October O.Henry 2022

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OUT WHY

QUEENS WOULD TRASH THEIR PRISTINE

GOWNS,

MADISON BRYANT Miss NC USA 2021

MARLEY STOKES Miss SC USA 2021

photo credit: RPM Productions

Enhance. Envision. Enlighten.

A NEW CHAPTER IS BEGINNING AT FRIENDS HOMES – with spacious new homes and more opportunities to maintain and enhance your body, mind and spirit.

As part of our exciting expansion, we’ve completely reimagined our wellness program by opening a 32,800-square-foot, state-of-the-art wellness center. The center features an indoor sports court, fitness center, indoor pool, integrative health clinic, salon, art and crafts rooms, a multi-purpose room for lifelong learning and much more. Plus, we’ve updated and added new dining venues to enhance the culinary experience, o ering fresh, local specialties, refreshing favorites and inspiring new flavors.

It’s all about giving you a greater variety of engaging activities for your physical, intellectual and spiritual wellbeing.

Join us for an upcoming event, and experience today’s Friends Homes firsthand. Call or visit us online to sign up for one of our special on-campus events today.

Life Plan Community

This Community’s Bank.

Working for TowneBank is so much more than banking. We’re involved in our community, in local businesses. We get to help families, individuals, and business owners.

We’re not just a community bank... we’re this community’s bank.

Michael Diamond • 336-493-7227

SVP, Private Banking Officer

MAGAZINE

volume 12, no. 10

“I have a fancy that every city has a voice.” 336.617.0090

111 Bain Street, Suite 334, Greensboro, NC 27406 www.ohenrymag.com

PUBLISHER

David Woronoff david@thepilot.com

Andie Rose, Creative Director andiesouthernpines@gmail.com

Jim Dodson, Editor jwdauthor@gmail.com

Cassie Bustamante, Managing Editor cassie@ohenrymag.com

Miranda Glyder, Graphic Designer

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Cynthia Adams, David Claude Bailey, Maria Johnson

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Mallory Cash, Lynn Donovan, Amy Freeman, CC Kallam, Bert VanderVeen, Mark Wagoner

CONTRIBUTORS

Harry Blair, Anne Blythe, Susan Campbell, Wiley Cash, Ross Howell Jr., Billy Ingram, John Loecke, Gerry O’Neill, Jason Oliver Nixon, Ogi Overman, Ron Rash, Liza Roberts, Kristine Shaw, Zora Stellanova, Ashley Walshe, Amberly Glitz Weber

ADVERTISING SALES

Marty Hefner, Advertising Manager Lisa Allen 336.210.6921 • lisa@ohenrymag.com Amy Grove 336.456.0827 • amy@ohenrymag.com Larice White 336.944.1749 • larice@ohenrymag.com

Brad Beard, Graphic Designer Rebah Dolbow, Advertising Coordinator ohenrymag@ohenrymag.com

Henry Hogan, Finance Director 910.693.2497

Stark, Subscriptions &

Director

910.693.2488

OWNERS

Jack Andrews, Frank Daniels III, Lee Dirks, David Woronoff In memoriam Frank Daniels Jr.

2022.

Magazine

The

Lead paint in homes can be a health hazard to young children.

Do you qualify for a lead-paint hazard grant from the City of Greensboro?

• Was your home built before 1978?

• Do children younger than 6 spend time in the home?

• Is a pregnant woman living in the home?

• Are you a low- to moderate-income homeowner OR renter?

Learn more. Scan the code or go to www.greensboro-nc.gov/LeadSafe.

REAL ESTATE IS LOCAL. SO ARE WE.

Tyler Redhead & McAlister is the largest locally owned real estate firm in the Triad.

Unlike other firms (with ownership in Seattle, Denver, Omaha, Austin, Pittsburgh and Madison), when you choose to buy and/or sell your home with one of our dedicated full-time professional real estate agents, you ensure that your entire investment stays local.

When your dollars remain local, you make a local impact – strengthening the businesses, schools, attractions and infrastructure in your community. Keep your most important investment local and reach out to Tyler Redhead & McAlister Real Estate when you’re ready to buy or sell a home.

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Asheboro Office 100 Sunset Avenue Asheboro, NC 27203

Greensboro

Oak Ridge Kernersville

Summerfield Asheboro

Point

Seattle

Dear Patients, Former Staff, Friends, and Colleagues,

As I announce my retirement, I thank you all for the privilege of allowing me to care for your oral health needs over the last 31 years. The time we have spent together has been rewarding personally and professionally, and the years have flown by. While practicing dentistry in Greensboro, I have watched patients’ children grow up and start families of their own, many of whom I have had the pleasure of treating as well. I have truly loved my chosen career and the incredible relationships that dentistry has afforded me. I hope that the sentiment came across in our interactions over the years.

I am always available for a visit or a chat as I have no intentions of leaving my beautiful, adopted home of Greensboro. My best wishes and gratitude go out to each one of you, my dental family, as I begin a new stage of my life.

With Fondest Memories, Dr. Jude D. Aucoin

BY

by Jim dodson

Coach and The Bull: A Love Story

The road less traveled to authordom

sniffed, “and in most it should stay there.”

Not long ago,

following a speech to a historical organization in Georgia, I was asked by a woman in the audience how I became a “successful author.”

Anyone fortunate enough to publish a best-seller is likely to get some version of this question from time to time. That’s because almost everyone has a story to tell, a desire to have their voice heard in some form or another.

For years my response was to quip. “Because I couldn’t make a living out of mowing lawns in the neighborhood forever,” or, “The Baltimore Orioles already had a decent shortstop.”

The truth is, writing books is a lonely enterprise, and the vast majority of folks who are good at it invariably find their way to the craft via some other pathway.

Before literary success arrived, Charles Dickens worked in a factory putting labels on tins of boot polish. Harper Lee was an airline ticket clerk. William Faulkner served as a postmaster. Nicholas Sparks, a dental equipment salesman.

We were all, in other words, something else before we be came writers. But dreamers all.

Why we choose to become writers and storytellers is perhaps the more interesting question — an age-old one, and a highly personal mystery that begs a more nuanced response.

In a famous essay titled “Why I Write,” George Orwell, of Animal Farm and 1984 fame, said writers put pen to paper out of “sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose.”

Joan Didion claimed she wrote simply to discover what she was thinking — and feared — at the moment.

The allure of writing a successful novel that makes its author a household name is a dream of untold millions of struggling writers. “Everyone has a novel in them,” the late Christopher Hitchens

The truth is, writing anything is work that takes time, discipline, imagination, constant revision, false starts, new beginnings and plenty of patience. Hemingway called it the “loneliest, hardest art.”

Though I suppose every artist in any medium can pretty much make the same claim.

One of my favorite writers, novelist Graham Greene, actually published a book called Why I Write in which he explained that good storytelling takes place in the unconscious before the first word is written on the page. “We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them,” he said — noting that ideas often come unbidden during unexpected moments of ordinary life — while dropping off your laundry, running errands, or (as in my case) mowing the lawn or working in the garden. This is why, regardless of how grubby I get in the flowerbeds, a pen and small notebook are always on my person. Everyone’s long journey to writing is different.

As the youngest son of a veteran newspaper man who hauled his family all over the 1950s South, I learned to read chapter books around age 4, in part because I never had time to make real playmates in the sleepy towns where we lived before mov ing again. From my parents’ bookshelf (both dedicated readers), I was drawn early to adventure storytelling, particularly the short stories of Rudyard Kipling, Greek myths, and any tale that involved animals and magical places. Fables and folktales ranked high. Absent a flying carpet, I often read books sitting in a large cardboard moving box on the porches of our old houses. And sometimes in the shady, cool dirt beneath the porch.

Inevitably, I grew up imagining someday becoming a journalist like my father, traveling all over the world to find such magical places. When he eventually introduced me to the essays of E.B. White — this was after reading Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web — I even pictured myself someday living on a farm on the coast of Maine.

When I look back, I see a clear pattern of how I became a writer.

Simple Life

Including an unlikely pair of school teachers who changed my life.

In a faraway October of 1969, I was a junior underclassman who landed in the American literature class of an aging spinster named Elizabeth Smith and — to my dismay — a newby math class teacher named Larry Saunders.

English lit and I were natural companions. But I detested algebra and was probably the slowest student in “Coach” Saunders’ class, a nickname we teenage geniuses were inspired to give him due his skinny, geeky frame and non-athletic orientation. By design, I rarely took my algebra book home and only occasionally did my homework.

I don’t know what Miss Smith saw in me. She was short, round and half deaf. Her unflattering moniker was “Bull” Smith. This was her final year of a long teaching career that stretched back to the mid-1930s. I eventually learned that my father had been her student the year she graduated UNCG — then called Woman’s College — and began teaching.

Out of the blue, Miss Smith pulled me aside one day to urge me to enter the Gate City’s annual O.Henry short story contest which had been running since the 1920s — so named in honor of hometown boy William Sydney Porter. So, on a lark, I did. My simple tale was about visiting my quiet grandfather on his farm for several weeks one summer, not long before he passed away.

The story won first place, deeply shocking my sports pals. I

dropped by Miss Smith’s classroom at the end of the term just to say thanks and wish her happy retirement. She gave me a copy of Robert Frost’s Complete Poems, and, in return, wished me a long and happy career writing books. I think I laughed. I was mowing lawns and playing pony league baseball that summer.

Larry Saunders was an even bigger surprise. Early on he realized that I would never a mathematician be — and proposed a remarkable compromise. If I never missed class, agreed to pay attention and try my best, he would agree to giving me a C-minus or better. I made the deal. Saunders was famous for writing daily inspirational quotes on the chalkboard. Once, the jokester in me managed to alter one of his quotes. “Familiarity breeds contempt” became “Familiarity breeds.” Even Coach had a chuckle. “Mr. Dodson is our budding literary genius,” he told the class, shaking his head. He was true to his word, however, when he could easily have submarined my GPA.

During my senior year, good fortune found me in Larry Saunders’ class again for geometry — which, shockingly, I found to my liking. Geometry became very useful when, decades later, I became an amateur carpenter like my father and grandfather, and I built my post-and-beam house on the coast of Maine with my own hands. I couldn’t have done it without geometry and Coach Larry. About the same time, I published my first book, which turned out to be an international bestseller. I always

Simple Life

meant to write Larry and thank him.

In 1983 on my way to a job interview at the Washington Post from Atlanta, where I was the youngest senior writer at the oldest Sunday magazine in the nation, I stopped by the Greensboro Public Library to do some research and spotted — of all people — Miss Smith paging through a dusty travel atlas in the reference room.

“Miss Smith,” I quietly interrupted her work. “I don’t know if you remember me . . .”

She looked up and chortled. “Of course I do, Mr. Dodson. I have followed your career with great interest. I am very pleased that you are writing. I imagine fine things are ahead of you.”

I was at a loss for words, but thanked her and wondered what she was up to these days. “I’m off to the dusts of ancient Egypt!” she trilled. “One of those faraway places I always wished to see!”

Before we parted, I also thanked her for seeing something in me — and for the volume of Robert Frost. Within weeks, I would withdraw from the Post offer in favor of a senior writer position at Yankee Magazine, a job that shaped my career and life — and this very magazine.

Sadly, I never got to say thank you to Larry Saunders, who passed away in January 2021. “He loved teaching, playing the piano, and his nieces and nephews. He had a huge sense of humor,” notes his considerable obituary. He spent almost four decades teaching math, rose to head of the department and would inspire the creation of the annual Larry Saunders Excellence in Teaching Award dedicated in his honor.

A good coach — like a great teacher — recognizes a young person’s strengths and weaknesses, and strives to help them find the right path in life.

Larry Saunders was both. Thanks to his wisdom, I built a beautiful house, found my way to writing books and even fell in love with inspiring quotes.

Which is why I think of “The Bull” and “Coach” every October. OH

Jim Dodson is the founding editor of O.Henry.

Weymouth Wonderland

Holiday Festival Dec 2 - 4

Three Days of Something Wonderful for Everyone!

Candlelight, Carols & Cocktails is for Grown Ups: Light up the season with a casual and comfortable evening gettogether. Friday, Dec. 2, 5 pm. $50 Members • $60 Non-Members

Outdoor Wonderfest & Market is for the Whole Family to go Walkin’ in a Weymouth Wonderland. Our grounds will be a holiday family funderland featuring: local vendors and artisans; Weymouth’s own Holiday Shoppe; food from some of our area’s popular food trucks; wandering minstrels and choristers; Santa and Mrs. Claus in their magical toy shop. And more!

Saturday, Dec 3, 10-4 pm. Entry fee of any $ donation

Teddy Bear Tea is For Kids ages 3-10, to enjoy an activitypacked event, with an adult by their side. All are welcome to bring their favorite teddy bear for an afternoon filled with fun!

Sunday, Dec. 4, two seatings 1 or 3:30 pm. $25 per child, $30 per adult

For tickets visit: weymouthcenter.org

To receive 5% off, use promo code: DTOH

Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities

555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines, NC

A 501(c)(3) organization

Short Stories

We Want the Fairytale

Seeing Julia Roberts and Richard Gere on the big screen was enough to leave our hopelessly romantic hearts swooning for years. The thought of seeing their characters’ story take the stage accompanied by an original score of painfully tragic yet blissfully sweet music . . . well, we’re with Vivian — so good, we almost peed our pants! The Tanger Center is kicking off its 2022-23 Broadway season on Tuesday, October 25, with Pretty Woman: The Musical, one of the most beloved romantic stories of all time. Missing it would be a big mistake. Big. Huge! If after the curtain closes you’ve decided your heart belongs to the theater, treat yourself to season seats and enjoy the theatrics all year long with equally show-stopping performances of Cats, Beetlejuice, Disney’s FROZEN and other shows you’ll like better than The Pirates of Penzance. Info: tangercenter.com/broadway-packages/broadway.

A Rebellious Act

The curtain is ready to open again: Triad Stage is back in the spotlight with a bang! Greensboro’s got more history than those onagain-off-again high school sweethearts we know all too well, and the world premier production of Rebellious is setting that scene October 4–23. This tale of four Bennett Belles navigates the complexities of friendship, brutal racism and oppression during the sit-in movement, pulling the curtain back to reveal how the Gate City suddenly found itself on the world stage in the ’60s. Will the young women take a stand and be “rebellious,” or will conformity win out over justice? Don’t wait in the wings — get your tickets or season passes now to find out. Info: triadstage.org.

Shake and Bake

Ladies, loosen up those apron strings and pass the butane torch to the man of the house. The Women’s Resource Center’s beloved fundraising event, Men Can Cook, is back and tastier than ever. Endless sampling, live entertainment and a silent auction are on the plat du jour, all catering to the desires of food connoisseurs and local baking legends alike at 5:30 p.m., Saturday, October 22. After the famous-in-their-own-kitchen chefs dazzle you with their culinary craft, it’s only a batter of time before you’ll be craving a savory sip to wash it all down. An array of small-batch crafted libations will raise spirits and shake ‘em up. We’re no Gordon Ramsay but if you’re in need of a taste test, we’ve mastered the art of chow ing down. Info: womenscentergso.org.

Sad Girl Autumn

We might have those postsummer blues, but we’re em bracing our feelings this year and tapping into our outlet of perfectly curated sad girl (or guy) anthems instead — deflection at its finest! Two-time Tony-nominated and Grammywinning Eva Noblezada is entering the Greensboro Cultural Center’s Van Dyke Performance Space with plenty of beautifully-soul-shattering songs to add to the queue. With a set list she’s referred to as her personal “Rainy Day Playlist,” she stands not only as the figurehead for us melancholic-music indulgers, but an inspiration to creative performers everywhere as she shares the Broadway tunes that started it all. Grab some tissues, pause the 10-hour loop of wallowing tunes on Spotify and bless your ears with the raw emotion that exudes from Ms. Noblezada at 8 p.m., Saturday, October 15. Info: creativegreensboro.com.

Pretty Woman from Ukraine

In a heart-breaking tale of love and lust, money and class that inspired such films as Pretty Woman and Moulin Rouge, Ukrainian Diva Yulia Lysenko will sing the title role of Violetta in one of the world’s most beloved operas, Verdi’s La Traviata. Lysenko, a powerful soprano who recently emigrated to the United States from Ukraine after beginning her career at the Lviv National Opera, plays a courtesan, famous in Parisian high society. The bourgeois Alfredo, a romantic poet played by Orson Van Gay II who falls hopelessly in love with Violetta, is willing to sacrifice family and fortune for true love. Can two people from opposite ends of the social spectrum make it work? No matter what happens, it’s worth your time to just take in the “vivid and effortless” singing of Lysenko in a Piedmont Opera presentation. But bring plenty of Kleenexes. Catch La Traviata October 21, 23 and 25 at Stevens Center of UNCSA. Info: piedmontopera.org/copy-of-la-traviata.

