WALTER Magazine - October 2015

Louise Louise Gaskill Gaskill Lighting Lighting thethe way way

Debbie Debbie Yow Yow

Building Building a legacy a legacy

AtAt the the table table

Tailgate Tailgate heroes heroes

WALTER

OCTOBER OCTOBER 2015 2015

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OCTOBER 2015

THE THE

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FEATURES

VOL 4, ISSUE 2 October 2015

68

81 HOUSE & GARDEN ISSUE 58 RALEIGHITES Variety, personality, and elegance in Raleigh’s homes and gardens

60

STYLE Louise Gaskill lights the way

by Katherine Connor photographs by Catherine Nguyen

76

STORY OF A HOUSE Living in harmony

by P. Gaye Tapp photographs by Catherine Nguyen

81

94 WALTER PROFILE Debbie Yow: The adventure for me is here

by Andrew Kenney

89

AT THE TABLE Tailgate heroes

by Andrea Weigl photographs by Jillian Clark

94

WALTER EVENTS WINnovation

Presented by WALTER and Bank of America photographs by Jill Knight

110

On the cover: Raleighites Ben and Margaret Williams’ country home in Caswell County, N.C.; photograph by Catherine Nguyen.

10 | WALTER

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DEPARTMENTS

114 48 Our Town

Shop Local: Studio 123 The Usual: French social club Game Plan: Debra Capps Off Duty: WRAL’s Monica Laliberte

by Jessie Ammons and Mimi Montgomery photographs by Travis Long

100 Essential ingredient

114 Givers

Blossoming forth

by Todd Cohen photographs by Jillian Clark

118 The Whirl

Parties and fundraisers

130 Seen in Raleigh

Oakwood oddities

Winter squash

by Kaitlyn Goalen photographs by Jillian Clark

102 Drink

Defiant drinking

by David Burris illustration by Tim Lee

104 Hear

Let’s do this

by David Menconi

photographs by Juli Leonard

In Every Issue 14

Letter from the Editor

18

Contributors

20

Your Feedback

24

Raleigh Now

38

Triangle Now

128 The Walter Scribo

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EDITOR’S LETTER

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Welcome to our first home and garden issue.

We’ve got something for everyone in these pages this month: From a grand, historic, art-filled estate to an elegant and comfortable bungalow.

We have gardens of classic beauty and those of unusual design.

The places we live in and the land we cultivate say a lot about us. As individuals and families, of course, but also as a city and region.

The sheer variety of beauty and style represented by the houses and gardens featured this month make it clear: Raleigh is an embracing place.

We value knowledge and history, family and tradition, but we’re not stuck in one way of doing things.

We also applaud the individual. We have experts – in art, horticulture, interiors, and landscape design, for example – whose passions take root here and inform the way they – and those around them – create their own beautiful spaces. (pgs.58-87) That’s also true in many other facets of life, of course. Nowhere was this more evident than on an early September evening when six of our region’s most innovative women took the stage at the WINnovation event we presented with Bank of America. The evening was a celebration of passion taking root and making a difference. (pg. 110) N.C. State athletics direcor Debbie Yow, the subject of our Walter profile this month, knows all about that. Her life and career have brought her to a place where she can both honor a legacy and build one at the same time. The university and the state are better for it. (pg. 89) It all adds up to a lot of inspiration. To live in a way that reflects who we are, to be unafraid to take a leap, to invest in something larger than ourselves. It’s a great way to start an invigorating season that will close out an excellent year.

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LIZA ROBERTS

Editor & General Manager Creative Director JESMA REYNOLDS Assistant Editor JESSIE AMMONS Community Manager MIMI MONTGOMERY Design Intern MACKENZIE ROBINSON Contributing Writers DAVID BURRIS, TODD COHEN, KATHERINE CONNOR, KAITLYN GOALEN, ANDREW KENNEY, DAVID MENCONI, P. GAYE TAPP, ANDREA WEIGL

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Published 10 times a year by The News & Observer Publishing Co. A McClatchy Company, 215 S. McDowell St., Raleigh NC 27601

OCTOBER 2015 Walter is distributed without charge to select Wake County households and available by paid subscriptions at $24.99 a year in the United States, as well as for purchase at Quail Ridge Books and other retail locations.

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CONTRIBUTORS

OCTOBER 2015

DAVID MENCONI has been writing about music and arts at The News & Observer since 1991.

Comin’ Right at Ya is his third book, following 2012’s Ryan Adams: Losering, A Story of Whiskeytown and the 2000 novel Off The Record. Writing with and about Asleep at the Wheel’s Ray Benson for Comin’ Right at Ya was about the most fun he’s ever had.

Broadloom, Rugs, Fabrics, Lighting and Wallpaper

8101 Glenwood Avenue 919.782.6010 | eatmansinc.com follow us on:

JILLIAN CLARK is a portrait and editorial photographer as well as an advocate for people with Trichotillomania. You can see her work at jillianclarkphoto. com. “I’m not a sports fan,” she says of her piece on N.C. State tailgaters, “but the camaraderie of tailgating and the great food may have turned me into one.”

P. GAYE TAPP has been an interior designer for more than 30 years and has been writing her blog, Little Augury, since 2008. She is currently working on a book, How They Decorated, for Rizzoli to be published in Spring of 2017. “This month’s story about Clarendon Hall is one after my own heart,” says Tapp. “Old houses, a stellar art collection, and stories all are passions of mine. The Williamses are a rare breed, both welcoming and erudite, and they have assembled a personal collection of art in a house alive with history.”

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KATHERINE CONNOR recently moved from Charleston to Five Points with her fiancé. Previously the founder and editor-in-chief of The Local Palate, Kate currently enjoys freelance writing and creating culinary events. “Louise literally has a light about her that made getting to know her such a pleasure,” says Connor of her article on Gaskill.

“I felt privileged to marvel in her studio for an afternoon, gazing at her beautiful collection of glass and seeing her creative process in person.”

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YOUR FEEDBACK

BY STEPHEN SONDHEIM AND JAMES LAPINE

OCTOBER OCTOBER 20-25, 20-25, 2015 2015 RALEIGH RAL R RA AL A L EIG E IG G H MEMORIAL ME EM EMO M MO O RI RIA R RIAL IIA L AUDITORIUM A UD AUDI UDITOR UDI TOR OR R IU IUM UM UM

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@WALTERMAGAZINE I love, love, love WALTER! I enjoy seeing and reading about my friends and neighbors here in Raleigh.

The magazine is beautiful! (I especially appreciate the matte texture of the cover, but that’s another subject ...) –Cindy Massey Inspiring article on Shelly Belk, Van Eure @walkforhope in Sept @WalterMagazine -@TdubHokie (September, pg. 117) Check out this fabulous cover by Tim Lee, current @WalterMagazine! Makes me smile big!

-@Laurelinesblog (September, cover)

PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN PHOTOGRAPHY

Great article @WalterMagazine covering @DowntownRaleigh unique retail shop @runologie -@CarlaRLaird (September, pg. 48) A beautiful and unusual #family fun idea in #Raleigh! -@GalleriaRaleigh (September, pg. 30) @SheilaAhler @WalterMagazine Thank you! It was an honor to be invited and be a part of an exciting evening! -@NancyMcFarlane (September, pg. 24) #WINnovation was a truly incredible gathering I’m so humbled to have been a part of.

-@MollyPaul_ (September, pg. 24) @brooksbell gave rip-roaringly funny talk with thoughtful life lessons @WalterMagazine @bankofamerica Event -@RyanFinchNC (September, pg. 24) Got to write about William Lewis, music-bringer & storyteller extraordinaire, for @WalterMagazine.

C’mon, banjos! –@TracyDavisNC (September, pg.

64) Thrilled to see my poem “A Mother’s Place” published in the September issue of WALTER! -@SharonKurtzman1 (September, pg. 115)

We want to hear from you! @WalterMagazine www.waltermagazine.com

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MOSH

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”

- L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

TOAST OF THE TOWN You don’t have to stick to your standard English muffin with butter: Local coffeehouse Sola’s Toast Bar is here.

Choose your own take on toast with a variety of bread options and toppings, such as brie and green apples or almond butter and homemade granola. The Toast Bar menu changes daily to reflect what’s in season.

Monday - Thursday, 6:30 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.; Friday, 6:30 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.; Saturday, 7:00 a.m.

– 10:00 p.m.; Sunday, closed; 7705 Lead Mine Rd.; solacoffee.com

Adding a shot of espresso to chai lattes …

A Halloween afternoon performance by the N.C. Symphony of music from the Harry Potter films … A Twine & Twig antler necklace from Monkee’s at North Hills … Fall foliage at Umstead Park … Roasting pumpkin seeds …

Midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at The Rialto on Friday nights … Lingering under the twinkle lights on the rooftop of Taverna Agora

“Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?”

FEELING CORNY?

Get outdoors and in the festive fall spirit with a classic corn maze. Green Acres Farm in Cary has their corn maze open until October 31. If you stick around after you find your way out, head to their pumpkin patch to pick out a few jack-o’-lanterns. Bring a canned good with you and receive $1 off general admission.

Monday - Friday, 9:30 a.m. - 6 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. - 3 p.m.; 627 East Whitaker Mill Road; ladyfingersofraleigh.com

Cozy autumn sipper TOUCHDOWN!

GNOME HOMES Lest you consider them mere garden decor, we’ve seen where the gnomes roam. Tucked within trees’ nooks and crannies, these clever abodes boast bright doors and miniscule windows. Apparently, fairies and gnomes alike call the magical little spots home.

22 | WALTER

Football season is upon us. Whether you’re a fair-weather fan or a die-hard disciple, tailgating is always a good idea.

But hosting one can be anything but fun. Ladyfingers Caterers’ Pitmaster Tailgate Packages make it all a lot easier.

With your choice of pulled pork, brisket or smoked ribs and plenty of sides, there’s something to please everyone headed to the game. If only long-standing football rivalries could be so easily settled.

Monday - Friday, 9:30 a.m. - 6 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. - 3 p.m.; 627 East Whitaker Mill Road; ladyfingersofraleigh.com

Courtesy Sola Cafe (TOAST); Lyrics from the “Monster Mash” Writer(s): Robert Pickett, Leonard Capizzi, Bob Pickett, Copyright: Acoustic Music Inc., Gary S Paxton Publications, Unichappell Music Inc., Capizzi Music, BMG Rights Management (Ireland) Ltd. (TWIST); courtesy Twine & Twig (NECKLACE); ;courtesy Ladyfingers (TAILGATE); Ray Black III (CORNY); Thinkstock (MULLED WINE)

THE

Congratulations Bank of America is proud to recognize six of the Triangle’s most accomplished and innovative women. We recognize your leadership and the ideas you have turned into reality to make our community a better place. You are a vital source and inspiration to us all.

Visit us at bankofamerica.com/local

Life’s better when we’re connected®

©2015 Bank of America Corporation | ARB8SPB6

Spot

LIght

Local treasures Charlotte’s celebrates 25th anniversary

D

ecades ago, Charlotte Harris was home in Texas for the holidays and in search of a good gift. Her friend told her she must go to Carol’s. “I thought, is that a new store?” Harris recalls. It wasn’t, it was just a woman’s house, but everyone there knew that Carol’s was the place to go for of-themoment jewelry. It wasn’t long before Charlotte brought the concept back to Raleigh; within a year, she was providing jewelry to local retailers here, too.

A former schoolteacher who’d stayed home to mother son Conner and daughter Stephanie, Harris’s next step was to try a store of her own. She opened Charlotte’s in Five Points in 1990, where for the first

24 | walter

Missy McLamb

raleigh

year, she sold the same jewelry that had earned her following. It was a hit. Charlotte’s then moved to Cameron Village, and with the new space came new wares.

Her friends and customers quickly came to see Harris as a trendsetter, but she demurs, claiming her customers always determined her product. “We’d be at market and my friends would ask me to look for a gold ring, or a gold chain, or something for a christening,” she says.

Her tasteful eye didn’t hurt, though. “I just started buying the things I loved. I really still live in magazines – I love to see what’s new and what’s in. And then I try to bring that to Raleigh. I love being surrounded by beautiful things.” Today those things range from jewelry to linens, clothing to home decor.

Now, Charlotte’s is celebrating its 25th anniversary. “Twenty-five sounds like a daunting number, but I don’t see it that way,” Harris says. “It’s happened in a really easy, happy manner. We have been

blessed.” “We” means the whole Harris clan, which operates Charlotte’s as a family. Husband Steve Harris has helped manage the business side of things since day one, and daughter Stephanie Sneeden manages the North Hills location. Charlotte’s will soon open a store in Charlotte, too, managed by Harris’s daughter-in-law, Mimi Harris.

Charlotte Harris is looking forward to the Charlotte shop because working with her own daughter here is already a pleasure. “We talk a million times a day and go to every market together,” she says of Stephanie. Plus, “she has such a young, new approach to it. She does most of our buying now.”

It’s perhaps that willingness to reflect changing tastes and trends that has kept Charlotte’s going strong for a quarter of a century. When a bridal shop opened at Cameron Village, Charlotte’s began carrying custom paper goods to cater to brides (the bridal shop has since

left the shopping center). When Pinterest sparked a DIY wedding approach, Charlotte’s brought a full-time graphic designer on board for custom invitations.

Charlotte Harris says she’s attached to no trend and takes it all lightheartedly, and in stride. “It’s been an education,” she says, “but it’s just been so much fun.

It’s invigorating.”

Both locations of the store will celebrate their big birthday October 23.

Harris and Sneeden plan discounts, giveaways, and other fun customer thankyous.

“When you say 25 years, that sounds like a very long time, but it hasn’t been a very long time,” Harris says. “If you’re doing what you really enjoy with the people you really enjoy being with, it makes for a happy day.” -Jessie Ammons Charlotte’s at Cameron Village, 2034 Cameron St.; Charlotte’s at North Hills, 4350 Lassiter Mill Road; charlottesinc.com

“At Bida Manda, the smiles are contagious.” greg cox News & Observer

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Spot

LIght

Not your father’s thrift shop

D

on’t let the rack of vintage clothes plunked down on the sidewalk – or the store’s name, for that matter – mislead you. Inside the two-story emporium of vintage-ness on West Hargett Street, Father and Son Antiques also stocks a revolving assortment of sought-after mid-century modern furniture and accessories without the typical high-dollar prices. For nearly two decades, owners Brian and Kiyomi Ownbey has been selling these in-demand pieces along with vintage clothing, records, and “a little, kitsch too” to customers not only in Raleigh, but all over the country.

Chosen by The New York Times in 2009 as one of the must-visit places for 36 hours in Research Triangle, N.C. (before Raleigh was considered a destination of its own), the store has attracted mid-mod devotees – and celebrities like actress Hilary Swank – who keep up with new arrivals via Facebook and Instagram feeds. Savvy out-of-town dealers snap up bargains from notables like Bertoia, Eames, Knoll, and Saarinen and have them shipped sight unseen.

Raleighites get to see what’s new in person while – vehicle permitting – taking home what they’ve scored instantly. So while loading up the George Nakashima chair, consider grabbing a ’70s Disco dress or a puffy ’80s one-piece ski suit for that upcoming Halloween party. -J.R. Father and Son Antiques: 107 West Hargett St. Find Father and Son Antiques on Facebook and Instagram

26 | WALTER

all images courtesy of Father and Son Antiques

Raleigh now

RALEIGH now › OCTOBER

2

MEET THE ARTIST

Talk about all-encompassing. Sarah Cain will paint directly on the walls and floor of CAM Raleigh for her exhibit The Imaginary Architecture of Love, opening October 2 and running through January 3. Cain characteristically layers both found objects and traditional canvas paintings into her on-site creations.

This particular installation will explore the dynamics of moving through both architectural and emotional spaces. Join Cain the day of her exhibit opening for an informal coffee-and-conversation gathering.

