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September 2020 DEPARTMENTS 11 Simple Life By Jim Dodson
14 Short Stories 15 Doodad By Nancy Oakley 17 Life’s Funny
By Maria Johnson
FEATURES 43 Weary
Poetry by Ruth Moose
44 Mural, Mural on the Wall
By Maria Johnson Raman Bhardwaj sends big messages with oversize art
20 The Omnivorous Reader
52 Fair Winds and Following Seas
23 Scuppernong Bookshelf 24 Spirits
56 Etched in Stone
By Stephen E. Smith
By Tony Cross
28 Home by Design By Cynthia Adams
30 The Sporting Life By Tom Bryant
By John Wolfe USCGC Diligence departs Wilmington By Cynthia Adams Flagstone Farm fuses past and present
69 Almanac
By Ash Alder
32 The Pleasures of Life Dept. By Honor Jones Garrett
37 Birdwatch
By Susan Campbell
39 Wandering Billy By Billy Eye
80 O.Henry Ending By Chris Burritt
Cover photograph by Lynn Donovan Photograph this page by Amy Freeman 4 O.Henry
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Fine Eyewear by Appointment 327 South Elm | Greensboro 336.274.1278 | TheViewOnElm.com Becky Causey, Licensed Optician
INSPIRE.. INSPIRE SOUTH END
Charlotte. A lot of inspiring encounters will leave you wondering how you’ve never experienced them before. Local muralist Nick Napoletano’s brilliant work is generating positivity during these uncertain times. Whether you’re letting your imagination run wild or marveling at something truly amazing, these cultural masterpieces will awaken your inner artist. charlottesgotalot.com
@ charlottesgotalot
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M A G A Z I N E
Volume 10, No. 9 “I have a fancy that every city has a voice.” 336.617.0090 1848 Banking Street, Greensboro, NC 27408 www.ohenrymag.com PUBLISHER
David Woronoff Jim Dodson, Editor jim@thepilot.com Andie Stuart Rose, Creative Director andie@thepilot.com Nancy Oakley, Senior Editor nancy@ohenrymag.com Lauren M. Coffey, Associate Art Director Alyssa Rocherolle, Graphic Designer CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Cynthia Adams, David Claude Bailey, Harry Blair, Maria Johnson CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
Mallory Cash, Lynn Donovan, Amy Freeman, Sam Froelich, John Gessner, Bert VanderVeen, Mark Wagoner CONTRIBUTORS
Here for you In these unprecedented times, it is important that you know we’re committed to providing you the financial access, guidance, and support you need during this rapidly evolving situation. Through digital, mobile, and by phone, Wells Fargo Advisors is here, and we continue to serve you and support our communities so that you can focus on what matters most — caring for your family’s health and safety.
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Branch Manager 806 Green Valley Rd. Greensboro, NC 27408 Phone: 336-545-7100
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8 O.Henry
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Jack Andrews, Frank Daniels Jr., Frank Daniels III, Lee Dirks, David Woronoff © Copyright 2020. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. O.Henry Magazine is published by The Pilot LLC The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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O.Henry 9
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Simple Life
Unexpected September
And the art of rolling with the punches
By Jim Dodson
Not long ago, my daughter took a new
job and moved with her fiancé from New York City to Los Angeles, or as I try not to think of it, from the Covid frying pan to the Coronavirus fire. If anybody can handle it wisely, on the other hand, it’s probably Maggie and Nate. Both are experienced travelers and savvy outdoor adventurers who’ve seen just about everything from the urban jungle to the wilds of Maine. During the first few days of their residency in the hills east of downtown LA, in fact, Mugs (as I call her) sent me a photograph of a large rattlesnake. It was casually crossing the footpath of the nature preserve near their house, where she was taking an afternoon hike with a friend and her dogs. Being a gal who grew up in the woods of Maine, she didn’t seem particularly rattled by the encounter, as it were — just respectful. “It kind of freaked the dogs but we were on the snake’s turf, after all. We just let him pass.” A few days later, she phoned to let her old man know she and Nate had awakened to a gently shaking house. “Our first earthquake,” she pronounced with a nervous little laugh. At week’s end, she phoned again to let me know they’d already put together an “earthquake emergency kit in case the Big One everybody predicts may happen soon.” Once again, she didn’t sound particularly vexed, merely bracing for whatever the world might throw at them — and us — next. During a year in which a runaway killer virus has delayed, cancelled, locked down or put on hold every aspect of “normal” American life — whatever shred of meaning that phrase still holds — I’m impressed with my daughter’s coolness under fire, an ability to keep calm and carry on as British citizens were famously advised to do on posters in 1939 as their world dissolved into World War. Factor in 2020’s long overdue racial awakening, massive social
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
protests in the streets, a collapsed economy and a presidential election that is shaping up to challenge the very foundations of our representative democracy and you have a formula for — well, who can really say? A friend I bumped into at the grocery store recently told me her daughter was depressed because her wedding has been canceled due to the virus. Somewhere I later read that almost half of the scheduled weddings for 2020 have either been postponed, rescheduled or simply canceled. “It’s as if tomorrow has been put on hold until further notice,” lamented my friend. “God only knows what the future holds.” It visibly perked her up a bit, however, when I casually mentioned that my own daughter’s wedding was in the same boat, a victim of these unexpected times — either proof that we’re all in this hot mess together or misery loves company, take your pick. Mugs and Nate were to be married later this month at the lovely old Episcopal Church summer camp outside Camden, Maine, where she and her younger brother spent many happy summer weeks as kids. They’d rented the entire camp and we were planning to decorate its cabins for guests to stay in rustic splendor as an option to local pricey inns. Two families were looking forward to several days of feasting on local seafood, songs around the campfire and watersports by day, with yours truly all set to don a camp sweatshirt and whistle to serve as de facto camp director, my first summer camp gig since scouting days. Instead, wisely, they postponed the blessed event until the same third weekend in September one year from now. The date stays the same because September in the North Country is exquisite, probably “as good as life and weather get,” as my sweet former Maine neighbor lady used to declare every year around Labor Day. During the two decades we resided there, in fact, I fondly came to think of September as the glorious “End of Luggage Rack Season” because as the weather cools and leaves turn, the summer tourists O.Henry 11
Simple Life REAL ESTATE IS LOCAL. SO IS KAREN.
“I love Greensboro! I moved here 21 years ago thinking it would be a 2 year stop on the way to a bigger city. It became home quickly to me and my three children and we never left!” When it comes to selling your home, no one in the Greensboro area does it better than Karen and the team at TR&M. Local experts, global reach. Call 336.274.1717 or visit trmhomes.com today.
12 O.Henry
suddenly pack up and head for home — a brief respite before bus loads of elderly “leafpeepers” begin to roll into the Pine Tree State for their annual October invasion. However brief, the sense of relief is palpable and the gift to residents is twofold. Summer’s end means local merchants’ pockets are full of wampum, and locals can safely venture into town to see old friends or visit uncrowded restaurants where the cost of a decent shore supper sometimes drops by a third. Back on our forested hilltop west of town, meanwhile, surrounded by 600 acres of birch, beech and hemlock, I always found September days to be among the most peaceful and productive of the year. These were times when I was at my writing desk by dawn’s early light and spent my afternoons mowing grass or tending to my late garden or finishing up my woodpile for winter. I never missed a chance to pause and marvel at September’s golden afternoon light and the telltale scents of summer’s end. Sometimes, if I sat long and still enough on the bench of my “Philosopher’s Garden” at the edge of the forest, a small procession of local residents would appear, including a trio of wild turkeys and a stunning pheasant, a large lady porcupine and a family of whitetail deer. Once, unexpectedly, a large iridescent green dragonfly landed on the back of my hand as I sat on the bench, a creature from Celtic myth, allowing me to examine him — or her — up close and personal. I remember asking this divine creature where it might be headed but got no answer. After a while, on a puff of early evening wind, like summer itself, it flew away. It’ll be 20 years next September since my wife and I sealed our own summer wedding vows by holding our reception the same third weekend of September that Maggie and Nate scheduled for their wedding this year. Maine-loving minds must think alike. Wendy and I calculated that late September — the autumnal equinox — would be the ideal time to invite far-flung friends and family from Carolina to California to come to Maine and help us finish our vows and kick up their heels beneath a full hunter’s moon. We hired a wonderful Irish The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Simple Life string band and our friend Paul to put on one of his spectacular lobster bakes for an unforgettable evening on the lawn. But something unforgettable and unexpected happened that September. Ten days before the party, as I was buying chrysanthemums at my favorite nursery on Harpswell Road on a perfect September morning, chatting with the owner as she rang up my purchases, her face suddenly went pale. I asked what was wrong. She simply pointed to the small TV playing on the wall behind me. It was 8:50 in the morning and smoke was billowing from the side of the North Tower of Manhattan’s World Trade Center. “A plane just flew into the top of that building,” was all she could manage. I stood watching with other shoppers for a few minutes then drove home wondering how such a horrible thing could possibly have happened. Ten minutes later, after I unloaded the flowers and went inside to turn on the TV, I got my answer, tuning in seconds before a second airplane flew straight into the South Tower of the Trade Center. You know the rest of this story, the single deadliest terror attack in human history that claimed more than 3,000 lives and changed so much about this country. Like Maggie and Nate, within a day, Wendy and I decided to postpone our wedding celebration for a year. We cancelled the Irish band and the lobster bake and phoned more than 100 friends to break the news. They understood completely. Not unlike this summer of Covid-19, travel was severely restricted and most Americans simply wished to stay glued to their TV sets in the wake of 9/11’s unspeakable horrors. Something else unexpected happened, though. After days of numbing news-watching, our phones began to ring with friends near and far wondering if they could still come to Maine for a visit. The phones kept ringing, the list kept growing. The reception was suddenly back on — and evidently needed by all. In the end, nearly 150 souls unexpectedly showed up that September night to share our vows in a circle of hands, to dance in the moonlight, eat steamed lobster and vanish every crumb of Dame Wendy’s amazing wedding cake (which, for the record, the groom never even got a taste of). At a moment when we needed it most, we were all there for each other, to laugh, cry, dance and simply be circled in love. It was an unforgettable night after all. “Most people want to be circled by safety, not by the unexpected,” authors Ron Hall and Denver Moore write in Same Kind of Different as Me, the moving 2006 bestseller about an unlikely friendship between a wealthy international art dealer and an angry Fort Worth homeless man that transformed both their lives. “The unexpected can take you out,” they note. “But the unexpected can also take you over and change your life. Put a heart in your body where a stone used to be.” That’s my wish for all of us this unexpected September, by the way — to find a heart where a stone used to be. OH Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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O.Henry 13
hor Short Stories Radiant Beams
Kudos to frequent O.Henry contributor Terri Kirby Erickson, whose new collection of poetry, A Sun inside my Chest, will be released next month by WinstonSalem’s Press 53. After losing both parents within a space of six months, Erickson arrived at the volume’s title, an affirmation “that love lives on, like a sun inside us, filling our hearts with warmth and light.” The sentiment is captured on the book’s brilliant cover, created by Erickson’s uncle, painter Stephen White and, of course, in each poem, which she says “expresses love in every form.” Look for more poetry by Terri Kirby Erickson, among the pages of this magazine’s October issue.
More Is Morehead
It’s been 40-odd years since Preservation Greensboro has published a new book, so we’re delighted to see the arrival of Governor Morehead’s Blandwood: A History & Catalog. With colorful photos and essays by PGI President Benjamin Briggs, Catherine Bishir, Judith Cushman Hammer, and a preface by Robert Leath, formerly of Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), the tome reveals the illustrious history, architecture and decorative arts of a 220-year-old American classic — right in downtown Greensboro’s own backyard. Speaking of backyards, have a look at some lovely local oases with PGI’s annual but first-ever virtual Historic Tour of Homes and Gardens. To learn more, turn to page 74 or visit preservationgreensboro.org. *Given the unusual circumstances currently facing all events and their organizations, anyone planning to attend any program, gathering or competition should check in advance to make certain it will happen as scheduled.
14 O.Henry
Get Your Kicks . . .
Steps, leaps, twirls or however you choose to shake your groove thing, and share your signature moves on September 19, aka National Dance Day GSO. Launching the 30th anniversary of NC Dance Festival, presented by the Gate City’s Dance Project, the event is virtual this year with recorded video segments of the dance groups’ performances in or around LeBauer and Center City Parks. The full complement of 30- to 60-second spots will be unveiled to the public on October 24, giving you the option to sit it out or dance alongside the moving images. As the song goes: We hope you dance. Info: danceproject.org.
