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january 2018 DEPARTMENTS 13 Simple Life By Jim Dodson 18 Short Stories 21 Life’s Funny By Maria Johnson 25 Omnivorous Reader By Stephen Smith 29 Scuppernong Bookshelf 31 A Writer’s Life By Wiley Cash 35 Gate City Journal By Maria Johnson 39 Papadaddy By Clyde Edgerton 40 In The Spirit By Tony Cross 43 True South By Susan Kelly 45 Birdwatch By Susan Campbell 47 Wandering Billy By Billy Eye
FEATURES 51 About Magic Poetry by Ry Southard 52 Men of Bronze by Jim Moriarty
Where art meets industry, in a world of gritty timelessness
60 Breathing Lessons by Ashley Wahl A New Year message about healing with trees
62 The House of Whispers by Cynthia Adams
A Depression-era Tudor reimagined by designer Randal Weeks of Aidan Gray Home
71 January Almanac By Ash Alder A blue moon and hot wassail
72 Arts Calendar 87 GreenScene 95 The Accidental Astrologer By Astrid Stellanova 96 O.Henry Ending By Cynthia Adams
Cover photograph and photograph this page by Sam Froelich
6 O.Henry
January 2018
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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M A G A Z I N E
Volume 8, No. 1 “I have a fancy that every city has a voice.” 336.617.0090 1848 Banking Street, Greensboro, NC 27408 www.ohenrymag.com PUBLISHER
David Woronoff Jim Dodson, Editor • jim@thepilot.com Andie Stuart Rose, Art Director • andie@thepilot.com Nancy Oakley, Senior Editor • nancy@ohenrymag.com Lauren M. Coffey, Graphic Designer Alyssa Rocherolle, Graphic Designer CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Cynthia Adams, David Claude Bailey, Harry Blair, Maria Johnson
A HOLIDAY MESSAGE FROM THE TRIAD’S LUXURY HOME MARKET LEADER Thank you, triad, for all the support that the you’ve shown us this year. We are honored to continue Tom’s legacy of compassionate professionalism in all that we do. As we move into the new year Tom Chitty Associates welcomes a new member of the team, Kathy Haines. Kathy considers the Triad to be the best place to live, work and play and is dedicated to providing excellent customer service to her clients. On behalf of Tom Chitty Associates, God Bless, and Happy New Year to everyone!
8 O.Henry
Kathy Haines
Barry S. Hardeman
336-339-2000 results@kathyhaines.com www.KathyHaines.com
336-420-2837 tomchitty@tomchitty.com www.tomchitty.com
January 2018
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Lynn Donovan, Amy Freeman, Sam Froelich, John Gessner, Bert VanderVeen, Mark Wagoner CONTRIBUTORS Ash Alder, Jane Borden, Grant Britt, Susan Campbell, Wiley Cash, Clyde Edgerton, Billy Eye, Ross Howell Jr., Billy Ingram, Susan Kelly, Sara King, Brian Lampkin, Meridith Martens, D.G. Martin, Ogi Overman, Romey Petite, Stephen Smith, Astrid Stellanova
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336.617.0090, ohenryadvertising@thepilot.com
Brad Beard, Graphic Designer
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Darlene Stark, Circulation Director 910.693.2488 Douglas Turner, Finance Director 910.693.2497
©Copyright 2018. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. O.Henry Magazine is published by The Pilot LLC
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Simple Life
The Road to Greatness Along a historic American highway, the heart and soul of a nation is revealed
By Jim Dodson
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE MEMORIAL ILLUMINATION AT ANTIETAM NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD
Over the past few months I’ve been
traveling the Great Wagon Road, researching a book about the 18th-century route that brought generations of Scotch-Irish, English and German immigrants to the American South, including both branches of my family.
Roughly following the so-called Great Warrior’s Path that lay along the eastern slopes of the Appalachian mountains from Pennsylvania to Georgia, used for millennia by native American peoples for hunting and warfare, the Great Wagon Road stretched more than 800 miles from Philadelphia to Augusta, Georgia, and was said to be the most traveled road in Colonial America. Thomas Jefferson’s daddy mapped and named it, and a young George Washington cut his teeth scouting and fighting Indians along it. Dan’l Boone traveled the Road from North Carolina to the unexplored frontiers of Kentucky and Ohio, while three major wars that shaped our national identity were conducted along it: the French and Indian War followed by the American Revolution, and a dozen critical battles of the American Civil War, most notably the bloodbaths at Antietam and Gettysburg. By my rough count at least three presidents and more than a dozen colleges and universities grew up along the Great Road, as I first heard a Salem College history professor call it 40 years ago, not to mention a dozen of Eastern America’s most important towns and cities, home to social visionaries and inventors who created everything from the Conestoga wagon to Texas Pete hot sauce and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Most of the early Quakers who populated Guilford and Alamance counties also made their way to a new life in these parts by traveling the Great Wagon Road, a branch of which was called the Carolina Road that took others (including my English and Scottish forebears) to Hillsborough and the coast. Though I’m not yet halfway on my travels from Philadelphia to Georgia, thus far it has been a trip full of rewarding surprises, unexpected turns, fresh insights and inspiring encounters. In my quest to know more about where we The Art & Soul of Greensboro
collectively came from — and how this remarkable road shaped the nation we inhabit today — I’ve already traversed a dozen major battlefields and museums, attended lectures and church services, hung at the elbows of area historians and academic scholars, spent hours in local archives, historical associations and historic sites, investigated iconic forefathers and forgotten heroes, unapologetically played tourist everywhere I could, checked out the hokiest roadside attractions and sampled local cooking every chance I got. What a simple pleasure this project has been — not to mention a refresher course on the power of American democracy during one of the most divisive years in memory. For perspective, try Googling “What Americans Know About Their Own History” and you may be deeply alarmed to learn what we collectively don’t know about our past and how our democracy was designed to work. Various polls over the past decade have shown, for example, that 67 percent of Americans have no idea what the purpose of the U.S. Constitution is for — or what exactly an “amendment” means. Another recent poll indicated more than half of high school graduates thought the 4th of July celebrated the end of the Civil War, another that the majority of Americans couldn’t simply name the three main branches of American government. The estimated half million frontier settlers who came down America’s first great “highway” beginning in the early 18th century — Ulster Scots, German Lutherans, Moravian bretheren, Amish and Menonite farmers, Presbyterian and Anglican preachers, and Eastern Jews — had no prescient awareness of the diverse nation they were collectively creating. The vast majority were simply ordinary folks who’d crossed oceans to seek a fresh start, religious freedom and a piece of the New World they could claim as home. In the process, the native peoples of North America were largely marginalized and exterminated, a tale as old as the hills, and an entire race was enslaved — mistakes we are still struggling to come to terms with and compensate for today. For this and other reasons, my desire to travel the “Road that made America,” as a prominent Pennsylvania historian called it during a long lunch conversation, has been building in me for at least two decades. That’s why my travels along the Great Wagon Road have been such a soulJanuary 2018
O.Henry 13
Simple Life
TWO VALENTINE WEEKENDS for COASTAL LOVEBIRDS
Birds of a Feather Join us Feb 10-12 or Feb 17-19 Celebrate at our beautiful coast with a cozy room, a waterfront view, creative cuisine, and a scenic cruise. This gift for your favorite “fine feathered friend” is really something to chirp about! Photo courtesy of Wilmington resident Jeffrey P. Karnes, named by audubon.org as one of 15 Awesome Instagram Accounts for Beautiful Bird Photos.
blockade-runner.com 14 O.Henry
January 2018
stirring pleasure — a much-needed reminder of why America has always been great and simply needs to get back in touch with the values and principles that drew our forebears to a wilderness in the first place. In Philadelphia, I dined at the historic City Tavern where the Sons of Liberty plotted the birth of a nation. I sat for a golden hour in a sunlit pew at Christ Church where Washington, Franklin and Betsy Ross worshipped, chatting with a fellow who lives and breathes the values of Benjamin Franklin, American’s first true Renaissance man At Lancaster, I dove deep into Amish culture and found myself trying to eat my way through the nation’s oldest farmers’ market and discovering the origins of the revolutionary Conestoga wagon that carried pioneer Americans across the continent. Just down the road in York, where in 1778 the Second Continental Congress signed the Articles of Confederation (a prelude to our Constitution), I sat in on a delightful night of local historians spinning tales about a town where the American Industrial Revolution essentially began. On a cold morning in late November, I attended the 154th reading of Abe Lincoln’s extraordinary Gettysburg Address with a distinguished Lincoln biographer, standing on the very spot in the National Cemetery where Lincoln gave the most inspiring speech in American history. Afterwards, I lunched with the nation’s leading Lincoln impersonator — a biology teacher from Illinois — who told me that “playing Lincoln” had profoundly changed his life in a dozen different ways. The next morning, I walked the famous battlefield at dawn where the course of the Civil War changed over three days in July of 1983. I could swear I heard drums. Two weekends later, my wife and I joined a slow-moving line of cars inching across five miles of soulful Potomac countryside simply to drive — sans headlights — through the annual illumination of the Antietam National Battlefield, the 29th year that more than 1,500 area Scouts and volunteers have placed 23,000 luminaries on the tranquil killing ground where more Americans died on a single day than in any other battle. The next morning, we attended services at the oldest Episcopal church in West Virginia, just across the river in Shepherdstown, a gorgeous little Potomac town where the wounded of Antietam shared Trinity Church on alternate weeks going forward — the Union wounded one week, the wounded boys in butternut and gray the next. In Hagerstown, Maryland, where the German wing of my family got off the GWR to head west to a new life in Cumberland and West Virginia, we attended a wonderful German Christmas market and spent an hour learning about the Colonial origins of Christmas in America during a walking tour of town-founder Jonathan Hager’s original stone house. Our guide was a retired career military man named Max Gross whose love of local history was flat-out contagious. “We are a blend of so many diverse cultures and people in America,” he said, explaining how various aspects of Christmas traditions really came from a dozen different cultures ranging from Poland to Turkey. “We think of these traditions as uniquely ours, but we are the splendid sum of so many cultures and people who came together in a wilderness to form the greatest democracy in history.” I could go on indefinitely about the diverse and lovely Americans I’ve met on my little odyssey through time and history, the sacred places I’ve walked, the many surprising things I’ve managed to learn, and even the hokey tourist traps I’ve explored with boyish glee. For this correspondent, the year ahead holds the promise of more spiritually enriching encounters with people from all walks of American life, a lesson of civic renewal among people who love their towns and communities with a passion that is palpable, a devotion that is true. Despite our present differences, their Great Road ancestors, I suspect, would be proud of how far they — and we — have come. OH Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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Meymandi Concert Hall, Raleigh
Friday, February 23 7:30pm
an evening with authors
JOHN GRISHAM and JOHN HART
National launch for John Hart’s new book “The Hush” For more information and to buy tickets, visit naturalsciences.org/thrillers
PRESENTED BY
WRAL-TV, Business North Carolina, North Carolina Humanities Council
Downtown Raleigh
naturalsciences.org
@ n a t u r a l s c ien c es
Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, goes the old song. But a hallmark of 21st-century life is to drag that kit bag with us wherever we go. Echoing this theme is Baggage Claims, an exhibit that runs from January 27 through April 22 at Weatherspoon Art Museum (500 Tate Street). Using suitcases, trunks, boxes and crates as their media, 17 international artists explore the impact of global travel and commerce on contemporary life, whether to preserve material possessions, cultural and personal histories — or cling to things that are counterproductive and no longer useful. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
Chasing the Dream
Outer Limits . . .
. . . even though there’s no limit to the imaginations of playwrights. Catch their newest creations at Drama Center’s 16th annual Fringe Festival from January 18–21 at the Stephen D. Hyers Theater (200 North Davie Street). Opening the event at 8 p.m. is the winner of the 2018 New Play Project, as well as the Mark Gilbert Award, Boxes and Baggage, by Amy da Luz. As its title suggests, the play revolves around the journey of four strangers who are literally and metaphorically impeded by the baggage they carry. For information on other plays presented at Fringe Festival, as well as performance times, visit or greensborofringefestival.org.
Coiffures for a Cause
Literal hair-raising has become de rigueur for Family Service of the Piedmont’s premier fundraising event — the annual Big Hair Ball (January 27). With a theme of “Cirque du Bal,” this year’s “to ’do,” as in years past, will feature outré fashions and hairstyles, and is, of course, presented by the Guild (and Junior Guild) of Family Service of the Piedmont. So come on out at 6:30 p.m. to Elm Street Center (203 South Elm Street) to quaff among the outrageous coifs — and lend a helping hand to strengthen families in the community. Tickets: safeandhealthyfamilies.com/ bighairball
A life insurance policy gives hope to a black family striving to better its economic circumstances circa pre-civil-rights-era Chicago in Lorraine Hansby’s drama, A Raisin in the Sun. Thanks to Triad Stage, you can see the play unfold (January 27–February 18), as it addresses broader themes of greed, heritage and personal integrity . . . and understand why it’s earned a place in American letters as a classic. Tickets: (336) 272-0160 or triadstage.org.
Chord-oba
PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN SPARTANA
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January 2018
On January 18, musical strains evocative of Spain will resound through Dana Auditorium (710 Levi Coffin Drive) at Greensboro Symphony Orchestra’s “Spanish Evenings” concert. Guest guitarist Manuel Barrueco will induce vibes of España with RimskyKorsakov’s Capriccio Espagnole; Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra, by Joaquín Rodrigo (which jazz heads will recognize from Miles Davis’s — heh — milestone album, Sketches of Spain); Debussy’s Iberia; and Ravel’s Alborado del grazioso. Concert begins at 8 p.m. For tickets and info: (336) 335-5456, ext. 224 or greensborosymphony.org. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
AVERY MCQUAID NELSON LAWRENCE, “ARRANGING SUITCASES”, 2012. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST. © AVERY MCQUAID NELSON LAWRENCE.
Short Stories
Carry-On
Lithe Limón
Meaning, José Limón. Named for its founder who formed the troupe in 1946, the Limón Dance Company broke new ground in modern dance with its emphasis on reaches, stretches and athleticism to express emotion and convey the vagaries of the human experience. Since Limón’s death in 1972, the company has continued to enthrall audiences with graceful and, at times, gravity-defying movement. See it to believe it at a part of the University Concert and Lecture Series on January 18 at 8 p.m. UNCG Auditorium (402 Tate Street). Tickets: (336) 272-0160 or triadstage.org.
Somm Kind of Winederful
After Stacey Land earned her stripes as a Certified Sommelier (a rigorous course of study, to be sure), 1618 Midtown, where Land works as general manager, has been pulling out the wine stoppers to celebrate. Since last November, the restaurant has been hosting a series of wine-related events that continue into the New Year, starting with the 1618 “Book” Club (a sly nod to the fact that most book clubs are less about reading and all about drinking wine). Offering three membership levels — Jeroboam for $50; Imperial at $70 and Nebuchadnezzar at $100 (limited to 20 people) — the Club promotes monthly wine selections, special access to events and special retail wine pricing for members. But wait! There’s more: 1618 Downtown will also host a wine dinner this month with Katie Bundschu, of the California winery Gundlach Bundshu. The 1618 franchise will also host monthly wine and culture classes, in which participants will learn about wine-growing regions around the world. For information about dates and times visit 1618midtown.com or facebook.com/1618Midtown.
Ogi Sez Ogi Overman
Now that the halls have been undecked and the sleigh bells unrung, we can get back to business — namely, going to concerts that don’t involve cracking nuts and forgetting old acquaintances. So let’s jump right in and welcome a new year of musical merriment.
• January 1, The Garage: Ironically, the
New Year begins with a going-away party for an old friend that’s been a mainstay since the turn of the century, The Garage. The no-frills bar opened by old pal Richard Emmett played a pivotal role in making downtown WinstonSalem an arts and music Mecca. The Genuine will ring down the curtain on the end of an era.
• January 20, High Point Theatre: What boomer doesn’t remember John Sebastian being called into action at Woodstock and forgetting the words to his most famous song? Or the album that turned that same generation onto bluegrass, Old & in the Way? David Grisman played mandolin on that disc, and these two cultural icons are now touring together. Far out.
PHOTOGRAPH BY LYNN DONOVAN
• January 20 & 21, Haw River Ballroom: The fact that this is a two-nighter shows just how mightily David Rawlings has exploded. Gillian Welch’s former sideman is now her frontman, and his Poor David’s Almanack was easily Americana music’s album of the year. • January 23, Carolina Theatre: You gotta love an artist whose first two bands were the New Pornographers and Neko Case and her Boyfriends. Neko has been out on her own for over a decade but her cult following still can’t decide if she’s indie rock, punk, country noir or some variation thereof. Doesn’t matter; good is good.
Tents and Tricorns
Though the 236th anniversary of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse isn’t for another couple of months, you can get preview into the daily lives of Revolutionary War soldiers. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on January 27, re-enactors of the Guilford Militia will set up camp at High Point Museum (1859 East Lexington Avenue) to show how members of the Continental Army ate, slept, lived and waged war. Don’t scoot until you see the whites of their eyes. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
• January 27, Cone Denim Entertainment Center: Speaking of genre-bending, Colt Ford is the king, somehow blending country and rap — and making it work. I was a skeptic until I heard him. White Oak may have folded but fortunately the CDEC lives on.
January 2018
O.Henry 19
To be on the cutting edge of heart disease actually requires less cutting.
This is today’s Cone Health. Cone Health’s Heart and Vascular Center, a national leader in cardiovascular care, offers Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR), an innovative and minimally invasive procedure to treat heart valve problems. For those in our community facing heart disease, take comfort in knowing that there’s a world-class team right in your own backyard. Learn more at conehealth.com
E X C E P T I O N A L C A R E . E V E R Y D AY.™ 2017-2018 U.S. News & World Report
Life’s Funny
The Purrfect Story Change comes on little cat feet
By Maria Johnson
We ambled past
a new storefront on South Elm Street, my pals and I, on a charity walk through downtown Greensboro.
