the Carolina Chocolate Drops

It all started in April 2005, at the first “Black Banjo: Then and Now Gathering.” The event, held at Appalachian State University in Boone, was part scholarly pursuit and part throwdown, featuring four days of “lectures, jams, workshops, down home frolics, and performances” with a view to bringing the “funky, plunky instrument” back home to Black America. Dom Flemons, a 23-year-old student at Northern Arizona University, attended.

“I was the young person at the event,” Flemons says. He had been playing banjo for a few years already, busking on street corners and devouring records by the Memphis Jug Band and Dave Van Ronk, as well as ’20s songster music of people like Gus Cannon and Henry Thomas.

So, like many young people who fall in love with old music, most of Dom’s musical heroes were dead — even if their music was very much alive. But in Boone he was about to enter the musical land of the living.

“When I met Joe Thompson, a light bulb went off in my head,” Flemons says. “I heard him playing at the opening ceremony for the Black Banjo Gathering, and all of a sudden I understood the music that connected people like Henry Thomas to Gus Cannon. When I heard Joe’s music, I heard that flavor of fiddle and banjo music that these guys were referencing, playing and living next to generationally. And that inspired me to move out to North Carolina. I sold everything I owned, packed up my car, took Route 66 east and headed for North Carolina to be near the music.”

Thompson, born in 1918, had been playing African American string band music for 80 years by the time Dom Flemons heard him perform at the Black Banjo Gathering. An Orange County native, Thompson joined his family on fiddle (after studying his

father’s old-time technique, which was handed down by his own father, a former enslaved person) playing square dances, parties and dances after corn shucking or tobacco stripping. Joe considered quitting music after his cousin and musical partner, Odell Thompson, died in the ’90s, but picked it back up basically by popular demand. Even a stroke in 2001 couldn’t slow him down. “I got to sit with Joe and play music,” Flemons remembers, “and it was a powerful experience just to be in his presence. I knew that I was connected to the tradition from there. It’s something beyond just music. It’s a feeling as well and, if you’re deep in the culture, you understand the nuances of that feeling.”

Two years after his performance at the first Black Banjo Gathering, Joe Thompson became a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow. He also started mentoring Dom Flemons’ new band. Local musicians Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson also saw Thompson at the Black Banjo Gathering and had been playing music at his Mebane house for several months by the time Dom, newly graduated from college, moved to North Carolina. The three youngsters decided to form a band of their own. “These are the years leading into Obama being elected,” Flemons says, “and culturally, people were ready for a Black string band. They could handle it.”

Flemons, Giddens and Robinson called their band the Carolina Chocolate Drops. “With the combination of all three of the original members of the trio, we created a sound that was very authentic and raw, but also landed right,” Flemons says. “We always had a rock solid rhythm. I leaned 100 percent into that, because being a fan of the Grateful Dead, I understand that give and take with the audience.”

All traditions, an accomplished jazz musician once observed, meet at the root. In their career, the Carolina Chocolate Drops were seamlessly able to blend Civil War-era Black string band music, ’60s folk-rock, jazz and hip hop. It’s no surprise — but still an absolute delight — that the band covered Blu Cantrell’s 2001 R&B Top 40 hit “Hit ’Em Up Style (Oops!)” on their Grammywinning album Genuine Negro Jig.

“I was a fan of Old Crow Medicine Show,” Flemons says, “so I

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always thought about fast old-time as being a genre. Fast old-time is something that people have always enjoyed, and it was becoming very popular at that time. When we were arranging songs with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, they would usually do a Joe Thompson number. I came up with the jug and took a combination of what I thought about with traditional jug bands, as well as people like Charles Mingus, and applied that to ‘Georgia Buck.’ That gave us a unique sound from a traditional old-time string band.”

The Carolina Chocolate Drops went on to have a stellar career, releasing five albums, opening for luminaries like Taj Mahal and Bob Dylan, making numerous television appearances, and performing several times at the Grand Ol’ Opry. But as all fiery combinations do, they burned bright, then out. Robinson left in 2011; Flemons followed suit two years later. By 2014, the group functionally disbanded. Until now.

“Rhiannon wants us to do this festival she’s putting together, Biscuits & Banjos,” Flemons says. The festival will be held in Durham April 25 - 27 and will feature not only a reunited Carolina Chocolate Drops, but also solo appearances by Flemons and Giddens. Rounding out the stellar lineup are legacy acts like Taj Mahal, promising newcomers Infinity Song, Tar Heel native Shirlette Ammons and many more. In the tradition of the Black Banjo Gathering — and countless others since time immemorial — there will be artist talks, workshops, a biscuit bake-off (Giddens is a

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self-described “avid biscuit baker”) and a community square dance.” Indeed, all American musical traditions do meet at the root. Blues, jazz, rock-and-roll — and a sizable chunk of country music — owe their very existence to African American musical idioms and cultural expressions. We are all the better for it, and when you combine this history with Southern food and an old-school hootenanny, life gets very good indeed. And North Carolina is one of the few places in America where something like this could happen.

“North Carolina is such a wellspring of culture in general,” Flemons says, “and I believe that it has done a lot of things right when it comes to expressing the culture of the state. I think it’s something in the way that the land is structured and the way people are raised. Because a lot of times they have this particular connection to the land, and a foot in both the country and the city. The Carolina Chocolate Drops did school shows in almost every city and town in North Carolina, so I got to see everything from Edenton all the way up to Asheville and Black Mountain and Hot Springs. Every part of North Carolina has something beautiful and unique, and the music reflects that.” OH

Tom Maxwell is an author and musician. A member of Squirrel Nut Zippers in the late 1990s, he wrote their Top 20 hit “Hell.” His most recent book, A Really Strange and Wonderful Time: The Chapel Hill Music Scene 1989-1999, was published by Hachette Books.

Harriet Flies Home

A tale of catch and release

Note from the editor: This was our 2024 O.Henry Essay Contest winner.

By eric Schaefer

She lands on the end of my fishing pole, making casting impossible. I don’t mind. I’m glad to see her. She has been gone for a few days, and I am always relieved to see her return. Not that I expect her to stay forever. She is, after all, a wild animal, and she needs to be with other crows — at least in theory. So I lean back in the boat and watch her preen her shiny black feathers.

Two years ago, my wife and I fished her, half-drowned, out of a drainage ditch in Florida, wrung her out and gave her a little cat food, which she readily accepted. Soon, the chick was eating everything and seemed perfectly happy with her surrogate parents and her roommate, a lab mix named Alfie. We named her Harriet. Harriet belongs to the tribe of fish crows who speak in a minor negative key. Their principal call sounds like anh anh. As in “anh anh, I ain’t doing that” or “anh anh, I ain’t what you think.” Crows are versatile, however, and are capable of a variety of vocalizations. They are accomplished mimics, and I believe Harriet can say whatever she wants if so moved. Cocking her head so that one eye focuses on me while the other surveys her surroundings gives me the impression that some complex calcula-

tions are taking shape inside her little crow brain. Alfie, on the other hand, I’m pretty sure I can outsmart.

At mealtime, Alfie sits, staring, drool pouring out of both sides of his jowls, his brown eyes pleading, “Oh pleeeze, can I have just a little of that whatever it is you’re eating? I don’t care, I’ll eat anything, and try my best to actually digest it or throw it up — that’s OK, too — but please let me give it a try.” Harriet doesn’t beg. She would rather steal. And steal she does. Glance away from your plate and she’ll swoop down and take a morsel, then fly up to a bookcase or a high counter. She’s discerning. She’ll examine her prize, maybe cache it for later, but she doesn’t just wolf it down, hoping it doesn’t come back up — like somebody else.

I’ve never invited Harriet on the boat, but she needs no invitation. She comes and goes as she pleases, and I flatter myself to think she likes my company. I did ask Alfie once, and he was delighted to be included. He bounded enthusiastically about on the boat until he lunged at a Canada Goose and we capsized. While I tried to save my floating gear, he bobbed up a little ways downstream, and I think I heard him say, “I don’t have any idea how we ended up in the water, but this sure is fun.” I didn’t invite him back.

When Harriet first came to us, I thought I should keep her indoors for her protection, so I built her a big cage. It took up half a room and I equipped it with swings and branches and pools and shiny objects and all manner of things a crow might like. She would have none of it. She squawked persistently whenever I put her in her deluxe accommodations, until either I or my wife surrendered and let her have the run of the house. She’d follow

ERIC SCHAEFER AND HARRIET

us around, poking her beak in whatever it was we were doing. We loved her company, but knew we couldn’t deny her the chance to explore the outdoors. So, one day, we decided to accept whatever happened, and we took her out to the porch and set her down on the railing. She was in no hurry to fly. She sauntered back and forth, examining her new surroundings. Crows don’t actually walk. They strut as if practicing an arrogant little dance step or modeling some outrageous new costume on a runway. Suddenly, she squatted and jumped into the air, flapping steadily until she landed on an oak tree branch.

Alfie catapulted off the porch, ran to the tree, and jumped up so his front paws were on the trunk and he was looking up into the branches. He was either saying, “Come down out of there! You’ll hurt yourself;” or, “How did you do that? Can you teach me?” After that, Harriet accompanied us on whatever outdoor activities we were engaged in, until, one day, she disappeared. We told ourselves it was a good thing, that it was exactly what she should do, and we hated it. But eventually she came back and started to come and go at irregular intervals. The times she was away began stretching out to days.

So now she sits at the end of my fishing pole, looking rather pleased with herself after having been gone for longer than I liked, when a murder of American crows shows up and takes up a raucous cry in the trees. So, this is where you’ve been? I feel like a parent with an unruly teenager. Go tell your friends you have to stay home for a while. She looks at me, calculating, and then at them, and then back at me and says anh anh, and flies off. OH

Eric Schaefer, and his wife, Janet, a French teacher and accomplished artist, have lived on a few acres north of Greensboro for 40 years, where they’ve kept all sorts of animals from sheep to chickens. Though he holds his master’s degree from UNCG in biology, he has always enjoyed writing and, for many years, penned a Sunday News & Record column on outdoor activities.

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Putting the Pieces Back Together . . .

With resilience, grace and wit

One evening as I am chopping vegetables, my young friend, Jamie, calls me.

She occasionally texts, but never phones. Most weeks, we chat at Brown-Gardiner’s fountain, where she is a popular server — animated, engaged — the primary reason for my going so often.

Answering, I strain to understand Jamie’s garbled speech. The only words fully discernible are “this is Jamie.” She struggles, stuttering, until falling silent.

Her friend, Lexi, takes the phone. Lexi’s words are crisply clear: Jamie has suffered a stroke. She goes on to say that she has just been released from the hospital following days of unconsciousness and lifesaving surgery. Lexi pauses.

“Jamie wanted you to know.”

Jamie is in her early 30s. A stroke? My knees wobble.

Jamie is the sort who brings life and vivacity into a room, as she has done at the lunch counter. The sandwiches, salads and dishes are standard lunch-counter fare, but nothing special. Jamie is. Often, she’d spot me approaching and open the door in greeting.

In a few days’ time, after much texting back and forth, Jamie indicates she would like a visit. I take silly gifts: A bath bomb that resembles a doughnut with pastel sprinkles. A satin sleep mask emblazoned, “Shit Could Be Worse.”

Just like her old self, Jamie howls with laughter.

She has miraculously survived the catastrophic stroke without losing her motor skills. There is no facial paralysis nor limp. No overt paralysis of any kind. Yet Jamie’s brain scans reveal damage to areas controlling speech. She struggles with aphasia and speech challenges.

Jamie chats normally and suddenly goes silent, freezing, searching for a word. This is something I had previously seen when another friend — a woman five decades older than Jamie — had a stroke.

