Life of Jane

It’s a Mall World After All

Memories of Forum VI

By Jane Borden

I have been to China, Europe, Mexico, Israel and Peru. But before that, I went international at the food court in the Forum VI. The shopping center, which was built in 1976 and gutted in the late ’90s, was on the corner of Pembroke Road and Northline Avenue, and inside it was an Italian restaurant and a Greek joint. Don’t tell me those countries are only 500 miles apart and on the same body of water — to my 12-year-old brain, they spanned the globe. Plus, the food court at Forum VI also had a hotdog place, and every culture in the world eats some kind of sausage, so I am making an airtight argument here.

Besides, if you took the escalator downstairs from the food court, and got a little more dressed up, you could journey to Japan. Kabuto was the first Japanese restaurant in Greensboro, established in 1976 when the mall was built. It was owned and operated by Yoshi Tanaka, who also opened the first Japanese restaurant in North Carolina, Sagano in Winston-Salem. The only reason I know this is because Tanaka’s son, Ken, was my buddy growing up. And the only reason I know Ken is because a Forum VI developer enticed his dad to move down from Boston and open Kabuto.

Going to Kabuto blew my tweenage mind. I’m guessing I had to go see Cathy at Looking Ahead after each time I dined there, because Kabuto blew the kinks out of my perm. Jeez, we get it, Jane, they cooked tableside. Excuse me. They did not just cook in front of you; they tossed shrimp tails in the air, and caught them in their hats. Shrimp on heads! They juggled salt and pepper shakers. It was a circus that fed you. They lit things on fire. Fire! I was a pyro in acid-washed jeans, and I think I might have cried the whole time I was there.

Dining at Kabuto was rare, though, on account of the price point and, maybe, the chance that I’d set someone aflame. The Forum VI dining establishment frequented most by me was the K&W cafeteria, because my grandmother liked to go. K&W is kind of the opposite of Kabuto. You go to the kitchen, instead of the kitchen coming to you; the food is already prepared when you arrive; and the only fires are small flames under chafing dishes. One similarity, however, is that hair nets are a kind of hat — or, at least, that’s what my toddler thinks. Even in these spare conditions, I adored K&W, not least because I could create an entire meal out of mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and Jell-O. When I think about it philosophically, the process of moving through a cafeteria line seems one of powerlessness: Your pace is set by the orderly line of other diners, your tray moves along its sanctioned steel path, the food has always already been served. Emotionally, however, I recall feeling a strong sense of agency at the cafeteria. I got to carry my own tray. I chose carefully how to fill its real estate. We seated ourselves — wherever we wanted! And if one was still hungry, she simply got back in line, unless it was only for more Jell-O, in which case, Jane, it’s time to go home.

While we are on the topic of Forum VI, I am compelled to share my strongest memory of the upscale, indoor mall, which, in fact, is not my memory at all, as I was not yet born. The story has been told so many times in my family, though, that I may as well have been there when my sister Tucker fell into the fountain. Then my eldest sister Lou shouted, “Get the pennies! Get the pennies!” But Tucker was cold and in shock, and scrambled out quickly. Then she said, with deep disappointment, “I didn’t get any pennies.” Mom and Dad took her into the shoe store Taylor’s, where the employees graciously helped her dry off and warm up.

Taylor’s is gone now, as are the fountain, Montaldo’s, the Limited Express, Toys & Co., the hotdog joint, and everything else that comprised Forum VI except for K&W Cafeteria. It is the only business remaining in the office building currently occupying the corner of Pembroke and Northline. My grandmother is also gone but I think of her every time I drive by. I also think of Jell-O.

My mother loved the Greek restaurant, and everyone there knew her name. But now she has that relationship with Ghassan’s. It’s Lebanese not Greek, but it scratches a similar itch for my mother, and they all know her order by heart.

Kabuto is still open, but in a new location, where Wendover crosses I-40. Presumably, it continues to blow tweenage minds with pyrotechnics. In fact, Kabuto’s legacy also remains. Last year, Yoshi Tanaka offered Ken the house he grew up in. So, after twenty years of living away — in Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Minneapolis, and Atlantic City — Ken has recently moved back to Greensboro with his wife and toddler.

As for my sister Tucker, she went into banking, so she finally got all those pennies.  OH

You can find Greensboro native Jane Borden, author of I Totally Meant To Do That, at JaneBorden.com or via twitter.com/JaneBorden.

Botanicus

What’s in a Name?

That which we call a daffodil by any other name still ushers in spring

By Ross Howell Jr.

Despite the cold, when March came to the mountains the boy I once was felt there might again be spring. After a snowy season feeding cattle with their rumps — and mine — bowed against bitter winds, I walked along split-rail fences, melting drifts limning muddy pastures.

The earth was warming with spring, and on sunny afternoons groundhogs nosed from their dens, groggy with winter sleep. I hunted them with my uncle’s pump-action .22.

One afternoon I came upon a sight that filled me with wonder. A neat row of daffodils nodded in the sun at the edge of a wood. Their yellow blossoms were all that remained of what had once been a homestead. I watched them as they danced with the breeze. Their faces were hopeful. I imagined a mother planting them for her family, a thin border next to a log house, long since vanished.

