A Way of Life

A WAY OF LIFE

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A Way of Life

Ann Tilley makes her mark, as lightly as possible

By Cassie Bustamante • Photographs by John Gessner

For me, it’s always been just to have the lightest impact on the world, on nature,” says Ann Tilley as she peers out from her sewing studio’s garage door, surveying the acreage that surrounds it. Nearby sits the narrow, tiny house with wood siding she and her husband, musician Adam Joyce, built and now reside in. The large family property is just about as far southeast as you can get in Guilford County. Just behind their home, a row of raised garden beds made from old refrigerators host early spring plantings, such as garlic, protected from the couple’s curious cats. Clothing pinned on a line strung along the garden’s exterior border waves in the breeze.

Tilley pauses, her fingers gently gliding along a patchwork T-shirt in shades of green with touches of lilac. “This is my absolute favorite shirt.” The garment has been created by stitching together pieces from old band merch. And not just any band — The Bronzed Chorus, Joyce’s group, whose sound is, according to Tilley, “instrumental post-rock, but then there’s a lot of synthesizer and electronic. I always say that if you listen to it in your car, you want to speed.” Tilley made a dozen or so of these tees and sold them at the band’s shows. The couple originally met at a Bronzed Chorus show in Durham, where Tilley was raised. Today, both are employees of Forge Greensboro. Joyce, a woodworker and furniture maker by trade, runs the makerspace’s wood shop while Tilley runs the textile shop.

Back in Bull City, Tilley’s parents own and run Acme Plumbing Company, originally founded by her great-grandfather. While her mother owned a sewing machine, Tilley, now 38, says the actual use of it sort of skipped a generation. “It was not progressive for her to sew,” she muses. Instead of traditional toys, Mom bought the kids sketchbooks and markers, nurturing creativity in other ways, while at the same time instilling in them environmentally conscious values.

“My mom was the first person I ever knew who wouldn’t buy something because of the packaging associated with it — before I ever heard of zero waste,” says Tilley.

Tilley recalls latching onto cross stitch as a child via Girl Scouts, discovering she loved fabricating art from fibers and how embroidery floss felt on her fingers. Later, in her tween years, a household book she happened to pull from a shelf opened her up to the world of sewing.

Foot to the pedal, she unearthed a means to express herself. “I like to be different,” she says. “I don’t like to wear what other people wear.”

Still, as the child of practical, no-nonsense parents, she says, “I thought fashion was frivolous. My parents are plumbers.”

Tilley’s interest in the arts led her to the Savannah College of Art and Design, a move that she says was good for her because it allowed her to explore painting, drawing, illustration and fashion. By the time she was an upperclassman, “I was obsessed with fashion magazines,” she recalls. “Harper’s Bazaar was my bible!” Tilley would flip through pages and, inspired, make her own versions of what she saw.

Her fashion interests led her to discover the fibers department, something she didn’t even know had a name. She recalls someone explaining to her what that department entailed and realizing it was exactly what she’d been after — “That’s me!” she recalls exclaiming. In 2008, Tilley graduated with her Bachelor of Fine Arts in fashion and fibers.

These days, Tilley calls herself a textile artist. The light-wood walls of her tiny home are filled with her own creations. “Pop art was my first love, which I think is really obvious.”

The art that hangs on her walls makes the house into something of a tiny museum that catalogues Tilley’s evolving interest in textiles. Inside a large, charcoal-gray, curved frame mimicking the shape of an iPhone is a woven textile she calls Hold Me, which is exactly what the text on the piece beckons. On the adjacent wall in the tiny home’s single spiral staircase leading to the loft, a complementary creation titled Current Reflections is framed in wood salvaged from old bleachers and given to them by a Forge friend. The piece itself is a chartreuse green, the yarn dyed by Tilley, and features a motif of toothbrushes, solar panels, poison ivy, trees and, in the center, tiny homes.

Up in the loft, the couple’s platform bed sits below a skylight. A shelf, inches away from the foot of the bed and made from the same recycled bleacher wood, provides ample room for books, plus space for guitar cases below. “It’s a little bit of a pain in the ass to change the sheets, but . . . ,” she trails off dreamily, looking up.

“I can literally see the Big Dipper,” she says. “And when you wake up in the middle of the night and the moon is there, I feel blessed every time.”

Next to the bed, a wall hanging Tilly fabricated faces the wrong direction so that the couple’s brindle-coated kitten, Tina — short for Patina — won’t damage it. Tilley takes it down and Tina immediately attacks.

The hanging is one of several Tilley made during a three-week art residency at Reconsidered Goods last November. Using denim yardage unearthed in “a ’70s storage unit,” Tilley crafted a piece that pays homage to Greensboro’s history in garment making, as well as her own background working as a Wrangler traveling on-site tailor and at a Raleigh denim factory. A pocket on the hanging is adorned with a leather Wrangler patch and Ralph Lauren rivets, a spray of bright, printed and embellished flowers emerging. Hot-pink felt lettering reads “Feeling lost? Discover crafts.”

“All of these pieces came from the idea of craft as therapy,” says Tilley of the work that came out of her residency.

Back downstairs on a gallery wall, a hanging fabricated from necktie silk reads “Days for Making, Days for Mending,” a necktie Tilley sewed hanging down its center. Along the bottom of the piece, “Salem” tags create a sort of fringe effect. Last fall, Tilley toured Salem Neckwear with Rene Trogdon, who was selling off and donating machinery and materials. His late father, James Trogdon Sr., had founded the company in 1964 to fill a niche market for premium neckties. Sixty years later, after Rene’s brother and the company’s then-president, James Trogdon Jr., became ill with long COVID, Rene found himself in a tough position and had to close. Sadly, James Trogdon Jr. passed away in December of last year.

“I mourn those stories of the loss of small and local,” she says, noting her parents’ own multigenerational company. Creating art with remnants from businesses such as Salem Neckwear, she gets to preserve a piece of their story.

“The thing I fear the most,” she continues, “is just that globalization is taking away all of that local personality.”

Every corner of their house, almost every nook and cranny in it, veers away from mass merchandising and designs driven by big-box retailers such as HomeGoods and Home Depot. The sliding door that leads to their single, green-tiled bathroom is a remnant from Tilley’s childhood bedroom. Where the original hardware sat, Joyce created darker-stained, midcentury-inspired wood inlays that flank the new nickel hardware. The exterior panels have been covered with mirrors to reflect light, giving the illusion of space. But the interior of the door was not such an easy task. Tilley struggled to strip all of the paint and eventually settled on covering it with a pastoral mural.

“I thought it was going to be done in a year without me doing anything,” quips Tilley about the home’s construction. But, she soon realized, “we need to do this together.”

Over the course of almost a decade, whenever they had time, Tilley and Joyce could be found outside of their rental home, just down the road in Julian, measuring, cutting, hammering. They also regularly visited the property, which had been in Joyce’s family for generations, first building and installing a solar shed.

