Author: O.Henry Magazine

A Few Questions for Greensboro’s Mr. Baseball

Donald Moore’s Extra Inning

by Jim Dodson

After 22 years at the helm of the Greensboro Grasshoppers as both president and general manager, Donald Moore opens the 2024 season in his new position as President Emeritus of the organization he helped create. A longtime figure in the Gate City’s sporting scene, Moore was a three-sport star at Page High in the early 1970s, playing baseball, football and basketball. He was lucky to play under two North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame coaches — Marion Kirby and Mac Morris. In the 1990s, Moore was involved with the Greensboro Sports Council and chaired the city’s high school basketball tournament for many years. Then along came the Hoppers. With a new season on the horizon, we caught up with Greensboro’s genial son — the man with a plan to bring baseball back to the Gate City — and asked him to reflect on his own journey around the bases.

Since the ballpark opened in the spring of 2005, how many fans have passed through your turnstiles?

It’s rather amazing. Somewhere close to 7 million fans have visited the ballpark. That’s a high compliment to the baseball fans of Triad.

Tell us how it all started.

It all started with a phone call from Jim Melvin in July of 2001. I was working in real estate development at Uwharrie Point and commuting 53 miles a day, six days a week. The development was winding down and I was trying to think of what I would do next. That’s when Jim called out of the blue wondering if I had interest in joining the baseball team as part of an investment team that bought the team and wanted to build a new stadium downtown.

What were the early days of the organization like?

To begin with, we were based over at Memorial Stadium in an office that was like a dungeon that had no windows. It was a pretty grim place. We had three seasons over there. The team nickname at that time was the Bats, and they had God-awful colors — black and purple. So, we changed the name to the Grasshoppers in the fall of 2004 to open the new stadium in the spring of 2005 with our affiliate, the Marlins. I’d always thought the colors of the University of Miami were so cool — green and orange. The Marlins came up and played an exhibition game.

Do you remember opening day?

Sure do. We opened with an exhibition game. Every seat in the stadium was taken. Our attendance was almost 8,000. It was a beautiful, sunny and cool spring day. The fans were ecstatic and couldn’t believe what an incredible ballpark they had. The credit goes to Jim Melvin, Len White, Cooper Brantley and the rest of the private investment group. Things really took off from there and have never stopped.

It’s been pointed out that the stadium was a key component in the redevelopment of downtown Greensboro. How do you feel about that?

I’m proud of the economic impact that the ballpark has had on downtown and in Greensboro at large. In the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, downtown was a ghost town. I think the stadium was just part of that rebirth. So much has changed since then. We have a new $100-million plus development rumored to be coming. I’m glad we could be part of that.

Best memories?

Oh, gosh. So many in 22 years. A lot of games and a lot of weekends. But it’s been fantastic. We won the league championship in 2011, a storybook finish. We won 17 of the last 20 games and got into the playoffs on the very last day of the season. Then we went to Savannah and won the title down there. The first championship since 1982. We also held the ACC tournament here three times — 2010, 2012 and 2014 — and packed the house. In 2012, we hosted the State-Carolina game here on a Saturday night and set a record for the state of North Carolina collegiate baseball — more than 10,000 fans. The Marlins also came two more times in 2010 and 2015. Those were all special days.

What sort of things did you learn along the way?

I learned early that we are in the entertainment business. Baseball at this level is family entertainment. Probably half our fan base has a family pet. I remember thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if we could get a dog into the mix?

Then along came Miss Babe Ruth.

That’s right. She was born November 5, 2005. I found her at a local breeder, and we had a press conference to say she was going off to spring training in March of ’06. She made her debut carrying baseballs in a bucket out to the umpires in August that year. The fans went crazy. She loved it, too. We retired her in 2015 after 649 straight games. I wrote a letter to the National Baseball Hall of Fame to offer them Babe’s original ball bucket. They were delighted to accept it. Today, it’s the only nonhuman artifact in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

How about the other four-legged baseball fans?

We had Master Yogi Berra, our only male in five dogs. He was a real cutup, always carrying a ball in his mouth. I would shoot a ball into the outfield, and he’d run and get it, and then race back through the tunnel. One time in ’09, Yogi stopped and left his business on the field. The fans loved it but the umpire tossed him out of the game. I wrote and sent out a press release pointing out that Yogi was the first dog ever to be ejected from a professional baseball game. It went crazy. Within a week, Yogi was in Sports Illustrated, and he and I were on Fox & Friends.

Lou Lou Gehrig joined us in 2012 and worked up until her passing in 2020. She became our office dog. She was followed by Little Jackie Robinson, who never got into the routine and became our office administrator. Willie May Mays joined us in 2022. Willie’s great, loves the whole thing, and the fans love her.

So how do you feel stepping back from all of that?

It’s bittersweet. I tell you, though, if you surround yourself with good people it makes it easier to go. I hired everyone on our staff and know what talented and committed people they are. Sure, I’ll miss it. But I’ll be around, checking in from time to time. It’s a good feeling to know you’ve made a difference in someone’s life. I run into fans all the time who have great memories of this place. Not long ago a father came up to tell me that I gave his son a baseball 15 years ago. It’s a small thing like that that you remember most.

So how are the Hoppers looking in 2024?

You never quite know. But it’ll be lots of fun. So, come on out. OH

2024 Feature

Kicking It at the Curb

For 150 years, Greensboro’s farmers market has cultivated community

By Ross Howell Jr.

Photographs by Lynn Donovan

The best description of what the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market feels like was written back in 1994 by Dorothy Mason — now retired professor emerita of geography at N.C. A&T State University. She was a loyal market customer then and still is today.

“On any Saturday morning in July, the old National Guard Armory building is the busiest place in the city,” Mason writes.

“Before 6 a.m., shoppers have gathered outside the entrances, while vendors unload their trucks and carry in boxes of green beans, tomatoes, corn, cut flowers and potted plants, baked goods, jams and soap,” she continues.