Back then, I didn’t call them “daffodils.” Among my kin, they were known as “jonquils.” In fact, I don’t remember hearing the word daffodil until my senior year of high school, in Mrs. Humphries’s English class, when we read the William Wordsworth poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.”

I raised my hand, wanting desperately to impress
Mrs. Humphries. She was a recent Radford College graduate, and quite attractive.

“Yes, Ross?”

“Those flowers sound like jonquils to me,” I said.

“In England, they’re more commonly referred to as daffodils. From the Latin asphodilus, The English ‘daffodil’ is probably adapted from the Dutch, ‘da asphodel,’”
Mrs. Humphries said.

I was crestfallen.

“Why everybody knows that,” my nemesis,
Verna Belcher, hissed from the desk behind me.

A quick poll of my Greensboro neighbors — my “scientific” question was, “When you were growing up, what did you call the yellow flower that bloomed first in spring?”— yielded mostly “jonquil,” though “daffodil” was an occasional response, and even “buttercup.”

It’s complicated.

“In some parts of the country any yellow daffodil is called a jonquil, usually incorrectly,” writes the American Daffodil Society, employing what I expect is their euphemism for the rural South. “As a rule, but not always, jonquil species and hybrids are characterized by several yellow flowers, a strong scent and rounded foliage.”

Now that plant sounds like what I think of as narcissus. So when I say “jonquil,” I should be saying “narcissus”? It’s not that easy.

“The term narcissus (Narcissus sp.) refers to a genus of bulbs that includes hundreds of species and literally tens of thousands of cultivars!” writes gardener Julie Day. “The Narcissus genus includes daffodils, jonquils and paperwhites, among many others, so when in doubt, this is the term to use.”

Just to confuse me further, Day adds this statement: “However, when someone says ‘narcissus,’ they’re usually referring to the miniature white holiday blooms of Narcissus tazetta papyraceous, known as paperwhites.”

Now I have paperwhites in my garden, too. But I call them “paperwhites.” So am I to understand that the flowers I called “jonquils” as a boy I should’ve called “daffodils,” and some of the bloomers I have in my garden now, the ones with the small trumpets, rounded leaves and scent, the ones I’d thought were narcissus, are in fact jonquils?

Not necessarily. Julie Day goes on to say that “daffodil” is “the official common name” for any plant in the genus Narcissus.

“So, if the plant is considered a Narcissus, it is also considered a daffodil,” Day writes. “However, most people use the term ‘daffodil’ when referring to the large, trumpet-shaped flowers of the Narcissus pseudonarcissus. These are those big, showy, familiar bulbs that bloom in spring that we all know and love.”

Got that?

But what about Mrs. Humphries? And the asphodels? Turns out they’re a different genus altogether. But some of their blossoms sure look a lot like jonquils. I mean, narcissus. Oh, you know what I mean.

And what about buttercups?

Things sure were simpler when I was a boy in the mountains hunting groundhogs.  OH

Ross Howell Jr. was rewarded for dividing and replanting bulbs this fall with a display of daffodils that brightened even the most confused and gloomy of March days.

Way to Go

For the ultimate send-off, hire a funeral band

By Grant Britt
Photograph by Sam Froelich

I’m gonna blow you away.

I made good on that promise in Florida many times, playing trumpet in the Key West Funeral Band in the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. That’s not so unusual in itself, but the fact that I’m a white boy born in North Carolina — and was the only band member of that persuasion — gives my accomplishment a little different perspective. The 150-year-old Key West Funeral Band was the only one of its kind outside of New Orleans, and some of the grandsons of the founders are still current band members.

I first found out about the band when they came marching by the house where I was living in The Conch Republic. I came running out and stood gaping as they passed by in all their ragged splendor, then followed them all the way to the graveyard. I finally worked up enough courage to approach the man I assumed to be the bandleader because he was wearing a captain’s hat, and asked him what the joyful noise was about. Thinking I was just another tourist inquiring about the quaint native customs, he gave me the short version. “It’s a funeral, white folks!” he snapped before turning back to the graveside festivities. After the service, however, I convinced him that I wasn’t a tourist and in fact lived right around the corner from him and had a genuine interest in the proceedings. That’s when he relaxed and opened up a bit.

It helped that I was familiar with the music. I am a confirmed backslid Baptist, a condition brought on by my abiding disrespect of authority of any kind, secular and especially ecumenical. I also have a healthy appetite for alcohol. Though estranged from the church, I have retained both a love and admiration for the hymns. The Baptists can’t abide drinking or dancing, but they’ve got some catchy rhythms suitable for either activity, and I recognized a few of them being played that afternoon.

In the course of the conversation, the bandleader mentioned that they were looking for a trumpet player. I was in my late 20s at the time, and although I hadn’t played since the fifth grade, I told him I was the man and he set up an audition for the following week.