À la Mode
The show must go on! And in the case of the 11th Annual Restoration Runway Fashion Show — it will! Rescheduled from March, the runway show will stream live on Friday night, September 25, at 7 p.m. A private streaming link will be available to all ticket holders, who will also receive Watch Party Kits filled with treats such as catering-to-go by 1618 On Location and dessert by Tha Cookie Pusha. A virtual photo booth, hosted by Joy Squad, will create a sense of community experienced at live events. Benefiting Restoration Place Counseling, event proceeds will subsidize as many as 3,000 professional counseling sessions. Executive Director Cindy Mondello says, “We’re grateful for those who support our mission, especially now, considering the huge impact of the pandemic on mental health.” Want to get in on the fashion action? Tickets are still available, including a new $30 option for the private viewing link only: BidPal.net/2020vision or (336) 542-2060 ext. 102. — Waynette Goodson The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Cri de Kora
Doodad
This year’s FolkFest is one for the ages
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BRENDAN MCLEAN
The Astrological Outlook for Pure Perfection
Wouldja look at those bookshelves full of tomes neatly arranged by size and color? That’s the handiwork of a Virgo, who does everything by the . . . book. Ruled by logical Mercury, these meticulous perfectionists love to plan, organize, make lists, dot i’s and cross t’s — and drive the rest of us nuts. Keenly aware that God — and the devil — are in the details, they make great engineers, managers and editors (believe us!), though they often overlook the proverbial forest for the trees. Perhaps because they’re so fond of trees, being attuned to nature and the physical; if they’re not tending gardens or hiking on woodsy trails, Virgos are striking yoga poses, trying out the latest diet fads, reaching for hand sanitizer and chiding you to wear a face mask, their pragmatic way of showing they care. Symbolized by the Earth goddess of the harvest — OK, “virgin,” so knock it off with the snickering and ban any thoughts of chastity belts — these folks are also the, ummm, other kind of earthy. Remember the sight of soaking-wet Virgo Colin Firth in BBC’s Pride and Prejudice mini series? Twenty-five years on, female hearts are still aflutter. Or how ’bout September-born Idris Elba flashing a seductive smile as People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive? Or sultry Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not: “You do know how to whistle, don’t cha? Just put your lips together and . . . blow.” Yowza! So sweet are the vibes this month at the Pisces full moon on September 1st, that Virgos might not even notice warrior Mars nodding off for a retrograde phase on the 9th, or happy-golucky Jupiter waking up from his own Rx nap on the 12th. Nah! They can’t help but notice. Every. Little. Thing. Because little things do matter — and inevitably lead to something big. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
“B
and, we’re ready for sound check!” At the announcement, Diali Cissokho (pronounced “Djelly Seeso-ko), sporting a colorful tunic in contrast to the black-clad production crew, strides down an embankment to the “stage” with its spectacular backdrop of horses, a majestic tiger and 54 other elaborately hand-carved and painted creatures of The Rotary Club of Greensboro Carousel that opened last month at Greensboro Science Center. Cissokho, a native of Senegal who makes Pittsboro his home, hoists a kora, an instrument made from hollowed-out calabash (bottle gourd), and positions it so the strings on its unusually long neck are facing him. Meanwhile the members of his band Kaira Ba, who look like any other dudes you might see in a Southern jam band, take up their own instruments. “They’re all N.C.-born and-bred,” says Amy Grossmann, director of the NC FolkFest. She goes on to explain that all of the musical acts for this year’s festival have some connection to Old North State. With Covid-19, out-of-state bands stayed put and FolkFest organizers decided to go virtual. But, adds volunteer and board member Denny Kelly, “It builds community.” From late July to mid-August, organizers filmed 10 bands in 10 different locations throughout the Triad: Rissi Palmer at Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum in Sedalia; Chatham County Line at the Old Mill of Guilford; Charlie Hunter at Center City Park. The Hamiltones, says Kelly, belted out heartfelt songs, pretending to engage a nonexistent audience in front of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum. Each two-hour segment will be introduced by a host delivering remarks about the filming location and streamed September 11, 12 and 13. Kelly suspects local music fans will gather for watch parties and Grossmann concurs: “A hundred years from now, people could be watching.” After Greensboro Science Center Director Glenn Dobrogosz makes remarks to the camera extolling the carousel as the “crown jewel” of the center’s $14.5 million expansion, Diali Cissokho and Kaira Ba take the mics again, and sweet, clear, harplike notes emanate from his kora, while he sings softly building to a crescendo, songs about learning, loss and racial unity, an artist’s cri de coeur — or cri de kora in this case. “We all go in the same direction,” he says, while the carousel whirs around, its mirrored panels flickering in one continuous wheel of art, music, light and life. Info: This year’s folkfest will be available on several channels, including GTN, YouTube and mugs.net. For information please visit ncfolkfestival.com. O.Henry 15
5019 BEARBERRY POINT
908 DOVER
Lake Jeanette at The Point. Wonderful brick home with Master on main plus 2 other main level bedrooms. Living Room with vaulted ceiling, Master with trey ceiling. Custom moldings, open Kitchen/Breakfast Room. Upper level with large Bonus Room & Bath plus Office. 2-car attached garage. Lots of storage.
Prime Greensboro Country Club location! Master on main level. Abundant options for entertaining and quiet time. Lower level offers flexibility for the kids hobbies, storage & more. Many updates including trey and vaulted ceilings, hardwood floors & more. Deck/lower level overlook the golf course!
SOLD
Chesnutt - Tisdale Team
Xan Tisdale Kay Chesnutt 336-601-2337 336-202-9687 Xan.Tisdale@bhhsyostandlittle.com Kay.Chesnutt@bhhsyostandlittle.com
www.kaychesnutt.bhhscarolinas.com
Š2019 BHH Affiliates, LLC. An independently operated subsidiary of HomeServices of America, Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate, and a franchisee of BHH Affiliates, LLC. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices symbol are registered service marks of HomeServices of America, Inc.Ž Equal Housing Opportunity.
16 O.Henry
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Life's Funny
Hanging with Coneheads How to lick a pandemic
By Maria Johnson
Are you ready for a scoop or two of good news?
Then lean in for the story of Ozzie’s, a Greensboro ice cream shop owned by local educators Adam and Betsy Greer. In case you’ve never been to Ozzie’s, you’ll find it on Old Battleground Road, near the national military park, in a space that used to hold a cross-training gym. These days, folks come to lift waffle cones, floats and sundaes instead of kettle bells. You’ll see Ozzie’s customers — a diverse lot by age, race and favorite flavor — fanned out across the broad lawn, posted up at picnic tables, folded into lawn chairs and perched on blankets. In the parking lot, some dangle their legs from tailgates while others hunker inside the ultimate personal protective equipment — their cars — within view of their neighbors but out of breath’s reach. With masks at ease, they lap up glistening globes of Honey Roasted Peanut Butter, Mint Moose Tracks, Dark Chocolate Raspberry Truffle and other ice creams churned out by the Blue Bell and Hershey’s brands. In a year when many businesses have been choked — if not outright suffocated — by Covid-19, Ozzie’s thrives because of many threads that wound together as the pandemic gained steam. Shop owner Adam Greer starts the story earlier this year, one night in February. He was walking the family dog. His cell phone rang. It was someone from Cobb Animal Clinic, next door to Ozzie’s former location, farther south on Old Battleground Road. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
They wanted to talk about parking. Adam understood. Ever since 2014, when the Greers bought the ice cream shop thinking it would be a good source of sideline income and a great place for their five kids to learn about business, parking had been a pain. When the shop’s 10 spaces filled up, cars spilled over into the veterinarians’ lot. The Greers asked people not to park there, but they did anyway. The phone call was cordial, but Adam was panicked by the time he hung up. He needed to change something, but he didn’t want Ozzie’s to lose its location beside the A&Y Greenway, a popular hiking and biking route. And he didn’t want to move to a shopping center, which he thought would rob the store of its charm. Named for a diner that the Greer family frequented while they were on a church mission to Jinja, Uganda, in 2010 and ’11, Ozzie’s was meant to re-create the laid-back, good-to-see-you, linger-as-longas-you-like vibe of the cafe. Place was important. Adam — who works full-time as lead administrator at The Covenant School, a private Christian academy housed at Centenary United Methodist Church — hopped in his truck and drove past the ice cream shop, hoping for inspiration in a string of commercial buildings up Old Battleground Road. Hope winked in a “For Rent” sign, which Adam later learned had been put up the day before. He toured the former gym the next day. He and his wife Betsy, who works at Caldwell Academy and Hope Chapel church, agreed on signing a lease the following week. The family descended to up fit the new location. “The kids painted and laid tile,” says Adam. “In some ways, it was fun for us.” O.Henry 17
Life's Funny
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18 O.Henry
Meanwhile, in March, Covid-19 clenched the country, and business at the original Ozzie’s slowed to a trickle. Then came the full force of spring. “As the weather turned, it began to pick up,” says Adam. “People were looking for something fun to do that didn’t cost a fortune.” It didn’t hurt that people itching for exercise flooded the greenway, as well as the adjoining necklace of parks: Jaycee Park, Country Park and Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. When Ozzie’s opened the new location at the end of April, sales ballooned, partly because of Covid boredom, partly because of proximity to the parks, and partly because of the shop’s roomier digs. “A lot of customers have said they didn’t go to the old location because it was harder to get in and out,” he says. Adam admits it feels weird for Ozzie’s to flourish in a year when so many other small businesses suffer. “For that, I’m sad,” he says. “It’s a ton of work, and it’s hard to make money.” But he’s happy that his shop provides a wholesome place for people to gather at a distance. There are several tables inside the new parlor, but most people gravitate to the lawn, where they can drift apart, yet knit together loosely — if only around the primitive pleasures of summer shade, a dollop of creamy sweetness, the nod and smile of a stranger. The Greers stress to their teenage employees the importance of being upbeat and welcoming to all who mask and queue inside for a cone. “We want to be a blessing, a bright spot,” he says. “One of the things Covid has done is help us understand the importance of community. I think that’s the way the Lord made us: We crave community.” And occasionally, a scoop of Sea Salt Caramel. OH Info: ozziesicecream.com Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. She can be reached at ohenrymaria@gmail.com The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Private Enclave
5308 FITZHUGH TRAIL | SUMMERFIELD
For more information about these homes, or for help selling your home, call Kathy at 336-339-2000
Kathy Haines
Realtor/Broker
Krista Stevens Photography
Krista Stevens Photography
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O.Henry 19
The Omnivorous Reader
The Write Stuff
What makes memorable writing work? By Stephen E. Smith
“These are the times that try men’s
souls.” “The world will little note nor long remember . . .” “A date which will live in infamy . . .” “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
The right words arranged in the best order have always served to rally us in moments of crisis, and although we have, of late, been inundated with words beyond number, no one has assembled the vocabulary that sums up our deep sense of frustration. Farnsworth’s Classical English Style (2020 revised edition) is the third volume in a series that focuses on words, metaphor, rhetoric and style in English usage, and although the author doesn’t address the present failure of language, he goes far in explaining what makes specific semantic patterns enduring. Farnsworth’s approach is straightforward. He parses great writing by great writers: Abraham Lincoln, Edmund Burke, Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and many others whose eloquence survives even in our present circumstances — writers who understood the enduring principles of style but who were willing to violate those principles in the service of meaning and resonance. Whereas most books on style offer formulas or impose a system for aspiring writers to follow, Farnsworth illustrates by use of example, citing short, familiar quotes to explain how memorable passages work. It is up to the reader to translate the lessons implicit in the writings of Lincoln or Churchill or in the King James Bible into a form that is acceptable in our times. Therein lies the benefit — and for the less disciplined reader, the rub. If you aren’t enthralled with language and its possibilities, the book is little more than a cure for insomnia. If, on the other hand, you’re a lover of words, Farnsworth’s latest offering might be just what the doctor ordered in the heart of a pandemic — a self-reflective occupation with the written word. The opening chapters focus on word derivation with attention to the effects of Saxon and Latinate words, and how they shape meaning when used in opposition. “There are two ways to say almost
20 O.Henry
anything in English: with little words or big ones,” Farnsworth writes. “More precisely, you can say most things with older, shorter words that have Germanic (or ‘Saxon’) roots, or with longer words that came into the language more recently — perhaps six or seven hundred years ago — from French, and before that from Latin.” Examples: ask/inquire; break/damage; luck/fortune; come/arrive, etc. Saxon words are short, direct, often one syllable, while Latinate words take prefixes and suffixes and are less likely to create an image in the reader’s mind — the visible vs. the conceptional. Admittedly, there’s little new in this observation, and Farnsworth quotes English historian Thomas Macaulay, who detected, more than 100 years ago, the Latinate fault in the work of Samuel Johnson: “All his (Johnson’s) books are written in a learned language, in a language which nobody hears from his mother or his nurse, in a language in which nobody ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or makes love, in a language in which nobody ever thinks . . . ” Thus he cleverly employs Macaulay’s critique as both explanation and example. Beyond this obvious observation, the reader is introduced to the more obscure nuances of word usage, demonstrating that the best writing — the most powerful writing — is a mix of Saxon and Latinate words, and he supplies and analyzes numerous passages from the King James Bible, Shakespeare, Lincoln and more. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s . . . .” “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hands?” “Ambition should be made of sterner stuff,” etc. Many of the most recognizable passages begin with Latinate words and end with a strong series of Saxon words, as with Patrick The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Reader Henry’s “I conceive it my duty, if this government is adopted before it is amended, to go home” — emphasizing the power created by word arrangements that stand in opposition to one another while keeping the demands on the reader (what Farnsworth calls “the cognitive load”) at a minimum. The book’s central chapters explicate active and passive voice, sentence variations, and esoterica such as metonymy, anacoluthon, right- and left-branching, and direct and indirect approaches to the audience and situation, all of which are, despite the pedantic terminology, easily accessible. The book’s final chapters, “Cadence: Classic Patterns” and “Cadence: Combinations & Contrasts,” which deal with prosody, the study of the stress and intonation in language, can be a trifle deadly — reminiscence of junior high English classes where you were tortured with scansions of Poe’s bouncy “The Raven” or Christopher Marlowe’s “Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships. . . .” During a raging pandemic, who gives a rip about spondees and pentameters? Still, Classical English Style is immensely entertaining, an indulgence for anyone wishing to escape the moment, and it’s worth a careful read, if for no other reason than it collects memorable quotes, a sort of Greatest Hits of clear and beautiful communication. So where are the words we need to hear? Where is the unifying sentence or paragraph so necessary at this time in our shared distress? It may have been uttered by George Floyd as he lay on the asphalt with a knee on his neck. Whether accidental metaphor or straightforward reality, “I can’t breathe” — a simple Saxon sentence that Farnsworth would find perfectly acceptable — may well sum up our collective state of mind, although it does nothing to lift us out of the funk in which we find ourselves. OH Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of seven books of poetry and prose. He’s the recipient of the Poetry Northwest Young Poet’s Prize, the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for poetry and four North Carolina Press awards. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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O.Henry 21
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Scuppernong Bookshelf
On Shaky Ground A body of earthquake literature will rock your world
Compiled by Brian Lampkin
My world was already shook. I had spent
the previous days taking my 17-year-old twins to their separate colleges — leaving them behind to uncertain coronavirus outcomes as we all held our breath hoping we’re not creating superspreader campuses across North Carolina. I was up early on Sunday, August 9, fully feeling the new emptiness around me when I realized the shaking was not my sobbing. There’s a pleasure involved in feeling the earth move that involves the risk of danger (the sexual metaphor is apt), but we’re unlikely to suffer severe earthquake consequences here in central North Carolina.