Calling All O.Henry Essayists

Several years ago, we introduced a personal essay contest that was a big hit with readers and creative writers of the Triad. It was called “My Life in a Thousand Words.” More than a hundred essays were submitted. And we’re no mathematicians, but that seems to add up to over 100,000 words read. The stories both delighted and sweetly tortured our staff as we tried to settle on a dozen or so entries that captured our hearts. Though there were ultimately first-, second- and third-place winners designated, all of the finalists saw their works printed in our pages.

Having rested our eyes a bit, brandy glass in hand, we’re ready give it another go.

The theme of this year’s “My Life in a Thousand Words” contest is The Year That Changed Everything.

Was it the unforgettable year you got married (or divorced), went to college (or dropped out), saw the light, kissed the blarney stone, joined the army, ran for president, met Mick Jagger, had a baby, ran away with the circus, spiritually awakened — or, like many of us, just survived?

Only you can tell the story. And we’d love to read it.

Same modest guidelines apply: Deadline is December 24, 2022. Submit no more than 1,000 words in conventional printed form. Shameless bribes and free (expensive) gifts welcome. Flattery also works.

Send to: cassie@ohenrymag.com

Ogi Sez

Ogi Overman

Well, brothers and sisters, I’ve got good news and bad news — and good news again. First, it’s October, which is always good. Need I enumerate the myriad wonders of the month? Nope, just walk out your front door and B-R-E-A-T-H-E.

On the bad side, after this installment, Ogi Sez will ride off into the sunset. After a fun eight-year run, it’s time to put me out to pasture.

But, hold on there, Bucko, the pasture can wait. The powers that be of this fine publication have decided that my talents can best be utilized elsewhere. Henceforth, my byline will appear often as a feature writer, specializing in music — but not exclusively. There are hidden gems all over this borough and we aim to continue ferreting them out.

Now, on to the business at hand.

• October 1, Ramkat: If you’re looking for the perfect blend of bluegrass, Americana and stage presence out the ying-yang, Scythian is your band. I make a point to see them every year at MerleFest, and they never disappoint.

• October 7, Doodad Farm: Generally, Doodad owners Dean and Laurel Driver lean toward local and regional acts. But several years ago they befriended Driftwood, a stellar Americana band from upstate New York. Since then the group has made a point to route its tours through here. These four will knock you out.

• October 8, High Point Theatre: When thinking of Scottish music, two names come to mind: the Tannahill Weavers and Dougie MacLean (who used to play with them). The Weavers, named after poet Robert Tannahill, aka “the Weaver Poet,” took Scottish music worldwide six decades ago and 18 albums later are still going strong.

• October 16, Tanger Center: The female face (and voice) of jazz piano has got to be Diana Krall. Her cosmic contralto and lilting licks have earned her two Grammys and eight albums that have debuted atop the Billboard Jazz Albums chart. That Elvis Costello is one lucky dog.

• October 20, Carolina Theatre: If music soothes the savage beast (which it does), then pianist-songwriter-author-storyteller Jim Brickman is the Beastmaster. Sit back and relax as his “Brickman Across America” tour comes to town. You’ll feel better coming out than you did going in.

FINE ITALIAN DINING | HOUSE-MADE PASTAS AND BREADS MADE DAILY

Born amid the storied walls of the historic Magnolia Inn in the heart of Pinehurst Village, Villaggio Ristorante promises an exquisite fine dining experience second to none. Live music every weekend on the patio in weather-permitting months. For diners only.

Tue, Wed & Thur: 5 p.m. – 9 p.m. | Fri & Sat: 5 p.m. – 9:30 p.m. Reservations required | reservations@villaggioristorante.net

65 Magnolia Road, Village of Pinehurst, North Carolina 910.420.2485 • villaggioristorante.net

CHOOSE YOUR PATH. Discover the breathtaking natural beauty of Alamance County. Tucked between the mountains and the coast, our towns and villages offer small surprises at every turn. Whether by land or water, you’ll find numerous trails winding their way through parks, alongside lakes and over enchanted waterways-such as the Haw River Trail, part of the Mountains to Sea Trail. What you find at the end of the trail may just be yourself.

You’ll find small surprises lead to big memories in Alamance County.

Tea Leaf Astrologer

Complex Hip or Knee Issues?

Meet the New Doctor at Murphy Wainer Orthopedic Specialists

Libra

(September 23 October 22)

It’s hard to find balance in a world so positively askew. Even for you, Libra. And yet, you make it look easy. Contorting your self with such subtle mastery that no one seems to notice you’re bent out of shape. Let the plates fall. Draw yourself a bath. The Earth will keep spinning while you recharge. And with the blustery energy of the new moon and partial solar eclipse sweeping in on October 25 — a breath of fresh air — it may be time to unearth a hidden passion.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21) In through your nose, out through your mouth.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Slow down and proceed with caution.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

It’s time to clear the cobwebs, darling.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18) The door was never locked.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Two words: system reboot.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

Butter won’t save the stale bread.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Try sweetening the pot.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20) There’s an app for that.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Don’t leave yourself at the altar.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Opening a window might help.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

Concentrate and ask again. OH

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

Daniel Marchwiany, MD, has joined Murphy Wainer Orthopedic Specialists as an orthopedic surgeon, adding a new dimension to the office’s services.

Now, patients with severe joint deformities, debilitating arthritis or a failed joint replacement can receive specialized care from a surgeon with Harvard Medical School fellowship training in complex and revision hip and knee replacement.

“Completing fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital allowed me to care for patients with very complicated problems and severe diseases of the joints, who were referred from across the country and even internationally,” he said. “I am looking forward to bringing that knowledge, the advanced techniques I learned, and a high level of care to the Greensboro community.”

Learn

MurphyWainer.com 336-375-2300

Offices in Greensboro and Eden

Murphy Wainer Orthopedic Specialists is a division of Southeastern Orthopaedic Specialists, PA.

The Time Machine

Jeff’s heart raced. He didn’t expect a casual bike ride to transport him right back to his childhood 30 years ago. It was so clear: a Friday in fall right before a long, carefree weekend. Just like today. In that second, he realized everything was different, but in three decades nothing had really changed.

Discover seasonal offers on vacation rentals & more at CrystalCoastNC.org

Life's Funny

Homeward Bound

by m aria Johnson

“Let’s go for a little drive.”

My dad said this on Sunday afternoons when I was a kid.

It was more gentle command than invitation, but I don’t remember anybody balking.

So the four of us — he, my mom, my brother and I — piled into whatever American-made V-8 living-room-on-wheels he was driving at the time and went along for the ride.

Usually, the excursions involved looking at other people’s houses, rolling through more expensive neighbors at a speed that would get you flagged on NextDoor these days.

Sometimes, the objects of our gawking were for sale — often my parents had seen them advertised in that day’s newspaper — but most of the places we ogled were not on the market.

What was the point? To drive. To dream. To discuss.

In hindsight, it’s tempting to say that Daddy — a civil engineer with a lifelong love of architecture, especially the work of Frank Lloyd Wright — was pushing us toward a sense of aesthetics there in his rolling salon. I honestly doubt that’s what he set out to do. But that’s what happened.

We followed his lead. As a naturalized U.S. citizen, he spoke better English than most of his fellow Americans, but he lapsed into his native Greek to praise some homes with a hearty “oraio” (nice) while discounting others with a sad “po-po-po-po.” (What a shame.)

The winners, in his opinion, shared a few traits. They had clean lines, proportionate features and they harmonized with their surroundings. Size had nothing to do with it. Ostentatious homes were kicked out immediately.

I suppose that’s how he could call our modest ranch home in Lexington, K.Y., in the heart of horse country, “a beauty." He also praised my mom’s childhood home, a two-bedroom bungalow in Spencer, N.C., where we visited my grandparents every summer.

I never saw my father’s boyhood home in Greece, but I wondered if it molded his way of seeing.

“What was it like?” I asked him.

“Rock,” he said with a smile.

“Do you think you could find it now?”

“I don’t know, honey-mou,” he said, using the endearing suffix. “It might not be there any more.”

“Do you remember what it looked like?”

“I remember there was a crack in the wall from an earthquake,” he said.

“Well,” I teased. “That narrows it down.”

He chuckled and added a hopeful line.

“One day, I’m taking our family to Greece.”

He never did. But I was still curious about the house.

One day, I thought, maybe I would find it. My chance came earlier this year.

My husband, our two grown sons and I were headed to Greece. We would spend most of our time in my father’s vil lage, Lagadia, which clings to the side of a mountain in the Peloponnese, the paw-shaped peninsula that claws at the turquoise seas west of Athens.

More than anything, we wanted to absorb the culture: to feel, hear, see, smell, touch and taste what shaped my dad. Finding his boyhood home would be a bonus. And a miracle.

I had no address, no picture no known relatives living in Lagadia, and no guidance from my dad, who died in 2015 at age 95. All I had were several downsized paper copies of a family tree that he had mined from his parents’ memories when he was 18. The handwritten chart went back to 1821, the year Greece launched a successful war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. Would that be enough?

Hope came in the form of Dora Tasiopoulou, who, with her builder-husband Takis, owns the inn where we stayed, Agnantio Studios and Suites.

On our third night, Dora, who speaks excellent English, assembled a few of the village elders in the family’s restaurant, Aroma Café, which is captained by Takis’ brother, Christos. Dora, who also runs a middle school in the nearby city of Tripoli,

The answers to lifelong questions are writ in stone

The Art of Living

INTRODUCING ALDERSGATE SQUARE

Building on our history of beauty and imagination, Arbor Acres is excited to announce Aldersgate Square, our newest residence rising from the center of this invigorating community.

Around here, how we evolve our environment is how we renew the vitality of our mission, which means that a splendid home of comfort, convenience, and thoughtful amenities—with lovely views and spacious rooms—is just the start

Because living well is one thing, but living with purpose and passion, among friends in a rare and picturesque setting—this is life in all its shining brilliance. Arbor Acres is forever in a state of becoming—a place where creativity shines, where generosity thrives, where the art of living blooms.

For more information on Aldersgate Square and other independent living options, please call (336) 724-7921.

Arbor Acres is

the Western NC Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Arbor Road, Winston-Salem, NC 27104

(336) 724-7921

Life's Funny

summarized the family tree to the old heads. She occasionally turned to ask me a question in English, then slid back into Greek. When she ticked off the names of my father and his siblings, one of the men perked up. Was my dad’s brother, Apostolos Yiannacopoulos, a doctor? Yes. Uncle Paul, as I knew him, was a professor of radiology at the University of Athens. Heads nodded. More words flowed. Dora turned to me with a smile and said, “We found your house.”

One of the men, Mr. George, lived two doors down from Uncle Paul’s family home, which would have been my dad’s family home, too.

Together, we made a plan. The next morning, Dora’s father-in-law, Mr. Dimitri, would take us to Mr. George’s cousin, who would take us to Mr. George, who would take us to my dad’s childhood home.

What else could we say but “OK”? It was the only way.

Historically, Lagadia — once home to more than 10,000 people, now inhabited by fewer than 300 souls — is known for its stone masons, so most of its structures are fashioned from native rock and knit together by a web of mortared walkways, alleys, walls and stairs. There are no street names, house numbers or formal property records.

You want to find a place? You rely on word-of-mouth and memory.

What were the odds that we would find both in the four days we happened to be there? A hundred years after my dad was born?

Statistically speaking, we had just won the lottery — in the warmth of the people.

The next morning, Mr. George led us through a labyrinth of walkways to my Dad’s home.

The first thing my eyes fell on was a burst of fuchsia roses in a stone planter beside the front door. My grandmother, Maria, loved roses. I looked at the lus cious petals as a greeting: “Welcome to my home.”

The L-shaped home hugged a slope. Imagine a house with a walk-out basement. And the front door on the side. A walled

Life's Funny

garden was on the low end. The garden was overgrown. The home’s red-tile roof had fallen in. The tops of the upper walls had been chewed off by time. The floors between stories had collapsed. Plants and small trees sprouted from debris inside.

No one had lived there for decades. It was, as the locals would say, “a ruin.”

But not to me. My dad’s stories came to life in front of me.

On the lower level, I saw the low vaulted ceiling of the kitchen where he would have begged the family’s young housekeeper, Christitsa, for fish. I could make out the remnants of the fireplace where my grandmother scooped ashes to smudge behind my dad’s ears to make him imperfect, thus warding off the evil eye.

I saw my grandfather sipping stout Greek coffee from a tiny china cup, sliding the saucer across a tablecloth to hide burn marks left by the falling ash of his unfiltered cigarette.

I saw my dad as a child, wearing what he called “short pants,” walking to church just 50 steps away, and to his school another 25 strides beyond. I saw him chasing a soccer ball on the stony landings around his home.

Right here.

He drew his first breath.

The high, innocent notes of his littleboy voice filled the air.

His mother watched him through these windows.

And now, a century later?

Bees buzzed around the salvia, thistle and sage that sprang from crevices in the tightly-stacked stone walls.

A fig tree growing inside the walls was setting fruit.

Roses beamed at us.

We stood in the morning sun, blinking through tears.

We had come 5,000 miles to look at someone else’s house.

It was, we agreed, handsome. Natural. Simple. Well-built. Suited to its place.

Oraio. OH

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

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The Creators of N.C.

A Purpose-Driven Art

Scott Avett follows the mystery

By Wiley Cash Photogra Phs By M allory Cash

For a man whose music I’ve been listening to for almost two decades and whose face I’ve seen everywhere from the Grammy Awards to the Today show to the 2017 documentary May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Broth ers by Judd Apatow, Scott Avett was surprisingly easy to reach. After a couple of calls and texts to mutual friends, my wife, Mallory, and I arrived to interview him one day in early August. He met us in the driveway of the small house he’d converted into an art studio in the country about 15 minutes outside of downtown Concord, North Carolina.

Most North Carolinians, as well as music lovers around the world, know Scott as the other half of the Avett Brothers, who, along with his younger brother Seth, bassist Bob Crawford and cellist Joe Kwon, have sold millions of records and whose career has carried the band from small stages in college towns to the Grand Ole Opry to Madison Square Garden and beyond. But Scott knows himself best as a man whose purpose is to create, and painting is as much a part of his creative life as songwriting.

While his visual art has rarely been exhibited publicly aside from a 2019 show at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Scott has been a working artist since graduating from East Carolina University in 2000 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio art. His paintings and drawings most often speak to family life and the natural world in rural North Carolina, but his work is in conversation with the many cultural and artistic influences he encounters on the road and in his reading life.

In our time together, Scott will rattle off quotes from French Impressionist Edgar Degas and the Trappist monk and mystic poet Thomas Merton the way some of us might

The Creators of N.C.

casually discuss Monday Night Football or the day’s headlines. It’s clear to me that while his work portrays what one could see and hear if one were to spend time shadowing him during his daily life on the land in Concord, there is a deeper spiritual mystery residing in the work that speaks to the same unseen hand that guides emo tions and ideas like love, duty, purpose and one’s role in them all.

This mystery is perhaps what Scott refers to as “the revelation of meaning beyond the physical act of making” that informs his exhi bition, “After the Fact,” which is running through October at the Greenville Museum of Art in Greenville, North Carolina. This exhibit will run concurrently with “Purpose at Random,” Scott’s show at the SOCO Gallery in Charlotte, which began in September and will run through November 2. The show in Charlotte features new oil paintings that Scott began working on in the early months of 2020, which means the work was created during the pandemic when he would have otherwise been on the road with the band. In a press release for the show, Scott says, “I’m not sure that it was easier to paint during the pandemic but it was certainly more available than playing concerts. Painting is a solitary activity. The more time alone the better, I think. The pandemic provided space.”

On the day we meet him, the only calendar space Scott has is a two-week break from touring, and so he’s at work completing a painting that will be featured in one of the upcoming shows. Inside, his studio reveals itself to be a place in creative flux. Paintings either hang on the walls or lean against them, some in various stages of completion. Hiding amongst them — and he will show it to us just before we leave in a few hours — is an early draft of a painting of singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile, the final draft of which appeared on the cover of her 2018 multi-Grammy Award-winning album, By the Way, I Forgive You.

We follow Scott into an open space, past a low counter where his kids’ works-in-progress are waiting for their return. The studio is bright and airy. Morning light pours through the windows on the east side of the house. Scott stands in the middle of the room with

a cup of coffee brewed by the Concord coffeehouse, Verb, in hand.

As Mallory unpacks her camera gear, I tell Scott that I grew up in Gastonia, which is on the west side of Charlotte, while Concord sits on its east. We talk about what it was like to be raised so close to Charlotte in the 1980s and ’90s without much awareness of what went on in what seemed to us to be “the big city.” We joked that the only time we went into Charlotte was to go Christmas shopping at SouthPark.