I went back to the trailer my wife and were renting in Key West’s Old Town in a neighborhood settled by the island’s black Bahamian residents and dug out the tarnished, battered horn I had ever since I was thrown out of band for smoking cigarettes. I commenced to drive the neighbors, dogs and family to the brink of madness with my horrendous bleating. By the time of the audition, I had re-familiarized myself with The Broadman Hymnal, that great Baptist musical celebration of blood and salvation, and had honed my bleating to a semiprofessional level. I passed the audition and was inducted into the band. This consisted of the consumption of a bellyful of beer, frenzied backslapping and the eliciting of a couple of promises — that I could perform under the influence and could get Sunday afternoons off, as that is the popular planting time in those parts.

There was one other condition. I had to assemble a uniform — white shirt, black pants and black shoes. Simple enough — for most people. But this was the mid-1970s and I was in favor of an alternative lifestyle, and, being of the hippie persuasion, had thrown out all my corporate togs before relocating from Carolina to Key West. I owned nothing that was the least bit respectable, so I’d have to make do.

Let’s see — here’s a pair of blue pants — that’s close to black, and maybe my fellow band members won’t notice the 2-inch-wide red stripe running down the outside of the leg. And as for shoes, these boots ought to work. So what if the sides are green, red and blue tapestry with 4-inch Cuban heels? The pants will cover them — most of the time. And as for a white shirt, why I’ll just pull out the guayabera, the ornate shirt worn by barbers and Cubans that somebody gave me as a joke. I looked like a Cuban executive or an escapee from a Haitian disco, but it’ll work, I thought.

The other band members thought otherwise and rode me for about six months. They finally gave up when I told them it was a marketing technique to add a little color to the band and that it was good PR. They thought I was crazy, but since I could play the horn and showed up on time, I guess they figured that dressing a little funny could be overlooked, and they finally left me alone.

Now it’s time to get down to business. There you are, all laid out in your Sunday best, looking natural, or as natural as a dead person can look. But looks don’t matter when you’re in the situation you’re in. You’d get a pretty good sendoff even if we weren’t there, because in this part of town, people down here turn a funeral into a celebration. But this is your lucky day. Somebody in the family has scraped together a few extra bucks and hired the funeral band to see that you go out in style.

But first we’ve got to loosen up a little. We usually gather in Regular Fellows, a little club with the coldest A.C. and the hottest jukebox this side of Nassau to have a few tall, cool Ballantine Ales. For the uninitiated, Ballantine is a greenish malt beverage with the odor of kerosene and a kick like a booster rocket. About five of these bad boys running around in your system will have you speaking in tongues. In short, it’s a quasi-religious experience, just the thing for a funeral warm-up.

Don’t infer from this that we got blind before a job. We just needed a little lubrication, as this stuff was thirsty work, and it’s warm down there.

We’re ready. We plant ourselves on your front porch if you got one, or in front of your house if you don’t. Here you come out the door feet first, in the hands of six strong men, and we blow at you until they load you in the hearse. It’s a good-sized blow. Depending on the stature of the deceased in the community, which determines how many people will come out and line the streets to see us strut our stuff, there can be as many as ten of us who have rolled out for the occasion. With a bass, drum, a snare, a pair of tenor saxes, a clarinet, a couple of ’bones and as many as three trumpets on a good day (and only me on a bad one), we could stir up quite a breeze.

Now that we’ve got you tucked away for your last limo ride, we line up in front of you and behind the flower car. We used to follow the hearse, but the exhaust fumes nearly laid all of us to rest, so we spoke with the undertaker and he made other arrangements.

We always try to follow Satchel Page’s admonition about never looking back, because something might be gaining on you, and because the last time we did, something was. On that memorable outing, the hearse stalled and couldn’t be restarted. The pallbearers took the coffin out and put it on rollers for the few final yards into the graveyard. Unfortunately, the hearse had stalled at the top of the only hill in Key West, Solares Hill, which is all of 6 feet above sea level. To complicate matters, the deceased was of considerable bulk. What’s more, the rollers in the hearse were well oiled, and before the pallbearers could get a good grip on the casket, it had gotten away and was headed straight for the band. We turned around when we heard the pallbearers shout, then commenced the fastest double-time in band history, still blasting away. When the pallbearers finally caught up with their charge, we were already in the graveyard hiding behind the biggest tombstones we could find. We all stayed put until they lowered that gentleman in the ground, for as somebody in the crowd remarked, he just wasn’t ready to go yet, and we wanted no part of any more escape attempts.

But that was the exception. Most of the jobs were routine, with the only danger being of a dental nature. As any marching band brass section member can tell you, the meeting of enamel and brass when you step in a pothole and your mouthpiece gives you a good rap in the choppers is not a good thing. It hurts like hell, it plays hob with the rhythm and it’s messy — you get blood all over your nice white shirt. But there’s not a whole lot you  can do about it. You just spit out the teeth, wipe your mouth and keep playing, because we’re just getting started.