“By 7 a.m., the scene can best be described as ‘a rump-bumping crowd.’ There is a festival atmosphere as shoppers select produce and vendors weigh it, talking together like old friends. Shoppers block the aisles, their bodies enlarged by bags and flower containers, as they stop to chat with friends.”

But, she notes, the market is about more than just the fresh veggies and homemade cakes. Mason adds. “It is a social event which brings people of a range of socioeconomic backgrounds together.”

Prof. Mason’s description was written for a study she presented at an annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers. Her interests were the market community, the human relationships it nurtures and the ways the market helps preserve regional cooking traditions.

Ever the academic, Mason brought the receipts to support her observations. She had administered questionnaires to 384 shoppers and conducted interviews with the market manager and many vendors and shoppers. She found that 74 percent of those polled had shopped the market for five years or more and 32 percent for 20 years or more. She discovered that more than 20 of her subjects had been coming to the market for 40 years, and three had been coming for an astounding 50 years.

In interviews, Mason had subjects who recalled being brought to the market as children, and one who identified herself as a fourth-generation shopper.

Mason also asked people open-ended questions about why they came to the market. Respondents commented on the freshness and quality of produce, supporting local farmers, nostalgia for a simpler time and — interestingly — the crowd.

“Crowd! This is the greatest reason,” wrote one respondent.

I like to peek into the nooks and crannies of history. And history helps us understand that the farmers curb market is much more like a tree than a building, more like a marriage than a location. It’s a living community within our city, benefiting us all.

To give you an idea of how long ago the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market was founded — when it first opened in 1874, our O. Henry magazine namesake, William Sydney Porter, was still enrolled in his aunt Evelina Henry Porter’s elementary school.

The most comprehensive account of the origins of the market is found — strangely enough — in a two-segment radio address delivered in 1951 by the Honorable Robert Haines Frazier, mayor, to WCOG listeners.

Mayor Frazier’s Greensboro roots ran deep. His father, Cyrus Pickett Frazier, had been a professor and long-time trustee at Guilford College, a superintendent of Greensboro city schools, and a successful real estate entrepreneur.

Mayor Frazier was born in Greensboro, raised in a Quaker household and became a Greensboro attorney. When he was elected to office, he succeeded textile industrialist and philanthropist Benjamin Cone, an individual well-known for his commitment to the local community.

The mayor notes that on May 13, 1874, a committee was appointed to look into establishing a market. Subsequently, the city purchased a lot and constructed a building accommodating 20 vendor stalls on the east side of the business district.

Frazier adds in painstaking detail how the stalls were rented at auction, the financial terms of stall rental, the requirements for stall cleanliness and maintenance, the market official who decided where vendors would hitch their horses and wagons, and the city ordinance written to prohibit random street vending of the “fresh meats, fresh fish, butter, eggs, poultry, vegetables, melons and fruits” to be sold during the hours the market was open.

In 1875, a special market house for fish mongers was added. A review of revenues revealed that the costs to create the market had been a good investment for the city. But the market’s success was blemished by its very popularity.

According to the mayor, “loungers” and “gossip” were problems.

“So great did the nuisance become that many of our ladies refused to go there,” Mayor Frazier told his radio audience. But the market clerk was given police powers and the city passed an ordinance “against idleness and loafing,” granting the mayor’s office with the power of enforcement. The problems soon diminished.

Then, misfortune struck on the morning of May 27, 1888, when the market house and all records, maps and furniture were destroyed by fire.

A year later, the decision was made to rebuild, using the walls that had survived the fire, and plans were made to put water in the market house and a drinking fountain in the public square.

By December 1901, the board of aldermen detailed new rules and regulations for the market, which operated until 1906 and then closed, evidently due to management problems.

When the farmers market reopened in 1922, it was in the open air on Commerce Place. Vendors parked their trucks or wagons on the curb selling items from the tailgates or running boards of their vehicles.

The location changed a couple of times in subsequent years, but, according to Mayor Frazier, the market returned to its Commerce Place location in the 1930s.

And, as happened after its original opening in 1874, the market’s success created problems. Business grew and spread into an alley extending all the way from Commerce Place to Eugene Street. With no central market building, the growing congestion and confusion were unmanageable.

Remarkably, in some of the most challenging days of World War II, the Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs “expressed the need for an adequately housed farm produce market,” the mayor tells us.

At a city council meeting in February 1943, a group of citizens presented a petition signed by 12,000 individuals “asking for the establishment of the market in the old Tobacco Market Warehouse on Commerce Place.” A commission was charged with studying the issue, and in January 1944, the city authorized “$65,000 in Market House bonds” to raise funds for “remodeling and equipping” a building.

On its opening day, June 24, 1944 — just days after the D-Day invasion — the new farmers curb market saw a crowd of 2,000, possibly the largest to gather at a single market up until that point. Greensboro’s mayor at the time “dedicated the market to the community as an influence for closer urban-rural relationship and greater production and consumption of native products.”

A look at the newspaper clippings on file in the Greensboro History Museum reveals even more about the synergy between the market community and the city community.

An article from the Greensboro Record, Feb. 7, 1962, carries the headline, “City Takes Over Armory Monday for Market Use.” In 1963, the curb market was moved from its Commerce Place location to its current one — the old National Guard Armory building on Yanceyville Street.

In the history museum’s files I also came across an October 1995 article in a newspaper section designated, “Irving Park Magazine.” The piece was written by Betty Taylor, who gives an overview of the history of the market and includes a photograph of “Margaret Rumley and Shirley Rumley Broom.”

Many curb market customers — myself included — remember the late Margaret Rumley simply as “Mom.” She sat on a kitchen stool at her stall greeting generations of flower buyers alongside her daughter, Shirley, who was first photographed by a newspaperman at the market selling a pie to a customer when she was 9 years old.

With all that history and the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market’s 2024 sesquicentennial celebration in mind, I set out on a cold Saturday morning in February for Yanceyville Street.