“That was the fancy mall,” Scott says, smiling. I tell him that once, when I was young, I spotted NASCAR legend Jeff Gordon with his first wife at SouthPark, and that leads us to a conversation about race car drivers as Sunday races served as the backdrop of our North Carolina childhoods, especially for Scott, given that Charlotte Motor Speedway sits just a few miles away from the place where he was raised. I ask Scott how he and his family ended up on this expanse of land where he has remained despite his world travels, his parents still living just a few miles down the road, and his own family’s home tucked into the woods behind his studio.

Scott’s father was born in North Carolina and grew up the son of a Methodist minister whose calling took the family around the state. Scott’s mother was an Army kid born on a base in Germany before being raised in Kansas and Virginia. Just before Scott was born, his parents and older sister moved to Alaska, where his father hoped to get work as a pipeline welder, but the job fell through, and on the way back south the family lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, for about a year. That’s where Scott was born. But they eventually found their way back to North Carolina and to the landscape where Scott’s grandfather had touched so many lives. When the family decided to settle down outside Concord — his father traveled as a welder and his mother taught school — they were gifted 2 acres and an old house by an elderly couple who had long admired Scott’s grandfather. His father renovated the home, and Scott’s parents lived there until the house burned down last

The Creators of N.C.

year. But fire can’t burn roots, and Scott’s parents rebuilt, and they continue to reside just down the road from him.

When Scott and his two siblings were growing up, his parents made certain that education was available to them, especially if the kids were hungry for it. “They were intent on that,” he says. “They said, ‘We will see to it that you have an opportunity to go to school. If we’re broke, we’ll rob a bank to pay for it. If you are interested in education, you will get the opportunity.’” All three children went to college.

It’s clear that Scott values his children’s education as well, especially in the arts. Aside from the makeshift studio set up for them alongside his own work, his daughter regularly participates in afterschool tutoring sessions in creative writing led by the owner of the local bookstore, Goldberry Books, in downtown Concord. It’s easy to imagine a holistic education in art and outdoor experiences unfolding for children in a landscape like this. If I sound wistful when imagining such a childhood it’s because I am.

But our conversation turns toward what could be considered the more practical matters of being a creator, namely, what happens when your hobby — whether it’s painting or songwriting or writing novels — becomes your job. Is the mystery of creation compromised?

“As soon as you’re doing something to pay bills, I don’t know that you’re really following your heart,” Scott says. “We’re called to have a purpose, but you can slip off that purpose really quick-

ly, and all of a sudden the purpose becomes to pay the bills more easily. I want to avoid that. There’s a mystery in creating. I want to follow the mystery and get as close to it as I can. But when I’m caught up in success or anything else it has nothing to do with getting close to the mystery. It just distracts from it.”

Jeff Gordon and NASCAR are still lingering in the corners of my mind, and I mention that Gordon retired from driving at the age of 44, and both Scott and I are now in our mid-40s. I tell him that I doubt Gordon’s physical skills were diminished at that age, but perhaps his awareness of the risks he was taking became more apparent the older and wiser he got. I ask Scott if he’s more aware of the choices he’s making at this stage of his career and if his skills are continuing to sharpen.

“I feel like I’m in the sweet spot, ability-wise,” he says about both performing music and painting. “Physically, I can do it, and, mentally, my tools have accumulated quite a bit. I see evidence of that when I can make plans about what project I am going to execute. Ten years ago, I might say, ‘I hope I can do this. I hope I don’t flub it and get stuck on something.’” He pauses for a moment. “I think I hold it all a little looser than I ever did, and I’m not going to be blown away by whether it hits or doesn’t hit. I don’t know why, but there’s now a barometer, and sometimes it says, ‘Hey, enough, you have enough. Now, with enough, can you lean into your purpose?’”

I ask him how it feels to let go of a painting after someone

The Creators of N.C.

buys it. After all, when he writes a song he can always perform it whether or not it’s on a record or in front of a live audience. “It rips pretty hard,” he says. “It really does. I see painting as me telling my life story, and as I do that, it’s kind of tough to imag ine that some of it’s in Colorado, some of it’s in New York, some of it’s in Texas. But I haven’t gotten too attached to any of them so far. There are only three I won’t let go of. One of my wife and two of our kids that I painted in bathing suits. They’re just portraits of them, but I’ve said those aren’t for sale.”

I ask him if his art is a result of his being anchored to this land given his family’s history on it. He pauses as if painting an answer in his mind.

“We’re all bigger than our place,” he finally says. “I am in North Carolina, and I am making the things I’m meant to make. When you can settle that and not think that New York is better than North Carolina, then you can start getting to your work.

“You have to find a corner of the world,” he says. “I truly believe that on these 80 acres there is more to explore than I can do in a lifetime. There is so much work to be done here, and by work I mean purpose. To me, my purpose is realized here. My purpose is to create. There are a lot of leaves to peel back here, and there are a lot of experiences happening.”

He pulls his phone from his pocket and flips through his photos, landing on a picture he took the night before of his 7-year-old son just after he’d fallen asleep. “There’s nothing not timeless about this,” he says. “If my purpose is to recognize relationships and see things, this is a good place to be.” He laughs and puts his phone away. “But where’s not?” OH

Wiley Cash is the Alumni Author-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. His new novel, When Ghosts Come Home, is available wherever books are sold.

1401 Benjamin Parkway Greensboro, NC 27408 336-373-4816

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Of Race and Justice

Two books with common cause

By a nne Blythe

Sometimes two books can sit far apart on the bookshelf and seem to have little in common. Then you read them and discover the themes they share.

Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial is novelist and lawyer Corban Addison’s first work of nonfiction, a fast-paced legal thriller that reads like a novel about — wait for it — hog feces.

Addison tells the saga of Elsie Herring and hundreds of other residents in eastern North Carolina so disgusted by the stench and waste disposal practices of the industrial-style hog farms among their rural, mostly Black communities that they waged a legal battle against a pork industry giant. Through deft description of courtroom drama and artful portraits of the characters in this classic good-versus-evil narrative, Addison exposes the longstanding injustices of institutional environmental racism.

In Beyond Innocence: The Life Sentence of Darryl Hunt, Phoebe Zerwick, head of the Wake Forest University journalism program who used to work at the Winston-Salem Journal, delivers a thor ough journalistic exploration of the life, wrongful conviction, exoneration and death by the suicide of Darryl Hunt. Zerwick shines a harsh light on a fundamentally flawed justice system and the institutional racism embedded in it.

Addison opens his book inside the federal courtroom in Raleigh where U.S. District Judge W. Earl Britt has just been alerted that a jury has reached a verdict in one of a series of nuisance cases that hog farm neighbors brought against Smithfield Foods Inc., the world’s largest pork producer.

The decision came quickly.

“The word spread like sparks from a brushfire,” Addison writes. “Smartphones emerge from pockets and handbags, thumbs fly across screens, and messages are cast across the digital wind, lighting up other phones with chimes and beeps miles away.”

Britt, Addison writes, is “a charming octogenarian with the oracular eyes of a barn owl,” who waits for the assembly of the necessary attorneys, paralegals, plaintiffs and others to take their places in the courtroom. Peering over his glasses at the lawyers, he motions to the bailiff to bring in the jury.

A quiet settles over the courtroom. The foreman, holding an envelope with the verdict sealed inside, tells the judge that he and his fellow jurors have come to a unanimous decision. “As the envelope makes its short trip to the bench, the plaintiffs in the

gallery take a breath and hold it,” Addison writes.

His prose is poetic though, at times, a bit overwrought. “The pain and sorrow of memory, together with the labor of years and dreams of days yet to come, are at the altar before them. Contrary to the tale of greed and opportunism being spun by politicians and poohbahs across town, they aren’t thinking about a million dollar payday as they wait for the judgment to be delivered. Instead, they are whispering a simple prayer, the prayer of verdict day, of verdictum. Please, Lord, let them believe us. Let them believe that we told the truth.”

In the ensuing scenes he gives readers a sense of history about land in the coastal plain that has been passed down from genera tion to generation among Black families who are standing up against the nemesis they say is responsible for them being unable to enjoy the life they, and their ancestors, once had.

This thoroughly researched and reported narrative ends with a visit to Joyce Messick, one of the plaintiffs in the nuisance cases who saw the hog farm near her family’s property shutter.

While Messick told him she finally felt as if she could breathe clean air, others have not gotten to that point. “Most have yet to see the change, to fill their lungs with liberated air, to stand upon emancipated ground,” Addison writes. “The dollar is still the lodestar of Smithfield Foods, and the legislature is still its domain.” Nonetheless, Addison concludes, there are people who will be relentless until commitments by the pork industry are realized.

To open her book about Hunt, Zerwick explains why she felt compelled to revisit a case she had chronicled in a series for the Winston-Salem Journal, one that led to new court proceedings that resulted in his exoneration.

“Beyond Innocence is my attempt to finish a story I began long ago,” she writes. “In 2003, when I wrote about the wrongful conviction of Darryl Hunt for the Winston-Salem Journal, Hunt was in prison then for the 1984 murder of a newspaper editor who had been raped and stabbed to death, not far from the newsroom where I worked.”

Hunt, who maintained his innocence throughout, was exoner ated after 19 years of legal battles and the help of tireless advo cates who refused to let the wrongful conviction stand.

“To the outside world, Hunt was the man who walked out of

Plan

Omnivorous Reader

prison without rancor or regret,” Zerwick writes. “But the past haunted him, and the heroic narrative of a man who fought for justice masked a deep despair.” Zerwick decided to revisit Hunt’s story after he was found dead in the driver’s seat of a pickup truck that had been parked by a busy road with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

She was grief-stricken, as were many others. Then she went into reporter mode.

“I wasn’t done with the story after all,” Zerwick writes. “I started looking into his death soon after the funeral. Rather than tackle the big question about the failure of the justice system, I focused first on the facts.” Answers began to arrive as she interviewed the people around him, studied photographs and Facebooks posts, and pored over correspondence Hunt had with his lawyers.

“Hunt’s death taught me a great deal about the limits of journalism and forced me to question my motives,” Zerwick writes. “Does the public’s right to know, that righteous principle we journalists invoke, justify exposing the secrets I hoped to find? Does shining a light in the dark places really help, as we claim it does? Who am I to tell a story Hunt had not told himself?”

In the end, though, Zerwick brings new layers to the saga of Darryl Hunt, the he roic advocate for reform, and the often-told recounting of his wrongful conviction.

“Long before politicians began campaigning against mass incarceration, Hunt saw the system he had left behind for what it is, a trap that condemns millions of men and women, and their children, to living on the fringes, barred from jobs, housing, bank loans, food assistance and more, barred, in short, from a reasonable chance at a decent life,” Zerwick concludes, and she wishes Hunt was here to be a part of the reforms.

Both Zerwick and Addison have crafted new, nonfiction accounts of old cases that tested the justice of the justice system. They should be read from cover to cover. OH

Anne Blythe has been a reporter in North Carolina for more than three decades.

Photo,

October Books

We asked our community, contributors and staff to tell us what books we’d find currently in their grasp. What resulted is a fresh mix of new-to-us nonfiction and literature as well as books worth revisiting. If you’d like to be a part of our O.Henry Readers Club, send along a short note with a few sentences telling us what page-turner is currently keeping you up at night. Email cassie@ ohenrymag.com.

We have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson is one of my favorite horror novels. It’s not gory or outright terrifying. There is a certain unsettling chill that crawls down your spine throughout the novel. If you want to feel uncomfortable, this is the perfect book. It is just so creepy and fantastical and mysterious. I have always loved the book’s ability to draw out such emo tions. Not fear, but discomfort.

— Scuppernong Books intern Ingrid Lander

Nina Riggs’ The Bright Hour, published posthumously in 2017, makes me wish that I still lived on Mendenhall Street, to be nearer her creative sphere. Emerson’s great-great-great granddaughter, Riggs earned an MFA in poetry from UNCG, and this bears testament to both. Her triumphant beauty and translucence rend me.

— contributing editor Cynthia Adams

What I’m re-reading this fall is George Cukor: A Double Life by Patrick McGilligan. Considered the greatest women’s director of Hollywood’s golden age, he was also the only openly gay director in Tinsel Town, the real reason he was fired from Gone With The Wind.

— contributor Billy Ingram

Apparently I’ve been under a rock, but I didn’t know of North Carolina author Sarah Addison Allen until Wiley Cash highlighted her in our August issue. Rather than picking up her recent release, Other Birds, I started closer to the beginning with The Sugar Queen, so far a beautifully written story about family secrets with loads of sweet food references, perfect for Halloween candy season.

— managing editor Cassie Bustamante

Beth Macy and I met at neighboring author tables in Nashville “watching people line up to buy J. D. Vance’s book,” as Beth tells the story. She’s since written Dopesick, an unforgettable book about our country’s opioid addiction crisis. I’m now reading its sequel, Raising Lazarus, about everyday heroes helping us to recover.

— contributor Ross Howell Jr.

The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult truly took my breath away. It’s a heart-wrenching story of paths taken, passed over and revisited that left me stunned and wanting more. I found myself reflecting on my own life’s journey with new eyes. I may never recover from reading this book, and I’m not sure that I want to! As a nerdy aside, you’ll learn a surprising amount of Egyptian history!

— reader Sarah Ross Thompson

Ten years ago, as a son of the South and integration, I was in search of a book that could help me come to terms with the racial disparities I continued to see in America. A friend recommended David W. Blight’s sweeping and eye-opening Race and Reunion, which accomplished the task and more. No event in our history imprinted its horrors upon the national consciousness as did the American Civil War, shaping a collective act of remembering that was equal parts fantasy and forgetting. Blight superbly recounts how failed Reconstruction and the mythology of the Lost Cause sewed the seeds of the racial gap that remains today — a Civil War we are all struggling to come to terms with. An engrossing history that’s more relevant today than ever.

— founding editor Jim Dodson OH

Art of the State

Sacred FIGURES

Cristina Córdova sculpts soulful, fantastic people from clay

By liza roBerts

“I was always very creatively inclined, and very restless,” says sculptor Cristina Córdova, as she moves – glides, really, with ease and focus –around a massive head she’s shaping out of clay in her Penland studio.

She molds it with elegant hands, quickly, decisively, certain about what she wants this clay to be. Like the work that has made her name, it will become real, it will be soulful, thoughtful, disarming, alive. Its eyes will be hollow, but they will express sadness; its face will be impassive, but it will express stoicism.

Known for her remarkably lifelike figurative sculptures in clay, which typically range from diminutive to lifesize, Cordova grew up in Puerto Rico and earned her undergraduate degree from

La persistence del verdor

BY

Art of the State

Cristina Córdova

El Rey Vestigios

the University of Puerto Rico and an MFA in Ceramics from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University before moving to Penland in 2002 for a three-year residency, and subsequently making the campus her home.

Córdova credits her mother with nurturing her creativity from an early age, steering her toward the career that has made her one of the most respected sculptors in North Carolina and a pillar of the Penland community since 2002. She credits a ceramics teacher with first showing her the potential of clay, the possibility that it could go beyond representation to “embody any idea.” At that point, she says, “the material revealed itself to me in this really exciting way. And I never looked back.”

Still, she took some time to settle on her subject. Gradually, “I started to become a little bit more excited, more empowered to start specifically to focus on the figure.” It was a focus borne in part by her heritage. Growing up Catholic in Puerto Rico, she says, in a house with literally hundreds of depictions of saints all around her, the idea of using a figurative work of art “as a way of harnessing your emotional energy and pulling it into something sacred” was a mechanism she’d internalized. Though her current work is not religious, Córdova finds that it’s understood “at a different level” in Puerto Rico, where “Catholicism is not a choice, it’s woven into the culture, so people come to the work with a shared insight.”

Art of the State

Cosmología Isleña

Her subject may come naturally, but that doesn’t make it easy. Depicting the figure in clay is a challenge. Early in her career, Córdova found herself stuck in between two worlds, the sculptural tradition of working in the round with a live model, and the more organic ceramic tradition. Eventually, she settled on a hybrid approach, one that includes not a live model but a series of blueprints that provide her with the measurements and di mensions she needs to create a sculpted three-dimensional figure.

The head before her on this particular day — not necessarily a man nor a woman, as is sometimes the case with her figures — is imagined instead of representational, and so its blueprints are designed merely to keep her to scale, leaving room for improvisation. In other instances, she uses a series of photographs to help her create more precise blueprints.

Córdova gestures to the head before her: “I’m called right now to do things that are big, almost monolithic. I think it has something to do with what we are experiencing [with the pandemic].

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Art of the State

I’m not interested in intimate or narrative-oriented work. I’m interested in big statements.”