We’re going to church now, and this is the toughest part of the job. Since we don’t have a lot of material, we compensate by playing each tune five times. That’s not too bad if it’s a small funeral, but you’ve got a whole lot of friends, you rascal you, and so once we’ve marched to the church, we’ve got to stand outside and blow until the whole funeral procession, including all the mourners have gone in. When we’ve blown the chorus of “Nearer My God To Thee” twenty-five times in a row and the people are still lined up on the sidewalk with no end in sight, we start to get a little edgy. All that Ballantine Ale we loaded onboard earlier is starting to back up in our throats, the sweat is pouring into our eyes and our lips are swollen to the size of truck tires. Finally all your friends, lovers, family and insurance agents have straggled in and the wailing begins.

This is where we break off. All of the services down here are of the open casket variety, and I don’t care how natural you look, none of us wants to be looking at your ugly puss for two and a half hours while the preacher whoops and testifies, and the professional mourners your family paid for are screaming and falling out of the pews and rolling in the aisles. It’s not that we’re disrespectful, but doing this two or three times a week, all that concentrated grief can makes us a little crazy. So we take a serious break and go down on the strip to pass the time. We know you ain’t going anywhere.

After a few more tall cool ones or maybe a little man, as a half pint of hooch is known around here — and maybe a game of dominoes in Bop Brown’s Jazzy Spot — we’re rested and ready to roll once again.

This is the best part of the day. All we’ve got left to do is the home stretch, and just like they do in New Orleans, we’re gonna strut. The city in its wisdom had banned us from rocking out on the way back home from the graveyard because it causes too much commotion and ties up traffic, so we’re gonna do our strutting on the way to the bone yard.

We’ll have plenty of company, and they’re in high spirits as well. Most of the congregation has sneaked out of the church at some point during the two hours the service had been going on and has been doing the same thing we have. The Ladies Auxiliary Choir has been warming up in church during the proceedings, and they’re going to be right behind us. The streets are lined with well-lubricated participants, and we trot out our zestiest stuff for this part of the journey.

The ’bones are wailing, their slides hooking unwary onlookers if they lean in too close to the band. My whole body is vibrating from the blowback from my horn and the others around me. The bass drummer is pounding so hard that the beats are coming back off the walls of the buildings we pass and slamming us in the heart. There ain’t nothing finer — it’s like walking with the King. As one blissful mourner once shouted as we passed by, “Man, you guys sound so good I wish I was dead!”

When we hit the graveyard, it gets even better. All that marble acts like an echo chamber and you can hear the notes running around seconds after you’ve played ’em. We march over to the grave and play one more chorus of “Lead Me To Calvary” as the family gathers around us. The sun is setting, the choir is humming softly in the background, and we finish up in a circle, playing softly as the coffin is set down for the last time.

That’s it for us. We don’t stay for the last rites for the same reason we don’t go in the church. It’s just too much. But still, the day is not over for us. All of us have full-time jobs, for the death rate in this little town won’t allow us to make a living as a band. But that’s fine too — we couldn’t take a lot of this, and at the prices we charge, there’d have to be an epidemic for us to make a killing at this.

So that’s it for you. Everybody said they had a good time. Sorry you missed it. Tell all your friends — well, maybe not. But the word’ll get around anyhow. If you want the best, the Key West Funeral Band is the only way to go. After all, it’s your funeral.  OH

 Grant Britt is still blowing O.Henry readers away, but with his keyboard, not a trumpet.

O.Henry Ending

Painted Lady

The challenge of putting on a good face

By Janna McMahan

Iím a Southern woman with a daily makeup habit. I strive for the subtle illusion of perfection, no garish lipstick or dark slashes for eyebrows. I don’t want to look as if I’m trying too hard, just healthy and awake.

I was a pretty teenager who never had a problem getting dates, so I was stunned the day my mother suggested I might want to consider wearing makeup.

While I was partial to sour grape Lip Smackers, all the Avon samples she passed along sat untouched in a drawer. After her comment, I examined my face closely, wondering if my life could indeed be better with a little blush. After all, I certainly didn’t want to be the girl who doesn’t care. So, I bought a vanity mirror and began to put on my face every day before school. Sparkly blue eye shadow and mascara became a necessity. I contoured my thin cheeks into hollows. I spent hours in our hometown pharmacy looking at products and magazines for application tips guaranteed to make me popular.

In my 40s, I was sitting in front of my collection of tinctures, creams and color palettes teaching my own daughter about makeup when I suddenly questioned my ritual. I grew up in the South in a time when women were heavily judged on their appearance. Shouldn’t that be changing? Was I instilling in my beautiful daughter a sense that she was somehow incomplete without the façade?

A student at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Madison saw makeup as an art form. She says, “Doing your hair is like sculpture and makeup is like painting. It’s how I express myself.” Where I had scoured Seventeen, Madison watches YouTube tutorials where makeup application is an elevated form of entertainment.

To wear or not wear makeup has become an interesting social phenomenon of late. This summer, while Olympic athletes sported bright red nail polish and lipstick, popular entertainers decided to go barefaced. Long terrified of being caught in public sans eyeliner, stars started posting no makeup selfies to thwart paparazzi who shame them for looking normal. Even Miss North Carolina pageant contestants got into the act, posting au naturel selfies in defense of one contestant who was singled out for a fresh-faced photo.