Theresa Mattiello, the new market manager, was just months into her new position when the market sesquicentennial launched. She’s not new to the market, though. For four years she worked a stall with Tea Hugger, selling a variety of hand-blended teas. Trained in graphic design, Mattiello also did social media work for the previous farmers market manager.

Mattiello lives in Glenwood and practices micro farming, growing plants in raised beds and utilizing vertical space to increase production. She’s representative of a new generation of urban gardeners who encourage others to think of their grass lawns as potential “yardens,” where fresh food can be grown within more traditional landscaping.

Standing alongside Mattiello in the “Info Hub” stall are two market employees. Shane Henderson is a student at N.C. A&T State, majoring in civil engineering and public health, and Abigail Miller-Warren is taking classes in sustainability at GTCC.

All three are young and enthusiastic — and their smiles are infectious. They’re handing out flyers announcing sesquicentennial events. This month, look for the annual plant sale and an Earth Day Fair.

Special events will continue monthly throughout 2024.

“It’s very exciting,” Mattiello tells me. “We managed to stay open during COVID with our mobile market, kind of a drive-through — but we did lose some vendors.”

Mattiello networks with current vendors, customers and the greater community to recruit new vendors.

“We’re always reaching out to farmers younger than 40 and farmers who grow more exotic vegetables to broaden the selection of produce available,” Mattiello says.

After accepting a flyer from Miller-Warren, I decide to browse.

First, I meet Garland McCollum, who’s at a stall right by the market entrance. His big hands are wrapped around a pair of long-handled pruning shears that he’s sharpening.

McCollum is there with Massey Creeks Farm, an operation specializing in sustainably-grown, grass-fed meats and eggs. He tells me the Rockingham County farm has been in his family since 1749.

“All I ever wanted to do was farm,” McCollum says.

After graduating from N.C. State with a degree in animal husbandry, he returned to the farm, where tobacco was still the main crop. But he wanted to raise livestock. Over time, he moved into growing hogs under contract and eventually discovered the possibility of selling his pork and lamb direct to consumers at the farmers market.

“I started sharpening implements here to pass the time when business was slow,” McCollum says. “Then I found out people really needed the service.”

Next I move to the Chéngers stall, occupied by Jo Ann and Bob Smith, whose daughter, Trina Pratt, owns the business and is also an adjunct professor in kinesiology at N.C. A&T State.

Jo Ann tells me that Prof. Pratt’s business name honors her son, Ché, who was born when she was still in graduate school.

“When he was a baby, he would not eat baby food,” Jo Ann says. “So Trina started making applesauce for him at home.”

“Are these soups?” a customer asks.

“Yes,” Bob answers. “Asian vegetable, butternut squash, chickpeas and tomato bisque. Vegan, all-natural, no preservatives, no additives.”

The customer ponders a selection, and Jo Ann processes the purchase.

She tells me many customers are older.

“Our bodies go through changes,” Jo Ann says. “That’s the other idea behind the name of the business. Regardless of age or health, people can eat my daughter’s food.”

A chef now helps develop recipes and the business sells soups, smoothies, juices and baby foods.

Dr. Pratt’s foods must do the job. Her son, Ché, steps up to the stall, now a handsome young man a good 6 feet tall.

Near a corner of the market building I spy a stall with some beautiful cold-weather vegetables. Lukas Hoey of The Hoey Farm introduces himself. He’s a bearded, genial young man, a first-generation, urban farmer who began his career as a chef.

When health issues precluded him from continuing in the restaurant business, he started farming.

“My kids help, my wife helps; we’re a family farm, but I’m the one primarily doing it,” says Hoey, who’s been a vendor for two years. “I love it.”

He explains that he has a greenhouse located by the coliseum. After starting plants there, he moves them to High Point, where a friend has a half-acre of land that she allows him to farm.

In his stall, he points out Chinese cabbage, kohlrabi, Swiss chard, curly kale and collards.

“We also do some micro greens, which are very healthy, like a super food,” he says. “We focus on things that grow really fast, things that are quick to harvest. Things that are a little niche.”

The market has proven to be a good pivot for Hoey. “I see familiar faces, customers from my restaurant days, but this is a much healthier setting for me. I’ve never looked back.”

Next, at a crafts stall, I’m eyeing elegant, hand-painted stones and wooden pieces, brightened with precise beads of color, and then, I’m gazing upon a face familiar from years ago when I worked at Replacements, Ltd. — where she still has her day job.

Viktoriya Saltzman.

A native Ukrainian, Saltzman is the owner of Dew Drop Rocks. She grew up in the town of Mariupol, on the sea of Azov, now famous for its ferocious resistance to Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

After a hug, she asks, “You see those eggs?” She points to them.

“Those two eggs, the wooden part, they came from Mariupol,” Saltzman says.

“My mom sent me from Ukraine,” she continues. “I receive the package like a week before the war.”

Saltzman admired their shape and painted them. “But I’m not going to sell them ever because they’re just part of my home. I keep them for someday . . . ” and her voice trails off.

She shows me selections of her work — jewelry boxes, ornaments, painted stone whimsies. She tells me the baby girl I remember from pictures is now a 17-year-old.

Next I stop by a stall with a man selling local honey. Turns out, he’s something of a market legend.

Bill Mullins is a 93-year-old retiree from the insurance business and the owner of Quaker Acre Apiaries. He’s been coming to the farmers market as a vendor for 55 years.

“Seems like when I started coming, we were outside at Commerce Place,” he chuckles.

Mullins tells me he got interested in bees as a boy in Alabama.

“My father was a general insurance agent, and he had a good friend in the mountains of Kentucky,” Mullins says. “He’d take me with him when he’d go up there to visit. And the friend kept honeybees.” Mullins recalls watching the honeybees while the men talked.

“And that’s what got me interested in bees.”

I ask Mullins how he feels about the farmers curb market after 55 years selling his honey here?

He muses for a moment.

“I’ve been here so long, nearly everybody here is a friend of mine,” he adds. “It’s just a very friendly place.”

