Simple Life

SIMPLE LIFE

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If Wishes Were Wheelbarrows . . .

Then babies would ride

By Jim Dodson

Twenty years ago, as part of our move home to North Carolina from Maine, I gave my beloved Chevy truck to a local kid who thought Christmas had come early. “Old Blue,” as I called her, was getting on in years and prone to stalling out from time to time. But, oh, how I loved that lady truck. She gave our tribe many fine memories, including a 6,000-mile camping-and-fly-fishing trip across the golden West with my 7-year-old daughter, Maggie, and our dog, Amos, that became the premise for a bestselling book and even a modest little film. 

Last Christmas, friends may recall, still pining for Old Blue, I jokingly wished that Santa would bring me a shiny new Chevy pickup truck. To help the old fella out, I even began scouting local Chevy dealers, hoping to find a deal on a nice new or used pickup truck that had my name on it. Unfortunately, the trucks I liked had eye-popping price tags, bad news for a recessionary Santa.

On one level, I’m glad my truck wish failed to come true. On another, everywhere I went in the city over the following year, I seemed to see fancy pickup trucks with old, white dudes like me behind the wheel, an unnaturally cruel sight for a fellow quietly suffering from years of truck lust.

So, I asked myself: What the heck does an old dude like me who lives and gardens in a quiet suburban neighborhood really need with a shiny new pickup truck?

The answer is nothing. Or pretty much nothing. 

On the other hand, if Santa had indeed brought me the shiny, new pickup I’d wished for, this year I could have impressed my neighbors by hauling home the largest Christmas tree ever in the back of my truck, a Currier and Ives scene for the age of consumer excess.

Instead, as usual, we purchased a lovely little fir tree at the roadside lot where we’ve found the “perfect” holiday tree for many years and drove it home on the roof of my elderly Outback. It looked sensational with its tiny lights glowing from our den’s picture window on a deep December night.

Still, old wishes die hard.

During an afternoon trip to the grocery store the other day, just when I thought my truck lust finally a thing of the past, a white-haired fellow about my age parked beside me and climbed out of a beautiful, cobalt-blue Sierra Denali 1500. It was a real beauty, and for a crazy, covetous moment, I wished I had one just like it.

“How do you like your rig?” I cordially asked.

He beamed. “It’s absolutely fantastic. Gave it to myself when I retired last year. One of the new self-driving models with four-wheel drive and a crew cab that’s perfect for hauling our four grandkids around town.” He added it had all the latest high-technology toys plus real leather seats and a super sound system.

“Feel free to take a seat in it, if you’d like,” he graciously offered.

I thanked him but declined the offer and wished him happy grandkid-hauling, then went on my way, realizing that I evidently hadn’t quite gotten my yen for a shiny new pickup truck completely out of my system.

Fortunately, my next stop was Lowe’s Home Improvement, which brought me back to Earth. As I loaded 10 bags of mulch and a hundred pounds of organic garden soil plus several bags of dried manure into my trusty old Outback “garden car,” I realized some things are simply never meant to be.

Besides, suddenly I spotted something by the store’s front doors that I truly wanted and needed more than a fancy new pickup truck.

A row of shiny new wheelbarrows.

•

The act of making wishes is as old as the invention of the wheel.

In ancient European folklore, wishing wells were places where any spoken wish — often accompanied by a coin tossed into the water — was thought to be magically granted. The ritual itself was a means of connecting with the divine and requesting blessings or favors. Wishing wells, in fact, exist in the lore of almost every world culture and still have a place in modern society, often found in spiritual and historic gardens, and even used in contemporary fundraising campaigns. And don’t forget, as Jiminy Cricket pointed out, when you wish upon a star, your dreams may come true.

In the modern context, however, the word “wish” simply means “a desire or hope for something to happen,” which makes me hear my late papa’s voice on the subject.

He was something of an armchair philosopher. One of his favorite expressions was “Whatever is worth wishing for, son, is worth working for.”

Probably because I was such a wishful kid, I heard this pithy bit of armchair wisdom dozens of times while growing up. 

As an early reader of adventure books, for example, I wished and dreamed to someday be another Rudyard Kipling or Edgar Rice Burroughs, maybe even Jules Verne. Later, my literary wish grew into being the next T. H. White or Ernest Hemingway.   

On another front, because I was a kid who was happiest in nature, in a garden or on a golf course, I wished to someday be either a forest ranger or someone who built beautiful gardens for a living, maybe even a golf course designer.

None of these wishes came true.

Or did they? Fueled by such youthful desires, I grew up to become a newspaper reporter like my father and found that I was even more drawn to stories about real people, history, nature, poets and things that make dreamers wish for a better world. Along the way, I’ve also built five landscape gardens and even designed a popular golf course.

In short, I’ve lived long enough to know the old man was right — that if we wish for anything, including a better world, we all must work to make it happen. 

So, whether by starlight or ancient wishing well, this Christmas I’m wishing for a couple very special things: More goodwill and kindness to each other in our troubled human family, and a safe and happy delivery for my daughter’s baby girl, due to arrive on Christmas Eve.

As a new grandpa, I can’t wait to tool my first grandchild around in my shiny new wheelbarrow.