5 - 7 p.m; museum admission $5; 409 W. Martin St.; camraleigh.org

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COMPETITIVE STREAK

Family bonding hits a new level at the Kids In Training youth/family adventure race on October 4. Teams of two - either a parent and a younger child or two teenagers - compete in a canoe, mountain bike, and trail run race. To get yourself comfortable with the course ahead of time, there’s an optional training session before the race at Lake Crabtree. And don’t take it too seriously: all finishers receive an award. 1 p.m.; $90; 1400 Aviation Parkway; kidsintraining.org

Louis Colombarini

courtesy of David Broach; courtesy of Kids in Training

4

Raleigh now

Spot

Artful apartments S

In the lobby of the Stanhope, nine LCD monitors display an animated digital art piece by N.C. State graduate student Tyler Brown and his studio. On the far wall is a piece by Little Diversified Consulting.

tudent living isn’t what it used to be at the Stanhope, a new Kane Realty building on Hillsborough Street in the heart of N.C. State territory.

In addition to a saltwater pool, game room, study rooms, an art studio, an exercise facility, and 30,000 feet of retail space including an IHOP and a CVS Pharmacy, the building is a showcase of local art.

In an effort to highlight the building’s connection with N.C. State in a sophisticated, innovative way, Kane and the university’s College of Design held a contest for commissioned art in the building. The final collection is striking and creative: An animated, digital art piece created by graduate student Tyler Brown and his studio is installed on a bank of nine LCD screens that greet visitors in the lobby. An outdoor sculpture built by College of Design alumni Michael Batts and Derek Blaylock sits overlooking the pool in the building’s courtyard. A graphic mural designed by Patrick

28 | walter

courtesy of Jon Masterson

LIght

courtesy of Jon Masterson

Fitzgerald, an associate professor at State, brightens up the state-of-theart fitness center.

“I wanted to make something fresh, inspirational, and maybe even invigorating,” says Fitzgerald of his huge, pop-art-inspired mural. His quest for inspiration is mirrored throughout the building as a whole.

The overall result is a playful environment that is solidly grounded in Raleigh’s creative community and speaks to a college student’s self-exploration and growth.

The developers say they hope the building’s involvement with the design world will continue to evolve.

“There’s just so much talent at the School of Design and we’d love to continue finding unique ways to pull it in,” says Josie Reeves, sales and marketing manager for Kane Realty.

“We really hope that this is just the start of an installation tradition.” –Mimi Montgomery

Above: N.C. State associate professor Patrick Fitzgerald’s pop-art-inpsired wall mural commands attention at one end of the fitness facility. Right: In the lobby, a custom textile piece

by Little Diversified Consulting.

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ENIGMATIC

One of the world’s largest mystery conventions will be here October 8 - 11. Bouchercon, an international gathering of crimefiction authors, fans, publishers, reviewers, booksellers, and editors, has almost five decades of history - this month, it’s coming to Raleigh. Among this year’s speakers is Glenn Meganck, a Raleighite with two books out this fall: Buried in Beignets, written under pen name J.R. Ripley, and Lights, Camera, Murder, written under pen name Marie Celine. $195; Sheraton Raleigh, 421 S. Salisbury St.; Marriott City Center, 500 Fayetteville St.; For event schedule visit bouchercon2015.org

courtesy of Christer Berg (Dancer: Jan Burkhard) (BAL); courtesy of Bouchercon

Have a ball at the ballet. Carolina Ballet will perform to Un Bal, the second movement of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. The program marks the debut of choreographer-in-residence Zalman Raffael, and will also include artistic director Robert Weiss’s Bach-inspired piece, A Dancerly Response. 2 E. South St.; For tickets and performance times, visit carolinaballet.com

RALEIGH now › OCTOBER

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THE WORLDS OF

M. C. ESCHER

NATURE, SCIENCE, AND IMAGINATION OCTOBER 17, 2015– JANUARY 17, 2016 East Building, Meymandi Exhibition Gallery The most comprehensive Escher exhibition ever presented in the United States. Featuring more than 130 works by the artist, some never before exhibited publicly.

PARTY WITH A PURPOSE

Join the Jamie Kirk Hahn Foundation for its Weekend of Purpose October 10 - 11. It starts Saturday with a Day of Service, where volunteers will work with community organizations targeting issues like poverty, food justice, and education. That evening, the celebration will continue at CAM Raleigh. Food will be served by the likes of James Beard-nominated chef Aaron Vandemark of Panciuto while Gary Crunkleton mixes cocktails and Ponysaurus Brewing takes care of the beer. Make sure you get out of bed the next morning in time for a brunch at Poole’s Diner supporting the foundation – you won’t want to miss it.

Day of Service: Free; Party for a Purpose: $50 - $125; Poole’s Brunch: $150; jamiekirkhahnfoundation.org/annual_event

courtesy of Nation Hahn (WEEKEND); courtesy of Saks Fifth Avenue Raleigh

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LEONARDO DA VINCI’S

CODEX LEICESTER

AND THE CREATIVE MIND OCTOBER 31, 2015– JANUARY 17, 2016 East Building, Gallery 2 The Codex Leicester is a 500year-old notebook from inventor, scientist, and artist Leonardo da Vinci. Presented in dramatic fashion, the original manuscript offers a rare glimpse into one of the greatest minds in history.

DEALS FOR GOOD

Here’s your excuse to go shopping: Saks Fifth Avenue’s national, month-long October cancer awareness campaign.

Saks Raleigh’s charity shopping weekend October 15-18 coincides with the store’s biannual friends and family sales event. It kicks off October 15 with appetizers, champagne, and a cancer survivor fashion show in the store. Throughout the weekend, a percentage of any purchase made will go to Rex Healthcare’s cancer treatment and research programs.

Keep an eye out for the Jason Wu-designed “Key to the Cure” campaign t-shirts: 100% of those sales go directly to Rex. Thursday event begins at 6:30 p.m.; Store open from 10 a.m. - 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 12noon - 6 p.m. Sunday; Jason Wu shirts $35; 7700 Old Wake Forest Road

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ncartmuseum.org or (919) 715-5923

The Worlds of M. C. Escher is organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art. The Codex Leicester is on loan from Bill Gates. In Raleigh generous support for the Codex Leicester is provided by the Ron and Jeanette Doggett Fund. Both exhibitions are made possible, in part, by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources; the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Inc.; and the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment for Educational Exhibitions. Research for these exhibitions was made possible by Ann and Jim Goodnight/The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fund for Curatorial and Conservation Research and Travel.

M. C. Escher, Drawing Hands, 1948, lithograph, 11 1/8 × 13 1/8 in., Private collection, Texas, © 2015 The M. C. Escher Company, The Netherlands. All rights reserved. www.mcescher.com Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Leicester (Sheet 1A, folio 1r) (detail), 1508–10, ink on paper, 11 2/3 × 8 1/2 in., Courtesy of Bill Gates, © 1994 bgC3 PRESENTING SPONSOR

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Spot

FAIR GAME

I

F YOU GREW UP IN RALEIGH, CHANCES ARE YOU HAVE memories of attending the N.C. State Fair as a child.

If you didn’t, it’s never too late to create some. Check out the rides, games, and food – delicious, daring, and otherwise – at the annual celebration October 15-25. This year’s theme is “Nothing Could Be Finer;” it aims to showcase the best in local entertainment, food, innovation, and agriculture. You can learn about our state at exhibits like the Mobile Dairy Classroom, the Village of Yesteryear, and Agriculture Today. At the State Fair Ark, visitors can meet and learn about more than 60 livestock animals all raised in North Carolina.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the rides and crowds, take a break and check out the Folk Festival, which takes place over the 10-day course of the fair. Folks specializing in everything from bluegrass to clogging will compete to

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see who best exemplifies our state’s musical heritage. The performances don’t end there – an array of free entertainment is planned throughout the fair. At Dorton Arena, groups like The Embers, Band of Oz, and Charlie Daniels Band will be stopping by to entertain.

Also, the famous pig races will be back, along with comedy shows, aerial acrobatics, and an all-female axethrowing exhibition. Be sure to check out Joan Matthews’ award-winning chrysanthemums, as well, which we feature in this issue (pg. 68). End the night in the wine and beer garden, featuring over a dozen local wineries and breweries. And, if you make it until 9:45 p.m., each night they’ll be hosting a fireworks show. –Mimi Montgomery Hours vary, but gates are open from 8 a.m. - midnight most days; $10 adults, $5 children ages 6 - 12, children under 6 free; 1025 Blue Ridge Blvd.; ncstatefair.org

Juli Leonard, The News & Observer

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hit the Road

I

n our age of instant, at-your-fingertips entertainment, The Rural Academy Theater is doing things a little differently. Each year, these Pender County-based performers take some of their original shows and hit the road in a horse-drawn wagon. The wagon also serves as a stage when the company stops for performances, using the night sky instead of spotlights, and grass instead of folding seats. The troupe’s method of transportation harks back to the days of vaudeville.

The group describes it as a fresh response to societal urbanization – instead of playing in jam-packed theaters, the group of puppeteers, musicians, sculptors, and dancers is able to perform at any time at any location, no matter how rural.

On October 17, the group will bring its show to North Carolina Museum of Art’s Museum Park Theater, where it will perform original pieces and screen a silent film accompanied with music by the

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Rural Academy Orchestra. “We love presenting unconventional performing arts and film events in the Museum Park, and a visit by the Rural Academy Theater is right up our alley,” says George Holt, director of performing arts and film at NCMA. “We believe that fans of Paperhand Puppet Intervention will be especially charmed by this original mix of live theater, music, shadow puppetry, and film.”

In case you miss the first evening, they’ll perform again October 18 at Stafford Commons on N.C. State’s campus. Grab a blanket and plan for an evening of outdoor entertainment that’s anything but standard. –Mimi Montgomery October 17, Preshow music, 7 p.m.; Performance, 7:30 p.m.; Members: $5, General: $10, Children 6 and Under: Free; 2110 Blue Ridge Road; ncartmuseum.org/calendar/event October 18, 6 - 8 p.m.; Suggested donation; Stafford Commons, 2610 Cates Ave.; ncsu.edu/gregg

Nicola Krebill

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courtesy of Dona Braghieri-Walton (FLIGHT); courtesy of Michael Zirkle (SCREEN)

Raleigh now › october

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16, 17 off screen

Taking flight

Look up. Burning Coal Theatre Company partners with Only Child Aerial Theatre in Brooklyn, N.Y. to present Asylum, a theatrical production performed mostly in the air. Set in the mid-1970s, the scripted theatre-aerial choreography hybrid tells the story of four psychiatric hospital patients and a nurse who become connected by a crumbling asylum. The show opens October 15 and runs Thursdays through Sundays until November 1. 7:30 p.m. Thursday Saturday, 2 p.m. Sundays; $25; 224 Polk St.; burningcoal.org

Winner, Triangle Business Journal’s Top Residential Team Award, 2015

Orchestral music gets a modern twist at the North Carolina Symphony’s Music from the Movies October 16 and 17. Far from a typical concert, the symphony will play epic scores from familiar films including the Dark Knight Rises, Harry Potter, Star Trek Into Darkness, Titanic, and Pirates of the Carribbean. The show marks the first of the Symphony Pops series, a handful of less traditional symphonic shows. 8 p.m.; $30 - $75; 2 E. South St.; ncsymphony.org

Spot

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Feeling

T

OPERATIC

HE NORTH CAROLINA OPERA WILL HOST ITS 2015 OPERA GALA OCTOBER 3 WITH COCKTAILS, dinner, dancing, live performances, and an auction at the North Carolina Museum of History. It’s a fitting venue for the company’s five-year-anniversary celebration, which will also toast 65 years of opera in the Triangle. The opera’s principal artists will perform pieces from Cold Mountain, a new opera the company will present September 2017 based on the book by Asheville native Charles Frazier. The story centers on a Confederate soldier who deserts the Civil War and attempts to make his way back home to his sweetheart in North Carolina. “There are so many new operas being written…to find one [set] in North Carolina that is so moving and beautiful is really special,” says Eric Mitchko, General Director. The gala also kicks off the 2015 - 2016 season, which will feature classics such as Madama Butterfly, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, and The Barber of Seville. “It’s a really wonderful display of three operas with spectacular casts,” says conductor Timothy Myers of this season’s lineup. “I’m thrilled that as a young company we are able to bring such high power talent to stage.”

–Mimi Montgomery 6:30 p.m. – 12 midnight; $300 per ticket; North Carolina Museum of History, 5 E. Edenton St.; ncopera.org

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Kent Miles

RALEIGH now

RALEIGH now › OCTOBER

11,30

17-18

Andrew Eccles, Decca (FLEMING); David McClister (ROOTS)

CAN’T GET ENOUGH OPERA? October 11, Celebrated Soprano Internationally celebrated soprano Reneé Fleming will grace the stage with the North Carolina Symphony for the first time ever to perform an operatic repertoire of songs. It’s one part of the symphony’s gala benefit evening, which also includes a dinner and cocktail reception. 7:30 p.m.; $105 - $280; 2 E. South St.; ncsymphony.org October 30, Madama Butterfly The North Carolina Opera’s season opener is a fully-staged production of Madama Butterfly, Puccini’s timeless story of a doomed romance. On October 30 and November 1, immerse yourself in the passion and heartbreak, performed entirely in Italian. English supertitles will keep you in the loop. 8 p.m.

Friday and 3 p.m. Sunday; $35 - $110; 2 E. South St.; ncopera.org

AMERICAN ROOTS

Folk music fans will love the American Roots music festical coming to Walnut Creek on October 17 and 18. The lineup includes Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Greensky Bluegrass, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, and Eric Church, among others. Offstage, a “Taste of Raleigh” food and beer celebration will feature a rotation of a local eats and brews.

This is the festival’s inaugural installation, and odds are it will become an annual tradition. Two-day tickets start at $79; 3801 Rock Quarry Road; blackbirdmusicgroup.com/american-rootsmusic-arts-festival

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GET YOUR NASHER ON

T

his fall marks the 10th anniversary of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. To celebrate, the museum is hosting a day-long, museum-wide celebration on October 4 including interactive activities, live music, and the unveiling of a new wall painting by Odili Donald Odita. On October 10, the merriment goes city-wide at a downtown Durham block party. Music, food trucks, art-making activities, and an open jazz jam will keep it festive. The party will also commemorate a new public art project, a mural on Foster Street likewise painted by Odita, who will attend both celebrations.

–Jessie Ammons 12noon - 4 p.m. museum party on October 4 and 3 - 8 p.m. block party on October 10; free; 2001 Campus Drive and 218 W. Morgan St., Durham; nasher.duke.edu

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courtesy of Nasher Museum at Duke University

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3 Nnenna freelon

Grammy-nominated jazz singer Nnenna Freelon is a longtime Durham resident, and her children, daughter Maya and son Pierce, have both become celebrated local artists in their own right. She will join the Ciompi Quartet for the finale of their 50th anniversary season opener on October 3. Prior to her appearanace, the string quartet will perform Quartet in G Major, op. 77, no.1 by Haydn. 8 p.m.; $25; Baldwin Auditorium, 1336 Campus Drive, Durham; dukeperformances.duke.edu

courtesy of Duke Performances (FREELON); N&O Archives

S ha d es , S h u t t ers & Bl i n ds

3, 4 bottoms up

Put a charitable spin on the annual German festival at Triangle Oktoberfest. This version has traditional Bavarian fare, beer, and music, but it’s presented by the Rotary clubs of Apex Sunrise and Cary MacGregor to benefit Alzheimers N.C.. The merriment commences immediately after the Alzheimers N.C. Walk October 3, and it’s a family affair complete with a kids’ zone and college football viewing.