In general, most men I asked said women look better without makeup and that too much makeup was off-putting, particularly foundation and overdone eyeliner. But when shown photos with and without makeup, men waffled. One even pointed to the before and after shots and said, “If you went to bed with that and you woke up with that . . . well, wow.” It seems men like just the right amount of undetectable enhancement, but they also don’t seem to look too hard. Once, a male friend and I were served by a waitress with obvious heavy false eyelashes, but as she walked away he said, “She has the most amazing eyes.”

On the other hand, women seemed more accepting of makeup in all forms, although in the spirit of full disclosure, most I spoke with were Southern women. My sister-in-law, a diehard makeup lover, says if she goes out without makeup people ask her if she feels well. My niece, who is in nursing school, says putting on makeup is one of the few times during the day she has a contemplative moment. A girlfriend, who is a master gardener, says she enjoys seeing herself transform from dirty overalls and baseball cap into a lady.

I noticed when I started hanging out in Colorado that few women there wear makeup and it made me wonder if makeup (and sunscreen) were a Southern thing. But later, in New York, I saw plenty of women who could give a Texas woman pause. Obviously, Southern ladies aren’t the only ones who like a little war paint.

I’ve seen women on the treadmill at 7 a.m. in full makeup, but I’ve also watched super buff gals lifting weights without a thought about their lack of lip gloss. I admit it, I fall somewhere in between and rarely go to the Y without spending a few minutes in front of the mirror. Is it habit or vanity? Are we makeup mavens simply victims of social expectations or amazing trompe l’oeil artists?

I admire confident women who go into the world barefaced, but I feel better artificially enhanced. Lately, I’ve been adjusting my routine and reading the over-40 magazines for tips on aging skin. I’ve started to dye my eyebrows and Botox suddenly holds appeal. As an author, I fear the social media photos people post from book signings, so you’ll never see a barefaced selfie of me. I need my lipstick. And I make no apologies for my ritual.  OH

Janna McMahan is the author of numerous novels, short stories and personal essays. Follow her writing life at www.facebook.com/jannamcmahan.

The Accidental Astrologer

Risky Biscuits

Mule-headed Aquarians: about to bust with a new sense of direction

By Astrid Stellanova

Aquarians are in fine fettle this year. Everybody calls them visionary — which in my opinion means: They are stubborn as mules, but much better-looking. Aquarians are true to themselves, having mule wisdom that makes them unlike any other Star Child. The Aquarian nature is naturally smart and everybody knows it. They’re ready for the New Year and busting with a sense of direction. And they’re bent upon getting there first and plowing a new field — except when they positively cannot get out of their own way. — Ad Astra—Astrid

Aquarius (January 20–February 18)

Oh, there’s something you want so flipping much you can just taste it but you are holding back. But you would die if anybody knew, wouldn’t you? Birthday Child, you gotta risk it for the biscuit. When you see what you want, don’t hold back until the biscuit is cold and stale. Pick it up, and slather it with some butter.    

Pisces (February 19–March 20)

It ain’t a story till you tell it. . . and you have got to tell it before you bust wide open, Honey. Who did what to who is the narrative that has kept you on edge for waaaay too long. You know who buried the body, dontcha?   

Aries (March 21–April 19)

Jay-zus, take the wheel, because you do not have a clue where you are going. And, to the alarm of us all, you are going 100 miles per hour like you are Richard Petty at the Indy 500. For godsakes, let somebody else be the pace car.

Taurus (April 20–May 20)

Opportunity has knocked twice. If you ignore it again, you will have to wait until the next astral cycle for a big opportunity like this one, Baby. Your heart has been pounding like wet sneakers in the drier. Ignore your fears. Open. The. Door.

Gemini (May 21–June 20)

Smug, ain’t you? There are so many ignorant people, and, in your not-so-humble opinion, they seem to be procreating in record numbers. If you don’t learn anything else, you might just try a little checking that attitude and making your sense of humor your bigger goal.

Cancer (June 21–July 22)

To those closest to you, your life is about as bewildering as a dumpster fire. Sugar, when you threw your troubles out the window, you threw something valuable with it. Reassess what you deleted. There are some friendships that you can still restore, and still need, Sugar.

Leo (July 23–August 22)

Your best friend in life, your mirror self, only had two things when you met. Their past and their future. Somehow, you overlooked just how much you two have in common. But if you surrender the past — both of you — there is so much waiting in the present.

Virgo (August 23–September 22)

If you hear yourself saying you are the voice of reason, then you know that everybody else is screwed. Baby, you have got to be kidding. Somebody cares about your future and you haven’t given them the time of day. Revisit, revise and renew yourself.

Libra (September 23–October 22)

Honey, when is “old enough to have learned something about life” going to kick in for you? You have allowed some issues to recycle themselves — old lessons still waiting. They ain’t going away. They are just going to hide in the closet until you invite them inside.

Scorpio (October 23–November 21)

You may not exactly hate your new situation, but let’s just say it feels like the Monday of your life is rolling 24/7. As a matter of fact, you did get a raw deal, Honey. But rolling in everybody’s sympathy ain’t going to help you. Put some steel in your backbone and Tuesday will come.