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

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Prescription for Success

Summerfield native Patrick Ball was born to play his hit TV role

By Maria Johnson

This holiday season, if you’re ambling the trails around Greensboro’s Lake Brandt and you think you’ve just passed the dimpled Dr. Frank Langdon from hit TV series The Pitt, you’re probably right.

That is, you’ve likely seen Patrick Ball, the Guilford County native who plays Langdon on the Emmy-winning HBO Max medical drama, soon to be in its second season.

Patrick, 36, plans to spend Christmas with his parents, Lee Ann and Jim Ball of Summerfield.

“Every time I go home, I run these trails,” Patrick says in a telephone interview. “I’ve run them in different chapters of my life. Returning to a familiar place, it becomes kind of my yardstick for growth.”

Since he left home, Patrick has done a heck of a lot of growing as an actor and as a person.

“He has integrity,” says his dad, proudly.

“He has found his way,” says his mom, relief audible in her voice.

As an actor, Patrick has experienced freakish success in the past year.

The one-in-a-million odds of any actor striking it big are very much like those of becoming a professional athlete.

Patrick’s newborn celebrity is astonishing, too, because the role that vaulted Patrick from dramatic obscurity to A-list luster so closely parallels the real-life careers of his parents.

Patrick plays the chief resident in a gritty Pittsburgh emergency room.

Lee Ann, now retired, was a registered nurse for Cone Health for almost 44 years, half of them spent in the emergency room.

“It was my passion,” she says.

Jim, also retired, worked for 40 years as a paramedic for Guilford County Emergency Medical Services. In the early 2000s, he held the record for saves in the field, meaning he basically brought 79 people back to life.

At home, when their kids were young, Jim and Lee Ann never talked about their high-stakes work, and Patrick, the oldest of three, had no interest in following their footsteps.

But he had a taste for high-risk/high-reward situations, a flair for the dramatic and a way of making his presence known.

“He was born with a big voice,” says Lee Ann, laughing. “He was louder than any other child, and he boomed at you if he had something to say.”

Energetic and adept at expressing himself physically, Patrick played recreational sports in Summerfield.

At Northwest Guilford High School, he was a member of the wrestling, basketball, baseball and football teams — briefly.

“We had him grounded the entire four years,” says Lee Ann, adding that she spent many hours praying for her oldest child.

“He was a pill,” says his nurse-mom, intending no pun.

“Patrick liked to test his boundaries,” adds Jim.

Later, on the phone, Patrick is more direct.

“I was a problem child,” he says, recalling how his parents stayed on him about sloughing off homework and smoking weed.

All they wanted for him, he says, was to find a constructive pursuit that he was passionate about and apply himself.

A possibility glimmered in high school.

Patrick and a couple of friends auditioned for an honors drama class because some older guys they admired took the class.

“They listened to Radiohead and Death Cab for Cutie,” Patrick says. “We thought they were the coolest guys in the world.”

The class was something of a dud, covered by a disinterested coach after the usual teacher went on maternity leave.

After a month of watching movies, Patrick and his pals started producing their own shows. They performed scenes from Tennessee Williams plays. They organized a school-wide variety show.

“That was a really cool feeling — to collaborate with a group of friends and make something out of nothing,” Patrick says.

“It was crucial to my formation as an actor because nobody was telling us we had to do it . . . we were able to follow our own curiosity and our own initiative and develop our own hunger.”

Opportunity winked again during Patrick’s freshman year at UNCG, where he enrolled in media studies, hoping to get into broadcast journalism.

A theater friend asked Patrick to help him out by appearing in a 10-minute scene for class. John Gulley, the head of UNCG’s theater studies, caught Patrick’s turn and urged him to join the program.

He did and won the lead role of Jack Tanner in Man and Superman, a dense George Bernard Shaw play.

Patrick, who had kicked off college with a couple of alcohol-related arrests, saw the role as a make-or-break moment.

“I focused for the first time in my life,” says Patrick, who describes himself as having ADHD.

He memorized his lines — a skill that comes easily to him — and showed up for rehearsal ready to go “off book,” without a script.

The late Josh Foldy, a UNCG theater professor who’d studied acting at Yale, thought Patrick could make it as a professional actor.

He wasn’t the only one. When Patrick and his senior classmates traveled to New York City for a showcase in early 2013, industry pros urged Patrick to move to the city immediately. He hesitated because he planned to perform with the N.C. Shakespeare Festival in High Point that spring. The work would land him a union card with the Actors’ Equity Association, a rite of passage for stage actors.

When the ailing festival canceled the spring show, Patrick jetted to New York a few credit hours short of his undergraduate degree.

“The iron is hot. I’m going now,” he says.

More than a decade of journeyman acting followed. Patrick crisscrossed the country to do regional theater. Back home in New York, he worked a slew of odd jobs: tearing tickets for the East River Ferry; driving a moving truck; working on a paint crew; handing out promotional cell phones at New York Fashion Week; serving at restaurants, bars and coffee shops.

His income and career path were all over the place. He considered teaching drama for stability.

At the urging of his childhood friend James Mieczkowski, now an Emmy-winning producer for PBS North Carolina, Patrick detoured to Yale, where he took a Certificate in Drama in 2022.The certificate converted to a Master of Fine Arts degree when Patrick finished his UNCG bachelor’s degree online later that year.