Big statements seem called for by the importance and enormity of our internal worlds in such a situation, she says. “The isolation, the uncertainty, the newness — to have to take all this in without being able to respond in our normal ways . . . recourse is very limited. So you’re holding this inside of you, and that’s all you can do, is hold it, and wit ness it, and be with it. We need a big container for that right now. So I’m making big containers.”

It’s not a simple process. Beginning with a large donut-shaped piece of clay that’s laced with sand and paper pulp for stability and structure, Córdova then patches in a perpendicular slab, and then another, and then adds rings of clay, providing “the basic topography.” From there, she more fully fleshes out and articulates the shape of the head and face.

Having worked “all over the place in terms of scale” over the course of her career, the process of working in such large dimensions now excites her: “This to me is a starting point. I really want to get bigger. I have no idea how I’m going to do that.”

Córdova’s award-winning work is in the permanent collections of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico and many others. OH

This is an excerpt from the forthcoming book Art of the State: Celebrating the Art of North Carolina , to be published by UNC Press this fall.

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Picture This

Adventures in leveling up a home

By Cynthia adaMs

As the homeowners run errands, a TV Land remodeling team sneaks in and transforms their grubby home.

Junk is hurled out and carpet ripped up! But guess what else? Someone eventually has to hang the damn artwork.

Inspired, I launched our own home refresh, reorienting furniture, dragging sofas and chairs from one room to another.

Which eventually necessitated moving artwork. Picture hanging inevitably involves hammering nails into our plaster walls, something that hasn’t always gone well in the past.

Nails are trouble with a capital T.

Trouble, as when a construction worker consulted a dentist, who found a six-inch nail in the roof of his mouth, shot clear into his brain. (No doubt, he had been farting away with a nail gun.)

The dentist – also male – congratulated him that if you had to have a nail in the brain, his was lodged in the ideal place.

Strangely, picture rehanging seemed to suddenly interest my husband for one reason: a new laser level. He ripped it from the package, casting a glowing red line, like Star Wars weaponry. I wanted to rehang the pair of pictures, not destroy them.

He hung the first. “’Bout right?” he muttered manly, nails held in his mouth, eyeing the second.

Then he placed the fist-sized gizmo onto the wall. The red line snaked around the corner, leading into the hallway.

Grunting slightly, he held the second picture wire by yet another gadget.

“Now,” he announced, squinting appraisingly, “I will align the next picture.”

The red laser was so mesmerizing I fell to thinking of ways to harness its powers. Before suggesting things that required aligning, like the washing machine, my husband commanded, “Now!”

“Now what?!”

“Now you must help me determine if the second frame aligns properly with the first.”

Well, duh! It suddenly seemed that the project was tipping unfairly from he who possessed fancy tools to me, who possessed only naked vision.

As I spied with my little eyes, the pictures appeared altogether wonky.

“Why aren’t you helping?” he complained.

“Helping how?”

“Can’t you make sure the pictures are STRAIGHT?” He perched on the top of a chair, dangling the second picture from

Sally Roesch Wagner

College.

13, 2022 at 4:00 p.m.

Brown Finch Chapel,

Home Grown

the picture hanging tool. “Look, I can’t hold this much longer,” he panted.

“Hmm,” I said uncertainly.

“Hmm – what?” he shouted. “Is it STRAIGHT?”

“Isn’t that what the laser thingy is for?” I retorted.

He climbed down from the chair, fixing me with a stare. “It probably IS. But…” he floundered. “I didn’t . . .”

A long pause.

“. . . read the instructions before I hung the first picture.”

Taking the picture from his hands, I gave him a dirty look.

He shot the laser around the room, taking aim at a sleeping schnauzer.

“Stop it!” I commanded.

Sheepishly turning off the laser, he chewed his lip.

“What good is that thing?” I scoffed.

“Well. It’s a great tool,” he retorted.

With our bare eyes and hands, heaving and fussing, we managed to get the heavy pictures reasonably realigned.

After which, I noticed a series of braille-like puncture marks in the wall.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing.

“Uh, that’s where I affixed the laser level to the wall,” he replied.

“You mean it makes holes in the wall!?”

“That’s the only thing I don’t like about it,” he answered. Dead serious.

“Well, I never!” I huffed, before suggesting we plug the holes with toothpaste, a trick I’d read somewhere. He scowled and retreated to the basement. As I repaired to the bathroom for toothpaste, I grabbed my sonic toothbrush, too. I re turned to find my husband swiping paint across the puncture holes.

Removing the pulsing toothbrush, I gurgled through the froth, “Look!”

“What now?”

The paint he’d dabbed over the puncture marks was a different shade.

Next year, I swear, he’s getting the Handyman Paint Matcher for his birthday. OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry.

Rose Breasted Grosbeak

What a Hoot

Call of the barred owl

By susan Ca MPBell

Owls definitely fall into the “spooks” category for many people. But there is one species that tends to be more endearing than scary: the barred owl. Maybe you have heard the “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you a-a-a-a-ll?” echoing through bottomland forest. The song is most frequently heard in early spring when male barred owls are claiming territory and advertising for a mate. But they actually can be heard vocalizing any time of the year. These are large but well camouflaged birds. Only a little bit smaller than the great horned owl, barreds are often their close neighbors. Disputes over space and feeding areas are not uncommon. Vocal sparring early in the year can get quite heated; however, male barred owls can be heard now, calling or squawking not only at night but at dawn and dusk as well..

This owl gets its name from the distinct vertical brown streaks on its breast, belly and flanks. The bird’s spotted head and dorsal surface, in addition to the barring, make it very hard to spot during daylight hours when it is perched motionless close to the trunk of a large tree. Their liquid brown eyes make them very endearing to bird lovers far and wide.

Barred owls find a wide variety of prey in swamps and bottomland forests. They feed on not only mice, rats, rabbits, small and medium sized birds, but reptiles and amphibians as well. These owls will also wade into shallow streams and pools after crayfish and small fish. At dusk, barred owls take advantage of large flying insects such as moths and large beetles.

Barreds, in spite of their size, actually nest in cavities. They will use old woodpecker holes, rotted stump holes and even larger manmade nest boxes. Up to five young are raised by both parents for close to a full year. Adult barred owls are sedentary and probably mate for life. This likely explains why they tend

to be so defensive of their territory. Not surprisingly, during the breeding season, the larger-bodied female barred owls are the most aggressive. Raccoons, opossums and hawks are common nest predators. But it is great horned owls that are the greatest predatory threat, so competition can be quite intense.

These owls are not averse to roosting, or even nesting, close to human habitation. People who get close to a nest may be subjected to distraction displays. The female may call loudly, quiver her wings or even attack with her talons. So, should you ever discover a nest hole, it is best to give it a wide berth to avoid any unintended consequences. They are known to use the same cavity year after year if they are successful. A pair of barred owls was documented to use the same cavity in the middle of the campus of the University of North Carolina for six seasons.

Despite the fact that they are non-migratory, barreds have ex panded their range. Over the last century, they have moved west ward into the Pacific Northwest and into southwestern Canada. They are in the process of displacing other native owls of the region including their close cousin, the endangered spotted owl. Certainly the future of this endearing species seems quite secure in our area. OH

Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photographs at susan@ncaves.com.

Jill

Mike

Rick

Katie

Russ

48 Hour Film Project

Lights, Camera, Panic!

BY JOEY RUDZINSKI.

Wandering Billy

By Billy [eye] ingra M

“We’re a species that rushes through everything, then complains that time flies.” — Steve Maraboli

I recall reading an article by Jeri Rowe back in 2004 about The 48 Hour Film Project being held in Greensboro, the first city in North Carolina to host this worldwide competition that originated in Washington, D.C., three years earlier. The idea is that individuals or teams create a short motion picture, from concept to completion, in just 48 hours, with all teams starting at the same time — 7:30 on a Friday night, in our case.

First, some ground rules: The movie must run between four and seven minutes, contain a certain prop (this year was keys) and a line of dialogue (“Don’t lie to me”), plus a particular character (in this instance, a musician named Duane or Diana Fortran). Details may vary, but these are the general parameters, whether you’re making a 48-hour film in Greensboro, Rome, Lisbon or any of the more than 120 cities participating around the globe.

Over the last 18 years, this hambone has been lucky enough to mug for the silver screen maybe 10 times in various 48 Hour Film Project productions. This was my fourth for Evan Wade’s Stumblemuse Productions. Wade swears this year will be his final frenzy of filmmaking, which is hard to fathom given the enthusiasm he brings to the event. He’s served in one position or another almost every season, the last dozen as producer. “As I went through my 30s, feeling unsatisfied and looking for a new pursuit, I found a certain satisfaction and glee during the 48 Hour Film Fest,” Wade says. “The weekends are always highlights

of any particular year, a great networking opportunity that keeps art alive in my heart, helps bolster my confidence as a leader while developing friendships that will last a lifetime.”

At the Friday evening kickoff this year, each team blindly selected two genres to pick from: science-fiction, comedy, western, film noir . . . you get the idea. Given a choice between drama or family film, we settled on the latter. It was decided I would play the lead — just my luck that I banged up my face a couple of nights earlier while avoiding tripping over the cat. Basically, I fought the wall and the wall won.

The next morning, cast and crew got together for the first time. Already there was turmoil. When an Italian restaurant was needed at the last minute, I suggested we decamp to New York Pizza on Tate Street where bar manager Gavin Holden was receptive to the idea of us filming there. This Slip ’N Slide approach to filmmaking is inherently exciting, developing characters and scenarios on the fly, in the moment. Fortunately, Evan Wade had assembled a team of top professionals with years of experience behind them. Director Ken Randall and Matt Amick, director of photography, engaged in guerrilla filmmaking at its finest. Under their pilotage everything looked and sounded pro all the way, moving deftly, quickly through scenes. After just six hours on Saturday afternoon we were done.

For my role — a washed up, one-hit wonder trying to convince his son to go into the music business — I was lucky to be part nered with a very talented actor, Chris Pierce. Our back-and-forth was more like stage acting, which generally requires eye contact, whereas with film it’s often advantageous to cheat a bit to the right or left of your co-star, showing more of your face to the

Wandering Billy

camera. Together we ad libbed our way around the written word, with a lot of our funnier, off-the-cuff scenes ending up on the digital cutting room floor.

My character was a raspy, bitter, high-strung contrarian — basically a walking heart attack. Spoiler alert for a six-minute film: He has one. In the bar at NYP no less. Talk about an ignominious demise.

In my experience with making 48-hour films, anything that can go wrong will. Flexibility is essential to getting things done on schedule. When a location fell through, I suggested we regroup at my place nearby, a four-plex built in 1930 that has been a background for dozens of motion picture and TV productions.

Not so bad, comparatively. Another team lost a crucial cast member due to a car accident on Saturday, necessitating reshoot ing everything next day. And when the organizers say you have only 48 hours, they mean it. One group found out the hard way after turning in their film 30 seconds late.

Our own nail-biter came during post-production. “Everything seemed fine until the audio started getting out of sync,” Wade tells me, referring to the crunch Sunday evening, deadline rapidly approaching. “We laughed nervously. [Editor] Louis Bekoe frowns and we make the fix. It happens again. Ten minutes later, we watch the ‘final cut’ again, now all flustered, when [production assistant] Lisa Steele notices the required line is missing . . . at which point, Louis’ main computer crashes.” With only 13 minutes to spare, they somehow beat the clock.

Screenings of all 28 submissions took place at the Carolina Theatre the very next weekend. This year was the first for our new city producer Mike Dickens. For a position with loads of responsibility and no pay, he did a bang-up job of coordinating everything. When he’s not wrangling cinematic cats, Dickens serves as webmaster/digital operations specialist at UNCG.

A total of 15 films were selected for the “Best Of” night held

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Wandering Billy

a week later where awards were handed out in 13 categories. Our contribution, Chitarra’s Requiem, won Best Special Effects, while Best Film of 2022 went to those that are fools, which will go on to represent the Gate City at Filmapalooza 2023 with the possibility of a screening at the Festival de Cannes next year.

My personal favs this year were BUSK by Good Gravy Productions; Biggest Fan by Hot Batteries; Friends and Funerals, a comedy written, directed and edited by My Big Fat Fabulous Life star and dapper dresser Lennie Alehat; Reconsidered Ghosting by 13th Pygmy Productions; and Kawabunga Productions’ Grandpa’s House.

Best in show was, in my opinion, the genuinely hilarious National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day by Colonel Popcorn Productions (awarded Audience Favorite: Group A). Turns out there really is a National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day, celebrated the day after this clever amuse-bouche wrapped. (Some of these films are viewable on YouTube.)

Acting is mostly something to dabble in today, but I started out my professional career in my teens as a working actor. From 2003–2006, I was writing and ap pearing on programs for VH1 and Bravo, while, a few years ago, I was almost cast as a murderous sex pervert on Death Row for a cable network series. Very disap pointed at not snagging that part — I was far creepier and infinitely more nauseating than the guy they cast!

While Evan Wade won’t be at the helm next summer, hopefully some other team will recruit this scenery chewer for another wild weekend of frenetic filmmaking. OH

Billy Ingram produced, directed and starred in his first television production at 11-years old, broadcast on The Kiddie Scene with Mr. Green in 1968 with a script lifted out of Cracked magazine. Find him on IMDb and watch his 2022 48 Hour Film Project at YouTube.com/watch?v=UNJFZRT8Y8E.

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The Art & Soul of Greensboro O.Henry 61 100 YEARS OF FAMILY BAKING

CHROME DREAMS AND INFINITE REFLECTIONS

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REFLECTIONS WITH THE

Crow at Dawn

Find me in the fold, the crease between light and darkness, where the silver sliver of a crescent fades and the first hint of daylight approaches, where I can still slip into the shadows, and playfully balance between morning and night.

Find me in the branches of the moonlit trees, among the silken threads of webs, as if I’ve just woken, as if I haven’t been larking about all night, basking in the freedom that only comes when the weary world sleeps.

Find me, sprightly greeting the day, as the sun starts to lay its golden rays upon my silky black wings, and I must swallow the darkness of the night, keeping it as a part of me, honoring who I am even in the brightest of sunlight.

— Cassie Bustamante

Here Be

Monsters

By John hood

IllustratIons By h arry BlaIr

— In Carolina

Tall tales of the tall. tailed and terrifying

It happened on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Just west of Maggie Valley, the parkway intersects with Heintooga Ridge Road. To the south is the legendary Soco Gap. To the west is the reservation of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. And just up the road to the north, at the boundary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is a striking monument made of stones from all over the world.

This stretch of the parkway is one of North Carolina’s most beautiful spots. One dark and foggy May night, however, Ashley Coleman saw something terrifying there. “The hairs on my arm and back of my neck stood up straight,” he says. “I have never in my life been so afraid.”

Coleman had parked at a nearby overlook to watch the setting sun. After returning to his car through the billowing mist, he began backing up — only to stop short as a huge figure dashed across the road and entered the woods. “It was entirely too large to be a black bear,” Coleman insisted, “and definitely wasn’t an elk.”

What was it? Well, I obtained these quotes from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), a 27-year-old group that bills itself as “the only scientific research organization exploring the bigfoot/sasquatch mystery.” Coleman’s reported May 30, 2021, sighting on the Blue Ridge Parkway has an official incident number (No. 69269) and designation (Class B, meaning “incidents where a possible sasquatch was observed at a great distance or in poor lighting conditions.”)

I begin with Coleman’s story in part because it’s our state’s most recent sighting. Many of North Carolina’s other BFRO cases are Class A, designating “clear sightings in circumstances where misinterpretation or misidentification of other animals can be ruled out with greater confidence.” In July 2020, for example, a Montgomery County motorist saw something bound across Highway 109. It was “large, maybe 8-feet,” she said, and covered in black fur except for lighter patches on its face and hands.

Every region of North Carolina is represented in the Bigfoot database. There’s the self-described “city boy” who went hunting

near Elizabeth City and found not a deer but a furry, 8-foot-tall hominid munching on leaves.

There’s the vacationer returning to his Smithfield home and glimpsing “a bear walking upright with long legs and arms longer than a man’s.”

There’s the trucker who was headed up N.C. Highway 53 toward Jacksonville when a “very muscular” figure bolted onto the road. “It seemed to have no neck,” he reported, “just a head — sort of like a caveman.”

There’s the man in Archdale, just over the county line from High Point, who happened to peek through his front window and see a creature, also neckless and furry and 8-feet-tall, skulking around outside. After first comparing it to the ’70s cartoon character Captain Caveman, the homeowner reached back another decade for a suitable reference: “I guess it looked more like an overgrown cousin It from The Addams Family.”

And then there are the multiple sightings in Buncombe, Burke, and McDowell counties of mysterious hominids variously described as bear-like, smelling like “dead garbage” and swinging their arms “like pendulums.”