Sagittarius (November 22–December 21)

Now, I’m not saying you don’t have the big picture, but Child, if you were a bird you would know exactly who to dump this one on. Repeat after me: It ain’t your fault. And it ain’t yours to fix. The mess you have been cleaning up on Aisle 5 was never your fault. 

Capricorn (December 22–January 19)

Somebody in your life tests your last nerve with their endless complaining. And then, to set you off, they do an eye roll. Which suggests they are gonna find a brain back there in that numb skull one day. Sugar, there is a reason this crazy maker is still in your life. They are not here to teach you eye calisthenics, either.  OH

For years, Astrid Stellanova owned and operated Curl Up and Dye Beauty Salon in the boondocks of North Carolina until arthritic fingers and her popular astrological readings provoked a new career path.

February Almanac

The Snow Moon

Perhaps no poem paints a more fitting portrait of this time of year than Thomas Hardy’s classic verse about a “blast-beruffled” bird whose joyful song pierces the silence of a dark and desolate eve like an arrow through autumn’s last apple.

Read: February is here. Behold the first glorious explosion of golden daffodils.

Although “Darkling Thrush” is set at the cusp of a new year (and century), its haunting image of “tangled bine-stems” slicing the sky “like strings of broken lyres” invokes, at least for this nature lover, the bleakest yet most beautiful days of winter. Since the heaviest snows tend to fall this month, the full moon on Friday, Feb. 10, has long been called the full snow moon. The Cherokee called it the bone moon because, well, food was so scarce that supper was often marrow soup.

Speaking of soup, now’s time for root vegetable stews and chowders thick with heavy cream and gold potatoes. Make enough and you can eat from it all week — a quick and hearty fix after a cold evening spent pruning the rose bush and deadheading pansies. Through the kitchen window, a brown thrasher gently swings on the suet feeder before disappearing with twilight. It’s cold, but daylight is stretching out a little further every day. The soup simmers on the stovetop. Spring will be here soon.

 A Grimm Fellow

Wilhelm Grimm, younger of the Brothers Grimm, was born Feb. 24, 1786, in Hessen, Germany. Perhaps that’s why National Tell a Fairy Tale Day falls just two days later, on Sunday, Feb. 26. In addition to publishing a hefty collection of folk tales — “Hänsel and Gretel,” “Der Froschkönig” (“The Frog Prince”), “Dornröschen” (Sleeping Beauty), “Schneewittchen” (“Snow White”), and on and on — the brothers started writing a definitive German dictionary in 1838, but never did get around to finishing it. Add a little extra magic to this month of love by spinning a tale about fairies or mermaids, or, in the spirit of this bleak wintry season, perhaps something a bit darker. Like the one where the evil stepsisters cut off their toes to make the glass slipper fit.

February, a form

Pale-vestured, wildly fair,—

One of the North Wind’s daughters,

With icicles in her hair.

– Edgar Fawcett, “The Masque of Months” (1878)

Say it with Flowers

Violet and primrose are the birth flowers of February. The old folk poem calls the flower blue, but violets bloom mauve, yellow and white, too. Gift a lover a violet on Valentine’s Day and they’ll read: I’ll always be true. As for the primrose, a pale yellow perennial that thrives in cool woodland glades, the message crackles like an ardent fire:
I can’t live without you.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

Nor hath love’s mind of any judgment taste;

Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.

And therefore is love said to be a child

Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.

– William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Botanicus

Room to Grow

Boxwoods need space, in both gardens and hearts

By Ross Howell Jr.

April Westerberg’s love for boxwoods goes back generations. The owner of a business that repurposes unwanted things for new uses, Westerberg and her husband, William, sell her items at the Chartreuse Barn in Thomasville and at the Holiday Show Made 4 the Holidays at the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, along with Christmas wreaths, roping and trees.

Last December, my wife, Mary Leigh, had just bought boxwood roping and a fir wreath from April’s stand.
I was collecting the greenery as Mary Leigh wrote a check.

“You might want to wet the boxwood down before you hang it,” April said to me. “Boxwood can be a little . . . prissy.”

Recognizing a kindred spirit, I launched into my tale of woe, how I’d just transplanted boxwoods from our front yard to the back, hoping to stop the depredations of a willow oak that had left the boxwood bordering our front walk in a hopeless condition of misshapen dissonance.

“When you plant them,” April said, “think of a little girl, twirling in place with her arms outstretched. They need a little room. People sometimes plant them too close to other plants.”

Then she looked me in the eye: “Boxwoods need to have their hair and nails done. They crave attention,” she said. “But I love them. They’re beautiful year-round. You can keep them in a pot. You can trim them into a hedge. I used boxwood in my bridal bouquet, with gardenias and Baby’s Breath.”

April inherited her love of boxwoods from her great-grandparents, immigrants from Italy and Sicily.

“My great-grandfather was a gardener who liked to give what he grew to others,” she said. “He loved boxwoods, and growing them became his specialty. In the spring he’d have us kids set 2-inch clippings in little plastic cups. I remember carrying egg cartons with those clippings all over the place.”