Below are books that look at many of the places that have suffered through recent major seismic events: New Madrid, Missouri (1811), San Francisco (1906 and 1989), Alaska (1964), Kobe, Japan (1995) and one yet to come. 2020 has no shortage of disasters, but ideally the human role in natural catastrophe is not to exacerbate the damage done. When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811–12, by Jay Feldman (Free Press, 2012, $19.99). If Greensboro is going to feel the effects of a major earthquake, it will be the New Madrid Fault’s fault. This seismic zone, centered in Missouri, is more likely to affect parts west of here, and When the Mississippi Ran Backwards sheds light on the quakes and the pivotal period between the Revolutionary and Civil wars, uncovering the era’s dramatic geophysical, political and military upheavals. A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906, by Simon Winchester (Harper, 2006. $15.99) Unleashed by ancient geologic forces, a magnitude 8.25 earthquake rocked San Francisco in the early hours of April 18, 1906. Less than a minute later, the city lay in ruins. Bestselling author Simon Winchester brings his inimitable storytelling abilities to this event, exploring the legendary earthquake and the fires that spread horror across San Francisco and northern California, its
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impact on American history and, just as important, what science has recently revealed about the subterranean processes that produced it. The Great Quake: How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet, by Henry Fountain (Broadway Books, 2018. $16). At 5:36 p.m. on March 27, 1964, a magnitude 9.2. earthquake — the second most powerful in world history — struck the young state of Alaska. The violent shaking, followed by massive tsunamis, devastated the southern half of the state and killed more than 130 people. A day later, George Plafker, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, arrived to investigate. His scientific detective work in the months that followed helped confirm the then-controversial theory of plate tectonics. Thus ends the nonfiction portion of our column. Here are three novels that use the shaking earth to their advantage. After the Quake, by Haruki Murakami (Vintage, 2003. $15). The six stories in Haruki Murakami’s mesmerizing collection are set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, when Japan became brutally aware of the fragility of its daily existence. But the upheavals that afflict Murakami’s characters are even deeper and more mysterious, emanating from a place where the human meets the inhuman. The Fifth Season (Broken Earth #1), by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit, 2015. $15.99). Lately my columns seem to lead back to N. K. Jemisin, so prescient about our times despite writing of the future. Here the world ends with the great red rift across the heart of its sole continent, “spewing,” like the publisher’s blurb, “ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, . . . where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.” A Theory of Small Earthquakes, by Meredith Maran (Soft Skull Press, 2012. $15.95). Alison Rose is drawn to Zoe, a free-spirited artist who offers emotional stability and a love outside the norm. After many happy years together, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake deepens fissures in the two women’s relationship, and Alison leaves Zoe for a new, “normal” life with a man, with Alison’s son is the outcome of both of these complicated relationships. OH Brian Lampkin is one of the proprietors of Scuppernong Books. O.Henry 23
Spirits
Let’s Be Perfectly Clear
By Tony Cross
Six years ago, I purchased the book
Liquid Intelligence, by Dave Arnold. When it arrived in the mail, I remember thumbing through the pages and quickly realizing that everything I was laying my eyes on went right over my head. “Ohhhh man, I’m dumb,” I thought. The book deals with the science of cocktails, and it’s laid out like a textbook. I failed chemistry in high school, so it’s safe to say this triggered scary flashbacks and my PTSD with, well, being dumb.
As insecure as I was, I still marveled at Arnold’s brilliance and passion for perfection chapter by chapter. There were some tricks I picked up right away — like how to properly milk-wash a spirit — but these little gifts were few and far between. If you’ve ever looked through the book, you’ll know exactly what I mean. The section that intrigued me the most was Part 3: Clarification. “Unclear liquids are actually suspensions, containing particles that reflect and scatter light in a random pattern that makes the liquid appear milky. Clarification removes these particles.” Pictured was a glass of cloudy, blended strawberry juice and next to it a glass of clear strawberry juice. Arnold goes on to say, “Why clarify? Why breathe?” I was hooked. There are a few ways to clarify juices. I’m going to talk about centrifuging — the way I clarify — but feel free to check out Liquid Intelligence for others. So, what’s a centrifuge? Have you ever donated blood? When they take the tube with your blood, they put it in this machine that spins the tubes thousands of times the force of gravity. This allows the platelets and blood plasma to be separated from the
24 O.Henry
other blood components. That machine is a centrifuge. For juices, centrifuges spin so fast that the solid particles in the liquid get thrown to the outside; this is called centrifugal force. But you know that, right? You’ve been on a Tilt-A-Whirl. When Arnold’s book came out, the cheapest centrifuge (to produce large volumes) wasn’t. It came in at just under $10,000. Yikes. I was bummed. But then, a few years later, Dave made an announcement that he had created the first centrifuge for bartenders and chefs. The Spinzall was released in 2017, and to my knowledge, it’s still the only centrifuge on the market catering specifically to bartenders/home bartenders. A friend of mine got one for Christmas from his wife, and I was able to tinker around with it. (His wife told me that it was still in the box! Gimme!) I was asked to give a science-based cocktail class around that time — hey, I told the committee I was completely unaware of what science is but they didn’t care — and was hoping that the centrifuge would come in handy. Following the directions and using the correct enzymes to break the solids down (more on that in a moment), I was able to clarify fresh strawberries. When the Spinzall finished doing its thing, I was in love. This might not do it for you, but it is what it is. I was so excited I took pictures and live video of the clarified juice coming out of the centrifuge. Everyone I told or messaged smiled or texted back saying “cool,” but nobody really gave a rat’s ass. You’re into brunettes, I’m into blondes. Whatever. Google this Spinzall thing and I’ll break down how simple it is to use. Let’s take strawberries as an example. You’ll need 400 grams washed and diced organic strawberries and an enzyme called Pectinex Ultra SP-L. You need this exact type. I found a knockoff version on Amazon, and it did not work. (What’s a counterfeit enzyme look like anyway?) You can get the Pectinex over at modernistpantry.com. Pectinex Ultra SP-L is an enzyme that breaks down pectin structure. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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O.Henry 25
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Spirits As Dave points out in this book, SP-L “is a mix of enzymes that are purified from Aspergillus aculeatus, a fungus found in soil and rotting fruit.” Basically, SP-L busts a cap in pectin’s liver. It’s needed to clarify most juices, so I always have a large bottle handy. And just like using the centrifuge, SP-L is easy to use. Here we go: Put your washed and diced strawberries into a blender on medium for 30 seconds. Add 2 milliliters of Pectinex SP-L, and then blend on medium (or medium-high, depending on your blender) for another minute to two. Let sit for a few minutes and you’re ready to run it through your Spinzall. This is where I’m going to stop giving advice. Arnold provides online videos with detailed operating and safety instructions so you won’t put an eye out. You may be asking yourself, “Why the hell do I want to clarify?” If you’re working in the kitchen at a restaurant, this centrifuge does way more than clarifying juices. It also makes herb oils, purees, no-churn butter, etc. If you’re a bartender, clarified juices can be used to make shelf-stable cordials (when paired with appropriate food-grade acids). Juices that are clarified are silky and smooth on the palate. Try making a daiquiri with clarified lime juice and you’ll see what I mean. If you’re not in the business, I can see why you may be hesitant to purchase this for your home bar. But, if you really geek out on cocktails and love playing host for your friends and family, go for it. There are so many ways to put the Spinzall to use that you won’t get bored. As for me, this centrifuge has been monumental for Reverie Cocktails. It’s allowed us to look at our cocktails in a whole new light. Making and distributing kegs of carbonated cocktails is completely different from making them one at a time, and this sucker has been a lifesaver. Even if you don’t gravitate (oh, geez, sorry about that) toward owning a centrifuge, or have zero interest in clarifying anything, I hope this high school chemistry dropout has shed the smallest ray of light on how science is everywhere, even in your cocktail glass. OH Tony Cross is a bartender (well, ex-bartender) who runs cocktail catering company Reverie Cocktails in Southern Pines. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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O.Henry 27
Home by Design
Hello Kitty, Martha and Me And the shattering fragility of life
By Cynthia Adams
My friend Martha “Mac” was
a formidable woman; unceremonious, fiercely smart, irreverent. Standing 6 feet tall in her bare feet, she was what some might call “substantial” — think Julia Child in her later years. (That is, if Julia had never picked up a whisk and had become a business professor.)