The signs on the plate-glass windows said Crooked Tail Cat Cafe. “What’s a cat cafe?” someone asked. “I think you take your cat in there and play,” someone offered. “Anyone can take a cat?” “What if your cat isn’t friendly?” “Do they serve food?” “Yuck if they do, with cats around.” We were engaging in a favorite pastime of individuals who have no clue: trying to come up with an answer by engaging a committee of individuals who have no clue. The fact was, none of us knew what happened inside a cat cafe. I made a mental note to find out. A few weeks later, I enlisted the help of a real investigative pro, my dear friend and former newspaper colleague Jerry Bledsoe. You might remember that in 1970s and ’80s, before he became a best-selling author, Jerry informed and entertained the stuffing out of Greensboro with a thrice-weekly column. You also might remember that one of his favorite subjects was cats. To wit, he made the fur fly by trashing cats and defending dogs. He regularly squared up against fellow News & Record columnist Jim Jenkins, who declared the superiority of cats and offered little consolation to canines. The game was good for two or three columns, complete with reader feedback, every time they growled and spat at each other. Dog people chewed on Jim. Crazy cat ladies called and cussed Jerry. They confronted him in person. “I’d be out eating, and some woman would come up and hiss in my ear,” Jerry recalls fondly. In truth, Jerry didn’t hate cats. But he didn’t have one either. Then something happened, something named Pookie, a beautiful Burmese cat who sauntered into the Bledsoe home and never left. Today, Pookie lives a pampered life, along with two other feline foundlings. They co-exist peacefully with an atomic-powered dog who was discovered, along with his littermates,
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
in a dumpster. Another whiskered ward, a feral cat that lives nearby, survives thanks to Jerry’s faithful visits. You heard it here first: Bledsoe, now 76, is a bona fide cat man, and a dog man, with well-bred nose for news. His forthcoming memoir, Do-Good Boy: An Unlikely Writer Confronts the Sixties and Other Indignities, covers the tumultuous first decade of his career, including his work for Esquire magazine. But Bledsoe’s enchanted by small stories, too, so it didn’t take much convincing to arrange a meeting at Crooked Tail. It was a weekday afternoon and cat-lovin’ spaces were available, according the online reservation schedule, so we walked in. We paid the entry fee ($10 an hour per person), sanitized our hands (for the cats’ protection), and signed our waivers. “Our cats are super friendly, but they do have teeth and claws,” explained employee Taylor Freeman. She let us through a gate into the cat lounge, an airy, modern and noticeably non-smelly space, thanks to top-shelf cat litter and air purifiers. She explained that all of the cats in the lounge — up to 10 at a time — come from the local adoption outfit Red Dog Farm, which spays, neuters, vaccinates and screens the candidates before sending them to live in the comfort of Crooked Tail until they find a new home. Indeed, cafe owner Karen Stratman, who dumped the corporate life for her own business, has created one cool kitty orphanage after discovering the trend online in 2011. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time,” says Karen. Crooked Tail is the first cat cafe in the state, though others are scheduled to open soon. With its hardwood floors, modular seating, soft music, indirect lighting, pop art (see the picture of Kitty Gaga), and wall-mounted catwalks, the feeling is contemporary cathouse. Occasionally, the room jingles and thumps with bursts of feline activity, but overall the vibe is chill. When they’re not pouncing and tumbling, the residents doze in fleece-lined baskets, hollowed-out shells of old TVs and streamlined sofas draped with fuzzy throws. Humans are welcome to pick up, pet and play with the cats — providing the cats are willing. As anyone who has lived with a little tiger knows, you can lead a cat to affection, but you can’t make it accept it. Bored or ignored? Read a book (Does This Collar Make My Butt Look Big?), watch a TV that actually works (a flat-screen model is bolted to the rear wall) January 2018
O.Henry 21
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January 2018
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Life’s Funny
or slip through a door to the backroom cafe for a decent cup of joe. The health department won’t allow food to be prepared on-site, but you can buy pre-packaged drinks and snacks, including locally made baked goods, and enjoy them inside the cafe. We happened to visit on a big day: The first shipments of beer and wine arrived in the cafe that afternoon, but, like most visitors, we were more interested in mousers than merlot. We spent some quality time in a window seat with Stash, a 10-year-old gray tabby who let me smooth his spine. He rubbed against me before a flick of his tail said, “Enough.” We met 7-month-old Bean, and his sidekick, 4-month-old Leo, who would be leaving together for a new home soon. We lingered over 4-month-old tortoiseshell Nola, a frisky lass who’d also captured the attention of High Point University sophomore Isabelle Germino. It was Isabelle’s second time in. The first time, a couple of weeks earlier, she’d visited with a friend on a busy night, been put on a waiting list, went to catch dinner at a nearby restaurant and returned a couple of hours later for a one-hour kitty fix. “They were all jumping around,” she said. “It was so much fun.” Now, she was back with a camera, shooting video for a school project. Nola was getting a lot of screen time. “I’m in love with this kitten,” she finally said to Freeman. “What’s the adoption process?” Crooked Tail works, averaging more than two adoptions a week. It’s no surprise that the spry kittens like Nola go quickly, and the older cats wait. Jerry and I settled on a sofa with 6-year-old Benji, an orange-and-white gent whose former family surrendered him because someone in the family developed an allergy to him. They did not part lightly. The family boxed his toys and food, and they wrote a letter to be opened only by the person who adopts him. Curled in his soft doughnut bed, Benji showed little reaction as Jerry massaged his ears. “He seems sad,” another woman observed. She was right. You could feel it, and the one who felt it most keenly was the one who’d once made scratch by making fun of cats. He leaned over and cooed into a velvety umber ear. “You will find a new family,” he pledged. “You’ll get to know them, and you’ll like them. Yes, you will.” Spoken like an old mewsman. OH You can reach Maria Johnson at ohenrymaria@gmail. com. Find Crooked Tail at crookedtailcatcafe.com or 336-550-4024.
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O.Henry 23
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January 2018
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The Omnivorous Reader
Wrestling Prose An iconic insider on the art of writing well
By Stephen E. Smith
In his latest book, Draft No. 4: On
the Writing Process, John McPhee deconstructs the process he’s spent a lifetime perfecting: writing on obscure subjects and delighting a discerning readership with technical explanations, entertaining narratives, and meticulous description, all of it couched in impeccable prose.
He begins by analyzing the most complex component of the writing process: structure. Using as an example his New Yorker article on the Pine Barrens, McPhee admits to spending two weeks lying on a picnic table in his backyard staring up into the branches and leaves and “fighting fear and panic” because he couldn’t visualize a structure for the material he’d assembled. Years of extensive research — interviews, articles, books, personal observations, etc., all of it cataloged on coded note cards — had gone into the project, but he couldn’t overcome the dread of banging out that first sentence and arranging the material in a readable form. Eventually, he overcame his writer’s block and produced an article that morphed into the bestselling book, but the experience was painful — and instructive. In an attempt to convey the intricacies of the process, McPhee employs a series of drawings and diagrams that, unfortunately, do little to untangle the complexities of problems he’d confronted. But readers shouldn’t be deterred. As with many of McPhee’s books, there’s a preliminary learning curve The Art & Soul of Greensboro
to overcome before landing on the safe side of abstraction. In “Editors and Publishers,” McPhee delves into the internal workings of The New Yorker and the publishing house of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. His insider anecdotes are informative and humorous and include character sketches of the editors and editorial staff, affectionately detailing their eccentricities. “Mr. Shawn [editor of The New Yorker] actually seemed philosophical about its [an obscenity] presence in the language, but not in his periodical. My young daughters, evidently, were in no sense burdened as he was.” He also contributes an anecdote concerning Shawn’s objection to writers turning in copy about locations that were cold, such as Alaska or Newfoundland: “If he had an aversion to cold places it was as nothing beside his squeamishness in the virtual or actual presence of uncommon food” — although Shawn approved a McPhee proposal to write about eating road kill in rural Georgia. In “Elicitation,” he dispenses useful advice on the art of interviewing, citing as an example his experience with comedian Jackie Gleason. His description of “The Great One,” bits and pieces of relevant detail — Gleason called everyone “pal” — creates a living and breathing facsimile of the comedian, and older readers will find themselves transported back to The Honeymooners and the loveable peccadilloes of the irascible Ralph Kramden. In a Time cover story on Sophia Loren, irony functions as description, succinctly capturing Loren’s appeal: “Her feet are too big. Her nose is too long. Her teeth are uneven. She has the neck, as one of her rivals has put it, of ‘a Neapolitan giraffe.’ Her waist seems to begin in the middle of her thighs, and she has big, half-bushel hips. She runs like a fullback. Her hands are huge. Her forehead is low. Her mouth too large. And, mamma mia, she is absolutely gorgeous.” January 2018
O.Henry 25
Reader
Gleason and Loren notwithstanding, McPhee devotes an entire chapter to a discussion of “frame of reference,” pieces of common knowledge that a writer employs to enhance a subject’s comprehensibility. He cautions against using allusions that don’t possess durability, warning that writers should never assume that anyone has seen a movie that might be used as an allusion. “In the archives of ersatz reference,” he writes, “that one [movies] is among the fattest folders.” He notes that popular culture changes with such rapidity that it’s dangerous for a writer to conclude that any allusion carries the weight of meaning necessary to elucidate a subject. To prove his point, McPhee polled his Princeton students using references such as Paul Newman, Fort Knox, Cassius Clay, Rupert Murdoch and discovered that the majority of his undergrads registered a low degree of recognition — and when it came to identifying Peckham Rye, Churchill Downs, Jack Dempsey, George Plimpton, and Mort Sahl, his students were blissfully ignorant. In his final chapter, McPhee again confronts writer’s block. In a note written to a frustrated student, he suggests a remedy: “Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something — anything — as a first draft. With that you’ve achieved a sort of nucleus. Then, as you work it over and alter it, you begin to shape sentences that score higher with eye and ear.” If there’s a fault with McPhee’s writing, and it’s difficult to find even the smallest gaffe, it’s an occasional touch of the dictionary disease: demonym, multiguously, bibulation, horripilation, etc. — words that will force the reader to touch his index finger to the Kindle screen, or God forbid, crack open a dictionary. McPhee is straightforward, practical, and illustrative, detailing the struggles serious writers endure on a daily basis and pointing out, finally, that creativity is the product of what the writer chooses to write about, how he approaches the subject and arranges the material, the skill he demonstrates in describing characters, the kinetic energy of the prose, and the extent to which the reader can visualize the characters and story. As always, he writes with grace and charm, and Draft No. 4 earns a niche on the bookshelf next to Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, the Harbrace College Handbook, Writing Down the Bones, Roget’s International Thesaurus, and the OED. OH
226 S. ELM STREET, GREENSBORO, NC 336 333 2993 OscarOglethorpe.com
26 O.Henry
January 2018
Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of seven books of poetry and prose. He’s the recipient of the Poetry Northwest Young Poet’s Prize, the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for poetry and four North Carolina Press awards.
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O.Henry 27
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The Big Chill
Embrace the dead of winter January’s weighty releases Compiled by Brian Lampkin
It’s here. The big dark. Streetlights struggle to
life at 5:30 p.m.; cold descends as the daylight slips off into the black ice of night. Time to read. Time to read something that feels like the drear, deadening silence of January. Luckily for you, new releases this January contain plenty of options to really sink into your seasonal affective disorder.
January 2: The Wolves of Winter, by Tyrell Johnson (Scribner, $26). Forget the old days. Forget summer. Forget warmth. Forget anything that doesn’t help you survive in the endless white wilderness beyond the edges of a fallen world. The Wolves of Winter is a captivating tale of humanity pushed beyond its breaking point, of family and bonds of love forged when everything is lost, and of a heroic young woman who crosses a frozen landscape to find her destiny. January 2: Darkness, Sing Me a Song: A Holland Taylor Mystery, by David Housewright (Minotaur Books, $25.99). Caught in the dark tangle of a twisted family and haunted by his own past, Taylor finds that the truth is both elusive and dangerous. Housewright has won the Edgar Award for his first Holland Taylor crime novel (Penance) and is the three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for his crime fiction. January 2: A Map of the Dark, by Karen Ellis (Mulholland Books, $26). Author Alison Gaylen says this book is “one of the most compelling psychological thrillers I’ve read in a long time, A Map of the Dark grabs you from the very first page and does not loosen its grip. I read this book in a day — I simply could not put it down —but I will be thinking about it for much longer.” January 9: Winter, by Ali Smith (Pantheon, $25.99). Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone. Smith is the author of Hotel World and The Accidental, which were both short-listed for The Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. How to Be Both won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Autumn was short-listed for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. January 16: The Stowaway: A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica, by Laurie Gwen Shapiro (Simon & Schuster, $26). From the grimy streets of New York’s Lower East Side to the rowdy dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to Antarctica’s blinding white and deadly The Art & Soul of Greensboro
freeze, Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s The Stowaway takes you on the unforgettable voyage of a gutsy young stowaway who became an international celebrity, a mascot for an up-by-your bootstraps age. January 23: Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression — And the Unexpected Solutions, Johann Hari (Bloomsbury, $28). “Through a breathtaking journey across the world, Johann Hari exposes us to extraordinary people and concepts that will change the way we see depression forever. It is a brave, moving, brilliant, simple and earth-shattering book that must be read by everyone and anyone who is longing for a life of meaning and connection.” — Eve Ensler January 23: Norwich: One Tiny Vermont Town’s Secret to Happiness and Excellence, by Karen Crouse (Simon & Schuster, $25). Norwich, a charming Vermont town of roughly 3,000 residents, has sent an athlete to almost every Winter Olympics for the past 30 years — and three times that athlete has returned with a medal. How does Norwich do it? To answer this question, New York Times reporter Karen Crouse moved to Vermont, immersing herself in the lives of Norwich Olympians past and present. January 30: The Winter Station, by Jody Shields (Little Brown, $27). Set in the year 1910: People are mysteriously dying at an alarming rate in the Russian-ruled city of Kharbin, a major railway outpost in Northern China. Strangely, some of the dead bodies vanish before they can be identified. Based on a true story that has been lost to history and set during the last days of imperial Russia, The Winter Station is a richly textured and brilliant novel about mortality, fear and love. But if you really want to dig deep, to go underground where depression crosses over into derangement, there’s this frightening descent into conspiratorial madness: January 2: Trumpocalypse: The End-Times President, a Battle Against the Globalist Elite, and the Countdown to Armageddon, by Paul Maguire & Troy Anderson (Faithwords, $24). Trumpocalypse explores the enigmatic prophecies and “biblical codes” involving Trump, and asks whether God raised up President Trump as a fearless leader to guide America and the free world through a series of major crises as the biblical endtime narrative unfolds, as many people with prophetic gifts are predicting, and shows why everyday Americans and evangelicals have rallied around Trump as their last hope of saving America and averting the horrors of the Apocalypse. OH Brian Lampkin is one of the proprietors of Scuppernong Books. January 2018
O.Henry 29
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January 2018
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A Writer’s Life
How to Survive a Book Tour Patience, planning and a sense of serenity
By Wiley Cash
I have been
ILLUSTRATION BY ROMEY PETITE
fortunate to publish three novels in the past five years, and I have been even more fortunate that my publisher has sponsored national book tours for each of my books. After the years it takes to write and publish a novel — much of that time spent in solitude and self-doubt — it is very rewarding to visit a bookstore, library or college campus and meet people who have read your work. I love hitting the road to answer questions, sign books and learn what readers are reading when they are not reading my books. When I first sat down to write my debut novel, I never imagined I would be so fortunate.