He taught a couple of summer classes at Yale. He landed a bit part on Law & Order.

It wasn’t enough.

He was done with acting, he told his parents.

He came home, ran the trails around Lake Brandt and interviewed for a fundraising position at High Point University.

He waited for an answer.

In the meantime, Moisés Kaufman, an acclaimed director who wrote the movie The Laramie Project, asked Patrick to do a play in Miami.

Dramatic tension mounted when HPU offered Patrick the job.

Patrick asked if he could start in three months, after the play wrapped. HPU said OK.

In a reversal worthy of the big screen, Patrick did the Miami play, met his girlfriend, actress Elysia Roorbach, declined HPU’s offer and moved back to New York.

That spring, in 2024, he did three Zoom auditions for the L.A.-based producers of The Pitt.

Patrick visited his parents in May.

He ran the trails.

The producers called. Could he get to L.A. for a screen test in two days?

Give me three, and I’ll be there, said Patrick.

The producers agreed.

Patrick showed his parents the pilot script.

“They said, ‘This checks out. This is real medicine,’” he remembers.

In L.A., Patrick mentioned to the show’s producer and star Noah Wyle that he’d read Wyle’s mom was a nurse and added that his mom was, too.

“‘Oh, so you get it,’” said Wyle.

Patrick explained how he understood the character of Langdon.

“I said, ‘I’m not here to play Hot Doctor. I know for a fact that working in an ER is blue-collar work. It’s ditch digging, and that’s how I’m gonna play it.’”

He got the part.

Fifteen episodes later, he’s a bona fide star, and, like it or not, fans regard him as a hot doctor — with his vivid blue eyes, hank of dark hair and a punctuated chin reminiscent of Kirk Douglas.

A hot doc who knows his stuff.

Patrick says he has been inundated with emails from medical professionals thanking him and his castmates for accurately portraying life in the emergency room.

The intensity, the procedures, the variety of cases, the physical demands, the emotional whipsaws — all of it rings true to them, including the episode in which Langdon gets caught stealing drugs from the hospital’s pharmacy.

It’s a legitimate issue in the medical community, says Patrick, and it’s a situation that resonates with him personally.

Almost four years sober, he knows very well the subtle ways of addiction.

“I want to tell that story as responsibly as possible,” he says.

Which brings us back to the holidays, a time of gifts and gratitude.

Patrick Ball will come home to celebrate both.

He’ll hold his new baby niece.

He’ll sit on the back porch and talk with his dad.

He’ll thank his mom for her continued prayers and patience.

And he will run the trails, taking measure of his life, which, he says, seems like a miracle.

“I spent 15 years auditioning for film and TV and traveling across the country doing theater, and waiting, and getting close to life-changing opportunities,” he says.

“Then the thing that comes through is telling this story that’s so close to home? It really does feel . . .”

He reaches for the right word.

“Providential.”

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

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Do You Hear What We Hear?

It’s all about knowing where to listen

By Billy Ingram

“Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.” ― Sarah Dessen

This Christmas Eve yule find me swinging and swaying on Summit Avenue when the world-renowned Sam Fribush Organ Trio unfurls their firehose of funky jazz gyrations at Flat Iron.

Fribush has proven to be a truly transcendent analog-tronic trouper luxuriating in that funky Philly sound of the ’60s and ’70s with no hint of nostalgia. Nimble fingers soulfully sweep across the keys of antiquated electric Hammond organs, manifesting sounds soaring with vibrant verve typified by Booker T. and the M.G.s’ Green Onions or Billy Preston’s organic tracks, “Outa-Space” and “Will It Go Round in Circles.” In my estimation, Sam Fribush promises to be the most exciting musical talent to surface from our city in this century. Back on American soil after touring Europe, this melodic maestro originally graced our pages in September 2024, you may remember.

Additionally, there’s an embarrassment of musical riches downtown this December at Flat Iron, a rousing roster of folk performers with deep Southern roots dabbling in a variety of genres. Fribush and company aren’t the only confirmed crowd-pleasers at Flat Iron delivering some sizzle to this time of tinsel and tensile kinfolk.

Originally an A&P grocery store in the late 1920s, the Flat Iron building was a derelict by 1997 prior to being done-over by developer Dawn Chaney, who told me, “It was boarded up when I bought it.” For a decade or so, The Flatiron (one word back then) served, and famously overserved, as a dive bar for day drinkers and clipped-winged nighthawks. After a dormant period, Common Grounds’ Dusty Keene resuscitated this space in spectacular fashion to become a live music venue in 2019. Josh King and his wife, Abby Spoon, took over three years ago.

Over a couple of decades, Josh King established himself as a distinguished, singularly gifted local singer-songwriter. When very few area bands were attracting national attention, King and cohorts scored successfully with House of Fools, formed in 2004 after a demo he and Matt Bowers recorded on the fly landed them a deal with California-based Drive-Thru Records. “They had some bigger pop-punk bands on the label and we weren’t that at all.” King confesses he reluctantly hopped on board. “We took the opportunity and ran with it and were able to do some cool stuff.”

That eponymously titled album’s reception, coupled with criss-crossing the country DIY style, resulted in Alternative Press magazine declaring House of Fools one of the “100 Bands You Need To Know in 2006.” Band lineup musical chairs and label leaving preceded House of Fools’ self-released second album in 2011, Versus the Beast. Subsequently, members have since migrated over to other projects.

