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Home Grown

HOME GROWN

Putting the Pieces Back Together . . .

With resilience, grace and wit

By Cynthia Adams

One evening as I am chopping vegetables, my young friend, Jamie, calls me.

She occasionally texts, but never phones. Most weeks, we chat at Brown-Gardiner’s fountain, where she is a popular server — animated, engaged — the primary reason for my going so often.

Answering, I strain to understand Jamie’s garbled speech. The only words fully discernible are “this is Jamie.” She struggles, stuttering, until falling silent.

Her friend, Lexi, takes the phone. Lexi’s words are crisply clear: Jamie has suffered a stroke. She goes on to say that she has just been released from the hospital following days of unconsciousness and lifesaving surgery. Lexi pauses.

“Jamie wanted you to know.”

Jamie is in her early 30s. A stroke? My knees wobble.

Jamie is the sort who brings life and vivacity into a room, as she has done at the lunch counter. The sandwiches, salads and dishes are standard lunch-counter fare, but nothing special. Jamie is. Often, she’d spot me approaching and open the door in greeting.

In a few days’ time, after much texting back and forth, Jamie indicates she would like a visit. I take silly gifts: A bath bomb that resembles a doughnut with pastel sprinkles. A satin sleep mask emblazoned, “Shit Could Be Worse.”

Just like her old self, Jamie howls with laughter.

She has miraculously survived the catastrophic stroke without losing her motor skills. There is no facial paralysis nor limp. No overt paralysis of any kind. Yet Jamie’s brain scans reveal damage to areas controlling speech. She struggles with aphasia and speech challenges.

Jamie chats normally and suddenly goes silent, freezing, searching for a word. This is something I had previously seen when another friend — a woman five decades older than Jamie — had a stroke.

More than once, rather than asking, “Where’s my phone?” Jamie instead says, “Where’s my brick?” Or, maybe block. Determined to show no reaction as my intelligent and chatty friend struggles to summon words, I still feel my heart sink for her.

But Jamie’s wit and intelligence are fully intact. She gamely laughs during a terrifying time. “My brain is def broken,” she texts a few months later.

Attempting jokes about the surgery, the hospital stays, the worry she reads in her friends’ faces, Jamie finds her way through her own terror with humor.

Showing the blackened bruising at her femoral artery after carotid angioplasty and stenting, she declares, “But I’m still pretty!”

Everyone reassures Jamie she will soon be well. Better than new. Even so, Jamie cannot drive, or resume college classes nor work for six months minimum.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” she will mutter, not cynically, but with convincing force, intent upon powering back to health.

One day, I mention that a collection jar for her benefit has been placed at Brown-Gardiner. Jamie texts back, asking if the picture chosen “makes me look pretty.” I report back that, in fact, it does. Her smile — her face — beams from the jar. Faithful patrons contribute small change and bills.

One day, $1,000 is dropped in the jar by a single group of customers. Jamie reports as best she can that it was from guys she always served on the Saturday morning shift. While she struggles to fully convey who “the guys” are, I try to guess if they are part of a golf team or a tennis league.

Jamie isn’t quite sure, but she is sure of one thing: “They love me.”

As her megawatt smile beams brighter, she adds, “and I love them.”

Since her saga began, Jamie has learned a preexisting congenital defect triggered her stroke, something called arteriovenous malformation, or AVM. In her case, it was located in the carotid artery. Much like aneurysms, it’s difficult for an AVM to be diagnosed until it’s too late.

Strangely, this hasn’t discouraged her. Learning the cause of the stroke has had the opposite effect. With a name, however strange, AVM is an anomaly that she can wrap her mind around, Jamie explains.

The condition is quite rare: Only 1.34 per 100,000 people have AVM.

Somehow, this statistic cracks Jamie up.

“Of course,” she says, articulating slowly. With a wry smile that says, “it couldn’t possibly be anything commonplace,” she throws her hands up in the air. Since her stroke, in rapid succession, Jamie has been scrutinized and scanned from top to bottom in MRI machines.

“Now I know the deal,” she adds.

Jamie has learned, to her relief, that she is not a walking time bomb.

“That was scary. Would I just drop dead?” This was her first thought upon emerging from days of unconsciousness after the stroke.

Jamie’s July birthday week draws together a young group of friends who take her for a celebratory steak dinner. She shares funny moments, reporting that she kept a journal “for my up-and-coming stroke comedy tour.”

Her speech is, against all odds, normal. Yet, the stroke is a bomb that fell onto her old life, segmenting it into before and after.

In the interim, another stent was needed. Weeks of speech therapy and recovery, scans and consultations have become months, now years. Two Christmases have passed.

Jamie has suffered medical setbacks, forcing her to temporarily abandon online studies begun since the stroke to complete her undergraduate degree. Even so, she will still graduate this year.

Jamie’s wrestled with red tape in order to get financial assistance. To cope with insurance claims. To get to medical appointments.

Simply to survive.

Yet Jamie’s resolve remains intact. In her first year of the event, she sent a revealing picture of herself at a game table with pieces before her.

“I’m gonna be sitting here trying to figure this stupid puzzle out . . . making my brain work . . . This is harder than it looks.”

In over two years of struggle, it is the only complaint Jamie has ever texted.

Essay Contest Winner

ESSAY CONTEST WINNER

Harriet Flies Home

A tale of catch and release

Note from the editor: This was our 2024 O.Henry Essay Contest winner.

By Eric Schaefer

She lands on the end of my fishing pole, making casting impossible. I don’t mind. I’m glad to see her. She has been gone for a few days, and I am always relieved to see her return. Not that I expect her to stay forever. She is, after all, a wild animal, and she needs to be with other crows — at least in theory. So I lean back in the boat and watch her preen her shiny black feathers.

Two years ago, my wife and I fished her, half-drowned, out of a drainage ditch in Florida, wrung her out and gave her a little cat food, which she readily accepted. Soon, the chick was eating everything and seemed perfectly happy with her surrogate parents and her roommate, a lab mix named Alfie. We named her Harriet.