More than once, rather than asking, “Where’s my phone?” Jamie instead says, “Where’s my brick?” Or, maybe block. Determined to show no reaction as my intelligent and chatty friend struggles to summon words, I still feel my heart sink for her.

But Jamie’s wit and intelligence are fully intact. She gamely laughs during a terrifying time. “My brain is def broken,” she texts a few months later.

Attempting jokes about the surgery, the hospital stays, the worry she reads in her friends’ faces, Jamie finds her way through her own terror with humor.

Showing the blackened bruising at her femoral artery after carotid angioplasty and stenting, she declares, “But I’m still pretty!”

Everyone reassures Jamie she will soon be well. Better than new. Even so, Jamie cannot drive, or resume college classes nor work for six months minimum.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” she will mutter, not cynically, but with convincing force, intent upon powering back to health.

One day, I mention that a collection jar for her benefit has been placed at Brown-Gardiner. Jamie texts back, asking if the picture chosen “makes me look pretty.” I report back that, in fact, it does. Her smile — her face — beams from the jar. Faithful patrons contribute small change and bills.

One day, $1,000 is dropped in the jar by a single group of customers. Jamie reports as best she can that it was from guys she always served on the Saturday morning shift. While she struggles to fully convey who “the guys” are, I try to guess if they are part of a golf team or a tennis league.

Jamie isn’t quite sure, but she is sure of one thing: “They love me.”

As her megawatt smile beams brighter, she adds, “and I love them.”

Since her saga began, Jamie has learned a preexisting congenital defect triggered her stroke, something called arteriovenous malformation, or AVM. In her case, it was located in the carotid artery. Much like aneurysms, it's difficult for an AVM to be diagnosed until it’s too late.

Strangely, this hasn’t discouraged her. Learning the cause of the stroke has had the opposite effect. With a name, however strange, AVM is an anomaly that she can wrap her mind around, Jamie explains.

The condition is quite rare: Only 1.34 per 100,000 people have AVM.

Somehow, this statistic cracks Jamie up.

“Of course,” she says, articulating slowly. With a wry smile

CASS

home grown

that says, “it couldn’t possibly be anything commonplace,” she throws her hands up in the air. Since her stroke, in rapid succession, Jamie has been scrutinized and scanned from top to bottom in MRI machines.

“Now I know the deal,” she adds.

Jamie has learned, to her relief, that she is not a walking time bomb.

“That was scary. Would I just drop dead?” This was her first thought upon emerging from days of unconsciousness after the stroke.

Jamie’s July birthday week draws together a young group of friends who take her for a celebratory steak dinner. She shares funny moments, reporting that she kept a journal “for my up-and-coming stroke comedy tour.”

Her speech is, against all odds, normal. Yet, the stroke is a bomb that fell onto her old life, segmenting it into before and after.

In the interim, another stent was needed. Weeks of speech therapy and recovery, scans and consultations have become months, now years. Two Christmases have passed.

Jamie has suffered medical setbacks, forcing her to temporarily abandon online studies begun since the stroke to complete her undergraduate degree. Even so, she will still graduate this year.

Jamie’s wrestled with red tape in order to get financial assistance. To cope with insurance claims. To get to medical appointments.

Simply to survive.

Yet Jamie’s resolve remains intact. In her first year of the event, she sent a revealing picture of herself at a game table with pieces before her.

“I’m gonna be sitting here trying to figure this stupid puzzle out . . . making my brain work . . . This is harder than it looks.”

In over two years of struggle, it is the only complaint Jamie has ever texted. OH

Cynthia Adam is a contributing editor to O.Henry magazine.

By SuSan campBell

Heard But Not Seen

Eastern phoebes tuck their nests away

Eastern phoebes are small black-and-white birds that can be easily overlooked — if it wasn’t for their loud voices. Repeated “fee-bee, feebee” calls can be heard around wet areas all over our state. The farther west one travels through the Piedmont and into the foothills of North Carolina, calling males become more and more evident. From March through June, males declare their territory from elevated perches adjacent to ponds and streams. Even on warm winter days, these little birds can be heard loudly chirping or even singing a phrase or two.

Phoebes have an extensive range in the U.S., from the East Coast to the Rockies, and up and across central Canada. In the winter they can be found in Southern states from the Carolinas over to Texas down into Mexico and northern Central America. They are exclusively insectivorous, feeding on beetles, dragonflies, moths — any bugs that will fit down the hatch. Although they do not typically take advantage of feeders, I have seen one that did manage to negotiate a suet cage one winter. Because their feet are weak, they’re not capable of clinging, so this bird actually perfected a hovering technique as it fed in spurts.

Originally eastern phoebes utilized ledges on cliff faces for nesting. We do not know much about their habits in such locations since few are found breeding in those places now. Things have changed a lot for these birds as humans have

altered their landscape.

While phoebes can be easy to locate as a result of their loud calls, in our area their nests may not be. Although they are good-sized open cup structures, they will be tucked into outof-the-way locations. Typically, they will be on a ledge high up on a girder under a bridge or associated with a culvert. They may also be up in the corner of a porch or other protected flat spot. Grasses and thin branches are woven and glued together with mud to form the nest; therefore it’s critical that the location be close to water.

The affinity eastern phoebes have for nesting on man-made structures in our area may indicate that these are safer than more traditional locations. Climbing snakes are not uncommon in the Sandhills. Black rat snakes and corn snakes are not as active on buildings as they are on bridges and other water control structures. The phoebes may be adapting their behavior in response to these predators and others less likely to be found so close to human activity.

If you have, or have had, phoebes on your property in summer, I’d like to hear about it. I continue to record locations and details on nesting substrate for the species in the Sandhills. The variety of locations that these little birds choose has been very curious. Light boxes and fixtures, gazebos, porch support posts and more have been used, if they are covered by at least a slight overhang. Not only is water a necessity for phoebes in summer, but they require mature trees for perching and foraging as well. Keep an ear out and perhaps you will find one of these adaptable birds nearby — and be sure to let me know! OH

Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos. She can be contacted by email at susan@ncaves.com, or by calling (910) 585-0574.

&

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Drawn to The Gate City

Comics come to life in unexpected places

By Billy ingram

“I don’t have

inspiration. I only have ideas. Ideas and deadlines.” — Stan Lee

Buried inside an otherwise ordinary office plaza on Cornwallis Drive, tucked twixt dental practices, LLCs and LLPs, sits the Fungeon, a collab for writers and illustrators, several of whom have long associations with many of Marvel Comics’ bestselling titles.

An assault on the senses, this fancave is where pop-culture ephemera from the last seven decades bedazzles every square inch. A tidal wave of childhood memorabilia washes over you — an impossible number of Batman and other superhero figurines, an autographed photo of Dy-no-mite Jimmie “JJ” Walker, breakfast food mascot dolls, a Pee-wee Herman marionette, Star Wars collectables, VHS tapes, movie posters, a full-sized early80s Galaxian arcade game, even a bright red Wham-O Monster Magnet with “life-time magnet” fists. I half expected the KoolAid Man to come bursting through the wall.

I’m there to meet with Chris Giarrusso, a former New Yorker and comic book creator who was drawn to the incandescent glow and nearly imperceptible excitement of The Gate City in 2017. Now, he shares a fantasy factory with four other creatives. There’s Jody Merriman, known as “Ol Grumpy” on social media. Giarrusso describes him as “a real burly, tough guy who you wouldn't expect to be drawing pictures.”Randy Green is an acclaimed comic artist, best known for Tomb Raide r

and Emma Frost. His family owned Green’s Supper Club locally. Illustrator Marshall Lakes has his own comic line. And lastly, former Marvel and DC editor Brian “Smitty” Smith is co-creator of the New York Times-bestselling graphic novel The Stuff of Legend as well as writer/artist of the adorable Pea, Bee, & Jay children’s book series from HarperCollins.

Giarrusso is one of those lucky, talented individuals who has managed to forge a career in the comics. “When I was in college,” the Syracuse native told me, “I read about the internship program at Marvel in Wizard magazine.” He applied in 1997 and was accepted. “So for a summer, I was an intern there. That’s really the big game-changer, just getting the foot in the door and people getting to feel comfortable around you, that you're not some crazy person. I guess they're always afraid that the intern's going to be some whack-job type.”

In 1998, Giarrusso was hired by Marvel’s production department, scanning artwork for Photoshop tweaking. “But I also liked to draw,” he says. “So I would show people my cartoons every chance I got. I was cartoon riffing on what was happening in the office or whatever.” Shades of Marvel’s superhero satirist extraordinaire Marie Severin. Eventually, the editor of “Bullpen Bulletins,” a feature in every Marvel publication, gave Giarrusso space for a monthly comic strip. “The editor said, ‘Yeah, OK, less work for me to fill up a page.’”

Almost by necessity, he created a line-up of cuddly, kid-sized Marvel heroes characterized by big heads and bulbous boots, whose comical interactions were drawn-up in standard newspaper strip format. “Because the panels were so small, it's easier to

wandering billy

draw little kids,” he says about the origin, if you will, of Mini Marvels. “You can actually squeeze them in better into the panels. And just the idea of them being kids was kind of already a built-in gimmick.” A devotee of Charles Schulz, Giarrusso quips, “I wanted to do Peanuts but with little Marvel characters.”

The little strip that could caught on. After about a year, “I pitched the idea for a longer story to Smitty before he went up the ladder. He was an assistant editor when I got hired as a production guy. I put a proposal together, handed it to him and then he pushed it through.” The result? The emergence of, quite possibly, the freshest, most original talent the genre has seen this century, effortlessly capturing the rhythmic essence that makes for great comics.

Undoubtedly, that’s why Marvel continually repackages Giarrusso’s back catalog. Mini Marvels: Hulk Smash was released in December and one reviewer raved that this book “will remind you why comics are fun, and if given to a new fan, this could be their gateway into comics.”

Mini Marvels: Spidey-Sense unfolds with a genuinely funny tale about paperboy Spidey’s fractious battles against a peevish Green Goblin while innocently attempting to deliver the Daily Bugle to his arch enemy’s house. Giarrusso rendered the pint-sized Spider-Man with an exuberance and fluidity reminiscent of co-creator Steve Ditko’s earliest web-slinger sagas.

Beginning in 2009, Giarrusso’s own original high flying tyke-in-tights, G-Man, flew into view in three graphic novels published by Image Comics, followed by The G-Man Super Journal: Awesome Origins, an illustrated-prose hardcover from Andrews McMeel, who also publish definitive collections of Peanuts dailies (and Calvin & Hobbes, another influence, I suspect). A series crying out to be animated, G-Man’s universe is populated by a multifarious cast of characters rivaling that of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, fused with the innocence of early-1960s Legion of Superheroes. Nominated for a Harvey Award in 2014, G-Man: Coming Home was selected as Favorite Adventure Graphic

Novel by Kids’ Comics Revolution.

“Fifteen years ago or so, when Mini Marvels was having a moment, Acme Comics invited me for a signing,”

Giarrusso explains about his initial sojourns South, previous to his relocation to Greensboro eight years ago. “It became kind of routine to come for every Free Comic Book Day. I got to know the area and the community and the people here.” Graphic artists and writers can easily work remotely and are often required to. In that regard, our fair city makes for a comfortable launching pad. “At one point, Smitty came down and he set up the [Fungeon] studio. A couple years later, I followed and just inserted myself into the framework that he created here.”

Giarrusso has been particularly productive of late. While working on Pea, Bee, & Jay, Smith sold HarperCollins on a series for middle graders that Giarrusso illustrates, Officer Clawson: Lobster Cop, which features the undersea adventures of a mystery-solving crustacean. A new Mini Marvels story appeared in October 2024, then Giarrusso created four visually arresting variant covers for the 2025 X-Men/ Uncanny X-Men crossover event. Alongside February’s incendiary image fronting his Eddie Brock Carnage #1 variant, these edgier renderings reveal an artist whose style is evolving, assuming a more dynamic, unflinching underpinning without sacrificing any inherent adolescent charm.