As for owning a club, that was a concept confined to dinnertime discussions,“not something we actually thought would happen,” King admits somewhat sardonically. “The timing just sort of lined up.” A notion not so far-fetched, given his wife’s years of experience bartending, followed by a considerable career in mental health, both indispensable skills handy for handling honky-tonk habitués.

Small, intimate performance spaces like this, geared toward local and touring up-and-comers, constitute the core of any city’s musical milieu. Flat Iron is where our indie scene beats best. A few December bookings on my list to check off:

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Promoter Tim Coleman sponsors a night of full-throated folk on December 11, headlined by Bob Fleming and The Cambria Iron Co. One of my favorite singer-songwriters of all time, Fleming’s solo strumming of his punkish confessions caught my ear and eye a decade ago. He possessed a stage presence shrouded with uncharacteristic shyness, a charismatic reluctance belying his Bukowski-esque runes. Now content sharing the spotlight, Fleming is decidedly more relaxed, jaunty even, since settling in with his muse (my supposition, anyway), co-vocalist Dawn Williams, and three fellow travelers. He’s a vocal powerhouse, pouring forth electrified, country-fried, soulful Southern rock.

Raised in Appalachia, Cliff B Worsham opens the evening. A founding member of Asheville metalcore sensation Secret Lives of the Freemasons before launching RBTS WIN, his hip-hop-inspired melodies were once vaguely reminiscent of Elliot Smith. “Then he got sober,” Coleman confides about Worsham’s return to his folk-music roots, “and he’s been doing his Appalachian Americana thing for a couple of years now.” Sandwiched ’twixt those two will be Johnson City’s Jacob Danielsen-Moore, strumming the style of porch music Andy and Opie might be relaxin’ to until Aunt Bee gets wind of his lyrics and chases that stranger back into the hills. Through darkly personal and occasionally twisted scenarios, for the last several seasons, he’s enthralled audiences on the Old Gods of Appalachia tour. “He’s just authentic when it comes to his music,” Coleman rightly declares. “There’s an honesty to what he does that you can connect with.” He’s right.

á

American Songwriter magazine proclaimed Greensboro’s own Abigail Dowd’s “eager vocals are accompanied by toe-tapping instrumentals that create a package of sonic warmth. It’s a friendly reminder that life’s blessings are happening in the here and now.” Dowd’s monthly Singer-Songwriter Series happens every third Tuesday, a fortuitous occasion for those interested in exploring the creative process by sitting in on conversations between working, folk-oriented tunesmiths.

King says Dowd, a self-described “song catcher,” is “bringing in artists she meets out on the road or at conferences. Top-notch talent, they’ll drive here just to do this with her.” Past participants include Dawn Landes (The Liberated Women’s Songbook), Ordinary Elephant, Demeanor, and Gold- and Platinum-record-selling artist Jason Adomo. On December 16, it will be Josh King joining Dowd on stage. “I was writing songs as soon as I learned my first two chords on guitar, in fourth grade,” says King. For an example of his resonate recordings, visit Youtube: Josh King’s Into the Blue.

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The aforementioned funktastic Sam Fribush arrives on December 23, chock full of Chuck Pinckney’s dynamic drum beats bolstering Will Darity’s spellbinding guitar flourishes, all three freestyle jazz masters. This triumphant triumvirate just returned after 16 packed performances barnstorming across 27 European and U.K. cities. Thanks to Vince Guaraldi, over the last 60 years, jazz has become sonorously synonymous with our holiday soundtrack, on par with Dean and Bing, so the lucky 100 or so attendees can expect a funk-infused feast casually wrapped in rapturous ribbons of radiant tonality. Tickets for this will sell faster than a 1999 Furby.

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This year, Flat Iron landed a grant from Live Music Society, a nonprofit providing support for smaller venues — “also giving North Carolina artists an opportunity to obtain free assets like a new bio, photo shoots, and live audio and video recording,” Spoon explains. Everything is produced on-site, “so they can do as many takes as they want and both of our engineers are really good at mixing.”

As for Josh King’s extracurricular activities, he recently hosted a House of Fools reunion and periodically jams with The Finns, a highly sought after wedding and corporate confab party band cultivating a sizable fan following.

On the flip side, despite an ideal location and enthusiastic following, that thin line between thriving and barely surviving is minuscule but crucial. Flat Iron would undoubtedly benefit from a benefactor with business bonafides. Leaping into the exciting, every once in a while profitable world of live music? Discuss over dinner.

For other events, visit flatirongso.com.

Omnivorous Reader

OMNIVOROUS READER

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Finding Everyman

Breaking a 19th century code

By Anne Blythe

Anybody who delights in being an attic archaeologist and parting the curtains of cobwebs in dim, dank corners to excavate layers of dust and forgotten family history will find much to like in Cipher: Decoding My Ancestor’s Scandalous Secret Diaries.

Jeremy B. Jones, an associate English professor at Western Carolina University, was digging around in boxes at his grandmother’s house one day when he came across a newspaper clipping that proved to be a golden ticket taking him back in time to the 19th century and the fascinating life of an ordinary man.