Harriet belongs to the tribe of fish crows who speak in a minor negative key. Their principal call sounds like anh anh. As in “anh anh, I ain’t doing that” or “anh anh, I ain’t what you think.” Crows are versatile, however, and are capable of a variety of vocalizations. They are accomplished mimics, and I believe Harriet can say whatever she wants if so moved. Cocking her head so that one eye focuses on me while the other surveys her surroundings gives me the impression that some complex calculations are taking shape inside her little crow brain. Alfie, on the other hand, I’m pretty sure I can outsmart.

At mealtime, Alfie sits, staring, drool pouring out of both sides of his jowls, his brown eyes pleading, “Oh pleeeze, can I have just a little of that whatever it is you’re eating? I don’t care, I’ll eat anything, and try my best to actually digest it or throw it up — that’s OK, too — but please let me give it a try.” Harriet doesn’t beg. She would rather steal. And steal she does. Glance away from your plate and she’ll swoop down and take a morsel, then fly up to a bookcase or a high counter. She’s discerning. She’ll examine her prize, maybe cache it for later, but she doesn’t just wolf it down, hoping it doesn’t come back up — like somebody else.

I’ve never invited Harriet on the boat, but she needs no invitation. She comes and goes as she pleases, and I flatter myself to think she likes my company. I did ask Alfie once, and he was delighted to be included. He bounded enthusiastically about on the boat until he lunged at a Canada Goose and we capsized. While I tried to save my floating gear, he bobbed up a little ways downstream, and I think I heard him say, “I don’t have any idea how we ended up in the water, but this sure is fun.” I didn’t invite him back.

When Harriet first came to us, I thought I should keep her indoors for her protection, so I built her a big cage. It took up half a room and I equipped it with swings and branches and pools and shiny objects and all manner of things a crow might like. She would have none of it. She squawked persistently whenever I put her in her deluxe accommodations, until either I or my wife surrendered and let her have the run of the house. She’d follow us around, poking her beak in whatever it was we were doing. We loved her company, but knew we couldn’t deny her the chance to explore the outdoors. So, one day, we decided to accept whatever happened, and we took her out to the porch and set her down on the railing. She was in no hurry to fly. She sauntered back and forth, examining her new surroundings. Crows don’t actually walk. They strut as if practicing an arrogant little dance step or modeling some outrageous new costume on a runway. Suddenly, she squatted and jumped into the air, flapping steadily until she landed on an oak tree branch.

Alfie catapulted off the porch, ran to the tree, and jumped up so his front paws were on the trunk and he was looking up into the branches. He was either saying, “Come down out of there! You’ll hurt yourself;” or, “How did you do that? Can you teach me?” After that, Harriet accompanied us on whatever outdoor activities we were engaged in, until, one day, she disappeared. We told ourselves it was a good thing, that it was exactly what she should do, and we hated it. But eventually she came back and started to come and go at irregular intervals. The times she was away began stretching out to days.

So now she sits at the end of my fishing pole, looking rather pleased with herself after having been gone for longer than I liked, when a murder of American crows shows up and takes up a raucous cry in the trees. So, this is where you’ve been? I feel like a parent with an unruly teenager. Go tell your friends you have to stay home for a while. She looks at me, calculating, and then at them, and then back at me and says anh anh, and flies off.

2025 Department O.Henry Essay Contest Winners

NC Surround Around

NC SURROUND AROUND

Dropping In

Return of the Carolina Chocolate Drops

By Tom Maxwell

It all started in April 2005, at the first “Black Banjo: Then and Now Gathering.” The event, held at Appalachian State University in Boone, was part scholarly pursuit and part throwdown, featuring four days of “lectures, jams, workshops, down home frolics, and performances” with a view to bringing the “funky, plunky instrument” back home to Black America. Dom Flemons, a 23-year-old student at Northern Arizona University, attended.

“I was the young person at the event,” Flemons says. He had been playing banjo for a few years already, busking on street corners and devouring records by the Memphis Jug Band and Dave Van Ronk, as well as ’20s songster music of people like Gus Cannon and Henry Thomas.

So, like many young people who fall in love with old music, most of Dom’s musical heroes were dead — even if their music was very much alive. But in Boone he was about to enter the musical land of the living.

“When I met Joe Thompson, a light bulb went off in my head,” Flemons says. “I heard him playing at the opening ceremony for the Black Banjo Gathering, and all of a sudden I understood the music that connected people like Henry Thomas to Gus Cannon. When I heard Joe’s music, I heard that flavor of fiddle and banjo music that these guys were referencing, playing and living next to generationally. And that inspired me to move out to North Carolina. I sold everything I owned, packed up my car, took Route 66 east and headed for North Carolina to be near the music.”

Thompson, born in 1918, had been playing African American string band music for 80 years by the time Dom Flemons heard him perform at the Black Banjo Gathering. An Orange County native, Thompson joined his family on fiddle (after studying his father’s old-time technique, which was handed down by his own father, a former enslaved person) playing square dances, parties and dances after corn shucking or tobacco stripping. Joe considered quitting music after his cousin and musical partner, Odell Thompson, died in the ’90s, but picked it back up basically by popular demand. Even a stroke in 2001 couldn’t slow him down. “I got to sit with Joe and play music,” Flemons remembers, “and it was a powerful experience just to be in his presence. I knew that I was connected to the tradition from there. It’s something beyond just music. It’s a feeling as well and, if you’re deep in the culture, you understand the nuances of that feeling.”

Two years after his performance at the first Black Banjo Gathering, Joe Thompson became a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow. He also started mentoring Dom Flemons’ new band. Local musicians Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson also saw Thompson at the Black Banjo Gathering and had been playing music at his Mebane house for several months by the time Dom, newly graduated from college, moved to North Carolina. The three youngsters decided to form a band of their own. “These are the years leading into Obama being elected,” Flemons says, “and culturally, people were ready for a Black string band. They could handle it.”