The doors to the shed feature a modern graphic design in vibrant colors, inspired by a Frank Stella piece. Stella, who passed away in May of last year, was known as one of the fathers of 1960s minimalist art. Tilley and Joyce painted the doors right after a particularly busy moment in life, “and then, on our week off, we were like, ‘Let’s do something fun.’” A moment later, she chuckles. “We can’t ever relax.”

Beyond its bold doors, the building houses the tiny home’s breaker box and a generator, plus the regular tools one would expect to find in a shed. As far as the solar system that runs the property’s power, Tilley says, “Adam just watched a bunch of YouTube videos” and figured it out.

Some yards away from the home, a curved hangar featuring a bold, turquoise garage door serves as her sewing studio. It’s not heated though, so she has plans to construct a new building and has marked stairs with old sewing machines leading to where it will exist a stone’s throw away. “Manifest destiny, you know?”

“Right now, it’s a little nippy,” Tilley says. She tugs tighter around her a lavender velvet jacket she made with a cherry-printed lining, all fabric sourced from Reconsidered Goods.

This is where the real “magic” Tilley is known for happens — Magic Pants, that is. In 2016, Tilley founded Ann & Anne, a ready-to-wear clothing brand, with Anne Schroth, owner of Red Canary. While there, the two women designed a high-waisted tailored pant that featured an invisible elastic band in the back, an elastic panel in the front, and a cinching strap. The result? A pant that flattered figures of all shapes and sizes. Her friends started calling them “Magic Pants” and the name stuck.

Ann & Anne closed officially in 2018 and Tilley pivoted to teaching sewing classes across the area, from Durham all the way to Winston-Salem, including a stint at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown.

At Village Fabric Shop in Winston-Salem, she offered a class on making Magic Pants and the shop employees suggested that she make a pattern for them. At the time, she was busy teaching, but when COVID shut that down for a while, she got to work. And now? “I have literally sold this [pattern] on six continents.”

Tilley has also created her own YouTube channel, which allows her to increase her reach, teaching people across the world how to make these pants. Sewing, she says, is what gave her the “first feelings of self-sufficiency,” something she hopes to pass on to others through her instruction. Nowadays, she makes practically everything she wears, right down to the undies, something she started making from scraps when she worked at Gaia Conceptions, a sustainable brand founded by Andrea Crouse and located “just behind Westerwood Tavern.”

“I worked there for years,” says Tilley. Gaia Conceptions, she says, features made-to-order organic clothing and the brand pays its employees fairly. “They really walk the walk.” Crouse, Tilley says, even showed her how to make her own deodorant.

Nearby, a pair of of underwear in blue and white sits on her sewing table. “I haven’t worn these — don’t worry” she quips. The fabric is soft, comfortable, and there’s no elastic that would dig into a waist.

While the temperatures have been less than ideal, Tilley has, for now, set up shop in Joyce’s music studio, settled a little farther back on their land. A makeshift desk in the middle of his space holds her Brother sewing machine, a row of guitars hanging on the wall behind it. Next to the machine, old fashion drawings from her SCAD days feature a flirty midi dress, a long embellished gown and a mod ’60s-inspired swimsuit. “I do make my own swimsuits now,” she says. “And having a well-fitting swimsuit is wild!”

Joyce’s studio serves as the hangout spot for the couple’s other cat, Go-Go Boots, a beauty with long fur everywhere except for — you guessed it — below her knees. With the sun beckoning, she requests to go outside. Tilley follows.

“We actually got married in this field,” she says, looking out into a large, cleared space of land. In July of 2016, the couple tied the knot. True to form, the large tent that provided shade for guests was made by a friend “from old Tyvek he dumpster dived.”

And do they plan to live out their days where they once said “I do”?

“Forever home, absolutely,” says Tilley. Perhaps, one day, they may consider building a different house with a main-level bedroom as they age. But, if they do, it will be right here. “It’s a way of life.”

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

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Who really holds the power?

By Cynthia Adams

My friend, Pratt, is laid up with woes: a serious illness that has taken a number of medical tests to diagnose and more pain pills than he cares to swallow.

But this week just takes the cake, he tells me. A favorite Toby jug slipped from his hands and shattered. His microwave won’t cook beyond seven minutes before halting. “Is it protesting, or just broken?” I ask. I suggested what my tech-savvy husband always tells me: power off and restart.

Then his smart TV died.

“I’m reduced to using my old, stupid TV,” he mutters. 

From my experience, smart TVs are just as stupid.

Ours regularly seems to freeze up — much like I used to do before a Toastmaster’s speech. It goes into sputtering spasms mid-streaming, just before the second to last episode of a compelling Netflix drama.

Our so-called smart TV doesn’t especially like being told what to do by Roku and regularly strikes until rebooting.

Rebooting heretofore sounded like something you’d have a cobbler do, versus a tech fix.

Sadly, even if my TV is getting smarter, I am not. The mechanisms of technology mystify me as much as ever. When my bank’s online bill-paying function abruptly stopped working this past weekend, I developed hives, fearing I’d been hacked.

Nope.

The banking IT pros were the guilty party behind this sabotage, all due to an update. Post said improvement, nothing functioned properly for days. Trying to resolve this over the phone — during which I was asked such things as “have you cleared your cache?” — I shuddered and felt mildly sick.

Actually, no, I had not even touched my cache. 

“What about your VPN?” Before I embarrassed myself by blurting out something about my VCR (long ago consigned to recycling), I answered honestly. “VP what?”

The customer service representative sighed. “Try logging in via a search engine other than your usual.” Flustered and fumbling as she stayed on the phone with me, I faced another hurdle. I could not read my own scribbled passwords.

My head throbbed. Meantime, Citibank hit me with a $28 late fee for a balance of $18 I couldn’t manage logging on to pay.

By day five of this technological marathon, I had a low-tech solution. Maybe I’d move elsewhere. But I was soon notified of a national data breach. My response? To freeze my credit and change all auto payments, and google distant archipelagos where no one uses the word “breach.”

My cell phone immediately began doing a curious thing, cutting out calls as quickly as I could answer them, perversely trying to connect to my headphones each time. 

I took the same advice I’d rattled off to Pratt and gave it the ol’ power off and reboot.

It worked!

Seems you don’t have to have the smarts to hold the power. But before I clear my cache, I’m doing a juice fast, pulling olive oil and visual meditation.

Then I’m powering my entire self completely down.

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Flight Risk

Didya hear the tale of a rooster on the lam?

By Cynthia Adams

The rooster crowed predawn. A rousing, rooster reveille. 

Was it a lucid dream, a subliminal sound? After all, I had fallen asleep reading David Sedaris, whose brother, Paul, is nicknamed “the Rooster.”

Unmistakable, again. A rooster’s lusty crow.

“Didya hear that?”

Don nodded, splashing his face. Our morning-has-broken repartee is mostly “Uh huh” or “Not yet,” in answer to “Ready for coffee?” or “Ready to walk the dogs?” 