For my most recent tour in support of The Last Ballad, I spent almost two full months on the road, most of it alone. The wonderful time spent with readers is only a fraction of what you do when you are on book tour. The vast majority of your time is spent running through airports, eating fast food late at night, lying awake in hotel rooms, missing your family and wondering if — in the end — the grind of the road helps book sales. This essay is about how to survive those many long, lonely moments. Here are a few steps you can take to overcome the perils of the book tour. I ask you to keep in mind that this is what has worked for me. Because of many factors, a book tour is not the same experience for everyone; this is based only on mine. Gear: If you will be taking any flights longer than an hour, consider getting a neck pillow. Yes, they are awkward to pack and you will look silly carrying it through the airport, but nothing is more awkward or silly than your head lolling against your seatmate’s shoulder or your chin bouncing against your chest while you fight sleep in midair. A vacuum-sealed, stainless-steel thermos also comes in handy: It will keep water cool and coffee hot for hours while you travel. You may also want to invest in an extra phone charger with a long cord. Outlets in hotels are often located behind the headboard or bedside table, and a long cord makes it
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
easy to charge your phone and use it as an alarm clock without moving furniture in your room. Finally, take a book, and make sure to take a book you actually want to read instead of a book you think you should be reading. Airport: Always check your bag if your host or publisher is paying for your travel because book tours can be long, and a day off from lugging your luggage is a gift. Otherwise, find a carry-on bag that holds a lot of stuff and is easy to transport. After checking your bag, empty your pockets before security and put everything except your ID and boarding pass into one of the small, zippered compartments on your carry-on luggage. There is nothing more annoying than standing at security while people empty their pockets before going through the metal detector. The same people will hold up the line on the other side of security while spending even longer putting everything back into their pockets. Do not be that person. For the same reason, wear shoes that are easy to slip off and on, and go ahead and take your laptop out of your bag. If you find yourself holding up the security line for any reason, do not be cute about it. The security line is not an open mic. There is nothing cute or funny about wasting people’s time when they are rushing to catch a flight. Food: Except for in a few cities, the food is irredeemably bad at most airports. There is no way around this. I have no suggestions to make about airport food except to avoid it if you can. Once you arrive at your destination, spend a few minutes scouting around online for good food that is nearby. When eating on the road, I walk a fine line between finding something convenient and fast while also wanting to have a distinct culinary experience. If I am in Austin I want to have the best barbecue. If I am in New Orleans I want to have the best gumbo. If I am in New England I want to have the best clam chowder. Keep in mind that “the best” does not always mean the “most famous.” Trust the people at the bookstore and hotel when it comes to food. They are locals. They know. There is also no judgment, at least not from me, for eating cheap pizza or a quick sandwich. You will often find yourself short on time, and settling on something simple is an easy way to make quick decisions. A book tour is not a vacation, and you cannot plan to eat like you are on vacation. Hotel: I have a particular routine when I check into hotels. I like to feel settled, so if I am staying for more than one night I unpack the necessary clothes and place them in drawers, and then I put my shaving kit on the bathroom counter before stashing my luggage in the closet. Then I turn on the television (CNN or ESPN) and iron the shirts and pants I plan to wear. I always iron during leisure time because there is nothing more hectic than ironing as you are preparing to rush out to a bookstore or catch a taxi to the airport. Clothes unpacked and ironed, I unplug the alarm clock by the bed. If you do not do this you can plan on it going off at 5:00 a.m. and being unable to figure out how to stop it. Go ahead and unplug it and set the alarm on your cellphone. No outlets close to the bedside table? Thank goodness you have your extra-long cord for the charger. Are you a coffee drinker? Most hotels have in-room coffee makers with coffee available. Some hotels have free coffee in the lobby. No matter what the setup, avoid January 2018
O.Henry 31
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January 2018
Styrofoam cups because coffee served in Styrofoam cups is an offense to humanity that cannot be forgiven. I know of a few writers who pack their favorite mugs along with fresh coffee and French presses. This is not a bad idea. Family: I have traveled with my family, and I have traveled without my family. It is easier to travel without my family, especially if we are staying in one hotel room, but it is also very lonely. To offset said loneliness I will often FaceTime with my wife and our girls. This inevitably ends with one child or another wanting to hold the phone while the other child gets upset, which inevitably ends with the phone being dropped or hung up or repossessed by my wife. Everyone gets off the phone feeling a little sadder and more frustrated than before the call. Sometimes I find it better to have my wife text me photos of herself with our daughters, and she posts many of these on Instagram so I can flip through them before bed. But I always go to bed feeling a little sad. I often wonder if it would be easier and less frustrating just to hear their voices instead of seeing their faces. For me, the easiest part of book tour is standing in front of a group of readers and discussing my book. The hardest parts are being away from my family and the constant feeling that I am running late for the next thing, whether that thing is a flight, a reservation, an interview or ride. But a book tour can also feature pleasant surprises that masquerade as disappointments. At the end of the most recent tour I was on the way home from out west when I missed a flight in Salt Lake City due to fog. It was noon, and the next flight that could get me home to Wilmington would not leave until midnight, and I would have to connect in Atlanta and would not arrive home until late the following morning. After getting my new tickets I had two options: sulk in the airport all day or go out and see something of Salt Lake City, a place I had never visited before. I caught a cab into the city and had an incredible day. I visited the King’s English, one of the most iconic bookstores in the country. I had lunch and a beer at a local brewery. I visited the Mormon Temple downtown, and I ended the day with an impromptu decision to catch a Utah Jazz game before catching the train back to the airport. It was an exhausting day that had begun with great disappointment, but it ended in joy and the certainty that despite how long I had been away and how far I was from North Carolina, I was headed back to my wife and children. I unzipped my backpack, removed my neck pillow, and settled in for the long flight(s) home. OH Wiley Cash lives in Wilmington with his wife and their two daughters. His new novel The Last Ballad is available wherever books are sold. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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Gate City Journal
A Page From The Past A former bookmobile rolls again . . . as a bookstore on wheels
By Maria Johnson
It’s a bookmobile with one big dif-
PHOTOGRAPH BY MARIA JOHNSON
ference: The books on this bus are for sale, and because they’re secondhand — gleaned from yard sales, library sales, church sales and donations — customers can pick up Pulitzer Prize winners — or pocket guides — for pennies. Boomerang Bookshop: Nomad Chapter is the V-8-powered dream of owner Crckt (pronounced Cricket) Leggett, who decided as a child that he was tired of people mispronouncing his given name, Diarra, so he customized his mom’s nickname for him by dropping the vowels. “I figured, it’s a nickname; I can spell it how I want to,” he says. His mom, Lois, now a retired librarian, gave him something else: a love of reading, which he literally has mobilized with Boomerang. You’ll find Leggett aboard his food-for-thought truck on most Saturday mornings at The Corner Market, at the crossing of Elam and Walker avenues in Latham Park. On Thursday evenings in spring through fall, he’s at the Grove Street People’s Market, not far from his home in the Glenwood community. He spices his itinerary with other stops. Last month, he piloted his 23-foot biblio-craft downtown for the monthly First Friday celebration. The next morning, he rolled into a holiday bazaar at Hope Academy on Florida Street. He popped up a canopy outside the bus and set out some of his wares: a plastic crate full of paperback classics penned by Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, E.M. Forster, J.D. Salinger, Philip Roth, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Sophocles, Anne Frank, Harper Lee and others. A hand-lettered sign made the deal clear: “Mass Market Paperbacks, $.50– 3.00. That’s Cheap, Son.” A few feet away, a cardboard box once filled with Smithfield Hams held more books priced up to 50 cents. A metal rack propped up volumes including W.E.B DuBois: A Reader, All New Square Foot Gardening, Martial Arts Home Training, Buddhism for Dummies, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights and The Lost Files of Nancy Drew.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Inside the neat, stylish bus, hundreds more books lined the walls. The works were organized according to genre, as you would find in any bookstore. Bios, Letters and Memoirs All Things North Carolina. U.S. History. World History. Women’s and Gender Studies. Literature and Fiction. Gardening. Leggett also stocks ’zines — independent, low-budget magazines — on a broad variety of topics. He carries books suited for children, but unlike the kiddie-fied bookmobiles of yore, Boomerang aims primarily at adults and established young readers. “I’m more interested in fostering the reading habits of young people who are reading for amusement already,” Leggett says. The mobile bookstore was his wife’s idea. They were sitting on their front porch one night, and Crckt was bemoaning what he regarded as a lost opportunity: a chance to buy the used bookstore where he worked, the now defunct-Empire Books on Spring Garden Street. No stranger to the ways of the page, he’d had also worked at Edward McKay Used Books & More (now McKay’s) and at a pop-up bookshop on Gate City Boulevard. He wanted his own used bookstore but couldn’t afford a traditional space. “You should start a food truck, but for books,” suggested Elizabeth Leggett, who teaches English as a second language at Kiser Middle School. “That’s just insane enough, it might work,” said Crckt. A few weeks later, he typed “bookmobile” into Craigslist and got a hit: a Thomas Built bookmobile, made in High Point in 1988. The double-door bus — one portal fore, one aft — originally was used by the Chapel Hill public library. Later, it served as the mobile headquarters for an auction business. The couple forked over $9,000 for the bus, and Leggett, who works full-time for the Forsyth County Public Library, dived into rehabbing the bus on weekends and evenings. On the interior, he added shelving. He decoupaged the ceiling with pages torn from books. He painted the exterior gray and added an eye-catching red-and-yellow logo with the help of his friend, graphic artist Lisa Sussman. January 2018
O.Henry 35
Gate City Journal
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36 O.Henry
January 2018
Inspired by the feral child in Leggett’s favorite movie, Road Warrior, the emblem shows a kid wielding a boomerang, reflecting the idea that books on the bus are circling back for another life. The Leggetts launched Boomerang in May 2017. Leggett was comfortable behind the wheel. At his regular job, he drives the Web on Wheels, a bus that takes Internet access to preschool and after-school programs in Forsyth County. “I jokingly refer to myself as a bookmobilist,” he says. Leggett also sells books online, at biblio.com, under the Boomerang name, but his walk-in customers lay hands on ink and paper. With only 91 square feet of space, he curates the selections carefully. “I like to keep the fiction of a high literary content, but I also like to represent voices that are underrepresented in the literary world, be it women, people of color or queer folk. I try to highlight social justice, camaraderie and diversity,” he says. Business is steady. If he rings up $60 in sales over a four-hour period, he’s happy. He hopes to reach people who might be intimidated by regular bookstores or who don’t have enough money to shop for new titles. Most of his books cost $4 to $7. He also hopes to draw curious passers-by such as Adam Hubert, a 23-year-old teaching fellow at Hope Academy, a private Christian school. Hubert was attending the school’s holiday bazaar when he boarded the bus to look around. He was surprised to find a copy of the recently published Invisible Man, Got The Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man’s Education. Hubert read the book last year, and he was struck by how author Mychal Denzel Smith challenged readers to examine their own prejudices. “It changed my perspective on life,” said Hubert, as he applied the educators’ discount (“I know what they’re up against,” says Leggett) and paid $12 for two books, The Mis-Education of the Negro, a 1933 volume by Carter G. Woodson and, Latinos, a Biography of the People, a 1992 work by Earl Shorris. “Working with Latinos here, I realized I don’t know much about their culture,” he said. Leggett hopes to own a bricks-and-mortar Boomerang some day, but first he wants to expand the reach of his bus, adding more stops to his schedule. He carries on a tradition that goes back farther than the motorized models. Over the windshield, he has pasted a quote from Parnassus on Wheels, a 1917 novel about a bookstore on a horse-drawn wagon: “Books, the truest friends of man, fill this rolling caravan.” OH Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. Reach her at ohenrymaria@gmail.com. Contact Boomerang at boomerangbookseller@gmail.com or go to the shop’s Facebook page. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Greensboro Office
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January 2018
O.Henry 37
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38 O.Henry
January 2018
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Papadaddy
A Grave Conversation Technically speaking, it’s a different world up there
By Clyde Edgerton
My parents were born in
ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY BLAIR
1902 and 1904 into homes without electricity. That kind of describes a starting point regarding my relationship to modern technology.
I remember an old Model T truck we kept in our backyard when I was a child. To start the engine, you inserted a crank into a hole below the radiator in the front grill. Then with the ignition turned on (after you’d primed the engine with the choke) you turned the crank until the engine started. Our truck was equipped with a wooden trough across the back end of the truck bed — where the tailgate goes. At the end of the trough was a circular saw. You could jack up the back of the truck, place a saw-belt around a tire or axle, the belt would turn the saw, and you could cut firewood from logs. My grandfather (born 1870) used to cutting wood with an ax, thought the contraption was unnecessary. Once, when he saw a neighbor cooking on a grill, he said, “We used to cook inside and go to the bathroom outside. Now they’re turning that around.” After automobile electric windows, air conditioning and automatic transmissions came along in the ’40s and ’50s, my father and mother would have nothing to do with them (until the ’70s). Now, on many days, I think about sitting by my father’s grave in Durham and having a conversation with him. He died in 1980. “Daddy, how’s it going?” I would say. “Nothing much happening on my end. How’s it going up there?” “Right much happening on the technology end,” I’d say. “I figured that might be coming. What about on the morality end?” “Not much there . . . that seems to stay kind of constant. But on the technology part, I was just thinking about how when you bought a car for the family you always wanted the windows that were rolled up with a handle, no air conditioning and a straight transmission.” “Oh yeah, I didn’t like the extras. But go ahead and feed me some new facts about technology, maybe politics, economics.”
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
“Let’s stay with technology,” I’d say. “No, wait a minute. On the politics: Do you remember Garland Fushee? The man who lived next to Tee Rawlings, service station?” “Of course. How could anybody forget Garland Fushee?” “Well, think about Garland being president,” I’d say. “Garland Fushee?” “Yes sir. Remember about how much Garland loved golf, and how much he would have loved to tweet about people he didn’t like?” “Garland wasn’t a bird,” Daddy would say. “Oh, that’s right. Sorry. Tweeting is something people do now. It’s connected in a roundabout way to technology. Connected to advances since the computer.” “Computer? I remember that computer on campus at Chapel Hill back in 1971. Remember when we went in that building for a drink of water and you showed it to me. It filled up a room.” “I do remember that. By the way, here in Wilmington, we buy water now — those who can afford it.” “You buy water? What in the world?” Daddy would say. “Long story,” I’d say. “It gets us over into economics, always connected to politics. Turns out our water problems are good for business.” “How so?” “Bottled-water business is looking up. And an upriver business releases chemicals into the water and a bunch of downriver businesses benefit: funeral homes, cremation services, pharmacies, hospitals, tombstone makers, florists.” “Oh, I see. Hmmmm. Sounds like they’re finally backing off on regulations.” “That’s the idea.” “All in all, looks like I may have checked out at about the right time.” “You could say that, Daddy. We’ll chat again in a few years. See how things are going.” “Let’s do that, Son. See you then.” And then I’d hop in my car and drive it back to Wilmington. In less than a decade it may be driving me. A lot of technology in a couple of lifetimes. OH Clyde Edgerton is the author of 10 novels, a memoir and most recently, Papadaddy’s Book for New Fathers. He is the Thomas S. Kenan III Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at UNCW. January 2018
O.Henry 39
In The Spirit
Hot Toddies
Warming up your winter cocktail repertoire
Maybe it’s just me, but I think
whiskey carries over better with folks during the colder months. I drink it year-round and definitely had my share of Boulevardiers over the summer, but I tend to drink whisky and whiskey straight more so during this time of year. However, at the end of the night, I usually prefer to mix myself a hot toddy of some sort. Toddies are simple drinks to make, with hardly any ingredients to grab from your kitchen. I desire them during certain late nights because they are soothing, and don’t pack the punch of imbibing it straight. I usually like to mess around with different ratios, bitters, and liqueurs to put a spin on the classics, and the toddy is no different. A good hot cocktail can put aches and pains at bay, even if it’s only for a few hours. The first mention of a whiskey toddy is written in Jerry Thomas’s 1862 book The Bar-Tenders Guide, , but it’s referred to as an Irish Whiskey Punch: “This is the genuine Irish beverage. It is generally made with one-third pure whiskey, two-thirds boiling water, in which the sugar has been dissolved. If lemon punch, the rind is rubbed on the sugar, and a small proportion of juice is added before the whiskey is poured in.” Let’s break that down. One-third of Irish whiskey can be 2 ounces, and the hot water should be 4. The “lemon punch” is nothing more than an oleo-saccharum (oil-sugar). To do this, take
40 O.Henry
January 2018
the peel from one lemon (avoiding the pith, as it will add bitterness) and place it into a small cup-sized container. Add half a cup of baker’s sugar on top of the peels, and seal. Let sit for at least four hours. This will extract the oils from the lemon peels into the sugar. In a small pot, add 4 ounces of water and put it on medium-high heat. Add the lemon-sugar, and stir until the sugar has dissolved. The amount of oleo-saccharum to add to your toddy is up to you; I recommend starting out with 1/2 ounce. Renowned bartender Jim Meehan has his version of a hot whiskey in his newly published book, Meehan’s Bartender Manual. In it, he mixes Thomas’s Irish Whiskey Punch and Whiskey Skin. Thomas’s Whiskey Skin is whiskey, boiling water and a lemon peel. Meehan recalls his first hot whiskey when he visited Ireland for the first time in 1997: “I was no stranger to hot toddies, but I’d never tasted one with a clove-studded lemon wedge, which serves the same steam- and heat-mitigating function as the head on an Irish Coffee. Since alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, if you combine boiling hot water with alcohol, heady fumes will evaporate from the glass, repelling all but the most intrepid imbibers.” That first whiff of a hot toddy might send you into a coughing frenzy. Meehan’s recipe is also simple: Hot Whiskey (Meehan’s Bartender Manual, 2017) 4 ounces hot water 1 1/2 ounces Powers Irish Whiskey (Jameson will work, too) 1 ounce honey syrup Garnish with 1 lemon wedge studded with 3 cloves Honey Syrup (Makes 16 ounces) 8 ounces filtered water 12 ounces honey The Art & Soul of Greensboro
PHOTOGRAPH BY TONY CROSS
By Tony Cross
In The Spirit Simmer the water and honey in a pot over medium heat (approximately 180˚ F) until the honey dissolves. Cool and bottle. I’m sure you can see how making a traditional Whiskey Skin wouldn’t be the least bit interesting if you ordered one at the bar, or if you made one at home. I’m not saying it wouldn’t do the trick, I’m just saying. That’s why myriad barmen implement their own spin on today’s toddy. I’ll admit, I usually keep mine simple: bourbon or cognac with a rich demerara syrup, aromatic bitters and a squeeze of lemon. One week when under the weather, I did whip together something healthy and tasty. Maybe it wasn’t healthy, but I felt better afterwards. Just as with any other classic drink, learn the basics and why it works. I chose High West’s American Prairie Bourbon. Why? Because it was the bourbon whiskey closest to my hand on the shelf. I used echinacea tea — this particular tea helped soothe my throat when I was sick the year prior — added fresh lemon for the citrus, and a local honey and ginger syrup for the sugar. For spice, I threw in a few dashes of Teapot Bitters from Adam Elmegirab (available online; flavors of vanilla, tea and baking spices). Easy to make, and really good going down. If you start with the basics, and learn why the specs work, it will become easier to play with other ingredients and make your own specialty toddy. Hard Day’s Night 1 1/2 ounces bourbon (I used High West American Prairie) 4 ounces (boiling hot) Traditional Medicinal Throat Coat Echinacea Tea 1/2 ounce honey-ginger syrup 1/4 ounces fresh lemon 3 dashes Dr. Adam Elmegirab Teapot Bitters Preheat a coffee mug with hot water. Add all ingredients into heated mug and stir lightly for a few revolutions. Add a twist of lemon. Honey-ginger syrup In a small pot, combine 1/2 cup honey (depending where you buy your honey, it will taste different; store bought — not local — will taste very sweet) 1/2 cup of water and 1 ounce fresh ginger juice (if you don’t have a juicer, grate organic ginger into a cheesecloth or nut milk bag and squeeze the juice into a container). Place over medium-high heat, and stir for a few minutes until all three ingredients have married. OH Tony Cross is a bartender who runs cocktail catering company Reverie Cocktails in Southern Pines.