Flemons, Giddens and Robinson called their band the Carolina Chocolate Drops. “With the combination of all three of the original members of the trio, we created a sound that was very authentic and raw, but also landed right,” Flemons says. “We always had a rock solid rhythm. I leaned 100 percent into that, because being a fan of the Grateful Dead, I understand that give and take with the audience.”

All traditions, an accomplished jazz musician once observed, meet at the root. In their career, the Carolina Chocolate Drops were seamlessly able to blend Civil War-era Black string band music, ’60s folk-rock, jazz and hip hop. It’s no surprise — but still an absolute delight — that the band covered Blu Cantrell’s 2001 R&B Top 40 hit “Hit ’Em Up Style (Oops!)” on their Grammy-winning album Genuine Negro Jig.

“I was a fan of Old Crow Medicine Show,” Flemons says, “so I always thought about fast old-time as being a genre. Fast old-time is something that people have always enjoyed, and it was becoming very popular at that time. When we were arranging songs with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, they would usually do a Joe Thompson number. I came up with the jug and took a combination of what I thought about with traditional jug bands, as well as people like Charles Mingus, and applied that to ‘Georgia Buck.’ That gave us a unique sound from a traditional old-time string band.”

The Carolina Chocolate Drops went on to have a stellar career, releasing five albums, opening for luminaries like Taj Mahal and Bob Dylan, making numerous television appearances, and performing several times at the Grand Ol’ Opry. But as all fiery combinations do, they burned bright, then out. Robinson left in 2011; Flemons followed suit two years later. By 2014, the group functionally disbanded. Until now.

“Rhiannon wants us to do this festival she’s putting together, Biscuits & Banjos,” Flemons says. The festival will be held in Durham April 25 – 27 and will feature not only a reunited Carolina Chocolate Drops, but also solo appearances by Flemons and Giddens. Rounding out the stellar lineup are legacy acts like Taj Mahal, promising newcomers Infinity Song, Tar Heel native Shirlette Ammons and many more. In the tradition of the Black Banjo Gathering — and countless others since time immemorial — there will be artist talks, workshops, a biscuit bake-off (Giddens is a self-described “avid biscuit baker”) and a community square dance.”

Indeed, all American musical traditions do meet at the root. Blues, jazz, rock-and-roll — and a sizable chunk of country music — owe their very existence to African American musical idioms and cultural expressions. We are all the better for it, and when you combine this history with Southern food and an old-school hootenanny, life gets very good indeed. And North Carolina is one of the few places in America where something like this could happen.

“North Carolina is such a wellspring of culture in general,” Flemons says, “and I believe that it has done a lot of things right when it comes to expressing the culture of the state. I think it’s something in the way that the land is structured and the way people are raised. Because a lot of times they have this particular connection to the land, and a foot in both the country and the city. The Carolina Chocolate Drops did school shows in almost every city and town in North Carolina, so I got to see everything from Edenton all the way up to Asheville and Black Mountain and Hot Springs. Every part of North Carolina has something beautiful and unique, and the music reflects that.”

2025 Department NC Surround Around

Omnivorous Reader

OMNIVOROUS READER

Coin of the Realm

The history of Rome in loose change

By Stephen E. Smith

If you believe the ancient Romans had little to do with your life, look at your feet. They gave us the concept of left and right footwear. They also left us their checkered history, of which there’s too damn much. If you’ve tackled Gibbon’s unabridged The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, you know that a manageable history of ancient Rome requires a framing device that places events and characters in perspective.

Historian/numismatist Gareth Harney has devised an agreeable gimmick. He has selected what he believes are the 12 most significant coins minted during the Empire’s 800-plus years, and he’s written A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins, connecting the coinage to the emperors and events that influenced their minting.

Roman coins were struck from alloys of gold, silver, bronze, orichalcum or copper — materials that gave them resilience — and they are discovered still in Welsh fields and Polish barnyards. You can buy a pile of uncleaned Roman coins on eBay for $30.

First introduced in the third century BCE, Roman coins were used well into the Middle Ages, and during a denarius’ existence, it would likely have passed between millions of hands. Many of the coins are worn smooth, obscuring the profile of the emperor or god whose likeness was meant to ensure political stability and economic security.

In crisp, energetic prose, Harney opens each chapter as if he were writing historical fiction. “The vision was surely his alone,” he writes of Constantine’s moment of conversion. “Yet the confused shouts of his soldiers seemed to claim otherwise. As the marching column ground to a halt before the spectacle, men raised their arms to the clear sky, calling out to their emperor to witness the unfolding miracle. It took shape, by all accounts, in the rays of the midday sun. A glowing halo surrounding the solar disk, sparkling with additional rival suns where it was intersected by radiating horizontal and vertical beams — all shimmering like jewels with spectral color.”

Harney guides the reader through the history of Rome from Romulus, suckled by a wolf on an early Roman coin, to the last emperor, who was deposed by the German general Odoacer in 476 CE. In the early years of the Empire, coins illustrated mythical scenes and various gods and goddesses, but that changed, as did much of Roman life, when Julius Caesar issued coins bearing his likeness. “Even in an age of giants — Pompey, Cicero, Antony and Cleopatra — Caesar would tower above all,” Harney writes, “bestriding the world like a colossus.” The appearance of Caesar’s profile on the Roman denarius in 44 BCE is acknowledged as a transformative moment in Roman history. The new coin violated ancient law, tradition, and the sacred delineation between military and civic authority. Caesar went so far as to order the minting of a denarius with the likeness of the defeated Gallic leader Vercingetorix, an enemy of the Roman Republic.

The Julio-Claudian dynasty receives its due — Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, et al. — and Harney explains the events leading to the coinage produced by each emperor. Bits and pieces of Roman excess and debauchery are reviewed in tolerable detail, and readers are occasionally treated to new depravities, of which there was no shortage in an empire populated with leaders who were murdered almost as quickly as they took power.