12noon - 10 p.m. Saturday and 12noon - 6 p.m. Sunday; $20 or $30 for both days; 8003 Regency Parkway, Cary; triangleoktoberfest.org

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WEEKEND of

WORDS

Y

OU DON’T HAVE TO BE AN EXPERIENCED wordsmith to attend the West End Poetry Festival in Carrboro. Hosted October 16 and 17 by the Carrboro Poets Council, the gathering marks the 10th anniversary of the festival, and will feature poetry readings, workshops, an open mic, and exhibits from publishers. Participating poets and facilitators include Ansel Elkins, Michael Gaspeny, Maura High, Tsitsi Jaji, Terry L. Kennedy, Susan Spalt, L. Lamar Wilson, and Celisa Steele. “We're excited,” says Steele, the Carrboro Poet Laureate and a member of the Poets Council. “We really try to have the festival bring together a diverse group of folks, and the poets so far represent a good range of styles, points in career, and backgrounds.” To give you a preview of the weekend’s literary greatness, we’ve included two poems from Steele and Ansel Elkins, both of whom will be at the event.

-Mimi Montgomery For more information on the festival, visit westendpoetryfestival.org

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Autobiography of Eve Ansel Elkins

Wearing nothing but snakeskin boots, I blazed a footpath, the first radical road out of that old kingdom toward a new unknown.

When I came to those great flaming gates of burning gold, I stood alone in terror at the threshold between Paradise and Earth.

There I heard a mysterious echo: my own voice singing to me from across the forbidden side. I shook awake— at once alive in a blaze of green fire.

Let it be known: I did not fall from grace.

I leapt to freedom.

Reprinted from Blue Yodel by Ansel Elkins with permission from Yale University Press

Reagan M., 9th grade

To a Son on the Verge of Divorce Celisa Steele The first time you really cried— not I’m hungry or I’m tired

It takes courage to be yourself. At Saint Mary’s we’re here to inspire girls like Reagan, as they stand up, speak up and discover who they are. We believe in the greatness of girls and that’s why we offer AP courses, three languages, 11 sports, a renowned arts program, real-world experiences and a close-knit community to support you every step of the way the possibilities are endless.

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but I’m hurt—I’d snapped the car seat buckle shut, your perfect two-month-old skin caught in the plastic jaws. I can still see the shock and inscrutable thoughts in your eyes. Then a wail, a keening akin to the lament of all the centuries’ forlorn, the orphaned, the widowed and wounded.

Imagine crying with such conviction still. As if the worst that can be done is done. As though the heart weren’t a mutt chained in the muddy yard of another midnight, where it barks and howls until, one day, we have no choice but to cut it free.

ADMISSION DAY STUDENT SHADOW DAYS October 12 and December 4 Reprinted from Broad River Review

To register for one of these events or to schedule a campus visit, call the Admission Office at 919.424.4100.

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CAMPneedlepoint

S

ERIOUS STITCHERS WILL CONVENE IN THE mountains this month for Elizabeth Bradley Home’s annual needlepoint retreat October 2-4 at Asheville’s Grove Park Inn. Attendees will dive in to two full days of instruction on a seasonal needlepoint kit design. With breaks for wine and cheese, coffee and cookies, open stitching, and a Kirk & Bradley and Elizabeth Bradley Home trunk show – brands known for the botanical pillows seen at local shops like Furbish Studio – the getaway’s organizers sure know their audience.

They ought to. Needlepoint.Com is well known to avid needlepointers as the parent company of both Elizabeth Bradley Home and Kirk & Bradley. Its website is also a top place to find needlepoint canvases, kits, and threads. Even dedicated stitchers, though, may not realize the operation is based in Raleigh on Hillsborough Street, and that its retail store has a far broader selection

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than its website.

The store often offers classes and welcomes beginners, but the annual fall retreat tends to attract serious hobbyists.

While transportation and accommodations are not included, a discounted rate at the Grove Park is available.

There’s also an optional upgrade to attend classes with Joan Lohr, an artist and popular needlepoint canvas designer. The whole shebang is a luxurious spin on a familiar pastime.

-Jessie Ammons The 2015 Needlepoint Retreat is $980, and the Grove Park Inn rate begins at $299 per night. For more information and to see what other local, beginner-friendly events are offered, visit needlepoint.com.

courtesy of Needelpoint.com

TRIANGLE now › OCTOBER

courtesy of the Fuquay-Varina Downtown Association (FACEOFF); ThinkStock (COSTUME)

TRIANGLE now › OCTOBER

15

18 RUN TO EAT COOKS & BOOKS

Former Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl recently published her third cookbook-memoir, My Kitchen Year. The book recounts Reichl’s year after losing her magazine job and how she turned to her kitchen for healing. At Fearrington Village on October 15, meet the author over a lunch of recipes from her book, including a dessert of “the cake that cures everything.” 1 p.m.; $105, which includes a signed cookbook and lunch; 2000 Fearrington Village Center, Pittsboro; fearrington.com

Avid runners, casual joggers, and supporters can all enjoy the Quintiles Bull City Race Fest on October 18. Half-marathon, five-mile, and one-mile routes for runners and walkers culminate in a festival on the lawn of the Durham Performing Arts Center. Refuel with a meal from a food truck or a local craft brew, and stretch while listening to live music.

Plus, local restaurants will host a downtown “carb crawl” the night before the race. 7:30 a.m. - 12 noon; $90 for halfmarathon, $55 for 5-miler, $25 for 1-miler; 318 Blackwell St., Durham; bullcityracefest.com

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TRIANGLE now › OCTOBER

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SCARECROW FACEOFF

24 COSTUME BALL Simon Pearce Engraving Event November 11 , 11 am to 4pm

fine gifts and interiors SouthChapelhill.Com fine gifts and interiors 107 meadowmont Village CirCle SouthChapelhill.Com (near the fountain) 107 meadowmont Village CirCle Chapel hill, north Carolina (near the fountain) 919.240.5475 Chapel hill, north Carolina 919.240.5475

Play dress-up a whole week before Halloween at the Cherubs masquerade ball on October 24. The nonprofit’s annual Halloween gala calls for evening gowns and tuxedos, although more elaborate period costumes are encouraged.

This year’s event includes a celebrity cocktail hour with Patsy Pease from Days of Our Lives, and there will also be a live band, a casino, and auctions and raffles. Proceeds go towards research and awareness of children born with congential diaphragmatic hernia. 6 p.m. cocktail hour or 7 p.m. - 12midnight ball; $75; TPC at Wakefield Plantation, 2201 Wakefield Plantation Drive; masqueradingangelsball.org

courtesy of the Fuquay-Varina Downtown Association (FACEOFF); ThinkStock (COSTUME)

Fuquay-Varina will be flanked with scarecrows beginning October 23. It’s all part of the annual scarecrow contest: Local businesses each create their own scarecrow to reflect their storefronts, and passers-by vote for favorites by putting a quarter in the jars before each one. On November 7, the jars are emptied and winners revealed, and all donations go to the Fuquay-Varina emergency food pantry and downtown revitalization committee. All day; free; Main Street and Broad Street, Fuquay-Varina; fuquay-varinadowntown.com

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Triangle now › OCTOBER

home grown design

28, 29

decoraleigh.com

Corner of Hargett & Salisbury Streets Open 7 days a week

BELLY LAUGHS

Watch John Cleese and Eric Idle, the founders of Monty Python, perform a combination of scripted storytelling, audience Q-and-A, musical numbers, video clips, straightup comedy, and more. Supposedly no two shows are alike, so you could even go to both back-to-back performances October 28 and 29. Given the distinctly irreverent brand of comedy the two have pioneered, it’s sure to be hilarious, memorable absurdity. 7:30 p.m.; $60 and up; 123 Vivian St., Durham; dpacnc.com

Spend $25 at Lafayette Village Shops, You Earn a Chance to

30

WIN

This holiday season, Lafayette Village will be giving away a $500 Shopping Spree! The contest kicks off on Saturday, Sept. 19th, and runs through Nov. 21st.

For every $25 you spend in a Lafayette Village shop (eligibility is based on single transactions and restaurants are not included), you will receive an entry for a chance to win a $500 Shopping Spree at Lafayette Village. The winner will be chosen at our Tree Lighting Ceremony on Nov. 21st.

(You do not have to be present to win).

SNEAK PEEK

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The Orange County Artists Guild open studio tours take place throughout November. You can get a sneak peek at a preview exhibition at the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts October 30. A selection of paintings, sculpture, and pottery will help you decide which studios to visit. The opening reception is October 30, but the preview runs through November 15. 6-9 p.m.; free; 121 N. Churton St., Hillsborough; hillsboroughgallery.com

courtesy of John Cleese/Eric Idlen ; courtesy of Bruce Mitchell (SNEAK PEEK)

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Local

From left: Molly Rohde, Charlotte Smith, and Martha Richardson.

“We never dreamed it’d be this big … watching Seaboard Avenue change, watching Capital Boulevard change. It’s just getting bigger and bigger.”

– Molly Rohde, co-owner of Studio 123

I

t started out as just a fun project. molly rohde and Martha Richardson met while planning the Carolina Ballet Winter Ball and quickly bonded over their love of design and art. In 2008, they rented a warehouse at Seaboard Station with a group of friends, planning to use it as an art studio – and maybe to sell paintings and furniture on the side. But when the economy took a sudden dive, customers began consigning their furniture to the studio, and the women found themselves primarily refurbishing and selling the vintage pieces. “It was a time when necessity was the mother of invention,” says Rohde. When their three other partners left the business, things became more serious: Rohde’s daughter, Charlotte Smith, came home from New York to join the team, and they

streamlined Studio 123 into the eclectic, well-cultivated vintage furniture store it is today.

The women laugh when they recount some of the things Richardson has brought home from her buying trips: Indonesian gold altar figures, a giant propeller from a nose-dived plane, a Carolina-blue canoe from the 1950s. “I buy everything from an army helmet to a Harley Davidson bustier,” she says. But it all always sells, a testament to how beloved Studio 123 is by its followers. It has many. The operation recently moved to a new location on Capital Boulevard, allowing the team to spread out a bit. “We have a wonderful following,” says Richardson. “They keep coming back.”

–Mimi Montgomery

1505 Capital Blvd., #15; seaboardstudio123.com

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photograph by travis long

The Junior League of Raleigh presents the 31st annual

October 29 – November 1 Raleigh Convention Center

Shop at SPREE! to find gifts for everyone on your list! Stylish jewelry.

Fashionable apparel and accessories for men, women and children.

Seasonal home decor. Special events and the You're Invited Back Cafe!

Purchase tickets online at www.ashoppingspree.org Tickets $10 in advance, $12 at the door

Our Town

The

Usual

“We don’t have any family here. In a way, this is our family.”

–Sandrine Pauwels, co-host of the French social club

W

hen Sandrine and Jean Pauwels moved from Paris to Raleigh 16 years ago, they were delighted to find a community of French natives in the area. Sandrine, especially, met regularly with women for coffee and book exchanges, but conversation would often return to wanting to connect on a less formal level. So the couple decided to open their Oakwood home. “We invited people to come, bring a dish, bring a bottle of wine,” says Sandrine. “It’s mostly open to the French community, but of course our American friends are welcome,” says Jean, before adding, with a chuckle, “we certainly have Francophiles, too.”

What began two years ago as a monthly potluck of a few dozen acquaintances quickly grew into 50-plus dapper guests,

sometimes as many as 90 of them, who trickle in and out. “It starts at 7 p.m., and then it’s – whatever. Until...” says Jean.

Sometimes, the merriment continues until 1 a.m. The group now meets every other month and invitations spread via word-of-mouth. “It’s become a connection between people who live here and people who are arriving here” from France, Jean says.

Minglers – including the couple’s children, Pauline, 17, and Alexandre, 21 – span every age and occupation, speaking French and eating heavy, savory hors d’oeuvres. As the clock approaches 10 p.m., the snacks switch to sweets. “It’s fun,” Sandrine says. “It’s just fun, fun, really fun.”

–Jessie Ammons photograph by TRAVIS LONG

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Our Town

Game

plan

“I have four teenage boys, so the State Fair is a big event for us. My family just walks around testing the food for the most part. We go in a big circle.”

–Debra Capps, owner and CEO, Capps Construction and Plumbing

D

ebra Capps claims she’s one of the luckiest ladies around. “I get to walk around with five good-looking men all the time,” she says of her husband, Todd Capps, and their sons, Jake, 16, Ethan, 15, Griffin, 13, and Owen, 11.

Male company is familiar territory for Capps, and not just at home: The construction and plumbing company she owns and runs is a rare woman-owned entity in a man-dominated industry. Capps bought the business from her father almost three decades ago and has been

forging her own path ever since.

On her radar this month is the annual N.C. State Fair, that smorgasboard of rides, agricultural displays, and, of course, carnival food. Capps’ favorite? “I have to have the corn. And there’s one (truck) called Al’s Fries – he’s got really good fries.” For her men, it’s just another postsports-practice meal, but for her it’s an indulgence. “I’m a healthy eater, so that’s a stretch for me. But you can’t not!

Fall means it’s time for the fair.”

–Jessie Ammons

Join Debra Capps at the N.C. State Fair October 15 - 25. Gate hours vary by day, but tend to be 8 a.m. - 11 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. - 12 midnight on weekends; $10, $5 ages 6 - 12, free for ages 5 and under; 1025 Blue Ridge Blvd.; ncstatefair.org photograph by travis long

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www.PhysiologicAesthetics.com

Our Town

Y

off

Duty

“If I could have 12 dogs, I would.”

– Monica Laliberte, WRAL 5 on Your Side reporter and Canine Companions for Independence volunteer

ou probably know Monica Laliberte as the face of WRAL’s 5 On Your Side, fighting for the rights of consumers. Fewer know that when she’s off duty, Laliberte fights for another cause: the rights of people with disabilities to live independent lives. For the past 11 years, she has been a volunteer trainer for Canine Companions for Independence, a nonprofit that provides assistance dogs.

In her early reporting days, Laliberte covered a piece on assistance dogs and was instantly intrigued. “I thought this was a great thing that my whole family could be a part of that was charitable,” she says. They tried it and were hooked – her family recently started training their seventh puppy.

Each Canine Companion volunteer undergoes a rigid screening process and is educated on how to properly train an assistance dog. Then they receive a puppy from the orga-

nization’s California headquarters (usually either a golden retriever, labrador, or a mix) and train it for 18 to 20 months on socialization, commands, and manners. Once the puppy graduates, it’s sent “off to college,” as Laliberte puts it, where the dog works with professional trainers for six to 10 months on everything from how to open and close drawers to how to retrieve things out of the fridge. It’s an intense process. “These dogs pretty much have to be perfect,” she says.

Of course, each dog’s graduation comes with a bit of heartache. “We cry our eyes out every time,” she says. “It’s kind of like giving up a child.” But she knows each puppy will go on to serve a huge purpose. “I think it’s so fulfilling…to see how these dogs change people’s lives. How they not only just help people to function in everyday life (but also) the social interaction that that dog can provide people – it’s just huge.”

–Mimi Montgomery photograph by tRAVIS LONG

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Every Woman Wants a Bailey Box Raleigh’s Cameron Village and Crabtree Valley Mall www.baileybox.com

&

W

E LIVE IN ONE OF AMERICA’S FASTEST-GROWING, most innovative, and best-performing cities. We don’t need the Brookings Institution, Money Magazine, or the Milken Institute to tell us that (though they do). It’s evident all around us.

It’s in Raleigh’s growth and its history, in the thriving new and proudly old. It’s also in the way we live. In traditional homes and modernist ones; with large families or alone. Single, married, empty nesters; in North Raleigh, downtown, or in between.

For our Home and Garden issue, we collected some of each. Beautiful houses and gardens that give a glimpse into some of the many ways we live in Raleigh today.