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January 2018
O.Henry 41
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42 O.Henry
January 2018
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
True South
For the Love of Nothing An entire month devoted to . . . whatever
By Susan S.Kelly
I speak now for that silent minority
ILLUSTRATION BY MERIDITH MARTENS
who fear to voice, confess, or admit their glad anticipation for, their deep abiding love for, their eternal gratitude for . . . January. Believe ye: there are those of us who crave every endless 31 days of a month so roundly dreaded by so many.
Bring it, baby. For quad-A overachievers, list-makers, and borderline OCD peeps like myself, January is the season of somnolence, of letting go. For over-organized souls, nothing beats a full-on month of . . . nothing. No holidays, and therefore no searching, purchasing, wrapping, hiding. No candy. No centerpieces. No costumes or cocktails. No (unspoken but acknowledged) competing for best dessert or coleslaw or fireworks or slalom or Easter basket or parade float. Personal bonus: no family birthdays. No yard work. Everything is leafless, hideous, and charmless, and with any luck, will stay that way for six more weeks. The only outdoor chore is filling the feeder. No to-dos of raking, mowing — it’s too early to even prune. Nothing needs fertilizing, watering. Even kudzu is temporarily tamed to a crinkled, wrinkled weed. I’m so thankful it’s too early to force quince or forsythia; no sense of obligation there, and if you still force narcissus, I have a collection of lovely forcing vases and trays and even the rocks that you’re welcome to. Sorry, but I need to hold on to the gin that stiffens the stems. And I love my roses, but, boy, do I love when they’re whacked off and not producing, and therefore not accusing me of leaving them to grow blowsy and frowsy rather than cutting and delivering them to someone whose life, living room, and outlook would be improved by — oh, never mind. I may be the only person you know who gets depressed when the first bulbs begin blooming. No fundraisers on PBS. This is huge. Nothing at the farmer’s market equals absolution from waking early to haul yourself there, and trying to fairly spread your vegetable benevolence to several farmers with pleading eyes. Nothing edible locally means seasonal broccoli and citrus with unknown origins are just fine. As for other aspects of eating, in January it’s practically unpatriotic not to exist on semi-solid foodstuffs straight from your Crock-Pot. Go ahead, add another packet of taco mix to
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
that pork butt, onion soup mix to that chuck roast, chili mix to that ground beef. Dow, Inc. knows: Better living through chemicals. No campaigns, primaries, elections. No yard signs. No door-to-door, ’cause it’s too cold for solicitors, and if you haven’t gotten your subscriptions and wrapping paper by now, sorry. And altar guilds everywhere — Rejoice! and God rest ye merry gentlemen and women — no need for changing altar hangings and linens. Even at church, once you get past Epiphany, there’s a nice long stretch of nothing until the deprivations of Lent. As for resolutions, by mid-month they’re mostly moot, admit it. Within the narrow demographic of January adorers, there’s an even smaller contingent: the snow lovers. For those of us dreamers, hopers, prayers and devotees of white stuff, January is the month during which those fervent desires are most likely to be fulfilled. For those who disloyally decamp for sunny Southern climes, desert isles, and ski slopes, all the better. Less car and foot traffic to mar the peaceful white perfection of a snowfall. Sorry, dear, I couldn’t get to the grocery store for supper supplies. Feel free to scrape whatever’s left in the . . . Crock-Pot. It occurs to me that, were I ever to get a face-lift, January would be an opportune time. Isn’t it divine to go to the movies and catch up on all those blockbusters you missed and get just the seat you want? Because no one else is there. Plus, you’re exonerated from even going to the movies: Everybody knows nothing Oscar-worthy is released between January and March. Not that I encourage sloth, far from it. January is the month made for domestic industries, with the iPod blasting in your ears and no fear of anyone catching you atonally belting tunes with Justin Timberlake or Taylor Swift. Consolidate coupons, cull the catalogs, schedule your spanking, sparkling pristine new calendar with all the birthdays you forgot last year. Polish silver. Then, transfer your earbuds to your laptop, scoot your socked feet to the fire, and proceed to unabashedly binge Netflix, knowing you’ve earned and are entitled to The Right to Relax. Oh, poor despised, derided month, that span of gloom and chill, so scorned and shunned by humanity, I’ll be there for you, bundled and content, cheering you on. Hermits, unite. We knew what Oscar Wilde really was referring to when he uttered, “the love that dare not speak its name” — we few, we happy few, who wallow, with glee, in January. OH Susan Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and proud new grandmother.
January 2018
O.Henry 43
Fashion Fundraiser & Silent Auction
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03.09.2018 Elm Street Center Downtown Greensboro
IntroducIng
BOOK DISCUSSION March 1, 2018 7 PM Weatherspoon Art Museum led by Dr. Noelle Morrissette Associate Professor of English, UNCG This program is co-sponsored by the Friends of the UNCG Libraries and the Weatherspoon Art Museum with support by the N.C. Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural & Cultural Resources. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 336-256-0184.
44 O.Henry
January 2018
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Birdwatch
Waterlogged
Look for the charismatic, aquatic Pied-billed Grebe in winter
By Susan Campbell
Here in North Carolina,
winter is the season for spotting waterfowl. Inland, in addition to Canada geese, birdwatchers have a shot at seeing more than a dozen species of ducks on local lakes and ponds. If you are looking closely, you may notice a very small swimmer, one that is often solitary in its habits. This would be the charismatic pied-billed grebe. It is the pied-billed that has the largest range of five grebes found across North America.
The pied-billed grebe is a compact waterbird in a family of birds that are expert swimmers and divers. In fact, you will never see a grebe on land. Their legs are placed so far back on their bodies that walking is very difficult. Not surprisingly the word “grebe” means literally “feet at the buttocks.” But these birds can readily dive to great depths to forage for aquatic invertebrates such as crayfish as well as chase down small fish. However, they are not the strongest fliers, having relatively small, rounded wings. I find it amazing that our wintering individuals come from as far away as the upper Midwest or even central Canada. The pied-billed grebe is smaller than a football with shades of gray and a white underside. Pied is defined “as having two or more different colors.” As its name implies, The Art & Soul of Greensboro
this bird has a silvery gray bill with a black band. It is very stout. The jaws of these birds are also very strong, and more than compensate for what they lack in bill length. Cracking the exoskeletons of insects, shrimps and clams is no problem for this beautiful swimmer, as is hanging onto slippery minnows. Another interesting detail of this bird’s anatomy is that it has an extremely short tail with bright white, undertail coverts that make it possible to identify this bird at a distance. These little birds have some interesting behavioral adaptations that are well worth watching for. For one, they have the capability to sink below the surface if the situation warrants. Somehow, they are able to control the buoyancy of their plumage and so can readily absorb water to increase their weight and quickly disappear from sight. Likewise they can swim with their heads just below the surface so as to not be seen. And they can even employ a “crash dive” to evade predators, pushing themselves downward with their wings and kicking hard with their feet. One other well-known trait of pied-billeds is that they eat large quantities of their own feathers. It is thought that they create a large but porous plug in the gut that traps dangerous fragments of certain food items from entering the intestine. They even feed feathers to their young. You can look for pied-billed grebes on any body of still or slow-moving water. Larger creeks, marshy ponds or even larger lakes in our area may host these little birds from October through March. However, individuals may give themselves away by the long, loud series of variable chatters, bleats or coos that they make in late winter or when advertising their territory to the occasional interloper. Either way, these birds sure deserve a good look any time, even though they are not that large — or very colorful. OH Susan would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos at susan@ncaves.com. January 2018
O.Henry 45
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January 2018
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Wandering Billy
Auld Lang Syne
A mystery photo from the past and the passing of two Tate Street icons
By Billy Eye “I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.” — Leonardo da Vinci
There’s a photo-
graph on my living room wall that I love. But I never gave it a hard look until my sister pointed out that the background had been painted over. She’d been told there was a little girl in the picture who had been painted out. I had no idea who the gentleman in the photo was, or how old the picture was, so that gave me the perfect excuse to visit with Bill and Anna Heroy, the Old Photo Specialists at 320 South Elm. These are the go-to guys who can reconstruct your family photographs, return them to pristine condition. They’re tops in the field, none better in the country.
Bill was able to work his magic on the print, pointing out the high silver content that dates it to before 1940. He also noted this was a blow-up from a much smaller photo, and it appears there was no little girl in this picture after all. So the mystery continues but at least it narrows my search for who this natty gent might be.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Bill and I lamented that everything is assumed to be so simple today when it’s done via computer. One keystroke, a filter gets applied, everything fixed in seconds, right? That’s not possible for the meticulous photo restoration Bill has become famous for. The Heroys have been talking about retiring for some time so I suggest, if there’s a family heirloom you want to pass down that needs extreme retouching, you should act quickly.
***
A Tate Street legend since the ’60s passed away not long ago. Two actually. As noted in last month’s issue of O.Henry, Jim Clark, a towering inspiration to generations of writers, left this world — and a devastating loss to this city it is. Then there was the very embodiment of stubborn nonconformity, Harry Wilton Perkins Jr., known to everyone in these parts as Electro, who was 70 years old at the time of his passing. A celebration of his life was held at College Hill Sundries where the one comment I heard repeated over and over was, “Electro was the first person I ever met on Tate Street.” “Electro never met a stranger, he talked to everybody,” Louanne Hicks shared with me. “He was outgoing, fun, entertaining and he was going to do what he was going to do. And that’s it. Period.” Defiantly scruffy, at least when I encountered him, Electro played blues guitar and Dobro for numerous bands, jamming in 1988 on an album with Rich Lerner, whose weekly radio program on WQFS is essential listening. I saw Electro perform at New York Pizza several years ago. An exceptional musician, he was scheduled to play the Tate Street Festival last year but was too ill to go on stage. (Sadly, that long-standing festival is no more.) January 2018
O.Henry 47
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January 2018
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Wandering Billy
wElcoming nEw patiEnts
A disparate collection of music makers, writers and artists turned up out to say good-bye to this multigenerational icon, including a gal I hadn’t seen in 15 years, Lucy Waldrup, well-known and universally loved as the youthfully cheerful waitress at Boba House when it first opened in 2000. Still as chipper as ever, and as lovely, Lucy was the first person I wanted to see in 2002 after spending a year in London. When I inquired about her whereabouts I was told, “She moved to Asheville yesterday.” Darn the luck. Ultimately I managed to catch up with Lucy and recently discovered the memory of Electro she holds closest to her heart: “This was 2001, Facebook wasn’t a thing yet so you couldn’t just know when it was someone’s birthday. One afternoon I came into College Hill at 3 o’clock, it’s my birthday, I want a drink, and [bartender] Pam says, ‘Lucy, you’ve got a card.’ I open it up, it was a birthday card from Electro and it said, ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, Iceland is beautiful, but not as beautiful as you.’ We had talked about Iceland but I don’t think Electro and I ever talked about my birthday or anything about birthdays. He was the only person that year who knew it was my birthday.” And this, from my pal John Lamb, currently teaching English in Hanoi: “Rest in peace, old friend. Thanks for all of the great conversations about history, life, your adventures, and music over coffee at Tate Street Coffee or beers at College Hill and the Exchange all of those years ago. Thanks for giving a young metalhead/ punk rocker a real love and appreciation for the blues and mostly thank you for being one of my first friends in the town that I lived in the longest of my adult life and still refer to as my hometown if anyone asks. I hope you get a chance to meet some of the legends you liked to talk about all of those years ago now and catch up with some of the folks you met along the way.”
Dr. Ryan Kraska and staff work together to provide patients with excellence in dental care in a professional and comfortable environment.
***
Finally, best wishes and speedy recovery to Teresa Staley, the only person you’ll ever meet who’s been in the same room with The Old Rebel and Joan Crawford, as I recounted in last year’s May issue of this magazine. Loyal friend and true supporter of local over-and-underground music, for years she’s been hosting summer house parties featuring the finest musicians this city has to offer, no hyperbole there. You haven’t arrived as an artist until you’ve played one of Teresa’s musicfests. OH Billy Eye is at a loss as to what to write here that doesn’t sound too self-deprecating. If he’s bragging, it’s because his life really is that awesome. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
502 North Elam Avenue, Greensboro, NC Phone: (336) 292-0863 | Fax: (336) 292-2583 www.kraska.com
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January 2018 About Magic A quantum taste of joy hidden in a top hat The wisdom of love up your sleeve Tell me your story as you rise wingless above the stage Let me make you believe in the vast unbelievable Wave your wand and marry our kindness Clapping we shout “encore!” — Ry Southard
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At 9 feet, James Barnhill’s Minerva (2003), towers over UNCG’s campus.
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Men of
Bronze Greensboro statuary began life at Carolina Bronze Sculpture
PHOTOGRAPH LEFT BY SAM FROELICH, PHOTOGRAPH RIGHT BY LAURA GINGERICH
By Jim Moriarty
Ed Walker
D
ressed like Marty McFly paying a nocturnal visit on his adolescent father in Back to the Future, Brian Brown and Jackson Jennings shuffle along in their silver coats and hoods with plastic face shields, carrying 270 pounds of molten bronze as if it were the industrial version of Cleopatra’s golden litter. As they tip the glowing bucket, orange metal flows like lava into the gray-white ceramic casts wired in place in a steel pan on the cement floor. This is how Ronald Reagan got to the Capitol rotunda. Carolina Bronze Sculpture, hidden down a gravel drive past Maple Springs Baptist Church on the other side of I-73 from Seagrove’s famous potteries, may be the foremost artists’ foundry in the eastern United States. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Certainly it’s the one most often used by Chas Fagan, the Charlotte artist whose statue of Reagan resides in the people’s house in Washington, D.C. The foundry is the life’s work of Ed Walker, 62, a quiet, unassuming man with a quick smile and a knack for noodling on an industrial scale. Walker is a sculptor, too. His Firefighter Memorial in Wilmington, North Carolina, incorporating a piece of I-beam from the South Tower of the World Trade Center, was completed in 2013, and he hopes to have the recently announced Richard Petty Tribute Park with multiple sculptures completed in time to celebrate Petty’s 80th birthday on July 2. One of Walker’s large abstracts is on its way to Charleston, South Carolina, on loan for a year’s exhibition. “Ed’s a rare combination of a complete artist’s eye mixed with an absolute engineer’s brain,” says Fagan. “He’s the kind of guy who can solve any problem — and every project has a list of them. Nothing fazes him.” Take Fagan’s sculpture The Spirit of Mecklenburg, a bronze of Captain James Jack on horseback, the centerpiece of a fountain in Uptown Charlotte. “The design was not easy,” says Fagan of the 1 1/2 life-size bronze. “I had the thing leaning and he’s at full speed so the horse’s feet are not on the ground exactly. Engineers had to be involved, at least two of them, maybe three. We’re all standing around this big clay horse and a question popped up on something pretty important. Everyone pipes in, pipes in, pipes in. Eventually Ed offers his opinion in his normal, subdued, quiet manner. Then the discussion goes on and on and on, the whole day. Magically, everything circled around all the way back to exactly what Ed had said. I just smiled.” Walker grew up in Burlington, living in the same house — three down from the city park — until he graduated from Walter M. Williams High School and went to East Carolina University. His father, Raleigh, was a WWII veteran who developed a hair-cutting sideline to his motor pool duties in the 5th Army Air Corps. “There was a picture he showed me of this barbershop tent, and Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill were standing out in front of it. They’d just gotten a shave and a haircut by him, and he was on the edge of the photo.” The same shears kept Ed’s head trimmed, too. Walker was drafted by art early on. He turned pro when he was in first grade. “Back then kids didn’t have money, at least not in my neighborhood,” he says. “My mom and dad (Lillie and Raleigh, who both worked in the textile mills) thought that ice cream was something you get on Friday for being good all week.” Others got it more frequently. Walker started drawing characters taken from classroom stories using crayons on brown paper hand towels, then trading them for ice cream money. Goldilocks. The Three Bears. January 2018
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Not exactly Perseus with the Head of Medusa but, heck, it was just first grade. Soon, he was coming home with more money than he left with in the morning. “My mom questioned me about it. The next day I had to go to the principal’s office and was told that under no circumstances could I be selling something on school grounds.” Sculpture reared its head at ECU. “I took my first sculpture appreciation class with Bob Edmisten. Had my first little bronze casting from that class. They pushed everybody to explore. You could use or do anything. I fell in love with that. Started learning how to weld and cast and carve, the kind of range of things you could do.” In addition to getting a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Walker met his wife, Melissa, another art major, also from Burlington. “We knew each other in high school,” says Melissa. “She was in the good student end,” says Ed. “I was in the back with all the problem people.” The old art building at ECU was near the student center. She was going out. He was going in. They were pushing on the same door in different directions. By their senior year they were married.