For many of these upstart emperors, assassination was often a merciful escape. In 260 AD, for example, the emperor Valerian was defeated by King Shapur I and was taken prisoner. He lived out his years in slavery, falling to his hands and knees to act as a step for Shapur to mount his horse. The emperor of Rome had become a human footstool for an enemy king who later had him skinned, stuffed and placed on display.

Harney’s discussion of the various currencies makes the constant shuffling of Roman emperors slightly less confusing, but the devaluation of Roman coinage is his most significant and timely lesson. The emperors, unable to pay for Rome’s defense, lessened the amount of silver or gold in each coin. “By 270, the ‘silver’ coins of Rome held less than 2 percent precious metal. Nothing more than crude scraps of copper rushed out of the mint, without a thought of quality control. A thin silver wash on the coins only served to insult the intelligence of the Roman people, and quickly wore off to reveal the depressing base metal below.” Any belief in a reliable gold or silver standard vanished from the monetary system. As coinage ceased to hold its value, Romans returned to barter as a method of exchange. When new coins were issued, they dulled more quickly, and they felt light in the hand, signaling debasement. Each degraded coin is part of the puzzle whose final piece reveals the complete collapse of the Roman state.

A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins will appeal to a broad audience. Excluding the rare reader who has a comprehensive knowledge of Roman history and the numismatist specializing in Roman coinage, the majority of readers (those who saw an episode or two of I, Claudius or the movie Gladiator) will find Harney’s history well-written, informative and sophisticated — high-end Monarch Notes for Gibbon’s six-volume Decline and Fall. They may even feel inspired to start collecting Roman coins.

Harney doesn’t claim that his research offers profound insights into our contemporary political divisions or the teetering state of our democracy, but readers will likely infer whatever lesson appeals to their politics. One truth, however, is inescapable: Empires rot from the inside out.

2025 Department Omnivorous Reader

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

Contact Sport

Con-text-ualizing a comedy of errors

By Maria Johnson

Fourteen neighbors? A couple of dozen cupcakes? A Friday afternoon?

Sure, I tell my mom, I’ll help her throw a small celebration of her 92nd birthday, a custom in her neighborhood, where the residents let each other off the hook by proactively reminding each other of the occasion and hosting their own to-dos.

It’s yet another example of something that’s gauche at a young age morphing into something that’s graceful, for all concerned, at a later age.

We draw up a guest list.

In her day, my mom would’ve inked the invitations in her distinctive hand using a fountain pen. She also would have served the cupcakes on her best gold-banded china.

Well, here she is, in her 10th decade, stuck with a daughter whose favorite pattern is “Compostable” by Chinet and who conveys her deepest emotions by text, usually with GIFs from TV comedies.

Finally, my mom agrees to text invitations — sadly without a video snippet of Tina Fey gorging on tres leches cake on “Weekend Update.”

My mom loves it when thumbs up and hearts blossom on the electronic string.

A week later, only a couple of people haven’t responded.

That’s when I learn from one of my mom’s neighbor’s, Amy, that two other neighbors, Ginny and Kathy, whom she was pretty sure would have been invited, have not received my text.

Amy guesses I might have sent the invite to Ginny’s home number instead of her cell number, which she rarely gives out. So Amy supplies the elusive number, and I zap a fresh invite to Ginny’s cell.

I should say “a Ginny’s cell.” And yes, in literature class, this would be called foreshadowing.

Next, I retrace my steps with Kathy.

Voila. I’ve sent the invite to another Kathy, so I tap out a new message to Neighbor Kathy, who responds with a heart.

I think about texting Another Kathy to say, “Never mind,” but she hasn’t responded so I let it go. (Insert suspenseful music.)

Meanwhile, Ginny replies with a conditional “yes” because she is recovering from chemo.

Wow. I am not aware that Ginny has cancer. I text her back, suggesting that she walk over to the party if she feels like it that day. No advanced notice required.

She pins a heart to my message.

To close the loop, I let Amy and Kathy know that Ginny plans to come if she recovers from chemo in time.

Amy and Kathy’s eyebrows shoot up. Ginny does not have cancer.

We all sleep on the unfortunate news of . . . someone’s cancer.

The next morning, feeling that something is off, I review my text to Ginny.

Oooooo.

Turns out I’ve texted a tennis friend named Ginny, who indeed is waging a successful battle against cancer.

She lives in Thomasville.

She doesn’t know my mom.

Yet she has pinned a heart to the invitation to walk down to my mom’s house.

What the . . . ? I admit my blunder to Tennis Ginny, who cops her own confession.

“I admit I didn’t know where I was going to walk to find a cupcake soiree,” she says.

Incidentally, this is why I love Tennis Ginny. She’s always game for fun, even if she’s not sure where to find it.

Resolving to wear glasses while texting, I call Neighbor Ginny, hoping for a voice on the other end.

These days, I know, calling someone in real time indicates either a dire emergency or an extremely juicy nonemergency with more details than two thumbs can handle.

This isn’t either, but Neighbor Ginny picks up without a hint of wariness. God Bless the Greatest Phone-Answering Generation.

She laughs her hearty New Englander laugh when I explain the situation.

I’m relieved at her forgiveness, which I find that older people grant easily, maybe because they need it themselves — as if the rest of us don’t.

Cupcake Day arrives.

The weather is perfect.

My mom’s neighbors stream through her door. I greet them and thank them for coming. A car pulls up.

“Who’s that?” someone asks.

I crane my neck.

“I don’t know,” I say, watching an elegantly dressed lady emerge with a potted flower.

She smiles as she steps through the door.

For the life of me, I cannot retrieve a name.

“I’m so glad . . . you could come!” I say, taking the amaryllis from her.

My mom lights up at the sight of her, hugs her and introduces her to her neighbors.

“This is my friend, Kathy, from church.”