Finally, I decide to join a short queue of customers waiting to purchase fresh shrimp and fish from George Smith of Smith Century Farm & NC Fresh Seafood in Gibsonville. Since no one’s behind me, we have a moment to chat.

“What Bill Mullins was telling you about is what we vendors call competitive camaraderie,” Smith says.

He tells me the 250-acre farm has been in his family since the late 1700s.

“I’ve got pencil drawings from the 1800s and a picture of the old home place around 1850 with everyone standing in front of the old log house dressed in their Sunday best,” Smith says.

His grandparents started coming to the market 91 years ago.

“I started coming in 1973,” Smith says. “I was 13 years old and came to help my grandmother. I got the bug and I’ve pretty much been here ever since.”

Another customer appears and I let Smith tend to business.

So I’ll close with the same advice that Mayor Frazier gave his WCOG radio listeners back in 1951.

“Today the Greensboro Curb Market, which has been termed the ‘largest producers’ curb market in the State,’ is a popular place for both our country and city folk,” the mayor said. “You’d be surprised how many shoppers are on hand at 6 o’clock on Saturday mornings.”

Early is best for top selection. And where else can you go in Greensboro to become part of a unique community that’s been around for 150 years? OH

For more information on the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, go to www.gsofarmersmarket.org or search Facebook for the handle Greensboro Farmers Curb Market.

2024 Feature

Simple Life

The Ever-Changing Garden

May the work never be done

By Jim Dodson

The spring gardening season officially got underway this year with the necessary removal of a 70-year-old red oak tree that threatened to fall on my garage office. Being a confirmed tree hugger and septuagenarian myself, I felt for the old boy having to come down. But I’d probably have felt worse — perhaps permanently — had the old fella decided to fall on my office with me in it.

Such is the fate of an ever-changing garden, which is a redundant phrase since every garden everywhere is ever changing, if only by a matter of degrees. Any gardener worth his mulch will tell you that the work is never finished. There’s always some new problem to contend with or a fresh inspiration incubated over dark winter days to finally put into motion. We are, as a result, forever incomplete gardeners, revising and learning as we go.

In my case, this year has been all of the above — new problems, fresh inspiration and learning as I go. As the result of the day-long operation to remove “Big Red,” as I called the elderly oak, half a dozen young plants just awakening from their winter nap had to be dug up and set aside so the crane removing the tree could navigate a path across my backyard garden, churning the ground up as it went.

I took this as a sign from on high that it was time to make several big changes in paradise. The first move came on the east side of our house where a trio of formerly well-behaved crape myrtle bushes were suddenly running amok and threatening to blot out the sun. The task of digging them out of the cold January ground proved the wisdom of Robert Frost’s elegant aphorism that the afternoon knows what the morning never suspected — i.e. that some tasks that were easy in the morning of youth prove to be monstrously difficult in the afternoon of age.

Still, I’m nothing if not a committed bugger when it comes to getting my way in a garden. After several hours of intense work with pick and shovel, all under the watchful eye of Boo Radley, the cat who suns himself in that particular part of the estate on winter days, the monstrous shrubs finally came out and I went in for a much-needed lunch break, muddy but triumphant.

“My goodness,” said my wife, stirring soup. “Who won the fight?”

You see, back in the “morning” of my gardening years — that’s five different gardens ago, by my count — Dame Wendy always found it highly amusing that I treated garden work like a full-contact sport, where blood of some sort was inevitably shed. In those days, I was so into clearing trees and rebuilding the ancient stone walls of a vanished 19th century homestead that once existed where our new post-and-beam house stood, I rarely noticed cuts, bruises or even gashes that needed a stitch or two. In those faraway days, all I needed was a long hot soak in our 6-foot Portuguese clawfoot tub, plus a couple cold Sam Adams beers to put things right.

These days, in the metaphorical “afternoon” of life, the cuts and bruises are fewer and the cure for sore muscles comes via a hot shower, a change of clothes and a nice afternoon nap with the dogs — though I have been known to wander outside just before the dinner guests arrive and get myself dirty all over again.

I think my sweet gardening obsession comes from a long and winding line of family farmers and gardeners, abetted by a childhood spent in several small towns of the South where I stayed outside from dawn till dusk, building forts in the woods, climbing trees, damming creeks and digging earthworks under the porch for my toy armies. More than once, I had to be hauled out from under the porch for church with my “good” Sunday pants streaked with red clay.

My mother, poor woman, nicknamed me “Nature Boy” and “Angel with a Filthy Face.” Worse than death was having her spit on a handkerchief to wipe a smudge of soil off my cheek as we entered the sanctuary.

Despite the damage from removing Big Red and heavy winter kill in both my side and backyard gardens this spring, I’m always nicely surprised by the resiliency of my suburban patch. One day, I’m looking at a bare perennial bed and the next, dozens of green shoots are coming up. The daffodils never fail to rise nor the cherry trees bud. The hosta plants miraculously return. The dogwoods burst into bloom and the azaleas erupt in technicolor glory.

This annual choreography of springtime is a nice reminder that we human beings do the very same thing. Nobody escapes hard winters, actual or metaphorical. The weather of life beats everyone down at some point or another. But slowly and surely, we re-emerge as the days lengthen and the sun grows warmer. Soon the sheer abundance of blossom and green makes a body forget the cold months of unseen struggle to get here.

Though I am an unapologetic fan of winter — my best season for writing, thinking and planning new adventures in the garden — the happiest time for this incomplete gardener comes when I see what managed to survive the winter and has come back with new vigor and surging optimism. Such sights make my old fingers itch to get gloriously dirty.

This spring, there will probably be a new garden shed surrounded by ferns where Big Red once stood, and old Boo Radley will have a new perennial garden full of flowers in which to sun himself on cool summer mornings. I may even finally finish the cobblestone pathway I started last year.

The job in a garden, you see, is never done. And that’s just the way I like it. OH

Jim Dodson is the founding editor of O.Henry.