PHOTOGRAPH RIGHT BY SAM FROELICH, PHOTOGRAPHS LEFT BY LAURA GINGERICH
T
he first stop after graduation was Grand Forks, North Dakota. If you’ve been to North Dakota, you know there are months and months of harsh winter followed by, say, Tuesday, which is followed by more winter. The University of North Dakota was interested in setting up an art foundry and offered a full stipend to the person who could do it. Walker had helped Edmiston put together the one at ECU’s then-new Jenkins Fine Arts Center. The professor recommended the student. North Dakota sent the Walkers a telegram — your grandfather’s instant messaging. Be here in two weeks. They were. “They had a new building and a bunch of equipment in crates,” says Walker. “Figure it out. Set it up.” Walker’s art history professor at UND was Jackie McElroy, better known today by the pseudonym Nora Barker, a writer of cozy mysteries, who reinforced his belief that you could figure out how to do just about anything if you wanted to badly enough. It became a recurring theme. Chased out of North Dakota with a master’s degree and a case of frostbite, the Walkers found themselves back in North Carolina trying to land teaching jobs. After traveling to a conference, essentially a job fair, in New Orleans, Ed and a friend, Barry Bailey, made a pact. If they didn’t have jobs in a year, they’d move to New Orleans. They didn’t and they did. The Walkers arrived on July 3rd, dead broke. They slept on the floor of the apartment of a friend of their friend, Barry. “We had no job to go to, no food, no money,” says Walker. The next day at a Fourth of July block party, he picked up some carpentry work building a Catholic church. It lasted the rest of the steamy Louisiana summer. The couple attended art openings, went to galleries, met people. Walker got a gig as a bartender at a private party thrown by a local sculptor, Lin Emery. “At the end of the thing, she gave us a tour of her home and her studio,” says Walker. A creator of high-end kinetic sculptures, Emery mentioned she’d just lost her fabricator and was swamped with jobs that needed doing. “Do you know anybody who knows how to weld aluminum?” she asked. “Well, I can,” said Walker.
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Cast in 2008, Nathanael Greene, by James Barnhill, oversees the roundabout in downtown Greensboro. January 2018
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He’d never done it before. With a weekend to learn how to TIG (tungsten inert gas) weld, a professor friend introduced him to a guy in the maintenance department at Loyola University who offered to help. Walker showed up for work on Monday. “I did not confide to her that I lied my way into the job until about eight months later,” he says. He worked in Emery’s studio until — with Emery’s help — he was able to mix and match enough bits and pieces of teaching jobs to laissez les bon temps rouler. Part time at Loyola. Part time at Delgado Community College. Part time at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Part time at Tulane University. Then, finally, a full-time job teaching sculpture at Tulane. “I had eight students,” Walker says of his first year. “In five years it went from eight students to 101 and eight sculpture majors.” But, as it turned out, Walker was more interested in sculpture than Tulane was. The Walkers had purchased a single shotgun house with 12-foot ceilings built in 1876 in the Ninth Ward, east of the French Quarter, two blocks from the Industrial Canal that would fail when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Ed created his own little foundry in the side yard. When he wasn’t tenured by Tulane in ’87, his little foundry became his business, initially casting bronze pieces for his students who suddenly had no place to complete their projects. By the fall of ’89, Melissa and their children, Sage and Nathan, moved back to North Carolina when Melissa got a job teaching art in Randolph County. Ed followed six months later. He fired up the foundry again in a building on North Fayetteville Street in Asheboro. In ’94 they bought 55 acres outside
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of Seagrove with a mobile home on the back corner. Carolina Bronze had a permanent place to live, one that they’re expanding to include what is, essentially, an outdoor gallery for large sculpture. It already has nearly 20 pieces in it, only a few of which are Walker’s. “We’re just getting going on it,” he says. “It’s not just to look at sculpture but to shop for it. It’s going to be a community park, too.” Since moving to its current location in ’95, the foundry has produced works of art for hundreds of sculptors, the best known of whom is probably Fagan. “He is a person I know will be in the history books one day,” says Walker. “He’s done so many notable people.” Fagan shares Walker’s penchant for figuring things out. He’s a 1988 graduate of Yale who majored in, of all things, Soviet studies. He took a couple of painting classes while he was in New Haven, and it turned out he had the one thing you can neither invent nor hide, talent. He says his work at the moment is mostly historical in nature. “I’m looking at a life-size seated James Madison. He’s in a 4-foot by 7-foot canvas,” says Fagan. While that commission was private, he had previously been hired by the White House Historical Association to paint all 45 U.S. Presidents. He did the portrait of Mother Teresa that was mounted on a mural and displayed during her sainthood canonization by Pope Francis. His sculptures include the Bush presidents, George H.W. and George W., shown together, and George H.W. alone; several versions of Reagan for Washington, D.C., London and Reagan National Airport; Ronald and Nancy Reagan for his presidential The Art & Soul of Greensboro
PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAM FROELICH
Honoring the Greensboro Four, James Barnhill’s February One is a commanding presence on the campus of North Carolina A&T State University.
Greensboro’s Bravest by Paul Nixon (2005) stands as a tribute to local firefighters at Fire Station 1 on North Church Street.
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At 6 inches tall, Blind Justice at the Alamance County Courthouse is one of Ed Walker’s 11 whimsical sculptures of Arty the Mouse scattered throughout downtown Graham.
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAM FROELICH
library; Saint John Paul II for the shrine in Washington, D.C.; and Neil Armstrong for Purdue University. The piece currently being produced at Carolina Bronze is a sculpture of Bob McNair, the owner of the NFL’s Houston Texans. Fagan’s start in sculpture was, in its way, as unusual as studying Russia to master oil painting. While he was at the White House working on Barbara Bush’s portrait, he was asked if he could do a sculpture of George H.W., too. Sure, he said. Fagan had never done one before. Now the path to many of his finished pieces passes through Carolina Bronze. “In this place I think we created a really nice marriage of modern technology and old school techniques that have been around for thousands of years,” says Walker. Once a sculpture is approved and the project is on, an artist like Fagan will deliver a clay maquette, roughly a 2-foot version of the piece, to Walker. “From that Ed would determine how difficult it would be to make,” says Fagan. “I’m sure in his mind he’s planning out every major chess move along the way, because they are chess moves.” David Hagan, a sculptor himself who works mostly in granite and marble, will produce a 360 degree scan of the piece, a process that takes about a day. That digital information is fed into a machine that cuts pieces of industrial foam to be assembled into a rough version of the sculpture at its eventual scale. “It’s at that point that I come in with clay and sculpt away,” says Fagan. “You’re at your final size and it’s a fairly close version of what you had, which may or may not be a good thing. What looks so great at a small scale may end up being not so great. You can have awful proportion things wrong. The foam that’s used is a wonderful structural foam that you can slice with a blade. For me, you can sculpt that stuff.” The eventual layer of clay on the foam varies according to the artist’s desire. Several intermediate steps eventually yield a wax version of the sculpture, except in pieces. “For the artist, you gotta go back in and play with that piece — or the piece of your piece — the head or a hand or an arm or something,” says Fagan. “They’re all designed or cut based on where Ed, foreseeing the chess moves, figured out what’s going to pour and how. The maximum size of the mold is dictated by the maximum size of the pour. Those are your limitations, so you have to break up the piece into those portions.” Solid bars of wax, sprues, are added to the wax pieces to allow for the pas-
sage of molten bronze and the escape of gases. A wax funnel is put in place. Everything is covered in what becomes a hard ceramic coating. That’s heated to around 1,100 degrees. The wax melts away. Brown, who has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from UNCG and whose own bronze sculpture of a mother ocelot and kittens will go on display at the North Carolina Zoo this year, slags the impurities off the top of the molten bronze. It’s poured at roughly 2,100 degrees. “I found that I enjoyed the more physical aspect of working with sculpture as opposed to doing drawings or paintings,” says Brown. After everything has cooled and the ceramic is broken away, the pieces need to be welded together to reform the full sculpture. “The weld marks on the metal, you have to fake to look like clay,” says Fagan. The artist oversees that, as well. “The bronze shrinks but not always at the exact same percentage. There are always adjustments.” The last step is applying the patina, one of a variety of chemical surface coatings, done at Carolina Bronze by Neil King. Different patinas are chosen for different reasons: if the piece is to be displayed in the elements; if it will be touched frequently; and so on. “For someone like the artist who is very visual, it’s hard to imagine what the end result is going to be when you see the process. It will just look completely different in the middle than it will at the end. It’s an absolute art,” says Fagan. When it’s finished, no one knows the structural strengths and weaknesses of the sculpture better than Walker. They crate it like swaddling an infant, put it in traction, and then ship it off. In a digital world where so many things seem to have the lifespan of magician’s flash paper, a foundry is a world of gritty timelessness. “Because we do a lot of historical things here,” says Walker, “we get to make permanent snapshots of points in time.” At the end of the day, whether they’ve poured brass bases for miniaturized busts of Gen.George Marshall or pieces of a torso for a presidential library, the kiln and furnace go cold. Like any other small factory, the doors are locked and everyone goes home. Except for Walker. These are the hours he gets to spend alone shaping a bas relief of Richard Petty’s greatest hits. As George McFly said to Marty when his first novel, A Match Made in Space, arrived, “Like I’ve always told you, you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.” OH Jim Moriarty is senior editor of O.Henry’s sister publication PineStraw located in Southern Pines, and can be reached at jjmpinestraw@gmail.com.
(Left) Arty the Mouse as Book Worm at the Graham Public Library; (right) As Money Bags, Arty the Mouse stands sentry at Graham’s Bank of America Building. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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Breathing Lessons A New Year’s message about healing with trees
By Ashley Wahl • Photographs by Chris Van Atta
Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world. – John Muir
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othing is ours to keep. It’s a gnarly pill to swallow . . . until it isn’t. Summer before last, heart aching for a lover I chose to leave yet didn’t know how to release, I began humming an unfamiliar tune as I walked past a colonnade of ancient sycamores. The melody was soothing, but when the lyrics floated into consciousness, the haunting beauty shook me to my core.
I breathed you in, now, Darling, I must breathe you out . . .
Tears blurred my vision. Whatever dimension that song had come from (I sure didn’t write it), the truth of it felt like a blow to the chest. Love is as formless and infinite as air, and yet we find ourselves desperately grasping for it. I reached for a trunk to keep from falling over.
You were never mine to keep. You were never mine to keep . . .
The heart wants what it wants despite the circumstances. I had just experienced the kind of love that births poets — the kind you never return from — and there was nothing to do but let go of it. Tears burned my cheeks as I gasped for air. I pressed my forehead against the sycamore’s mottled bark until I felt as if I could breathe again. Trees are masters at letting go. Look at the sycamore, its gray bark peeling away to reveal a deeper layer of beauty. Study the naked branches of the black walnut against the crisp winter sky. Imagine being so vulnerable — having perfect faith in your own magnificent cycles and unfurling. J.R.R. Tolkien wasn’t the first to envision trees as magical, spirited beings. The ancient Celts saw them as gifted healers, teachers and guardians between worlds. I happen to share these beliefs. Not because I adopted them from anywhere. I’ve just spent enough time with trees to know that they’re doing more than cleaning the air, although I can’t think of a more profound offering. In 2016, The New York Times ran a profile on German forester Peter Wohlleben, author of Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries from a Secret World. “Though duly impressed with Mr. Wohlleben’s ability to capture the public’s attention,” wrote journalist Sally McGrane, “some German biologists question his use of words, like ‘talk’ rather than the more standard ‘communicate,’ to describe what goes on between trees in the forest.” There isn’t a morsel of scientific research to back me when I say this, but I believe that trees share their sacred wisdom telepathically with those open to receiving it. Some trees are more transparent than others. Having spent countless quiet hours nestled in the sweeping branches of a nearby climbing oak, a favorite lakeside perch to watch the great blue heron The Art & Soul of Greensboro
stalk its supper, I wasn’t entirely surprised to receive this clear and simple message from the old tree one recent evening as a golden sunset painted the sky magnificent: The love that you give is the love you receive. “Thank you,” I whispered to the tree I call Spire. Yes, love is infinite and formless. I carry that kernel of wisdom like an amulet worn close to the heart. In the late 1990s, environmental activist Julia “Butterfly” Hill spent two years 180 feet up an ancient California redwood to prevent loggers from felling it for lumber. Eighty-some days into Hill’s tree-sit, a wicked rain and hail storm with 70-mile-an-hour winds hit. Frigid and struggling for her life, she started talking to the tree dubbed Luna. This is what she heard back: “The trees in the storm don’t try to stand up straight and tall and erect. They allow themselves to bend and be blown with the wind. They understand the power of letting go.” Witness one autumn and see the exquisite beauty of such complete and knowing surrender. Perhaps if we were able to quiet our minds and bodies for long enough, we, too, might accept that change is synonymous with life. We might have deeper faith in the big picture. The summer I moved to Asheville — yes, heartbroken and searching for the love that was already within me — I spent mornings in meditation at the base of Mama, the twisted maple on the grassy hill in my front yard. When I closed my eyes beneath her, I felt deeply grounded, as if my own invisible roots were firmly planted in the earth. In that stillness, I could hear music with my entire being. The vibration of cricket song. A tapestry of chirps and warbles and caws. Wind through leaves. Mama was not separate from this breathing soundscape, I realized. We’re all a part of it. The secret is being present for long enough to hear it. Perhaps that’s the ultimate wisdom. Presence. Choosing to be here, now, again and again. A few weeks ago, having realized it was time to say goodbye to another beautiful romance, I felt an aching in my chest that I knew was not mine. I walked upon a favorite tree, a multi-trunk vision with a portal-like opening just large enough for me to step inside. Cradled inside this healing channel, I did the only thing there was to do: exhale. “Let everything that is not yours dissolve,” said the tree. “Only love remains.” As I let go, this time with less resistance and considerably fewer tears, I felt my heart grow light. Nearby, a squirrel playfully scurried across the forest floor, scrambled up a tree, then leapt from limb to limb with acrobatic grace. Off in the distance, a couple having a picnic shared a kiss. A smile warmed my face as I felt the wisdom of the trees take root inside my being. Love is always here. Yes. There’s no need to grasp for it. All we have to do is breathe. OH The former senior editor of O.Henry and its sister publications, PineStraw and Salt, Ashley Wahl is a poet, writer, musician and self-proclaimed dryad. January 2018
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The House of Whispers A Depression-era Tudor reimagined by designer Randal Weeks of Aidan Gray Home By Cynthia Adams • Photographs by Amy Freeman
If
a house can talk (as my husband is convinced that they do) they either shout or whisper. In that case, a formerly dark and languishing Tudor now speaks in silken, cultured tones. The sophisticated tones ring out in an understated palette employed by a wildly popular design expert with furnishings, lighting and accessories that translate into haute couture for lovers of Euro-chic. The house restoration project was undertaken by Randal Weeks, a name less familiar than his widely recognized business, Aidan Gray Home. So, when Pinterest and the blogosphere first posted details in early 2017 of Weeks’s historic home renovation, it was impossible not to sit up and pay attention. The house of the moment was one in the Triad — in High Point, no less! The Euro-chic aesthetic of Aidan Gray Home includes modern furniture and antique reproductions, lighting, garden décor, lamps and chandeliers. Tony New Orleans and Houston French-inspired interiors often feature at least a few Aidan Gray touches, summoning what could be described as the European counterpart of Ralph Lauren — minus the jewel tones, tartan plaid, brass and leather. Instead, Aidan Gray’ signature look consists of the sort of deconstructed antique seating, pale walls and distressed pieces that has made Restoration Hardware a hit — you have likely seen some of Aidan Gray’s pieces in an RH catalog and didn’t realize it. But who would ever have imagined that such an understated look would be compatible with a 90-year old Tudor that had been languishing on High Point’s Hillcrest Street — looking roundly depressed and tatty — and crying for help? Only the visionary Randal Weeks, as it turns out. He snapped up the property, making plans to redo the home for his personal use. He must have sensed the former stateliness of the home that had belonged to W.C. “Chase” Idol, a High Point bank executive who required a residence that would reflect his station in life. In the fall of 1929 Idol engaged architect Lorenzo Winslow to design a grand home on the half-acre lot in Emerywood. Winslow favored the Tudor style and built many examples before the Depression dented his Greensboro business and he left to work in Washington. The design included four bedrooms (or “chambers”) and three baths. Featuring leaded glass windows, flanked by an open porch on one side and by a porte-cochère on the other, the house was beautifully conceived. The original front door, with brass braces, was over 2 inches thick. Its heft
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hinted at what was behind it: a generous center hallway and sweeping stairway with a customized railing. Idol, the original man of the house, spent his workdays at the downtown High Point location of Wachovia bank near his new home, which had considerably more panache than its owner. “W.C. was ironically named Chase,” observed one acquaintance. Ironic because the man himself was “about as energetic as an earthworm,” the acquaintance allowed in an amusing oral history of High Point notables recorded in 1989. The author also recalled Chase’s habit of keeping a flyswatter in hand, idly swatting flies at his desk — seated with his back to the window. But there were no flies on Randal Weeks, whose own Aidan Gray showroom stands very near the former location of Chase Idol’s workplace. Moving with purpose, the designer gutted the Tudor to the studs, hauling off 100,000 pounds of plaster, yet preserving all the architectural features for re-use. Confessing in an online blog to being borderline obsessive-compulsive, The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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Weeks said he could not tolerate all the plaster cracks. Electrical systems were totally redone, and creaking radiators were hauled out. One of his close assistants lived on site to implement Weeks’s vision. A vision that expanded the size of the house to more than 5,500 square feet, thanks to the addition of three more bedrooms and baths, spa-like in ambiance. Weeks also invested the house with dark stained floors, a sleek kitchen and landscaping that included an elegant statue. The exterior was given a facelift, with the brick and timber exterior painted a pale gray and white, and overgrown shrubs and trees removed. All told, the designer invested half a million in the renovation of the the old Tudor, adding luxe details like heated tile floors in the kitchen and baths, and replacing those plaster walls with insulation and sheetrock. Having removed all the house’s trim, doors and special touches, Weeks carefully replaced the moldings and ornate detail afterward. He removed a disappearing stairway to the attic and converted it from storage space into a full third floor (the location of three additional bedrooms and two of the three added baths) with permanent stairs. Weeks then filled the three-story house with art, and shades of Aidan Gray: distressed antiques from his own furniture line, and even a custom-made din-