That man was William Thomas Prestwood, Jones’ great-great-great-great-grandfather, who had traveled many of the same lands and roads Jones has. Learning the details of his kinsman six generations removed was anything but typical family lore handed down from one generation to the next. Prestwood, as the newspaper clipping from 1979 revealed, had been a prolific diarist, but not the kind of journal keeper who seemed intent on preserving his life story beyond his death 166 years ago.

The details of the daily life of this militia man, Appalachian farmer, teacher, philosopher and prolific philanderer might have been lost to the annals of time had a man not salvaged a stash of Prestwood’s hand-sewn journals from a Wadesboro house scheduled for demolition in 1975. Those notebooks weren’t filled with the elegant and elaborate penmanship of the 19th century. They were written in code, a series of shapes, numbers and symbols that added an element of intrigue that eventually landed them on the desk of a state archivist.

Unable to solve the mystery of what the journals’ author had written, the archivist copied a few pages and sent them off to a National Security Agency cryptanalyst who had retired in the Appalachian Mountains. The expert in encryption and decryption quickly cracked the code, eventually transcribing the journals’ pages, revealing the many brief but telling details of an Everyman’s life in the Carolinas.

Prestwood wrote about collecting turkey eggs, hunting for a horse on the loose, farming, visiting neighbors, drinking rum, eating watermelon, playing music, strife with his father, the births of his children, deaths in the family, dreams, and his many sexual conquests and unrequited longings worthy of Tom Jones. He gives a glimpse of a public hanging and even the eclipse of 1821 — not with the flourish of a wordsmith but in the short sentences or fragments of an ordinary person.

“In 1859, a forgettable man died,” Jones writes in the opening sentence of Cipher’s first chapter. “He left behind bedclothes, a spyglass, cooking pots and an umbrella. He left history books and algebra books and mineralogy books and Greek grammar books and astrology books.” He lists the daughters and sons who preceded Prestwood in death and the debt he left behind, a sum that his “landholdings and scattershot of personal property — sold for a total of $11.94” didn’t cover. Prestwood, Jones writes, “entered the ground penniless.”

The journals he left behind, the treasure trove that Jones learned about from the yellowed 1979 newspaper article in The Asheville Citizen-Times — have proven to be priceless, though. They give a glimpse, as the codebreaker wrote, “of the very essence of Everyman’s life from the cradle to the grave.”

Jones toggles between Prestwood’s life and his own, turning to archives, property records and other historical accounts to help flesh out his ancestor’s story. Occasionally, he fills in gaps with his own imagination and hypotheticals to further a narrative that includes slave ownership and womanizing.

Jones struggled with whether he should lay bare the details of a long-dead man’s thoughts and his comings and goings. After all, those specifics were cloaked in a code cracked more than a century after the last journal entry.

“He’d blanketed his shin-skinning and corn-planting and woman-laying in code for a reason, and what right did I have to come along two hundred years later and run my fingers along the edges of his life in a library in the middle of the state?” Jones asked himself while viewing the diaries in a special library collection in Raleigh. “Was I shrinking his life by bringing it out into the open, making him smaller than he ever was, less of a man?”

In Cipher, Jones not only has brought Prestwood to life again — scandalous warts and all — he has created a memoir of sorts, a depiction of his own everyday life exploring today’s connection to this country’s complicated past. Jones has given us yet another chapter in Everyman history, an interesting read for anyone who likes to look at what America once was and has become. 

Sazerac December 2025

SAZERAC

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December 2025

Making a Mark

After graduating from Savannah College of Art and Design May 31, 2015, Blythe Leonard turned down an offer to work with Ralph Lauren, despite her background in fashion. Instead, she made a beeline back home to Thomasville.

By June, she had created her own brand of handcrafted leather goods and opened shop April 1, 2016. “I placed an order for my sewing machine before I even graduated.” 

The other part of her plan was to support other “makers.”

“I wanted to uplift locals. I have a service heart; I’m always hoping to help people up.” Blythe smiles. “It is Hallmark-y.”

Today, Blythe Leonard Leather at 606 Davidson St. features her hand-crafted goods. Miranda Kerr and the late Diane Keaton are among celebrities who have owned her handbags.

Her second location, 12 East Guilford St., was once headquarters for Lambeth Furniture Company, precursor to giant Thomasville Furniture.

She bought the 1898 building on October 1, 2020. 

With support from entrepreneurial parents Jane and Mark Leonard, third-generation owners of Hill Spinning Mill in Thomasville,

and a slew of paid and volunteer labor, a spiffy remodel resulted in the perfect showcase for one-of-a-kind items. Leonard transformed the down-on-its-luck building during the pandemic, stocking two stories with the work of 100 artists.

Maker’s Market opened on May 29, 2021.

Now, nearly 350 “makers” produce wares sold in artful displays: handmade jewelry, pottery, gardening tools, specialty food items and artwork — all using American materials. “If they make candles, even the glass they pour the candles into has to be made in the U.S.,” says Blythe.  Her woodworker brother, Nick, creates cutting boards and 16 other woodworkers sell everything from spoons to ornaments. 

Blythe considers the quality, pricing and work of friendly makers. “I won’t work for or with anybody that’s rude,” she insists.

Come the holidays, Blythe casts a wider net for those who cannot make the trek to historic Thomasville. 