You have my permission to snort.

In olden times, cartographers would fill the unexplored corners of their maps with colorful illustrations of fantastic beasts and phrases such as “Here Be Lions” or “Here Be Monsters” or (on one 16th century globe) “Here Be Dragons.” But this is the 21st century. We’re supposed to be past this sort of thing. Plus, doesn’t everyone walk around with audio/video recorders in their pockets? Surely, we don’t need to place our trust in bleary-eyed motorists, excitable hunters and varied wanderers of the night talking of monsters ill-met by moonlight. If giant ape-men truly populated the marshes, forests and hills of the Old North State, surely, we’d have hard evidence by now.

I’ve always been a skeptical sort. Plus, I spent decades cover ing politicians. Need I say more? Lately, though, I’ve found my

critical eye drawn away from genial true believers and toward what might be called performative skeptics. The kind who loudly, self-righteously denounce other people for chasing after Bigfoot and the like — and then, with a self-satisfied grin, glance down at their smart phones to check their horoscopes, buy healing crystals, watch New Age videos on TikTok or retweet their political tribe’s latest wild-eyed conspiracy theories.

When it comes to Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and many other cryptids — a modern coinage derived from cryptozoology, refer ring to creatures known from legend or rumor but never proven to exist — the imaginative leap to belief is arguably smaller than for, say, homeopathy or ESP. After all, while the prospect is highly unlikely, it would break no fundamental law of nature for some kind of “missing link” anthropoid to persist in the wild or for some supposedly extinct reptile to lurk in a deep body of water.

You need not be a true believer to find cryptids intriguing. Just ask Joneric Bruner. He’s from the aforementioned McDowell County and one of the organizers of the WNC Bigfoot Festival

in Marion, the largest event of its kind in the eastern United States. Bruner estimates some 20,000 people attended the 2022 festival. Do they all treat the existence of Bigfoot as fact? Of course not. Many just came looking for a fun weekend — and found it, by all accounts.

You know who else doesn’t believe in Bigfoot? Bruner himself. “I’m open to the idea,” he told me, “but I’m not going to conclusively say, ‘Yes, he is real.’”

Like Bruner, I’m no true believer. I’m just curious, and in the market for story ideas.

After authoring many serious history books, I decided a couple of years ago to make a turn toward speculative fiction. My Folklore Cycle series of historical-fantasy stories began with the 2021 novel Mountain Folk, continuing with a novella (The Bard: A Mountain Folk Tale) and a second novel (Forest Folk, just published). In my fictional world, fairies and monsters coexist with historical figures such as George Washington, Daniel Boone and Sojourner Truth. It’s an improbable blend, I admit, but readers seem to enjoy it. What they especially appreciate, they tell me, is that few of my fantastic elements are fabricated from whole cloth. Rather, my research took me deep into European, African and Native American folklore, from which I imported magical creatures to my otherwise-realistic depiction of early America.

Much of the action is set in North Carolina, allowing me to draw from centuries-old traditions of monster lore. Here are four Carolina cryptids that make an appearance in the Folklore Cycle. Each represents a different region and cultural origin, yet all share a gruesome trait: drinking blood!

• The Whipping Snake: Stories of lightning-fast snakes that whip their prey into unconsciousness, then sink their fangs into an exposed vein, can be found throughout the Southern United States and Northern Mexico. But one of the first written accounts dates to Revolutionary War-era North Carolina. British General Henry Clinton sailed south from Boston in early 1776 to invade the Southern colonies. Reaching Wilmington in March, he expected to meet up with reinforcements, but they weren’t there. What did lay in wait at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, Clinton later wrote, was a dangerous beast, the Whipping Snake, that “meets you in the road and lashes you most unmercifully.”

• The Gallinipper: Several decades later, and further up the Cape Fear near modern-day Fayetteville and Dunn, the legend of the Gallinipper arose among workers harvesting timber and making tar, pitch and turpentine. They spoke of a giant mosquito, as big as a hawk, that could rise from a swamp or swoop down from a tree to attack. The Gallinipper probably reflects a blending of African and Native American lore. The Tuscarora, for example, told tales of a giant mosquito that “flew about with vast wings, making a loud noise, with a long stinger, and on whomsoever it lighted, it

sucked out all the blood and killed him.”

• The Tlanusi: The Valley River runs southwest through the mountains to join the Hiwassee River in Murphy. Near the confluence is a place the Cherokee called Tlanusi’yi, “Place of the Leech.” The redand-white-striped monster in question, the Tlanusi, was said to be as large as a house. It hid in an underwater cavern near a natural bridge of slippery rock. When someone tried to cross, the Giant Leech would break the surface, shoot a waterspout to knock the foolish traveler into the water and drag its prey below to feed.

• The Monster Cat: Tales of dangerous felines span many genera tions and regions. In the 19th century, the residents of Salisbury, Statesville, and other Piedmont communities spoke of encounters with the Santer, an enormous beast with glowing fur, long fangs, and a strong tail that, like the Whipping Snake, could be used to soften up its prey before going in for the bloody kill. Further north and west, mountain folk spoke of the Wampus Cat, variously described as having more than four legs, capable of walking upright on two legs or shape shifting into human form.

North Carolina’s most-famous cat tale comes from the Sandhills. On December 29, 1953, a resident of the Bladen County town of Clarkton reported seeing an impossibly large cat on the prowl. Two days later, a local farmer reported two dead dogs. Their bodies were mangled and drained entirely of blood. Other attacks followed. On January 5, a Mrs. Kinlaw rushed outside to comfort her whimpering dogs. Something like “a big mountain lion” sprung at her, Mrs. Kinlaw later said, before retreating down a dirt road. “‘Vampire’ Charges Woman,” screamed the resulting headline in the Raleigh News & Observer. The so-called Beast of Bladenboro was never seen again — well, except on the cover of my novel, Mountain Folk.

Now, perhaps, you can guess the real reason I led off with that May 2021 report of Bigfoot on the Blue Ridge Parkway. For starters, the inci dent occurred just east of the Cherokee reservation, and native folklore plays an outsized role in North Carolina’s tradition of monster tales. To the south lies Soco Gap, where legend has it that local hero Junaluska confronted the famous Tecumseh and insisted he not try to bring the Cherokee into his Confederacy. Junaluska has many adventures in the pages of my new novel, Forest Folk, including a desperate battle with a Giant Leech. And, as I mentioned, just north of the purported Bigfoot crossing is a monument made from stones painstakingly assembled from many different places. From the Carolina mountains and foothills, yes, but also from the White House, the Alamo, even the Rock of Gibraltar. As it happens, all these places are featured in published or forthcoming books in my Folklore Cycle.

What does that stone monument honor? Freemasonry!

History, heroes, picturesque locales, fantastic beasts, the Masonic fount of a thousand conspiracy theories — it sure has the makings of a great story. And a great story is what countless generations wanted to hear. It’s what the crowds of people flocking to Bigfoot festivals still want to hear. They want to live in a world where not all questions have been answered, where not all mysteries have been solved, where something furry, slimy, or improbably gargantuan may yet be lurking in the darkest corners of their mental map.

I want to live in that world, too. Don’t you? OH

John Hood is a Raleigh-based writer. The latest book in his Folklore Cycle series of historical-fantasy tales, Forest Folk , was published in April.

By Cassie Bustamante ø illustrations By miranda Glyder

A family brings the spirit of the Purépecha to Greensboro

ust over 2,000 miles away, on the small Isla de Pacanda in Mexico’s Lake Pátzcuaro, the indigenous Purépecha are preparing for the island’s 3,000-yearold celebration of Día de los Muertos — or Day of the Dead.

Here in Greensboro, Alejandra Ochoa de Thompson, who grew up next to Lake Pátzcuaro, readies her own Sedgefield home with her family to recreate some of that legendary magic for a group of interior designers during High Point Furniture Market weekend.

On Día de los Muertos, it is believed that the veil between worlds — the living and the dead — lifts, allowing souls to return for one day. The living celebrate with and honor those who have passed away by offering gifts to their dearly departed — from favorite foods to items that reflect preferred colors and interests.

“In every way, they are trying to please the person [they lost],” says Thompson, founder and creative director of Thompson (formerly Thompson Traders), a family-run business that designs and imports artisanal, hand-crafted, metal sinks, tubs and range hoods from Santa Clara del Cobre in Mexico.

Daughter Samantha Thompson Lizarraga, the company’s former marketing director and a coowner, chimes in, “To celebrate their life and to give it meaning . . . this keeps them alive.”

Embracing the opportunity to share a part of

her personal history and the company’s legacy with the community that has supported her, Thompson looks forward to opening up her home for the night. “I think it is important to give a little piece of us — a little piece of what we have had,” she says.

“It was [my mom’s] dream to work with her children,” adds Thompson Lizaragga, “but also bring a piece of Mexico to the U.S. So we brought the sinks and this is an even further exten sion — the hospitality of Mexico.”

For one evening, Thompson transforms her own deck and backyard into a scene that feels directly transported from the Isla de Pacanda. A canopy of twinkling lights and goldenyellow floral garlands representing Cempaxochitl (“the Aztec marigold” and iconic Day of the Dead flowers) hang from the trees, cascading over the deck. Candles line the railings and grace brightly decorated tables set with copper chargers, colorful textiles and goblets, sugar skulls, and menus outlining the five-course meal. Every part of this event is replicated with meaning and deliberation based on the

centuries-old ceremony.

In 2017, the company threw its first Day of the Dead party, with a plan to continue biannually. Of course, COVID struck, making the 2019 event the last for a while. But this year, the rela tively new tradition will continue and hold even more significance for most than before.

“I think it’s going to be more emotional because we have lost so many people,” says Thompson. “Everybody has lost somebody.”

In March of 2020, Thompson lost its CEO and close family friend, Fred Starr, to COVID. His relationship with the family “ran deep beyond business,” notes Thompson Lizarraga, who adds that the company will be eternally grateful to him for turning it around, navigating through a time of struggle.

As the youngest of 14 children in “a family that has been so close,” Thompson, 71, has seen many in her family pass on before her, most recently her sister, Susana. This year’s celebration will be especially meaningful to her as she honors her sister as well as Starr.

“People will remember how you made them feel,” notes Thompson, recalling how her own parents made everybody feel welcome, her voice cracking with emotion. “They were the biggest givers . . . I hope I can keep doing the celebration” to carry on their legacy.

People and moments from Thompson’s long life — sprinkled with bits of the celebration’s history — are present in every detail, especially in the extensive food preparation and creation.

Thompson, who does all of the cooking herself, says that it’s

a moment to reconnect with her past. “If I cook a dish, I imme diately see myself with all of my brothers and sisters eating,” she says, her brown eyes sparkling as she fondly remembers her child hood in Mexico.

Each dish has a story. For instance, the mole, according to Thompson and Thompson Lizarraga, originated in a Mexican convent. Legend has it that “a very important bishop” was to visit and the nuns worried about what to feed him. One sister added peppers, and another tossed in chocolate. Thompson says, “Now a lot of people make a joke because the mole has —”

“— everything you can possibly dream of is in that dish!” interjects Thompson Lizarraga.

For Thompson, the many courses served at her party represent “a part of the culture, state or a city and the history behind each dish.”

Chiles en Nogada, or chiles in walnut sauce, is a dish featuring green poblano peppers stuffed with a mixture of meat in a white cream sauce topped with red pomegranate seeds. As Thompson Lizarraga notes, the dish features the colors of the Mexican flag, celebrating the country’s own Independence Day.

This time around, Thompson plans to place descriptive cards by each dish denoting its significance, whether historical or familial.

The traditions of her country of origin are shared not only in the meal itself, but in the way the foods are presented over time. “My sister says in Mexico food is a sport,” laughs Thompson Lizarraga. “And this is still true for all of Mexico. Lunchtime is a two-hour pe riod where you sit and have several

courses . . . and talk with people and eat.”

“At the party, it’s three [hours],” adds Thompson, who wants her guests to have time to relax as they converse with others. What she offers, in addition to a delicious array of Mexican foods, is an opportunity for genuine connection. “If you take a little time to eat, sit in front of each other, you have to communicate,” she says. “And life is moving so fast now — it’s become so impersonal.”

After food and conversation follows live entertainment inspired by the festivities on the Isla de Pacanda. Thompson paints a picture of what the entire night looks like in Mexico, beginning with a candlelit boat ride to the island where a violinist or guitarist serenades riders with mournful yet beautiful songs about death. On the island, a parade of Catrinas and Catrins, which originated as a satire of European high society, marches along to melancholy music that “makes you cry. Because you almost feel the presence of all these souls that left — but you wonder in that moment.”

The festivities on the island run all through the night. “The cartoon Coco is not very far off,” says Thompson Lizaragga, referencing Disney’s 3-D, animated classic about a trip to the Land of the Dead.

At Thompson’s own party, there will be a similar, smaller parade, live music and dancers. She describes Paperhand, a company out of Saxapahaw that makes its own masks and costumes and will perform among the trees in her backyard the evening of the party. Paperhand has its own band, including a singer who sounds similar to the late renowned Costa Rican-Mexican singer Chavela Vargas.

“She had a strong voice,” says Thompson, “and she’d sing those songs and immediately transport you to another place — very sad and very dramatic.”

One song, in particular, she was known for is “La Llorona,” which means “the one who cries,” according to Thompson Lizarraga. While music is a universal language that can convey emo tion, Thompson hopes this year to have some of the songs trans lated for her guests so that they can understand the words as well.

This year’s party will be the company’s third and, as Thompson Lizarraga says, “Every time we do it, it gets better. It gets more exciting.”

And with each passing year, the family sees how the party impacts its guests. In 2019, a designer who had lost a child was in attendance. Thompson recalls that when the guest left that evening, she told her hostess, “Oh my gosh, I am going to feel different now.” This year, according to Thompson, she plans on lighting a lantern for her child.

Thompson’s wish is that her guests this year are similarly transformed — that they leave with a sense of genuine connection, a feeling “that we have hope, that the soul exists, that we are one . . . that the soul is one.”

Thompson Lizarraga adds, “The world needs that right now: To remember whether you’re left or right, whatever your beliefs are, we’re all just people.”

While the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead lifts for just 24 hours, according to Mexican beliefs, the Thompson family’s hope is that the feeling of unity cultivated during its Day of the Dead party carries on well past that, and that we continue to honor the dead, but that we take the opportunity to be truly present today. OH

Cassie Bustamante is managing editor of O.Henry magazine.

Hot Trends Legends of the Fall

The Madcap Cottage gents know the days get shorter but the fun doesn’t

By Jason olIver nI xon and John loecke

Think of England! p

The layered, timeless English country house style is top of mind and not just because we spent a few weeks in August bopping from one National Trust prop erty to another in Norfolk and Hampshire. Or that we savored a long weekend at English-inspired Highlander Mountain House in Highlands, North Carolina. Think antiques married with the contemporary, heaps of portraits, a raging fire, muddy wellies by the front door, and floral prints paired with tartans and Indian hand-block fabrics. Bring the look home, and capture a relaxed, easy-breezy vibe.

Mad for Martinis t

A recent Wall Street Journal article proclaimed that millennials are eschewing wines for marvelous martinis. And why not? Our most favorite martini has to be at go-to staple Ryan’s in Winston-Salem. Classic. Easy. Olives on the side. Paired with spot-on service. And at 1703, also in Winston, a cool martini in their super-chic green-hued dining room is absolute perfection

Grand Millennial Gorgeous t

More of more is absolutely more. After years of beige and linen hues taking center stage, we have finally broken through the fog into a tantalizing world packed with prints, patterns, and color. Hurrah! And layering is back. Embellishment. And trim. So bye-bye, minimalism. It was mediocre knowing you. Bust out and bring on the wallpa per. After all, if you want to live in a museum, well, good luck.

Why Don’t You? q

Paint your front door a bright color. Wallpaper a powder room. Open a bottle of champagne — just because. Run a bath and add two extra helpings of bubble bath. Turn up the stereo and do a spontaneous dance. Color your hair. And install a disco ball in your living room.

Love and Other Outdoor Sports q

During the pandemic, so many outdoor sports had a resurgence — from golf to pickleball and bocce. But we have fallen under the spell of a favorite lawn game that we hadn’t played in years, croquet. Croquet is the new black and orange. So hit the court. Just be forewarned: We play the game like the gals in the classic ’80s movie Heathers. Says John, “We love that you can sip a little rosé between strikes.”

Tip, Top, Throwback p

Throwback restaurants are having a big resurgence, possibly because we could all use a spirited dash of nostalgia in these crazy days. In Manhattan, there’s Donohue’s Steak House on Lexington. In Palm Beach, the locals flock to Ta-boo. In Atlanta you will find us at The Colonnade. And London celebrates Maggie Jones’s.