Of course. Another Kathy is Church Kathy, who sometimes shuttles my mom to a prayer retreat. We communicate by text from time to time.

As it turns out, Church Kathy also used to live in my mom’s neighborhood and knows a couple of party guests. She wades in and charms the throng.

I find Neighbor Kathy in the kitchen.

“This just keeps getting better,” I whisper.

She snickers and shrugs: “It seems to be working out.”

Indeed. If Church Kathy thinks it’s odd that she was invited to “walk over” for a cupcake — from wherever she lives now — she never lets on.

If anyone else thinks it’s odd that a non-neighbor — albeit a former neighbor — is stirred into the mix, they never let on.

If my mom thinks she’d better lobby for handwritten invitations next time, she never lets on.

If I think that my husband, who makes fun of me for having more than 1,000 contacts in my phone, might be onto something, I never let on.

Surrounded by friends who are happy to be together, no matter how they got there, my mom is in heaven.

Surrounded by grace — some of it self-administered — I am, too.

2025 Department Life's Funny

Tea Leaf Astrologer

TEA LEAF ASTROLOGER

Pisces

(February 19 – March 20)

In case you need the reminder: Yellow does not mean gun it. And only a Pisces needs to hear that it doesn’t mean drift into oblivion, either. Proceed with caution, yes. But stay the course. Be aware of your surroundings and navigate accordingly. When Venus goes retrograde on March 27, it’s time to tend a karmic wound before it festers. In other words: Identify the pattern so you can break it. When in doubt, a salt bath ought to help.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

Scrap the old story.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Opt for the silk ones.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Steady your hand.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Keep on keeping on.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Don’t miss your cue.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

Too much salt will wreck the meal.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Cast a wider net.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Get some fresh air.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Try washing behind your ears.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Fix your gaze on the horizon.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Plant the seed, then let it be.

2025 Department Tea Leaf Astrologer

Sazerac March 2025

SAZERAC

Sage Gardener

I love raw onions so much I’ve devised a stratagem so that fast-food employees don’t get my hamburger order wrong. (“Extra onions” is often misconstrued as “no onions.”) So, I tell the clerk, “I’d like an onion sandwich . . . and it’s OK if you leave the hamburger on it.” Whether baked, fried, char-grilled or caramelized, onions are, as the Egyptians believed, a gift from the vegetable gods. But the Sage Gardener’s sagacity on the subject of onions does not extend much further than knowing there are two basic types, branching (or green) onions and bulb onions. And I hereby confess that I’ve never been able to grow a bulb onion any larger than a small lime, but I may have finally figured out why. Sure, some sources say growing onions is as easy as poking a hole in the dirt with your finger and dropping in a seed or a set, but a friend convinced me the seed route is not for me. After he ordered a number of enticingly named varieties such as cipollini, big daddy and red zeppelin, my permaculturistic pal nursed what few seeds germinated, misting them with water and even encouraging them with some baby talk, only to watch almost every single one of his transplants wither and die. Me? For years, I’ve been lured by the sets that pop up in garden section of big-box stores in the spring. But then I read about “long-day,” “intermediate-day” and “short-day” onions. “Long-day onions are not recommended for our area,” writes Lisa Rayburn, an agent with the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service. “Unfortunately, the onion sets sold in big-box stores are usually long-day onions and will not form properly in our area.” Duh! While onion maps show that the Northern U.S. has long days, the Tar Heel landscape is in the short-day territory or intermediate-day range. Rayburn says if you plant long-day onions in the state, “They will produce only greens or very small, if any, bulbs.” Further research, however, revealed that “recently, long-day and intermediate-day-type onion varieties have been developed that are well-adapted to North Carolina conditions.” That, according to Chris Gunter, a former prof and vegetable specialist at N.C. State. Browsing the Burpee catalog that just came in the mail, I see that they have several different varieties of sets hybridized for intermediate and short-day climates. B-I-N-G-O! Of course, all this is something I’m sure I would have learned in a Master Gardener class if I weren’t too bull-headed to take one. So this month, I’ll be poking a hole with my finger in the still frigid soil and dropping in a Georgia Queen hybridized set or a Snow White. (Warmer climes, by the way, produce sweeter onions.) And later in the summer, when I top a big, bad sizzling burger with some freshly picked butter-crunch lettuce and a fat, juicy slice of Cherokee tomato, I’ll weep from joy — and onion juice — as I slice up my first huge homegrown onion and plop a ring or two atop the stack.

Window on the Past

Since 1905, a lot has changed in the Greensboro Fire Department. For starters, we’re no longer relying on horses and steam engines. And, these days, women are wading into the smoke and putting fires out alongside men. What hasn’t changed is the epic heroism of the GFD.

Taking Flight

William Mangum, Greensboro resident and North Carolina’s artist, is accustomed to high-flying success. But, not long ago, he soared to new heights by winning an international competition to come up with the livery on the fuselage of Boom Supersonic’s Overture aircraft.

How Mangum managed to snag one of the competition’s most coveted awards over more than a thousand entries from across the globe is a tribute not only to the artist’s famous versatility, but also a prime example of how traditional art form can still fire the imagination in a highly digital world.

We recently sat down with Mangum at his downtown studio on a quiet winter afternoon to get the details.

It started, he explains, when a notice in Triad Business Journal caught his eye. It announced a competition to design the outer skin — aka the “livery” — of Boom’s forthcoming supersonic jet.

“It really excited me because as a kid I was enthralled with building model airplanes,” he says. “The problem was that submissions were due the following Monday, less than 48 hours away. After pondering the opportunity for about 30 minutes, I called my wife, Cynthia, and told her I really wanted to give it a shot, but would have to spend two nights at the studio to make the deadline.”

Mangum’s approach was to produce a painting of the aircraft and graphically transfer it to a model of the plane. “My idea was to imagine an American flag draped on the plane moving at Mach-speed, shearing it off against the fuselage.”