Ironic? In the bowels of a nondescript office complex, cleaved from a patch of woods where as a 9-year-old I happily retreated reading DCs with Go-Go Checks purchased from a drug store around the corner, there exists a grotto where creative individuals are weaving dreams into fourcolor fantasies and captivating children’s lit that is destined to ignite imaginations for generations to come. OH

Born and raised here, Billy Ingram moved to downtown Greensboro in the 1990s after a career in Hollywood where he was a key member of the design team the ad world dubbed “The New York Yankees of Motion Picture Advertising.”

The Opal Ring

When I was thirteen, my grandmother gave me an opal ring. I like to wear it when I dress up to go out. It is so delicate most people never notice it. My grandmother whispered, It’s from some old beau.

I wear the ring, her memory, to feel magical. Three small iridescent stones, a gold band worn thin. Only when I asked did she whisper her secret. Did you ever look deeply at the displays of color,

opaque stones holding quiet fire? The band’s worn thin. The last time you betrayed me I slipped on the ring. Iridescent means plays of color. So few truly look deeply. She called me to her room, opened a sacred drawer.

This is the last time you betray me. I slip on the ring, its blue-green, pink lights so delicate. You never noticed. In her room, she handed me a velvet-lined box. My grandmother gave me her opal ring. I was only thirteen.

—Debra Kaufman

Debra Kaufman’s latest collection of poetry is Outwalking the Shadow from Redhawk Publications.

CAROL KEY

IN

PROFILES COURAGE

LUCKY FOR US — THESE WOMEN ENJOY RUNNING INTO BURNING BUILDINGS FOR A LIVING

By Ross Howell JR. • PHotogR aPHs By M aRk wagoneR

When women first joined the Greensboro Fire Department as firefighters in 1978, they often were met with doubt and resistance.

But, through generations of service, female firefighters have shown that they have the mettle to take on the physical and mental challenges of firefighting — and to excel.

In Greensboro today, there are 34 women who are full-time firefighters. I had the opportunity to speak with a few of them.

Deputy Chief Carol Key invites me into her corner office in the GFD administrative suite of Fire Station 1 on North Church Street.

I can’t say precisely what I expected her background to be, but it certainly wasn’t art! Key studied at the Savannah College of Art and Design and holds a bachelor’s degree from the N.C. State School of Design.

She and her husband, Kevin, are the only married couple to go through the grueling, six-month recruit training program at the same time. Her husband now serves as captain in the GFD critical resources branch.

“We’d been married for one month and four days when our class started,” Key says. Everything about the program is intense. An individual recruit is allowed to fail two exams. If they fail a third, they’re out.

“Kevin and I spent the first six months of our marriage together — seven days a week, 24 hours a day,” she continues.

She pauses.

“About halfway through training,” Key says, “we got into a

knockdown, drag-out fight in front of everybody.”

“And we’d tried to be so professional,” she continues. “We wouldn’t even kiss in public.”

“But after the argument,” Key adds, “we both acknowledged we needed a little space now and then, and we were OK.”

And they’re still OK — happily married, with two daughters studying at UNC-Chapel Hill.

I ask her how she and Kevin managed raising young children on 24-hour shift schedules.

“We had to make a decision about that,” she says. The one-dayon, two-days-off schedule results in three separate firefighter shifts — “A,” “B” and “C” — so that a full complement of firefighters covers the entire city 24/7, 365 days a year.

“We decided that I would work ‘A’ shift and Kevin would work ‘B,’” Key continues. So each parent had the kids home to themselves on “A” and “B” shifts, and on “C,” the whole family was together.

“The kids loved it!” Key laughs.

Since “C” shift was their “together time,” she and Kevin resolved to do things as a couple.

“We’d go on lunch dates, we’d go see a movie during the day, whatever we could do to enjoy each other’s company,” she says.

“That was nice,” Key adds.

“This is the first time I’ve been 8 a.m.–5 p.m. since I was in training back in 2008,” she says.

Through all the years, Key has kept her hand in graphic design and art. She has her own freelance graphic-design business, has painted expansive murals in the education wing of West Market Street United Methodist Church and consulted on the website design for the Greensboro Firefighter Historical Society, where she serves as president.

“Firefighting is such a gritty profession,” Key says. “It’s not for everybody. But I love it.”

Yakima Fox has been a Greensboro firefighter for 18 years. She serves at Fire Station 59, West Vandalia Road. Born in Salina, Kan., Fox moved here when she was 3 years old.

Firefighter is just one of the roles she plays. Fox also performs in community theater and even has a talent agent, though she doesn’t devote the amount of time to acting that she used to.

Her brother was the reason she considered trying out for the Fire Department.

“He was a GFD firefighter,” Fox says, “and he just kept bugging me and bugging me. ‘They need women,’ he said. ‘You should try out.’”

At the time, Fox was a student, studying biology at N.C. A&T.

“I wanted to do something in the medical field,” she explains.

While Fox’s brother was pestering her, an aunt’s comment made her absolutely determined to apply. When the aunt heard Fox was thinking about trying out to be a firefighter, she said, “Well, I don’t think you can do it.”

Fox looks me straight in the eye.

“I’m the kind of person,” Fox says, “you tell me that I can’t do something, I’m going to do it just to prove you wrong.” Fox also thought, pragmatically, that a Fire Department salary would surely be a big help paying tuition.

She was accepted. Then came training.

“It was a whole realm I didn’t know, it was all foreign,” Fox says. “It was a challenge in so many ways — mentally, emotionally, physically.”

“I’m 5 feet, 2 inches tall,” she continues. “I couldn’t even reach certain things!”

But Fox adapted, finding her own ways to meet the recruitment trainers’ strict standards.

Fox tells me one of the most difficult training tasks was putting out her first car fire.

She had to work alone, wearing full turnout gear, breathing oxygen from her self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA). Her suit felt like it was closing in on her. The SCBA air she was breathing was getting warmer and warmer from the heat of the flames.

The fire was producing a lot of smoke, so much that it was difficult for her to see. The pressure of the hose was pushing her back as she moved toward the fire.

“It was a workout that I hadn’t ever experienced,” Fox says. “I was using muscles I’d definitely never used before. And I was thinking, Man, this was just a car fire.”

“That’s the mental part of it,” she continues. “You say to yourself, ‘I’m going to be OK.’”

“So you take a moment,” Fox says, “and you go in there and do what you need to do.”

That moment cemented her confidence.

“From then on,” she concludes, “I enjoyed it.”

Fox believes her 15-year-old son has mixed emotions about her profession.

“He’s quiet, he’s a teenager, he doesn’t say much,” she says. “Sometimes I think he worries about my safety a little bit.”

She tells me her son is a good actor — “better than me,” she exclaims — and has performed in community theater with her.

Fox also hopes her son will participate in the Greensboro Fire Department Explorers program, where young people meet with firefighters for an inside view.

“I want him to understand what my job is,” she says. “I want him to understand the challenges and the benefits.”

“I want him to see how you can help somebody,” Fox says.

“That’s why I like this work so much,” she continues. “I’m helping people who really need it. When somebody sees me, they are not having a good day — maybe they’re even having a tragic day. And I’m able to make their day just a little bit better.”

YAKIMA FOX

WENDY CHEEK

As I enter the Fire Station 49 office on West Friendly Avenue with Captain Wendy Cheek, one of the firefighters nods his head in her direction as we pass.

“You’re talking to a legend,” he says.

A few days after our conversation, Cheek is due to retire from the GFD after 30 years — 20 years as a captain, riding an engine. And she stays plenty busy outside the station, too.

An advocate for healthy eating and fitness since losing her mother to cancer, Cheek took up massage therapy 24 years ago and has a loyal list of clients. She started her practice as a backup, in case she was injured as a firefighter and couldn’t continue the work.

And she has a small farm near Madison where she keeps chickens, raises hay as a crop and maintains a truffle orchard.

“After I retire, I’ll get some goats,” Cheek laughs. “The little ones. And a dog.”

But what drives her now, what fills her with pride and emotion, is her work in the Fire Department.

Cheek grew up in the N.C. mountains among the foothills near Elkin and Jonesville, and moved to Greensboro in 1989, “following a boy,” she says, shaking her head.

The boy thing didn’t work out, but she stayed on, working at a downtown deli and studying law enforcement and computer programming at GTCC.

“I was thinking I might go into the FBI,” she says, “until I learned they could place their agents anywhere in the United States.”

“I really wasn’t sure I wanted to move away from family,” Cheek adds. Looking for a challenge both physically and mentally, she called the GFD to see if they hired women.

At the time she was accepted for training in 1995, there were only four women in the department, as she recalls, and no others had been hired for years.

An avid hiker then and now — Cheek celebrated her 50th birthday by hiking the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim — she was also a competitive bodybuilder. Still, she remembers fire training school as one of the most difficult challenges she’s ever taken on.

And during her career, she’s done her best to guarantee every crew member riding a call, siren blaring and lights flashing, is trained, fit and prepared to give their very best.

“When I ride the truck,” Cheek says, “I ride in the back a lot.” Typically, the captain leads the crew from the front seat, next to the driver. From that position the captain receives computer information on the status of the emergency. Less experienced crew ride in the back seats. By riding caboose, the captain makes it possible for junior crew to get valuable experience.

“I want them to know what I know — or more than what I know,” she explains, “because if I’m the weakest link on the truck, then I know we’ll be OK.”

Cheek is very direct in communicating what she expects of her crew’s interaction with the public.

“I always tell the guys, ‘You treat every person like they’re your grandparents,’” she says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a stubbed toe or a heart attack, we’re going to treat them with kindness and respect.”

How does she hope her firefighters will remember her?

“Well, I don’t see myself as any kind of legend,” she says. “It’s not like I’ve been doing anything out of the ordinary.”

“I want them to remember that I always took care of them, that I stood up for them,” Cheek adds. “I want them to remember I gave them 100% until the day I walked out this door.”

In January, Jurica Isangedighi marked her 10th year with the GFD. She grew up in Chapel Hill, was a standout point guard for the women’s basketball team at Chapel Hill High School and attended High Point University on a full basketball scholarship. When she graduated in 2011, Isangedighi wanted to become a college coach. To get experience, she returned to her old high school as an assistant to her former coach. For the next two years, they led their teams to the women’s state basketball championship finals.

Isangedighi moved to the collegiate ranks the following year, coaching at Mount Olive College, now the University of Mount Olive.

It was then that a former teammate who was applying for a Fire Department position, encouraged Isangedighi to try as well.

“After attending High Point, I loved this area, and I always wanted to come back,” Isangedighi says. But she’s thorough. She applied not only to the Greensboro Fire Department, but also to the WinstonSalem and Raleigh departments.

The Greensboro department offers candidates the additional benefit of practice dates.

“You can go through the course and get your hands on the equipment,” Isangedighi says. For women, she believes, that’s essential experience.

“We’re not as strong as men, so we have to rely more on technique,” she continues. And instructors showed candidates the proper way to do things.

So when it came down to passing the tests required to qualify, Isangedighi says, “It wasn’t so bad. Still, it’s very, very demanding — physically and mentally.”

In the relatively short time since her hiring as a GFD firefighter, Isangedighi has earned the coveted title of “engineer.” That’s “driver” to you and me.

Think about it. She’s piloting — on city streets — a behemoth machine that weighs more than 20 tons, measures some 10 feet wide and 40 feet long, and is powered by a 500-horsepower diesel engine. Ladder trucks, which Isangedighi is also qualified to drive, are even bigger.

But she can go you one better.

Isangedighi’s Fire Station 21 on Horsepen Creek Road is a three-bay GFD facility with both fire and ladder trucks. It’s also part of the state regional response hazardous materials team.