2024 Department Simple Life

Fooled Ya Foods? Imposter-ble!

As both serious foodies and suckers for cooking shows, the team at O.Henry is smitten with Kids Baking Championship, a Food Network competition that features youngsters whipping up confections in the kitchen. Our fav episodes? Hands down, the “Dessert Imposters” theme, which features sweet treats that resemble savory entrees. A hearty meal of meatloaf, catsup and mashed taters? Think again — it’s chocolate cake dressed with strawberry coulis and a dollop of buttercream. Inspired, we asked our own “In Good Taste” contributor, Jasmine Comer, to plate up some of her own deceptive dishes that’ll leave your taste buds pleasantly bewildered.

Savory Sundae

Hot temps are just around the corner here in North Carolina. Nothing cools you off like a scoop or two of chilled, hand-dipped — mashed potatoes? That’s right, this “ice cream sundae” is nothing more than tubers. To make, mash potatoes with milk and butter for an extra smooth and creamy finish. Stir in brown food coloring to give it a chocolatey appearance. Refrigerate before scooping. You can even experiment with other root veggies. Beets would give you the look of a berry sorbet. Top it off with chocolate sauce — oops, gravy — and what any sundae needs, a cherry (tomato) on top. OH

Golden Nuggets

Every kid’s favorite meal or the Golden Girls round table discussion treat? Though these crisped-to-perfection nuggets appear to be chicken, they’re actually made from cheesecake. To make, use refrigerated, homemade no-bake cheesecake, and — with clean hands, of course — dig in and grab a chunk. Mold into nugget-like shapes and roll in graham cracker crumbs. Even though there’s no baking, there’s pretty much zero risk of Salmonella. Pair with “ketchup,” aka cherry dipping sauce.

Sushi Sweets

Hmmmm, something looks fishy here. Think again! If you go coconuts for sushi, you’ll gobble up this sweet spin on a savory, tangy Asian bite, where fruit takes center stage, standing in for sushi-grade fish. Sweet chunks of mango, kiwi and strawberry are wrapped in — is that rice? — sweet sticky coconut rice! For a touch of added crunch that screams “tempura,” toss toasted coconut flakes on top. And no matter how you roll, sake’s always a great complement.

2024 Feature

Art of the State

Gateway to Mysteries

John Beerman deeply sees and paints the natural world

By Liza Roberts

Right: White House From Studio Winter Sunny Morning, 2024 15.75 x 17.75 in. Oil and acrylic on canvas

Before John Beerman paints a landscape, he studies the place that’s caught his eye and picks a particular day and time. Maybe it’s a low-lit evening in fall, or maybe it’s a morning hour that only exists over a span of days in spring, when the angle and energy of the sun provides a certain glow. And then he goes there, day after day, at that appointed hour, building his painting bit by bit until the moment is over — the hour has passed, the shape of light has changed, that bit of season is gone.

One spring morning not long ago, he arrived at a field at Chatwood, the Hillsborough estate owned at the time by his close friend, the author Frances Mayes. Beerman arrived well in advance of his chosen hour, because it takes some time to set up his easel. He has a wonky system of clamps and slats to hold boards in place that will serve as a perch for both his canvas and his paint. His paint is of his own making, too: It’s a homemade egg tempera, created with pigment and egg yolk that he keeps in an airtight jar.

To accompany him on one of these plein air excursions is to realize that Beerman doesn’t just look like Monet at Giverny, with his straw hat, wooden easel, linen shirt and leather shoes, but that he sees like Monet: He views the natural world with the same kind of reverence. Beerman studies the landscape as if it had a soul, character and moods. He learns its nuanced beauty out of a deep respect — and only then does he paint what only he can see.

“I have always found the natural world a gateway to the greater mysteries and meanings of life,” Beerman says. At a time when the world faces so many problems, he says, “it’s important to see the beauty in this world. It is a healing source.”

Beerman has often ventured to notably beautiful places around the world to find this gateway. To Tuscany in springtime, coastal Maine in summer, the glowing shores of Normandy or the estuaries of South Carolina. Recently, he is choosing to stay closer to his Hillsborough home. “Sometimes I feel rebellious against going to those beautiful places and painting those beautiful sights,” he says. “My appreciation and love of the North Carolina landscape continues to grow. I feel we are so fortunate to be here.”

This year, so far, he has been painting the views from his studio windows. “I am struck by the idea that every day the sun moves across the sky, the seasons change,” says Beerman. “I’m looking at one house in five different versions throughout the day.”

The particular house on his easel now is a millhouse currently under renovation. He has a bird’s-eye view of the millhouse from his second-story studio, but it constantly evolves with the men working on it and the light that suffuses it. What Beerman is painting, though, isn’t “a house portrait,” but an attempt to capture “the luminosity of that particular light.” Also compelling him is the energy of the project at hand: “The guys working on the house are just as interesting to me,” he says, so he has begun to paint them into the scene, even though figures have rarely appeared in his landscapes.

Left: White House From Studio Winter Morning with Figure, 2024.
15.75 x 17.75 in. Oil on canvas

Middle: Rooftop and Trees From Studio, Winter Sunny Morning, 2024 11.75 x 11.75 in. Oil on linen.

Right: Winter Dusk From Studio Window, 2024 11.75 x 11.75 in. Oil on linen.

The ability to revisit the subject of his fascination day after day as he completes a painting is a refreshing change, he says. Typically, he’d paint small oil sketches in the field, then bring them back to the studio to inspire and inform his large oil paintings. Here, he can continue to study parts of the house, the men and the project that elude him; he can “get more information” as he goes.

But if his proximity to his subject has changed, Beerman’s essential practice has not.

“I’ve always felt a little bit apart from the trend,” he says. “I love history. And one also needs to be in the world of this moment, I understand that. I’m inspired by other artists all the time, old ones and contemporary ones . . . Piero Della Francesca, he’s part of my community. Beverly McIver, she’s part of my community. One of the things I love about my job is that I get to have that conversation with these folks in my studio, and that feeds me.” Beerman’s work keeps company with some of “these folks” and other greats in the permanent collections of some of the nation’s most prestigious museums as well, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and governor’s mansions in New York and North Carolina.