Martha loved good design, but didn’t give a happy hoot for clothing. Chief among her passions were American glassware, jewelry, antiquities, Mid-Century Modern furniture, British mysteries and biographies, travel, Kinky Friedman, Cook Out burgers, Duke U. and . . . Hello Kitty. As the Sesame Street song goes, “one of these things is not like the others.” That unlikely thing was Hello Kitty. Hello Kitty celebrated her 45th anniversary last year, bookending my friend’s final exit. Martha, who died last May, would have hated missing the Hello Kitty Friends Around the World Tour, which kicked off last fall in L.A. I believe she would have been there. She was a die-hard Pepper. As Martha’s health failed, she pivoted
28 O.Henry
from Pepsi and Dr Pepper to diet Dr Pepper, but remained faithful as ever to the big plush feline with the pink hair bow. Martha lived in stark contrast to Kitty, never one-dimensional, with the sort of intense presence that no one could miss. She did not suffer fools gladly. Martha’s academic achievements were serious but she adored understatement and devastatingly dry wit. Also unlike Kitty, she was unpredictable. Martha once declared she would visit all the locales of books she enjoyed, including Franklin, Tennessee, where a Confederate widow buried nearly 1,500 dead soldiers. She sent me a postcard from the setting of Widow of the South. Typically acerbic, Martha scrawled on the back, “Lots of graves.” She meandered on to the west coast of Florida, then wound up in Austin, Texas, where she earned her doctorate. Another such junket led her to glass-making sites across the United States, stopping off in Weston, West Virginia, where she was a longtime board member of The Museum of American Glass. At one time, she drove a two-seater Honda CRX, which required her to imitate a contortionist to get behind the wheel. Martha’s mind, formidably quick, far outpaced a body that slowed to a lumber. Still, she traveled alone. “Intrepid” is the inadequate word that comes to mind. The word “carapace” also fits. Martha had a protective shell. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Home by Design An initiation preceded friendship. She allowed you into her world once you proved you were unafraid of her. My hubby succeeded by offering his delicious mashed potatoes in a pot straight off the stove. Delightedly, Martha plunged the spoon into the pot, declaring them the “best mashed potatoes ever.” They remained lifelong friends. When Amazon evolved from bookseller to behemoth, Martha was an early adopter, and eBay became an obsession. Both allowed her to indulge her Hello Kitty passion full on. One Christmas, Martha gave me one of the most memorable gifts I have ever received: a padded Hello Kitty toilet seat. She kept a Hello Kitty toaster for herself. The following birthday, Martha gave me a Hello Kitty notepad and a bag of assorted chocolates. Also, Keith Richard’s excellent autobiography, Life, which she had just hoovered down, as she did with books. The Hello Kitty gifts perplexed me given that I am a dog person. She indulged a love of turquoise to the point she once bought a necklace — bigger than the coveted Squash Blossom design — and large enough to hoist a car engine with — but glassware was the thing that eclipsed all other passions. The crematorium where her funeral was held last spring was beside a strip joint. As in strippers, not furniture refinishing. I smiled to myself as I parked, thinking how Martha would have appreciated the irony.
Friends and family gathered later at Martha’s townhouse, where she had slowly rid herself of the Mid-century Modern furniture, making room for more fragile collectibles. Now steel shelves and racks held hundreds of pieces of exquisite glass: antique, American, European, rare and some less so. Much of it was donated to the Weston museum where she had traveled often to pay homage to great glass design. Sitting on lawn furniture among the glassware, we mourners sipped wine as a storm rumbled. Despite the gathering of folk with doctorates and high IQs, words failed. None of us was equal to the wit Martha’s remarkable originality demanded. So, we shifted awkwardly on our webbed seats, swallowing down the bitter realization that there was no collectible so rare as our fine and fiercely original friend. Months later, invited to choose a piece of glass, I strained to admire an unfamiliar piece from a shelf top; it toppled and crashed as if pushed by an invisible finger. “Oh, shit!” I exclaimed, stricken. “Exactly what Martha would have said,” came the dry reply from Jim, her executor. Of course, I thought bitterly. Hemingway was wrong about the lucky growing strong at the broken places. I swept up the shards and took what remained of the piece home. OH Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry.
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The Sporting Life
Fields of Dreams Remembering conversations with old friends
By Tom Bryant
I backed the old
Bronco out of her resting place in the garage and loaded it with my hunting paraphernalia. The gear for this trip was negligible because it was just an afternoon chase, and I’ve learned after many hunting seasons to travel light. As far as that goes, most of my dove shoots over the last several years have just been an excuse to get to the woods, not much shooting involved.
The little farm I lease, ostensibly for bird hunting, is only 30 minutes from home and one of the prettiest pieces of property I’ve been on in a while. It’s about a hundred acres, maybe a little more, and used to be a tobacco farm. Two old barns are still on the property and provide a haven to escape bad weather when needed. I pulled the Bronco into a grove of pines, shut it down, grabbed my dove stool out of the back and found a nice shady spot close to the field to set up and watch for doves. It was still hot. September always is. Not much different from August, maybe a little respite later in the day, but hot anyway. I watched the field for a short while. I could see a few birds working toward the north end but not much on my side, where I had decided to hunt. So I wandered back to the Bronco, put the tailgate down, fetched some water from the cooler and perched on the back like my dogs and I used to do. I had two yellow Labs, not at the same time, but in different eras of my life. My first, named Paddle, lived 14 years and hunted with me almost every time I went to the woods. She was with me in my early hunting days, the time of my life when I was still figuring out what the world was all about. She and I had many conversations sitting as I was now on the back of this vintage truck. Mackie, my second Lab, came along right after Paddle went to her reward where birds flew aplenty and the retrieves are always successful. Mackie was different. Where Paddle could be described
30 O.Henry
as laid-back, Mackie was a little uptight. It’s funny to see how dogs have different personalities, just like people. When we would pull up to a hunting area and I would let Paddle out of the truck, she would walk around slowly, stretch, wander away, do her business, come back, and look up at me as if to say, “OK, boss, let’s go do this thing.” When I let Mackie out of the Bronco, she would hit the turf running, tearing about, nose to the ground, all business, as if birds were everywhere and she didn’t want to miss a one. Mackie was during my adjustment time when I had finally figured out that you couldn’t equate success with money. Money helped, though. It was the barometer used by just about everyone gauging achievement. As the old saying goes, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.” I had many wonderful conversations with each dog sitting on the tailgate of this old truck. They were amazing companions, and not a day goes by that I don’t think of them, especially on opening day of dove season. I walked back to the stool and stood next to an old pine on the edge of the cut cornfield. Doves continued to fly on the north end, but clouds had moved and the sun was now bearing down. Birds don’t fly in this kind of heat, so I sat on the stool, leaning against the pine and remembered a hunt that my old friend Bryan and I had many years ago. It was the first week of the season and, man, it was hot. The kind of heat where it seems you sweat more water than you can drink. Our spot on the field was right beside an overgrown drainage ditch. The crop of corn had been combined the week before, and there was plenty of food for birds. Our problem, though, no shade. A white-hot sun so bright that it looked as if it took up the entire western sky was slowly moving to the horizon. I had backed up the Bronco so it was facing west, which gave us a sliver of shade at the back of the truck. Bryan and I were hunkered down on our stools in the minuscule shadow cast by the tailgate. The hunt looked as if it was going to be a dud, but as the sun began to drop behind the tree line, doves started flying by the hundreds. In less than 30 minutes, we both had our limit. A far off rumble of thunder broke my reverie, and I watched as The Art & Soul of Greensboro
The Sporting Life cumulus clouds built up like mountains in the western sky. “It’s gonna storm before sundown,” I said to no one in particular. I miss my dogs, I thought. When I had Paddle and Mackie, I always had someone in the field to talk to. It seems that over the last three or four years, I’m in the woods more and more by my lonesome. My old hunting buddies are aging out, for one reason or another, health problems, other interests, whatever. Now, most days out in the countryside find me a solitary fellow. As the thunder persisted toward the west and it seemed as if the storm might be heading my way, another memory of a longago dove hunt, one that could have been deadly, came to mind. I was hunting a cornfield that abutted a small tobacco patch and was walking the dirt tractor path in between the two planted fields. The Bronco was parked at the top of a small rise, almost to the trees, about a hundred yards away. Suddenly, a dove fluttered up out of the standing tobacco, probably having gotten grit from the plowed areas for its craw to help in processing food. I shot and it fell somewhere in the rows of plants. Paddle had died the season before, so retrieving was up to me. While all this was going on, I noticed a squall line coming over the trees right toward me, so I stepped up the pace to find the dove. I had just spotted it and was bent over to pick it up when the hair on my arms and the back of my head stood up. I dropped the shotgun to the ground and hunched over to make myself as small as I could, and BAM! A bolt of lightning hit a giant white oak in a peninsula of woods jutting out in the tobacco field not 50 yards from where I was hunkered down. The storm was closer now, so I picked up my gear and moved to the Bronco as the first big splats of raindrops pounded on the roof of the little truck. I turned it around to get a better view of the storm coming across the cornfield. Lightning was popping here and yonder and thunder rolled across the trees. It was a sight that never grows old: Mother Nature showing the critters, me included, who’s boss. OH Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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O.Henry 31
The Pleasures of Life Dept.
The Road Game Life lessons learned on the move
By Honor Jones Garrett
Not long ago, 35 years after I made a
similar trip, my husband John and I loaded our daughter Caroline’s things into a rented van and set off from our home in Easton, Pennsylvania, to Chapel Hill, where Caroline is beginning her freshman year at college. She is the last of our four children to make this momentous journey. The three preceding her made this trip in our beloved 1999 Chevy Suburban, something of a family tradition. In this instance, however, just as we got fully loaded and ready to roll, John discovered that the “old gray mare’s” brakes were weak and her air conditioning had died. Then again, that wonderful old car has more than quarter of a million miles on her odometer — and about that many family memories. She has earned her rest! 32 O.Henry
When I look back at my own life and career, I realize how important my college connections and friendships were to landing my first “real job” with CNN in Atlanta in 1989. One year later, I became a weekend sports producer for an ABC affiliate in San Antonio, Texas, and met my future husband, John Garrett, who happened to be playing football for the San Antonio Riders of the World Football League. It was your textbook case of “sports-reporter-meets-charmingprofessional-athlete,” the beginning of a 28-year love affair with each other and the game of football. John and I were married on May 15, 1993, at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Greensboro. Sometimes I forget how special my hometown is until I see visitors experience the Gate City’s unique beauty and charm for themselves. That day, the two of us happily started on a new and uncharted journey. Little could I imagine that after growing up in the same house most of my life, I would marry into football and move 13 times over the next 26 years! Add to the mix four children, several family pets, and the aged but faithful Chevy Suburban and you have all the elements of a truly Great American mobile love story — and ultimate family road game, to borrow a relevant phrase. The one thing I know for sure about life and football is that, for better or worse, nothing is certain or lasts forever. Now more than The Art & Soul of Greensboro
The Pleasures of Life Dept. ever, we are reminded of this truth by events that have turned all our lives upside down, underscoring the importance of making the most of every moment we have with family and friends. Change is inevitable. But one thing all of us have learned is that if you are determined and stay focused on the things that matter the most, you’ll probably record more wins than losses and lots of precious memories. We live in Easton, because John is the head football coach at Lafayette College. Although I am a long way from Southern sweet tea, cheese grits, Fresh Market and Biscuitville, Greensboro remains a special place in my heart, the place where this grand road trip really began. It seems like yesterday that I was riding my yellow banana seat bike to Irving Park Elementary School or to Brown-Gardiner Drug for orangeades and crinkle fries. Ditto the memories of cheerleading at pep rally days for Page High’s state 4A championship games. It’s all imprinted on my soul with a deep affection for my hometown. My big brothers, Mike and Kelly, would certainly agree that we were fortunate enough to grow up with parents and a community that taught important lessons about honesty, love and kindness. These were the values I carried with me as the life of a football coach took me far from home. Our football journey began in San Antonio followed by a brief stop in Buffalo with the Bills of the NFL. Our first real home, however, was in Tampa, Florida, where John signed first as a player with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1992 but soon became a coach and scout for the team. Our very first rental home was a typical Florida pink stucco bungalow. We didn’t have two nickels to rub together. The Laura Ashley flowered couch from college was our best piece of furniture. That was the beginning of the coaching carousel. After two years with Tampa Bay, he coached four years with the Cincinnati Bengals. Then it was on to the Arizona Cardinals to serve as quarterbacks coach for two years, followed by a second stint with the Cincinnati Bengals. After that, we moved to the University of Virginia Cavaliers for three years followed by the Dallas Cowboys for six. After a third stint in Tampa Bay we moved onto the Oregon State Beavers. Then it was back to Florida for a year with the University of Florida Gators. The Richmond Spiders brought us back to Virginia. Are you still with me? Finally, John landed the head coaching job at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, where we currently reside. Though we were repeatedly uprooted, wherever we landed we remained firm in the belief that our children were the most important things in our lives. Whenever John reported in February to start a new job, for example, the kids and I typically stayed back to finish off the school year and sell the house, then pack up and drive cross country to our new home, unpack, enroll in new schools (24 of them in total!), find new doctors (dentist, pediatrician, family doctor, chiropractor, dermatologist, etc.), sign up for new athletic teams, scout out new churches, engage in new community organizations, seek out new friends, and definitely find a good hairdresser! That wouldn’t seem such a big deal for most families, I suspect, except that we had to do it more than a dozen times. (And we all know how hard it is to find a good hairdresser!) Looking back on this long and winding road, whatever challenges we faced, we chose to see them as “gifts” or opportunities. For instance, Christmas is called “Black Monday” in the NFL, the day most pro teams fire their head coach after a losing season . . . and thus begins the annual Coaching Carousel. Instead of opening presents and holiday parties, many The Art & Soul of Greensboro
O.Henry 33