Not “Was that a rooster?”

We live in town, on a park, and have seen foxes, deer, raccoon, possums, chipmunks and squirrels. Once, I encountered a juvenile bear during a morning run. We’ve a variety of birdlife, including hawks and owls. But a rooster? Never.

The real secret to our relationship, we’ve silently agreed, is keeping things muted until coffee cups are filled and emptied, the paper skimmed, and we’ve dressed without walking into closet walls. Neither of us are morning people. 

Pulling on sneakers and grabbing dog leashes, we both understood we were going to look for the rooster.

“Sounded close,” Don muttered, and we set out, as if we were advance scouts nearing enemy lines. A Delft-blue sky rimmed the horizon above our usual trail into Latham Park. There was no birdsong beyond harsh complaints from an agitated murder of crows congregating along power lines, and the plaintive moans of mourning doves. 

The rooster was nowhere to be seen, but day after day we kept hearing him.

We redoubled efforts to find him during morning and afternoon walks. We began inhaling our cuppa joe and I waved the paper off, determined. 

“Didya hear him this morning?” I began asking first off. It felt portentous.

Along the park trail, seeking confirmation from others, too, I’d ask perfect strangers, “Didya hear that?”

“A rooster!” they’d marvel, squinting at me with interest as if I had conjured the bird up. Sometimes his crowing sounded well beyond the prior day’s perimeter, surprising us.    

Then, finally, he just appeared as we gardened one Saturday. The Dude himself!

Our wildest terrier alerted us when the rooster strolled over for a drink from our fountain. Bax trembled with excitement, as if to say, “I found him, and I’m keeping him!”

When I approached the rooster, he nonchalantly disappeared into the woods, strutting along our neighbor’s fence line. His plumage was colorful; a gorgeous fellow. 

My grandmothers had kept chickens, and I’d written about raising urban chickens for this magazine; I knew enough to give him space.

A few days later, we spotted him in the shaded perimeter of a parking lot. We froze, pulling the terriers closer. Soon after, we discovered the rooster was gaining an online presence on Nextdoor.

Some had names in mind, including Leghorn Foghorn. Don called him Russell Crowe.

Our editor once had a rooster cleverly called Brewster Roostamante. 

But the person resolved to capture the rooster dubbed him the innocuous sounding Todd. (Didn’t he deserve better?) After organizing a small posse for the weekend, a trap was sprung after his fourth or fifth reveille.

Soon after, we both started hearing phantom crowing. 

“Didya hear that?” I asked Don, pausing my weeding the weekend of Todd’s entrapment.

“I keep thinking I hear him, too.” He pulled a sad face.

Trundling him off to suburbia, Todd’s captor posted a mugshot. “Todd” was captive, pacing in a dog kennel. Gone was his devil-may-care swagger. Can a rooster look dispirited? 

Within 24 hours Todd was transported away to God-knows-where by God-knows-who. I imagine the clever bird had already figured out how things lay, so to speak.

Because the pairing of roosters and life in a high-density neighborhood, it turns out, is a foul, foul affair.

Omnivorous Reader

OMNIVOROUS READER

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Mountain Thriller

Murder in the Grove Park Inn

By Anne Blythe

If you’re someone who likes to armchair travel through the pages of a good book, Terry Roberts, a native of the North Carolina mountains, has a thriller of a journey for you.

In The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape, Roberts transports his readers to the luxurious Grove Park Inn, a stately and historic resort in Asheville that serves as the dark yet alluring backdrop for a murder mystery that exposes the tiers of a justice system that doesn’t always treat the wealthy and the poor equally.

The book starts with a bang when a nameless man standing near a tousled bed pulls out a pearl-handled derringer, shoots a naked college girl and leaves her on the thick, soft carpet to die in a pool of her own blood.

We quickly meet Stephen Baird Robbins in his home in Hot Springs, 30 miles downriver from Asheville. He’s a twice-married, once-divorced and once-widowed man who has stood trial twice for murder and been acquitted both times.

It’s October 1924, and Robbins, a retired investigator with a reputation for solving seemingly unsolvable crimes, is living a somewhat relaxed existence in a rental home with Luke, his 3-year-old son whose mother died in childbirth. Life had dealt them some wounds and bruises, but Robbins and his two neighbors were optimistic that together, they could raise Luke to adulthood.

When Robbins received a letter on fancy stationery from Benjamin Loftis, owner of the Grove Park Inn, trying to stir him out of his secluded piece of the world, he balled it up and threw it in the fireplace. Loftis persevered, first with a telegram telling Robbins his “presence is required due to a matter of some urgency,” and then with a personal follow-up in a chauffeur-driven trip to Hot Springs.

Loftis, a “newspaperman, chemist, pharmaceutical manufacturer, self-styled architect and — this is important —hotel man,” gave his pitch to Robbins. The hotel’s renown was in jeopardy after a college girl was found dead in one of the plush rooms.

“So in sum, you have a murder on your hands, and not just any murder, but the worst kind — a supposedly innocent young woman,” Robbins responds to Loftin. “The publicity is killing you. Two weeks have gone by and the sheriff hasn’t been able to nail anybody for it and you are getting desperate.” Robbins, a character who has appeared in two previous books by Roberts, let the hotel owner know from the start that he might not like the results.

“I want the murderer caught and punished, so that the inn’s reputation will remain unsullied,” Loftin responds.

Thus begins a tale that takes Robbins, who describes himself as “hill born and runaway” with “rarely two bills in my wallet to rub together,” to a resort where a man of his socioeconomic background is rarely a favored guest. Given wide access to the large granite stone inn described as “the finest pile of rocks ever built,” in October, “when fall began to wrap its cold hands around the mountains,” Robbins checks into the third floor hotel room next door to the murder scene.

The cast of characters includes an array of hotel workers and well-heeled guests such as judges, politicians and other townspeople who want to mingle and be seen among the wealthy travelers seeking retreat.

The hotel workers, its dining room servers, front desk managers and dutiful housekeepers are an interesting lot. The hotel itself, with all its corridors, luxurious amenities and nooks and crannies, becomes its own character.

Then there are the “girls” — the young women brought in to “keep the party lively” for events that might draw mostly men and a few bored wives. Robbins, a tenacious investigator with a knack for building rapport with the working people, has no qualms about standing up to the powerful. He is determined to find out who killed Rosalind Caldwell, or “Rosie,” as the locals called the young woman found dead in the hotel.

“Perhaps only Stephen Robbins could do what must be done here,” Roberts writes in his acknowledgements thanking the character for yet another appearance in one of his books. “After all, this is a book about prostitution and politics — a timely topic — and it required a hard hand and true voice to find justice.”

The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape is about social status, privilege, racial injustices a wrongful arrest and a forthright observation that things are not always as they seem, even if that’s what the wider community wants you to believe. In fast-moving, descriptive prose, Roberts takes readers on a pursuit filled with danger and love that reveals the deaths of two other young women found lifeless in circumstances eerily similar to Rosie’s.