We also visited one of our city’s most interesting

artists, Louise Gaskill, who makes many local houses – and others all over the country – brighter and more beautiful with her handmade light fixtures. And we got to know some local gardeners with horticultural innovations and passions that are decidedly not of the ordinary.

We also took a drive to the historic, art-filled retreat of one of Raleigh’s most esteemed couples in the arts.

Clarendon Hall – the stately 1842 home of Ben Williams, the North Carolina Museum of Art’s first curator, and his wife, Margaret – is an inspiration for anyone who loves and lives with art.

They and the others whose houses and gardens fill this special section have found a unique kind of harmony between the lives they live and the environments they live them in. photograph by CATHERINE NGUYEN

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shear genius

GreenFront Interiors & Rugs 2004 Yonkers Rd., Raleigh, NC 27604 (919) 754-9754 | greenfront.com

home

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garden

Flora bundance

W

When Bill and Judy Fitzgerald signed up six years ago for one of the cottages at The Cypress of Raleigh, an elegant North Raleigh senior living community, they were hoping to relieve themselves of some of the burden of maintining a six-and-a-half acre country property. But downsizing didn’t necessarily mean simplifying.

Judy made sure the contract included the rights to what was technically a common area behind their cottage. She wanted to recreate, on a smaller scale, the English garden she and Bill had enjoyed at their previous home. So she brought in her friend and garden designer Bridget Hutchison from Hudson, Quebec to help.

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photographs by catherine nguyen

english garden

With over 25 varieties of roses, the design of the garden was influenced by country gardens in England.

Hedges, paths, a center fountain, and a pergola provide the structure, or as Judy says, the “bones” of the garden. Her experienced horticultural skill and adroitness with color and texture ensure a variety of flowers blooming throughout the growing season.

When the “Garden is Open” sign is out, and most of the time it is, neighbors are welcome to follow the path and enjoy it for themselves.

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At last, is under one roof!

cottage living

Opposite: The shady pergola anchors one end of the English garden, providing structure and a place for climbing roses to flourish. It’s also a favorite spot for the Fitzgeralds to enjoy the garden’s ever-changing light and color. Tucked in the shade garden is a bunny ornament, representing one of Judy’s favorite motifs. Above: Conical boxwoods from Canada create an evergreen living wall.

Their friendship, nearly three decades in the making, began when the Fitzgeralds lived in Hudson, where “Biddy” – along with a host of other local experienced gardeners – shared knowledge and passion about plants and design with Judy.

Hutchison was such a valued resource that the Fitzgeralds had already hired her to create two previous gardens. This time, with Judy at the design helm, the friends sat down at the kitchen table and “went through a couple of erasers” to create a plan that would incorporate all their must-haves within the more limited space.

Hutchison recommended a framework for the garden. That meant hedges, paths, pergolas, and walls to establish structure, or, as Judy says, “bones.” Once that was set, they chose the plants. By including over 25 varieties of roses – hybrid teas and floribundas – they ensured something would always be in bloom (nature permitting) and fragrant, too. Four Iceberg tree roses were chosen to anchor each quadrant of the garden, which is hedged with Nomar boxwoods from Canada.

The garden’s painterly mix of annuals and variety of textures are evidence of Judy’s background in interior design.

Today, Judy maintains the garden herself, spending about half an hour each day deadheading or edging. None of the roses are treated with insecticides.

Instead, she introduced predatory mites and ladybugs to keep the plants healthy.

And the garden is truly for the community. When the Fitzgeralds’ “Garden is Open” sign is out front, and it usually is, neighbors are encouraged to meander down the path to to enjoy Judy’s, and nature’s, handiwork. -J.R.

Welcoming our newest team member, Lee W. Turner!

Visit us at 715 Morgan St. (Corner of St. Mary’s & Morgan)

home

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garden

A house for

A

sharing

A few years ago, kristin and john replogle came home to Raleigh after a stay at their Outer Banks beach house and realized they missed more than the ocean air. In their traditional Drewry Hills home of nine years, they had none of the open, lightfilled aesthetic that made their place at the beach so refreshing.

“We don’t we have that at home?” they asked each other.

Skylights, they decided, would fix it. So they called in their friend, the builder Joel Williams, for suggestions. “You’ve got more problems than just the light coming in,” he told them. To get what they were after, Williams suggested entirely reconfiguring the back of the house, inside and out. Oh, and skylights would help, too.

It was a daunting proposition, but after 11 moves in the last two decades, the family of six knew they weren’t about to move again. They decided it was worth it to make their house exactly the way they wanted it to be, and welcomed the opportunity to nudge their traditional brick home into a more “transitional” aesthetic, bringing in modernist elements and ideas.

Architect Ron Cox and interior designer Barbara Replogle of Details Interiors brought in seamless sliding glass doors, couches-as-swings, extraordinary amounts of natural light, clean lines, a graceful transition between the formal front of the house and the facelifted back, and a limited color palette. Williams’ team made it a reality. The result is a bright, glass-walled haven incorporating an open kitchen and family room; a wine cellar-as-art-installation; a limestone patio, pool, and fireplace; and a whole new personality. North Carolina materials were used throughout.

“It totally changed the way we live in the house,” Kristin Replogle says. Sunday nights now mean family dinners followed by family swims in the saltwater, solar-heated pool. Parties now mean sitting by the outdoor fire and grown-ups swinging from ceiling-hung couches.

And day-to-day, Kristin says, being in the house now isn’t that different from being at the beach. “Now, you feel like you’re far away. It’s a house for sharing, and a house for being.” -L.R. photographs by Jeanette Galie Burkle

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traditional to transitional Opposite page: A limited color palette and a graceful marriage of traditional and modernist elements make for an open, light-filled haven for entertaining and dayto-day living.

This page, clockwise from above: Ceilinghung couches in the bright family room make a playful gathering space popular with all ages. “That’s the room everyone goes in to,” Kristin Replogle says.

A saltwater pool is big enough to swim in, but small enough not to take over the space. “It’s the place for the family to gather,” she says.

Beyond the patio’s limestone walls lies a far more rustic slice of life, including a henhouse with five chickens, a vegetable garden, and bee hives.

The glass-walled wine cellar – inspired by one the Replogles admired in a New York restaurant, doubles as a work of art and holds 378 bottles. The new configuration of the house “makes entertaining fun again,” Kristin says.

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home

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garden

RX: home

W

When pharmacy owner Trey Waters added person street pharmacy to his portfolio and gave it an overhaul earlier this year, it wasn’t the only part of his life getting a re-vamp. The old bungalow he’d bought near his new store needed some help becoming a home. The prescription: A renovation by architect Ashley Morris of Pell Street Studio and interior designer MA Allen.

What started out as a job focused on the kitchen, master bathroom, and dining area quickly mushroomed. Walls were torn down, new ones were built, and floorboards were replaced.

Allen made it all uniquely Waters’s.

“She was involved in nearly every step of the process,” Waters says. But it wasn’t exactly an easy one: As the renovation began, Waters was hobbled by a torn ACL, and Allen was drawing ever-closer to her pregnancy due date. “We were such an odd couple making selections,” Allen says. It wasn’t just their ungainly gaits, they also had different styles and preferences.

“He has a lot of antiques and lots of rustic, raw wood things.

I’m more classic and clean,” says Allen. But it worked. “Blending those elements worked really well. I think we balanced each other.” The result: a home that is at once masculine and elegant; fresh but familiar.

The two were also careful to ensure the home remained a distinct reflection of the owner’s life. “Our biggest goal was to maintain the charm and character but also make the space more contemporary and open,” says Waters. Vintage pharmaceutical bottles and paraphanelia line the bookcases next to Waters’s collection of antique literature. Weathered floorboards, masculine prints, and dark colors play nicely with a stream-lined kitchen with white-on-white subway tiles – a nod to both Waters’s and Allen’s aesthetics.

The whole process took about six months but results in a house that looks – in the best way possible – like it’s been lived in for years. With an interior like this, we think its safe to say that’s probably the plan. –M.M. photographs by nick pironio

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the perfect mix

Opposite page: A pale palette makes a fresh backdrop for weathered bricks and the apothecary collections of a pharmacist.

This page: Space, air and light give the bungalow elbow room and elegance.

october 2015 | 67

home

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garden

raleigh’s fairy godmother of mums

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Joan Matthews understands that not everyone knows what she’s talking about when she talks about Chrysanthemums. Many, she knows, envision autumn’s grocery store go-to, five bucks if you’re lucky, tidy globes the color of fall leaves. Placed in a pot beside a pumpkin on a stoop, they’re everyone’s perfectly predictable fall décor, disposable come December.

Those mums are not Matthews’ mums.

Matthews’ mums are not uniform. They’re not conveniently hued to match the season. They’re not to be found at the grocery store, or really any store at all.

Matthews’ mums are interstellar supernovas of color and shape; they are otherworldly, spidery, and often gargantuan. They are rare, they require tending, and they are disappearing. Matthews is determined to save them.

A visit to the .14-acre lot that holds her house and garden in Five Points is a lesson in the triumph of will, passion, and purpose over practicality. Her will to grow, nuture, and love mums. Her passion to share them with

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photographs by juli leonard

rare, endangered

Opposite page: Joan Matthews in her Raleigh garden, filled with rare Chrysanthemum cultivars.

This page: Large blooms are possible when plants are assiduously de-budded throughout the growing cycle. Matthews’ blooms have won blue ribbons at the N.C. State Fair.

the world. And her gripping purpose: to save them from vanishing from the United States.

Her will: Matthews has a very small garden. But it holds more than 300 plants of 120 different types, including 80 on the roof of a chicken coop. Every day between March and October, the former English as a Second Language teacher spends as much time as she can nurturing, re-planting, and de-budding her mums so that they can reach their ultimate potential.

Her passion: She is so eager to share her love of mums and spread it, make it catch, that she will speak to any garden club that asks. She gave a lecture on mums in her garage. She enters mum competitions though she doesn’t care about winning – even disdains it as unmeaningful – just to keep the mum conversation going. She will force herself to cut a dozen of her blooms (something she hates to do), place them in wine bottles rescued from neighbors’ recycling bins, arrange them in the middle of her dining room table, and go out on the street to invite strangers in, just so they might fall in love and want to grow mums, too. That’s how it started with her, 15 years ago,

when she saw an 11-inch bloom at a show. “I had never seen anything like that,” she says.

Her purpose: When Matthews learned that King’s Mums, the country’s foremost – arguably only – seller of unique mum cultivars had accidently killed off the bulk of its crop and that the population of mums in the United States was threatened, she went into overdrive. Because mums are grown not by seed but by cuttings, this was dire news. She took armfuls of her plants to Duke Gardens; she tried to give some to the J.C. Raulston Arboretum and offered to speak to its school of agriculture. She started the Central Carolina Chrysthansemum Society.

“I give away plants to anyone,” she says. “I will talk to anyone about mums. I’m not a mum expert. I’m the advocate. The enthusiast. I grow them to show: You can do this.”

She admits that her compulsion can be difficult to explain, even to her husband, who is supportive if perhaps perplexed by her focus. For Matthews, it’s simple: “For some reason,” she says, “it has fallen into my hands to help these mums stay in existence.” -L.R.

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Vegetal and

courtesy of Leslie Herndon

garden

vertical

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What nature can create, the gardener can nurture, tame, and frame. And, if you’re Greenscape floriculturist Leslie Herndon, turn on its head and hang on a wall.

Live, vertical, growing artwork is what Herndon creates yearround at Raleigh’s Cameron Village. With feather grasses and annuals, evergreen herbs, ferns, cherry tomatoes, and ivy, among many other plants, Herndon creates giant vegetal “paintings” to brighten otherwise-blank walls and spaces. These works incorporate a multitude of hues and textures, scents and shapes. She has made them to commemorate events, to celebrate seasons, and to encourage people to stop and smell, touch – even taste.

First patented in 1938 by University of Illinois landscape architecture professor Stanley Hart White and made famous more recently by French botanist Patrick Blanc, living

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walls – or vertical gardens, as they’re also known – represent a horticultural trend that has found its way to Raleigh and seems here to stay. The new Citrix building downtown, for instance, is home to a massive, two-story living wall that hangs from a crane left over from the building’s previous life as an industrial warehouse. Designed by the Baltimore firm Furbish and Alliance Architecture of Durham, the Citrix wall is home to 8,000 plants from 14 different species, including philodendron, orchid, and fern.

Not to be confused with wall-covering climbing vines like ivy or jasmine, walls like these incorporate live plants in individual containers, happily growing vertically and in precise formation. The growing-vertically part turns out not to be that big of a deal for the plants, Herndon says. It’s the tiny space for their roots that’s the challenge. It’s one of the reasons that living walls are hard to care for and haven’t yet gone mainstream outside of corporate settings.

Constant watering helps. Typically, watering systems are built into the scaffold or frame that holds the living walls up.

The infrastructure at Cameron Village doesn’t allow for that, so Herndon’s creations are watered by hand six days a week.

They’re worth the effort, which begins with painstaking planning and experimentation. Herndon begins with a life-size sketch. She maps out color, shape, and texture, and decides what plants will help her achieve the desired effect. Then she plants the creations and waters and fertilizes them in careful conditions for up to eight weeks before installation.

Her inspiration comes from lots of places. She created an edible wall this past summer to help promote healthy living.

Cherry tomatoes, basil, thyme, oregano, arugula, radishes, and carrots were all featured. It worked. “People actually ate things off the wall,” she says. “We had to rotate the plants out to replace them.”

Another time, she created a planted replica of Claude Monet’s famous painting San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk (below). “I wanted to do something different,” she says. “I’m a big Monet fan.” -L.R.

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home

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mossology

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David Spain is an artist whose medium is moss. Yes, moss. That spongy, green, felt-like plant that sprouts in humid nooks and wooded glens. A pioneer in the burgeoning world of moss landscaping – and heralded by tastemakers from Martha Stewart to Southern Living – Spain is known for taking moss out from its darkened garden corners and bringing it proudly to an evergreen center stage.

The landscape designer’s role as a champion of moss was thrust upon Spain in 2008 when his father-in-law – whose wooded Raleigh backyard was then home to many varieties of the stuff – told Spain it was “impossible” to cover his sizable front yard with moss, as well. He dared Spain to try.

So Spain set out to learn, and discovered that there was nobody to teach him. Experts on moss in the wild, yes, but no expert on moss cultivation. He considered taking a course in briology (botany relating to mosses), but realized the curriculum would cover how the plants live happily in nature, but not purposefully in landscapes. “It was so fascinating to me that I

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courtesy of David Spain

garden

couldn’t find anyone who I could learn from,” he says. “It was an a-ha moment. It made me realize I could be a very large fish in a very small pond. And I didn’t have anyone telling me: ‘No, you can’t do that.’”

So he read and learned and experimented. He tried treating fields of moss with different acid levels, watering levels, and types of moss. He failed and tried again. In two years, “I cracked the code.” He did his first major garden in 2011 and hasn’t looked back.

With Spain at the forefront, moss gardens have become popular for their beauty, hardiness, sustainability, and eco-friendliness.

Today, Spain’s Raleigh moss fields supply thousands of clients from Five Points to Big Sur. They are big and small, appreciated by residents of modernist mansions and modest bungalows alike. Turns out people of all kinds love his otherworldly places of quiet beauty and contemplation.

“Moss is just this verdant connection, connecting all of the other elements in the garden,” he says. “It gives you a feeling of antiquity, like it’s been there for a long time. Part of it is the way the moss glows with this vibrant, verdant green but also has this softening quality. And it looks good year-round.” -L.R.

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style

Transcending

A

light

by Katherine Connor

ask Raleigh’s Louise Gaskill the secret to her artistry in lighting design, and you won’t get far. “Oh, I don’t know how I do it, I just sort of taught myself and I learn as I go,” she says humbly, with a smile. It’s hard to believe that such a masterful creator – her handmade, one-of-a-kind fixtures are sought after by interior designers and clients all over the country – could deny her skill, but that’s another of Gaskill’s gifts: making it all seem simple.