“The hazmat truck is actually a tractor trailer,” Isangedighi says. “And I recently got my Class-A license, so I can drive it.” She smiles broadly.

“I love driving the trucks,” Isangedighi continues. “I have a really great crew. I have a captain who knows a lot about trucks and engines, so he’s teaching me.”

She explains that the trucks can be quirky and the engineers check them every day, lifting the cab to inspect the engine, testing the pump to ensure it’s working properly, checking all the tools on board.

“Every single day, every engineer does that,” she says. “Then, once a year, we’ll take them into the garage for service. These trucks constantly have eyes on them.”

And on her days off?

“Oh, I’m back home with my two kids and my wife, hanging out,” Isangedighi says. “Our son is 4 and our daughter is 1.”

She tells me her son likes to Facetime with her when she’s on the truck, and sometimes the whole family will stop by the station.

“He’ll get on the truck,” Isangedighi says. “He thoroughly enjoys it.”

“But the little one,” she laughs, “has no idea. She’s too young.”

Isangedighi intends to remain with the department for her whole career.

“I think the Fire Department is a great transition for athletes,” she says.

“You’re part of a team, you’ve got a goal to accomplish, you train and you get to help people in the community,” Isangedighi concludes. “That’s a good thing.” OH

Ross Howell Jr. is a contributing writer.

Fit for a King

Today’s princes and princesses learn skills to become tomorrow’s leaders

By

Billy ingR a M

PHotogR aPHs By Betsy Blake

Society’s crustiest curmudgeons disparaging the aberrant behavior of today’s youngsters has practically become a national pastime. Modern-day kids, many insist, are rebellious, insolent, lazy, entitled, unable to communicate effectively whether speaking or writing, and devoid of core American values such as hard work, accountability and responsibility. Oh wait, that’s exactly how society characterized those of us who grew up in the ’50s and ’60s, my generation. Raised to be considerate, kind and obedient, to curtsy and bow when company arrived, to be seen, not heard . . . and we all know how that turned out. But has the pendulum of propriety swung way too far in the opposite direction?

Just imagine what effect it might have if today’s youngsters were taught etiquette, the importance of courtesy, respect, punctuality, politeness, eye contact, proper dressing and grooming.

That’s precisely the focus of Geovanni Hood, whose Charmed School of Etiquette is spearheading a return to refinement and civility, most recently in conjunction with D-UP in the enlivened Washington Street Historic District in High Point. His six-week course engages kindergarteners to teens in lessons that stress proper manners and comportment, encouraging youngsters to gaze

away from a constant barrage of pixelated stimulation in order to effectively face life’s three-dimensional challenges.

Founded by Jakki and Corvin Davis in 2007, D-UP (Develop Skills, Uprise Education and Power-Up For Life!) began as an after-school basketball program. A year after achieving nonprofit status in 2010, D-UP moved its headquarters to Washington Street, expanding outreach efforts to include nutritional education to combat childhood obesity, while promoting academic achievement and character development.

“We wanted to make sure that the students went through etiquette classes,” D-UP’s Jakki Davis tells me, “because this is something they can learn now and it will be forever ingrained in them.”

Hood was brought in as a visiting instructor, says Davis. “When I met Geovanni and saw his interest in our students and what he was doing, I thought, ‘This will be perfect.’ ” Plus, she adds, he makes it fun.

“When your child steps out the house, they are not only a representation of themselves, but they are a representation of you,” Hood says. They’re creating their brand, so to speak. Your brand, he says, involves knowing “how to be socially active, how to make friends, how to engage in conversations and build character.”

Cultivation reflects positively on parents as well.

Besides collaborating with nonprofits such as D-UP, Hood’s outreach includes local churches, the YMCA and the Piedmont School at Andrews High School. “I’ve taught at Howard University in D.C. as well, so I pretty much just travel.” Most organizations will bring him in for a day, but longer sessions may stretch into two eight-hour days back to back “or I might come in one day a week for five weeks.”

As former Human Relations Commissioner for the City of High Point and a certified career coach and navigator, his book Navigating Success: Interview Eitiquette Guide for Teenagers is a primer for anyone who believes chivalry is not dead, merely moribund. “Young people can’t do what they don’t know,” Hood insists. “When somebody comes along, leading by example, then others will get it and hopefully follow suit.” As for getting through to teenagers, he says, “If I’m teaching them how to be properly mannered versus calling it ‘etiquette,’ they understand it better.”

A Greensboro resident by way of Brooklyn, what inspired Hood to lead the way in teaching etiquette to a new generation? A room at the O.Henry Hotel dedicated to the memory of Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown.

Beginning at the turn of the last century, with determination undeterred by mob violence and an overwhelming resistance

toward efforts aimed at assimilating African Americans into polite society, Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown established, then tenaciously re-established after everything was burned down by residents opposed to the very idea, institutions of higher learning for people of color. By 1940, Brown became known as the “first lady of social graces,” following the publication of her manners manual, The Correct Thing to Do, to Say, to Wear, a more reality-rooted companion to Emily Post’s Etiquette, published two decades earlier.

Hood shares Brown’s basic philosophy: “Educate the individual to live in the greater world.”

“What I teach is situational etiquette, but also interview etiquette, and I love teaching both,” he says, reflecting his background in corporate culture and client services. “I’ve been in management for the last 13 years and interviewed plenty of candidates who don’t know how to answer a situational question, may only answer one part of the question, or arrive in incorrect attire, not wearing a tie or not having access to resources to be dressed properly for an interview.”

Knowing the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork is one indication of how far socially you’ve climbed, but more crucial is learning how to handle those unexpected forks in life’s roads we find ourselves navigating. But it’s important to note that the aforementioned Emily Post, America’s esteemed etiquette

expert, once famously stated, “Nothing is less important than which fork you use. Etiquette is the science of living. It embraces everything. It is ethics. It is honor.”

One day last winter at D-UP’s new workshop, converted from a former house, I was able to observe firsthand how eager preschoolers are to learn new skills. “The little ones, they’re one of my favorite groups,” Hood says. “They’re so young and impressionable, just super excited about learning at such an early age before they have other impressions put on them.” He begins by focusing on what goes into creating a great first impression: “What does that look like? What does that sound like? And how to leave a lasting impression.” To demonstrate the practicality of his instruction, he guides the kids through different role-playing scenarios.

At the end of the six-week program, both those youngsters and the older students enrolled in the etiquette course would have an opportunity to utilize their newfound expertise by rubbing tiny little elbows with the city’s elite during D-UP’s annual Royal Celebration held in December 2024 at Congdon Yards in Downtown High Point. The culminating event serves as a graduation ceremony of sorts, centered around a formal dinner served amid enchanting surroundings.

Inspiration for the Royal Celebration occurred a decade ago when Davis was accompanying children on a trip to Octoberfest. “I was in the backseat with one of our little boys and his sister, who had on a princess gown,” she recalls. “I said, ‘Look at my little princess,’ just admiring her, and her brother says, ‘She ain’t no princess.’ I said, ‘Of course, she is. And you, a prince.’” The young man objected, saying, “I ain’t no prince.” But Davis encouraged him, saying “Yes, you are prince and don’t ever feel like you’re not.”

The next day, reflecting on that

exchange, Davis realized, “We can tell kids who they are but sometimes we truly have to show them. All of these thoughts started coming to me — like limousines, tuxedos, a sit down meal, empowering kids to be able to talk with adults and not fumbling over the words.” Within weeks, D-UP cobbled together the very first Royal Celebration, “just by reaching out to our partners, because it was already the end of the semester and we had no budget for this at all.” That was nine years ago.

There were around 30 enrollees that first year, but by 2024 enrollment had grown to 65 participants, all outfitted in tuxes and elegant gowns donated by VIP Formal Wear at Four Seasons Mall. “We have community members who understand exactly what we’re doing and it means a lot to them,” Davis says about VIP and other sponsor contributions for the Royal Celebration. “You could see an instant change in the boys’ demeanor when they were trying on tuxedos. The same with the girls trying on their dresses and shoes.” Arriving in style to the venue by limo, Davis says, the kids emerged with a new attitude. “It’s such a positive experience for them, but also for us to see their reactions.”

Attended by local dignitaries and business leaders, the purpose behind a Royal Celebration is instilling confidence in the young ones when in a formal setting. “We have a three-course meal for them,” Davis says. “They don’t even have to question which fork to pick up. Using their manners, not speaking [out of turn], it’s such a confidence builder.” The children were paired with adults at each table so they could engage in grown-up conversations and put their newly-honed skills to work.

During the social hour, the courtly kiddos were encouraged to mingle and introduce themselves before striding on stage to receive their awards based on performance and improvement. Another highlight of the evening was a round of ballroom dancing. “We offer dancing here anyway,” Davis points out. “Ballet, modern and hip hop, but here they got to practice ballroom.” By

all accounts, the Royal Celebration was once again triumphant. No surprise that, around this same time, Davis was crowned 2024 Businesswoman of the Year by the High Point Chamber of Commerce.

Lately, Hood has been venturing into middle schools, instructing students on developing resumes. While that may seem premature to an outsider, “We are preparing children for the future,” Hood says. “If they understand these things at a young age, then start practicing these skills, just imagine how far ahead they’ll be later on, perfecting skills instead of learning them for the first time.” He’s also instructing teenagers on interview techniques and leading, “a social skills class that will be a summer program to help prepare them for returning back to school.”

Is Emily Post still relevant to modern life? “There’s a way society works in order to gain opportunities in your favor,” says Hood. In fact, he suggests the pathway to happier happenstances begins “by carrying yourself correctly, having genuine morals and values that you stick to and, more importantly, being an example for the person that’s watching you. Because you never know what an inspiration you can be for them.” Naturally, there are times when potential participants walk out on his classes. “This is for those who want it, for those who want to be their best, who want to strive for change. So if you’re not ready to make that difference right now, I’m not mad at you. You’ll get it eventually . . . or you won’t.”

Uber-ing back to High Point’s palatial train station for the rail ride home, by happenstance, I had the same driver returning who

picked me up earlier. He somewhat warily asked what I was doing on Washington Street. In that instant, staring out onto this clean shaven boulevard as excited children are exiting a bus to scurry into an after-school program, where across the street young men are shooting hoops, killing time before a scheduled lesson in checkbook economics, I blurted out, “I think I just witnessed a revolution.” OH

Geovanni Hood is also co-founder of High Point Fashion Week, where around 16 designers and over 50 models will strut the runway for a third season during October’s Furniture Market.

Waking Up Washington Street

A major expansion of the Washington Street Historic District revitalization is now underway — a partnership between Thrive High Point, D-UP, the High Point Chamber of Commerce and the Washington Street Community Association — that will reinvigorate long-neglected storefronts and homes along the boulevard. It’s an effort designed to jump-start businesses owned by minority and women entrepreneurs by providing them with a brick-andmortar presence in an area that was once regarded as the Black Wall Street of High Point and the center of a vibrant community

Washington Street grew into a bustling hub of community and commerce beginning around the turn of the 20th century, remaining prosperous well into the 1960s. This was the site of the Kilby Hotel and Arcade, seafood markets, doctors’ and lawyers’ offices, Odd Fellows and Toussaint L’Ouverture lodge halls, a post office, a nightclub, the YMCA, two cab companies, attractive apartments, a miniature golf course, pool rooms, a barber shop, cafes, a funeral home, churches, a privately built public tennis court, movie theatre, and a library branch.

Many long-time residents were employed by the Piedmont Hosiery Mill around the corner. In the 1920s, the city’s first female dentist, Dr. Eva Ziegler, a Black Howard University graduate, practiced on Washington. One of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, John Coltrane, mastered his tenor saxophone as a child just a few short blocks away.