The Pleasures of Life Dept. coaching families live in fear of what’s coming next. Will they find a job? Where and how far away will they have to move the family? We were no exception. John lost his job on the very day we found out I was pregnant with our fourth child, Caroline. Clearly, the baby news was our silver lining. Our time in the NFL was special. John became the tight ends coach for the Dallas Cowboys and had the unique opportunity to coach alongside his brothers, Jason and Judd. Our six years with the Cowboys was exciting and fun, but the memories that most often come to mind were the Thanksgiving dinners we had with family and friends on Fridays of Thanksgiving week because the Cowboys always played on Turkey Day. Our Thanksgiving Fridays became our time to feast, laugh, and share stories before John and the other coaches went back in the office to prepare for the next game. College football was a different culture, and its own rewarding experience. In the college ranks, John felt he was making a real difference helping to develop young players and future leaders. Ironically, however, making it to a bowl game often meant spending Christmas in an unfamiliar city with a tabletop artificial Christmas tree and four young kids crammed into a hotel room in, say, Boise, Idaho. Other times, dad was actually gone on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day for an away game. At such moments, we learned to be resourceful. When John could not be home to read his annual rendition of “Twas The Night Before Christmas,” for example, he made a personal recording of the book, wrapped it up and placed it beneath the tree. On Christmas Eve, Caroline opened the gift and declared, “Dad is with us for Christmas!” There were other life lessons to be learned, as well. Our son, John Jr. came home from middle school one day terribly upset because kids at school were saying mean things about his dad and his uncle. “Your dad and uncle are terrible coaches. The team sucks. Your dad should be fired.” I can’t think of many professions where children at school attack the worth of someone’s father. In moments when you can’t fix the hurt, I learned, all you can do is just hold your children. That said, our kids quickly learned how to decipher true friends and understand they should never measure their own worth by the opinions of others. These were priceless lessons. Today, I look back at this learning process with deep gratitude. One reason our children turned out to be so kind and respectful, I think, is because they have seen how detrimental careless, unkind words can be. In short, we have learned to look for nuggets of wisdom wherever we found them in the challenging moments of life. Here’s another lesson learned. Though early on John and I promised we would never live apart after we got married, we sometimes had to compromise on that ambition for the greater good of our kids. When he went to work as offensive coordinator for Oregon State, for example, we couldn’t bear the thought of moving our oldest daughter to Corvallis in the midst of her happy senior year in high school — and thus jeopardize her college opportunities while sowing the seeds of resentment. So John and I commuted once a month to see each other, a bi-coastal marriage between Florida and Oregon. We couldn’t have been farther apart if we had planned it that way. On a lighter note, to this day, when our kids are asked, “Where are you from?” they pause and ask: “Do you want to know where I was born? Where I lived the longest? Where I went to high school and graduated? Or where my parents live now?” It’s almost amusing — but a fact of life when
34 O.Henry
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
The Pleasures of Life Dept. you’ve grown up in so many places. Whatever else may be true, educating our four children has been our most important priority — and the most challenging on the financial front. We never had an option for in-state tuition because we moved so often in 26 years. And because we believed our kids needed to take responsibility for making wise choices in their own lives, we allowed them to pick where they wished to attend college. The good news is that they made excellent choices, though like millions of American families weighing the high cost of college, the strain on our finances has been anything but easy. John and I sometimes joke that we are looking at Parent Plus loans that could well outlive us. But the payoff has sure been worth it. John, Jr., 24, graduated from Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee and is currently earning his Masters in Philosophy at Georgia State. Honor, 23, just graduated from the University of Georgia and currently works for a PR firm in Nashville. Olivia, 21, is entering her senior year at the University of South Carolina studying early education. And there is our youngest, Caroline, who is headed out the door this year to UNC-Chapel Hill. As our children worked on mastering multiple moves and coping with countless schools, I learned the art of buying homes and economically renovating them, becoming something of a Traveling “Fixer Upper.” That turns out to be a gift I’ve been cultivating since seventh grade when my parents bought our childhood home on Granville Road in Greensboro, a lovely old house with more than a few cosmetic needs. It was there where I first started scraping wallpaper and devel-
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
oped the vision to breathe life back into historic homes. We currently live in a 125-year-old home on College Hill in Easton, just five blocks from Fisher Stadium at Lafayette College. In a way, we have come full circle. For John, there is always the hope and excitement that comes with a new season of football, even one diminished by the uncertainty of a pandemic. Whatever else happens, in football there will be high hopes for “next season,” whenever it comes. As for me, I’m deeply thankful every day for the valuable lessons I’ve learned from living on the road of a transient football life. Among other things, this long and winding journey has helped me discover my own gifts as a health-life-mindset coach who can help others. Perhaps that’s my version of the new season, one that gives me great happiness thinking about how far we’ve all come — and have yet to go. OH Honor Jones Garrett, owner of HONOR IT, LLC, is a certified healthlife-mindset coach and a graduate of the University of North CarolinaChapel Hill. With certifications in NLP, Life Coaching, Health Coaching, EFT, Meditation, Hypnotherapy, and Reiki Energy Healing, she specializes in helping clients create positive lasting change in their health, life, and business. For more information about Honor, visit her website at www.honoritcoaching.com or at honoritcoaching @gmail.com (817) 422-2050
O.Henry 35
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Birdwatch
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Beware the stealthy Cooper’s Hawk
By Susan Campbell
To some, a hawk is a hawk. Yet here in the
Piedmont and Sandhills of North Carolina, we have 10 different species of these feathered hunters in our area during the course of the year. There are the fast-flying, powerful falcons. Also, you can spot large buteos over open terrain. Around lakes and along the coast, look for fish-eating osprey. And, in addition, there are the less understood, ultra maneuverable bird hawks, known to birders as accipiters (from the Latin “accipere,” to grasp or take).
Slender, fast-moving bird hawks such as Cooper’s hawks and the slightly smaller sharp-shinned hawk are tough to spot and even more difficult to identify. Both can be seen in our area 12 months of the year. Consider that anyone who feeds songbirds will, like it or not, be providing for these ubiquitous bird-eaters’ welfare. To differentiate the two species, one needs good binoculars and more than a little good luck in order to get a good enough view to make the call. A keen eye and being in the right place at the right time can, however, be very rewarding. Adult Cooper’s are handsome with slate-gray back and fine, red barring along the breast and belly. The large head is a dark gray and is set off by a paler neck. Feathers on the crown are often held erect, giving the birds an almost regal hooded appearance. The tail is somewhat rounded and barred with alternating brown-and-black bands with a narrow white tip. The legs too are relatively long and yellow with very strong and sharp talons. The sexes of Cooper’s hawks are identical in appearance with the exception that the females are approximately 15 percent larger than males. As a result, males must be cautious, even around their mates, since they are in the size range of prey that females may take. They will not only make submissive calls but listen for reassuring vocalizations from the female during the breeding season to be
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
assured of their safety. Young birds have brown streaking on the breast and belly, which may take up to two years to be replaced by adult plumage. So as is common with the larger hawks, yearling Cooper’s may not breed until their second summer. As with other accipiters, Cooper’s hawks are adapted to hunting in closed canopy forest. Their shorter, rounded wings and long tail make them well-suited to moving through forested habitat. They will commonly fly low to the ground and then precipitously maneuver up and over obstacles to ambush prey on the far side. They also hunt on the ground, walking about through thick cover looking for sparrows and other smaller birds hidden within. Cooper’s hawks have one brood in late spring to early summer. The male constructs the large stick nest high in a mature tree during about a two-week period. Once the nesting begins, he will feed the incubating female as well as gather most of the food for the nestlings. The female Cooper’s defends the nest vigorously and broods the young birds until they are well feathered. Although it is not uncommon for backyard birdwatchers to see one of these masterful hunters with a fresh kill, like all predators they miss more than they actually catch. Furthermore Cooper’s hawks eat a variety of prey including squirrels and other rodents. The birds they do catch tend to be the most common species such as mourning doves and, in more urban locations, rock doves (pigeons) and European starlings, none of which are at all in short supply even in our area. Cooper’s hawks were one of the species negatively affected by DDT usage in the middle of the last century, but they have rebounded very well. And nowadays they are not averse to living alongside humans even in more open terrain if prey is abundant. Families of Cooper’s have been documented in the yard of folks in Whispering Pines as well as Southern Pines in recent years. Not too many people can boast of sharing a piece of woodland with one of the world’s most skillful fliers. So keep your eyes peeled and maybe you, too, will find these amazing creatures living in your neighborhood as well! OH Susan would love to receive your wildlife observations and/or photos at susan@ncaves.com O.Henry 37
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Wandering Billy
You Auto Be in Pictures How babies were made in the ’60s
By Billy Eye “Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.” ― Martin Scorsese
The history is
vague but it’s been well over a hundred years since Model Ts and touring cars clattered their way to a spot on the beach or at a resort area like our own Pinecroft (pure speculation on my part), where management stretched a sheet between two trees and invited tourists to enjoy a moving picture under a starlit canopy.
Drive-in theaters never caught on in a big way early on. It wasn’t until 1933 that the first modern drive-in debuted in New Jersey, advertised as a place where, “The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are.” Open Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights beginning in 1941, on the outskirts of town, The Drive-In on High Point Road was Greensboro’s first outdoor cinema with an automotive capacity of 600, admission $1 per car. It would remain the largest of its type in town. In 1949 the lot was renamed South Drive-In. That’s when North Drive-In (400 capacity) opened across town on U.S. 29. In the summer of 1950, a smaller 195-car capacity Sundown Drive-In, catering to the African-American community, welcomed their first carloads of customers. Owned and operated by Rounder L. Ledwell & Clarence L. Fuller, the Sundown closed in 1966 after theaters of all types were desegregated two years earlier. As the 1950s unfolded, mobile moviegoing exploded across the country, peaking in the early 1960s when there were more than 5,000 drive-ins nationwide. During that period, luring motorists in with neon signage comparable to a Las Vegas casino, the Piedmont on West Market, the Crescent on Piney Forest Road and the Park Drive-In on Lawndale became date night hot spots. There’s something inherently romantic about enjoying a The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Hollywood popcorner bathed in midnight blue, soundtrack enhanced by chirping cicadas, the dialogue echoing from those metal speakers clamped onto the driver’s side window sounding like a too-loud television in the next room of a cheap motel. And why is the glass fogged over in the car next to us? There’s a semi-famous photo taken around 1960 at a local drive-in showing a couple in locked embrace wearing so many layers of clothing you have to wonder how the Baby Boom ever happened. The format was pretty much the same at any location: After a cartoon and the first feature film, 8-minute shorts featuring dancing, bubbly soda cans, cascading Jujubes and back-flipping hot dogs enticed patrons to visit the refreshment center while counting down the time until the next picture show started. In 1961 Jim Bellows, owner of the Center Theater downtown, bought the aging South Drive-In, installing new projection and sound equipment along with an air-conditioned concession booth and restrooms (“Plumbing with city water”). The next year, Bellows took possession of the North, renaming it Skyline Drive-In Theatre. In the late-1960s, the Skyline would hold dusk-to-dawn movies, from 8 p.m. until almost 6 a.m., on one weekend projecting all of the Sean Connery James Bond flicks, from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, in order on the really big screen. In most cases, like Skyline for instance, the manager’s office and living quarters were actually inside the screen. Circle Drive-In on Robbins Street was last to open in 1970, just as attendance here and nationwide was winding down. As cities expanded their borders the real estate value of those large properties increased exponentially. The advent of daylight saving time in 1970 robbed businesses of that crucial, family friendly 7 to 8 p.m. hour. Within a few years, a gasoline shortage, coupled with smaller, less comfortable vehicles, resulted in the Piedmont, Park and South Drive-Ins closing in 1975. By the end of the ’70s, schlocky, sex charged B-movies became the O.Henry 39
Wandering Billy draw, grindhouse features produced especially for the drive-in market like ’Gator Bait (“Untamed and deadly, she ruled the swamp with a blazing gun and a luscious smile.” ), Mad Monkey Kung Fu, Blacula and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, along with blockbusters that had finished their first run at the Carolina or Terrace theaters, crowd pleasers like Smokey and the Bandit and Dirty Harry. The Skyline closed in 1980. Circle Drive-In, Greensboro’s last surviving, flickered out in 1983. A few years ago, Mike Small was scouting photo opportunities just west of the intersection of highways 158 and 66 in Walkertown when he happened across a still-standing drive-in screen fronted by acres of unkempt weeds bordering a residential neighborhood. He tells me it’s a nearly forgotten reminder of the Bel-Air Theater: “We took our kids Rebekah and Dallas there in 1994 to see Pocahontas when they were younger.” The Bel-Air opened in 1955 and was welcoming carloads of moviegoers until 2000. A uniquely American experience tucked forever into cobwebbed membranes of the mind. Not this time, Bunky! You can still experience the joy of a moonlit motion picture. There’s an outdoor screen nightly at Marketplace Mall in Winston-Salem for fan favorites like The Dark Knight and Elf. Marketplace Cinema owner
Daniel Kleeberg assures me, “We will be showing movies in the snow if that is what it takes to survive.” I like that idea! Winston-Salem Fairgrounds also sports an open-air theater called The Drive while Scoop Zone Backyard in Greensboro will rent you everything you need to enjoy movie magic in your own backyard or neighborhood gatherings. Find them on Facebook. Better yet, take a 45-minute drive north and you’ll discover Eden Drive-In, circa 1949, on Fireman Club Road in Eden. Open weekend evenings at 6:30 p.m., movies starting around 8:30, Eden Drive-In sports two screens with a choice between kiddie fare, Minions and such, and PG movies like Dirty Dancing and Grease. Friday nights are busiest; Sundays you’ll have more room to spread out. With a 400-car capacity, it’s the only authentic drive-in nearby, right down to the old-time snack bar grill. No need for those clunky metal speakers any longer, crystal clear sound is piped into your car radio. Haven’t been myself but plan to check it out. Facing an uncertain future leaning into the past can be a worthwhile pursuit, no matter how noisy your kids are! OH Born and raised here Billy Eye, a former Hollywood movie poster designer, would like to credit CinemaTreasures.org for information about drive-in theaters.