More locally, you will find us happily savoring spaghetti with meatballs at Kitchen Roselli in Winston-Salem-adjacent East Bend (well worth the field trip). The shock of the new is truly so overrated. We prefer places where they know our name and the menu rarely changes. OH

Jason Oliver Nixon and John Loecke are the duo behind Thomasvillebased Madcap Cottage.

Simple Abundance

By cynthI a a dams • PhotograPhs By a my Freeman

Martha Yarborough has been up since 7 a.m., the thermostat hovering at 80 degrees and nary a breeze. A lesser person would have stayed in the shade.

But not Yarborough, a petite, energetic woman in a state of perpetual, sunny-side-up motion.

Time spent weeding, hoeing, mulching, watering and fussing in 3 acres of flower beds and veggie gardens is meditative therapy for the scrappy gardener. Most of her gardens are recently created, and by her own hand.

“The gardens happened as you see them in the last three or four years.” Transformative, productive years. One sign placed by a pathway simply reads, “Gratitude.”

She insists she couldn’t be happier during these solitary hours. Nor more grateful. “On a perfect day, I’m out in the yard doing gardening, heavy labor. I enjoy people and being con nected. I enjoy entertaining a lot.” But, Yarborough emphasizes, “my alone time is in the garden.”

“Listen, I feel very strongly, when we are blessed,” she adds, “we are commissioned to bless others. Gardening presents life lessons all the time. When you’re cutting flowers, giving them away, it’s cyclical. The more you give away, the more that comes.”

“I learned from fellow gardeners and I started doing things,” she says. “You can’t be afraid; if it doesn’t work out you just change it.”

Almost organically, Yarborough found a daily rhythm. After rigorous gardening follows meditation, or reading from favorite writer Sarah Breathnach’s Simple Abundance.

She will later work with a charitable interest in town, hike or cycle.

But occasionally, Yarborough gardens for 10 hours at a go.

In the Triad, Yarborough is best known for her devotion to education, arts and culture. This May, she hosted a Shared Radiance Performing Arts production of Shakespeare in the Garden, featuring Richard III, each act taking place in differing locations on the property. The War of the Roses was waged amidst actual roses, with an actual black steed and knight in armor making a convincing appearance on her front lawn.

Yarborough had seen the horse and rider at another event, and convinced them to come to the outdoor theatrical fundraiser.

A colorful and lush garden embodies the spirit of its gardener

“I take it to the hilt,” she admits. “Anything.”

She is especially supportive of working women. “I am 78, so I would like to be living an engaged life . . . being involved in my community and with family and friends.”

Until her husband Gordon’s death in 2006 following a 20-month battle with ALS, a neurodegenerative disease, the couple dedicated themselves to education and civic projects. Gordon, aka Yogi, owned High Point furniture concern, Yarborough and Company. (She wisecracks: “Not the most original name, huh?”)

While her husband excelled in business, Yarborough dedicated herself to education and students with special needs, ultimately working as a coordinator with exceptional children in the Guilford County Schools. In 2015, Yarborough gave $1 million to her alma mater, Greensboro College, funding scholarships.

In the mid-70s, Yarborough and Yogi moved to a mini-farm rimmed with a pond and pastures, where they raised sons Preston and Austin. When the boys were teens, she reentered the workplace and resumed teaching at-risk and special-needs students for 16 years, retiring in 2008.

But with newfound time, Yarborough leaned into gardening for its many benefits, becoming a Master Gardener in both Guilford and Davidson counties. Her gardens exponentially expanded.

Yarborough has survived more than one ordeal to arrive at this particular place of grace and fearlessness. “I learned from fellow gardeners and I started doing things,” she says. “You can’t be afraid; if it doesn’t work out you just change it.”

Sitting in the sunroom surrounded with floral paintings, she has her computer stationed with a view of the gardens. Recently installed solar lights become glowing orbs at dusk, making the garden “look like a fairyland!”

Offering a tour, Yarborough grabs a hat, surveying newly created beds in the front of the house where none existed merely a year ago. (There was a dirt track for her son’s bikes once, she points out.)

Notably, a winding path is named the Simple Abundance walk.

She stops and kneels, naming plants by both their common and botanical names. “These little seeds . . .” she coos, bending over an immaculate bed. “These seeds! You plant them and they turn into

something so beautiful! It never ceases to amaze me!”

“Then, when people have given you plants — and I have plants from people who have died — I feel they are living right on,” Yarborough smiles, rising up to her feet.

How does she do this, all by herself? She thinks of her acreage like a house, albeit one with uninvited guests.

“In my head, I have many rooms. And you can’t work on every room every day. You have deer that come. You have varmints that come in . . . and you have to work around it.” She adds, “The deer have eaten all my day lilies but you have to move on!”

Yarborough’s face clouds briefly while inspecting another bed. Vividly pink and leggy cleome, which seem to be taking over, must come out. “It’s too much!”

She walks across colorful, hand-painted stepping stones (she is painting at least another 80 to complete a new pathway) en route to a vegetable garden, enclosed with a fence featuring a mural cre ated by artist Dana Holliday.

“Advice from a Butterfly” adorns the wooden fence boards. “Take yourself lightly,” is the core message, along with letting your true colors show. Holliday painted another mural of red poppies

featured at the rear of Yarborough’s fastidious ranch home.

Meanwhile, Holliday, who also hikes, is in the British Cotswolds. But she emailed questions to pose to her good friend. “What drives Martha, and where does she get her endless energy and enthusiasm?” she wondered. “She can fall off a 40-foot cliff in Nova Scotia and not only survive, but come home and do a TV interview.”

A cliff?

It seems that five years ago, the 5-foot, 1-inch, 100-pounder fell into a ravine and was airlifted to a hospital by rescuers with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

But that traumatic event seems to be shrugged off, relegated to a footnote in Yarborough’s colorful and intrepid life.

In short, she has long since moved on to climb another moun tain. “You only live once,” Yarborough says firmly.

What she prefers discussing is having a purpose in life.

So, she talks about education, the arts, fundraising — the cliff story comes much later, after she has walked the farm. Wearing a teal-colored hat and her face wreathed in smiles, Yarborough points out the many plantings identified with descriptive markers:

Blackberry lilies. Callas. Lambs ear. Dahlias. Allium. Poppies. Lenten roses. More lilies. Clematis.

Flower beds blossom everywhere the eye falls, each lovingly nurtured. Each appropriate to its season.

“As you know,” she says, “gardening’s a lot of work. I love the manual labor. I’m not a designer. I’m a worker.”

Is this all her own work?

“I just have a mower,” Yarborough answers, meaning a man who mows the property. The weeding, the planting, the tending, she says firmly, allowing herself a modicum of pride, are hers alone.

There is detectable pride, too, in Women in Motion, which she helped found in 2015. This initiative supports working women in High Point, Jamestown, Archdale and Trinity.

More stories tumble out.

Yarborough describes a side gig, ushering at the Greensboro Coliseum since 2006, in order to enjoy events like bull riding, which tickle her. “I wasn’t going to sit home,” she confides, staying even busier following Yogi’s death.

Then, pandemic isolation grounded her. She coped by staying in motion, walking and cycling. “I called a friend and I said, ‘Let’s hike every trail in Greensboro!’ We walked 10–12 miles a day.”

She learned to find joy in ordinary moments and purpose in rescuing animals.

Only after exhausting all subjects does Yarborough settle into the Canadian misadventure.

The calibration of the conversation changes, slowing.

In 2017, she was hiking with the travel group, “Roads Scholars,” in Nova Scotia. “It was our first day out — a group of about 15 of us, with no cell phones. So, we went up to these waterfalls. And looking up, I said, ‘I want to go on up there.’ So about six of us went up the mountain. Coming down, I moved over to let somebody by me. The bank gave way. I fell 40 feet into a rock ravine. No cell phone coverage and so . . . ” Her voice trails off.

Somersaulting to the bottom of a stony ravine, Yarborough fell atop the backpack that saved her.

“People thought I had died. They said I flipped over. Well . . . I remember, vaguely, sitting up, and then they knew I wasn’t dead,” Yarborough explains with preternatural calm.

“They airlifted me to the hospital in Halifax [Nova Scotia]. The only thing I had was a broken collar bone and a punctured lung! It was absolutely unbelievable.”

“The Canadian Mounted Police called my son Preston and

said, ‘Your mother has fallen off a mountain. You need to come get her.’”

In a few days, hospital staff asked Yarborough, “‘Where do you think you’ll be staying for the next two weeks? Because you cannot fly.’ So, Preston, who works for the Center for Creative Leadership, was in Vermont,” she recalls. “He took me to Boston. Then my son in Austin flew in and took me home.”

The aftermath of this trauma?

“I don’t have time to waste,” she says matter-of-factly of her recovery.

The next year, she hiked Montana’s Glacier National Park. She threw herself even more energetically into life.

“I love people,” she offers, by way of explanation. Seeking connection, she hiked, biked, camped, traveled and sought every possible outlet in the natural world.

Mostly, Yarborough devoted more time to her gardens, carving 3 of 9 acres expressly for beauty, flowers and vegetables.

Six acres remain in pasture where farm animals graze and find sanctuary. One of her two miniature donkeys, two of the three goats and a miniature horse have been rescued. Most are from Red Dog Farm Animal Rescue Network.

At meal time, the diminutive animals come running, nearly bowling their petite mistress over. No pushover, Yarborough

firmly takes charge, ordering the more aggressive goat to give shyer animals space.

“I think when I fell and not only survived, but survived without a lot of physical traumas, I realized I was left here for a reason,” Yarborough says while feeding her menagerie of animals. “It’s important to live every day with purpose.”

“People who don’t know me think I’m prim and proper all the time . . . but I’m not. I don’t perceive myself as coming across that way. Because I’m real. I try to be real.”

But people knew her that way before, didn’t they?

Yarborough pauses. She thought so. But she’s loosening up, she admits later. She is hosting a group of women for a Grace and Frankie night with a dinner she will cook, and howls at how funny the Netflix series is.

Later, she emails to say “I was in my garden at 6:45 a.m. today.”

A week later, Yarborough sends a short message while camping during 95-degree weather and torrential rains. “Guess where I camped last week? Hagan-Stone Park. Tent. [Friend] Sherry Raeford and I camped together.”

Near her driveway is a sign, a coda, visible while leaving:

“For each of us, there is a desert to travel. A star to discover. And a being within ourselves to bring to life.” OH

By ross howell Jr. PhotograPhs By a my Freeman

On a summer evening, I’m sitting with my neigh bors, Jane and Randy Jackson, in the living room of their house overlooking Fisher Park.

Shaded by big oaks and a magnolia, it’s a graceful old home that I’ve admired ever since I moved into the neighborhood 13 years ago.

Jane grew up in Winston-Salem, graduated from Reynolds High School and went off to Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. Randy grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, moving with his family to Atlanta when he was in 10th grade.

“Football was my life in high school,” Randy says. So when the University of Alabama phoned him in Georgia, asking him to try out as a walk-on, he gave up his plan to study marine biology at the University of Florida.

After going through two-a-day practices, an injury and doubts

about his ability to play at such a high level, Randy decided to give up football. He finished his freshman year at Alabama and transferred to Georgia Tech.

“My Dad was between jobs,” Randy explains, “and paying out-of-state tuition, so I decided to come back to Georgia to help with finances.”

It was a good move.

In Atlanta, Randy met Jane on a blind date. They were married during her senior year at Agnes Scott.

The next year, Randy entered his first year of study at the Medical College of Georgia.

“She went through medical school with me,” Randy says.

“In a house with no air conditioning in Augusta, Georgia,” Jane adds. “And pregnant.”

“She’s a tough, tough girl,” Randy says, beaming at his wife.

Later, the couple moved to Jane’s hometown of WinstonSalem for Randy’s internship and residency at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, then on to Greensboro for private practice in 1982.

“We loved Fisher Park,” Jane says, “but, back then, younger kids were picked up early and bussed a long way to school.” The Jacksons didn’t want their 5-year-old daughter, Alice, and 8-yearold son, Freeman, spending so much time aboard a bus.

So they settled into a small house on Elmwood Drive in Irving Park.

“There were 28 kids on that street who were between my two children’s ages,” Jane says.

“I would come home from the hospital and be attacked by these little kids,” Randy laughs. “I’m not talking about one or two. I’m talking about a whole herd of them!”

“And we had Page High School kids, too,” Jane adds.

Remembering how important sports had been to him as a youth, Randy decided to spring for a “sport court” in the backyard of their house.

“And there we were,” Jane says, “inundated with all this medical school debt.”

Randy’s facility had a basketball hoop and tennis nets. Children played there constantly, and neighborhood dads enjoyed pickup basketball games, too.

“It was like a community center,” Jane recalls. “We used to call it Jackson Park.” They smile, reflecting on the memories.

“So we lived there for a while and then we moved to another house a little bit bigger a couple blocks away,” Randy says. “Then our kids finished high school . . .”

“And went off to college,” Jane finishes.

With Freeman and Alice out of the nest, you may think we’ve come to the point in the story where the Jacksons will purchase the graceful, cedar-sided Fisher Park house where we’re sitting, with its metal-picketed fence draped with ivy and thick-columned front porch festooned with wisteria.

Nowhere near it.

Not long after the Jacksons had moved into their first little house on Elmwood, they purchased property in Summerfield.

“Randy had always wanted a farm,” Jane explains.

“We had nothing on it,” Randy says. “Just land and a pond.”

One evening, while the Jacksons were attending a pop-up supper at a home in Irving Park, they noticed a picture of a

log cabin hanging over the fireplace. Seeing their interest, one of the guests commented, “There’s a cabin like that up in Virginia near Smith Mountain Lake.”

“Maybe you’d like something like that on your farm,” he added.

To which Jane replied, “I’d love that.”

The price for the log cabin was reasonable, but it would have to be dis mantled and moved to the Jacksons’ property.

“So I thought, maybe I could put it up!” Randy laughs. “I’m strong, I used to play football!”

After the cabin in Virginia had been thoroughly photographed and the logs meticulously numbered, it was Jane who followed the truck transporting them to Summerfield.

“Those logs aren’t what you see in tobacco barns,” Jane says. “They’re 16inch oak and chestnut.”

Thinking she’d like the cabin situated with a view of the pond, she guided the truck to that corner of the property to unload.

“They dumped them like a huge pile of pickup sticks!” Randy exclaims. “And each one of those pickup sticks weighed 300 or 400 pounds.”

Then Jane reconsidered. It was humid near the pond, she reflected, plus they didn’t own the land beyond, so there was no telling how the view might change in the future.

“I don’t feel good about this,” she said to Randy. The logs would have to be moved to another location.

“All I had was a Ford Bronco,” Randy says.

“So I bought an old tractor, a John Deere 1010,” Randy says. “I had a boom and chain I’d hook up to the three-point hitch on the back of the tractor, and I’d put the chain around a log, pick it up and drag it to the new location.” He placed the logs atop rocks to help prevent rot and arranged them by number.

“Sort of like the walls had fallen over,” Randy says. “It took forever.”

“We didn’t know what we were doing,” Jane adds.

They recruited their children on weekends to remove nails and pieces of tarpaper siding that had once covered the logs.

“The kids thought it was like prison camp,” Jane chuckles. “They’d call all their friends, trying to get them to come help.”

Eventually the Jacksons built a shelter to keep the old logs out of the rain. That was the first structure on the property.

Randy asks Jane if she remembers how long the process took.

“Six years,” Jane answers, and pauses. “You know, they built the Biltmore in six years.”

She’s right —1889 to 1895 — and we share a big laugh.

Finally, the time came when the Jacksons were ready to have a foundation built and begin erecting the logs. After much research and reading, Randy decided that the task might be more than he and his antique tractor could undertake.

While driving out U.S. Highway 220 at Guilford Courthouse National

Battleground Park, he’d noticed that a log barn and log house were being restored. One day when he saw men working, he decided to stop and speak with them.

There he introduced himself to the man who seemed to be supervising the work, Si Rothrock.

“I know where there’s a log house on the ground that has logs bigger and fatter than those logs,” Randy said to Rothrock. “Furthermore, the logs don’t have cathedral notches or half-dovetails, they have full dovetails.”

“You know where there’s a house like that?” Rothrock asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Randy said. “It’s only a few miles from here.”

Turns out, Rothrock was one of the owners of Reidsville Building Supply Co., a business founded in 1920 by Rothrock’s grandfather. Over the years, Rothrock had become an expert at restoring old log houses.

“He’s like a genius,” Randy says. “He could write books.”

Rothrock agreed to ride out to Summerfield with Randy to have a look. When they arrived, he began to examine the logs closely.