To call her a lighting designer is to tell half the story. She’s also an alchemist, creating of-the-moment lamps, sconces, and chandeliers out of antique glass, seashells, found fragments, and metal fixtures. When she talks about her designs, her silver-blue eyes radiate.

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photographs by cATHERINE NGUYEN

Beautiful jewelry

for Every

n o i s a c c O masterful creator

This page: Louise Gaskill in her studio, filled with her collection of vintage glass, metal components, and found fragments.

“I cannot say enough good things about Louise,” says prominent Chicago interior designer Julia Buckingham.

“We have the same design aesthetic, which I describe as vintage antique with a modern vibe. She’s highly creative with her vision and yet she makes it seem so simple, so effortless.”

Originally from New Bern, Gaskill graduated from Meredith with a history degree and launched a career in software sales in Raleigh. She fell into lamp design after creating a few pieces for herself, then kept it up as a hobby.

She says her love of history has always fueled her work. “Perhaps that’s something that ties all of this together: the history and the stories of the glass and the different pieces of lamps. I love the story behind old pieces,” she says.

There were no artists in her family, no crafts passed down through the generations. Instead she taught herself to design new fixtures by deconstructing lamps she wanted to work with, then reconstructing them and learning as she went.

At one point, Gaskill considered creating larger pieces of furniture,

but sage advice from her husband, Robert Sheldon, convinced her to stick with lighting: “Don’t ever buy anything

•

d i a m o n d s , e s tat e a n d a n t i q u e j e w e l ry

•

loose diamonds of all shapes and sizes

• • •

c e rt i f i e d a p p r a i s a l s e x p e rt j e w e l ry r e pa i r s we buy diamonds, g o l d a n d p l at i n u m

downtown raleigh since 1949

307 s. wilMington street 919.832.3461 r e l i a b l e j e w e l r y. c o m

“Louise is so great at mixing old glass with new designs. For my last project, we combined vintage navy glass with a ’70s cut crystal cylinder.

It's one of my favorites.”

-Martha Schneider, Raleigh’s La Maison

that you can’t pick up yourself,” he said.

Though her pieces remained manageable, her workshop quickly overtook the garage and storage shed where her husband once tinkered with cars. After 14 years, she still picks up every piece herself. And in the process, Gaskill has become a revered artist within a niche industry – a niche industry with big competitors.

“That really is probably the hardest part of this whole enterprise, that I’m all by myself in this field, and I’m competing against large corporate companies with big budgets and mass forms of production. My pieces are works of art and

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can take up to one to two weeks to complete, but this is an heirloom and something that will stay in your family for generations to come.”

The fun part

It all starts with the hunt, and that’s “the fun part.” Gaskill says there’s nothing better than finding a great piece of antique glass – some come from other lamps, fixtures, or vases. Glass dictates the piece: Every lamp, chandelier, or sconce has some piece of glass in it. It’s her inspiration and her signature touch.

Her workshop is filled with it: cobalt

blue cylinders, bulbous German bases, Italian teardrops. And there’s more: a pile of gold kitchen sifters found at an antique fair will eventually make their way into the base of a lamp. A wall is filled with various pendants and knickknacks that will make a piece uniquely hers.

Gaskill starts with the frame, or the base of a piece, adds a lamp pipe down the center, and then starts stacking things together, seeing what works and taking it apart again until it “fits.” This is

unexpected merging

This page: Found metallic coasters and old chandelier pieces stand ready for reinvention. Opposite page: A piece of Murano glass is the starting point and inspiration for a new chandelier.

where her joy comes: in the unexpected merging of components.

In addition to antique glass, Louise uses different metallic parts: coasters from a chair, irons from a fireplace, old chandelier bases. She buys her pieces from all over – eBay, auctions, antique malls. Sometimes clients give her a piece that they would like refurbished. Raleigh interior decorator Susan Tollefsen had a client with an old family chandelier that was pretty but tired. With Louise’s finesse, it became a new, more interesting chandelier, but lost none of its history.

Gaskill has never marketed herself and relies solely on word-of-mouth advertising. She sells only to designers and to a few retail shops in Raleigh, including La Maison in North Hills. Her client roster covers the entire country – from Chicago to Florida, Charleston to Raleigh – and she plans to showcase her 70

new lighting designs to decorators at the High Point Market October 17-22.

“Louise designs unique fixtures that can combine lots of different time periods together between the traditional, transitional, and modern,” says Tula Summerford of Raleigh’s Design by Tula.

“Her pieces work for any style house.”

Where to Find Louise Gaskill’s Work Louise Gaskill By appointment only: 2023 Progress Court, Raleigh Louisegaskill.com Susan Tollefsen Interiors 2025 Progress Court, Raleigh Susantinteriors.com La Maison 4209 Lassiter Mill Rd., Suite 132 Raleigh Lamaisonraleigh.com Design by Tula Designbytula.com

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STORY

of a house

living in harmony

by P. Gaye Tapp photographs by catherine nguyen october 2015 | 81

immersed in art

70 walter 82 || walter

“We put art everywhere,” says Ben Williams, above with wife Margaret. The walls of Clarendon Hall are full, but the couple’s collection extends to sculpture, furniture, and decorative objects. Modern and classical works fill the house by mutual consent. Oppposite: The house’s second parlor – the couple’s living room – is a perfect example: Louis XV-style chairs, an Eames molded plywood chair, a Gio Ponti lamp, an inherited antique Empire sofa, and a copy of a Cumaean Sibyl with her scrolls are all at home together. A portrait over the Thomas Day mantle is of one of Virginia’s Crown Governors, c. 1740, and attributed to Charles Bridges, an English painter. The deep bronze color of a Bertoia sculpture mingles with the trompe l’oeil marble of the parlor mantel. Previous page: In the dining room, a Thomas Day walnut sideboard holds pieces of Jugtown pottery from the Williams’ extensive collection, Danish Modern porcelain, and a glazed turquoise bowl that picks up the color in one of Ben Williams’ modern circle paintings called Summer.

C

Clarendon Hall, built in Caswell County in 1842, was described by historian Katherine Kendall as “a rich man’s house.” Today it could be described as a house rich in art. Ben and Margaret Williams have assembled a collection here based on their love affair with art – and with a house, eternally young.

Ben Williams, now in his late 80s, was the first curator of the North Carolina Museum of Art and the curator of the Gregg Museum at N.C. State; he also studied with Henri Matisse in Paris. Margaret Williams served for years as the head of the art department at what was then St. Mary’s College in Raleigh.

Portraits of each other, and Ben’s paintings – from his early days to today – fill the walls. There is also a sizable collection of art created by some of the most esteemed artists of their day, who were and are the couple’s much-admired friends and regular visitors to the house. october 2015 | 83

84 | walter

art is not a thing, it’s a way Clockwise from far left: In the central hall, a sleek sculpture by noted North Carolina artist Horace Farlowe stands on a modern pedestal.

Behind the Farlowe sculpture are works by Morris Graves and Edith London.

Thomas Day’s grand staircase, with feathery trompe l’oeil marble risers, sweeps up to a landing where the Williamses painted a portion of the wall black to set off another of Ben’s canvases, an abstract composed with gold leaf.

A tree that once stood near a family cabin in Roaring Gap, N.C. provided Ben with the wood for several long, low tables or benches that are used as coffee tables in the den and parlor.

In the dining room, a hand-crafted cabinet featuring panels inset with pine straw weaving

by Angelika Rackendorf sits in front of a Thomas Day mantel.

An Isamu Noguchi table in the central hall displays a sculpture Ben made from the same tree that provided the wood for the benches.

For years the couple visited Clarendon Hall on the weekends and lived in Raleigh during the week. Now the historic home is their permanent residence. Here, important modern art – including works by Morris Graves, an abstract expressionist from the Pacific Northwest, and works by British abstract painter Ben Nicholson – hang side-by-side with significant North Carolina art, including works by Francis Speight, Sarah Blakeslee, and Maud Gatewood.

It’s fitting that a couple immersed in the North Carolina art scene for more than six decades hangs its Gatewoods with its Nicholsons. Their summer sojourns to North Carolina’s Black Mountain College – an extraordinary enclave of visionary modern artists from 1933-1957 with a lasting impact on art today – are evident in the prints that line Clarendon Hall’s grand staircase. These works, by German-American expressionist Lyonel Feininger, who taught at the school, and by abstract painter Josef Albers, who led the school and taught students including Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg, are a testament to the state’s long history as a wellspring of art.

Art continues to fill the Williams’ days. Ben teaches, paints, and collects with Margaret. And every day they live immersed in it.

Architecturally, Clarendon Hall is beautiful, designed with Federal and Greek Revival influences. Interior details, including mantels, mouldings, doors, and the grand staircase, are attributed to Thomas Day, a free black cabinetmaker from neighboring Milton. Ben unearthed original finishes for the mantles and restored them with trompe l’oeil marble.

With such history, it would have been easy to decorate the house with antiques and period details. There is some of that, but there’s so much more in the house’s rooms, all of which are flooded with natural light. Clarendon Hall holds family antiques, modern furniture from Knoll, and handmade tables and benches by Williams. Indeed, the house has been a lifetime project for the Williamses. They’ve made extensive additions and in-

86 | walter

lifetime project Ben Williams paints in the upstairs hall. Just beyond is a bedroom co-opted for the overflow of paintings that will get hung on the walls, when the mood strikes. Over the mantle is a painting Ben created while working as a copyist for the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

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one man’s folly The whimsical side of the Williams’ collection includes small collages by Ben, art students, and friends. The powder room, known as “The Inner Sanctum,” is a testament to the joy and humor the Williamses have found in collecting.

stalled a modern kitchen and bathrooms. The former stable – they call it “The Villa” – is currently being made ready for the Williams’ caretaker.

It would be impossible to appreciate the house separately from the Williamses. There is a vibrational pull between their art and the house that can only be attributed to the love, enthusiasm, and knowledge the couple has for art and the creative process. The couple reflects a similar harmony: Margaret’s calm demeanor and Ben’s exuberance embody the same rhythm as the house and its art, all in perfect consonance.

“Art cannot be separated from life,” said Robert Henri, the American realist painter, teacher, and founding member of the Ashcan School. “It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life’s experience.” As great admirers of Henri, and as artists and teachers, both Ben and Margaret Williams have lived their lives according to this philosophy.

Surrounding themselves with art has been the experience of their lifetime.

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Missy McLamb

DebbieYow

The adventure for me is here

D

by andrew kenney

Debbie Yow appears from her athletics director office at a bustling clip. She offers a hearty hello to her senior staffer and a visitor. This is the heart of Wolfpack territory, covered with jerseys, milestone photos, and an overwhelming amount of red. This morning, before anything else, the person who runs the place wants to show off its latest addition.

“Feel how heavy this is,” Yow says, hefting a bust of a wolf into the hands of Fred Demarest, an understated guy who handles media relations for the athletics department. Demarest appreciates the weight of the thing for a second.

“Guess how much it costs,” Yow says. Demarest guesses. The wolf, his boss reveals, cost a surprisingly low $50. It’s going to make a great staff gift, they agree. october 2015 | 89

It’s a disarming welcome. Yow, 65, is in the final decade of an ever-ascending career, and her sixth year at N.C. State. She was the first woman to lead an athletics department in the Atlantic Coast Conference, has coached at three universities – Kentucky, Oral Roberts, and Florida – and led departments at three others. When she swept into Raleigh, it was with a series of hires that transformed State’s athletics program.

Lately, she seems to have won the Wolfpack’s trust. Her coaches are winning games.

The online bulletin-board critics are favorable. At N.C. State, where cheering often comes with lament, people seem awfully contented.

But while Yow’s influence is tangible, her work isn’t done. Her master plan for the renovation of her school’s athletics extends already through 2017. And before she retires in 2019, she’d like to obliterate the chip on N.C. State’s shoulder, once and for all.

Her path has prepared her. She has been a dropout and earned a doctorate, and she is tied to North Carolina by family and by death. Her sister was the late Kay Yow, a coaching icon who led the N.C. State women’s Wolfpack basketball team from 1975-2009 for 700 wins, brought home a gold medal for the U.S. women’s basketball team in 1988, and remains beloved statewide and across the wider world of college basketball.

Today, at her sister’s beloved State, Debbie Yow leads more than 250 employees and 550 student athletes on 23 varsity teams, playing and practicing at 15 facilities and fields.

Her circle has come nearly all the way around, from the basketball gymnasiums of her family’s hometown in Gibsonville, N.C., to cities and states beyond, and now back to Raleigh, a city with high expectations of Debbie Yow.

Early years

Kay was eight years older than Debbie – far enough ahead that she saw little of her teenage younger sister, except at basketball games. Kay was working as the girls’ coach for 90 | walter

Missy McLamb

minister of culture Debbie Yow in her office at N.C. State, where she is the athletics director.

Allen Jay High School, and Debbie was the hot new jump shot on a rival team.

The younger sister expected an easy victory in their first face-off.

“I knew it wasn’t going to be an issue if it was one-on-one,” Yow says, eyes narrowing with the memory. She told her sister: “You can put your best person on me.”

So Kay used two of her best instead, winning games with a double-team defense. Each loss irritated Debbie so badly that she would go for months without talking to her sister.

Yow hated to be stifled, but competition was a Yow tradition. Their little sister, Susan, played the game too.

All three girls spent time dribbling in the Gibsonville High School gymnasium.

Ask about their parents, and Yow will show you a picture of her mother as captain of an all-girls squad sponsored by one of the local mills. And she can still hear their father calling from the sidelines, where he would sit in his khakis and his work shoes.

“All the men in my family always ex-

pected the women to be athletes,” she says.

“That’s just the way it was. They would expect that you would be in the homecoming court, and you also better start on the basketball team.”

courtesy N.C. State Athletics Office

Bringing it home

fine with mediocrity.”

In Holloway’s first season leading the swimming and diving program, State finished in the conference’s top five for the first time since 2006. This year, Wolfpack aquatics won the conference for the first time in 23 years, and took an eighth-place national finish.

Meanwhile, the university’s athletics department as a whole has lifted steadily up the national rankings.

Yow’s metric of choice is the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics Directors’ Cup. When she arrived, State sat at 89th in the cup rankings, which are based on schools’ athletic performances across 20 sports.

She set her sights on the top 25, alongside Duke and UNC – and her goal is already in sight. The school’s ranking has improved in four of Yow’s five years at State, peaking this year at No. 27 for Division 1. The change comes on the backs of both the marquee teams and the squads that don’t rake in huge revenues. Baseball, softball, men’s basketball, and both golf teams have posted significantly improved scores, among others. More visibly, Coach Mark Gottfried has led the men’s hoops team to the NCAA tournament in each of his first four years, breaking a five-year drought.

“All the men in my family always expected the women to be athletes, That’s just the way it was. They would expect that you would be in the homecoming court, and you also better start on the basketball team.”

To understand Debbie Yow’s challenge, here in the twilight of her career, you have to understand N.C. State athletics.

State in its prime has been a spoiler and a wildcard. Its 1983 basketball team – the Cardiac Pack – put together a string of come-from-behind victories, and then an unlikely final dunk to snatch the championship from a steamrolling University of Houston squad.

There are few sights like a State crowd riding high on an underdog victory against its liberal-arts cousin, the University of North Carolina. It was Pack fans, in fact, who unearthed the first of the evidence that eventually would yield the recent UNC athletic-academic scandal.

This is a school that bleeds and seethes Wolfpack red. The Pack is perpetually ready for a big year, a big upset – and it’s perpetually waiting. For every white-knuckle victory there has been an embarrassing stumble, or three unwanted interventions by the basketball gods. It’s a special pain, so ineffable that most people just call it “N.C. State Sh*t.”