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ing table — overseeing every detail personally, including window treatments. Ultimately, though, Weeks would never occupy the Idol house. Given the proximity of his Aidan Gray showroom, he had originally intended to use the house during furniture markets and as a vacation home. But during the renovation, his family argued that the Tudor would be too work-associated to make for a good retreat. Eager to see his vision through to completion, Weeks deemed the renovation a design experiment that gave him absolute creative freedom and intimated he would sell the house. As rumors of its sale circulated, Dr. Nik and Lori Teppara kept their ear to the ground. A realtor friend, Lesley Bailey, had told the couple about the house before Weeks had even completed the renovation of the guest house/garage. The Tepparas didn’t want others to know of their interest — it was a large and imposing house and, as ones who live modestly, they preferred to pursue the sale quietly. “My husband insisted we park nearby and walk over,” Lori recalls. But the heart wants what the heart wants. And Lori’s heart immediately skipped a beat as soon as the big door swung open and she had a clear sight line from the entry to the kitchen. “When I walked in, I just knew,” says Lori. “White, gray, streamlined. . . I The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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wanted the house. We put in an offer within weeks.” For the busy couple — Nik is a surgeon and Lori is a trainer who operates a fitness studio — the newly sleek and rebuilt house has the benefit of modern conveniences and upgrades within the elegant structure of an historic house. “I never thought we’d live in an old house,” Lori adds. “But this is a new house with old bones.” The couple not only wanted the house, they wanted the furnishings, as well. They took ownership of the house on February 1, 2017, and moved in immediately after closing, having quickly sold their previous home, the William Delk house in High Point’s Heathgate “It’s a nice house and we loved it,” Lori says fondly of their old abode that they’d inhabited since 2011. But their new dwelling . . . this is one-of-a-kind. With a few exceptions (some pieces of artwork that the Tepparas have collected), it maintains the designer’s interiors as Weeks had envisioned. The designer was so obsessive to detail that once the Tepparas had expressed their intention of buying the home, its purchase was delayed . . . by Weeks’s sourcing a particular carpet for the master closet — a “plush one,” says Lori, “that won’t show vacuum lines.” He also installed a chandelier inside the closet. But as the saying goes, God is in the details. That much-discussed contemporary kitchen with open shelving? It isn’t simply that it features several twinkly, Euro-style lights, but that the signature lighting is presented in such a way as to inspire a blogger to compare it to an art installation. The professional grade gas stove? “It’s blue inside,” says Lori, who enjoys that particular, secret detail. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Idol has been essentially chased away, flyswatter and all; this house bears the distinctive imprimatur of all that typifies Aidan Gray. And yet — it is now the Teppara house and thoroughly lived in and loved. Truth be told, there are some detractors. Never mind the fact that the rescued house was in dire need of a facelift. Or that it languished on the market before Weeks bought it, and had multiple (read: expensive) issues. Forget that it could have been a tear-down, given its generous lot and appealing location. For purists and preservationists, the Randal Weeks house redo isn’t necessarily their cuppa tea. Top on the list of their objections: the pale gray paint applied to the Tudor’s brick exterior —the designer’s dominant color — and that was just not cool with those who barked online about painted brick being an insult to the architectural style. However, for lovers of Aidan Gray’s European vibe, which typifies ornate architectural details and objets d’art juxtaposed against a pale canvas — the house is a thing to marvel at. There is no cry for help now. It whispers hipness. It whispers artfulness and class. And for the Tepparas, function. Lori reminds that at the time of the move, she and Nik had a new baby and two other young children. “We did not want to do any work on the house,” adds Lori. The couple had neither time nor inclination. Not only had they fallen in love with the Aidan Gray aesthetic, “We needed more space,” Lori allows. “We loved open concept when our son was 1. But as we had more children, we wanted a more traditional home.” It was also in walking or biking distance for them both to their workplaces. “My husband’s a surgeon, January 2018
O.Henry 67
and he has no time, and I have a fitness business.” They switched two sofas around to make the downstairs den more utilitarian for their younger children. They replaced a painting over the fireplace with one from their designer friend Stacy Yow. With a few exceptions — a Four Hands console, for instance, embellished with the names of New York subway stops (a nod to their mutual New York pasts when Nik was doing his residency and Lori ran Hubble Fitness) — the house maintains the designer’s interiors. Today, these are the things Lori loves most about the new “old” house: She loves the sleek open kitchen, and that she is constantly discovering new things to appreciate. The ice maker “makes incredible ice — and I didn’t even notice it was there until my 40th birthday party!” she exclaims. She loves its double ovens, the large range, the abundant storage and that the kitchen was expanded to run the entire width of the house, even retaining original corner cupboards. She has come to appreciate the heated tile flooring as well. Upstairs, the former sewing room (according to the house’s original blue prints, which were given to Weeks) is now a pale pink color and suffused by afternoon light. It is warm and cozy — and Lori says one of her favorite aspects of the entire house. The sleek showers in the 6 baths are of-the-moment — but her youngest children prefer the generous tub of the master bath, which has a waterfall effect. Lori also thinks it’s nice that eldest son, Brayden, has a room on the third floor and privacy. “He’ll appreciate it one day,” she says knowingly. In December, the Tepparas opened their home for the Guild of Family Services of High Point, with 125 guests enjoying the former W. C. Idol home. “They had a record showing, and raised the most money,” Lori texts afterward. In the unseasonably warm days of early winter, no doubt guests enjoyed the furnished porch that opens off
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the living room, and outdoor art by Meredith Covington and Nan Jones. Lori is happy for guests to fill their home, as the couple spends much of their time in the kitchen and den areas. To accommodate occasional visitor overflow despite the seven bedrooms, they finished off the guesthouse, then added a garage and expanded the existing driveway. That porte-cochère is a charming touch, but a squeeze for modern cars, much larger than anything Idol drove in 1929. “My husband drives a Ford Raptor,” Lori says, wincing. “It’s a tight fit for the cars. I took his mirror off.” Today, Idol might be amazed to see his fine home newly redone by a well-known designer and now enlivened by the patter of not two little feet but six — the three energetic Teppara children. “Brayden is now 7,” says Lori, “Brooklynn is 5, and Tegan is 2.” She shakes her head. “Was I glad the house was done and ready to move in? Yes, I was! I had a 1-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 6-year-old. And I work,” she laughs. Now, the house that once whispered to Randal Weeks is filled with laughter, thanks to her little ones. OH Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O. Henry. When her and her husband Don’s 1926 house whispered, “buy me!” she heard it. Now it is shouting, “time to redo the downstairs bath!”
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
January 2018
O.Henry 69
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January 2018
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
January A L M A N A C
By Ash Alder
It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice.
— Wallace Stevens, “No Possum, No Sop, No Taters”
n
Begin Again
Perhaps it’s true that the best narratives are cyclical, taking the reader on a figurative journey that ultimately leads them back where they started, yet, through some alchemical reaction, altogether transformed. Like the fool’s journey, or the legendary ouroboros eating its own tail. Which brings us back to January. Outside, a pair of cardinals flits between the naked branches of a dogwood and the ornate rim of the pedestal birdbath. You think of the piebald gypsy cat who used to visit, how he would balance on the ledge to take a drink. Months have passed since you’ve seen him, but that drifter has charm. You’re sure he’s napping in some cozy sunroom, patiently waiting for the catkins and crocus, for the cheerily, cheer-up, cheer-up, cheerily return of the robin. The warmth of your own smile stretches across your face, and in this moment, all is well. On this first day of January, you imagine the New Year unfolding perfectly. Steam curls from your tea mug as an amalgam of flavors perfumes the air. Cinnamon bark, licorice, ginger and marshmallow root . . . Giving yourself permission to luxuriate, you reach for a favorite book of poems. “To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June,” said German author Jean Paul. You turn to a dog-eared page, can almost smell the honeysuckle and wild rose. You’ve read this poem many times, yet, like you, it is brand-new.
Blue Moon with Honey
Henry David Thoreau could wax poetic on “That grand old poem called Winter.” Perhaps it’s not the easiest season to weather, but from darkness comes light. Behold phloxes and hellebores, snowdrops and winter-blooming iris, and on Wednesday, Jan. 3, until the wee hours of Thursday, Jan. 4: the Quadrantids meteor shower. Named for Quadrans Muralis, a defunct constellation once found between the constellations of Boötes and Draco, near the tail of Ursa Major, the Quadrantids is one of the strongest meteor showers of the year. Although a just-full moon may compromise viewing conditions, you won’t want to miss a chance to see this celestial event. Twelfth Night (Jan. 5), the eve of Epiphany, marks the end of the Christmas season and commemorates the arThe Art & Soul of Greensboro
rival of the Magi who honored the Infant Jesus with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Seeking a hangover cure following this night of merrymaking and reverie? Ginger tea. And don’t be shy with the honey dipper. The natural sugar will help your body burn off what’s left of the wassail. January’s blue moon falls on the last day of the month. Reflect upon the ways you let your own light shine on this rare and energetically powerful night. Like attracts like. What are you calling in for 2018?
To Your Health!
Traditionally served in a large wooden bowl adorned with holly and ivy, wassail is a hot alcoholic cider that spells celebration. Many recipes call for port, sherry and fresh-baked apples, but here’s a simple (un-spiked) version for you. Start now and wrap your hands around a mug of hot wassail within the hour. Serves four. Ingredients 2 cups apple cider 1 cup orange juice Juice of one lemon 2 cinnamon sticks 6 cloves 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg Instructions Combine all ingredients in a large pan. Bring to simmer over medium-low heat. Reduce heat. Continue simmering for 45 minutes. Ladle into mugs and enjoy.
There are two seasonal diversions that can ease the bite of any winter. One is the January thaw. The other is the seed catalogues. — Hal Borland January 2018
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January 2018
All for Knot 1/
7 & 27
January 1–13 SHOWTIME. But not for much longer. Winter Show, consisting of 120-plus works of North Carolina artists, winds up its run. GreenHill, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org.
January 2–February 11 PUNCH THE CLOCK. It only takes a minute to decide to see For All Time: Interpretations of the Fourth Dimension from the Collection. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
January 2–March 4 CLAY NATION. Mexican sculptor Kukuli Velarde’s expressive clay figures still ani-
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What a Maroon 1/
To Your Health
18-20
mate Gallery 6 at the exhibit, Isichapuitu. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
January 2–April 8 BIGGERS IS BETTER. Meaning, Sanford Biggers: Falk Visiting Artist, a multimedia exhibit exploring, history, culture and identity. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
January 5 SWARM UP. 7 p.m. Get buzzy with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
1/
22
CARRIE-OKE. 6 p.m. As in, a concert by Americana alto Carrie Paz, to ring in the First Friday of the New Year. GreenHill, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org. GROOVES AND MOVES. 10 p.m. Jessica Mashburn is spinning again, your cue to cut a rug at Pop-Up Dance Club. Print Works Bistro, 702 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 3790699 or printworksbistro.com.
January 6 SWARM UP. 7 p.m. Get buzzy with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Arts Calendar January 7 & 27 ALL FOR KNOT. Noon and 11 a.m. Getting ready to take a trip down the aisle? Take a trip to Carolina Weddings Shows to plan your nuptials down to the last detail. Embassy Suites, 204 Centrepoint Drive (1/7) and Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd. (1/27), Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 545-1970 or 33bride.com.
January 9 LIGHT RAIN. 7 p.m. Singin’ in the Rain, that is. The 1952 musical spoof of the silent film era continues the Decades of Film series. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 333-2605 or carolinatheatre.com.
January 10 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Sandra Worsham, author of Going to Wings. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
January 12 & 13
THE PUB GAME. 7 p.m. Greensboro Bound literary festival presents “Literary Jungle, Literary Community: A Panel Discussion on SelfPublishing.” Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
January 18 ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE. 5:30 p.m. Start the New Year right at an arts and wellness class in which you’ll make a calendar with a collage of personal affirmations. GreenHill, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. To register: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org. AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Brett Ingram, author of The Secret World of Renaldo Kuhler. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. THRONES AND GROANS. 7:30 p.m. Catch a musical sendup of Game of Thrones, re-imagined as Musical Thrones: A Parody of Ice and Fire. High Point Theatre, 220 E. Commerce St., High Point. Tickets: (336) 887-3001 or highpointtheatre.com.
MONSTER MASHUP. 7 p.m. The contenduhs are in the (wheel)house: Grave Digger! Max D! El Toro Loco! Wonder Woman! Zombie! Megalodon! Blue Thunder and Monster Mutt Rottweiler! Yep, it’s time for Monster Jam Triple Threat Series. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
January 18 & 20
January 12 & 14
January 18–20
OPERA BOUFFANTE. 7 p.m. and 2 p.m. Go Figaro a way to see Greensboro Opera’s cuttingedge production of Rossini’s light opera, The Barber of Seville. UNCG Auditorium, 402 Tate St., Greensboro Tickets: (336) 272-0162 or greensboroopera.org.
January 13 & 27 KEEP POUNDING! 10 a.m. Move over, Thor: The one, the only, the Blacksmith is at the top of his game for 2018. High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org.
January 17 HISTORY-ONICS. 10 a.m. Hear a discussion presented by the High Point Historical Society Guild. High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
STRINGALONG. 8 p.m. Hear Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, Ravel and Joaquín Rodrigo — on guitar, courtesy of Manuel Barrueco who joins the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra for “Spanish Nights.” Dana Auditorium, 710 Levi Coffin Drive, Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 335-5456, ext. 22434 or greensborosymphony.org. WHAT A MAROON! Which Robert Dubac certainly is not. For some withering satire on the dumbing down of popular culture, check out his one-man, Off-Broadway hit, The Book of Moron. Performance times vary. Odeon Theatre, Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
January 18–21 PLAYTIME. The 16th Annual Greensboro Fringe Festival showcases new plays. Performance times vary. Admission is free, though a $10 donation is appreciated. Stephen Hyers Theater, Greensboro Cultural Center, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: thedramacenter.com.
January 19 SWARM UP. 7 p.m. Get buzzy with the Greensboro Swarm, NBA Development League
for the Charlotte Hornets. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com. AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet Cathy Cleary, author of The Southern Harvest Cookbook. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. MODERN MOVEMENT. 8 p.m. The venerable Limón Dance Company brings modern steps to the stage. UNCG Auditorium, 402 Tate St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 272-0160 or triadstage.org.
January 20 CHIL(I) OUT. 9 a.m. Add a little spice to life at the Seventh Annual Chili Challenge, a competition among Triad chefs to whip up the best chili using locally sourced ingredients. Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2402 or gsofarmersmarket.org. BOUNCERS. 4 p.m. As in, the rising stars of collegiate and professional basketball, who’ll strut their stuff at the North Carolina Scholastic Classic. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com. AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet D.M. Pulley, author of The Unclaimed Victim. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. DYNAMIC DUO. 8 p.m. John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful and mandolinist/composer David Grisman team up to deliver some acoustic jams. High Point Theatre, 220 E. Commerce St., High Point. Tickets: (336) 887-3001 or highpointtheatre.com.
January 21 SIT(KOVETSKY)-IN. 5 p.m. Greensboro Symphony Music Director and Conductor Dmitry Sitkovetsky takes a bow — to his violin, that is — at a Rice Toyota Sitkovetsky & Friends Chamber concert. UNCG School of Music Recital Hall, 100 McIver St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 335-5456, ext. 224 or greensborosymphony.org.
January 22 TO YOUR HEALTH! 5:30 p.m. Hey, Ladies! Why not raise a glass along with your awareness of women’s health issues at Black, Gold & Bling Ladies’ Night Out, hosted by Wake Forest Baptist January 2018
O.Henry 73
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Arts Calendar Health? Enjoy complimentary champagne, wine, hors d’oeuvres and door prizes — and a little health education. 98 Asian Bistro, 1800 N. Main Street, High Point. To register: (336) 713-2378.
January 23 AUTHOR, AUTHOR. 7 p.m. Meet novelist Naima Coster, author of Halsey Street. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. BEST CASE SCENARIO. 8 p.m. Indie songstress Neko Case takes the stage. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 3332605 or carolinatheatre.com.
January 25 GREAT AGAIN. 7 p.m. See Pam’s Great Gatsby, a short documentary film by Ben Singer. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
January 26 ASPIRING SCRIBES. 7 p.m. A new crop of literati showcase their works at a UNCG M.F.A. student reading. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
STELLAR KELLER. 7:30 p.m. Organist Nicole Keller shows off her a magnificent set of pipes at Music for a Great Space. Christ United Church of Christ, 410 N. Holden Road, Greensboro. Tickets: musicforagreatspace.org.
FAB FOLLY-CLE. 6:30 p.m. See outrageous ’dos and fashions for a good cause: the Big Hair Ball, supporting Family Service of The Piedmont. Elm Street Center, 203 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Tickets: www.fspcares.org/bighairball
January 27
SOULFUL SOUNDS 8 p.m. Hear American Spiritual Ensemble, which strives to preserve the beloved African-American musical art form. High Point Theatre, 220 E. Commerce St., High Point. Tickets: (336) 887-3001 or highpointtheatre.com.
MUSKET MANIA. 10:30 a.m. Learn about the life of a Revolutionary War soldier at a Guilford Militia Encampment. High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: (336) 8851859 or highpointmuseum.org.
January 27 & 28
BIG DEAL. 1 p.m. UNCG Associate Dean and Professor of History Charles C. Bolton delivers a lecture, “The New Deal and the South,” a companion to the exhibit, New Deal in High Point. High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: (336) 885-1859 or highpointmuseum.org.
THE WILD ONES. 7 p.m. and 2 p.m. They got their motors runnin’ but instead of the highway, motorcyclists are headed for the indoor tracks for AMSOIL Arenacross and Arenacross Amateur Day. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Tickets: (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.
WORTH ITS SALT. 2 p.m. Holly Goddard Jones’s The Salt Line, that is. The focus of WFDD Book Club. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
January 27–April 22 CHECKED. See 17 artists’ perceptions of how global travel has affected daily life at Baggage Claims. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 334-5770 or weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
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Arts Calendar January 28–February 18 “Absolutely, perfectly, exceptionally fabulous!”
RAISIN’ THE BAR. The struggle to achieve the American Dream takes center stage — literally — in Lorraine Hansberry’s classic drama, A Raisin in the Sun. Triad Stage, 232 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 272-0160 or triadstage.org.