“We are always looking for avenues to bring customers to our makers so that they are successful. So, we reached out to Piedmont Crossing [a Thomasville retirement community] to see if we could set up a tour bus to come visit the store.” 

On-site pop-up shops have grown popular.

Maker’s Market recently co-hosted a pop-up at Pennybyrn, extending invitations to other retirement communities.   

Blythe says the residents appreciated the opportunity to shop where they live since many use walkers, canes or wheelchairs.

Meanwhile, Blythe’s writing about how she got here. Her working title, “A Whole Lot of Faith and a Whole Lot of Crazy,” looks back on the exciting past decade. 

“I tell people I must be crazy to have opened a second business during COVID.” — Cynthia Adams

Unsolicited Advice

In 2021, PBS declared, “The misunderstood fruitcake has a magnificent shelf life — and history.” In fact, it dates back to ancient times. Perhaps the one your neighbor brought you last Christmas was, in fact, a relic of the past. Antiquated or not, we’ve got some alternative uses for that unwanted fruitcake your family is likely to forgo in favor of snowman-shaped sugar cookies.

Small and dense, it’s practically a brick, making it a perfectly weighty doorstop — though we don’t endorse building your home from fruitcake. Great for holding the door while you hustle through with present-laden arms, we recommend changing it out before spring and the onset of ants, though we cannot confirm that they’ll even eat it.

Sliced, you can take out some of that holiday angst on the ice with a family-friendly game of fruitcake hockey. 

Need a moment of om? Maybe a little hip release? Stretch yourself into the pigeon, a yoga pose that opens up those flexors and glutes, and rest your forehead on the next best thing to a yoga block — Aunt Helen’s fruitcake.

When all else fails, listen to the advice of your old buddy, Sam-I-Am. Don’t be a fruitcake Grinch. Try it! Try it! And you may . . . actually like it. Especially after a festive meal of Green Eggs and Ham.

Just One Thing

Every year, Greensboro’s GreenHill Center for NC Art gathers the works of over 70 artists state-wide in one glorious, two-month-long exhibit. Winter Show, now in its 46th season, has become a Gate City staple for both art connoisseurs and those who believe in supporting local artists. No matter where you land, you’ll find something unique that grabs your attention — perhaps one of Asheville creator Heather Divoky’s crowns. Divoky, who describes herself as “an artist, designer, and sometimes-poet,” utilizes marker and ink on paper, copper wire, and beads to fabricate these one-of-a-kind fashion statements. Divoky draws “in all sorts of fantastical, deeply detailed ways” to create vibrant, fanciful crowns, allowing you to wear her wildest whimsies — everything from moths and possums to celestial bodies and flora. Pictured here is Pride I, a royal rainbow of blooms. While we’re told this specific crown won’t be at Winter Show, we do know that ones similar will be on display in all their crowning glory. Want a head start? Don’t miss Winter Show’s First Choice event from 5:30–7:30 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 4, or Collector’s Choice from 7–10 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 6. The Public Opening follows from 1–3 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 7. Info: greenhillnc.org/winter-show-2025

Carol W. Martin collection at the History Museum

Window on the Past

Many of the traditions we have in Greensboro have stayed the same, including holiday storytelling. Pictured is Elizabeth Holder, a volunteer at the Greensboro History Museum during the 1990s, using miniature figurines to relay the Moravian settlers’ history to Global Studies Magnet School students. Some things never change — like the snap of the perfect Moravian cookie.

Tea Leaf Astrologer

TEA LEAF ASTROLOGER

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Sagittarius

(November 22 – December 21)

There’s a fine — and in your case, blurred — line between passionate and possessive. When Venus struts into Scorpio on Nov. 6 (where she’ll glamp out until month’s end), that line is primed to become a short leash if left unchecked — and nobody wants to be on the other end of that. A word of advice: Don’t smother the fire. Tempted as you may be to cling fast and tight, a little space will keep the coals glowing red hot.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Go easy on the eggnog. 

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Keep a knuckle of ginger on standby. 

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Add a splash of maple syrup. 

Aries (March 21 – April 19) 

Fold in a little extra sweetness.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Reshuffle the deck. 

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Dress for an adventure. 

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Make way for true romance.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Use your mulligan.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)  

Stretch those hip flexors. 

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Try not to overextend yourself. 

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Serve yourself the first slice. 

Art of the State

ART OF THE STATE

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Pete Sack’s Second Act

Taking a turn as community leader

By Liza Roberts

A successful painter for nearly 30 years, Pete Sack has work featured in several corporate collections, including SAS Institute and Duke University Hospital. His resume includes dozens of prominent solo and group exhibitions and he’s currently got a waiting list for commissions.

Known for paintings that feature finely nuanced portraiture through an abstracted lens, Sack often obstructs faces with shapes and colors, combining pencil drawings with watercolor and, finally, oil paint. Sometimes two or three portraits of the same person are layered on top of each other, just enough expertly wrought detail to recognize who it is.

His completely abstract paintings are no less contemplative. Thought Patterns is a series “created with the premise that we begin every day as a new person,” he says. Depicted as layers of spheres and ovals of various hue, some are cool and moody, others buoyant, a few bright and jangled. The resulting paintings reflect the moods and thoughts of the days he made them. “Each day we are reacting to fresh thoughts, actions and environments,” he says. With a limited palette and the self-imposed requirement that he complete each piece within a single day, the works are “fully representative of a particular moment in time and take into account the deeply layered experience each individual has with the present moment.”