The paintings that have made his name include celebrated landscapes of New York’s Hudson River early in his career (he is a direct descendant of Henry Hudson, something he learned only after 25 years painting the river), of North Carolina in later years and of Tuscany, where he has spent stretches of time. They all share a sense of the sublime, a hyperreal unreality, a fascination with shape and volume, space and light, a restrained emphasis on color and an abiding spirituality.

“Edward Hopper said all he ever wanted to do was paint the sunlight on the side of a house,” Beerman says. “And I so concur with that. It’s as much about the light as it is about the subject.” A painting of the lighthouse at Nags Head includes only a looming fragment of that famous black-and-white tower, but it’s the glow of coastal sun Beerman has depicted on its surface that make it unmistakably what and where it is.

“With some paintings, I know what I want, and I try to achieve that. And other paintings start speaking back to me,” he says. Beerman’s talking about another painting, of a wide rolling ocean and a fisherman on a pier. As he painted it, childhood memories of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, came into play: “In this old rowboat, we’d go over the waves. And in doing this painting, that came in . . . ahh, maybe that’s where I am. Sometimes it bubbles up from memories that are right below the conscious.”

The rhythm of the work he has underway now suits him well, he says: “I’ve traveled a good bit, but I’m a homebody. I like cooking on the weekends, and making big pots of this or that. I love being able to walk to town, or ride my bike to town.”

And he’s eager to stick close to his chosen subject. “I love the long shadows of the winter light,” he says. “I want to capture it before the leaves come back on the trees. I have that incentive: to get in what I can before the leaves come back.”

Whatever he’s painting, Beerman says he’s always trying to evolve: “One hopes you’re getting closer to what is your core thing, right? And I don’t want to get too abstract about it, but to me, that’s an artist’s job, to find their voice. I’m still in search of that. And at this time in my life, I feel more free to express what I want to express, and how I want to express it. I don’t feel too constrained.” OH

This is an excerpt from Art of the State: Celebrating the Art of North Carolina, published by UNC Press.

2024 Art of the State Department

The Remix

Who ever said you needed a matching set?

Photographs by Amy Freeman

Styling by Amy Freeman and Cassie Bustamante

With the season of brunches, showers and casual backyard gatherings upon us, we wanted to take a moment to remind you that some of the prettiest tables are set with a cohesive yet random mix of dishes, florals and produce. Just pick a color story, choose a theme and then? Let your imagination run wild. We scoured High Point’s Boxwood Antique Market and Greensboro’s Twin Brothers Antiques for an eclectic array of dishes, platters and inspired accessories. Then we hit the grocery store for fresh flowers and vegetation. The result? A feast for the eyes.

Putting the “gold” in goldfish, this collection of mismatched white-and-gilded dishes allows a quirky plate to draw the eye. Hints of blush and tangerine play off the fish’s colorful scales.

Tea time! Classic blue-and-white blends seamlessly as long as the tones are similar. Set the mood by placing themed books on the table — open to certain pages or stacked in a collection as a centerpiece.

What’s black and white and red all over? This eye-catching table with a fashionable French and equestrian mix featuring hints of gold — classy and casual at the same time.

Green represents new beginnings. Invite someone you’ve just met over and share a spread in mixed greens, featuring simple details and botanicals, plus hints of blush. Gold butterflies add a touch of whimsy, but birds would fly just as well.

Snacks on the beach? Yes, we shell. Sometimes all you need is a charcuterie board, woven baskets, oceanic-inspired serveware and a smattering of seashells and starfish to create a casual picnic that feels just like a day at the beach.

We did say to let your imagination run wild! Take your guests on a safari at this table, where zebra and leopard motifs stand out against simple black-and-white dishes. Bring in color by playing purr-fectly off of the feline’s orange-hued pattern.

2024 Feature

Omnivorous Reader

The Color of Music

Symphony of Secrets plucks at the heartstrings

By Anne Blythe

Brendan Slocumb, a composer-turned-novelist with deep ties to North Carolina, hopes to one day be “the Stephen King of musical thrillers.” That’s what the author of Symphony of Secrets and The Violin Conspiracy told Katie Buzard, an Illinois Public Media arts writer, in a 2023 interview.

With two books in his repertoire from the past two years and a third due out in 2025, the gifted writer is well on pace to keep up with the “King of Horror,” whose first three books were published in a three-year span. Slocumb’s most recent, Symphony of Secrets, has been chosen as one of the 2024 selections for North Carolina Reads, a statewide book club created by N.C. Humanities, a nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, because of its exploration of “racial, social and gender equity, and the history and culture of North Carolina.”

The book is set mostly in New York but features visits to Oxford and the Granville County public library. Building on some of the same themes from his first book, Slocumb continues to explore the torment of institutional and everyday racism in his second as he toggles between the present day classical music world and the 1920s and ’30s in New York.

The novel opens with Frederic Delaney, a deflated early 20th-century composer whose plummet from stardom was almost as rapid as his meteoric rise, going through his pre-concert ritual 16 hours before his death — Champagne poured into two glasses and a toast to a photograph of his as yet unidentified collaborator.

We are quickly introduced to professor Bern Hendricks, a musicologist at the University of Virginia who has been consumed with Delaney (a composer of Slocumb’s invention) for much of his life. He knows every piece, all the operas and songs to the most minute detail.

Bern is deep into one composition, enjoying the layering of the alto and tenor saxes over the French horns — and the “French horns’ epic battle with the trombones, when the horns fought for supremacy, but the trombones would, in just seconds, kick their asses” — when he is summoned by the august and influential Delaney Foundation. It’s the organization that shaped Bern’s life from his early days in Milwaukee as a “poor bologna sandwich-eating kid with a beat-up French horn” to the respected academician he has become.