To accompany his submission, he included a note describing his participation in North Carolina’s aviation history, specifically his work celebrating the centenary of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk.

A short time later, he received the good news in an email from the sponsors.

“By dang, out of 1,100 international submissions, I won the top prize of ‘Most Original Design.’ It was incredible. Their email said they were going to take my design and put it on a working model of the project.”

He’s not sure if his imaginative rendering will grace the skin of Boom’s first supersonic jet, expected to roll out sometime in 2029, but he plans to stay in touch with the company.

“I’d love to be one of the first folks to fly in it,” he admits. “The plane will have only 80 seats, all business class, and will fly to London in just three and-a-half hours. That would be a big thrill for sure.”

In the meantime, he has a major Earth-bound commission to paint portraits of High Point University’s 41 campus buildings. That project will take flight over the next 18 months.

“I’m very excited about that, too,” he says. “It has a much easier deadline.”

Just One Thing

If you are a fan of Gossip Girl, chances are, you’ve spied a Marilyn Minter piece. Frostbite hangs in the bedroom of Blake Lively’s character, Serena van der Woodsen, honing in on a determined blue eye that dazzles with shimmering silver shadow and dewy lashes. And then there is the iconic Stepping Up, which hangs in the van der Woodsen family’s hallway and features a grime-covered ankle and heel in a sleek, rhinestone-covered stiletto. It’s no wonder that during the show’s last season, Minter created a piece entitled Gossip. Born in 1948 in Shreveport, Louisiana, Minter has worked for more than a half-century, challenging standards around sexual imagery. In this C-print, Minter plays with bokeh, and we see a blurred-out, red-lipped mouth, slightly open as if whispering. Droplets of water that look as if they’re on the camera lens seem to suggest gossip, true or not, is being broadcast. Purchased by UNCG’s Weatherspoon Art Museum with funds from the Burlington Industries Endowment and the Lynn Richardson Prickett Acquisition Endowment, Gossip is part of the current “Embodied” exhibit, curated by students in Art History 490 and running through March 29. Info: weatherspoonart.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions.

Unsolicited Advice

Sure, we’ll take a pint o’ green beer on St. Paddy’s Day, but why stop there when you can celebrate Irish American Heritage Month all March long? We’ve got the craic to make the Emerald Isle shenanigans last. Erin go Bragh!

1. Binge Bad Sisters. Set in Dublin and filmed in Ireland, this Apple TV+ series follows the five Garvey sisters as they navigate the sudden, mysterious death of one of their husbands. If you’re into murder and mayhem, but in a pretty, pastoral setting, hit play — it’s gas.

2. Hozier, U2, The Cranberries, Ed Sheeran, Van Morrison, The Pogues. What do they all have in common? They’re on our “Irish I Was There Right Now” playlist. Make yourself one for hours of nonstop Irish-made music that’ll have you shamrockin’ a’round the clock.

3. Crank up the corned beef-and-cabbage crockpot. Irish American immigrants originally cooked up this concoction based on the homeland’s bacon-and-cabbage dish, substituting more affordable meat. While we prefer the salty, savory scent of bacon to broim — which is what this dish reeks of — we’ve got no other beef with this meal.

4 Don your wooden-soled clogs, cue up “Riverdance” and go mad yoke. Not recommended for apartment dwellers. Or anyone whose neighborhood has a noise ordinance, for that matter, because the jig will surely be up.

5. Indulge in an Oreo Shamrock McFlurry. There’s nothing particularly Irish about this, but, hey, at least it’s green. And delicious.

In the Market

I attended an event recently where half of the folks were talking about this guy, “Chad,” and his amazing spices. One lady raved about a pie she’d just made with what I found out later was his King Blossom Apple Pie blend. The very next Saturday morning, I set out in search of this suddenly illustrious spice meister.

Chad Smith sets up a booth where he peddles his Guilford Hill Spice Blends (most) Saturdays at the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market downtown, where I asked about his line of seasonings. I wanted to know where the inspiration sprang from. “I couldn’t find a Cajun that didn’t have so much salt, so I decided to make my own,” he answers. After Smith created a palate-pleasing blend, he shared the results. “At first I gave my Two Step Cajun to friends and family and they all told me I should sell it. So I developed a whole collection that I’ve been selling now for five years and it’s all natural.”

The most popular seasoning is his Painted Lady Garden. “It has rosemary and basil out front, then blended with sage, thyme and oregano on the back end,” Smith says. “The idea behind all of my recipes is that you won’t taste any one ingredient at a time — everything works together for one big flavor.”

For an added boost, his Scotch Bonnet Pepper is mixed with a little bit of brown sugar and cinnamon. “As your meat cooks,” Smith explains, “that brown sugar makes a nice glaze over everything. The Fitz Roy Adobo I use for my taco meat, whether it’s chicken, pork or beef. Fantastic. We’ve been using this lately with burgers as well.”

Selling 1.9-ounce jars for $10 each, Smith named his spice line after the neighborhood he lives in, Guilford Hills. “It’s a nice community with lots of families, and families need a way to make their meals easier. Where Mom and Dad can put dinner together and it’ll be flavorful, everyone will be happy, and the blend does most of the work for you.” Plus, he notes that because his blends are salt free, customers can add salt to fit their personal taste. The first ingredient in his Green Stone Greek is tomato powder, “and you have garlic, black pepper, onion, oregano, sage, beet powder, coriander, cinnamon and nutmeg.” Delish!

Chad Smith creates these proprietary small-batch mixes in Out of the Garden Project’s shared-use kitchen, a commercial grade facility that allows local entrepreneurs to produce prepackaged food products for the marketplace in a safe and sanitary environment. “This time of year, the Chihuahua Chili Powder sales increase because it’s made with smoked, dried jalapeño,” Chad tells me. “The smoke will deliver a bold flavor to anything you cook it with — a big bowl of chili or just do some nice bean dip. The Eighteen Arms Chinese is also popular; we just did a stir fry with that the other night.”