- Mattie
WEEKLY HAPPENINGS Mondays BUZZING. 10 a.m. Your busy little bees engage in a Busy Bees preschool program focusing on music, movement, garden exploration and fun in the kitchen, at the Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. Preregistration: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com. CHAT-EAU. Noon. French leave? Au contraire! Join French Table, a conversation group. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.
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Tuesdays READ ALL ABOUT IT. Treat your little ones to story times: BookWorms (ages 12–24 months) meets at 10 a.m.; Time for Twos meets at 11 a.m. Storyroom; Family Storytime for all ages meets at 6:30 p.m. High Point Public Library, 901 N. Main St., High Point. Info: (336) 883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com. PINT-SIZED GARDENERS. 3:30 p.m. Instill a love of gardening and growing edible things in your kiddies at Little Sprouts (ages 3 to 5 years). Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. To register: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com.
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January 2018
PICKIN’ AND GRINNIN’ 6 until 9 p.m. Y’all come for Songs from a Southern Kitchen: Graymatter (1/2); Molly McGinn, Dave Willis and Brent Buckner (1/9); Windfall (1/16); Sam Frazier and Eddie Walker (1/23); South Carolina Broadcasters (1/30). 1421 W. Wendover Terrace, Greensboro. Info: (336) 370-0707 or lucky32.com/ greensboro_music.htm. CREATIVE KIN. 5 to 7 p.m. Moms, dads, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins: Enjoy a free evening of artistic expression at ArtQuest. GreenHill, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 333-7460 greenhillnc.org. MUSSELS, WINE & MUSIC. 7 until 10 p.m. Mussels with house-cut fries for $15, wines from $10–15 a bottle and live music by AM rOdeO — at Print Works Bistro, 702 Green Valley The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Arts Calendar Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 379-0699 or printworksbistro.com/live_music.htm. ONCE UPON A TIME. 2 p.m. Afterschool Storytime convenes for children of all ages. Storyroom, High Point Public Library, 901 N. Main St., High Point. Info: (336) 883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com.
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Thursdays TWICE UPON A TIME. 11 a.m. Preschool Storytime convenes for children ages 3–5. Storyroom, High Point Public Library, 901 N. Main St., High Point. Info: (336) 883-3666 or highpointpubliclibrary.com. ALL THAT JAZZ. 5:30 until 8 p.m. Hear live, local jazz featuring Dave Fox, Neill Clegg and Matt Kendrick — and guests Stephen Henson (1/4), April Talbott (1/11), Carrie Marshall (1/18) and Joey Barnes (1/25). All performances are at the O.Henry Hotel Social Lobby Bar. No cover. 624 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 8542000 or www.ohenryhotel.com/jazz.htm. JAZZ NIGHT. 7 p.m. Fresh-ground, freshbrewed coffee is served with a side of jazz at Tate Street Coffee House, 334 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 275-2754 or www.tatestreetcoffeehouse.com. OPEN MIC COMEDY. 8–9:35 p.m. Local pros and amateurs take the mic at the Idiot Box, 2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Info: (336) 274-2699 or idiotboxers.com.
Fridays MINI MAKERS. 11 a.m. Let your child (age 5 or younger) bring out his or her inner Van Gogh at ArtQuest’s Masterpiece Fridays, featuring which melds tales from classic storybooks and artistic activities. Cost is $6 per person. GreenHill, 200 N. Davie St. Greensboro. To register: (336) 333-7460 or greenhillnc.org.
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THE HALF OF IT. 5 p.m. Enjoy the hands-on exhibits and activities for half the cost of admission at $5 Fun Fridays ($2 on First Fridays). Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com.
Fridays & Saturdays NIGHTMARES ON ELM STREET. 8 p.m. A 90-minute, historical, candlelit ghost walking tour of Downtown Greensboro. Tickets: (336) 905-4060 or carolinahistoryandhaunts.com/ information. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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Arts Calendar Saturdays
TO MARKET, TO MARKET. 7 a.m. until noon. The produce is fresh and the cut fleurs belles. Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, 501 Yanceyville St., Greensboro. Info: gsofarmersmarket.org. THRICE UPON A TIME. 11 a.m. Hear a good yarn at Children’s Storytime. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. WRITE IS MIGHT. 3 p.m. Avoid writer’s block by joining a block of writers at Come Write In, a confab of scribes who discuss their literary projects. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com. JAZZ ENCORE. 6:30 p.m. Hear contemporary jazz cats Robert Griffin and Danny Grewen (1/6), Andrew Berinson Trio featuring Ti Harmon (1/13), Nishah DiMeo (1/20), Kathy & Gregg Gelb (1/27) while noshing on seasonal tapas at O.Henry Jazz series for Select Saturdays. O.Henry Hotel, 624 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 854-2000 or ohenryhotel.com.
• Mediation, not Litigation • Board Certified Family Law Specialist • “AV” Preeminent Peer Rating, Martindale Hubbell • Top 100 Attorney in America, Worth magazine • Best Lawyers in US, US News & World Report • Legal Elite, Business North Carolina magazine • Trust and Estates litigaton
Redefining Family Law To learn more, contact Aycock Family Law at 336.271.3200 or www.treyaycocklaw.com 125 South Elm Street | Suite 501 Greensboro, NC 27401
78 O.Henry
January 2018
IMPROV COMEDY. 10 p.m. on Saturday, plus an 8 p.m. show appropriate for the whole family. The Idiot Boxers create scenes on the spot and build upon the ideas of others, creating shows that are one-of-a-kind — at the Idiot Box, 2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Info: (336) 2742699 or idiotboxers.com.
Sundays HALF FOR HALF-PINTS. 1 p.m. And grownups, too. A $5 admission, as opposed to the usual $10, will allow you entry to exhibits and more. Greensboro Children’s Museum, 220 N. Church St., Greensboro. Info: (336) 574-2898 or gcmuseum.com. MISSING YOUR GRANDMA? 3 p.m. until it’s gone: Tuck into Chef Felicia’s skillet-fried chicken, and mop that cornbread in, your choice, giblet gravy or potlikker. Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen, 1421 W. Wendover Terrace, Greensboro. Info: (336) 370-0707 or lucky32.com/fried_chicken.htm. To add an event, email us at ohenrymagcalendar@gmail.com by the first of the month ONE MONTH PRIOR TO THE EVENT.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
M A R ION Tile & Flooring
CERAMIC TILE • MARBLE • VINYL • CARPET • HARDWOOD
Life & Home
Family Owned & Operated For 55 Years Products Porcelain & Ceramic Tile • Brick & Stone Marble & Granite • Cork • Hardwood Luxury Vinyl Tile • Carpet
services Bathroom Remodeling Kitchen Floors & Backsplashes Tile Repairs & Cleaning Service Complete Installation Service by Qualified Craftsmen
Monday - Friday • 9am-5pm
4719 Pleasant Garden Road, Pleasant Garden 336-674-8839 | www.mariontile.com
“ S t u n n i n g Fa r m H o u S e ”
...
Browns Summit
3811 Summit LakeS Dr Commercial office space, restaurants, conference + event facilities, fitness center, apartments and community events.
4 Beds/3.1 Bath • Over 3,000 Sq Ft 2+ Acres • Master on Main 3-Car Garage • Walk-In Attic Hardwoods • Sprinkler System
MICHELLE PORTER MP
L E T ’ S
G E T
M O V I N G !
...turning dreams into an address
(336) 235-2393 REVOLUTIONMILLGREENSBORO.COM The Art & Soul of Greensboro
REALTOR®, BROKER, MBA, ABR, CSP, GRI, CRS, SFR, CPM • homes@michelleporter.com www.michelleporter.com ©2017 BHH Affiiliates, LLC. An independently operated subsidiary of HomeServices of America, Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate, and a franchisee of BHH Affiliates, LLC. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices symbol are registered service marks of HomeServices of America, Inc.® Equal Housing Opportunity.
January 2018
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Business & Services
Life & Home
Empowering Dreams. Embracing Legacies.
Happy New Year it’s about Communities, Families and Homes.
M. Gaines LeGare
NMLS# 198806 • Area Manager
Shop LocaL for Best Prices
5 A OAk BrAnch Drive, GreensBOrO, nc 27407
We Service What We Sell & Offer Personal Attention
Office:336.663.0778 cell:336.213.3186 www.GatewayLoan.com/gaines-legare
Gateway Mortgage Group is a registered service mark of Gateway Mortgage Group, llc nMls 7233. Greensboro Branch: 5 A Oak Branch Drive, Greensboro, nc 27407
es
80 O.Henry
January 2018
336-854-9222 • www.HartApplianceCenter.com
2201 Patterson Street, Greensboro, NC (2 Blocks from the Coliseum) Mon. - Fri.: 9:30am - 5:30 pm Sat. 10 am - 2 pm • Closed Sunday
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
ooking L at you Business & Services
here’s
2222 Patterson St. #A • Greensboro, NC 27407 336.852.7107 • www.houseofeyes.com Only one block from the coliseum.
get your
eyoenbrows
Gibsonville
Come
SHOP DROP til you
Antiques & ColleCtibles Full of History, Antiques & Charm 106 E. Railroad Ave, Gibsonville, NC
(336) 446-0234
EyEbrow ThrEading for MEn and woMEn ONLY way to get the FUZZ off your face
Downtown Gibsonville behind the Red Caboose
GibsonvilleAntiques.com Mon-Sat 10-6 & Sun 1-5
Complimentary cake and coffee everyday.
at Friendly Center(next to Great Clips & Opp. Five Guys) 3123 Kathleen ave, Greensboro, NC
336-541-8999 • www.jassisbrowbar.com
Practicing Commercial Real Estate by the Golden Rule Bill Strickland, CCIM Commercial Real Estate Broker/REALTOR 336.369.5974 | bstrickland@bipinc.com
www.bipinc.com The Art & Soul of Greensboro
fleek
• Unique 5-minute process • Lasts longer than waxing • Defined arch • Yogic & Natural hair removal • Artistic technique from India used by Queens
ASHMORE RARE COinS & MEtAlS Since 1987
• 30 years as a major dealer of Gold, Silver, and Coins • Most respected local dealer for appraising and buying Coin Collections, Gold, Silver, Diamond Jewelry and Sterling Flatware • Investment Gold, Silver, & Platinum Bullion
Visit us: www.ashmore.com or call 336-617-7537 5725 W. Friendly Ave. Ste 112 • Greensboro, NC 27410 Across the street from the entrance to Guilford College
January 2018
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shops • service • food • farms
support locally owned businesses
Greensboro's Locally Owned Kitchen Store since 1985
Friendly Shopping Center, Greensboro, NC 1-800-528-3618
336-299-9767
www.extraingredient.com
HAPPY & HEALTHY is our businEss
dr. Janine M. oliver
1052 Grecade St. GreenSboro, nc 27408
Conveniently located in Midtown
336.897.1505
www.BAHpetcare.com
82 O.Henry
January 2018
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Join the effort. Visit www.triadlocalfirst.com.
shops • service • food • farms
support locally owned businesses
Sometimes it’s smarter to lease than to sell your home. Call us when you think you’re there! Michelle will be pleased to discuss how Burkely Rental Homes can help you. -Sterling Kelly, CEO Burkely Communities
A Life well lived. Summerfield Farms is a working farm and events venue with a focus on memorable celebrations, 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef, certified organic produce and whole-body wellness. Visit our store, The Market, 7 days a week or shop online at SummerfieldFarms.com (use code OHENRY for 10% off your first online order or mention ‘O.HENRY’ when you visit The Market and get a 10% discount!).
A Store for All Seasons & Reasons Come in and See and Feel the Difference in Fine Clothing, Sportswear and Service!
Charleston Khakis Southern Proper Ralph Lauren FA MacCluer Bill’s Khakis Bobby Jones Trafalgar Nettleton Bugatchi Brackish Baroni Berle
Your Local, Hometown Clothier
3712 Lawndale Dr. Next to the Fresh Market Greensboro, NC 27455 336.286.2620
www.gordonsmenswearltd.com
100% GRASS-FED BEEF
CERTIFIED ORGANIC PRODUCE
WEDDINGS & EVENTS
LUXURY LODGING
Just 20 minutes from downtown Greensboro 3203 PLEASANT RIDGE RD • SUMMERFIELD, NC • 336.792.5712 • SUMMERFIELDFARMS.COM
M A R K E T H O U R S : M O N D AY– S AT U R D AY: 9 A M –7 P M , S U N D AY: 1 – 5 P M
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
January 2018
Join the effort. Visit www.triadlocalfirst.com.
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B’nai Shalom Day School
Bishop McGuiness Catholic High School 1725 NC Highway 66 South Kernersville, NC 27284, (336) 564-1010, www.bmhs.us
2900 Horse Pen Creek Road Greensboro, NC 27410, (336) 665-1161, www.caldwellacademy.org
Focus: B’nai Shalom Day School is the Triad’s only infant – 8th grade Jewish independent school. We foster academic excellence, maximize individual student’s potential, and develop leadership skills in a dual curriculum (English and Hebrew). Aftercare and full day option available (7:30 am to 6:00 pm) as well as generous financial aid opportunities. Grades: 8 wks - 8th grade • Enrollment: 105 • Student/Faculty: 8/1 Admission Requirement: On a rolling basis. Meet with Director of Admissions, classroom visit, academic assessment (Pre-K and older), transcripts from current school. Tuition: $4,040-$12,000 (preschool), $2,388-$16,990 (K-8)
Focus: The largest private high school in the Triad. Outstanding high school experience with exceptional academics, extracurricular activities and athletic opportunities. All faiths welcome and financial aid available. Located minutes from downtown Greensboro. Grades: 9-12th • Enrollment: 405 • Student/Faculty: 8/1 Admission Requirement: Admission is on a rolling basis. Please visit www.bmhs.us for an application or call the admissions office at 564-1011 to schedule a campus tour. Tuition: $9,132-$12,588
Focus: A classical Christian school founded in 1994 by a group of parents who envisioned a school that would cultivate their children’s growth in the knowledge and love of God without sacrificing academic excellence. A time-tested process for educating a child at all stages of development, a classical Christian education teaches students how to think, not what to think. Extended day and tuition assistance available. Grades: PreSchool-12th • Enrollment: 830 • Student/Faculty: 9/1 Admission Requirement: Priority application deadline is February 1st. Applications received after this date will be processed and considered as they are received.
804-A Winview Drive, Greensboro, NC 27410 (336) 855-5091, www.bnai-shalom.org
Canterbury School
Greensboro Montessori School
Caldwell Academy
High Point Christian Academy
5400 Old Lake Jeanette Road, Greensboro, NC 27455 (336) 288-2007, www.canterburygso.org
2856 Horse Pen Creek Road, Greensboro, NC 27410, (336) 668-0119, www.thegms.org
800 Phillips Avenue High Point, NC 27262 (336) 841-8702, www.hpcacougars.org
Focus: A PreK-8 Episcopal School with strong academics and a focus on educating the whole child - mind, body and spirit. Extended day and financial assistance available.
Focus: Greensboro’s only triply accredited Montessori school where toddlers to teens achieve academic excellence through hands-on, multi-disciplinary learning. Students organically develop real-world skills in leadership, time management, problem solving and social responsibility through Montessori’s innovative approach to education. Grades: Toddler (18 mo) - 9th grade • Enrollment: 235 Student/Faculty: Under 3 years, 6:1; 4 years and above, 10:1 Admission Requirement: Meet with Admissions Director. Classroom visit and teacher assessment (for students ages 3 and older). Tuition: $8,628-$16,656
Focus: HPCA provides an academically rigorous environment rooted in a Biblical worldview. We are committed to Christ-centered, quality education and academic excellence in partnership with family and church within a loving, caring atmosphere. Grades: Preschool - 12th grade • Enrollment: 650 Student/Faculty:16/1 Admission Requirement: Admissions is on a rolling basis; inquiries, tours and interviews are on-going. For specific requirements please visit hpcacougars.org. Tuition: $6,550-$9,650
Noble Academy
Our Lady Grace School
Grades: Preschool - 8th grade • Enrollment: 370 Student/Faculty: 8/1 Admission Requirement: Requirements vary per grade level but include: application, teacher evaluation forms, developmental assessment or classroom visit, transcripts from current school. Tuition: $5,600-$8,000 (preschool), $3,346- $16,730 (K-8)
High Point Friends School
800-A Quaker Lane High Point, NC 27262 (336) 886-5516, www.hpfs.org
3310 Horse Pen Creek Road Greensboro, NC 27410 (336) 282-7044, www.nobleknights.org
201 S. Chapman Street Greensboro, NC 27403 (336) 275-1522, www.olgsch.org
Focus: High Point Friends School instills academic excellence, self-confidence and leadership skills through experiential learning, extracurricular activities, and service learning opportunities for students in Preschool – 8th grade.
Focus: A K-12 independent school that specializes in working with students with an ADHD/LD diagnosis. Strong academics along with athletics, music, art, and drama are offered.
Focus: Catholic education with on-level and accelerated academics and character development. Inclusive Special Education programs for students with AU and LD diagnoses. Educating the whole child to serve and to lead with love, respect, dignity, and integrity. Visit www.olgsch.org for more information.