The foundation has uncovered what is believed to be the original draft of Red, a long-lost Delaney opera and an enigma of modern American music. It doesn’t take much coaxing to lure Bern from the Charlottesville campus to the foundation’s plush New York offices, even with the hush-hush of it all. His task is to authenticate Red, the final piece in Delaney’s Rings Quintet, a series of operas inspired by the yellow, blue, black, green and red rings of the Olympic flag.

What he discovers, though, with the help of Eboni Washington — a brilliant, sassy coding whiz from the Bronx — is a gripping history with the potential to destroy both the reputation of the composer Bern idolizes and the foundation interested in preserving an untarnished image of Delaney.

Central to the plot line is one of the most interesting characters of Slocumb’s Symphony: Josephine Reed, a neurodivergent Black woman from North Carolina with a gift for music. She arrives in New York in 1918 with a small, crumpled piece of paper in her gloved hand. We find out why she has traveled all that distance when she rounds a street corner and hears “a trombone, a clarinet and then a trumpet lifting itself up like a benediction, blessing the air with a run of notes that Josephine breathed in like the smell of the earth after a spring rain.”

She hears the sounds of the city — the subways, elevator doors, automobiles, the wind blowing through tunnels — in musical scales. “The wind whistled in a wavering B-flat up to an F-sharp,” Slocumb writes.

What further sets Josephine apart is how she sees music in colors: pinks, blues, greens, hints of brown, red and more. She has an innate vision and makes distinctive doodles on composition manuscripts that lead to the creation of masterpieces for which she never was credited — Delaney was. It was a photograph of Josephine that Delaney saluted shortly before his death.

Reed becomes a captive in an industry that devalues her because of her skin color and uniqueness. Though she eventually sheds her fragility and finds the confidence to stand up for herself, Josephine’s life comes to a tragic end. With her death, the story of the true composer of the celebrated Delaney operas remains buried until Bern and Eboni find a shipping trunk in the basement of one of Josephine’s distant relatives, and the real source of the operatic sensation that won global acclaim is unearthed.

Slocumb, who grew up in Fayetteville and got a degree in music education from UNC Greensboro, plucks at the heartstrings of his readers throughout Symphony of Secrets. In this fast-paced and galvanizing musical thriller, he reminds us that what’s past is, indeed, prologue, that white supremacy, cultural appropriation and access barriers that existed in the 1920s persist. OH

Anne Blythe has been a reporter in North Carolina for more than three decades covering city halls, higher education, the courts, crime, hurricanes, ice storms, droughts, floods, college sports, health care and many wonderful characters who make this state such an interesting place.

2024 Department Omnivorous Reader

Poem April 2024

Penumbra

My father taught me a civil trick.

If you get caught during a rainstorm

at a downtown restaurant, just ask

the bartender if someone left a black umbrella. They will present you with

a cardboard box chock full of them.

It is not a lie: Someone really has left behind each one. You have left many. Part of the loophole is to make sure to give that umbrella to someone who needs it, or at the very least, leave it

in a shady vestibule, on the coat rack next to that sad windbreaker. Otherwise it doesn’t count. Now they could call this all a life hack, but I consider that lacking. The process of inheritance is about so much more than getting what you need.

— Maura Way

Maura Way’s second collection of poetry, Mummery,
was published in November 2023 by Press 53.

2024 Feature Poem

Wandering Billy

The Organ Pipes Are Calling

Nothing could be fina than to play the Carolina

By Billy Ingram

“Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.” — Charlie Chaplin

The Carolina Theatre will once again be giving us the silent treatment at 7 p.m., April 30, when Mark Andersen — one eye focused on the screen — performs his original score for Charlie Chaplin’s highly acclaimed, bathtub-gin-era rom-com, The Circus. First projected on the Carolina’s big screen in March 1928, this was the last motion picture Chaplin made during the pre-talkie era, winning the Little Tramp his first Academy Award for “versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing.”

Rapidly approaching its 100th anniversary, the Grecian-Revival-inspired Carolina Theatre boasts an unusual but valuable component installed before opening night: a Robert Morton Pipe Organ designed and constructed specifically to accompany silent pictures. It’s become a rarity; mere months before this opulent movie palace (locally designed by James M. Workman) first welcomed moviegoers in 1927, sound had arrived for motion pictures, leading to the company that made those instruments going belly-up in 1931. As a result, the Carolina Theatre possesses the only remaining Robert Morton Pipe Organ in North Carolina.

This magnificent wind-and-keyboard instrument is in pristine condition, thanks to Mac Abernethy, who, beginning back in 1968, assembled a team of volunteers determined to restore this long-neglected music maker to its full-throated glory — while, at the same time, city leaders were finalizing plans to raze the Carolina Theatre in favor of a municipal parking lot. “It’s taken a lot of work with a lot of help over the years,” Abernethy says of maintaining that Art Deco-inspired, three-manual console pipe organ. “In 1968, we had to come here after the last movie at 11 o’clock to do any work. We’d be up here until 2, 3, 4 in the morning.” The area around the theater in those days was a veritable urban hellscape. “When we went to leave, you didn’t know what you were going to run into.”

For last February’s screening of a rarely seen silent race film, Body and Soul, which was produced, written and directed by Oscar Micheaux, the Carolina Theatre invited world-renowned composer and musician Mark Andersen to provide accompaniment. “You name it, I’ve played it,” Andersen says of the illustrious pipe organs he’s performed with across the globe. “Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall in London. I was associate organist at Notre Dame in Paris and went to school at the Paris Conservatory there.” Having played over 400 concerts across America on just about every large organ that exists, Andersen served as organist for the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler and as head staff music arranger for NBC in New York.