Like most downtown business districts around the nation, Washington Street fell into a state of dilapidation and neglect after integration in the ’60s opened up employment and lifestyle possibilities in more affluent enclaves. In 1973, when enterprises were fleeing the area, the Piedmont’s best kept culinary secret, Becky’s & Mary’s Restaurant, began serving savory soul food on the 700 block, and is still going strong after more than half a century.

Fortunately, following decades of decay, a significant number of houses and brick storefronts remain standing across one of the Furniture Capital’s most beloved boulevards. Currently under renovation is an impressive two-story manse, sitting resolutely in the center of the 600 block. Across the street at 613 Washington, neighbors in decades past gathered at the L&M Grill for breakfast and burgers; it’s also where visionaries Jakki and Corvin Davis’ D-UP programs swung into action in 2011.

“We’ve always wanted more people to frequent this area,” Jakki Davis says. She’s fueled by a desire for this tattered avenue to not merely serve as a shortcut through the neighborhood, “but a [destination] for all citizens of High Point and the Triad to frequent, not only providing economic vitality for the businesses but for recreation, for the culture, and for the arts. Because that’s who we are.”

With funding from Guilford County, Davis says, “We’ve purchased a lot that’s a construction site now, but it’s going to be our STEM gym and arts complex. In addition, we have property that was conveyed to us by the city of High Point.” With these resources, she says, “We will be able to service not only 175 children a day, but family members of all abilities and ages. We just want to get back to what Washington Street used to be, when it was really thriving with a lot going on.”

Observing firsthand downtown Greensboro’s resurgence in the 2000s, it’s easy to envision a radiant, vibrant future for our sister city’s newly designated National and local Historic District, expanding on and enhancing the rich legacy forged by generations of families and individuals who made their homes and staked out successful businesses in an inviting atmosphere along Washington Street.

Home to Port

A roving designer settles in High Point’s Emerywood

By Cassie Busta M ante

PHotogR aPHs By BeRt VandeRVeen

“How many times can one decorate and move?” asks Mark Abrams, co-owner of PORT 68, a home decor company based out of Chicago. He’s lived all over the States in his 62 years. As a young man in the mid-1980s, Abrams first visited the Furniture Capital of the World and had a sense of knowing he was going to one day call it home; friends told him he was insane. But he’s got the last laugh because “fast forward and here I am!” And, it turns out, his century-old Colonial in High Point’s historic Emerywood is the house this wandering spirit has lived in the longest. Perhaps this time he’ll pull

his ship into harbor for good.

Born and raised in Demopolis, Ala., Abrams remained in the Yellowhammer State during college, initially planning to study architecture. “I realized real quick there’s a huge amount of math requirements,” he quips while petting his black-and-white cat, Freddie, perched in his lap. Instead, he graduated from the University of Alabama in 1985 with a degree in communication. At the time, the school didn’t allow double majors, so Abrams minored in fashion merchandising and design, considering a career as a retail buyer.

But, during his junior year of college, an internship with one

of the largest design-marketing companies, Gear-Holdings, in New York City, shifted his trajectory. “Gear,” as Abrams refers to it, was co-founded and owned by a family friend, the late Raymond Waites, who also hailed from Demopolis. “I went to New York and it changed my life,” muses Abrams.

“It was like a big grad school,” he says, where he learned the ropes of both business and design as a Gear employee, eventually stepping into the role of visual director. “Because of Gear, and who I knew and what I was doing,” says Abrams, “I was published in every shelter magazine there was and on a few covers of books for my design work.” One of his first projects was a four-part pub-

lishing series with Better Homes & Gardens that wound up in a book. His work at Gear is what introduced him to High Point, where he set up a showroom for one of the company’s licensees.

Eventually, Abrams grew tired of grinding his gears. “I just worked and worked and worked and made no money.” What his bank account lacked in abundance, he made up for in a padded portfolio. Plus, Waites had introduced him to “the who’s who of the industry,” providing him with valuable connections. After a few years, he left Gear and jetted to Los Angeles, where new adventure awaited.

And ever since, he’s barely kept his feet in one spot for more than two years at a time. “I’ve moved 12 times cross-country,” he says. “I’ve lived in, let’s see, New York, L.A., Dallas, St. Louis, Kansas City, Greensboro — twice — New York again.” Plus, he adds, Ferndale, Washington, and, before High Point, Chicago.

In 2009, with industry veteran Michael Yip, Abrams co-founded PORT 68. Its mission?

“Bringing home beautifully designed products from ports around the world to you.”

At the time, Abrams was living in Greensboro on Kemp Road. Before that, he’d been living just around the corner on Watauga in Hamilton Forest when a realtor knocked on his door and told him someone wanted to buy his house. Abrams, a sucker for flipping houses recalls,

“I said, ‘As long as you can find me one in this neighborhood, that’s fine.’ And he did!”

But with the start of the company, Abrams relocated to Chicago, where PORT 68 has its headquarters. With showrooms in High Point, Atlanta and Dallas, the company decided to look for what Abrams calls a High Point “market house,” a place where the team could stay when they needed to be in the city. He called his pal, real estate agent Lee Kemp, and asked her to show him a house he had his eye on. Turns out, “it was way too much work.”

“I was just adding it up in my head and I am going no, no no.” But Kemp came through with another house that was being sold as an estate and was a stone’s throw away from the one he’d already seen. Abrams did a 15-minute walk through, made an offer he didn’t think they’d ever accept and hustled off to the airport.

As soon as he landed at O’Hare Airport, he got the call that the offer had been accepted. “I was like, ‘What!’” he recalls.

While he hadn’t planned on moving, after nine years of living in the Windy City, where “the snow would blow horizontally,” this warm-weather-loving Southerner had had enough. Abrams traveled often for work and was spending at least eight weeks a year in High Point as it was, and being in High Point would also put him within driving distance to the Atlanta showroom. Why

not just move there?

After all, he says, High Point has a “very tight-knit design community” that you won’t find anywhere else, the sort of place where a close-knit group of industry friends can get together to “complain, discuss, egg each other on — all the things you need to talk about.”

During Market, the PORT 68 team infiltrates and makes his house their home base. “I call it the sorority house because people are all over the place and it’s kind of a wreck.” But, he adds, he always wants his guests to feel right at home. “My house is where you can put your drink anywhere and don’t worry about it, put your feet up anywhere and have a good time. I don’t live in fine antiques; I live in old things that I love and that’s kind of it.”

Of course, being in High Point also made it a little easier to get back to his hometown of Demopolis, where his aging parents still lived. About the time Abrams landed in High Point, his father had just begun battling Alzheimer’s. With his parents’ failing health, Abrams found himself traveling to Alabama every two to three weeks. Assuming the time would come, Abrams prepared his home for his mother to move in, readying the main-floor bedroom and handicap en-suite bathroom the previous owner added.

Sadly, he says, “That didn’t happen.” In 2022, his mother passed away, followed by his father in March of last year.

The bedding in that main-floor guest space was assembled originally with his mother in mind. A black-and-white duvet and bed pillows juxtaposed with playful, burnt-orange tiger “hide” throw pillows feature a “timeless” toile that was created by Gear in 1986. Fellow Demopolitan Waites wanted to craft the classic pattern with a hometown-homage twist. Using antique document fabric, Abrams says, they added “vine-and-olive people,” an homage to the French expatriates who founded Demopolis. For Abrams, the most exciting element is that the plantation-style house depicted on the toile fabric is historic Bluff Hall, which had been owned by Abrams’ grandfather before he sold it to the Marengo County Historical Society.

But the real kicker? “My mother turned down living in the house [Bluff Hall]

because, she said, ‘I don’t want to live in an old barn,’” says Abrams with a chuckle. Judging by the toile design, Bluff Hall is far from being considered a barn.

These days, Abrams doesn’t travel back to Demopolis as much now that both parents are gone. “The estate is coming to an end so I feel a slight relief of just the physical driving back and forth.”

Making his house a home while running a business and taking care of his long-distance parents eventually took its toll on Abrams. In June 2024, he went into atrial fibrillation, abnormal rhythm of the heart, accruing the equivalent of “a weekend at the Ritz Carlton,” referring to his hospital bill. But, he says, “I am alive.” The cost was well worth it because “little High Point Hospital” was able to regulate his heart rhythm. And now, he says, it’s time for him to make himself a priority.

Abrams kept a few sentimental family pieces that he’s seamlessly blended into his design, such as a wooden box he’d given his father 30 years ago that now sits on the sofa table. While he describes his style as somewhat “eclectic” — a mix of tonal colors and metallics, texture, layers, and animal prints — he also says, “I am very calculating when designing.”

The living room, off of which sits a covered porch, is the prime example of his design ethos at play. A rich, streamlined velvet sofa faces two lush, armless chairs. A woven, natural rug anchors the space, layered with a smaller, vintage-style rug in the warm earth tones that reverberate throughout the home. In front of his windows, two white, carved-wood screens he found years ago at a Chicago antique shop — for an absolute steal — provide privacy.

Abrams has filled built-ins — stylishly and meaningfully — with

books, decorative pieces and souvenirs, and, of course, PORT 68 mirrors. In front of one, three glass boxes display sentimental collections from his many travels to Vietnam, India, England and all across the globe. And, to top it off, a silver engraved vessel, “my baby cup.”

On the narrow strip of wall next to the built-ins Abrams points out a set of three steel, engraved bookplates found in Palio, Italy. “They’re all my initials.”

In the adjacent sitting room, a large, bright-orange Suzani tapestry picked up in Istanbul is stretched on a wooden frame, transforming it into a show-stopping work of art. Textiles are one of Abrams’ favorite souvenirs to purchase when abroad.

“They don’t take up any room and they don’t break in your luggage,” he quips.

The Suzani, it turns out, hangs on a wall Abrams had hoped

to knock down to create a spacious eat-in kitchen, but that turned out to be structurally impossible. Instead, he made small cosmetic changes, painting the kitchen and updating it with leftover wallpaper from a showroom. The paper, a neutral tan-and-white trellis design, is “Island House” by Madcap Cottage, a local High Point brand that is a PORT 68 licensee, along with iconic New York fabric house Scalamandré Maison and colonial classic Williamsburg. Just off the kitchen is a 100-year-old original, a dark-wood butler’s pantry with glass-door uppers. Abrams has painted the wall behind it orange, echoing the color of his Suzani. “I wanted to gut this,” Abrams admits, noting that several drawers were not functioning, “but my business partner’s wife freaked out and she goes, ‘Do not take it out!’” His solution? He removed those drawers and added a wine refrigerator, which nestles in perfectly. And now, he appreciates the marriage of display piece and storage the cabinet

offers. “I gotta put my mother’s junk somewhere,” he says with a laugh. “All the silver — lots of silver — I call it the burden of Southern silver” — a phrase he stole from Waites’ wife, Nancy, a fellow Southerner.

In the dining room, Abrams once again used wallpaper — a Thibaut metallic rafia in easy-to-remove vinyl — to refresh the space. Throughout the house, the plaster ceilings needed repair so he “wallpapered the ceiling so I didn’t have to deal with the cracks or the plaster.”

In the center of the dining room ceiling, a large-scale, traditional brass chandelier hangs, adorned by simple black shades, which, Abrams jokes, cost more than the fixture itself. “I bought my chandelier — my brass chandelier, which would be thousands of dollars if you bought it through Visual Comfort — 20 bucks at Habitat.”

He frequents the local Habitat for Humanity retail store because vendors regularly abandon showroom pieces there. Pro designer tip? “You just need to go. All. The. Time.”

In his primary bedroom upstairs, another Habitat find covers the entire wall behind his headboard. Unseen to the naked eye, Abrams notes that there are two off-centered windows hidden behind pleats of creamy, linenwool fabric, a visual trick that allows him symmetry. The whole treatment, he says, cost him just around “100 bucks.”