These were not the sort of women whose deaths would typically draw big headlines in Prohibition Era Asheville, Robbins notes. Their bodies were not discovered in a fancy hotel, nor did they come from the well-to-do neighborhoods of the town’s rich and famous.

Even if there are enough clues to figure out the likely killer long before the story ends, Roberts is adept at pulling his readers through to the conclusion to find out whether or not there will be justice for these victims. It’s an entertaining pursuit, a journey to another place and another time well worth taking.

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The Donor

Giving of yourself in acts great and small

By Cynthia Adams

Ann Deaton wears her niece Leslie’s citrus-quartz pendant, fingering it gently as we talk. When I mention how lovely it is, a smile flickers. She eats slowly, sipping tea during our lunch in a Middle Eastern restaurant. The retired high school counselor, with intelligent blue eyes behind gold wire-rimmed glasses, is just regaining the ability to laugh after months of being hamstrung by grief at the loss of her niece. 

Leslie inherited Ann’s charismatic personality and valiantly fought cancer for months until her recent death. Ann had been a constant presence in Leslie’s abbreviated life. She watched her battle pancreatic cancer with a pilgrim’s fervor, both expecting a miracle.

In a sense, Ann believes Leslie experienced one. The singular miracle was that, until her end, she remained lucid, engaged, even questioning. At one point, Ann thought that if Leslie got into a new drug trial, she might triumph. Her smile tightens. 

“She was so ill at that point; the drug itself would have killed her. I think Leslie lost hope when she learned that.”    Today, however, Ann doesn’t weep. She is cried out.

Bearing witness to suffering has taken a toll.

She wraps half the sandwich, saying, “My appetite isn’t really great.” Ann has just returned from Key West, a trip she has made often with old friends. 

“I needed it,” she admits. “Those sunsets.” 

“It’s so kind of them to invite me.” She casually mentions it might have something to do with “the kidney.”

Without missing a beat, she tells me how she takes trips and celebrates holidays with the family.

The kidney?    

“My kidney.” 

Ann gave their daughter a kidney on September 25, 2002.

She laughs as my mouth drops open. The recipient survived many years. “Her kidney lasted until her death from cancer.”

“I was in the hospital at Duke overnight. That’s all,” Ann replies, batting questions away.

She looks past my shoulder into space, reflective. Ann remains other-focused. 

I tell her my stepfather died of kidney failure after many years on dialysis. 

Every eight minutes another person is added to the national transplant waiting list. Only one out of every four needing a transplant receives a kidney, with a typical wait of five years. 

Ann is aware of the statistics. She tries to convince others that she is living proof that organ donation “is no big deal.” The transplant is done laparoscopically and generally requires just one overnight hospital stay. A friend, Realtor Kathy Haines, chose to follow her lead, donating a kidney to a stranger.

Ann knows how grateful her recipient’s family remains. At the young woman’s death, she was told that “a part of me is already in heaven.”

“Wasn’t that nice of them to say?” she asks, dabbing a napkin at her mouth. 

We part. Ann is off to feed the feral cat colonies around town that she supports. It’s another cause near and dear to her. 

With a warm smile she winds a scarf around her neck.  Ann walks purposefully, off into the winter’s day. 

Afterward, I call a friend whose son died one year after receiving a kidney from a living donor and complete stranger.

I relate what Ann has just shared — that the transplant pain was not significant and recovery was straightforward. My friend’s voice quavers. 

“I’ve always dreaded asking the donor, that wonderful man, about the pain he suffered.” 

She collects herself.

“Thank you for that. And please, please, thank Ann for me.” 

Outside, the sun emerges, pushing back against earlier grayness. I think of Ann making her faithful rounds in a RAV4, feeding cats in a colony near a shopping center and then another off Spring Garden, where wary felines gather and await her. At home she cares for Leslie’s cat, Virginia, and other rescues.

There is always an Ann, I think, to show us our better selves.

Winter will yield to spring. The sun, defiant, climbs higher until its magnificent sunset.

Fit for a King

FIT FOR A KING

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Fit for a King

Today’s princes and princesses learn skills to become tomorrow’s leaders

By Billy Ingram

Photographs by Betsy Blake

Society’s crustiest curmudgeons disparaging the aberrant behavior of today’s youngsters has practically become a national pastime. Modern-day kids, many insist, are rebellious, insolent, lazy, entitled, unable to communicate effectively whether speaking or writing, and devoid of core American values such as hard work, accountability and responsibility. Oh wait, that’s exactly how society characterized those of us who grew up in the ’50s and ’60s, my generation. Raised to be considerate, kind and obedient, to curtsy and bow when company arrived, to be seen, not heard . . . and we all know how that turned out. But has the pendulum of propriety swung way too far in the opposite direction?

Just imagine what effect it might have if today’s youngsters were taught etiquette, the importance of courtesy, respect, punctuality, politeness, eye contact, proper dressing and grooming.

That’s precisely the focus of Geovanni Hood, whose Charmed School of Etiquette is spearheading a return to refinement and civility, most recently in conjunction with D-UP in the enlivened Washington Street Historic District in High Point. His six-week course engages kindergarteners to teens in lessons that stress proper manners and comportment, encouraging youngsters to gaze away from a constant barrage of pixelated stimulation in order to effectively face life’s three-dimensional challenges.

Founded by Jakki and Corvin Davis in 2007, D-UP (Develop Skills, Uprise Education and Power-Up For Life!) began as an after-school basketball program. A year after achieving nonprofit status in 2010, D-UP moved its headquarters to Washington Street, expanding outreach efforts to include nutritional education to combat childhood obesity, while promoting academic achievement and character development.

“We wanted to make sure that the students went through etiquette classes,” D-UP’s Jakki Davis tells me, “because this is something they can learn now and it will be forever ingrained in them.”

Hood was brought in as a visiting instructor, says Davis. “When I met Geovanni and saw his interest in our students and what he was doing, I thought, ‘This will be perfect.’ ” Plus, she adds, he makes it fun.

“When your child steps out the house, they are not only a representation of themselves, but they are a representation of you,” Hood says. They’re creating their brand, so to speak. Your brand, he says, involves knowing “how to be socially active, how to make friends, how to engage in conversations and build character.” Cultivation reflects positively on parents as well.

Besides collaborating with nonprofits such as D-UP, Hood’s outreach includes local churches, the YMCA and the Piedmont School at Andrews High School. “I’ve taught at Howard University in D.C. as well, so I pretty much just travel.” Most organizations will bring him in for a day, but longer sessions may stretch into two eight-hour days back to back “or I might come in one day a week for five weeks.”