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40 O.Henry
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The Art & Soul of Greensboro
September 2020 Weary We Slant toward another Season. The light tells time when the first red leaf Of fall lands torn and bug bitten at our feet after fluttering down like some letaloose little bird. Summer lays lost and the grasshopper saws his song To some organic green tune His mother wove. He chides What works he himself has never Seen nor done. His antennae Tick, flicks dust mote spangles Of sun spent worries and he Glides toward home. — Ruth Moose
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
O.Henry 43
44 O.Henry
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
O.Henry 45
rtist Raman Bhardwaj stands so close to movie star Lupita Nyong’o, he can feel the heat coming off of her, and she is flat sizzling. Neither wears a mask — worrisome behavior in these Covid-19 times — but it’s OK because Bhardwaj is painting the actress’s face on an outdoor mural that’s catching the late afternoon sun. “I can’t stand the heat,” Bhardwaj says casually. His last name is pronounced BARD-wadj. First name: RUM-an, “Like in rum and Coke,” he says. As a native of India, he cannot claim this is his first experience with furnace-like temperatures, but he is undeterred. Shade from a curtain of trees crawls his way. He pours a stream of glossy black latex into a tray and soaks a paint roller to do Nyong’o’s hair. “Usually you would start a picture from the top down,” Bhardwaj explains as he steps up to his sweltering work. “If something goes wrong, I’ll fix it. I’ll take the risk.” He crowns Nyong’o in broad strokes. The paint does not cover completely, and the effect is softening. “I wasn’t expecting this,” Bhardwaj says, stepping back. “It’s good.” Just then, the roller attachment drops off its handle, landing in the recently bulldozed dirt of the Kotis Street Art Outdoor Gallery. “Uh-oh,” says Bhardwaj. He snatches up the sticky roller, picks off the biggest pieces of crud
46 O.Henry
and continues painting, standing on the toes of his paint-splattered Crocs until he cannot reach any higher. He tries a longer handle, but it doesn’t work, so he reverts to the short handle, drags a ladder to the wall and continues working on Nyong’o, who won an Oscar for her supporting role in the 2013 film 12 Years a Slave. Gently, Bhardwaj wipes a drip of black paint from her left ear, picks up a can of nutmeg-colored spray paint and replaces a curved ridge of cartilage. Pssst. A thin line of black under her left eyelid. Pssst. A white gleam in the center of her iris. Pssst. A touch of sienna in the white of her eye. “Our brain thinks it’s white, but it’s actually not,” says Bhardwaj. A breeze sweeps away puffs of paint that do not make it to Nyong’o’s striking face, a visage Bhardwaj chose to venerate the beauty of brown-skinned women. Marty’s brush. That’s what some people call Bhardwaj, meaning he’s the go-to painter of Greensboro developer Marty Kotis, father of the local street-art scene. It’s a remarkable nickname for the 44-year-old artist, considering that he had never painted a mural, much less tagged a wall with graffiti, before last year. “In my hometown, we had no culture of murals,” says Bhardwaj, who was weaned on paper and canvas. He grew up in the northern The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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Indian city of Chandigarh and landed in Greensboro on an artist’s visa in 2018. Now, a year after Kotis handed him a spray can, Bhardwaj has finished 29 projects, a healthy slice of the 220 works created under the umbrella of Kotis Street Art in its four-year history. (See September 2018’s ohenrymag.com/painting-the-town/) Bhardwaj has a strong presence at the developer’s latest project, an outdoor gallery of pole-mounted panels near the corner of Church Street and Lees Chapel Road. Not only is Bhardwaj’s mural of Nyong’o’s face prominent there — you can’t miss her; she’s the one with a third eye of consciousness on her forehead — his work covers almost every vertical surface in the adjacent Church Crossing shopping center, which Kotis owned for seven years before making it a venue for aerosol art. The caramel whorls painted on stucco over Millie Nails? They’re Bhardwaj’s. The stout round columns covered with brown faces and Hindi letters? His. The Marvel Comics and DC Comics characters duking it out on a retaining wall? Those are Bhardwaj’s, too. At Kotis’s direction, he darkened the complexions of some characters. Witness a Captain America that looks more like America — and Greensboro. “We wanted a welcoming wall that inspired kids of different colors and nationalities,” says Kotis.
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Bhardwaj’s art is not limited to the walls of Kotis holdings. In the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, Bhardwaj took to the streets of downtown Greensboro with other supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement. The activism resonated with him. As a dark-skinned child, he felt the sting of prejudice. Though he was born a Brahmin, the highest social caste, he watched as his teachers lined up the lightest-skinned students in the front rows for class pictures. “I thought, ‘OK, the fair-skinned kids have a better chance than me,” he says. “It acts on your confidence level. I can connect with the Black community.” In late May, he joined other Greensboro artists who got approval from business owners to express themselves on plywood that protected plate glass from looters. Bhardwaj painted two murals at Little Brother Brewing. One shows two boys — one Black, one White — with their arms around each other. The other shows a dark hand and a light hand curled to form a heart shape. The panels have been moved to Guilford Preparatory Academy, a charter school on East Cone Boulevard. “They’re going to appeal to kids,” he says. “Even if you’re not paying attention, images are stored in your head, and they have an effect.” Last year, his piece Flights of Fancy, a dreamy green vision of floating people and animals, was posted on billboards across the The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Piedmont. The surreal piece was one of five local winners of ArtPop, a national contest sponsored in this area by the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. Bhardwaj’s submission was grounded in his own feelings about immigration. “I was thinking of a free land, with no borders, where people can fly anywhere,” he says. “I like to dream happy. No matter how big you are, everybody likes magic.” As a child growing up in Chandigarh, a city laid out by FrenchSwiss architect Le Corbusier (picture lots of traffic circles), Bhardwaj was fascinated by religion and mysticism. He built an altar to Hindu gods in his room at age 4. By the time he was 6, he was known as the kid who recited long chants and prayers. “I could memorize anything and retain anything,” he says. “I was good in studies for the same reason.” One day, after looking at a classmate’s drawing of the popular comic strip character Daddy-Ji, Bhardwaj went home and drew Daddy-Ji for himself. “I drew it for many days,” he says. “I was trying to perfect it. The day I could draw it without looking at the picture, I was like, ‘Yes!’” Soon, he was known as the kid who spouted prayers and drawThe Art & Soul of Greensboro
ings. Gradually, art replaced religion as his obsession. He shunned sports, which he found to be populated by bullies. “I was intimidated,” he says. He made peace powerful in pencil and paper, which he used to detail the musculature of athletes, superheroes and mythical figures. Bhardwaj imagined that he, too, possessed the powers to overcome his weaknesses and help others. His favorite hero was Batman, righter of wrongs. Bhardwaj’s father, a city college official and editor of a literary magazine, divined a career for his younger son: illustrator. He introduced him to a children’s book publisher, and Bhardwaj, age 12, had his first professional gig, drawing pictures for moralistic books by the writer Munshi Premchand. Bhardwaj earned 10 rupees — about 60 U.S. cents in those days — per illustration. A book contained 10 to 15 images. “For one book, I would get more than my monthly allowance, so I was happy,” he says. At age 19, while studying art at a local art college, Bhardwaj won a national award for his illustrations. Emboldened, he asked the college gallery for a one-man show of his figure drawings. He was denied, but he landed a show at a city museum. He also got an encouraging review after badgering a tough critic, S.S. Bhatti, to see his work. O.Henry 49
Today, Bhardwaj reflects on the chutzpah he mustered as a young man. “I wanted to prove something to everyone, always,” he says. “Even in school, I dreaded failure, so I over-prepared. It was out of fear of failure.” Fear propelled him to the top of his profession. He won recognition as a newspaper illustrator and designer at The Indian Express and The Times of India, both daily behemoths. He also expanded the sideline he’d started at age 12, illustrating children’s books and, thanks to the growing reach of the Internet, generating logos and animations for business websites. Bhardwaj preferred Western clients to Indian clients. They were more polite, he thought, and they paid better. “I felt like they were more honest and appreciated me,” he says. He became a pure freelancer in 2010, and he thought about moving to the West, but family ties kept him in India until his mother’s sudden death in 2017. “After that, I thought, ‘I have to go now. Life is short,’” he says. He applied for an artist’s visa that would allow him to stay in the United States for three years. In March 2018, he landed in Greensboro, where his brother lives. Bhardwaj liked the city immediately. It reminded him of home. “It’s clean and green and sleepy,” he says. “I like sleepy.” He hadn’t been here long when he added an item to his bucket list: “I cannot die without doing a wall.” Murals, with their oversize scale
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and impact, mesmerized him. “Content-wise, they can be grand,” he says. “I like to do grand things.” By the summer of 2019, Bhardwaj had painted his first two murals, one inside the Greensboro Cultural Center and one facing a covered patio at The Brewer’s Kettle, a beer hall in Kernersville. He was itching to tackle more visible pieces, but he was nervous. “I’m not ready,” Bhardwaj told his friend Bill West, a musician from Chapel Hill. “You’ll never be ready,” said West, as he handed Bhardwaj the web address for Kotis Street Art. Bhardwaj and Marty Kotis had coffee. Kotis offered him a trial run inside his Red Cinemas, a movie multiplex blanketed, inside and out, with wall art. Wielding spray cans for the first time, Bhardwaj painted caricatures of two Bollywood stars, Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan. Kotis offered another space, on the backside of Saffron Indian Cuisine in the Westover Gallery of Shops. Bhardwaj brushed on a giant ballerina. He spray-painted his next piece, Heath Ledger’s Joker from The Dark Knight, which haunts the backside of Red Cinemas. Kotis was floored, not only by the composition, but by how quickly Bhardwaj learned to use spray cans and the “doodle grid” system that most street artists use to accurately transfer digital images to large walls. He was even more impressed when Bhardwaj squeezed another version of the criminal clown — based on Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal The Art & Soul of Greensboro
in Joker — into a doorway in the back of the theater. “That’s extremely difficult, to aerosol that small a character,” says Kotis. “There’s not a lot of room for error.” Next, Bhardwaj busted out a shirtless Bruce Lee on the back of World of Beer the Westover Gallery. After that, Kotis, who’d been providing the artist with supplies and food, started paying him for commissions. Last year, on the 25th anniversary of the Community Theatre Group’s performance of The Wizard of Oz, Bhardwaj and Kotis cooked up a tribute. Bhardwaj would paint 13 Wizard scenes on Kotis properties all over town, creating a scavenger hunt for fans of the film. But first, Bhardwaj had to watch the movie. “Now I see what everyone is so excited about,” he says. “I love that movie. It’s great, great storytelling.” Increasingly, Bhardwaj paints murals in private homes. For one client, a basketball fan, he plastered Michael Jordan across a carport wall. For Jeanie Duncan and her partner Lyn Koonce, who live on the edge of Fisher Park, Bhardwaj blanketed one dining room wall with a condensed panorama of the park. Using a brush to achieve the look of a pen-and-ink drawing spiced with splashes of color, he folded in the couple’s favorite features of the neighborhood: antique street lights; stone bridges; the masonry King’s Chair; rocks in the creek; and wildlife such as rabbits, squirrels, birds and dragonflies. He finished the piece in July. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
“We can’t wait to share it with others,” says Duncan, who’s eager for coronavirus to subside. “It’s a conversation piece between the two of us. I can only imagine what it will be among friends and family.” In the post-Covid world, Bhardwaj wants to pick up where he left off, doing local shows of his paintings on canvas. His studio pieces whisper the influences of Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse. These days, he paints mostly women, including nudes, a practice scorned in many places in India. “I still find in Greensboro some people are not comfortable with it, but it’s not dangerous. It’s not like people can come to your gallery and mess up your show and take down your paintings,” he says. Bhardwaj hopes to get a three-year extension of his visa, which runs out at the end of this year. He’s gathering contracts to justify staying. He’d like to get a Green Card, indicating permanent residency, and become a U.S. citizen. For all of this country’s problems, he says, it’s a fertile place to be an artist. The average person here knows much more about art than his compatriots back home. “Here, even if I’m alone among foreigners, we still have the connection with art, which is my life.” OH See Bhardwaj’s work on Instagram @artistraman or www.artistraman.com. O.Henry 51
Fair Winds and
Following Seas
USCGC Diligence departs Wilmington By John Wolfe • Photographs by Andrew Sherman
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I
t’s a cool gray Memorial Day morning, and the tide is nearly full beneath the big white ship moored at the heart of Wilmington, this city on a river. The wharf bustles with lastminute preparations for departure. Sailors in blue coveralls load pallets of provisions up the gangplank; a life-jacketed crew prepares the ship’s small boat for launch as a team of line-handlers surveys the bollards and places fenders over the side. A few crewmembers are still arriving at the ship. Some come alone, with seabags slung over their shoulders, saluting the flag flying at the stern as they cross the ship’s brow. One petty officer tarries with his family in the parking lot, wearing sunglasses and crisp dress blues, his tight-lipped wife beside him as he hugs his children one more time. This is part of the service. Goodbye is a familiar word in every sailor’s vocabulary. But on this day, it feels a little more permanent. Their ship is the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Diligence, a 210-foot medium endurance cutter with a crew of 74. Commissioned in 1964, it has been stationed in downtown Wilmington since 1992 after undergoing a two-year, $28 million refit in 1990. After it departs it will spend the next two months patrolling the Atlantic, completing its missions of search-and-rescue, marine fisheries enforcement, counterdrug operations and migrant interdiction. To be diligent means to be persistent in application to one’s work, and Diligence lives up to its name: In 2011 it seized 3,000 pounds of cocaine in the western Caribbean, worth $34 million, and three years ago it intercepted three high-speed smuggling boats carrying $60 million worth of cocaine in the eastern Pacific.