Sack’s path began at the Visual Art Exchange — a nonprofit hub for nurturing, connecting and showcasing artists — when he landed in Raleigh in 1988 after earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at East Carolina University. “When I moved here, the VAE was where you learned how to be an artist in this area,” Sack says. It’s also where he and many others had their art exhibited publicly for the first time. “It was where you got your pieces on the wall.” 

An emerging artist residency at Artspace and a full-time studio there followed, which further engaged him with the downtown art community. When the creative space Anchorlight opened on S. Bloodworth Street, he moved his practice there. Then he spent nearly five years as an artist in residence at SAS Institute in Cary, where he made as many as 150 works of art for the growing software company’s walls. These days, Sack has a studio on Hargett Street and a dedicated roster of collectors.

None of it happened by sitting back and waiting for things to come to him. For years, Sack worked to create opportunities for himself, finding creative ways to get his work seen outside the gallery system, including working with real estate developers and interior designers making art that he could be proud of while still suiting their purposes.

The spirit of those efforts expanded to the wider community in 2023 when he and three other established Raleigh artists, Jean Gray Mohs, Lamar Whidbee and Daniel Kelly, began convening groups of fellow artists to discuss the declining number of exhibition opportunities and spaces to gather and experiment downtown. The result was the creation of The Grid Project, an art collective focused on mounting pop-up exhibitions. With the long-term loan by ceramic artist Mike Cindric of his former studio (now called Birdland), The Grid Project has mounted 10 shows in the last two years, exhibiting work by 25 artists. Those exhibits spawned the creation of what Sack and Mohs call the Boylan Arts District.

The calling on everything Sack’s learned over the last 27 years about what it means to be an artist in his community.

In an unexpected turn of events, Sack was tapped last spring to co-direct the Visual Art Exchange with Mohs. The two aim to revive the 45-year-old institution, bringing it back to its roots as a resource for artists, a place for them to learn the practical business of being an artist, connect with other artists, and show their work.

A rebirth is in order, because among other challenges, the pandemic hit the VAE hard. By one estimate cited by Sack, the nonprofit gave out as much as $300,000 in funds directly to support artists during that time. The financial hit proved significant, and the organization moved out of its brick-and-mortar home in late April as a cost-saving measure. Sack and Mohs were recruited by the board and took the reins in June.

“As we move into this new chapter, our immediate focus will be on strengthening the internal structure of the organization,” the co-directors said in an October email to stakeholders. At the time, they were full-time volunteers; the VAE had just $7,000 in the bank. They have since held a series of listening sessions to gather input about the organization’s future direction.

“We need to temper expectations,” Sack says, “and let people know that this is the reality. But we aren’t going anywhere. We’re going to see this through.”

In the meantime, they’re doing what they can, where they are, with what they’ve got. In October, they filled the empty windows of the former CVS at the corner of Hargett and Fayetteville streets with art by Renzo Ortega and Lee Nisbet, working with Empire Properties to turn what was a dark corner into an art beacon. VAE is providing small stipends for the artists and calling the effort “StreetFrame.” Sack says they hope to replicate it in other empty downtown storefronts.

In October, under the VAE banner, the duo opened Echoes of Modernism, an exhibition examining how modernist architecture shapes our political, social and economic lives. Curated by artist Sam van Strein, it included work by Amba Sayal-Bennett, Daniel Rich, Frances Lightbound and van Strein.

Meanwhile, Sack’s art has its own demands. Last year, he had back-to-back shows for six months at a stretch and worried about “saturating” the market.

The demands of his work with VAE have given him time to “take a step back, to recalibrate” his art, and to think about where to take it next. “My sketchbook is filling up, I am building up the reserves, and I’m excited to see where the work goes,” he says. “Toggling between the figurative and the abstract is still something that I’m pushing. At the end of the day, I’m always going to be an artist. I’m building up to something bigger.”

And despite the obvious challenges, that same spirit is fueling his work with VAE. Sack says he’s determined to make it indispensable to the next generation of Raleigh artists.

“Years ago, I would never have thought I’d be in this position, just because it’s not something I ever wanted to do,” he says. “But the writing is on the wall that nobody’s coming to save us. We have to save ourselves.” 

Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

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Predictably Perfect

A Hallmark moment to remember forever

By Cassie Bustamante

Let’s face it, the market of cheesy holiday romance films — à la Hallmark — is oversaturated. But I recall when just one or two would be released each year, and you had to pay attention to when they aired, even if you recorded them with TiVo. My daughter, Emmy, and I would dive under the plush, down cover of my cozy bed and snuggle together as a string of lights twinkled on the wall above my headboard and a Christmas tree glimmered in the corner of the room. Emmy’s interest in watching holiday films while cuddling with her mom has inevitably declined. Anyhow, this year, she’s away at her first year of college, leaving me on my own while Netflix drops a barrage of Hallmark-adjacent films. And while I know within the first five minutes of viewing how the next 90 or so will unfold, I still adore these movies. The plot line is as comforting as my morning cup of coffee, filling me with a familiar, nostalgic warmth.