A study in cool neutrals — black, gray, tan and chrome — his bedroom is a comparatively soothing and minimalistic space. The rug, a tan-and-white plaid “was custom made for me through my friends at Momeni.” In the corner, an easel features a sketch of the human form and, above a black settee, two large astronomical prints mimic the room’s colors.

“This is the contrast,” says Abrams, leading the way to a chocolate-black bedroom one door down. “I always like having one dark bedroom for guests

because it’s cozy,” he says. Flanking the windows, black-and-white zebras leap across scarlet Scalamandré drapes.

Abrams gestures to the smaller furnishings in the space. “A lot of this stuff I’ve had forever, from house to house to house, and it just works when you buy classic things,” he says. Metal pedestals purchased 30–40 years ago from Charleston Forge display porcelain urns.

The last “bedroom” of the upstairs is smaller and the staircase to the attic lines the back wall. Abrams, who doesn’t need a fourth bedroom, turned it into his dressing room. The pièce de résistance is the open cabinet displaying what he calls “my trust fund” and perhaps this collector’s most expensive pieces, amassed over time. Again, he reiterates the importance of buying something classic and taking care of it, except this time he’s talking about his extensive shoe collection. “Luckily, your feet sizes don’t change. This may change,” he says as he pats his stomach, “but that doesn’t change.”

For now, Abrams says, the house is “all done over.” He’s repaired, repainted and wallpapered almost every surface. Of course, there’s still an old basketball slab in the backyard that he’s contemplated painting to resemble a pool, complete with a big, inflatable rubber duck. “But,” he says, “I don’t know if anybody would get my humor.”

At home, relaxing on his velvet sofa, Abrams reflects on his life. “All from a boy from a small town in Alabama,” he muses. “It’s been a crazy adventure.”

Is it time to call an end to the crazy adventure and plant permanent roots in High Point?

As if he hadn’t yet thought of it, he says, after a beat, “Well, yeah, maybe.” OH

ALMANAC March

By a sHley walsHe

May your thoughts be as glad as the shamrocks, May your heart be as light as a song, May each day bring you bright, happy hours, That stay with you all the year long. — Irish Blessing

March is an arrival, a revival, tender life still wet from birth. Listen.

A purple martin sings at dawn, hollow bones weary from 5,000 miles of flight.

“Join me,” he broadcasts to the others. “Over here! On past the flowering redbud. The air is sweet, and spring is nigh!”

Yes, spring is nigh. We’ve much to celebrate. The journey through winter was long and arduous.

On the forest floor, where trout lily and bloodroot grace the softening earth, fiddleheads unfurl like soundless party horns.

One by one, swallowtails emerge from chrysalides as yellow confetti propelled in slow motion. Winged maple seeds sing in scarlet, cascading from naked branches like blazing garlands.

A chorus of peepers screams out.

Squirrel kits nuzzle nursing mothers in their dreys. Born pink and blind, their world is all warm milk and wriggling bodies. When they open their eyes, the violets will have opened, too.

In the garden, a cottontail kindles her first litter. Deadnettle and dandelions mingle with delicate grasses. A bluebird crafts her cupshaped nest.

Can you sense your own revival? Your own tender blossoming? Spring is here, and so are you.

Emerge from brumation as the snake does. Wiggle your toes in the feather-soft grass. Let the sun melt the winter from your skin and bones as the sparrow trills rejoice!

Once in a Red Moon

According to National Geographic, two of the nine “must-see sky events” of 2025 are happening this month, beginning with a total lunar eclipse and blood moon on Friday, March 14. During the total eclipse, visible from 2:26 – 3:31 a.m., Earth’s shadow will cause the moon to appear otherworldly, glowing in shades of “pumpkin orange to coppery red.” Can you say le fantastique? Night owls: No reason to miss it.

Next on the docket of celestial sensations is a deep partial solar eclipse on Saturday, March 29. Early birds: This one’s for you. Bust out those eclipse glasses for a show that will peak at sunrise.

A Time to Sow

The soil is thawing. The birds are twittering. The worms are back in business.

Earthworms are key to healthy, nutrient-rich soil. And did you know that just 1 acre of land can host upwards of 1 million of the cold-blooded wigglers? The more, the merrier.

As a new season begins, we, too, return to the garden.

In early March, sow carrot, spinach, radish, pea and turnip seeds directly into the softening earth. Chives, parsley, onion and parsnips can be planted mid-month. At month’s end, bust out the beet and arugula seeds.

Broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage seedlings can be transplanted outdoors mid- to latemonth. Ditto kale, Swiss chard, lettuce and kohlrabi.

As robin exhales mirthful tunes of crocus and tulip and plump, soil-laced worms, you gently hum along.

Taste What’s

Downtown Greensboro invites you to embark on a culinary journey where you can sample diverse cuisines, immerse yourself in unique atmospheres, and experience an array of savory styles, all within a convenient stroll.

See for yourself, in Downtown Greensboro.

Cheesecakes by Alex LENSES: Stumble Stilskins | Crafted

Patti Callahan Henry

FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 2025 • 3 — 5 p.m.

The Colonnade at Revolution Mill: 900 Revolution Mill Drive • Greensboro, NC

O.Henry magazine is thrilled to welcome back New York Times- and USA Today-bestselling author Patti Callahan Henry in celebration of her latest novel, The Story She Left Behind, out on March 18. Kick off the first weekend of spring with your girlfriends, gathered in an intimate, exposedbrick and wood-beamed space. Nosh on heavy low-country themed hors d’oeuvres crafted by Pepper Moon Catering, sip wine and chat with fellow book-lovers as well as the author herself during a cocktail hour, after which Patti will share inside stories and discuss her newest masterpiece.

Book your tickets today at:

March 2025

Before attending any event, it’s best to check times, costs, status and location. Although we conscientiously use the most accurate and up-to-date information, the world is subject to change and errors occur!

March 1–31

MAKING CONNECTIONS. This installation of works from the Weatherspoon’s attic showcases the gallery as an academic museum with deep connections to its campus, Greensboro and broader communities. Free. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: weatherspoonart.org/ exhibitions/current-exhibitions.

ANDREW WYETH. “Andrew Wyeth at Kuerner Farm: The Eye of the Earth” explores the connection between one of the most celebrated 20th-century American artists and a particular farm in his hometown, Chadds Ford, Penn. Reynolda House Museum of American Art, 2250 Reynolda Road, Winston-Salem. Admission info: reynolda.org/museum/exhibitions.

CRIP*. This group exhibition features contemporary artists exploring disabilities and the ways their personal experience of disability intersects with other aspects of their lives. Free. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: weatherspoonart. org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions.

ALPHA ART CLUB EXHIBIT. “Pathos, Patience, Perseverance” celebrates 100 years of High Point’s oldest African American women’s group and features photographs, memorabilia, oral history and newspaper articles collected by the club’s members over the last century. Free. The Art Gallery at Congdon Yards, 400 W. English Drive, Suite 151, High Point. Info: tagart.org.

March 1–29

EMBODIED. Curated by the students in UNCG’s Art History 490: Museums and Exhibition Space, this exhibit explores “Meaning in the Human Form.” Free. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: weatherspoonart.org/ exhibitions/current-exhibitions.

March 1–21

HIGH ART. This is the last month to catch

Jewish Festival

March 23, 11 am - 5 pm • Temple Emanuel

the 2-D and 3-D work of students from 17 area high schools, ranging from Grimsley to Tri-City Christian Academy. The Art Gallery at Congdon Yards, 400 W. English Dr., Suite 151, High Point. Info: tagart.org/exhibits.

March 1–16

FENCES. Times vary. The North Carolina Black Repertory Company presents the August Wilson play examining race relations in 1950s Pittsburgh. Tickets: $35. Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts at Hanesbrands Theatre, 209 N. Spruce St., Winston-Salem. Info: ncblackrep.org.

March 1–2

EVERYBODY. Times vary. UNCG School of Theatre students invite you on a wild and unpredictable ride in this modern-day adaptation of the 15th-century morality play, Everyman. Tickets: $5+. Pam and David Sprinkle Theatre, 402 Tate St., Greensboro. vpa.uncg.edu/events.

THE ADDAMS FAMILY: YOUNG@PART. Times vary. Adapted for youth and teen performers and presented by High Point Community Theatre, this quirky musical tells the story of Wednesday Addams’ coming of age. Tickets: $16.81+. Centennial Station Arts Center, 121 S. Centennial Ave., High Point. Info: highpointtheatre.com/events.

VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE. 8 p.m. & 3 p.m. Triad PridePerforming Arts presents this Tonywinning play about three bickering, middleaged siblings. Tickets: $15+. Congregational

United Church of Christ, 400 W. Radiance Drive, Greensboro. Info: triadprideperformingarts.org.

March 1

CELLO CONCERTO. 7:30 p.m. Guest Principal Conductor Chelsea Tipton and cellist Bryan Cheng join the Greensboro Symphony for a performance of ColeridgeTaylor’s “Danse Nègre,” Elgar’s “Cello Concerto” and Brahms’ Symphony No. 3. Tickets: $42.35+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter. com/events.

BLAKE SHELTON. 7 p.m. The country legend is joined by Emily Ann Roberts, Craig Morgan, Deana Carter and Trace Adkins. Tickets: $46.15+. First Horizon Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: gsocomplex.com/events.

DIG IT. 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Just in time for spring, celebrate the grand opening of Guilford Garden Center’s second location with live music, prizes, plant education and garden fun. Free. Guilford Garden Center, 3811 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Info: guilfordgardencenter.com.

BOOK LAUNCH. 6–7 p.m. Scuppernong Books’ own Steve Mitchell celebrates the release of his latest novel, Body of Trust. Illustrated by Christine Kirouac. Free. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: scuppernongbooks.com/ events/calendar.

March 2–3

CHORAL CONCERT. Times vary. Bel Canto Company and Gate City Voices present Sanctuary, celebrating the Triad’s high school conductors and their choirs. Tickets: $5+. Christ United Methodist Church, 410 N. Holden Road, Greensboro. Info: belcantocompany.com/events.

March 4–9

A BEAUTIFUL NOISE. Times vary. The Broadway show serves as a musical memoir, depicting Neil Diamond’s incredible rise to fame. Tickets: $33+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

March 4

CASABLANCA. 7 p.m. Grab your popcorn and a seat for a screening of the classic film starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid. Tickets: $8. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/events.

March 5–9

WOMEN’S ACC TOURNAMENT. Times vary. Experience the Ally Women’s ACC Basketball Tournament in person right here in the Gate City. First Horizon Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum.com/events.

March 5

CLIVE CARROLL. 7:30 p.m. The guitarist hailing from the UK hits the stage with a moving acoustic set. Tickets: $22.60+. Flat Iron, 221 Summit Ave., Greensboro. Info: flatirongso.com/events.

March 6

FLAMEKEEPER. 5–7:30 p.m. Following a mini-concert by the UNCG School of Music’s Old-Time Ensemble, explore the life and disability journey of fiddler Michael Cleveland as part of the “Crip*” Film Series. Free. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: weatherspoonart.org/ calendar.

March 7–16

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. Times vary. The Community Theatre of Greensboro presents this legendary Tony-winning musical about a tight-knit Jewish community in a pre-revolutionary Russian village. Tickets: $15+. Starr Theatre, 520 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: ctgso.org.

March 7

FIRST FRIDAY. 6–9 p.m. Head downtown

for a night of live music and happenings stretching all the way from LeBauer Park and the Greensboro Cultural Center to the South End. Free. Downtown Greensboro. Info: downtowngreensboro.org/first-friday.

WITS! 9:40 p.m. Standup jokesters crowdsourcing for comedy. Tickets: $8.08+. The Idiot Box, 503 N. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: idiotboxers.com.