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This is the sixth cutter to bear the name Diligence, an honor few ships share. The first Diligence was one of the 10 original revenue cutters, built by order of George Washington in 1791 to enforce customs and tariff laws and provide income for the fledgling nation, and sailed from Cape Fear the following year. It famously seized notorious French smugglers, an act which led to the mysterious disappearance of its master, Thomas Cooke, and his son in 1796. According to Coast Guard historian William H. Thiesen, the next three ships named Diligence were also based out of Wilmington. Diligence II served in the quasi-war with France in 1798 and now has a full-sized replica in the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia. Diligence III was lost in a hurricane off Ocracoke in 1806, and Diligence IV saw action in the war of 1812. As of this morning, Diligence is the only cutter named for one of the Coast Guard’s original 10 revenue cutters still serving in its namesake’s home port. But when it casts off its lines, that comes to an end. After this patrol, its new home port will be Pensacola, Florida, where Diligence will be moored alongside three other ships in its class to make maintenance easier as they near the end of their service life. When Diligence is eventually retired, its name will live on. The Coast Guard recently announced plans to build 10 new ships: Heritage-class 360-foot offshore patrol cutters, which will become the mainstay of the oceangoing fleet. The first flight will include WMSM-922 (W means Coast Guard and MSM stands for maritime security cutter), the seventh Diligence, which will carry the name forward. But currently, the Coast Guard has no plans to home port The Art & Soul of Greensboro
another cutter in Wilmington, although the dock will remain available to visiting ships. Cmdr. Luke Slivinski is the ship’s commanding officer. Lean and tan, with steady blue eyes and close-cropped sandy hair, he stands on the quay by the ship’s bow, talking to the press and the small group of civilians who have gathered. Even though the ship is leaving, he emphasizes that the Coast Guard will remain: Sector Headquarters for North Carolina will stay in Wilmington, and small boat bases at Oak Island and Wrightsville Beach will continue to stand ready to come to the assistance of mariners. “The Coast Guard has enjoyed a very special relationship with the city of Wilmington,” he says, and “that close relationship . . . will continue.” Calling Wilmington a “hidden gem in the service,” both captain and crew are sad to be saying goodbye. Though its home port will be different, the mission of the cutter remains unchanged. Life onboard, Slivinski says, is about how you’d guess it would be spending months at a time on a 210-foot ship with “70 of your best friends.” It’s nothing like a Carnival Cruise, he explains: The work is 24/7, and 16- or 18-hour workdays are typical. The types of missions and activities the cutter gets involved in are rarely scheduled. The Atlantic Ocean can be a harsh place, something they get exposed to quite regularly, and it’s tough to be away from family and friends (and for the younger sailors, cell service) for months at a time. “But there’s a certain allure and mystique about going to sea,” Slivinski says. “Every day is different — the environment is constantly changing. It never stops moving. And it certainly humbles you, in a way, because you’re at the whim of the ocean and Mother Nature. It’s certainly special for me, which is why I’ve made a career of it.” Working together in tight situations, while stressful, has the benefit of creating a floating family. “That’s what keeps people coming back,” Slivinski says. “It’s not the food, or the long work hours, or the constant motion or seasickness. It’s being part of a group and getting to accomplish some amazing things that no one person could do on their own. The camaraderie that you have on a seagoing ship can’t be replicated anywhere.”
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
It’s time to say goodbye. The captain goes back onboard, and the only people left on the pier are the families of the men and women on the cutter, waving American flags and homemade signs. A banner saying “THANK U” billows from a window on a nearby building. On the golden river, an armada of local boats floats outside the perimeter made by a Coast Guard small response boat, waiting to wish the Diligence off one last time. The ship’s crew appears on deck, on the bridge, on the fo’c’sle and the fantail, bedecked in blue coveralls and orange life jackets. Gray smoke billows from the stack as the engines warm up. The clouds are parting, the sun is coming out. One prolonged and three short blasts on the ship’s whistle, a deep baritone bellow that announces it’s getting underway, and 228 years of maritime tradition come to an end as it clears its lines for the final time. The small boats in the river sound a chorus of horns in response; a cheer goes up. American flags wave everywhere. Diligence backs out, pivots to starboard, and slowly gathers way downriver with the falling tide. The Wilmington fireboat throws a sparkling cascade of water skyward as Diligence leads the parade south. The crowd onshore waves goodbye. No longer will their ship play soaring bugle calls when they raise the flag in the morning or lower it at sunset. No longer will their ship ring eight bells at noon, a naval tradition that dates back to the age of sail, when time was kept with sand-filled hourglasses and eight bells signified the end of a watch, that “all was well.” Part of the heartbeat of Wilmington leaves with this ship. Diligence, among other things, is the living counterpart to the old gray battleship North Carolina across the river — an active part of our nation’s tradition of service, a tradition as proud and colorful as the rainbow of signal flags she flew from bow to stern, dressed overall on the Fourth of July. The great white ship passes beneath the yawning span of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge for the final time, leaving the city in its wake, and heads out to sea. OH John Wolfe enjoys life as a writer and mariner on the North Carolina coast. More of his work can be found online at www.thewriterjohnwolfe.com.
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Etched in Stone Flagstone Farm fuses past and present By Cynthia Adams • Photographs by Amy Freeman
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F
or years, Missy Rankin worked in commercial and residential design at an Asheboro firm with partner Dede Reese. But her opus is Flagstone Farm, where she used those skills in service to a larger purpose. “Ultimately function and form come together” is Rankin’s design philosophy. Over time, a legacy property and family heirlooms found new life. Missy and her husband, Sam, thoughtfully improved a 40-acre property they acquired from a family friend in 1993. They made refinements with close attention to the farm’s rustic beauty. The name itself is a nod to a significant feature on the property: the stone itself. “Sam and I named our house ‘Flagstone Farm’ [because of the quarry and the use of that stone in the 1948 house construction] when we bought it from Charles McCrary’s family,” says Rankin. The quarry was the source of the home’s original blue-slate exterior fireplace chimneys and terraces. “We’re sitting on the northernmost vein of Carolina blue stone of the Uwharrie Mountains,” Rankin continues. “The original family dug a quarry and excavated the stone for the house and then offered the quarry to people building homes.” Evidence of this generosity is easily visible along Asheboro’s city streets. “Several homes in town and a church, are built of slate,” she adds. “The patio and its walls, walkways and fireplace are built from stone from the quarry, as is the one fireplace in the house. The
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garden pathway is constructed of old brick and bluestone we found on the property. Sam and I built that walkway before planting the garden,” says Rankin. Brothers Charles and Frank McCrary, sons of Asheboro industrialist D. B. McCrary, built a pair of summer residences at Flagstone Farm. “In 1947–48 Charles and Frank built the two ‘country’ houses (where we now live) on the west side of town. That land had been in the McCrary family for years as farmland,” Rankin explains. It was mere miles from the McCrary’s stately homes in downtown Asheboro near the Acme-McCrary Hosiery Mill complex of buildings (now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.) The McCrary and Moser families were old friends. Rankin’s father, attorney Wescott Moser, “was devoted to his hometown, contributing to the community with his time and energy his entire life,” says Rankin. Moser served on the City Council and as Mayor pro tem. But his most remembered work was co-chairing the Randolph County Zoological Committee with David Stedman in the 1970s. (In early developmental stages, there were various groups established to “garner public support for the zoo and to raise funds” according to press reports.) “This committee’s efforts established the Zoo firmly in Asheboro,” says Rankin. “He was a member of the NC Zoological Authority and remained active in the NC Zoological Society until his death.” Manufacturing was interwoven with her husband, Sam’s family. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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His father, Sam Rankin Sr., founded Ramseur Interlock Knitting Co. in the mid-1940s. Missy and Sam met when she was in high school. Sam was graduating from college and going abroad for textile studies. They married after her second year at UNCG; she completed her interior design degree. After acquiring the farm, they decamped from town whenever possible with their growing family of three children. The fenced pastures enabled the couple to keep horses. “We were ready to bring them out of boarding.” For over a decade, the Rankins left the original home unaltered, occasionally renting it short-term during the furniture market or when families were building a home. “It was long, basically an early ranch, even though designed by an architect in Asheboro and built in 1948,” she adds. “It looked like a long, gray house.” Judging by vintage photos of the deft remaking, the now handsome country home on rolling farmlands responded to the couple’s bucolic improvements. A split-rail fence and a new pond were redolent of the Uwharrie Mountains. In 2004, the couple decided to make the retreat a permanent home, beginning renovations and constructing a cottage, which they completed in March of 2005. They wished to preserve a sense of place, yet add functionality. “Sam and I are project-oriented; I create, and he engineers,” says Rankin. His hobbies grew to include woodworking, metal sculpting, The Art & Soul of Greensboro
even intricate needlepoint projects, detailed and often historic in nature. (“He watched my mother do it and was fascinated,” she explains.) His original works are featured throughout the property: as sculptures, custom gates and wood furniture made from felled walnut trees. The family occupied a new cottage on the property while completing the renovation of the primary house. Rankin, who is not a fan of disposable design, thought long about how she would approach the renovations. Things that could be recycled and reused, like the old kitchen’s hardwood countertops, were cut down and used in the cottage’s kitchen. “Reduce, reuse, recycle,” noted Rankin in her design notebook. She sits on a screened porch they added, now furnished with the McCrary’s rattan front porch furniture. The front porch was integrated into the main living areas and a more expansive porch configured. The original house in “before” photos is a departure from the beauty of the present. With a generous front porch, gray-painted exterior-shingle siding plus stacked stone features, the “after” evokes the architectural style of Blowing Rock, where the Rankins have a vacation home. Inside, the kitchen was moved, bedrooms were reoriented, and practical needs were addressed to accommodate a family of five. (It lacked even a laundry room.) But the footprint of the house was gently, sympathetically, altered and enlarged. An example is the foyer, expanded in the remodel, which features ash flooring. Rankin herself carefully distressed it, marrying the wormy chestnut (and now priceless) flooring material that is O.Henry 61
preserved throughout the house. The foyer’s new ash flooring abuts the original chestnut flooring in a perfect, imperceptible, match. With a vaulted ceiling complete with beams in the main room there was much to like about the original house, she says. But it was dark, with unpainted wood on walls, ceilings and floors that were then in vogue. By painting the wood paneling and ceilings Rankin dramatically lightened the largest and most dramatic room. The house is a display of her designer strengths and restraint. The old and new merged into an improved entity. It is a marriage of repurposed, or recycled, materials and something even more important. Much like a magician’s sleight of hand, Rankin seems capable of disappearing into her work. The understated interiors allow prized heirlooms and art to take center stage. Many of the furnishings are ancestral. “Sug’s chairs,” she indicates, pointing to a pair of wing chairs. “Sug” Moser, her paternal grandmother, lived with the family until Rankin was 15. Handsome keepsakes populate the rooms: a hunt board, corner cupboard and sideboard. Family portraits are on view, as well as the work of artist David L. Bass. Sam’s prize-winning needlepoint rug hangs prominently in the living room. The front study is painted mossy green, a departure from the rest of the house where walls, trim and ceilings are painted Sherwin-Williams’ Muslin to unify the space. The neutrality and quietness of the architecture is a canvas,