Yow’s task, then, is to temper and kindle those jet-fire bursts into a steady flame.

She set straight to it when she was hired to replace 10-year director Lee Fowler, leaving little doubt about her intentions as she swept a series of nine new head coaches into place.

“The whole change of N.C. State athletics, I think, is … around her vision,” says Braden Holloway, a 2001 graduate and one of the first new coaches under Yow’s program.“The vision was not here when I was in school … There was no accountability.

It was kind of our slogan: Everybody was

coach, and now you’re in a quagmire.”

Yow knows this math well. She describes it simply, to the point of redundancy: “Establish the culture. Reinforce the culture. Act with integrity when the culture is threatened.”

But the real stuff of an effective “culture” – a concept that has long obsessed board rooms and locker rooms – isn’t so easy to capture.

It emerges in communication, mostly behind the scenes: It’s in Yow’s late-night voicemails to staff, and in the painstaking personal responses she drafts to fans’ complaints. Her touch is powerful.

“She runs on 220 volts, and some people run on 110,” says Chris Boyer, who runs external affairs and communications for Yow. That engine revs the bottom line as well. Two important measures of an athletics department’s success are money and graduates. Under Yow’s leadership, the department’s revenues have grown from roughly $50 million to $70 million, nearly catching up with the University of North Carolina, the Triangle Business Journal reported.

“Everyone’s budget here is considerably better than it was five years ago,” Yow says.

“They were starving.”

Apparel contracts and increased ticket sales, especially under Gottfried’s basketball program, have boosted the department. An improving economy likely has played its part too.

The school’s athletes, meanwhile, are graduating at record rates.

Creating a culture

Student-athletes, of course, are bound up by the rules of fate and statistics, perhaps more than the professionals. There’s only so much a coach can do – much less that coach’s boss – to guarantee victory in the face of countless improbabilities.

The one thing that Yow truly can influence is State’s culture – the organizational calculus that balances the simpler arithmetic of scores and salaries and gradepoint averages.

“The people are the key,” she says. “Hiring the right coaches is probably the single most important thing I do. Hire the wrong

Lady Kat While head coach at Kentucky from 1976-80, Yow’s record was 79-40, including a 24-5 record in 1979-80, her final season in Lexington.

october 2015 | 91

photos both pages courtesy N.C. State Athletics Office

Yow was the head coach at Oral Roberts from 1980-83 before returning to the Southeastern Conference at the University of Florida, her final coaching position.

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“It’s stay, stay, stay,” Yow says.

“Work your way through it.”

Only 49 percent of the student-athlete cohort finished N.C. State in 2009, according to the federal graduation rate.

That number climbed to a school record of 71 percent in 2014, reflecting national trends and surpassing the NCAA average.

Yow can claim some credit for that improvement. Just as coaches respect Yow’s experience in coaching, students empathize with her twisting, turning path toward education.

“It’s easy for me. I remember what it feels like not to have it,” she says of her quest to help athletes earn their degrees.

Yow dropped out of East Carolina University after two years, just as her sister’s star was rising.

And she remembers the moment that put her back on track. She flashes back to a moment at the Sears in Burlington, N.C., where she worked after leaving ECU. Then 20, Yow was organizing something – fishing gear, she thinks – when her supervisor shut her down.

“He came up to me and basi-

cally said, ‘What you’re doing is all wrong,’” she recalls. She knew her way would make more sales, so she tried to argue back – and then something clicked.

“I’m right, he’s wrong, I’m smarter than he is, and it doesn’t matter. He’s the supervisor. … It doesn’t matter. I have no authority.”

That low memory, along with her older sister’s guidance, would propel her toward Elon College (now Elon University), where she played basketball for Kay. So began the climb.

Lasting legacy

Debbie Yow once made Kay a promise. She knew she shouldn’t have, but it couldn’t be helped.

The elder sister was terribly ill with breast cancer early in 2009, unable to coach any longer. She had been in the hospital often, but Debbie decided one particular week that she had to drive from Maryland, where she was athletics department head, to see her sister. (Debbie Yow’s husband, William Bowden, had a premonition that she should go.)

Kay slept most of the day of their visit so Yow says. “It has to do with our spirit… that she’d be able to stay awake through the We’re created to be creative. We’re created women’s basketball Carolina-State game. to do things. We all have talents. We’re all Kay’s associate head coach was leading the gifted in different areas. It has something Wolfpack in her place. to do with watching that play out.”

Carolina was highly ranked, but State held the lead through much of the game. Grit and determination Until some “N.C. State stuff” happened.

Like most athletes, Debbie Yow doesn’t The Tar Heels came from behind at the seem to mind punishment. Otherwise she very end, tying the game and winning in wouldn’t spend hours answering the floods overtime. of email that reach her account most weeks.

“Kay, I’m so sorry you lost,” Yow told her “Unless you’re extraordinarily profane, sister after the game. Then she had an idea, you can email me, and you’re going to hear a way to get back at their rival. “Maryland back from me,” she says of the fans. “Most plays (Carolina) in a couple weeks – and of the time, they’re pained, and they need when we do, we’re going to beat them,” she comfort. It’s a strange feeling, when you said. care about something like the outcome of But Carolina was ranked No. 2 in the a sporting event … but you have no real aunation. All she could do was ask her wom- thority. The next best thing is to have conen’s coach, Brenda Frese, to win – and apol- fidence in the person in charge.” ogize for the unfair expectations.

She’s been living in this world for nearly Kay died before Maryland would have 40 years now. Now the time’s ticking down its shot at Carolina. Debbie got the call on on her lofty goals, and the clamor for victoa Saturday morning and rushed to Raleigh ry’s only getting louder – but she somehow with her husband the same day. There they seems relaxed. faced the amazing plans that Kay had laid “I’m most at peace when I know that for her funeral, to be held a week later. She we’re making progress here, and that Bill is had arranged for live music and a reunion healthy and happy … and if I get to read of all her former players on the same day. some at night,” she says. “I am boring. I’m She wanted their grandmother’s quilt to be realizing how truly boring I am as I’m placed on her casket. She had recorded her talking. I’ve done a lot of things in my life. own eulogy, some 20 minutes of talk about The adventure for me is here. This is my adher life and the religious convictions that venture. It’s what can we do, and who can drove she and Debbie alike. we help? And in the process, how much can On Sunday, the day after Kay’s death, we win?”

Debbie Yow found a message from her basketball coach waiting on her phone. She had forgotten all about the game. She tears up now as she reads it aloud.

“She said, ‘We upset UNC. This one’s for the Yows.’”

It was a parting gift for an eternal State fan – but in a way, Debbie Yow is still living her sisterly promise.

It’s about more than scores and championships. It was Kay’s presence here, lasting long beyond her triumphant funeral, that helped draw Debbie Yow back to North Carolina.

“It has to do with – I don’t know The Yow sisters: Susan, Debbie, Kay what the words are to express that,”

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at the

Table

TailgatE

heroes

I

by andrea weigl photographs by jillian clark

Neither pouring rain, nor thunder, nor storm warning sirens could deter them.

N.C. State University fans may have briefly hopped into their cars and trucks or huddled under tents to avoid the downpour, but they still filled the parking lots encircling Carter-Finley Stadium for this year's season opener.

The Wolfpack nation were decked out in their red, white, and black. Their chairs, tents, and hammocks were red. Their party cups and koozies were red. Their aprons, tablecloths, and steel-drum pig cookers were red. It is clear that these tailgaters take two things seriously: Wolfpack football and their food.

94 | walter

game on Clockwise from left: The Natural Born Grillers' cookbook; Rick Gentry and Chad Navin grill an assortment of meats for their tailgate spread; the Natural Born Grillers are set up to eat.

Like Anthony Nessell of Rockingham, who ground brisket, chuck roast, and bacon that morning to make burgers for his tailgating group, the “Natural Born Grillers,” before the 6 p.m. kick-off. Along with those burgers, Nessell and his grilling and frying accomplice, Terry Grayson of Apex, were cooking up bacon-wrapped hot dogs, sausages, Philly cheesesteak egg rolls, and s’mores wontons.

This group has been tailgating together for about 20 years, since the day Mark and Rhonda Driver of Wilson took pity on Grayson and his college friends – parked a few spaces away – as they struggled to cook on a rinky-dink grill.

“We were sitting there, drinking a cold beer, and it looked like a Chinese fire drill,” says Mark Driver, who offered the 20-somethings the use of his grill. “We have been together ever since.”

The tailgating group’s dynamic has evolved, Grayson says, from the keg stand revelry of their 20s to the family-friendly games and camaraderie they enjoy with their children today.

Food is a key part of the group’s pre-game ritual. They plan out menus based on themes: All-American, Mexican, Lowcountry boil. Grayson and Nessell, the group’s primary cooks, never met a dish that wasn’t improved by bacon. And they love to figure out how to deep fry their favorite dishes: pecan pie, apple pie, chocolate chip cookie dough, even banana pudding.

“We'll try anything in a wonton wrapper or an egg roll,” Nessell explained. They have even published their own tailgating cookbook, and consistently win the N.C. State tailgating contest for their “region” of the parking lot. In 2012, they beat out all of the other “regional” winners to be named overall Tailgate Champions. october 2015 | 95

food and fellowship Clockwise from top left: Six Pack Tailgating Crew member Chuck Crotts mans the bar of his 16-foot trailer complete with two 60-inch televsions; Steve Ferone, Dr. Herb Land, and Rick Gentry have their game faces on; Carl Marshburn shows off the prized "women'sonly bathroom" in the Six Pack Tailgating Crew trailer; "We'll try anything in an eggroll," says Anthony Nessell who prepared these Philly cheesesteak eggrolls.

All of this cooking and eating – and bacon – is not for the faint of heart or the waistline-obsessed. “We call it the tailgate 10,” joks Rhonda Driver.

The Natural Born Grillers aren’t the only ones to take their tailgating spread seriously.

Jack McDuffie and Rick Gentry are the primary cooks for a tailgating group who came together around a Raleigh-based company, Food Masters, Inc. The company’s founder, Ron Moore, began tailgating at N.C. State games in 1969 and eventually bought a motor home for that purpose.

Their group, which can host up to 80 people on a Saturday, has expanded over the years as these things do: this guy is that guy’s college roommate, this guy played tennis with that guy’s daughter in the 1970s, and they met this guy at a softball tournament. Moore and his family and friends are now on their third motor home, which is currently co-owned by four families – and mainly used for tailgating.

Gentry, a Raleigh resident who has two sons who played N.C. State football and a daughter on the soccer team, prepares all the 96 | walter

meats with McDuffie: chicken, pork chops, ribs, and pulled pork. Everyone else brings sides and desserts. All together, the spread fills several eight-foot tables.

“I like cooking for people,” says Gentry. So much so that the opening day of dove hunting season – a day he wouldn’t miss, but the same day as N.C. State's season opener – didn’t change his routine. Gentry got up at 3:30 a.m. to go hunting, returned home by 11 a.m. to make baked beans, potatoes, and green beans, and got to the motor home lot to finish cooking by 3 p.m. The 15 doves he shot showed up at a later tailgating feast as bog, a lowcountry stew often made with chicken, sausage, and rice.

Not far away is the Six Pack of North Carolina Tailgating Crew, made up of six men from Guilford County. They include Jorman Fields, the group’s patriarch, his son, John Fields, two

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brothers, Ged and Matt King, and two men who were college roommates, Carl Marshburn and Chuck Crotts. Crotts is such a diehard N.C. State fan that he, his wife, and their wedding party went to the State v. Duke basketball game in Durham a few hours after Crotts and his wife got married 18 years ago.

A couple of years ago, the six men decided to upgrade their tailgating experience. They bought a 16-foot trailer with two 60-inch televisions, a grill, and – to appease their wives – a women’s-only bathroom.

“The most important thing about our tailgate is the women’s bathroom,” Carl Marshburn explains, “and even though the women are not here today...”

Crotts finishes the thought: “It will not get used today.”

The men are also serious about their food. This Saturday’s spread included John Fields’ pickled shrimp; pimento cheese; deviled eggs; hamburgers; black bean, corn, and feta salad; chips, and more. Each season, they also do an oyster roast, a fish fry, and a beef tenderloin feast.

For these men, and some many other tailgaters, these Saturdays are about more than just food and football.

Marshburn used to drive up to Raleigh from Charleston, S.C., to go to N.C. State games. Then he took a job in Portland, Ore. and he couldn't come back as often. Five years after moving to Oregon, Marshburn said he told his wife: “It’s killing me.” He missed this group of friends and these Saturdays too much. They moved back to North Carolina.

“The main thing,” Marshburn said, “is just getting together and the fellowship.”

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Team Six Pack Jorman Fields, John Fields, Carl Marshburn, and Chuck Crotts.

From Anthony Nessell of Rockingham

From Marianne West of Lake Gaston

Philly Cheesesteak Egg Rolls 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 large onion, sliced 16 ounces Cremini mushrooms, washed and sliced 1 tablespoon fresh ground black pepper, or to taste 2 tablespoons Dale’s steak seasoning 2 (17-ounce) package of Hormel Roast Beef in Au Jus 1 package egg roll wrappers 20 slices provolone cheese 1 large egg, beaten Vegetable or peanut oil for frying Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add onions and mushrooms, sautéing until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes.

Add black pepper and Dale's steak seasoning to mushrooms and onions and continue sautéing for 5 more minutes.

While vegetables are cooking, heat both packages of roast beef in the microwave, per the package instructions.

Once heated, remove beef from packages and shred in a large bowl.

Add onions and mushrooms to the shredded beef. Stir together and place in refrigerator to cool. (Mixture should be room temperature or lower for egg roll construction.)

Make the egg roll: Lay the egg roll wrapper out like a diamond. The corner furthest from you will be corner 1, corner 2 is to the left and corner 3 is to the right, the corner closest to you will be corner 4. Place 1 slice of cheese and about 2 to 3 tablespoons of the meat in the middle of the egg roll wrapper just slightly below the line between corners 2 and 3.

Use your finger or small brush to spread some beaten egg mixture along the edges from corners 2 to 1 and from 1 to 3.

Take corner 4 (the corner closest to you) and bring it up corner 1 (the top corner).

Once you fold it up, use a rolling-back action to tighten the meat mixture into a cylinder shape. Fold in corners 2 and 3, making sure the egg mixture seals both corners.

Continue rolling the egg roll towards corner 1 until all the edges are sealed.

Fry the egg rolls in oil at 350 degrees until golden brown. Drain on a paper towel and serve with plenty of napkins. Yield: 20 egg rolls.

Grape Salad 20 clams 4 cups seedless red grapes 4 cups seedless green grapes 8 ounces regular or low-fat sour cream 8 ounces regular or low-fat cream cheese 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/2 cup white sugar or Splenda 1 cup chopped pecans 1/2 cup brown sugar or Splendabrown sugar blend Wash and thoroughly dry grapes. Mix together sour cream, cream cheese, vanilla, and sugar in a bowl. Combine grapes and cream cheese mixture and put in a 9-inch-by-13inch baking dish or a two-quart bowl. Mix brown sugar and pecans together for topping.

Spread evenly over grape salad and chill overnight.

Yield: 10-12 servings.

From Courtenay Griffin of Wilson Pickled Shrimp 1 package Good Seasonings Italian dressing mix 1 onion, thinly sliced 1 red bell pepper, stem and seeds removed, thinly sliced 1 lemon, thinly sliced, seeds removed 1 (4-ounce) bottle capers, liquid drained and liquid reserved 1 (5-ounce) jar green olives with pimento, drained and liquid reserved 2 pounds shrimp, peeled, deveined and cooked Make Italian dressing, per package directions, substituting red wine vinegar for the vinegar. Make it 24 hours ahead of time for best results.