Besides the farmers market, Guilford Hill Spice Blends can be found at the Extra Ingredient in Friendly Center and online at Guilfordhillspice.com. Get it while it’s hot.

2025 Department Sazerac

Simple Life

SIMPLE LIFE

The Art of Healing

With the dawn of spring, we begin again

By Jim Dodson

If you live long enough, the saying goes, you will discover that healing takes time.

This ancient wisdom is being driven home to me because 15 days before I sat down to write this column, I received a complete left knee replacement.

Friends who’ve been down this path were quick to assure me that the pain and discomfort that accompanies major joint surgery can only be mitigated by time, patience and committing to an aggressive program of physical therapy.

Owing to a lifetime of sports injuries and a fulsome style of landscape gardening my cheeky bride, Wendy, once called a “blood sport with bushes and trees,” I suppose I’ve always downplayed my naturally high tolerance for pain — until now.

“Did you happen to catch the number of the city bus that ran over my leg?” I groaned to my wife on post-op day three, often described as the peak moment of pain during joint recovery.

“Just relax and let your body heal,” was her response. “By March, you’ll be back in the garden and playing golf with a brand-new knee that feels great. It just takes some time to heal, babe.”

Of course, she was right. So, I shut my yap and let my body get on with its healing business without further interference from me.

It proved to be a wise move. Upon completing my second week of physical therapy, not only did I learn that I was a week and a half ahead of the normal recovery rate from knee replacement, but had also begun to regain the ability to walk without the assistance of a cane. The pain was also slowly vanishing — so much so that I did a walking tour of my garden to assess the winter damage.

This adventure got me thinking about how waiting for the pain to stop and the healing to begin is a common experience that touches every aspect of our lives.

As children, we fall down or cut a finger and run to Mom or Dad, who applies the bandage and a kiss that makes the injury soon forgotten.

Every day on the news, however, we learn about children who live in war zones or are victims of child abuse. Their young lives will forever be damaged by the trauma they’ve suffered — a pain that will likely never quite vanish, leaving a wound that may never heal.

On a much larger scale, the recent devastation of homes and lives lost from Hurricane Helene and the raging wildfires of Los Angeles have produced pain and suffering on an apocalyptic scale, something that will take decades for communities to rebuild and heal. The outpouring of love and assistance from complete strangers to our mountain neighbors, however, speaks volumes about our shared human instinct for healing. A similar outpouring is already underway in the City of Angels.

On the scale of normal, everyday life, a lover’s broken heart may only require a few healing months of intense self-care, a good therapist and a new pair of shoes to begin the mending process.

The psychic pain of losing a job, sending a child off to college, ending a close friendship, or saying goodbye to a loved one or special place you may never see again can impose their own unique weight on the human heart. In time, only memory and gratitude for what was may soften the pain.

That, at least, is my hope.

One evening over this past Christmas, as we sat by the fire watching a holiday movie, our beloved cat, Boo Radley, suffered a sudden massive seizure. Boo was a large, gray tiger cat who entered our lives 14 years ago when Connor, Number Two son, brought him home as a tiny feral kitten found at the Southern Pines train depot on a winter night.

Connor named him “Nico” and kept him in his upstairs bedroom for several weeks before he moved on to Boston to accept a new job. At that point, we renamed the inherited young cat “Boo Radley” and watched him quickly take over the house. One minute he was grooming the ears of our big golden retriever, Ajax, the next sleeping in kitchen pots and pans. He was always up to some amusing mischief that made us all smile.

For some reason, Boo took a particular shine to me, showing up at my desk every morning to playfully tap my computer keys as I wrote. The first time I let him outside, he followed me entirely around the backyard watching me plant roses and mow the lawn.

One summer evening near dusk, I saw Boo bolt across the backyard being chased by a young gray fox. Before I could come to his rescue, I saw the young fox running back the other way — chased by Boo. Crazy as it sounds, their game of tag went on for weeks.

When we moved to the old neighborhood where I grew up in the Gate City, Boo really found his stride. He supervised as I re-landscaped the entire property and faithfully came to sit under the trees with me every afternoon when the day’s work was done. Likewise, for over a decade, he never failed to appear from his nighttime rounds to sit together under the early morning stars while I sipped coffee and had a friendly chat with the universe. He usually snuggled up in my lap as the Almighty and I sorted things out. On most afternoons, he napped in the golden-hour sun in his favorite part of the garden, which I eventually named “Boo’s Garden.”

Like the original Boo Radley, he particularly didn’t care for strangers, and proved to be fiercely territorial, ready to chase off any feline intruder foolish enough to get too close.

Wendy liked to say Boo was simply guarding his turf — and his best buddy.

I do believe this may be true.

On the fourth night after my knee replacement, however, during the deepest pain of my recovery, Boo suffered his sixth seizure in five weeks. The promising medication he’d been on for a month simply didn’t work, proving the art of healing is as much mystery as it is science.

Following a sleepless night, we made the painful decision to end Boo’s suffering. Hours later, a lovely vet from Lap of Love came and put my best pal to sleep on his favorite blanket. I don’t think I’d ever felt such emotional pain. Over a cat, no less.

Every moment of this life, as my late Grandmother Taylor liked to say, someone is waiting beneath a clock for a birth or a death or a chance to begin again.

The return of spring brings winter’s long wait to an end. It’s nature’s moment to heal and begin again.

With my brand-new knee, I can’t wait to get out into the garden.

But my best friend is gone, a pain that will probably take years to heal.

2025 Department Simple Life

Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

Tanked

A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

By Cassie Bustamante

One of my favorite childhood books is Judith Viorst’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. If you’ve read it, you know that poor Alexander has one of those days where everything goes wrong. And — spoiler alert — it doesn’t even have a happy ending. But what it does have is an assurance to kids far and wide that everyone has days like that. Everyone.