As former Human Relations Commissioner for the City of High Point and a certified career coach and navigator, his book Navigating Success: Interview Eitiquette Guide for Teenagers is a primer for anyone who believes chivalry is not dead, merely moribund. “Young people can’t do what they don’t know,” Hood insists. “When somebody comes along, leading by example, then others will get it and hopefully follow suit.” As for getting through to teenagers, he says, “If I’m teaching them how to be properly mannered versus calling it ‘etiquette,’ they understand it better.”

A Greensboro resident by way of Brooklyn, what inspired Hood to lead the way in teaching etiquette to a new generation? A room at the O.Henry Hotel dedicated to the memory of Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown.

Beginning at the turn of the last century, with determination undeterred by mob violence and an overwhelming resistance toward efforts aimed at assimilating African Americans into polite society, Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown established, then tenaciously re-established after everything was burned down by residents opposed to the very idea, institutions of higher learning for people of color. By 1940, Brown became known as the “first lady of social graces,” following the publication of her manners manual, The Correct Thing to Do, to Say, to Wear, a more reality-rooted companion to Emily Post’s Etiquette, published two decades earlier.

Hood shares Brown’s basic philosophy: “Educate the individual to live in the greater world.”

“What I teach is situational etiquette, but also interview etiquette, and I love teaching both,” he says, reflecting his background in corporate culture and client services. “I’ve been in management for the last 13 years and interviewed plenty of candidates who don’t know how to answer a situational question, may only answer one part of the question, or arrive in incorrect attire, not wearing a tie or not having access to resources to be dressed properly for an interview.”

Knowing the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork is one indication of how far socially you’ve climbed, but more crucial is learning how to handle those unexpected forks in life’s roads we find ourselves navigating. But it’s important to note that the aforementioned Emily Post, America’s esteemed etiquette expert, once famously stated, “Nothing is less important than which fork you use. Etiquette is the science of living. It embraces everything. It is ethics. It is honor.”

One day last winter at D-UP’s new workshop, converted from a former house, I was able to observe firsthand how eager preschoolers are to learn new skills. “The little ones, they’re one of my favorite groups,” Hood says. “They’re so young and impressionable, just super excited about learning at such an early age before they have other impressions put on them.” He begins by focusing on what goes into creating a great first impression: “What does that look like? What does that sound like? And how to leave a lasting impression.” To demonstrate the practicality of his instruction, he guides the kids through different role-playing scenarios.

At the end of the six-week program, both those youngsters and the older students enrolled in the etiquette course would have an opportunity to utilize their newfound expertise by rubbing tiny little elbows with the city’s elite during D-UP’s annual Royal Celebration held in December 2024 at Congdon Yards in Downtown High Point. The culminating event serves as a graduation ceremony of sorts, centered around a formal dinner served amid enchanting surroundings.

Inspiration for the Royal Celebration occurred a decade ago when Davis was accompanying children on a trip to Octoberfest. “I was in the backseat with one of our little boys and his sister, who had on a princess gown,” she recalls. “I said, ‘Look at my little princess,’ just admiring her, and her brother says, ‘She ain’t no princess.’ I said, ‘Of course, she is. And you, a prince.’” The young man objected, saying, “I ain’t no prince.” But Davis encouraged him, saying “Yes, you are prince and don’t ever feel like you’re not.”

The next day, reflecting on that exchange, Davis realized, “We can tell kids who they are but sometimes we truly have to show them. All of these thoughts started coming to me — like limousines, tuxedos, a sit down meal, empowering kids to be able to talk with adults and not fumbling over the words.” Within weeks, D-UP cobbled together the very first Royal Celebration, “just by reaching out to our partners, because it was already the end of the semester and we had no budget for this at all.” That was nine years ago.

There were around 30 enrollees that first year, but by 2024 enrollment had grown to 65 participants, all outfitted in tuxes and elegant gowns donated by VIP Formal Wear at Four Seasons Mall. “We have community members who understand exactly what we’re doing and it means a lot to them,” Davis says about VIP and other sponsor contributions for the Royal Celebration. “You could see an instant change in the boys’ demeanor when they were trying on tuxedos. The same with the girls trying on their dresses and shoes.” Arriving in style to the venue by limo, Davis says, the kids emerged with a new attitude. “It’s such a positive experience for them, but also for us to see their reactions.”

Attended by local dignitaries and business leaders, the purpose behind a Royal Celebration is instilling confidence in the young ones when in a formal setting. “We have a three-course meal for them,” Davis says. “They don’t even have to question which fork to pick up. Using their manners, not speaking [out of turn], it’s such a confidence builder.” The children were paired with adults at each table so they could engage in grown-up conversations and put their newly-honed skills to work.

During the social hour, the courtly kiddos were encouraged to mingle and introduce themselves before striding on stage to receive their awards based on performance and improvement. Another highlight of the evening was a round of ballroom dancing. “We offer dancing here anyway,” Davis points out. “Ballet, modern and hip hop, but here they got to practice ballroom.” By all accounts, the Royal Celebration was once again triumphant. No surprise that, around this same time, Davis was crowned 2024 Businesswoman of the Year by the High Point Chamber of Commerce.

Lately, Hood has been venturing into middle schools, instructing students on developing resumes. While that may seem premature to an outsider, “We are preparing children for the future,” Hood says. “If they understand these things at a young age, then start practicing these skills, just imagine how far ahead they’ll be later on, perfecting skills instead of learning them for the first time.” He’s also instructing teenagers on interview techniques and leading, “a social skills class that will be a summer program to help prepare them for returning back to school.”

Is Emily Post still relevant to modern life? “There’s a way society works in order to gain opportunities in your favor,” says Hood. In fact, he suggests the pathway to happier happenstances begins “by carrying yourself correctly, having genuine morals and values that you stick to and, more importantly, being an example for the person that’s watching you. Because you never know what an inspiration you can be for them.” Naturally, there are times when potential participants walk out on his classes. “This is for those who want it, for those who want to be their best, who want to strive for change. So if you’re not ready to make that difference right now, I’m not mad at you. You’ll get it eventually . . . or you won’t.”

Uber-ing back to High Point’s palatial train station for the rail ride home, by happenstance, I had the same driver returning who picked me up earlier. He somewhat warily asked what I was doing on Washington Street. In that instant, staring out onto this clean shaven boulevard as excited children are exiting a bus to scurry into an after-school program, where across the street young men are shooting hoops, killing time before a scheduled lesson in checkbook economics, I blurted out, “I think I just witnessed a revolution.”

Profiles in Courage

PROFILES IN COURAGE

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Profiles in Courage

Lucky for us — these women enjoy running into burning buildings for a living

By Ross Howell Jr.   •   Photographs By Mark Wagoner

When women first joined the Greensboro Fire Department as firefighters in 1978, they often were met with doubt and resistance.

But, through generations of service, female firefighters have shown that they have the mettle to take on the physical and mental challenges of firefighting — and to excel.

In Greensboro today, there are 34 women who are full-time firefighters. I had the opportunity to speak with a few of them.

Carol Key

Deputy Chief Carol Key invites me into her corner office in the GFD administrative suite of Fire Station 1 on North Church Street.