Combine dressing, onion, red bell pepper, capers, olives, and shrimp together in a large bowl.

Add some or all of the re-

served capers and olive liquid to taste.

Let sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours before serving.

Yield: 10-12 servings.

From Amy May of Raleigh, who recommends using Ghirardelli chocolate chips.

Rich Chocolate Chip Toffee Bars 1 cup (6 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate chips 1 cup (6 ounces) milk chocolate chips 2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour 2/3 cup packed light brown sugar 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter or margarine, cut into squares 1 egg, slightly beaten 1 cup coarsely chopped nuts (optional) 1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk 1 3/4 cups (10-ounce package) Heath English Toffee Bits, divided Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease 9-by-13-inch baking pan. Combine chocolate chips in small bowl. Set both aside.

In large bowl, stir together flour and brown sugar. Cut in butter with pastry cutter or a fork until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add egg; mix well. Stir in 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips and nuts. Reserve 1 1/2 cups dough mixture. Press remaining dough mixture into bottom of prepared pan.

Bake 10 minutes. Remove baking dish from oven and pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over hot crust.

Top with 1 1/2 cups toffee bits.

Sprinkle reserved crumb mixture and remaining 1/2 cup chocolate chips over top.

Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Remove and sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup toffee bits. Cool completely in pan on wire rack. Cut into bars.

Yield: about 36 bars.

“WE FEEL THAT THE RALEIGH SCHOOL ISN’T JUST A PLACE FOR LEARNING, IT’S AN ENTIRE EXPERIENCE, ONE THAT DOESN’T JUST EDUCATE CHILDREN BUT HELPS BUILD CONFIDENT, KIND, CREATIVE AND INFORMED YOUNG ADULTS.”

Allan and Maria Action, TRS parents

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Elementary Parent Information Night November 5th, 7 p.m.

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COMMUNITY. CHALLENGE. INQUIRY. RESPECT.

Essential ingredient

WINTER SQUASH

F

by KAITLYN GOALEN

Folks, we’ve turned pumpkins into the Miley Cyrus of autumn eating.

Once upon a time, pumpkins were cherished totems of the season, embraced with fervor by children in costumes. And while vestiges of that innocence still exist, popping up each Halloween like a Hannah Montana rerun, it’s been all but swallowed up by a new image: “pumpkin spice.” Like Miley’s wagging tongue, pumpkin spice follows us from latte to doughnut to beer. The flavor is ubiquitous and over-thetop, and tastes nothing like the ingredient for which it’s named.

100 | walter

photographs by jillian clark

stuffed acorn squash Serves 4

This recipe is very much a template that can be customized to your taste. Swap the cheese (blue cheese would be delicious), swap spinach for kale, or bacon for sausage. You could even swap the bread for partially cooked rice; it’ll resemble a gorgeous risotto after being roasted.

2 small pumpkins or 4 acorn squash Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 shallot, minced

And that’s the shame of it, because actual pumpkins and their winter squash ilk (all part of the Cucurbitaceae family), should be the centerpiece of your cooking this month. No need to wait until Thanksgiving: make a pumpkin pie this weekend (and give it a twist by using coconut milk instead of the stalwart evaporated milk, or by throwing sorghum into the filling in-

stuffing them full of your favorite things and roasting them whole. I like to mix stale bread with whatever is left in my fridge (the ends of a cheese plate, for example, or the last of a package of bacon), stuff the mixture into a pumpkin (or, for individual portions, acorn squash), top the mixture with cream, and bake until the squash is tender and practically melting into a cheesy, molten center.

4 garlic cloves, minced 8 ounces button mushrooms, thinly sliced 3 sprigs fresh thyme 2 cups cubed day-old bread (such as sourdough or country loaf) 1 ounce sharp cheddar, cut into small cubes 1 ounce Gruyere, cut into small cubes 1 ounce Fontina, cut into small cubes 3 slices bacon, cut into ½-inch pieces and cooked until crispy (optional) 1 cup spinach leaves, torn into bite-size pieces (optional) ½ cup heavy cream Preheat the oven to 350°.

Using a sharp knife, make a circular cut around the stems of each acorn squash (as if you were carving the top of a jack-o'-lantern). Remove the tops, and use a spoon to hollow out the squash, discarding the seeds and stringy fibers.

Season the insides of the squash with salt and pepper, and set the squash inside a 13-by-9-inch rimmed baking pan.

Actual pumpkins and their winter squash ilk should be the centerpiece of your cooking this month. stead of granulated sugar). Swap out the butternut squash in your favorite soup recipe for an heirloom like red kuri squash or Jarrahdale pumpkin.

Or do as I do: Let the natural vessel-like nature of pumpkins and squash work to your advantage by

My comparison ends here: Miley, under all the pageantry and gyrating, has a killer voice. Pumpkin spice, likewise, harkens back to a vegetable worth honoring. Let’s get back to the source.

In a large skillet over medium heat, add the olive oil. When it shimmers, add the shallot and garlic. Cook until the garlic is fragrant, about 2 minutes, and add the mushrooms and thyme. Cook, stirring, until the mushrooms have shrunk in size and are cooked through, about 8 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the bread, cheese, bacon (if using), spinach (if using), and reserved mushrooms.

Season lightly with salt and pepper. Spoon the bread mixture into the squash cavities, pressing down gently to pack. Divide the cream between the four squash, pouring it slowly into the cavity, then replace the squash tops.

Bake for 90 minutes to 2 hours, until the squash is tender when pierced with a knife. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving.

OCTOBER 2015 | 101

Drink

DEFIANT

I

drinking

by DAVID BURRIS

I DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT WHISKEY, BUT I KNOW ONE THING: IT IS good. Whiskey has inspired writers, musicians, and artists to strive for greatness. It has kept bridegrooms even-keeled before the altar.

It has brought soldiers strength as they’ve faced the horrors of the battlefield. It has helped mankind battle the dis-ease of everyday living. It has made my belly warm at football games. These are all good things.

The whiskey I am writing about here, North Carolina’s own Defiant American Single Malt Whisky, is a very, very good thing. It has a uniquely defined character and yet is still a whiskey of wide-ranging possibility. It’s also a product of North Carolina, which for me, being an unapologetically proud Tarheel, is a very good thing.

102 | WALTER

I’d like to point out that this fine Tarheel hootch is spelled “whisky” rather than “whiskey.” As far as my research goes, it seems to be the first American whiskey spelled without the “e” – as both the Scotch and Canadian varieties are spelled.

Defiant indeed. No surprise from a whisky distilled here in the Tarheel state, born from our stubborn and defiant nature.

This fine hootch has kept me company during an odd year in my life – many strange moments along many strange trails. I’ve circumvented the globe twice already, and my big takeaway so far is that I could use a nap. A slightly less profound takeaway: When I roam, I like to have something from home to provide a bit of a touchstone. Defiant Whisky has done the job. Three instances follow: #1 RALEIGH, N.C. Straight from the bottle My first movie, The World Made Straight, hit theaters on January 9. It was uncharted territory. It was nerve-wracking. The anxiety that was arabesque-ing its way around my noggin was only relieved by the cold fear that machete-ed its way into my gut.

The premiere shindig was in Raleigh at the N.C. Museum of History. On the one hand, it was something I was excited about, because so many friends and family would be there. On the other hand, it was something I was anxious about, because so many friends and family would be there. There would be classmates from Chapel Hill, Broughton, Martin, Lacy.

There would be friends of my parents from First Baptist Church and Meredith illustration by TIM LEE

College. There would be former bandmates. There would be ex-girlfriends.

Before the screening, I posted up in the lobby to say “hey” and thank people for coming. From across the room my friend, publicist, and one-woman-support system Michelle Yelton clocked that my head was swimming (the backstroke, she later told me). She pulled me aside and handed me a handsome bottle that I’d never seen before – a bottle of Defiant American Single Malt Whisky – and told me to “go put it in my car” – code for “go outside and take a cheeky pull off of this thing… and I mean NOW.” So I did.

Straight from the bottle, the reassuring, smoky bite of this fine whisky calmed me down and made me very warm inside. With clear eyes I looked more closely at the label – distilled by the Blue Ridge Distilling Co. of Golden Valley, N.C., only a few miles from the setting and filming location of my movie: a pleasing bit of serendipity… Good.

#2 BANGKOK, THAILAND With two cubes of ice About two weeks later, I touched down in Bangkok to begin developing an upcoming film project. I brought a bottle of Defiant, my new favorite North Carolina whisky, with me. A wee bit of home in a mad city of warm, lovely, layered chaos. Bangkok is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s longest city name: Krungthep Mahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathani Buriromudomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amonphimon Awatansathit Sakkathattiya Witsanu Kamprasit.

“The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of god Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated

god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnu.”

It’s quite a town. Among other things, a town built by Vishnu, apparently, the creator and destroyer of all existences: Clearly, a town perfect for whisky.

The complex layers of Defiant Whisky meshed splendidly with the complex layers of Bangkok. I took to having a glass with two cubes of ice after those spectacularly spicy Thai meals. A perfect after-dinner drink for the City of Angels… Good. #3: VENICE BEACH, CALIFORNIA In an Old Fashioned “What could possibly go wrong with an Old Fashioned?,” said actor Jim Backus (Mr. Howell from Gilligan’s Island) in the film It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Answer: nothing.

Back in Venice Beach (where my house is only a short hop from the “Big » continued on p.127

RAY AND FRIENDS

With Dolly Parton, far left, and George Strait, above.

LET’S

DO THIS

C

by DAVID MENCONI

CO-WRITING SOMEONE ELSE’S MEMOIR INVOLVED A NUMBER OF FIRSTS, but probably the biggest was this: It was the first time I was ever interviewed for a job on a band bus. It happened in the summer of 2013 outside Durham’s Motorco music hall, where the Texas band Asleep at the Wheel was playing. That was the first time I met Wheel main man Ray Benson. He was sitting at a table rolling a joint, and to this day, that’s still how I picture him in my mind’s eye.

104 | WALTER

Ray gets called “larger than life” a lot, because he is. Imposing six-foot-seven frame, deep drawl, booming laugh – he tends to be the focus of whatever space he occupies, and he takes up a lot of it.

He’s also one of the great characters in the music business, having kept an oldtime Western-swing band going long and strong enough to win nine Grammy Awards in four decades while surviving disco, grunge, and a dozen other trends.

As they say, Ray’s been around the world twice and talked to everybody at least once, coming away with a million tall tales about Janis Joplin, Willie Nelson, and other celebrity-jet-stream types. Perfect memoir fodder, in theory. But turning his anecdotes into something readable was proving to be a challenge. Ray was in the market for a co-writer; his publisher suggested me; I walked onto his bus and we did our one-question job interview.

“So,” he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke, “whattaya think?”

photos on this page courtesy of Ray Benson

Hear

“Let’s do this,” I said.

“Let’s,” he said, and we both kind of cackled. This is going to be fun, I thought, and it was.

My usual job is writing for a newspaper, which I’ve done at The News & Observer for 24 years. Frequently that involves chasing after people who’d just as soon not be interviewed – my last book was an unauthorized biography in which the subject (Ryan Adams) refused to cooperate. So being able to ask any question, no matter how tawdry, and actually getting an answer every time was kind of a dream come true.

“So, Ray – how no-holds-barred do you want this?” I asked him at our first interview.

“Hundred percent,” he said, without hesitation. Okay then.

The publisher’s lawyers weren’t completely down with that, so the finished product Comin’ Right at Ya: How a Jewish

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‘So, Ray – how no-holdsbarred do you want this?’

I asked him at our first interview. ‘Hundred percent,’ he said, without hesitation. Okay then.

Yankee Hippie Went Country, or, the Often Outrageous History of Asleep at the Wheel wasn’t quite 100 percent. Close, though.

My time behind the curtain with Ray came at a difficult time for him. He was still licking his wounds from a romantic breakup, which he explored in an exceedingly dark solo album, and that informed a lot of our conversations.

I met with Ray a half-dozen times over the course of a year, mostly in his hometown of Austin, and we also talked by phone and email a good bit. He kept asking when I was “gonna get on the bus with us,” so I spent a few days on the road, too. Probably the most memorable meetup was at Vince Gill and Amy Grant’s Nashville mansion when Asleep

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whattaya think?

David Menconi and Ray Benson

at the Wheel was recording in Gill’s in-home studio. I tried not to be too obvious in my attempts to count all the Grammy Awards in that house before giving up because there were just too many.

One night in Austin, Ray suggested we spend an evening at a dinner party with some old friends of his. As spirits flowed and tongues loosened, Ray and friends told stories on each other and various peers. I tried to make myself invisible, taking notes under the table for questions to ask later – the god awful TV movie Ray made with Dolly Parton, drug freakouts in the studio, lurid gossip about various record executives – while doing my best to keep my eyes from getting too wide. Getting Ray into his social element became a key part of the interview process. Not coincidentally, it was also a blast.

Co-writing a book like this doesn’t involve sitting together at the computer arguing over punctuation. And it wasn’t as simple as he talked and I wrote it down, either, but it went something like that. I’d liken it to being someone’s speechwriter. Once I’d been around him a bit, Ray’s voice was easy to get on the page. So mostly, I just had to keep out of the way and let Ray be Ray. It’s a remarkable tale: Jewish kid decides to become a country singer and by God turns himself into one. Drops out of college at the height of the Vietnam War, convinces some friends to do the same; they move to West Virginia to start a country band. If it weren’t true, you wouldn’t believe it as fiction.

Somehow it worked, and Asleep at the Wheel is still in business 45 years later. I’m only sorry I won’t be on the bus for the rest of the story.

An excerpt from

Comin’ Right at Ya: How a Jewish Yankee Hippie Went Country, or, the Often Outrageous History of Asleep at the Wheel,

by Ray Benson and David Menconi

PREMIER FABRICS RALEIGH

I

’ve always been a good salesman – skilled at peddling ice to eskimos, as they say. But this was a harder sell: “Come with me to middle-of-nowhere to start a country band.

We’ve got no money, jobs, prospects or even electricity or food, and we’ll be playing music that’s sure to confuse everybody. So whattaya say?” Somehow, I talked a few people into it.

Don’t ask me how.

By the end of 1969, we had a destination picked out for our adventure: an outback tract near Paw Paw, a town of 706 souls in the wilderness of deepest West Virginia. It was in the middle of nowhere, but owned by a friend’s family. As Antioch’s winter term wound down and on-campus conversations turned to plans for the spring, I started telling friends the news: “Me and Reuben and another guy named Gene Preston are all gonna move to a farm outside of Paw Paw, West Virginia, and start up a country-western band.” To a person, everybody looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Two of us were Jewish and all three of us were long-hairs, going into the redneck wilds of West Virginia to start up an old-time country band – what could possibly go wrong? Cue “Dueling Banjos.”

I couldn’t wait.

My parents, however, were decidedly less than thrilled, especially my dad. When I told him I was quitting school, he flipped his lid and thundered about how I better not expect any more money out of him. I told him I didn’t want any of his money; ah, youth.

So anyway, that was the end of my formal schooling. All these years later, the only paper I’ve got is a high-school diploma – everything else has been post-graduate work in the school of hard knocks. I still have people coming to me all the time, asking what to do if your kid wants to be a musician. I tell parents to be as encouraging and supportive as they can while drilling into their kids that they’ve got to either have a Plan B or accept that they’ll never make much money. A career in music is a vow of poverty for most people, so you’ve got to love it.

This excerpt (copyright © 2015 by Ray Benson) is used by permission of the University of Texas Press. For more information visit utexaspress. com.

David Menconi will read from the book Wednesday, Oct. 21 at 7 p.m. at Quail Ridge Books, 3522 Wade Ave.