Grades: Preschool - 8th grade • Enrollment: 208 Student/Faculty:14/1 Admission Requirement: Admission is based on academic records, placement testing, and teacher recommendations. A classroom visitation is also required prior to admittance. Tuition: $1,915-$6,125 (Preschool); $9,794 (Lower); $10,454 (Middle)
The Piedmont School
Grades: K - 12th grade • Enrollment: 160 Student/Faculty:8/1 Admission Requirement: Students need to have an average to above average IQ score and a diagnosis of ADHD and/ or learning difference (we recognize CAPD) and a current psych-ed evaluation. Admission on a rolling basis. Tuition: K - $14,000, Grades 1-12 - $19,930 - $20,790
Grades: 3 years old - 8th grade • Enrollment: 250+ • Student/Faculty: 12/1 Admission Requirement: Application form, school transcript, current preschool teacher assessment, immunization form and admissions screening test. Tuition: $3,500-$7,860 (see website for special programs)
815 Old Mill Road High Point, NC 27265 (336) 883-0992, www.thepiedmontschool.com
2200 N. Elm Street Greensboro, NC 27408 (336) 273-9865, www.spxschool.com
St. Pius X Catholic School
Westchester Country Day School 2045 N. Old Greensboro Road High Point, NC 27265, (336) 869-2128, www.westchestercds.org
Focus: A wonderful K-12 independent school dedicated to providing an outstanding educational environment for students with an ADHD/LD diagnosis. Strong academics enhanced by music, art, drama, and athletics. Grades: K - 12th grade • Enrollment: 95 Student/Faculty: 6:1 word study, language arts, math. 12:1 all other subjects. Admission Requirement: Enrollment is on a rolling basis. Requirements include an average to above average IQ, and either an ADHD diagnosis or another diagnosed learning disorder. Tuition: K-12th $18,038. NC grants available.
Focus: Catholic elementary school serving Pre-K through 8th grade, emphasizing Christian values and academic excellence in a nurturing environment. Grades: PK - 8th grade • Enrollment: 456 Student/Faculty: 15:1 Admission Requirement: K-8 applicants must participate in a standardized assessment conducted by ABC Educational Services, Inc. Please visit www.spxschool.com for more information or contact the admissions office at 336-273-9865 to schedule a campus tour. Tuition: $5,620 - $8,712
Focus: Westchester Country Day is a college preparatory school teaching and guiding students in grades PK-12 to strive for excellence in moral and ethical conduct, academics, the arts, and athletics. Grades: PK - 12th grade • Enrollment: 420 Student/Faculty: 16:1 Admission Requirement: Admissions is on a rolling basis. Please visit www.westchestercds.org for more details or call the admissions office at (336) 822-4005 to schedule a tour. Tuition: $2,625 - $17,990
And her natural curiosity and thirst for knowledge are best fulfilled at Greensboro Montessori School, where students as young as 18-months-old are given the respect, encouragement and independence necessary to prepare for a lifetime of achievement.
Area Schools
For her, only the BEST will do.
Come see how Greensboro Montessori School delivers the best in education from early childhood through ninth grade.
OPEN HOUSE:
Sunday, January 28 at 1 p.m. Call 336-668-0119 or visit thegms.org to register
B'NAI SHALOM'S FAB LABÂ Presents
Parents vs. Kids An afternoon in the maker space
WHEN
 Sunday, January 21 at 3:00PM
RSVP
Please RSVP by January 17 to agarcia@bnai-shalom.org
For more details, contact Ashley Garcia at 336.897.0705 The Art & Soul of Greensboro
January 2018
O.Henry 85
Arts & Culture
THE 18 & 20 2017 SON SEA
Musical Thrones, A Parody of Ice & Fire John Sebastian and David Grisman Thursday, January 18, 2018 - 7:30 PM
Be transported to Thrones’ magical locations (if you close your eyes) for a quirky, irreverent celebration of the Game of Thrones TV series.
American Spiritual Ensemble
Saturday, January 20, 2018 - 8:00 PM
Two of the greatest ambassadors American music has ever had!
Kit and the Kats
Saturday, January 27, 2018 - 8:00 PM
Saturday, February 3, 2018 - 8:00 PM
Classically trained vocalists highlight the Black experience through music.
A nostalgic blast back to the late 50’s and early 60’s Rock & Roll music
For Tickets, call 336-887-3001 or visit HighPointTheatre.com Acts and dates subject to change. For the latest news, go to HighPointTheatre.com
86 O.Henry
January 2018
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
GreenScene Greensboro Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours at Schiffman’s Thursday, November 2, 2017 Photographs by Lynn Donovan
Megan Mabry, Meridith Berger, Lou Anne Flanders-Stec Emily Baxter, Stuart Hall, Laura Fonke
Sharon Edwards, Emily Baxter, Laura Fonke, Happy Davis
Tom Pullara, Forrest Howard
Robert Gray, Lane Schiffman
Will Marsh, Troy Lawson, Lane Schiffman Valarie Beasley, Brian Watkins, June Gerringer
Scottie Hundley, Tracy Greene, Kelley Harris
Chad Davis, Brent Christensen
Happy Davis, Tracy Garner
Subscribe today and have Never miss an issue!
$45 in-state $55 out-of-state *per magazine
Call 366-617-0090 or
delivered to your home! The Art & Soul of Greensboro
mail payment to P.O. Box 58 • Southern Pines, NC 28388 January 2018
O.Henry 87
Arts & Culture
University Concert and Lecture Series presents
Limón Dance Company Friday, January 19 8:00pm UNCG Auditorium
vpa.uncg.edu
Colson Whitehead
C.P. LOGAN
Classes, Commissions, Party Classes “Venice” • 42”x60” • original oil • connie P. logan - artist/teacher
online Classes
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author 125th Anniversary Lecture
Thursday, February 8 8:00PM School of Music Recital Hall
www. CPLogan.com 88 O.Henry
January 2018
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
GreenScene
David Balfour & Tiffany Lam-Balfour
Uma & Ravi Avva
Greensboro History Museum Annual Dinner 2017 Thursday, November 2, 2017
Photographs by Lynn Donovan
Cham Edmiston, Jacye & Tyson Strandberg, Susanne Hall Rosa & Bill McNairy, David Hammer
Suzanne Walke, Jim & Kate Schlosser, Bill Walke
Diane Joyner, Katie Houston, Nancy Lynn Moore
Sally & Jim Skidmore
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Mark Kaley, Pat Haywood, Craig Taylor, Loren Kaley
Brigitte Blanton, Glenn Perkins, Mark Kaley
Hoke Huss, Amber Lavinder
Sherry Abernathy, Carol Hart, Rodna Hurewitz
January 2018
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Arts & Culture
David Pershall David Pershall David Pershall
Hall Hall Cecelia Hall Cecelia Cecelia
Donald Donald Hartmann Donald Hartmann Hartmann
Andrew Owens AndrewAndrew Owens Owens
Figaro Figaro
Figaro
Dr. Bartolo Dr. Bartolo Dr. Bartolo
Rosina
Rosina Rosina
Count Almaviva Count Almaviva Count Almaviva
January 12 &January 14, 12 &2018 14, 2018 January 12 2018 & 14, Tickets On Sale Now Tickets On Sale Now Tickets On Sale Now GreensboroOpera.org GreensboroOpera.org (336) 272-0160(336) 272-0160 GreensboroOpera.org (336) 272-0160
90 O.Henry
January 2018
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
GreenScene
Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts Donor Reception Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Photographs by Lynn Donovan Walker Sanders, Kathy Manning, Steven Tanger
Mike Perdue, Terence Forde, Matt Brown, Scott Johnson Willie Bullock, Pat & Pete Cross
Bob Shuman, Nancy Hoffmann, Joyce Shuman
Martha Turner, David & Pam Sprinkle
Doug Copeland, Nancy Vaughan, Jean Copeland
Susan & Mackey McDonald, Cissy & Bill Parham
Tamara & Jim Slaughter, Susan Veazey
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Nancy Doll, Susan Veazey, Randy Kaplan & Kathy Manning
Laura Way, Barbara Peck, Julie Rendle
Bruce Brodie, Marc Bush
Rick Lusk, Effie Varitimidis, Scott Johnson
January 2018
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GreenScene Greenhill Center for NC Art Collector’s Choice Saturday, December 2, 2017
Photographs by Lynn Donovan
Heather Van Dam, Kyle Britt, Megan Callahan Spencer Conover, Kaitlin Smith
Cecelia Thompson, Laura Way, Mindy Oakley
Dom Sebastian Alexis, Jenn Graf
Susie Crow, Mebane Ham
Adam & Melissa Tarleton, Lindsay Jones
Carolyn Maddux, Penn Wood, Sue Cole, Dirk Drust
Ann Lynch & Russ Williams, Tom Corrigan
92 O.Henry
January 2018
Darah, Michael & Artis Ray Robinson, Kenny Shulman
Mike Dunford, Louis Dalessandris, Katy Dunford
Pamela & Jeff Kiefer
Jane Wells Harrison, Rob & Jill Eberle, Walker Farish
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Great ChoiCes For Your New home iN the New Year
1101 SunSet Drive
6 oa k G l e n C o u rt
2 3 0 2 Da n bu ry r oa D
3 elm riD Ge C ourt
Chesnutt - Tisdale Team Xan Tisdale 336-601-2337
Kay Chesnutt 336-202-9687
Xan.Tisdale@bhhsyostandlittle.com Kay.Chesnutt@bhhsyostandlittle.com 4 0 3 e l m wo oD Dr i v e
20 Sommerton Drive
©2017 BHH Affiliates, LLC. An independently operated subsidiary of HomeServices of America, Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate, and a franchisee of BHH Affiliates, LLC. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices symbol are registered service marks of HomeServices of America, Inc.® Equal Housing Opportunity.
Celebrating our neW loCatIon
Moving to Dover Square in January 2018 near Main & taylor Shoe Salon 1616-H Battleground ave 27408 • greensBoro, nC 336.272.2555 • www.simplymegs.Com
Simply Meg’s Savvy Style. Purely PerSonal.
Floral Design Delivery Service Home Décor & Gifts Weddings & Special Events Newly Engaged? Come Visit Us! 1616 Battleground Avenue, Suite D-1 Greensboro, NC 27408
336.691.0051
mcmanus2@bellsouth.net
w w w. r a n d y m c m a n u s d e s i g n s . c o m The Art & Soul of Greensboro
January 2018
O.Henry 93
Downtown Greensboro
Interior Design • Furnishings • Accessories • Gifts • Art
Recipes fRom the old city of
JERUSALEM Middle Eastern food is naturally good for you. Jerusalem Market provides you with complete foods with all good nutrients, good fats, the food is natural fuel. Loaded with protein, nutrients, and vitamins, Middle Eastern food is naturally engineered for the most beneficial effect on the body.
VIVID i n t e r i o r s
513 South Elm Street , Greensboro, NC 27406 336.265.8628 www.vivid-interiors .com
N ThIs mENTIOrECEIvE D N a D a
10% OFF
“You Will Be Pleased”
CaTErING markET plaCE DINE IN TO GO
310 South Elm Street • Greensboro, NC 27401 336.279.7025 | Mon-Sat 11am-9pm | www.jerusalemarket.com
modern furniture made locally
511 S Elm St. | Greensboro NC 27406 | 336.370.1050 areamod.com
94 O.Henry
January 2018
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Dark Side of the Moon
The Accidental Astrologer
As ironic as it is, this month’s total lunar eclipse is a highlight of 2018
By Astrid Stellanova
Oh, my, Star Children! We are in for a treat on January 31st, when there will be a total
eclipse of the full moon. If that isn’t a bang-up way to start the New Year, then I don’t know what is. Take a moon bath under the stars! Hoot and holler and raise your voices up! Star gazers say this cosmic event will bring mothers and working women into the limelight. Watch for this to be a recurring theme all year long. Ad Astra—Astrid
Capricorn (December 22–January 19) You don’t need to keep looking in the rearview mirror. All good things lie ahead, Sugar. Memory lane is closed. And what you have lying straight before you is worth focusing on. Meanwhile, there is a great opportunity for investing in yourself and a new idea in the new year. Don’t let that escape you — take the off ramp! Aquarius (January 20–February 18) Well, look at you social caterpillar! You have broken into a tough circle of friends that only took about a thousand forevers. But you were patient and they finally saw that one of you was worth ten of a lot of people. You’re well loved, Honey Bun. Pisces (February 19–March 20) You sayin’ your Jaguar can’t make it up the driveway at your mountain place? Or you’re allergic to all metals but platinum? Sugar, that is something called a humblebrag. Nobody else has told you, so I have to. It is true you have been prosperous. And that you have especially fine taste. Just say a little bit less about it. Aries (March 21–April 19) Somebody bamboozled you pretty good. Looked like you couldn’t tell a skunk from a Billy goat. Well, they reckoned wrong. You’ll get your chance to settle the score but don’t let it concern you. The view ain’t worth the climb, Honey Bunny. Taurus (April 20–May 20) There is one somebody who gets under your skin and makes you lose your everloving mind. You know who and when. You have got to stop the blame game, hurling insults faster than Kim Jong-un. It might be a game to them but it is bad for your constitution, Sugar.
of misplaced sympathy. But what they need from you is leadership. That might require you to be a lot firmer than your Beautyrest mattress. Leo (July 23–August 22) Yep, your little plan fell into place, which either puts you in the catbird seat or the litter box. You were cunning and scored a win. But is this a game you really want to win? Ask that question. Also, a friend from your past needs a pal. It would be good karma just to let them know you remember them. Virgo (August 23–September 22) Can’t never could, Sugar, but don’t kill yourself. It is also true that flop sweat ain’t becoming. During the holidays you may be asked to step up and take on a social role that you have never especially wanted. But it will be growth for you. And a toehold inside a door that has been closed for a very long time. Libra (September 23–October 22) You speak Southern? Then you know not to look over yonder for something right under foot. Focus is all you need to find your heart’s desire. And even though you feel like you have given all you have for a mighty big goal, you have something important and don’t even recognize it. Scorpio (October 23–November 21) Hunh? Darling, you brought a cup of Ramen noodles to a knife fight? I don’t know what got into you lately, but you have had this idea that life is a spectator sport. Well, what are you planning to do with the rest of this special life? This month is a good time to ask yourself if you are going to keep chasing after unicorns.
Gemini (May 21–June 20) You’ve been showing too many teeth. Makes people nervous, and that completely undermines you. Stop trying so hard to be liked. You don’t have to work that angle. If you can stand in your truth, they will admire you, anyhow. You are likeable enough, Sally Field.
Sagittarius (November 22–December 21) It was not your fault that all the effort you made last month didn’t pan out. So move on, Sunshine and enjoy the show. There’s a whole new opportunity right before you, right this second, to become the person your Mama always knew you could be. Nobody can eclipse your bright lights this month. OH
Cancer (June 21–July 22) Let’s get some lumbar support for you, since you’re having a lot of trouble with your backbone. The thing is, you let a situation get out of control because you felt a lot
For years, Astrid Stellanova owned and operated Curl Up and Dye Beauty Salon in the boondocks of North Carolina until arthritic fingers and her popular astrological readings provoked a new career path.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
January 2018
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O.Henry Ending
What the Shell?
By Cynthia Adams
In the 1980s, my South-
ern daddy introduced my new husband to boiled peanuts. Dad loved “goobers” in all forms but was especially fond of them if they were roasted or boiled.
Don popped one into his mouth, eager to please, despite the off-putting, dishwater gray, stewed peanut hulls dripping with saline wash. Don is from South Africa, where he likes to tell small children they eat bugs and worms, washed down with Rooibos tea. (FYI: Medicinal Rooibos tastes better than cod liver oil but worse than moonshine.) So Don gamely chewed the peanut. “It certainly has texture,” he observed, if a little too brightly. A boarding school–educated man, my husband is nothing if not diplomatic. Dad frowned. “Lord! You ate the shell! Spit it out and start over,” he instructed. Don spat and obediently shelled on the second try. “That improves the taste considerably,” he said, looking much relieved. Since then, Don hasn’t just embraced boiled peanuts, he has become a defender of the slimy little legume. Whenever Don spots green peanuts for sale, he does a Snoopy dog happy dance. He doesn’t care what the cost; Don practically runs to the checkout counter. Overjoyed, he boiled up half a bushel this weekend. We stood together over a steaming pot, so eager to test the goobers we both burned our tongues but grinned anyhow. “Remember when I didn’t know you were supposed to shell them?” Don almost always muses, shaking his head. After gorging ourselves, he sent me several facts gleaned from the Internet. “Boiled peanuts have high anti-oxidant value!” he texted as I finished the Sunday paper. “Good to know!” I yelled towards his office.
96 O.Henry
January 2018
“In Ghana and Nigeria, boiled peanuts are eaten as street food,” he texted again. “They are also popular in the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa, especially in Durban.” Don’s brother lives in Bloemfontein, one of South Africa’s three capitals, which, by strangest coincidence, is a lot like High Point, and seven hours from Natal. Durban, three hours south of Natal on the east coast of South Africa, is a lot like Myrtle Beach to my eye. “Wow!” I hollered back. I hate to text, thinking it’s silly when he is in the next room. Then, I imagined South Africans buying and munching boiled peanuts from street vendors, wondering what they did with the shells. The next day, I called my colleague, gourmand and veteran food writer David Bailey. We talked Paul Theroux’s Deep South, and grumbled about how he didn’t really get the South. “Read Dispatches from Pluto,” David advised, going on and on about Richard Grant’s rollicking good read on restoring a Mississippi plantation house. Then we talked boiled peanuts and I told him how Don discovered they were big stuff back home. “Don must have had boiled peanuts in South Africa and forgot about it!” David chortled. “That’s wonderful,” he laughed. “It’s like okra! Boiled peanuts came from Africa! Full circle!” Reinvigorated, Don keeps spreading the gospel of the virtues of boiled peanuts, but I could have spared him some trouble: Regional cuisine is a hard sell. It is next to impossible to get anyone who didn’t grow up Southern to even consider eating a green peanut, let alone one that has been boiled for hours in salt water. It would be easier to convince a Yankee to try pickled pigs feet. Or eat liver mush or a fried baloney sandwich. And most especially, unless in the throes of love, to persuade an expat to pop a salty boiled goober in the mouth and chew. OH O.Henry frequent contributor Cynthia Adams solicits your favorite recipes for fried rabbit, okra, or even cooter. Yes, you read that correctly. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY BLAIR
Boiling down cultural differences
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