I can’t say precisely what I expected her background to be, but it certainly wasn’t art! Key studied at the Savannah College of Art and Design and holds a bachelor’s degree from the N.C. State School of Design.

She and her husband, Kevin, are the only married couple to go through the grueling, six-month recruit training program at the same time. Her husband now serves as captain in the GFD critical resources branch.

“We’d been married for one month and four days when our class started,” Key says. Everything about the program is intense. An individual recruit is allowed to fail two exams. If they fail a third, they’re out.

“Kevin and I spent the first six months of our marriage together — seven days a week, 24 hours a day,” she continues.

She pauses.

“About halfway through training,” Key says, “we got into a knockdown, drag-out fight in front of everybody.”

“And we’d tried to be so professional,” she continues. “We wouldn’t even kiss in public.”

“But after the argument,” Key adds, “we both acknowledged we needed a little space now and then, and we were OK.”

And they’re still OK — happily married, with two daughters studying at UNC-Chapel Hill.

I ask her how she and Kevin managed raising young children on 24-hour shift schedules.

“We had to make a decision about that,” she says. The one-day-on, two-days-off schedule results in three separate firefighter shifts — “A,” “B” and “C” — so that a full complement of firefighters covers the entire city 24/7, 365 days a year.

“We decided that I would work ‘A’ shift and Kevin would work ‘B,’” Key continues. So each parent had the kids home to themselves on “A” and “B” shifts, and on “C,” the whole family was together.

“The kids loved it!” Key laughs.

Since “C” shift was their “together time,” she and Kevin resolved to do things as a couple.

“We’d go on lunch dates, we’d go see a movie during the day, whatever we could do to enjoy each other’s company,” she says.

“That was nice,” Key adds.

“This is the first time I’ve been 8 a.m.–5 p.m. since I was in training back in 2008,” she says.

Through all the years, Key has kept her hand in graphic design and art. She has her own freelance graphic-design business, has painted expansive murals in the education wing of West Market Street United Methodist Church and consulted on the website design for the Greensboro Firefighter Historical Society, where she serves as president.

“Firefighting is such a gritty profession,” Key says. “It’s not for everybody. But I love it.”

Yakima Fox

Yakima Fox has been a Greensboro firefighter for 18 years. She serves at Fire Station 59, West Vandalia Road. Born in Salina, Kan., Fox moved here when she was 3 years old.

Firefighter is just one of the roles she plays. Fox also performs in community theater and even has a talent agent, though she doesn’t devote the amount of time to acting that she used to.

Her brother was the reason she considered trying out for the Fire Department.

“He was a GFD firefighter,” Fox says, “and he just kept bugging me and bugging me. ‘They need women,’ he said. ‘You should try out.’”

At the time, Fox was a student, studying biology at N.C. A&T.

“I wanted to do something in the medical field,” she explains.

While Fox’s brother was pestering her, an aunt’s comment made her absolutely determined to apply. When the aunt heard Fox was thinking about trying out to be a firefighter, she said, “Well, I don’t think you can do it.”

Fox looks me straight in the eye.

“I’m the kind of person,” Fox says, “you tell me that I can’t do something, I’m going to do it just to prove you wrong.” Fox also thought, pragmatically, that a Fire Department salary would surely be a big help paying tuition.

She was accepted. Then came training.

“It was a whole realm I didn’t know, it was all foreign,” Fox says. “It was a challenge in so many ways — mentally, emotionally, physically.”

“I’m 5 feet, 2 inches tall,” she continues. “I couldn’t even reach certain things!”

But Fox adapted, finding her own ways to meet the recruitment trainers’ strict standards.

Fox tells me one of the most difficult training tasks was putting out her first car fire.

She had to work alone, wearing full turnout gear, breathing oxygen from her self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA). Her suit felt like it was closing in on her. The SCBA air she was breathing was getting warmer and warmer from the heat of the flames.

The fire was producing a lot of smoke, so much that it was difficult for her to see. The pressure of the hose was pushing her back as she moved toward the fire.

“It was a workout that I hadn’t ever experienced,” Fox says. “I was using muscles I’d definitely never used before. And I was thinking, Man, this was just a car fire.”

“That’s the mental part of it,” she continues. “You say to yourself, ‘I’m going to be OK.’”

“So you take a moment,” Fox says, “and you go in there and do what you need to do.”

That moment cemented her confidence.

“From then on,” she concludes, “I enjoyed it.”

Fox believes her 15-year-old son has mixed emotions about her profession.

“He’s quiet, he’s a teenager, he doesn’t say much,” she says. “Sometimes I think he worries about my safety a little bit.”

She tells me her son is a good actor — “better than me,” she exclaims — and has performed in community theater with her.

Fox also hopes her son will participate in the Greensboro Fire Department Explorers program, where young people meet with firefighters for an inside view.

“I want him to understand what my job is,” she says. “I want him to understand the challenges and the benefits.”

“I want him to see how you can help somebody,” Fox says.

“That’s why I like this work so much,” she continues. “I’m helping people who really need it. When somebody sees me, they are not having a good day — maybe they’re even having a tragic day. And I’m able to make their day just a little bit better.”

Wendy Cheek

As I enter the Fire Station 49 office on West Friendly Avenue with Captain Wendy Cheek, one of the firefighters nods his head in her direction as we pass.

“You’re talking to a legend,” he says.

A few days after our conversation, Cheek is due to retire from the GFD       after 30 years — 20 years as a captain, riding an engine. And she stays plenty busy outside the station, too.

An advocate for healthy eating and fitness since losing her mother to cancer, Cheek took up massage therapy 24 years ago and has a loyal list of clients. She started her practice as a backup, in case she was injured as a firefighter and couldn’t continue the work.

And she has a small farm near Madison where she keeps chickens, raises hay as a crop and maintains a truffle orchard.

“After I retire, I’ll get some goats,” Cheek laughs. “The little ones. And a dog.”

But what drives her now, what fills her with pride and emotion, is her work in the Fire Department.

Cheek grew up in the N.C. mountains among the foothills near Elkin and Jonesville, and moved to Greensboro in 1989, “following a boy,” she says, shaking her head.

The boy thing didn’t work out, but she stayed on, working at a downtown deli and studying law enforcement and computer programming at GTCC.

“I was thinking I might go into the FBI,” she says, “until I learned they could place their agents anywhere in the United States.”

“I really wasn’t sure I wanted to move away from family,” Cheek adds. Looking for a challenge both physically and mentally, she called the GFD to see if they hired women.

At the time she was accepted for training in 1995, there were only four women in the department, as she recalls, and no others had been hired for years.

An avid hiker then and now — Cheek celebrated her 50th birthday by hiking the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim — she was also a competitive bodybuilder. Still, she remembers fire training school as one of the most difficult challenges she’s ever taken on.