In fact, it was her great-grandfather who suggested her name: “He said April was the most beautiful time of year, and that’s what my name should be. Not ‘Aprile [ap-reel-eh],’ his native Italian, but ‘April,’ because he was proud to be an American.”

So “What’s in a name?,” asked the poet and playwright Shakespeare. In April’s case, it was her destiny.

“The day my parents found out they were going to have me, they went out and bought a nursery in upstate New York. You could say gardening’s in my blood. My father had been mowing lawns and doing landscaping. So he bought a nursery business. It turned out well. Later he moved to Nashville, where he developed gardens for some of the country music stars. I remember riding around in his pickup with him. We’d pull up at these nurseries, with great expanses of boxwood and Fraser firs, and it really made an impression on me.

“Later we moved to Galax, Virginia. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, Joyce, because my father was always on the road with his business. She had a little warehouse where she sold greenery. How she loved growing her boxwood! She taught me so much. She used to say, ‘April, if you get into this business, I want you to remember me, but don’t blame me when your hands hurt.’

“Not long ago, I had a couple tell me about a place where they used to buy Christmas decorations. ‘It was a lady who sold greenery,’ they said. ‘We’d stop by every year, but this time, everything was shuttered up. It was near Galax.’ When I realized they were talking about my grandmother, I started to cry. In my booth I had a picture of my grandmother and me when I was a girl, and I showed it to them.”

Turning reflective, April said, “Christmas Day was also my grandmother’s birthday. When she passed away in 2010, it was devastating. So the Christmas season is bittersweet for me. Obviously, it’s important to our business. But when I think of my grandmother Joyce, well, it’s hard.” But then, hearts always hurt more than hands.  OH

Ross Howell Jr. is the author of the novel, Forsaken. The boxwoods he transplanted to the bed in front of his backyard cabin are happy for the moment. He tends to them assiduously and admits to encouraging them often, telling them how beautiful they are.

Story of a House

Worthwhile

Artist Lauren Worth’s house of light and fantasy

By Cynthia Adams  
Photographs by Amy Freeman

Lauren Worth makes her way to the back of her sunny house. Like the rest, it is uncluttered and peaceful. As she walks, she chats about how she and her husband, David, bought it after a “premature” downsizing to Ascot Point. They discovered they were too young to move into that situation, she explains, with a half-grin, half-grimace. Neither retired nor seriously contemplating doing so, they soon exited Ascot Point.

And yet, she adds, downsizing was a good exercise.

Having gotten rid of most of their furniture in that prior, premature move, the Worths found the current, larger home. It is not a McMansion but a house of wonderful scale, occupying a quiet street in Irving Park. They furnished it largely with things taken from a mountain home. 

Worth laughs. “We were too practical to go buy all new furniture just because we had gotten rid of everything.” With a shake of her head she adds, “We would never do that.” The house itself is open and modern, but it is the back half of the Worth dwelling that makes the statement. So she likes that this new house (built in 2006) suggests a vacation home, in Worth’s mind at least. That has something to do with the interiors being shot-through with light, and also the nearby pool, a languid, liquid piece of art. 

It is a nice counterpoint to the large cook’s kitchen that opens onto a den with a dramatic, two-story fireplace. The den, with a wall of glass, in turn, opens onto the rectangular-shaped — and dazzling — pool.  It’s the sort that suggests a famous someone just left one of the lounge chairs to call her broker or agent.

The pool occupies most of the backyard. It is flanked by a fireplace and outdoor living room at one end and a bar at the other. The sum of this means easy entertaining for a crowd of a hundred or more — or even their son’s recent engagement party.

The smooth marriage of the house and pool exudes California Cool, a vibe that says, “Let me entertain you.” As the afternoon sun moves, the pool’s surface becomes a silky trampoline, playfully bouncing light back to the interior of the house.

Yet the cultivated sparseness of the architecture and interiors also makes for a perfect canvas. The neutrally decorated walls become the perfect backdrop for the art that Worth collects. Or rather, as she explains, art that she has gathered.

Pausing, Worth says she especially feels fortunate to find herself here, in such a sunny space — especially given she also works here in an upstairs studio; serendipitously, it already existed when she and David moved here two and a half years ago.

She stops to point out pieces of artwork the couple have collected, lingering to explain why she loves the particular artist. (Worth has been long involved with The Public Art Endowment through the Community Foundation, and has been a hard-working advocate for public art.) “I also buy art from artists I respect and know personally, and it gives me great joy to stroll by their work every day in my home. I buy mostly 2-D work but also ceramics and sculpture.”

Worth is a working artist herself, which is why it all becomes so personal. “I basically buy art because I like it, and I’m not consciously building a collection or buying it as an investment,” Worth told me in an email. “I guess you could say that all our artworks have become a collection of sorts because most of the works are by artists with an N.C. affiliation,” she wrote. “N.C. has a rich history is supporting artists and offering nurturing, educational and highly creative environments for artists (such as GreenHill, N.C. School of the Arts, Penland School of Crafts, The Governor’s School, Weaver Education Center).” 