Chris, my husband, is away for work, so I’m on my own for a few days with our three kiddos. I pick up Wilder, 5, from his after-school program and we head home for the evening. Shortly after we walk in the door, he comes to me, his blue eyes looking sad and guilty, his cheeks slightly flushed.

“I know you got a text from the school today, Mom,” he grumbles.

A text from his teacher? I check my phone to see if I’ve missed it. Nope. “Why would the school message me?” I ask him.

He looks at his feet, kicking the carpet. “My card was flipped from green to yellow,” he mumbles. In kindergarten-speak, his behavior went from good to “you’ve been warned.”

“Oh, no,” I say. “What happened?”

“I talked when I wasn’t supposed to,” he replies. Welp, he’s definitely my kid. I can’t tell you how many classes I got kicked out of for disruptive chatter.

“Hey, it’s OK,” I say, hugging him. “You made a mistake and you learned from it. I’m sure it won’t happen again.” Though, if he’s like me, it will most definitely happen again. (My math teacher once called me the “Mayor of Math Class” because I had to greet everyone before taking my seat. What some deem disruptive, I call friendly.)

After dinner, I head to his room to snag dinosaur PJs from his bottom drawer. And that’s when I see it.

In the small aquarium sitting atop his dresser, Bluey — his cobalt beta named not for the hilarious Australian cartoon dog, but for his color — is vertical in the tank, pouty-face up, tail down.

Tap, tap, tap. I rap on the plexiglass side. Nothing. His little pectoral fins don’t make a flutter.

I take a deep breath, preparing myself to make Wilder’s no-good, very bad day even worse by letting him know the fish he’s loved for over a year is no longer.

“Hey, bud,” I say, “I’ve got some bad news.”

“I know,” he answers, suddenly awash with shame. “You got the text.”

I stifle the giggle trying to escape from my lips. Laughing while delivering the news that my son’s first pet has died is not exactly the kind of exemplary behavior I’ve read about in parenting books. Of course, I’ve never claimed to be an exemplary parent.

“No.” I pause. “Bluey died.”

He perks up, the corners of his little mouth even start to turn upwards. Is that a smile forming? This is not the reaction I was expecting.

He trots down the hall to his room, where his sister, Emmy, is ready to help me scoop out Bluey and send him off to a burial at sea, aka the commode.

Wilder stands on his bed and peers into the tank, where Emmy’s fishing around. She finally nabs him and Wilder asks, “Can I see him?”

Emmy holds out her hand, the limp, lifeless beta sitting in her palm.

Shocking both his big sis and me, he raises his hands in triumph. “I have been waiting for this day!” he shouts.

“What?!” I say, startled. “I thought you’d be sad.”

He peers at me sheepishly, then fakes a short-lived whimper. “Well, I am a little sad,” he says. Then his face lights up. “But now I can get a new fish — a glow-in-the-dark fish!”

While I’m relieved that this moment isn’t another page in Wilder’s own tale of woe, I can’t help but pull good ol’ Alexander off the bookshelf as our bedtime story that night.

Because I want him to know, “Some days are like that.”

Even for a fish.

2025 Chaos Theory Department

Almanac

ALMANAC

Almanac March 2025

By Ashley Walshe

May your thoughts be as glad as the shamrocks,

May your heart be as light as a song,

May each day bring you bright, happy hours,

That stay with you all the year long.

— Irish Blessing

March is an arrival, a revival, tender life still wet from birth.

Listen.

A purple martin sings at dawn, hollow bones weary from 5,000 miles of flight.

“Join me,” he broadcasts to the others. “Over here! On past the flowering redbud. The air is sweet, and spring is nigh!”

Yes, spring is nigh. We’ve much to celebrate. The journey through winter was long and arduous.

On the forest floor, where trout lily and bloodroot grace the softening earth, fiddleheads unfurl like soundless party horns.

One by one, swallowtails emerge from chrysalides as yellow confetti propelled in slow motion. Winged maple seeds sing in scarlet, cascading from naked branches like blazing garlands.

A chorus of peepers screams out.

Squirrel kits nuzzle nursing mothers in their dreys. Born pink and blind, their world is all warm milk and wriggling bodies. When they open their eyes, the violets will have opened, too.

In the garden, a cottontail kindles her first litter. Deadnettle and dandelions mingle with delicate grasses. A bluebird crafts her cup-shaped nest.

Can you sense your own revival? Your own tender blossoming? Spring is here, and so are you.

Emerge from brumation as the snake does. Wiggle your toes in the feather-soft grass. Let the sun melt the winter from your skin and bones as the sparrow trills rejoice!

Once in a Red Moon

According to National Geographic, two of the nine “must-see sky events” of 2025 are happening this month, beginning with a total lunar eclipse and blood moon on Friday, March 14. During the total eclipse, visible from 2:26 – 3:31 a.m., Earth’s shadow will cause the moon to appear otherworldly, glowing in shades of “pumpkin orange to coppery red.” Can you say le fantastique? Night owls: No reason to miss it.

Next on the docket of celestial sensations is a deep partial solar eclipse on Saturday, March 29. Early birds: This one’s for you. Bust out those eclipse glasses for a show that will peak at sunrise.

A Time to Sow

The soil is thawing. The birds are twittering. The worms are back in business.

Earthworms are key to healthy, nutrient-rich soil. And did you know that just 1 acre of land can host upwards of 1 million of the cold-blooded wigglers? The more, the merrier.

As a new season begins, we, too, return to the garden.

In early March, sow carrot, spinach, radish, pea and turnip seeds directly into the softening earth. Chives, parsley, onion and parsnips can be planted mid-month. At month’s end, bust out the beet and arugula seeds.

Broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage seedlings can be transplanted outdoors mid- to late-month. Ditto kale, Swiss chard, lettuce and kohlrabi.

As robin exhales mirthful tunes of crocus and tulip and plump, soil-laced worms, you gently hum along.

2025 Almanac Department

Author: O.Henry Magazine