And during her career, she’s done her best to guarantee every crew member riding a call, siren blaring and lights flashing, is trained, fit and prepared to give their very best.

“When I ride the truck,” Cheek says, “I ride in the back a lot.” Typically, the captain leads the crew from the front seat, next to the driver. From that position the captain receives computer information on the status of the emergency. Less experienced crew ride in the back seats.

By riding caboose, the captain makes it possible for junior crew to get valuable experience.

“I want them to know what I know — or more than what I know,” she explains, “because if I’m the weakest link on the truck, then I know we’ll be OK.”

Cheek is very direct in communicating what she expects of her crew’s interaction with the public.

“I always tell the guys, ‘You treat every person like they’re your grandparents,’” she says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a stubbed toe or a heart attack, we’re going to treat them with kindness and respect.”

How does she hope her firefighters will remember her?

“Well, I don’t see myself as any kind of legend,” she says. “It’s not like I’ve been doing anything out of the ordinary.”

“I want them to remember that I always took care of them, that I stood up for them,” Cheek adds. “I want them to remember I gave them 100% until the day I walked out this door.”

Jurica Isangedighi

In January, Jurica Isangedighi marked her 10th year with the GFD.

She grew up in Chapel Hill, was a standout point guard for the women’s basketball team at Chapel Hill High School and attended High Point University on a full basketball scholarship. When she graduated in 2011, Isangedighi wanted to become a college coach. To get experience, she returned to her old high school as an assistant to her former coach. For the next two years, they led their teams to the women’s state basketball championship finals.

Isangedighi moved to the collegiate ranks the following year, coaching at Mount Olive College, now the University of Mount Olive.

It was then that a former teammate who was applying for a Fire Department position, encouraged Isangedighi to try as well.

“After attending High Point, I loved this area, and I always wanted to come back,” Isangedighi says.

But she’s thorough. She applied not only to the Greensboro Fire Department, but also to the Winston-Salem and Raleigh departments.

The Greensboro department offers candidates the additional benefit of practice dates.

“You can go through the course and get your hands on the equipment,” Isangedighi says. For women, she believes, that’s essential experience.

“We’re not as strong as men, so we have to rely more on technique,” she continues. And instructors showed candidates the proper way to do things.

So when it came down to passing the tests required to qualify, Isangedighi says, “It wasn’t so bad. Still, it’s very, very demanding — physically and mentally.”

In the relatively short time since her hiring as a GFD firefighter, Isangedighi has earned the coveted title of “engineer.” That’s “driver” to you and me.

Think about it. She’s piloting — on city streets — a behemoth machine that weighs more than 20 tons, measures some 10 feet wide and 40 feet long, and is powered by a 500-horsepower diesel engine. Ladder trucks, which Isangedighi is also qualified to drive, are even bigger.

But she can go you one better.

Isangedighi’s Fire Station 21 on Horsepen Creek Road is a three-bay GFD facility with both fire and ladder trucks. It’s also part of the state regional response hazardous materials team.

“The hazmat truck is actually a tractor trailer,” Isangedighi says. “And I recently got my Class-A license, so I can drive it.” She smiles broadly.

“I love driving the trucks,” Isangedighi continues. “I have a really great crew. I have a captain who knows a lot about trucks and engines, so he’s teaching me.”

She explains that the trucks can be quirky and the engineers check them every day, lifting the cab to inspect the engine, testing the pump to ensure it’s working properly, checking all the tools on board.

“Every single day, every engineer does that,” she says. “Then, once a year, we’ll take them into the garage for service. These trucks constantly have eyes on them.”

And on her days off?

“Oh, I’m back home with my two kids and my wife, hanging out,” Isangedighi says. “Our son is 4 and our daughter is 1.”

She tells me her son likes to Facetime with her when she’s on the truck, and sometimes the whole family will stop by the station.

“He’ll get on the truck,” Isangedighi says. “He thoroughly enjoys it.”

“But the little one,” she laughs, “has no idea. She’s too young.”

Isangedighi intends to remain with the department for her whole career.

“I think the Fire Department is a great transition for athletes,” she says.

“You’re part of a team, you’ve got a goal to accomplish, you train and you get to help people in the community,” Isangedighi concludes. “That’s a good thing.”

Poem March 2025

POEM

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March 2025

The Opal Ring

When I was thirteen, my grandmother gave me an opal ring.

I like to wear it when I dress up to go out.

It is so delicate most people never notice it.

My grandmother whispered, It’s from some old beau.

I wear the ring, her memory, to feel magical.

Three small iridescent stones, a gold band worn thin.

Only when I asked did she whisper her secret.

Did you ever look deeply at the displays of color,

opaque stones holding quiet fire? The band’s worn thin.

The last time you betrayed me I slipped on the ring.

Iridescent means plays of color. So few truly look deeply.

She called me to her room, opened a sacred drawer.

This is the last time you betray me. I slip on the ring,

its blue-green, pink lights so delicate. You never noticed.

In her room, she handed me a velvet-lined box.

My grandmother gave me her opal ring. I was only thirteen.

—Debra Kaufman

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

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Drawn to The Gate City

Comics come to life in unexpected places

By Billy Ingram

“I don’t have inspiration. I only have ideas. Ideas and deadlines.” — Stan Lee

Buried inside an otherwise ordinary office plaza on Cornwallis Drive, tucked twixt dental practices, LLCs and LLPs, sits the Fungeon, a collab for writers and illustrators, several of whom have long associations with many of Marvel Comics’ best-selling titles.

An assault on the senses, this fancave is where pop-culture ephemera from the last seven decades bedazzles every square inch. A tidal wave of childhood memorabilia washes over you — an impossible number of Batman and other superhero figurines, an autographed photo of Dy-no-mite Jimmie “JJ” Walker, breakfast food mascot dolls, a Pee-wee Herman marionette, Star Wars collectables, VHS tapes, movie posters, a full-sized early-80s Galaxian arcade game, even a bright red Wham-O Monster Magnet with “life-time magnet” fists. I half expected the Kool-Aid Man to come bursting through the wall.

I’m there to meet with Chris Giarrusso, a former New Yorker and comic book creator who was drawn to the incandescent glow and nearly imperceptible excitement of The Gate City in 2017. Now, he shares a fantasy factory with four other creatives. There’s Jody Merriman, known as “Ol Grumpy” on social media. Giarrusso describes him as “a real burly, tough guy who you wouldn’t expect to be drawing pictures.”Randy Green is an acclaimed comic artist, best known for Tomb Raider and Emma Frost. His family owned Green’s Supper Club locally. Illustrator Marshall Lakes has his own comic line. And lastly, former Marvel and DC editor Brian “Smitty” Smith is co-creator of the New York Times-bestselling graphic novel The Stuff of Legend as well as writer/artist of the adorable Pea, Bee, & Jay children’s book series from HarperCollins.