Worth well knows how difficult it is for artists to make a living selling their artwork. “That’s another reason I want to keep supporting other artists and add to the work we have.”

The artistic impulse must feel like a genetic imperative. Worth’s uncle, Marshall Bouldin, and his son, Jason Bouldin, are artists. “They are outstanding portrait painters, and I’ve learned a great deal from both of them over the years,” Worth explains. Personally, however, she especially likes contemporary, nonrepresentational works. 

In an artist statement, Worth once wrote: “I am a gardener of strangeness in the true sense of Baudelaire. For me, art is a puzzle, each piece beautiful, strange and unique, slowly forming a larger image as we begin to understand its logic and intoxicating beauty. My engagement with the natural world has led me to believe that we can be sustained through playful care, reverence and stewardship of the world around us. It is my goal as an artist to cultivate curiosity and encourage the discovery of beauty in the strangest of places.”

Inside her studio, she says, “I live with my own art on a daily basis in the studio, which is a blessing and a curse: I love what I do, it challenges me, but I sometimes just get sick of staring at it all the time,” she admits. Worth takes the conversation upstairs, and moves about her studio describing where she buys the handmade papers she uses in her work (usually at Penland) and how she makes the oversized stencils she uses from her own enlarged photographs taken in the deep woods in order to create mixed medium collages. Using acrylic paint, acrylic gel medium, handmade paper, photographic images, magazine clippings and handmade templates, Worth builds the multi-layered collages. Austrian painter Gustav Klimt and Swiss-German surrealist Paul Klee are inspirations to her.

“There is a natural metamorphosis of the painting itself. I try to make sure that proportion, scale and composition is right,” Worth says of her artistic process.

She has shown in the last year in Aspen, Colorado, the Semans Gallery in Durham and in New York. Her work is sold in New York through the Walter Wickiser Gallery, and at the Tyler White O’Brien Gallery in Greensboro and online. She has three paintings that were chosen for GreenHill’s Collector’s Choice this winter.

While Worth inhabits an otherwise orderly life and home, she protests the studio is a mess (it isn’t) as she points to works in progress. Pausing before a 28 x 48 commission underway, she gestures to details she has created that blend paint with her own, manipulated photographic images. Her technique was developed as a result of a desire to break out of her old art forms.

“I woke up one night and thought of it, seven or eight years ago. I was trying to think of something different that would capture the feeling of a tree but give me room to manipulate it. There were a lot of branches, for example,” she says, pointing to a collage, “and texture.” 

She chooses what to leave in, or out. Then, Worth says she further abstracted the branches “so there is a semblance of it . . . a combination of representational images and abstract geometric forms. I want there to be something left of mystery in a painting. I like to put fish in trees . . . although fish do move in trees in Alaska, where salmon spawn.”

For Worth, art is a portal into a fey world where each tree branch, wisp or willow is not exactly as it appears. There is a bit of mystical, magical witchery, wonder, even quantum physics in each composition. “My paintings have a mind of their own,” she says and laughs. The outcome is beautiful and fantastical: Feathers and coral grow in trees. Using magazine clippings, for example, Worth fashioned coral to portray it as a parasite on the tree. 

“It is about metamorphosis. We go into the woods for the stillness we find there, but under the quiet there is all this universal flux, this constant change.

“There is a semblance of a branch,” she says, pointing to a detail, “but it is a combination of representational image and abstraction.” 

She accepts commissions on occasion, saying that her collectors “know what they like — not like what they know.” When a work is done, Worth steps away. 

In one titled Gossamer Delight, she painted over what was originally there because it didn’t quite please her. The ghost of the original painting bleeds through. “This is called pentimento,” she explains. “It comes from the Italian for ‘repent.’  It’s almost like we try to get rid of our sins but can never quite do it.”

Now, Worth accepts, even likes, the painting that the former one has become. “Each piece skirts the border between the real and the imagined like a memory that may have been a dream,” she once said.

Nor does it pierce her heart when someone is critical of her efforts, Worth says.  At one of her shows, a man told her he did not care for her work. 

“I wondered if he would have liked more space,” she muses. Not personal space — just space within the art itself. Worth absorbed the criticism, trying to find its meaning and use. She had already been trained in the art of handling criticism in her prior life as an artist working for years at Wind Rose, a long-standing Greensboro business. (The owners have since deceased.) It was there, working in an atelier, that Worth learned to take all in stride. Wind Rose artists created unique works of art from furniture and accessories, hand painting the imported European pieces — sometimes to withering criticism of designers who reviewed the pieces designated for trade only.

“It was great, really great,” Worth says of Wind Rose. It was a true artists’ studio; the years working at Wind Rose gave her confidence. There could be strangeness in beauty, she discovered. “Ned, an owner, said, keep painting balanced but asymmetrical. This gives it rhythm and tension.” It also led her to desire that things around her be beautiful, she says, and accept her own self-creation. 

“I consider myself a late emerging artist.”  OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O. Henry and writes for various magazines and publications. While working in the Netherlands, she tried her best to visit all 300-plus museums there and solidified a love of art and artists.