March 8–9

COLLAGE WORKSHOP. Times vary. Natalie Schorr teaches the art of collage. Tickets: $15. Reconsidered Goods, 4118 Spring Garden St., Greensboro. Info: reconsideredgoods.org/calendar.

March 8

TEA WITH SEAGROVE POTTERS. 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Spend the day cruising the beautiful countryside, discovering spectacular handmade pottery and sampling teas and pastries along the way. Free. Info: teawithseagrovepotters.com.

JAZZ WORKSHOP. 3–4:30 p.m. All levels of musicians are welcome to listen, discuss and jam with other musicians. Free. The Music Academy of North Carolina, 1327 Beaman Place, Greensboro. Info: musicacademync.org.

UNPLUG. 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Celebrate Global Day of Unplugging during Read Across America week by making your own cardboard car to attend “drive-in” story time. Free. High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: highpointmuseum.org.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL HISTORY. 6–7 p.m. Susan Shackelford, co-author of Shattering the Glass, discusses the history of women’s basketball. Free. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: scuppernongbooks.com/events/calendar.

MUSIC MASTERCLASS. 11 a.m.–noon. Educators, singers and performers Nathan Gunn — a Metropolitan Opera baritone — and Scott MacLeod show off their talents as well as share in conversation about music education and performance. Free. The Music Academy of North Carolina, 1327 Beaman Place, Greensboro. Info: musicacademync.org.

MARCH 9

PHILHARMONIA. 3 p.m. Joined by the pre-professional dancers of Dance Project, the Philharmonia of Greensboro performs a family-friendly show including Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. Free. Van Dyke Performance Space, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greensboro-nc. gov/departments/creative-greensboro.

AUTHOR TALK. 2 p.m. Three authors — Matthew Wimberley, Zackary Vernon and Mark Powell — gather together to discuss their latest works. Free. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: scuppernongbooks.com/events/calendar.

MARCH

11

U.S. NAVY BAND. 7 p.m. The United States Navy Concert Band performs an array of music, from marches and patriotic selections to modern wind ensemble repertoire. Tickets: Up to six tickets free with in-person pickup at the Tanger box office. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

March 11 & 18

YOUNG ARTISTS KOLLECTIVE. 4–5:15 p.m. The YAK Club provides budding artists the opportunity to experiment with materials and processes. Registration: Nonmembers, $45; Members, $40.50. March 11, Grades K–2; March 18, Grades 3–5. ArtQuest at GreenHill Center for NC Art, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greenhillnc.org/events.

March 12

JOE BONAMASSA. 8 p.m. Backed by a stellar band of legendary musicians, the artist Guitar World magazine calls “the world’s biggest blues guitarist” puts on a lively show that will rock your world. Tickets: $65.75+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

RICK PRICE. 7:30 p.m. For over 30 years, this Australian singer-songwriter has been serving up soulful sounds. Tickets: $22.60+. Flat Iron, 221 Summit Ave., Greensboro. Info: flatirongso.com/events.

March 13–16

TWELFTH NIGHT. Times vary. In collaboration with Shared Radiance Performing Arts Company, Creative Greensboro presents a Shakespeare classic featuring a blend of jazz, funk, pop and classic musical theatre in the first performance of its kind in North Carolina. Stephen D. Hyers Theatre, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greensboro-nc. gov/departments/creative-greensboro.

March 13

COLLECTION STUDY SESH. 6–7:30 p.m. Weatherspoon curators lead a community collection study session focused on artists including Helen Frankenthaler and Elaine de Kooning, who were members of a post-war artistic cohort that changed the modern art world. Free. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500

Tate St., Greensboro. Info: weatherspoonart. org/calendar.

MOUNTAIN MOVIES. 7 p.m. Celebrate mountain culture at a viewing of selections from the Banff Centre Mountain Film World Tour. Tickets: $16+. High Point Theatre, 220 E. Commerce Ave., High Point. Info: highpointtheatre.com/events.

March 14

CALIDORE STRING QUARTET. 7:30 p.m. Founded in 2019 at Los Angeles’ Colburn School, this quartet is one of the world’s foremost interpreters of a vast chamber music repertory. Tickets: $5+. Christ United Methodist Church, 410 N. Holden Road, Greensboro. Info: musicforagreatspace.org/season.

KATT WILLIAMS. 8 p.m. The actor and comedian whose career spans over 20 years delivers a night of entertainment with his Heaven on Earth tour. Tickets: $77.25+. First Horizon Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: gsocomplex.com/events.

March 15

LANG LANG. 8 p.m. Heralded by The New York Times as “the hottest artist on the classical music planet,” this pianist, educator and philanthropist tickles the ivories and shares stories. Tickets: $7.50+. UNCG Auditorium, 408 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: vpa.uncg.edu/ ucls.

KC AND THE SUNSHINE BAND. 7:30 p.m. “Get Down Tonight” with the group that’s had you putting on your “Boogie Shoes” for over 40 years. Tickets: $61.10+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

AARON LEWIS. 8 p.m. Known as a founding member of Staind, this rock-turnedoutlaw-country musician is joined by The Stateliners. Tickets: $67.80. Piedmont Hall, 2409 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum.com/events.

QUAKER ABOLITION. 11 a.m.–noon. Linda Willard, author of Quaker Abolitionist: Breaking the Chains of Oppression, signs books and shares stories of Quaker men and women who were part of the abolitionist and women’s suffrage movements as well as the Underground Railroad. Free. High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: highpointmuseum.org.

SPRING GARDENING SEMINAR. 10 a.m.–4 p.m. The Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs is getting ready for spring. Learn about edible landscapes from Master Gardener Jeanne Aller; favorite local plants

from horticulturalist Mike Trivette; and flower design from Plants & Answers owner Clark Goodin. Registration: $20; box lunch available to add by March 10: $10. Sail Room at Greensboro Science Center, 4301 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Info: 336-5806617 or 336-854-0408.

March 16

GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV. 7 p.m. The indie-rock and folk artist, who moonlights as a horticulturist and runs Starling Farm in Colorado, performs with the Greensboro Symphony. Tickets: $57+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

INTRO TO PERMACULTURE. 1–3 p.m. Learn how to turn your outdoor space into an edible landscape that imitates and intensifies nature’s way while providing food for your family and the city’s pollinators. Free, registration required. Meeting Place Park, 801 W. Smith St., Greensboro. Info: downtowngreenway.org/events.

QUILTING 101. 1–4 p.m. Paula Becker teaches beginners basic quilting techniques through creating a table runner. Tickets: $30. Reconsidered Goods, 4118 Spring Garden St., Greensboro. Info: reconsideredgoods.org/ calendar.

March 18

A VERY MERRY UNBIRTHDAY. 11 a.m. Don’t be late — hop on over to celebrate the Greensboro Newcomers Club’s 71st birthday with an Alice in Wonderland theme, where you’ll enjoy a delicious buffet-style lunch with the Queen of Hearts, Mad Hatter and March Hare. Reservations required; membership is open to those who are new to the area or have experienced a life change in the past two years. Greensboro Country Club, 410 Sunset Drive, Greensboro. Info: greensboronewcomersclub.com.

March 19

MENDENHALL BLAIR HOUSE. 10–11:30 a.m. The High Point Historical Society welcomes staff of the historic home to discuss its future. Free. High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: highpointmuseum.org.

March 20–29

THE PROM. Times vary. Down-on-their-luck Broadway stars shake up a small town Indiana high school as they rally behind a teen girl who wants to take her girlfriend to prom. Tickets: $15. Weaver Theatre, 300 S. Spring St., Greensboro. Info: weavertheatre.com.

March 20

OPEN MIC. 6–7:30 p.m. Writers of all genres are invited to read from their original works for five minutes at “a very cool monthly open mic” held on the third Thursday of each month. Free. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: scuppernongbooks. com/event.

THE GREENER SIDE. 8:30–10:30 p.m. Nick Ciaccia hosts comedians from all over the country. Tickets: $17.53. The Idiot Box, 503 N. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: idiotboxers. com.

March 21

PATTI CALLAHAN HENRY. 3–5 p.m. Grab your girlfriends and enjoy an intimate cocktail hour featuring heavy hors d’oeuvres and sips, followed by a talk from this New York Times-bestselling author, whose newest novel, The Story She Left Behind, hits bookstores March 18. Tickets: $40+. The Colonnade at Revolution Mill, 900 Revolution Mill Drive, Greensboro. Info: ohenrymag.com.

SPEED FRIENDING. 5:30–7:30 p.m. Looking to make new friends and spark great conversation? Register for your age group’s time slot and come away with new buds. Free, registration required. LoFi Park, 500 N. Eugene St., Greensboro. Info: downtowngreenway.org/events.

AKIKO: FORMLESS WOMAN. 6 p.m. Celebrate the opening of local photographer Maurice Hick’s exhibit featuring a collection of works shot in Japan; the show will remain up for four weeks, Thursdays–Saturdays. The Continental Club, 816 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: facebook.com/ ContinentalCLUBGSO.

MARCH 22–31

OF WINGS AND FEET. See the giant, papîermaché puppets created by Paperhand Puppet Intervention and learn about their impact at an exhibit sure to fuel your imagination; public opening to be held from 5:30-–7:30 p.m., Saturday, March 22. Free. GreenHill Center for NC Art, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greenhillnc.org/events.

March 22–23

STORYBOOK TALES. Times vary. The Greensboro Ballet captivates with tales for all ages, including its highlight, Alice in Wonderland. Tickets: $20+. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/events.

March 22–23.

MAD HATTER TEA. Times vary. Before the ballet performance, sip tea with storybook characters, including Alice and the Mad Hatter himself. Tickets: $30. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/events.

UPCYCLED PRINTMAKING. Times vary. Clorinda Vido teaches you how to create unique stamps using styrofoam and recycled materials, which will be used to stamp vibrant prints on paper. Tickets: $15. Reconsidered Goods, 4118 Spring Garden St., Greensboro. Info: reconsideredgoods.org/calendar.

March 22

CIRQUE DE LA SYMPHONIE. 7:30 p.m. Conductor Christopher Dragon leads the Greensboro Symphony while un cirque including acrobats and contortionists performs an electrifying spectacle with a Heroes & Villains theme. Tickets: $42.35+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

GUITAR CONCERT. 2:30–4:30 p.m. Music Academy faculty and students share the stage for a unique concert featuring solos and ensembles. Free. The Music Academy of North Carolina, 1327 Beaman Place, Greensboro. Info: musicacademync.org.

WOMEN’S HISTORY. 1–4 p.m. Women’s history comes to life through costumed interpreters. Free. Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Ave., Greensboro. Info: greensborohistory.org/events.

March 23

JEWISH FESTIVAL. 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Explore Jewish life and culture through food, music, dancing, a sanctuary tour, an artisan market and kids zone. Free. Temple Emanuel, 1129 Jefferson Road, Greensboro. Info: gsojfest.org.

MILLENNIUM TOUR. 7 p.m. Trey Songz, Omarion and Bow Wow headline an incredible lineup, featuring special guest Rick Ross. Tickets: $92.75+. First Horizon Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: gsocomplex.com/events.

March 23–28

MAN OF LA MANCHA. Times vary. The Piedmont Opera presents the 1965 musical inspired by Don Quixote. Tickets: $11.24+. High Point Theatre, 220 E. Commerce Ave., High Point. Info: highpointtheatre.com/ events.

March 26

MARIE BENEDICT. 11:30 a.m. The New York Times-bestselling author (and lawyer), whose latest book, The Queens of Crime, was released last month, will present at the High Point Literary League meeting, followed by a book signing. Members only, but membership enrollment is open. High Point Country Club, 800 Country Club Drive, High Point. Info: hpliteraryleague.org.

GOLDEN GIRLS. 7 p.m. The Laughs Continue in this live parody show. Tickets: $47.20+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/ events.