“This is a very rare thing you’ve got here,” Randy recalls Rothrock saying.

He told Randy because of the large size of the logs and the fact that they were fashioned with full dovetail corners, the

cabin likely was built by German workmen sometime before the Revolutionary War.

“Something like this shouldn’t be wasted,” Rothrock said. “Maybe somebody who knows something about it should put this up.”

Randy agreed.

The Jacksons tell me how they marveled at the craftsmanship of Rothrock’s subcontractors. They were rough-and-tumble country boys, but they were true artists in stone and wood.

“I loved watching the stone mason,” Jane says. “You wouldn’t believe how big those boulders he worked with were. He was unbelievable.”

“His name was Frank Norton,” Randy says. “He had the best eye.” Randy tells me how the cabin foundation looks like dry stack stone from the outside, but, in fact, is held by mortar on the inside.

Even with experienced, knowledgeable workmen, “it was a long, drawn-out process,” Randy says.

Some of the original logs were in such poor condition that replacements had to be made. Randy took this handiwork on himself, cutting trees on the property and shaping them using a broadaxe, just as German workmen would’ve done back in the day.

Cleaning the old logs, and fashioning and curing new ones

continued. Sometimes they were hoisted by crane into position, only to be lowered back down because the dovetails didn’t fit properly and had to be redone.

Jane recalls a plumber having trouble getting the right size elbow to install under the house. He came inside and asked to use the phone, not realizing that she could hear his conversation from the kitchen.

Jane remembers him saying to his buddy on the phone, “You won’t believe this place, it’s like The Beverly Hillbillies.”

There was a pause, and then he said, “No, before they got the crude.” Again, we enjoy a good laugh.

And the Jacksons continued to pitch in with the work. Jane installed the molding for the kitchen windows and trimmed the pantry. Randy concentrated on the never-ending task of chinking logs. They both sanded the floors by hand — some of them wood from the original cabin, some reclaimed lumber from an old schoolhouse.

“There’s absolutely nothing about this place that is anything but unusual,” Randy says.

The cabin had one bathroom. Up a stairway from the living room was a bedroom they called “the barracks,” which featured five single beds where they could pack in children coming home from college with their friends. And there was a snug little bedroom under the roofline of the kitchen. The Jacksons built a shed onto the cabin that begat another, including a large, bright sunroom.

“The house is like a chambered nautilus,” says Jane. “One thing after another.”

With the cabin now habitable and the children no longer at home, the Jacksons sold their Irving Park house and moved to Summerfield, where they remained full-time for 12 years. Daughter Alice was married at the farm. When grandchildren came along, they celebrated birthdays there and played in the pastures and woods.

“Why would you want to live anywhere else?” visiting friends would often ask the Jacksons.

Which brings us to the city house.

“Randy’s still practicing medicine then, and there’s a hospital merger,” Jane recalls.

That meant that he was on call to hospitals in Reidsville, Randleman, Siler City, Lake Norman, Statesville and elsewhere.

“Sometimes I’d be driving home after being up all night and fall asleep in the car,” Randy adds.

The Jacksons decided they needed a place in Greensboro, which is more centrally located. They were looking for a small townhome or even an apartment.

But when a tennis buddy told Randy about a home in Fisher Park on the market, the Jacksons decided to have a look in the neighborhood that had first attracted them.

“The way the house smelled, the way it looked, reminded me so much of my Grandma’s house,” Randy says. “She was the neat-

est lady.”

Though they knew they didn’t need the space, Randy and Jane decided they had to have this lovely old place.

“It’s an illness,” Jane laughs.

The house had once been on the Greensboro Symphony Guild’s Tour of Homes, and a News & Record article described the big front porch as its most impressive feature. The house was designed by Greensboro architect Raleigh James Hughes in the colonial revival style and was built about 1915 for F. P. Hobgood, a local attorney.

“A subsequent owner, Cadillac dealer E. B. Adamson, made considerable changes to the house in 1949,” the N&R article continues. Adamson oversaw the creation of “a 9-foot-wide hall that runs through the house and opens onto a backyard garden.”

“With its 10-foot ceiling, hardwood floor and spacious feel, the hall is the home’s second most dramatic feature,” the article concludes.

Most any visitor would agree.

While the Jacksons made improvements when they purchased the house in 2004, they’ve just recently finished another renova tion, converting a sleeping porch, small bathroom and what had been a study for a previous owner, retired Guilford College profes sor Bill Carroll, into a large master bedroom on the first floor — as had been specified in the architect’s original drawings — along with a spacious bathroom.

The Jacksons give me a tour. Jane points out the many windows and tells me how light floods the rooms, especially in the morning. They show me the new powder room for party guests, and where the Christmas tree gets placed in the hall for the holidays.

“We’ve been in this house as long as any house we’ve been in, other than the farm,” Randy says, as I’m preparing to leave.

“We love this place.”

“We goofed with the grandchildren, though,” Jane says.

There are six grandkids in all — three in Charlotte and three in Wilmington.

Randy explains that he’s asked the older grandchildren if he ever needed to sell the farm, would that be a problem? He tells me they solemnly informed him they would get together with their parents and buy the farm.

“With their allowances,” Jane adds, a twinkle in her eye.

“So many memories,” Randy says. “We could never sell the farm.” OH

Ross Howell Jr. is a contributing writer to O.Henry. His historical novel, Forsaken, is available at bookstores and online.

Bishop McGuinness Catholic High School

1725 NC Highway 66 South, Kernersville, NC 27284 (336) 564-1010 • www.bmhs.us

Focus: The largest private high school in the Triad. Outstanding college prep high school experience with exceptional academics, extracurricular activities and championship athletic teams. Aviation and Fine Arts programs. College Board AP Honor Roll Distinction. Full AP program with College Counseling Center. Class of 2022 awarded over 8MM in merit-based scholarships. Learning Support Program, All faiths welcome. Transportation available.

Grades: 9-12th • Enrollment: 462 • Student/Faculty: 8/1

Admission Requirement: Admission is on a rolling basis.

Tuition: $11,009-$15,005

Caldwell Academy

2900 Horse Pen Creek Road, Greensboro, NC 27410 (336) 665-1161 • www.caldwellacademy.org

Focus: The mission of Caldwell Academy is to assist parents from a biblical perspective in the instruction of their child by providing a classical and Christian education.

Grades: Transitional Kindergarten – 12th Grade Enrollment: 530 • Student/Faculty: 9/1

Admission Requirement: We invite those interested to come visit our campus to learn more about our school and community. After completing an application, appropriate academic assessments are administered followed by a family or parent interview.

Tuition: $7,164 - $14,808 depending on grade level

Greensboro Montessori School

2856 Horse Pen Creek Road, Greensboro, NC 27410 (336) 668-0119 • www.gms.org

Focus: Greensboro’s only accredited Montessori school where students achieve academic excellence through hands-on, experiential learning. Students organically develop real-world skills in creativity, leadership, problem solving, and social responsibility, so they’re empowered to positively impact the world.

Grades: Toddler (18 mos) to 9th grade • Enrollment: 260

Student/Faculty: Under 3 years, 6:1; 4 years and older, 11:1

Admission Requirement: Applicant families meet with the director of admission, complete an application, and submit relevant forms (e.g., development forms, teacher recommendations, etc.) based on the age of the applicant. Applicants 3 years and older visit classrooms. The deadline to apply for the 2023-24 school year is March 15, 2023.

Tuition: $8,580 - $20,232 (current school year)

Noble Academy

3310 Horse Pen Creek Road Greensboro, NC 27410 336.282.7044 • www.nobleknights.org

Focus: Noble Academy empowers students with learning differences to pursue their highest potential within a comprehensive, supportive educational environment.

Grades: 2 - 12 • Enrollment: 160 • Student/Faculty: 8/1

Admission Requirement: Average or above average intelligence, a dignosis of ADHD and/or a learning disability, including Central Auditory Processing Disorder and/or difficulties with one or more of the following: Attention, Processing speed or memory, Auditory processing, Executive functioning, Reading, Math, or Writing, and Academic fluency.

Tuition: $24,100 for Lower School, $24,500 for Middle and High School. Noble Academy can offer financial assistance to families that qualify. Noble Academy also accepts the Opportunity Scholarship and the ESA+.

B’nai Shalom Day School

804-A Winview Drive, Greensboro, NC 27410 (336) 855-5091 • www.bnai-shalom.org

Focus: Experiential Learning, Jewish Values, Student-Centered Learning

Grades: 8 wks - 8th grade Enrollment: 165

Student/Faculty: 8/1 *Lower depending on the age of Preschool students

Admission Requirement: K-8 students are required to be Jewish or have attended a Jewish Preschool. This is not a requirement for our Preschool program.

Tuition: $12,290-$19,630

Greensboro Day School

5401 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro, NC 27455 (336) 288-8590 • www.greensboroday.org

THE GDS EXPERIENCE

Age 2–Grade 12

• Commitment to student safety & well-being

• Exceptional preschool program

• Rigorous and exciting academic program

• Multitude of opportunities in athletics & the arts

• Beautiful 65-acre campus

Community Cornerstones: Respect. Kindness. Integrity. Responsibility.

Admission Requirement: Admission on a rolling basis.

Tuition: $10,955 to $26,280

New Garden Friends School

Preschool & Lower School: 1128 New Garden Rd. Middle & Upper School: 2015 Pleasant Ridge Rd. Greensboro, NC 27410 (336) 299-0964 • www.ngfs.org

Focus: The Triad’s only independent preschool through 12th grade school guided by Quaker faith and practice, and built upon the long-held standards of extraordinary Friends schools.

Grades: PK-12

• Enrollment: 258 • Student/Faculty: 8/1

Admission Requirement: Families are encouraged to visit. Rolling admissions. Application, report cards and/or transcripts, student visit, and essays for older students are required.

For details please see www.ngfs.org/admissions

Tuition: $8800-$25100

ALMANAC

OctoberFlickering Lights

By a shley walshe

October is the wisdom weaver, spinning the invisible to light, capturing the ephemeral, then letting it all go — again and again.

On this crisp autumn morning, waves of yellow leaves release themselves to the damp earth, and golden light illuminates a silver orb. Glistening with beads of dew, the spider web is a work of wonder. A series of concentric whorls and radial lines resembles the helm of an ancient ghost ship; the thumbprint of an unseen giant; a chandelier turned sideways. Dripping like crystals from tidy spirals of silk, hundreds of water droplets hold within them tiny worlds of ever-shifting beauty and light. Until the dew dries, each leaf falls 1,000 times. Until the dew dries, a hidden world is manifest.

The garden spider knows three things: creation, destruction and the space in-between. In other words: Nothing will last. She isn’t afraid of starting over.

In the evening, when the shadows take life and the owls cackle like witches gone mad, the black and yellow spider will swallow her own web. The same wind that sends colored leaves swirling will carry a fresh line of silk from one swaying tree to another, the bridge from which the weaver spins anew.

Tomorrow, the air will be cooler; the light, softer; the leaves, a brighter shade of gold. The spider, silent at the navel of her orb, will wait for her next cue. It’s neither time to build nor devour. And yet, the leaves continue to spill. The crows are roosting by the hundred. An invisible force is stirring, whirling at the center of all living things.

Before the first winter squash was gutted and carved to resemble a ghoulish floating head, early Irish immigrants fashioned jack-o’-lanterns from turnips and mangelwurzels (root vegetables used as fodder). Why? Tradition. And to ward off evil spirits, of course.

Have you ever seen a face hacked into a hollowed-out turnip? By comparison, our pumpkin “jacks” appear quite jolly. If you’re really trying to spook your neighbors this year, consider whittling a bushel of root veggies for the front porch. Or not.

Pumpkin Craft

Sure, you can roast the seeds (toss with oil and sea salt, then bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees). But what of all the pumpkin guts?

If you’re one to add pumpkin to everything but the compost pile — muffins, oatmeal, waffles, cookies, soup — try making a purée. It’s like pie filling, minus all the sugar and spices. And it’s pretty simple:

First, remove the seeds (you’re roasting them anyway, right?). Next, steam the pulp until it’s tender (about 30 minutes), let cool, then use a potato masher or food processor until pulp is smooth and creamy. Freeze the excess.

Yes, a sugar pumpkin will taste better. But a carvin’ pumpkin is more fun. OH

‘Only today,’ he said, ‘today, in October sun, it’s all gold — sky and tree and water. Everything just before it changes looks to be made of gold.’ — Eudora Welty, The Wide Net and Other Stories

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For all the seasons and all the memories for years to come.

Welcome to Fleet-Plummer, where you always find more than expected. For over 70 years Fleet-Plummer has been the destination for fireplace & hearth, outdoor furniture & grills, The Boutique, home decor, gifts, The Christmas Shop and so much more.

As one of Greensboro’s premier remodelers, Win-Win knows how to deliver from start to finish—with stunning designs, meticulous finishes, open communication, and a proven 9-step remodeling process. We specialize in transforming kitchens and bathrooms so they are on trend, yet still fit in seamlessly with the style of the home. Visit our website to see examples of our work and to get ideas for your own remodeling project. Then use our online form or give us a call to set up a no-obligation consultation.

beautiful, functional spaces and provide the quality products to finish the look. Best of all, our licensed, insured, locally owned and operated Re-Bath teams complete projects in days, not weeks. Schedule your free in-home consultation today.

Although conscientious efforts are made to provide accu rate and up-to-date information, all events are subject to change and errors can occur! Please call to verify times, costs, status and location before attending an event.

Weekly Events

MONDAYS

TOTAL BODY DANCE. 7–8 p.m. An adult fitness program consisting of cardio dance routines. Free. Lewis Recreation Center, 3110 Forest Lawn Drive, Greensboro. Info: greensboro-nc.gov (click on “events”).

WEDNESDAYS

ZUMBA IN THE PARK. 5:30–6:30 p.m. Shake and groove in this weekly class led by Velmy Liz Trinidad. Free. LeBauer Park, 208 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greensborodowntownparks.org/calendar.

GREENSBORO CHESS CLUB. 6–9 p.m. Enjoy chess on a social and competitive level. Free. Lewis Recreation Center, 3110 Forest Lawn Drive, Greensboro. Info: greensboro-nc.gov (click on “events”).

THURSDAYS

CYCLING CLUB. 6–8:30 p.m. Cyclists meet up for an easy downtown ride. Free. LeBauer Park, 208 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greensborodowntownparks.org/calendar.

FRIDAYS

TUNES @ NOON. 11 a.m.–2 p.m. Enjoy live music and food in Market Square. Free. LeBauer Park, 208 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greensboro downtownparks.org/calendar.

October Events

01 & 02

INCLUSIVE THEATRE. 4 p.m. & 2 p.m. The Community Theatre of Greensboro shares its OnStage & Inclusive Performance Showcase featuring actors of all abilities. Tickets: $10+. Greensboro Cultural Center, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: ctgso.org.

01

KEY VIRTUOSO. 8 p.m. AfricanAmerican classical musician Michelle Cann joins the Greensboro Symphony for a piano concerto. Tickets: $35+. Steven Tanger

Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: greensborosymphony.org/event.

CHRIS MEADOWS. 7 p.m. Rapper Chris Meadows performs with The Dark Knights, plus special guests Fresco From34 and Housewife; standing room only. Tickets: $7/advance; $15. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/events.

ARTIST TALK. 5:30–6:30 p.m. Hear from PRESENCE artists Roy Nydorf and William Paul Thomas. Free. GreenHill Center for NC Art, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greenhillnc.org/events.

MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM: 7:30–10 p.m. Shakespeare’s comedy comes to life on stage at UNCG. Taylor Theatre, 406 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: vpa.uncg.edu.

02

ART IN THE ARBORETUM. Noon–5 p.m. Stroll through the arboretum while perusing a juried art and fine craft show. Greensboro Arboretum, 401 Ashland Drive, Greensboro. Info: greensborobeautiful.org.

SITKOVETSKY & FRIENDS. 4 p.m. Greensboro Symphony Conductor and Violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky, joins violist Scott Rawls and cellist Alexander

Ezerman with pianist Michelle Cann. Tickets: $35. Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St., Greensboro. Info: greensborosymphony.org/event.

03

JOSHUA BELL. 8 p.m. Grammy-winning violinist Joshua Bell plays as part of the UNCG Concert and Lecture Series. Tickets: $5+. UNCG Auditorium, 408 Tate St. Info: vpa.uncg.edu/home/ucls-22-23.

04 – 23

REBELLIOUS. Times vary. This powerful world premiere production follows four Bennett Belles through the sit-in movement. Tickets: $15+. Triad Stage, 232 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: triadstage.org.

05

GARDEN LESSONS. 1–4 p.m. Learn about forecasting for your garden and flower arranging from experts, presented by Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs. Free. Sail Room, Greensboro Science Center, 4301 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro. Info: thegreensborocouncilofgardenclubs.com.