Giarrusso is one of those lucky, talented individuals who has managed to forge a career in the comics. “When I was in college,” the Syracuse native told me, “I read about the internship program at Marvel in Wizard magazine.” He applied in 1997 and was accepted. “So for a summer, I was an intern there. That’s really the big game-changer, just getting the foot in the door and people getting to feel comfortable around you, that you’re not some crazy person. I guess they’re always afraid that the intern’s going to be some whack-job type.”

In 1998, Giarrusso was hired by Marvel’s production department, scanning artwork for Photoshop tweaking. “But I also liked to draw,” he says. “So I would show people my cartoons every chance I got. I was cartoon riffing on what was happening in the office or whatever.” Shades of Marvel’s superhero satirist extraordinaire Marie Severin. Eventually, the editor of “Bullpen Bulletins,” a feature in every Marvel publication, gave Giarrusso space for a monthly comic strip. “The editor said, ‘Yeah, OK, less work for me to fill up a page.’”

Almost by necessity, he created a line-up of cuddly, kid-sized Marvel heroes characterized by big heads and bulbous boots, whose comical interactions were drawn-up in standard newspaper strip format. “Because the panels were so small, it’s easier to draw little kids,” he says about the origin, if you will, of Mini Marvels. “You can actually squeeze them in better into the panels. And just the idea of them being kids was kind of already a built-in gimmick.” A devotee of Charles Schulz, Giarrusso quips, “I wanted to do Peanuts but with little Marvel characters.”

The little strip that could caught on. After about a year, “I pitched the idea for a longer story to Smitty before he went up the ladder. He was an assistant editor when I got hired as a production guy. I put a proposal together, handed it to him and then he pushed it through.” The result? The emergence of, quite possibly, the freshest, most original talent the genre has seen this century, effortlessly capturing the rhythmic essence that makes for great comics.

Undoubtedly, that’s why Marvel continually repackages Giarrusso’s back catalog. Mini Marvels: Hulk Smash was released in December and one reviewer raved that this book “will remind you why comics are fun, and if given to a new fan, this could be their gateway into comics.” Mini Marvels: Spidey-Sense unfolds with a genuinely funny tale about paperboy Spidey’s fractious battles against a peevish Green Goblin while innocently attempting to deliver the Daily Bugle to his arch enemy’s house. Giarrusso rendered the pint-sized Spider-Man with an exuberance and fluidity reminiscent of co-creator Steve Ditko’s earliest web-slinger sagas.

Beginning in 2009, Giarrusso’s own original high flying tyke-in-tights, G-Man, flew into view in three graphic novels published by Image Comics, followed by The G-Man Super Journal: Awesome Origins, an illustrated-prose hardcover from Andrews McMeel, who also publish definitive collections of Peanuts dailies (and Calvin & Hobbes, another influence, I suspect). A series crying out to be animated, G-Man’s universe is populated by a multifarious cast of characters rivaling that of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, fused with the innocence of early-1960s Legion of Superheroes. Nominated for a Harvey Award in 2014, G-Man: Coming Home was selected as Favorite Adventure Graphic Novel by Kids’ Comics Revolution.

“Fifteen years ago or so, when Mini Marvels was having a moment, Acme Comics invited me for a signing,” Giarrusso explains about his initial sojourns South, previous to his relocation to Greensboro eight years ago. “It became kind of routine to come for every Free Comic Book Day. I got to know the area and the community and the people here.” Graphic artists and writers can easily work remotely and are often required to. In that regard, our fair city makes for a comfortable launching pad. “At one point, Smitty came down and he set up the [Fungeon] studio. A couple years later, I followed and just inserted myself into the framework that he created here.”

Giarrusso has been particularly productive of late. While working on Pea, Bee, & Jay, Smith sold HarperCollins on a series for middle graders that Giarrusso illustrates, Officer Clawson: Lobster Cop, which features the undersea adventures of a mystery-solving crustacean. A new Mini Marvels story appeared in October 2024, then Giarrusso created four visually arresting variant covers for the 2025 X-Men/Uncanny X-Men crossover event. Alongside February’s incendiary image fronting his Eddie Brock Carnage #1 variant, these edgier renderings reveal an artist whose style is evolving, assuming a more dynamic, unflinching underpinning without sacrificing any inherent adolescent charm.

Ironic? In the bowels of a nondescript office complex, cleaved from a patch of woods where as a 9-year-old I happily retreated reading DCs with Go-Go Checks purchased from a drug store around the corner, there exists a grotto where creative individuals are weaving dreams into four-color fantasies and captivating children’s lit that is destined to ignite imaginations for generations to come.

Birdwatch

BIRDWATCH

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Heard But Not Seen

Eastern phoebes tuck their nests away

By Susan Campbell

Eastern phoebes are small black-and-white birds that can be easily overlooked — if it wasn’t for their loud voices. Repeated “fee-bee, fee-bee” calls can be heard around wet areas all over our state. The farther west one travels through the Piedmont and into the foothills of North Carolina, calling males become more and more evident. From March through June, males declare their territory from elevated perches adjacent to ponds and streams. Even on warm winter days, these little birds can be heard loudly chirping or even singing a phrase or two.

Phoebes have an extensive range in the U.S., from the East Coast to the Rockies, and up and across central Canada. In the winter they can be found in Southern states from the Carolinas over to Texas down into Mexico and northern Central America. They are exclusively insectivorous, feeding on beetles, dragonflies, moths — any bugs that will fit down the hatch. Although they do not typically take advantage of feeders, I have seen one that did manage to negotiate a suet cage one winter. Because their feet are weak, they’re not capable of clinging, so this bird actually perfected a hovering technique as it fed in spurts.

Originally eastern phoebes utilized ledges on cliff faces for nesting. We do not know much about their habits in such locations since few are found breeding in those places now. Things have changed a lot for these birds as humans have altered their landscape.

While phoebes can be easy to locate as a result of their loud calls, in our area their nests may not be. Although they are good-sized open cup structures, they will be tucked into out-of-the-way locations. Typically, they will be on a ledge high up on a girder under a bridge or associated with a culvert. They may also be up in the corner of a porch or other protected flat spot. Grasses and thin branches are woven and glued together with mud to form the nest; therefore it’s critical that the location be close to water.

The affinity eastern phoebes have for nesting on man-made structures in our area may indicate that these are safer than more traditional locations. Climbing snakes are not uncommon in the Sandhills. Black rat snakes and corn snakes are not as active on buildings as they are on bridges and other water control structures. The phoebes may be adapting their behavior in response to these predators and others less likely to be found so close to human activity.

If you have, or have had, phoebes on your property in summer, I’d like to hear about it. I continue to record locations and details on nesting substrate for the species in the Sandhills. The variety of locations that these little birds choose has been very curious. Light boxes and fixtures, gazebos, porch support posts and more have been used, if they are covered by at least a slight overhang. Not only is water a necessity for phoebes in summer, but they require mature trees for perching and foraging as well. Keep an ear out and perhaps you will find one of these adaptable birds nearby — and be sure to let me know!