GLENCOE MILLS. The High Point Historical Society hosts a bus trip to one of the

most-well preserved 19th-century textile mill villages in the Southeast. Tickets: $60, lunch not included. Info: highpointnc.gov/calendar.

March 27

THE SIMON & GARFUNKEL STORY. 7:30 p.m. Two re-enactors portray the musical legends in this immersive concert-style tribute show. Tickets: $29+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

BJ BARHAM. 8 p.m. Born in Greensboro, American Aquarium’s lead singer takes the stage for a solo show. Tickets: $28+. Flat Iron, 221 Summit Ave., Greensboro. Info: flatirongso.com/events.

March 29

KEB’ MO’ & SHAWN COLVIN. 7:30 p.m. Two bluesy songwriting artists join forces for a night of Americana music that’ll have you swaying. Tickets: $61.60+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

NATURAL EGG DYEING. 11 a.m.–4 p.m. Get ready for the Easter Bunny by dyeing

provided eggs with onions, blueberries and other common foods from nature. Free. Historical Park at High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: highpointmuseum.org.

March 28–30

VINTAGE MARKET DAYS. Times vary. Peruse an indoor/outdoor vendor market chock full of vintage scores, handmade goodies as well as sweet and savory treats. First Horizon Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: gsocomplex.com/events.

March 28

MARY GAUTHIER. 7 p.m. Fiddle & Bow celebrates 25 years of courageous music from the artist known for songs such as “Drag Queens in Limousines.” Tickets: $25+. In the Crown at the Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/events.

STEVE TREVIÑO. 8 p.m. Following the success of his 2024 Netflix special, “America’s Favorite Husband” hits the stage for a night of comedy gold. Tickets: $30.50+. Carolina

Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/events.

March 30

PUNCH NEEDLE WORKSHOP. 2–4 p.m. Discover the art of punch-needle crafting in a workshop led by local artist Leslie Birbick. Tickets: $20. Reconsidered Goods, 4118 Spring Garden St., Greensboro. Info: reconsideredgoods.org/calendar.

March 31

ROMANCE BOOK CLUB. 7 p.m. Romance is not dead — it’s alive and well at Scuppernong Books’ monthly online book club. Free. Info: scuppernongbooks.com/ events/calendar.

WEEKLY HAPPENINGS

WEDNESDAYS

LIVE MUSIC & PAINTING. 6–9 p.m. Evan Olson and Jessica Mashburn of AM rOdeO play covers and original music while artist-inresidence Chip Holton paints. Free. Lucky 32. 1421 Westover Terrace, Greensboro. Info: lucky32.com.

FAMILY NIGHT. 5–7 p.m. Enjoy an artdriven evening with family and friends in the studios. Free. ArtQuest at GreenHill Center for NC Art, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greenhillnc.org/events.

THURSDAYS

JAZZ AT THE O.HENRY. 6–9 p.m. Sip vintage craft cocktails and snack on tapas while the O.Henry Trio performs with a different jazz vocalist each week. Free. O.Henry Hotel Social Lobby, 624 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: ohenryhotel. com/o-henry-jazz.

PELVIC HEALTH YOGA. 9–9:45 a.m. This Vinyasa-style flow class works toward lengthening and strengthening the pelvic floor and surrounding muscles. Free, registration required and donations accepted. Triad Pelvic Health, 5574 Garden Village Way, Greensboro. Info: triadpelvichealth.com/ classes.

THURSDAYS & SATURDAYS

KARAOKE & COCKTAILS. 8 p.m. until

midnight, Thursdays; 9 p.m. until midnight, Saturdays. Courtney Chandler hosts a night of sipping and singing. Free. 19 & Timber Bar at Grandover Resort & Spa, 1000 Club Road, Greensboro. Info: grandoverresort.com.

FRIDAYS

MASTERPIECE FRIDAY. 10 a.m.–noon. Parents and caregivers are welcome to bring their kiddos to spend an enchanting morning exploring the wonders of storytelling and crafts. Registration: Non-members over 1, $8; Household Level Members, free. ArtQuest at GreenHill Center for NC Art, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greenhillnc.org/events.

MINDFULNESS MEDITATION. Noon–12:30 p.m. This free introductory class offers a guided meditation for reducing stress in both the mind and body. Free, registration required; adults only. Triad Pelvic Health, 5574 Garden Village Way, Greensboro. Info: triadpelvichealth.com/classes.

FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS

LIVE MUSIC. 7–10 p.m. Enjoy drinks in the

1808 Lobby Bar while soaking up live music provided by local artists. Free. Grandover Resort & Spa, 1000 Club Road, Greensboro. Info: grandoverresort.com.

SATURDAYS

BLACKSMITH DEMONSTRATION. 10 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Watch the sparks and red-hot iron turn into farm implements as the past is recreated under the able hands of a costumed blacksmith. Free. Historical Park at High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: highpointmuseum.org.

HISTORIC WALKING TOURS. 1 & 5 p.m. Take a guided walking tour through the history of downtown Greensboro at 1 p.m. or, if you’re into true crime, stroll through The Gate City’s darker side, covering 1953–1997, at 5 p.m. Tickets: $14. The Bodega, 313 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: trianglewalkingtours.com/book-online.

LETUSBLOWYOU AWAY

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2105 W Cornwallis Drive Suite A, Greensboro, NC 27408 (corner of Cornwallis Dr and Battleground Ave)

(336)-285-7642 | blowoutsandbubbles.com | info@blowoutsandbubbles.com

StorybookTales

Living Information For Today (L.I.F.T.)

L.I.F.T. is a social support program that helps surviving spouses ad just to the loss of their partner. It gives participants the opportunity to socialize with others who share similar feelings and experiences. This program is both entertaining and educational, with speakers on a wide variety of topics For more information on the L.I.F.T. program, please contact Hanes Lineberry Funeral Services at 336-272-5157

celebration

on March 9th and

3712-E Lawndale Dr., Greensboro NC 27455 www.neighborhoodbarre.com/location/nb-greensboro/ greensboro@neighborhoodbarre.com

GreenScene

Carolina Theatre Holiday Cheer

The Crown at the Carolina Theatre

Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Photographs by Lynn Donovan

Jeri Rowe, Altina Layman, Katherine Rowe

Judi Kastner, Dawn Chaney, John Graham

April, Horace & Denise Sturdivant

Jean Copeland, Evan Olson & Jessica Mashburn-Olson

Gary & Carol Krikorian

Robby Hassell, Doug Copeland

Jo & Phil Marsom

Marty Barber, Laura Johnson

Patrice Hinnant, Alexa Aycock

Marc Isaacson, Will Truslow

Judi Kastner, Keith Holliday, Amanda Garner

Bob & Nancy Thurston

Davis & Mary Ann McDonald, Chip Hagan

Blakely & Wright Barn, Jim Kluttz

Barbara & Bill Vinson

Locke & Lynda Clifford, Jerry & Susan Schwartz

Robby Hassell, Betty Cone, Eloise Hassell

Brian Gray, Charles Brummitt, Ron Pudlo

Carlos & Judy Yanez

GreenScene

Chabad Jewish

Center Car Menorah Parade

Celebration Station

December 25, 2024

Photographs by Ivan Saul Cutler

Carly Adler, Martin Fields

Eva Turner, Mindy Samet Andrews, Susan Feibelman

Levi Plotkin, Avohom Plotkin, Sroli Plotkin, Meir Minkowitz

Tylee Friedland, Jennifer Sandock, Monica Cummins, Wendee Miller Cutler, Alexa Rose Cutler

Dale Gurvis, Kyle Warner, Amy Warner, Molly Warner, Jake McGee

Chabad Rabbi Yosef Plotkin

Hindy Plotkin, Chevi Plotkin

Mendelson-Posey Family

Barb Oliver, Jamie & Jeff Schleuning

Orabele Pront, Rachel Pront

Levi Plotkin, Meir Minkowitz

Chabad Rabbi Yosef Plotkin kindles lead candle on can goods Hanukkah Menorah

Nichole Walters, Rachel Walters

Wendee Miller Cutler

Chaya Plotkin, Rachelle Aaron, Chevi Plotkin

Michal O’Gara, Rhapsody O’Gara

Jerry Wertman, Chabad Rabbi Mendy Minkowitz

The Donor

Giving of yourself in acts great and small

“My kidney.”

Ann gave their daughter a kidney on September 25, 2002.

She laughs as my mouth drops open. The recipient survived many years. “Her kidney lasted until her death from cancer.”

“I was in the hospital at Duke overnight. That’s all,” Ann replies, batting questions away.

She looks past my shoulder into space, reflective. Ann remains other-focused.

I tell her my stepfather died of kidney failure after many years on dialysis.

Every eight minutes another person is added to the national transplant waiting list. Only one out of every four needing a transplant receives a kidney, with a typical wait of five years.

Ann Deaton wears her niece Leslie’s citrus-quartz pendant, fingering it gently as we talk. When I mention how lovely it is, a smile flickers. She eats slowly, sipping tea during our lunch in a Middle Eastern restaurant. The retired high school counselor, with intelligent blue eyes behind gold wire-rimmed glasses, is just regaining the ability to laugh after months of being hamstrung by grief at the loss of her niece.

Leslie inherited Ann’s charismatic personality and valiantly fought cancer for months until her recent death. Ann had been a constant presence in Leslie’s abbreviated life. She watched her battle pancreatic cancer with a pilgrim’s fervor, both expecting a miracle.

In a sense, Ann believes Leslie experienced one. The singular miracle was that, until her end, she remained lucid, engaged, even questioning. At one point, Ann thought that if Leslie got into a new drug trial, she might triumph. Her smile tightens.

“She was so ill at that point; the drug itself would have killed her. I think Leslie lost hope when she learned that.” Today, however, Ann doesn’t weep. She is cried out.

Bearing witness to suffering has taken a toll.

She wraps half the sandwich, saying, “My appetite isn’t really great.” Ann has just returned from Key West, a trip she has made often with old friends.

“I needed it,” she admits. “Those sunsets.”

“It’s so kind of them to invite me.” She casually mentions it might have something to do with “the kidney.”

Without missing a beat, she tells me how she takes trips and celebrates holidays with the family.

The kidney?

Ann is aware of the statistics. She tries to convince others that she is living proof that organ donation “is no big deal.” The transplant is done laparoscopically and generally requires just one overnight hospital stay. A friend, Realtor Kathy Haines, chose to follow her lead, donating a kidney to a stranger.

Ann knows how grateful her recipient’s family remains. At the young woman’s death, she was told that “a part of me is already in heaven.”

“Wasn’t that nice of them to say?” she asks, dabbing a napkin at her mouth.

We part. Ann is off to feed the feral cat colonies around town that she supports. It’s another cause near and dear to her.

With a warm smile she winds a scarf around her neck. Ann walks purposefully, off into the winter’s day.

Afterward, I call a friend whose son died one year after receiving a kidney from a living donor and complete stranger.

I relate what Ann has just shared — that the transplant pain was not significant and recovery was straightforward. My friend’s voice quavers.

“I’ve always dreaded asking the donor, that wonderful man, about the pain he suffered.”

She collects herself.

“Thank you for that. And please, please, thank Ann for me.”

Outside, the sun emerges, pushing back against earlier grayness. I think of Ann making her faithful rounds in a RAV4, feeding cats in a colony near a shopping center and then another off Spring Garden, where wary felines gather and await her. At home she cares for Leslie’s cat, Virginia, and other rescues.

There is always an Ann, I think, to show us our better selves.

Winter will yield to spring. The sun, defiant, climbs higher until its magnificent sunset. OH

For further information see the North Carolina Institute of Medicine at https://nciom.org, the American Kidney Fund at www.kidneyfund.org or the National Kidney Foundation at www.kidney.org.

HARRY BLAIR