06 – 07

ASSEMBLY: 7 p.m. NC Dance Festival Trailblazer award-winner Tommy Noonan of Culture Mill presents the U.S. premiere of “Assembly.” Tickets: $15+. Greensboro Project Space, 111 E. February 1 Place, Greensboro. Info: danceproject.org/assembly.

06, 14 & 27

CARCERAL COUNTRY. 6–7:30 p.m. Investigate issues of social justice with authors, journalists and activists. Free. Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: scuppernongbooks.com/event.

07 – 23

GUYS AND DOLLS. 2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. Celebrate the golden era of Broadway with this classic musical comedy. Hanesbrands Theatre, 209 N. Spruce St., Winston-Salem. Info: ltofws.org.

07

SPIN THE CROWN. 6 p.m. Skaters gonna skate at a four-hour dance-skating event hosted by The Gentleman Boss and Katie Blvd. Tickets: $7/advance; $10. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/events.

08 – 09

ARTSTOCK. Times vary. Follow the red balloons to tour local artists’ work. Free. Greensboro. Info: artstocktour.com.

08 & 10

FEMALE COMPOSERS. 8 p.m., 7:30 p.m. Celebrating its 40th year, Bel Canto performs new favorites by women com posers. Tickets: $5+. First Presbyterian Church, 617 N Elm St, Greensboro. Info: belcantocompany.com.

08

DOWNTOWN GREENWAY RUN. 4–8 p.m. Run 4 miles or participate in a 1-mile fun run/walk and stay for a block party with music, prizes, games and activities. Registration: $25+. LoFi Park, 500 N. Eugene St., Greensboro. Info: downtowngreenway.org/events.

SCOTTISH MUSIC. 8 p.m. Scotland’s Tannahill Weavers play traditional music from their homeland. Tickets: $20+. High Point Theatre, 220 E. Commerce Ave., High Point. Info: highpointtheatre.com/events.

REAL TALK 8 p.m. The Real Talk Comedy Tour tells it like it is in a hilarious way. Tickets: $59.50+. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum.com/events.

N.C. DANCE FESTIVAL. 7:30 p.m. The mainstage performance of the NC Dance Festival delivers new and recent work by five professional choreographers. Van Dyke Performance Space, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: danceproject.org.

09

CHARLIE’S ANGELS. 4–7 p.m. The 5th Annual Charlie’s Angels Rett Syndrome Fundraiser features a silent auction, live music from Grand Ole Uproar, treats from Black Magnolia and princess appear ances. Tickets: $20; kids under 10, free. Double Oaks Bed & Breakfast. 204 N.

Mendenhall St., Greensboro. Info: facebook.com/events/375700261431575.

11 – 22

23 CHUNKS OF BEING: Gregory Price Grieve, head of UNCG’s religious studies department exhibits his retrospective works of art, including 40 years worth of photo-collages, paintings, sculptures, videos and installations. Greensboro Project Space, 111 E. February 1 Place, Greensboro. Info: vpa.uncg.edu.

11

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. 7:30 p.m. Celebrate the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, at a tribute concert. Tickets: $25+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

11, 22 & 26

CREEPY CLASSICS. 7 p.m. Get in the Halloween mood with a spirited

flick such as Hocus Pocus or Candyman. Tickets: $7. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/events.

12

ARTIST TALK. 6–7 p.m. Hear from PRESENCE artists Alia El-Bermani and Clarence Heyward. Free. GreenHill Center for NC Art, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greenhillnc.org/events.

13

COMEDY SHOW. 7:30 p.m. Comedian A-Train hosts Frankie Beverly and Maze plus several funny guests. Tickets: $76+. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum.com/events.

ARTIST TALK. 6 p.m. Hear Brooklyn-

based artist Shaun Leonardo, whose work inspires social change, give a talk. Free. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: weatherspoonart.org/calendar.

14 – 23

THE WEDDING SINGER. Head back to 1985 with this musical comedy fea turing a wedding singer with rock star dreams. Tickets: $15+. Starr Theatre, 520 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: ctgso.org.

14

URBAN BUSH WOMEN: 8 p.m. Urban Bush Women deliver an energetic and culture-rich dance as part of the UNCG Concert & Lecture Series. Tickets: $5+. UNCG Auditorium, 408 Tate St. Info: vpa.uncg.edu/home/ucls-22-23.

15 – 16

HOT WHEELS. Watch your favorite vehicles light up the arena in a Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Glow Party. Tickets: $22+. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum.com/events.

15

ABIGAIL DOWD. 7:30 p.m. The duo of Abigail Dowd and Jason Duff performs In the Crown with special guest Jane Kramer for a night of musical storytelling. Tickets: $20/advance; $25. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/events.

EVA NOBLEZADA. 8–10 p.m. Grammy winner Eva Noblezada sings her “Rainy Day Playlist” filled with “sad girl anthems.” Tickets: $35+. Greensboro Cultural Center, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: creativegreensboro.org.

LAY LAY. 6 p.m. Young Hip Hop star That Girl Lay Lay brings her Back 2 School Bash to the Gate City. Tickets: $40+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

GOLF TOURNAMENT. 9 a.m. Tee off at the inaugural Patriot Golf Classic Tournament to benefit PGA HOPE. Registration: $150/two-person team.

Gillespie Golf Course, 306 E. Florida St., Greensboro. Info: greensboro-nc.gov (click on “events”).

GHOST STORIES. 6–7:30 p.m. The High Point Museum shares ghost stories at Historical Park. Free. 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: highpointnc.gov/2329/Museum.

16

DIANA KRALL. 7:30 p.m. Grammywinning jazz singer Diana Krall shares her sultry voice. Tickets: $35.50+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

20

BRICKMAN ACROSS AMERICA. 7:30 p.m. Jim Brickman tickles the ivories with his greatest hits. Tickets: $35+. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/events.

BRYAN SERIES. 7:30 p.m. Tennis champion Venus Williams kicks off the Guilford College Bryan Series. Tickets available after season subscription sales end. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

21 – 25

LA TRAVIATA. Times vary. Ukrainian

diva Yulia Lysenko joins the Piedmont Opera for its production of La Traviata. Tickets: $20.36+. The Stevens Center of UNCSA, 4th St. N.W., Winston-Salem.

21

TYRUS LIVE! 7:30 p.m. Comedian, NWA wrestler and bestselling author Tyrus brings the laughs with opener Joe DeVito. Tickets: $45+. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/events.

22

MEN CAN COOK. 5:30–8:30 p.m. Famous (in their own kitchens) male chefs, local libations, live entertainment and a silent auction come together in support of the Women’s Resource Center. Tickets: $50. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: womenscentergso.org.

HIDDEN TRUTH OF BLACK WALL STREET. 8 p.m. Learn the uncut truth about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 in this thought-provoking production.

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The Honor Card - 35 Years

Raising awareness and funds for the needy and homeless.

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A $5 Honor Card is an inspiring way to recognize a client, friend or family member and give a meaningful gift to someone in need.

Through Bill’s unique vision and talented hands, thousands of lives have been changed by the power of the Honor Card. It is an extraordinary and poignantly human story.

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Calendar

Casting

Tickets: $42.50+. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/events.

DAVID SEDARIS. 8 p.m. New York Times bestselling author and humorist David Sedaris spends an evening reading his cheerfully misanthropic stories. Tickets: $50+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

CASTING CROWNS 7:00 p.m. The contemporary Christian band brings The Healer Tour to the Gate City, with special guests CAIN and Ann Wilson. Tickets: $27+. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum.com/events.

23

EAST OF NASHVILLE. 4 p.m. Songwriters Nikki Morgan, Bobbie Needham and Colin Cutler take the stage In the Crown. Tickets: $10/advance; $12. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolina theatre.com/events.

CHRISTIAN NODAL. 8 p.m.. Latin Grammy-winning singer Christian Nodal comes to the Coliseum with his Forajido Tour. Tickets: $62+. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City

Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum.com/events.

25

IRON MAIDEN. 7:30 p.m. The heavy metal band rocks the Gate City, with special guest Within Temptation. Tickets: $39.50+. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum.com/events.

25 – 29

WILLIAM SUITS. Explore the works of William Mangum Awardee William Suits. Greensboro Project Space, 111 E. February 1 Place, Greensboro. Info: vpa.uncg.edu.

25 – 30

BIG SHOW. HUGE. Fall in love all over again at Pretty Woman: The Musical. Tickets: $29+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.

26

NIGHTS AT THE IMPROV. 6:30–8:30 p.m. Kick off a four-week intensive improvisational workshop. Registration: $155. Little Theatre of Winston-Salem Classroom, 419 N. Spruce St., WinstonSalem. Info: ltofws.org/adult-classes.

27

PAPER PERSONA. 5:30–6:30 p.m. Jaymie Meyer leads an art and wellness workshop in which attendees will create paper dolls embodying aspirations for renewal. Registration required: $10/ members, $15/nonmembers. GreenHill Center for NC Art, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greenhillnc.org/events.

28

STEP UP. 7 p.m. Drankins hosts Ain’t No Half Steppin, the 2022 Aggie Homecoming Step Show. Tickets: $50. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum.com/events.

CURATOR TALK. 3–3:45 p.m. Weatherspoon curator Emily Stamey looks at past and present contexts for the artworks in Gilded. Free. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: weatherspoonart.org/calendar.

29

LIL BABY. 7:30 p.m. The 2022 Aggie Homecoming Concert features Lil Baby plus special guests Chlöe Nardo Wick and Glorilla. Tickets: $69.50+. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum.com/events.

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS. 10 a.m.–2 p.m. Learn about the Latin American holiday that originated in Mexico. Free.

David

Dia De Los Muertos 10.29.2022

1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: highpointnc.gov/2329/Museum.

AMAZED: 7:30 p.m. Country band Lonestar delivers rich melodies and strong vocals. Tickets: $40+. High Point Theatre, 220 E. Commerce Ave., High

Point. Info: highpointtheatre.com/events.

OPUS. 7:30–9:30 p.m. Creative Greensboro’s Opus Concert Series kicks off its fall season with the Choral Society of Greensboro. Free. Virginia Somerville Sutton Theatre at Well Spring, 4100 Well Spring Drive, Greensboro. Info: creativegreensboro.com.

30

HOMECOMING GOSPEL CONCERT.

6 p.m. Tye Tribett with special guest Le’Andria Johnson perform headline the Aggie Homecoming Gospel Concert. Tickets: $29.50+. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum. com/events. OH

Lonestar 10.29.2022

To submit an event for consideration, email us at ohenrymagcalendar@gmail.com

by the first of the month

ONE MONTH PRIOR TO THE EVENT.

1738 Battleground Ave

Irving Park Plaza Shopping Center

Greensboro, NC

A LIVE DANCE PERFORMANCE Join the Fred Astaire Dance Studios for its semiannual showcase of amateur and professional ballroom dancers. Experience stunning costumes, great music, amazing dancing, and energy that only a live performance can offer.

The Carolina Theatre October 15, 2022 ~ 6 PM

Tickets are $25 (includes tax and fees) available at The Carolina Theatre Box Office ~ www.carolinatheatre.com ~ (336 333-2605 Fred Astaire Dance Studios Greensboro ~ www.fredastaire.com/greensboro/tickets (336) 379-9808

Arts & Culture

URBAN BUSH WOMEN OCTOBER 14

The Art & Soul of Greensboro O.Henry 131 a dance company whose works weave contemporary dance, music, and text with history, culture, and spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora

JOSHUA BELL OCTOBER 3 FOR TICKETS VISIT UCLS.UNCG.EDU

one of the most celebrated violinists of our time, in recital

GreenScene

MUSEP season finale show

Creative Greensboro Sunday, August 28, 2022

Photographs by CC Kallam

Johnetta Dawson & her grandkids Prince Clemons (8) & Kyrie Cofield (8)

Meredith Gornto

John Bambic, Aldo & Barbara Bambic

Emanuel Wynter

Jonathan Permar & Ryan Milligan

Dominique Bradley & Doreen Kaphalanya Bahm

LaTrinda Moore

Emanuel Wynter

GreenScene

GSO Food Truck Fest Sunday, August 28, 2022

Photographs by CC Kallam

Smith Family: Michael Smith, MJ Smith, Chantz McElratz, Malaysia Smith

Morgan Rigsbee & Daniel White Baylee Dockery

Finn Phoenix

Victoria Wiley

Jordyn Sosa, Martin Searcy, Empress Cox

Ivan Alvarez & Julianne Paris

Isaiah Brooks (8 months) & Kaitlyn Brooks

Ronnie & Damaris Staton

Leslie Garcia & Gina Cazares

Malieja Burke & Rasheed Burke

Pamela Brunk & Andy Brunk

Gwen Jones & Irving Jones

134 O.Henry The Art & Soul of Greensboro Sanjaya Bolton, Bria Maiden & Kimyatta B.

Kristy Woodson Harvey

Join O.Henry magazine at The Colonnade at Revolu tion Mill, Greensboro, as we host Kristy Woodson Har vey, a New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including Under the Southern Sky and The Peachtree Bluff Series. Following drinks and hors d’oeuvres, she'll share stories from her latest novel, The Wedding Veil. Set at the Biltmore, this historical-contemporary novel is about Edith and Cornelia Vanderbilt, a present-day family, and the famous, missing Vanderbilt veil.

Tickets are on sale now and include beverages, hors d’oeuvres from Pepper Moon Catering, Q & A with the author, and book signing.

(The Wedding Veil will be available for purchase.)

6

8

The Colonnade at Revolution Mill 900 Revolution Mill Drive Greensboro, NC 27405

Supported

— Parade.com

"One of the hottest new Southern writers."

O.Henry Ending

Good and Dead

And totally down-to-earth

Our neighbors are the best. They’re very quiet, very private — I’ve never actually seen them. But I should mention that they’re also quite dead.

Last spring, my husband and I, newlyweds, moved into an RV near Lake James as sort of a romantic venture. We live at the end of a private drive shared with other RVers (mostly weekend warriors) and a few retirees with swanky prefabs and sweeping views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Our view is a little different. Just beyond the camper’s eastfacing windows — and I do mean just beyond them — 11 white crosses are staggered among windswept pines, a sparse fringe of mountain laurel and a dusting of vibrant moss. Most of the crosses are wooden, one is broken; a handful are PVC replicas. Two actual headstones, weatherworn as the crooked trees, blend in with the rugged landscape.

The site is decidedly understated. No fencing; no benches; no fancy signage. Propped against the base of a lichen-laced pine, a wooden plank marks “Dobson Cemetery” in handpainted lettering.

I make it a point to greet the Dobsons each day, same as I would any neighbors. There’s Alexander (d. 1876), who lived to be 83; and Cora J. (obviously dead but stone illegible); and about a dozen others. Lord knows how many bones rest six feet below. But I find comfort in the Dobsons’ quiet presence. So far as I can tell, they don’t seem to mind ours.

My fascination with cemeteries began six years ago while visiting my great aunt in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Shirley was dying of bone cancer, and I was there to help her sort through her worldly possessions. It was a tender time.

While Shirley was facing her mortality in a literal sense, I was navigating a different kind of loss: a heart-wrenching breakup. After supper, I’d venture down the street for a stroll through one of the city’s oldest burial grounds, Lakeview Cemetery. There, perhaps for obvious reasons, my grief felt welcome. Yet so did my dreams of a full and happy life. As I wove among the ancient trees and motley gravestones — the living and the dead — my perspective shifted. We’re not here for long. What will we do with the time we’ve got?

Which brings me back to our camper with a view.

We see our share of white-tailed deer. Birds come and go. But you can imagine we don’t get a ton of human foot traffic back here. We’d had none, in fact, until the other morning.

We were dining on the back deck when our neighbor — a live one from a few lots down — appeared like an apparition amidst the wooden crosses. Our startled dog went ballistic.

“Sorry to disrupt your brunch,” Dave chimed as he tromped heavily through the lot. Despite having lived here for over two years, he’d never felt inclined to visit the cemetery until hearing that the Dobsons “may or may not” be related to Daniel Boone.

He came. He saw. He seemed utterly unimpressed. We returned to our peaceful graveside picnic.

That our dead neighbors might be kin to an American trail blazer certainly intrigued me, but after a bit of fruitless digging — online, mind you — I gladly surrendered the search. The way I see it, they’ve all crossed the veil into that good night. They’re all pioneers. Besides, it’s often the mystery that keeps life interesting.

On that note, dear neighbors, I’m really glad you’re here. I hope you won’t mind if I keep saying hi. But it’s really OK if you don’t answer. OH

Ashley Walshe is a former editor of O.Henry magazine and a long time contributor of PineStraw.

Story and Photogra Ph by a Shley WalShe