Andersen’s love for pipe organs began in first grade, when he won the North Carolina State Piano Teacher’s competition. “I’m the youngest artist that has ever played with the North Carolina Symphony,” he notes. At that time, the church he was attending was installing a brand-new pipe organ. “The company that put that organ in was kind of amazed that this little guy was interested in learning to play it.” Having grown up in Lumberton, Andersen recalls that “the first time I played [the Carolina Theatre’s] organ I was 8 years old. I was with a group of musicians that were coming here because we could not imagine a pipe organ in a movie theater. I met Paul Abernethy, who was Mac’s dad, and he showed us the organ that sat down in the orchestra pit then.”

Sixty years later, bringing an added excitement and authenticity to its Silent Series, Mark Andersen returns to the Carolina.

I got to roll my grapes over that Robert Morton Pipe Organ when I was introduced to the maestro recently. Also in attendance was musical theater star Brody Bett. He, too, had an organic epiphany at a very young age. “I’m homeschooled,” the 14-year-old triple-threat performer tells me. He recalls going on a field trip with fellow homeschooled students to Greensboro’s Christ United Methodist Church. “I saw this ginormous pipe organ. I was like, wow, you have all these sounds and it’s so massive and it’s so powerful. My 5-year-old mind, seeing that organ, I’m like, ‘Dude, I think this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life!’”

If the name Brody Bett sounds familiar, I hipped you to his amazing career in my January 2023 column. He was 6 years old when he first got up on the boards in Greensboro theatrical productions. Then, at 8 years old, he landed the juvenile lead in the multimillion-dollar Broadway touring production of Finding Neverland and spent the next season crisscrossing the country as Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Off-ramped due to the pandemic, the lad’s career undertook an unexpected but welcome pivot when he began securing roles as a voice-over artist for animated shows on Nickelodeon, Netflix and Amazon Prime. Currently, he can be heard as Rocky in the PAW Patrol: Grand Prix video game and Kakeru in episode 4 of the hit anime series Kotaro Lives Alone.

Brody remembers like it was yesterday (I mean, it practically was) when he sang and danced across the stage with the Community Theatre of Greensboro at the Carolina. “The first silent movie I ever saw here was when I was 9 years old,” Brody says. “Michael Britt, who unfortunately passed away last year, accompanied The Phantom of the Opera.”

All of the scores that accompany the silent films Andersen performs were written by him. But still, he says, “You have to closely watch the movie while you’re playing.” He remarks that, when composing a soundtrack for silents, it’s just like scoring a live movement. “Like the soundtrack of a talkie movie, it’s meant to be played at a certain time. Is the projectionist running it too fast, running too slow, where your scenes change, and so forth?”

Brody has sent fingers flying across the keys in an impressive number of venues. “I’ve played the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ in Philadelphia,” the largest, fully-functioning pipe organ in the world, he says. “I’ve played the Bedient Organ at First Congregational Church in Sioux Falls and the Walt Disney Concert Hall Organ in LA, the one Manuel Rosales designed.” He can list so many others, including arguably the most famous such instrument in America, the Salt Lake City Tabernacle (formerly Mormon Tabernacle) Organ, festooned with over 11,000 harmonic pipes.

Closer to home, he says, “I’ve been playing for church Sundays at Irving Park United Methodist — it’s a great space.” Brody Bett’s first funky single, “Times Square,” can be found on Spotify and sampled on YouTube.

I wonder if one day I’ll be attending a silent at the Carolina and Brody will be in front of the keyboard. OH

Born and raised in Greensboro, for a 10-year period in the 1980s and ’90s, Billy Ingram was part of the Hollywood design team the ad world enshrined as “The New York Yankees of motion picture advertising.”

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Birdwatch

Harbingers of Spring

Return of the red-winged blackbirds

By Susan Campbell

For some, the sound of spring is the song of the American robin, our melodious and most familiar songster. But for me it has always been the sounds of red-winged blackbirds. As a beginning birdwatcher in New York State, migration begins a lot later than here in North Carolina. And some of the first returnees riding the warmer winds back north are red-wingeds. The “chuck”-ing coming from the ribbons of birds as they passed overhead was the very first sign that winter was losing its grip. Not long after, I would be greeted by the first males giving their loud “konk-a-ree!” songs from the tallest of the cattails in the nearby marsh.

Red-wingeds get their name from the bright red epaulets on the wings of the adult males. These patches are actually set off on the black wing by a patch of yellow feathers just below. Otherwise the birds are completely dark. Females, not surprisingly, are quite drab. Their brownish, streaky appearance is superb camouflage against the tall grasses in the wet habitat that they tend to inhabit. Young birds are also entirely streaked, which makes them harder to spot as they learn their way in the world, well into their first winter.

These blackbirds can be found inland in our state year round. However, in the winter months, they gather in large flocks so they are not widespread. Aggregations of thousands of birds can be found closer to the coast from late fall into early spring. But by now, they are returning to local bottomlands, lakes and ponds to breed. Red-wingeds are unusual in that they are a species that is polygynous. Males may have a harem of mates within the territory that they defend. Experienced males will pair with two or more females as early as mid-March. Females will create substantial nests in low vegetation by weaving wet leaves and shoots together to form a dense cup. They will add mud to the inside and then finally line it with fine grasses before laying two to four pale eggs with dark streaks.

Although blackbirds are generally known to feed on seeds, of both native and agricultural origins, in the summer they hunt mainly insects. They are known to probe at the base of aquatic plants with their slender bills and are very capable of prying insects from the stems. Young red-wingeds, like so many species, require lots of protein. It is the mother birds that forage for the family. Males spend most of their time defending their territories from high perches, singing throughout the day and fiercely chasing interlopers that venture too close.

As abundant as these birds may seem to be, their numbers have been declining for several decades. It is likely due to the continuing loss of wetland habitat throughout their range. Additionally, terrestrial predators are on the rise in areas where they breed — including cats. If you have red-wingeds in your neighborhood this spring, consider yourself lucky, and be sure to get out and enjoy their antics as well as that unmistakable song. OH

Susan Campbell would love to hear from you. Feel free to send questions or wildlife observations to susan@ncaves.com.

2024 Birdwatch Department