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showcasing a dramatic collection of Chinoiseries, art, and artifacts. Lelia Judson Tuttle, Rankin’s great-great aunt, amassed a collection that figures prominently into the home. Tuttle graduated from the State Normal and Industrial College (now UNCG) in 1900. She earned a graduate degree at Columbia University in New York then taught at Davenport College in Lenoir before undertaking religious studies to become a Methodist missionary. In 1910, Tuttle embarked alone to China, accepting a position as chair of English literature at the McTyeire School for Girls in Shanghai. She worked there until 1926, when she transferred to Soochow University and became Dean of Women and professor of English and history. “Her portrait still hangs on a wall there,” says Rankin. She forged powerful connections to China’s leading political lights, having taught the children of Charlie Soong, a wealthy man who returned to China after being educated at Duke, thanks to his benefactor James B. Duke. Soong’s children went on to become powerful figures. “One married Sun Yat-sen, and another married Chiang Kai-shek,” says Rankin. “Madame Chaing became very well-known for her own personal strengths alongside her very powerful husband,” she adds. “Lelia attended their wedding. The sisters stayed in touch with Lelia as they aged, sending her lovely gifts of Chinese handwork for many years. These gifts form the basis of a huge collection that Lelia amassed and later distributed much of to her nieces and nephews.” The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Tuttle dedicated most of her income to purchasing Chinese objets d’art. She sent home elaborate letters written on scrolls of handmade paper, now housed in the Special Collection at UNCG’s Jackson Library, along with other artifacts. In 1942, the invasion of Shanghai and Japanese occupation necessitated her departure. When Tuttle returned to Caldwell County that year, she purchased a home near her family’s home place, later donating inherited lands to create the Tuttle Forest Foundation. The Tuttle Educational State Forest is managed by the N.C. Forest Service. Tuttle’s kinship with the Chinese people and culture was profound. The precious items eventually entrusted to Rankin include porcelains, artwork, paintings and textiles, and a Scholar’s Robe that predates the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. Over time, however, even the new cottage at Flagstone Farm claimed its own identity. It became a part of the tight-knit, Asheboro community. “The cottage became a guest house,” Rankin explains. And it was also a pastoral meeting place for volunteer interests like the Friends of the Library. Rankin, a voracious reader, invited one notable writer friend to stay there on more than one occasion. “Wiley Cash stayed here and wrote,” she adds. He won the O. Henry Award for his writing — possibly for what he wrote while there. It seems that the Rankins also shared in a sense of conservatorship. Flagstone Farm has become a nature preserve; deer wander through on their daily circuit. “I cannot begin to tell you how many deer are here,” Rankin smiles. If they munch the plants, she doesn’t even mind or shoo them away. “Fish in the pond, wild turkey — and we once had sheep and donkey.” The sheep and donkey were rehomed by the zoo where Rankin has long volunteered. The family took them in with glee. She notes, happily, “nature shows up all the time, including migrating geese.” With the same admiration Rankin expressed in showing off her aunt’s precious artifacts, her face lights up observing a configuration of clouds. The clouds, multicolored marshmallows, bobble across the sky beyond the pond. It adds to the farm’s abundant wildlife, enriching the nature show that Rankin “could watch from the screen porch all morning long.” There is no spring feeding the pond, Rankin explains. They created it from an open pasture, stocked it with fish, and added a simple pier. She likes to paddle out onto the pond in an old Girl Scout’s canoe, she muses. The grandchildren like swimming there. The pond, a languid part of the foreground, now reflects a moody sky. A storm is gathering and the clouds dimple with intensifying color. Rankin points a finger upward. “Just look at that!” She grows quite still, simply observing. Nothing, not even beloved heirlooms, can top pleasure taken from the natural world. OH Lelia Tuttle's collection of Chinese artifacts includes letters, records and memorabilia. Missy Rankin (class of '76) and family arranged for the donation to the UNCG University Archives in July 2004. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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Outsiders’ Delight The morning sun’s rays twinkling on crests of gentle waves, the whisper of a breeze with that first, satisfying sip of steaming hot coffee, or the reverie of an afternoon nap. . . all best enjoyed from a comfy sofa on an open terrace. And what about the meandering paths neatly punctuated by stepping stones that wind their way among greenery and a profusion of color — pinks, yellows, lavenders — through your lovingly tended garden? Or the patio, aglow in evening with lanterns and fireflies, and strains of music, while you and friends, share laughter and memories to the clink of iced glasses and the sizzle of a grill? With the arrival of temperate days and cooler nights, life outdoors doesn’t get any sweeter. Why not take advantage of it by carving out spaces beyond your home’s walls and foundation? The accouterments — from pavers and potted palms, divans to decking — that create and enhance a private outdoor nook or cranny, or convivial gathering spot are at your fingertips. So go ahead: Dig, plant, expand your boundaries, stretch out, celebrate and savor it all. For there’ no place like home . . . especially when it flourishes under the canopy of a sheltering sky.
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Look for the Fall issue of Seasons, on newsstands late September. For locations, go to https://seasonsmagazinenc.com/locations/
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A L M A N A C
September n
S
By Ash Alder
Signs of Autumn
According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, Native Americans eptember breaks you open with her golden hours, her had several names for this month’s full moon — the “Corn Moon” wildflowers, her long, sweet kiss of transience. She is absolute and “Barley Moon” among them. Other names include “Moon radiance. Summer in her loveliest form. And one day, out of When the Plums Are Scarlet” (Lakota Sioux), “Moon When the nowhere, she cradles your face in her tender hands, gazes into your Deer Paw the Earth” (Omaha), and “Moon When the Calves dewy eyes, and tells you that everything will change. Grow Hair” (Sioux). Poetic, don’t you think? Whatever you’d like September is the earliest fall leaves — yellow and burnt orange — to call it — imagine the names you might contrive — this month’s dotting the trees like a Tibetan prayer flag strung across a verdant full moon will rise in the wee hours of Sept. 2, when the swallows landscape. She’s the electric hum of cicadas, the pink glow of muhly swirl as one, when the leaves begin to turn, when the apples are grass in sunlight, blueberries on creeping crimson vines. ripe for the picking. September is bewildering. Summer and autumn at once. She Speaking of apples, Johnny Appleseed Day is celebrated this slows you down, asks you to savor what is right here, right now — month — on Saturday, Sept. 26. Born John Chapman (1774–1845), treasures untold. this American nurseryman and missionary was the living legend Look and see. known for introducing apple trees to the Midwest and northern Pear trees heavy with yellow fruit. parts of present-day West Virginia. Among the colorful stories colSwamp sunflowers. lected about this gospel-preaching plantsman, Chapman was said Monarch butterflies. to have had a pet wolf who began following him after he healed its Eddies of tree swallows. injured leg. And while that wasn’t a mush pot on his head, he did Here today, gone tomorrow. But such is wear a tin cap used for cooking during his travels. Another fun the nature of September. Your face is in her fact: Chapman’s trees grew tart apples believed to have been hands now, and she asks you to watch closely. used for alcoholic cider, as the fruit itself was practically unYou look up to the trees, notice the green and palatable. In Michael Pollan’s book The Botany of Desire, yellow leaves wave hello and goodbye as the first the author dubs Chapman a “modern-day Dionysus.” breeze of autumn passes through them. Just like Bet they didn’t tell you that in grade school. that, summer is drifting beyond the veil, a transition that renders you both dizzy and tender. September invites you inward. You I meant to do my work today — aren’t looking for a sign per se, but you But a brown bird sang in the apple tree, are open to one. A simple affirmation that all is as it should be; that you are where you should be, right here, And a butterfly flitted across the field, right now. And all the leaves were calling me. It will take you by surprise. Perhaps you will be on a walk. The path will be familiar, but today, — Richard Le Gallienne on the stretch of trail that leads to the picnic bench in the woods, you will notice an arrangement of goldenrod and late summer flowers in a vase on the center of the table, the sun filtering through in such a way that the flowers glow. As winter squash and late summer There is no one else around. You take a crops spill from the September garden, seat at the bench, and in this moment, plant mustard, radish, turnip, onion all is well. and pansies galore. OH Everything will change, you think, but life is as it should be. Autumn is a second spring when Such is the nature of life every leaf is a flower. — Albert Camus and September.
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Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder By Chris Burritt
We packed Alice up
and put her on a plane to Paris. Somehow she had convinced me that spending a year in one of the most expensive cities in the world would be cheaper than going to college in Columbia, South Carolina.
Not yet 21, Alice has turned out just as many parents would wish. She’s smarter than her dad. She inherited a blessed few traits from me. She stumbles on her words. When the last of her travel documents for Paris arrived shortly before her departure, I chided her, but she reminded me she had learned procrastination from me. I imagine some of you would welcome a break from your grown children. In the few weeks Alice was home last summer, she left coffee mugs everywhere except in the kitchen sink. She hijacked her grandmother’s car and scooted around whenever she pleased. Exactly where, I’m not sure, though I think she was somewhere in the Carolinas. I ask you to remember a few years back, or maybe long ago, when your children were coming along and you wished the best for them. If you were lucky, they didn’t get caught skipping school or breaking the speed limit — or worse. We shouldn’t be surprised when they fail to resist the temptations of the proverbial primrose path; after all, we’ve created a roadmap for them. I should have learned this lesson sooner. But admittedly, I’m a pushover for my daughter — even to this day. Children play the gray between parents. They tell us where they’re going. They sometimes lie. Alice tends toward being sneaky, another of my traits. I’ve warned her about the perils of shading the truth; she shrugs. I’ve urged her to wear a mask wherever she goes even if Covid-19 regulations don’t require it. Her insouciance nagged me as Alice left for her second trip to Paris, on her own. The first visit was a family trip that lasted a few weeks. Alice was old enough to cycle with her
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older brother, Christopher, to the bakery near our garden apartment. They’d return with soft éclairs, fresh and wrapped in paper. I realized then they were blessed with wanderlust that lured Christopher to Asia and now Alice to Paris. She said she’s actually going to study there. Alice endeared herself to me long ago when she defended my dog, Inky, from someone’s accusation that she smelled bad. “Inky smells like Inky,’’ Alice replied. She was a precocious child. I rocked her on a creaky floor, telling stories about a little girl who lived in a house in the woods. On her walks, she’d encounter a monster with long claws that would swipe at her heels. She always managed to escape, jumping through her bedroom window and under her bed covers, safely home. I remembered those stories when Alice came home last summer, though some of their details had slipped away. I also remembered rocking Alice for a while when I’d finish the story, until she’d say, “You can leave now.’’ I guess she’s saying as much now. Before she departed, Alice invited me to visit her in Paris. I’m setting aside money from odd jobs to buy a plane ticket. I’m inclined to pass on things we did before. Wouldn’t I regret skipping the Mona Lisa in the Louvre? I tell myself no. I’m embarrassed to say what I actually want to do: Return to a particular bench near the Musée d’ Orsay, a museum of Impressionist art. It was shady and cool on that July day, I remember, and Alice slept in my lap, while her mother and brother visited the museum to look at Van Gogh’s selfportraits and one of his starry nights. I think I’ll book a flight for next spring. On second thought, the view from the Eiffel Tower may be too breathtaking to pass up. My daughter and I may ride to the top together. Imagine this instead: I jump on a flight to Paris and when I get there, Alice is not. Never was. Wouldn’t that be just like her? OH Chris Burritt is a Greensboro native who has worked for the State Port Pilot, the weekly newspaper in Southport, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Bloomberg News. He now writes articles for the Northwest Observer covering Summerfield, Oak Ridge and Stokesdale. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
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