1526 Wake Forest Rd. Raleigh, NC 27604 919-743-5794

Follow us on Facebook & Instagram @PremierFabricsRaleigh

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WALTER S BOOK CLUB Please join us for a very special luncheon

with #1 New York Times bestselling author

Sarah Dessen at the UMSTEAD HOTEL & SPA

100 Woodland Pond Drive, Cary

A perfect Sunday afternoon to share with friends of all ages…enjoy a luxurious lunch and conversation with one of the country’s most celebrated writers for young adults - and older ones, too.

Sunday, October 25 12:00 p.m.

Three course luncheon with wine and mocktails $75 per person Chapel Hill’s own Sarah Dessen will discuss her latest book, the New York Times bestseller Saint Anything, and her eleven other beloved, critically-acclaimed bestsellers including Along for the Ride, Keeping the Moon, and Someone Like You. Space is limited to 125. Tickets are $75 and are available to purchase at waltermagazine.com.

WALTER

EVENTS

WINnovation

AT THE ANGUS BARN

U

WINnovation speakers: Guenevere Abernathy, Jackie Craig, Molly Paul, Lauren Whitehurst, Mayor Nancy McFarlane, and Brooks Bell

Under twinkling lights in the beautiful setting of the Pavilion at the Angus Barn, nearly 200 people gathered on a mild September evening for our major fall event: WINnovation.

Presented by Bank of America and Walter, the event celebrated six of our area’s most accomplished and innovative women: Raleigh Mayor and MedPro RX founder Nancy McFarlane; Brooks Bell company founder Brooks Bell; Soar Triangle co-founder Lauren Whitehurst; Raleigh Aquatic Turtle Adoption founder Molly Paul; The Green Chair project founder Jackie Craig; and LoMo Market founder Guenevere Abernathy.

Each honoree gave a five-minute “WIN” talk about her own entrepreneurial journey and the lessons she’s learned along the way. Representing a wide range of perspectives and life experiences, the speakers shared wisdom, insight, and humor. They talked about the spark that inspires them, the hurdles they’ve overcome, and the perseverance that’s seen them through.

The audience – a high-profile bunch of entrepreneurs, creators, and leaders themselves – say they came away informed and inspired, and with a broader network of fellow innovators. Our hope is that the stories shared, the connections made, and the conversations begun will serve to grow our alreadythriving entrepreneurial ecosystem.

110 | WALTER

photographs by JILL KNIGHT

MaryAnne Gucciardi, Kari Stoltz of Bank of America, Christine Katziff of Bank of America

Van Eure of the Angus Barn, Liza Roberts of Walter

“If I think about advice or words of wisdom, it’s really ‘What are your priorities?’ And they’re going to change. They’re different when you’re 20, or 30, or 40, or 50; but fundamentally there’s something that really is important to you and I think that success in business and life comes from realizing that and building around that.” -Nancy McFarlane, Raleigh Mayor and MedPro RX founder

Samantha Warren, Michelle Wiggins, Jacqueline Kannan

OCTOBER 2015 | 111

“Leap. Don’t get stuck in the planning – go for it. But then also break it into something that you can manage and think about how to manage your ideas.”-Guenevere Abernathy, LoMo Market founder

WINnovation speaker Lauren Whitehurst during the audience question and answer session.

Denise Bennett of Bank of America

Denise Walker of Walter

“If you look at the funding from venture capital firms to startups in the United States, 5-7 percent of that money goes to female-led businesses … that is an anomaly, and it is something that we needed to try and fix … this is not a women’s issue. This is an issue for our community, our country, for us to push forward.”

-Lauren Whitehurst, Soar Triangle co-founder

Joan Siefert Rose of CED

Ella Frantz, Robert Frantz Sepi Saidi of SEPI Engineering & Construction

Pam Mullaney of dress

“We are a society that gives children one image of success, and that’s straight A’s and being a top varsity player. It’s a very hurtful message. My parents and my teachers have given me the room to be myself and to work as hard as I can, and that has allowed me to grow in ways I could have never imagined.”

-Molly Paul, Raleigh Aquatic Turtle Adoption founder

“It’s okay to feel uncomfortable. I believe that feeling uncomfortable is a sign of courage and of innovative thinking.” -Brooks Bell, founder of Brooks Bell The News & Observer publisher Orage Quarles III and Linda Quarles

“Women and men in this room, this community needs you, too. Every one of you has some quirky, unique talent to share, as well as time to give and stuff to give, too. Every good work being done in this community here in Raleigh needs human capital like yours. There will never be a good reason not to do it, not to share it, not to give of your time and your talent and your treasures.”

Newsco-founder & Observer publisher Quarles III and -Jackie The Craig, of TheOrage Green Chair Project Linda Quarles

Jesma Reynolds of Walter hands gifts donated by Kendra Scott jewelry to speakers Lauren Whitehurst, Mayor Nancy McFarlane, and Brooks Bell.

givers

Katherine McVey Blossoming forth

U

by Todd Cohen

Using flowers to help lift the spirits of people living with sickness, terminal illness, poverty, or a disability is the mission of The Flower Shuttle, an all-volunteer nonprofit in Raleigh.

With hundreds of donated flowers – given by local florists, grocery stores, plant wholesalers, just-married brides, churches, gala hosts, and others – the group’s volunteers gather at the Raleigh Moravian Church most Tuesday mornings to create fresh arrangements for people in need.

Anywhere from 75 to 125 Flower Shuttle volunteers work every week not only to create new bouquets, but to pick up donated flowers and to deliver fresh arrangements to more than 20 retirement homes, nursing homes, hospitals, hospices, dialysis centers, and chemotherapy centers.

114 | walter

photographs by jillian clark

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It’s a major operation, as the bustling action on a Tuesday morning attests. “The room is filled with joy and happiness,” says Katherine McVey, a retired physical therapist and president of The Flower Shuttle. “It gives you a real sense of community…

You’re part of this real community that shares love and joy with others.”

The Flower Shuttle was founded in 2006 by Raleigh artist Kathy Reece, who was inspired by an article she had read in O, The Oprah Magazine about a flower-recycling center. Since then, The Flower Shuttle has distributed about 130,000 arrangements – as many as 400 a month.

McVey, 59, a native of Rochester, N.Y., retired last year after 36 years as a physical therapist. She and her husband, Jim McVey, a director of contract performance for GlaxoSmithKline, live in North Raleigh. Their son, Alex, is a mechanical engineer in Charlotte for Fluor, a construction company.

How does The Flower Shuttle work?

McVey: Everything is volunteer. We are a well-greased machine. We have an administrative team. Somebody is responsible for pickup. For each vendor, there’s a primary, a backup, and another backup to pick up flowers. The same with delivery. Expenses are pretty minimal. We buy the foam we put the flowers in. We try to get vases and mugs donated. We have a bin behind the church. People drive by and drop off the vases and mugs. The mugs and vases stay in a locked shed behind the church. We arrange flowers in the activity room in the church.

You can go online and ask to have flowers delivered to your establishment. A chemotherapy center might call for 20 arrangements for the reception center and spread around where the chemo takes place. They get them every week. We have more than 20 regular customers.

Where else do you get the flowers?

Some churches donate their Sunday flowers. WakeMed usually has huge fundraisers and donates their flowers. And people donate flowers from weddings, funerals, and special events. People used to throw those flowers away.

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C AT E R I N G

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What's the activity room like when volunteers create the arrangements?

People are at long tables talking to each other.

Everybody is so supportive and loving. It’s a beehive of activity. Grandmothers bring their grandkids. There are different levels of beauty in arrangements. We have a lot of talented ex-florists.

And we have Flowers 101 – basic training. We walk around and say, “This is what it should look like.”

Do you do any fundraising?

At the end of the year, we send out mailings (to request donations) to church members, all the people registered with The Flower Shuttle, and businesses that donate flowers. And we bake goods and get baskets and give them to the flower donors.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a physical therapist from the time I was in eighth grade. My great aunt was in a wheelchair with rheumatoid arthritis and had had a total hip replacement. While I was visiting her, she said, “You need to come to therapy with me.” I did home health, worked in hospitals, and ran a rehab hospital. Every day I went to work, I absolutely loved my job.

Who are your parents?

My dad is Tom Hughes. He’s 89. He worked for Xerox as a tech rep manager for copying machines. My mom is Judie Hughes. She’s 87.

She was a stay-at-home mom until I was in middle school. Then she worked at an interior decorating company, Bayles Furniture.

What did you learn from them?

Love, respect, honor, hard work. They were role models, very in love with each other. They still live in the house I grew up in. My dad takes care of my mom, who has dementia. I try to give him a break whenever I can. He mows the lawn, cooks, does the laundry, does everything.

What is a volunteer experience that meant a lot to you?

When I had my son, I did home-health physical therapy in Raleigh.

The inner city was part of my territory. It gave me an opportunity to mesh my spirituality and my work. In addition to therapy, I did grocery shopping and laundry for patients. And now we feed Hope and I and a group from our the homeless downtownWalk – myfor husband church, Church of God in Cary. We make food and take it downtown through Bread of Life. We do it one Saturday every other month.

What charities are nearest to your heart?

Habitat for Humanity. I can think of nothing worse than being homeless. I volunteer at Dress for Success. We help impoverished women get employed. You can do image coaching or career coaching. Also Raleigh Rescue Mission, and the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. It’s terrible to be hungry.

om o r w o t sh o o f e r squa 0 0 0 , New 4

Ceramic, Porcelain, Natural Stone, Glass, Metal & Decorative Tiles Who are your heroes?

(Flower Shuttle founder) Kathy Reece. She looks out for other people. She's the epitome of who a person should be.

What motivates you?

My goal in life is to be a better person, every single day. Part of that is stopping being selfish and looking to see how I can help others.

That’s the essence of life.

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Triangle Tile & Stone of NC, LLC 901 Trinity Road, Raleigh | 919-859-5860 | triangletile.com

What do you like about Raleigh?

The people. The weather. All the culture. It's not too big or too small. It’s really progressive. There’s something going on all the time.

There’s plenty to do and give back to. There’s so much, yet it’s not a huge, huge city.

What inspires you?

Knowing I can make a difference in a positive way in other people’s lives, day after day.

What does philanthropy mean to you?

Taking my eyes off of me and putting them on a common cause, something bigger than myself.

What do you do for fun?

We hike. We camp. I use the greenway three to four times a week. I bike about 13 to 14 miles each day. It’s a great way to start the day. I also cook and bake, scrapbook, and make cards. I’m into crafty things, like flower arrangements with dry flowers, wreaths.

What is your philosophy of life?

Love yourself, love others, have fun, and don't take things too seriously.

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A NIGHT BY THE POOL WITH SILENT AUCTION More than 50 guests gathered by the pool at a private home August 23 to raise money for the Joel Lane Museum House’s general fund. The 18th-century-historic site was home to Joel Lane, who is credited as “The Father of Raleigh.” Supporters enjoyed beverages and mingled while a silent auction rounded out the evening, which was hosted

by John Lyon and Dolly Smith.

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SIR WALTER RALEIGH AWARDS FOR COMMUNITY APPEARANCE September 9, Raleighites gathered at CAM Raleigh for the Sir Walter Raleigh Awards for Community Appearance. The awards are annually granted to new contributors who enhance the character, environment, and appearance of our city. Before the awards ceremony, guests mingled and enjoyed cocktails and appetizers.

Peter Lamb and the Wolves

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Mayor Nancy McFarlane, James Goodnight, David Mauer

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WINE SPECTATOR AWARD DINNER To celebrate its Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for its wine list, Faire restaurant hosted a fivecourse dinner for 45 guests with wine pairings on Aug. 31. The wine served was chosen by resident sommelier Michael Tinley, who crafted the award-winning wine list.

John Nobling, Lisa Jeffries, Julie Patel, G. Patel

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Charlene Newsom, Susan Harb, Tracey Kunst, and Simon Griffiths, photobombing

RAWHIDES AND RODEO QUEENS: THE ART OF THE WILD WEST During the First Friday Gallery Walk on August 7, Gallery C was turned into a scene out of the Wild West to celebrate the opening of the Rawhides and Rodeo Queens exhibit. Saloon food was passed around by costumed servers and Western music provided ambience.

Each guest voted for their favorite artist and the winner, Drew Deane, won a week in El Dorado.

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Vanvisa Nolintha, Vansana Nolintha BIDA PROMDA Bida Manda restaurant celebrated its third anniversary September 6 with Bida Promda, an ’80s-prom themed party that took it back old school. Guests showed up downtown in their best ’80s-prom threads and rocked out to music by Nick Neptune.

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Drink

» continued from p.103

W” from the above-mentioned film), I stumbled on what I honestly believe is the best Old Fashioned I’ve ever utilized to augment a Pacific Ocean sunset. Seriously.

Kingsley Amis famously wrote: “The Old Fashioned is a sweet drink and that just has to be faced… the only cocktail to rival the Dry Martini at the other end of the taste spectrum.”

My variation includes chocolate chili bitters and orange bitters along with homemade simple syrup. Defiant’s grown-up, smokysweet character puts a cultivated curl on the classic cocktail… Good.

There are a couple of months remaining in the year. I am guessing I shall find myself wandering down a few more strange trails and facing a few more strange moments. I am also guessing that I shall have a bottle of something from the Old North State at hand to remind me of where I came from (Cardinal Gin would work nicely in London I'm thinking.... Perhaps Raleigh Rum in Kyoto?).

Anyway, at some point, I’m hoping to get in a nap. Good.

Frantz Photography

SHOP | DINE | UNWIND

DEFIANT OLD FASHIONED 2 ounces Defiant American Single Malt Whisky or other craft whiskey 1 dash Miracle Mile Chocolate Chili Bitters 1 dash Fee Brothers Orange Bitters 1/4 ounce demerara simple syrup* 1 Luxardo maraschino cherry (Or try a Trader Joe’s dark morello cherry – makes it a tad more tart. Regular old maraschino cherries will do in a pinch.)

1 orange peel (With the orange bitters, I find that the orange peel is a bit superfluous, but still nice to zest the rim.)

Tools: bar spoon, shaker (or pint glass)

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In a shaker (or a chilled pint glass), add the syrup, bitters, and whiskey. Stir (do not shake, peasant). Add ice cubes and stir again. Before pouring, fill an Old Fashioned glass with ice and zest the rim with orange peel. Add cherry. *Make the syrup yourself. It’s easy. ½ cup of water, ½ cup of Trader Joe’s Turbinado Raw Cane Sugar, ½ ounce vodka (the vodka will not affect the flavor and will keep it from going off) – heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Easy, peezy, lemon squeezy.

The Walter Scribo

The answers to the following clues are in this issue. Happy reading!

ACROSS

2. This Caswell County home was once described as “a rich man’s house” 4. Joan Matthews’ garden holds more than 120 different types of this bloom 5. Writer David Menconi’s response when asked to help write Asleep at the Wheel frontman Ray Benson’s memoir 8. Beyond vintage clothing, look for this at Father & Son antiques 10. David Burris can’t get enough of this hometown spirit 11. Louise Glaskill swoons over a great antique piece of this 12. Debra Capps never misses this fair food delicacy

DOWN 1. The Rural Academy Theater’s transportation of choice 3. Debbie Yow holds down this position at N.C. State 6. The Natural Born Grillers will try any tailgate appetizer made in one of these 7. The Miley Cyrus of squash, according to Kaitlyn Goalen 9. David Spain is an artist and this is his medium

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seen in RALEIGH

OAKWOOD ODDITIES Downtown’s Historic Oakwood offers plenty for visitors to see. There are period homes, lush gardens, and Raleigh’s oldest private cemetery. The News & Observer’s photo editor and staff photographer Juli Leonard took to these tree-lined streets with iPhone in hand to photograph some of the more unusual aspects of the neighborhood she calls home. Leonard says her limited equipment provided a creative challenge, and changed her perspective entirely. The result is a collection of mysteriously spooky images befitting the season. photographs by JULI LEONARD

130 | WALTER

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