Each one goes something like this: Big-city lawyer Holly ventures to a small, snowy town named Hope Falls — with a gazebo in its town center, of course — to visit her newly widowed father for the holidays. There, she inevitably saves the local Christmas tree farm, owned by a flannel-wearing stud named Nick, by setting up a pop-up bake sale where she sells cookies using her late mom’s cherished, handwritten recipe. Naturally, Holly and Nick fall in love and open a bakery named “Pining for Sweets” on the farm property and live happily ever after, selling Christmas trees and confections.

And while Emmy’s no longer into the yearly ritual, last Thanksgiving I discovered that I need not watch the 32 Hallmark “Countdown-to-Christmas” films all by my lonesome self.

And so it was that one late November evening, we arrive home from my parents’ house, stuffed and sleepy. Our oldest, Sawyer, heads immediately to his lair to play video games. Emmy retreats to the warmth of her own bed. My husband, Chris, turns the family-room television on to whatever college football game is being played. Our youngest, 6-year-old Wilder, builds a Pokémon puzzle on the coffee table with Chris. Taking inventory of the situation, I decide I could use a quiet, little lie-down myself.

I turn on the Christmas lights already strung over my bed (confession — we keep them up year round because I love their glow), flop myself down and grab the remote. Netflix tells me that Lindsay Lohan’s latest, Our Little Secret, is today’s top film. I love a good comeback story and applaud Lohan for finding her way back to the screen in a healthy, wholesome manner. And, to be fair, this movie is a level up from Hallmark. Kristin Chenoweth, Tim Meadows and Ian Harding, the dude who played Ezra Fitz in Pretty Little Liars, a show that Emmy and I watched together in its entirety? Yes, please.

With 30 minutes left in the movie, Wilder, wearing his Super Mario pajamas and Santa hat that he hasn’t taken off all day, wanders in to ask if I’d like to watch a Peanuts movie with him and Dad.

“Of course, I’d love to,” I say. “But lemme just finish watching this first. OK?”

He peers curiously at the screen and spies glimmering Christmas decorations adorning a large, twinkling, light-covered home. Instead of leaving, he hops on the bed and nestles into me. While the movie is rated PG-13, I decide it’s tame enough for him to stay. Plus, a lot of the inappropriate content will fly right over his Santa-capped head.

As the ending draws close and the love interest makes his grand, sweeping gesture to finally win over Lohan, Wilder says, “This is making me feel like I am going to cry.”

After a moment, Lohan and her beau embrace and seal it with a kiss. “See,” I say to Wilder, “It’s a happy ending.”

He hugs me tighter as he says, “Yes, but it’s just so beautiful that I want to cry.”

So, this year, I’m ready. The lights are twinkling above the bed. Soon I’ll be cuddling up with my new romance-loving partner in crime. And when Emmy comes home for her Christmas break, we’ll just squeeze in tighter and make room for her, too. That is, if she wants to join us.

O.Henry Ending

O.HENRY ENDING

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The Light That Binds Brightly

Reflections on traditions

By Ivan Saul Cutler

With warm, fond memories, I cherish my youth, especially those sweet middle childhood years in Compton, the vibrant working-class suburb of L.A. My family, the Cutlers, was the only Jewish family on McDivitt Avenue. We lived happily among many wonderful neighbors and friends.

Religious differences — Catholics, Protestants and Latter Day Saints — made no difference because Jimmy McAuley, Jimmy Hoffman, Craig Lee and Wayne Stiglbauer were my friends, my buddies. Yes, in those halcyon days of my youth, all of us guys were typical boys, doing what boys did together — playing sports, having newspaper routes, riding bikes, goofing off.

On one late-1950s, sunny, Southern California Christmas Day, I arose early. Of course, I knew what day it was. Even though no gift-bearing Santa Claus ever visited my home, my vicarious thrill to see and share their gifts was real, and my friends knew it.

Yes, I couldn’t wait to see what gifts they’d received and join in playing with their new toys and games, while righteously dismissing clothes as a real present.

Just as I was ready to dash out the door, Dad gestured gently with his hand to stop. “Son,” he said in his thick Lithuanian accent, “today is a special holiday for our Christian friends. Your buddies need to be with their families now.”

He was right. Thanks, Dad, for forever imprinting that lesson on my heart that’s been guiding me in life. Respect and honor are the Cutler holiday traditions and best gifts instilled by my immigrant father, Harry.

Now, almost 70 years later, Dad’s no longer here, but I’ve embraced those enduring values and then some. Back then as the Jewish kid in the neighborhood, I could rejoice in the distinct year-end holiday differences of Hanukah and Christmas, yet savor the exhilarating similarities of the radiating light of my heirloom Menorah (an eight-branch candelabra my Grandfather Meyer Cutler handmade in 1936 for my father and his two brothers) and my friends’ glowing Christmas trees, which I helped decorate every year.

My father’s respect-honor ethos teaching remains bright, illuminating and enhancing my diverse relationships with all people I encounter. It’s my father’s enduring gift of wisdom — the presents of presence — that keeps on giving all year.  

Hanukah (dedication in Hebrew), the bright eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights, commemorates the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple in 165 B.C.E. (before the common era) by the Maccabees after its desecration by the Syrian Greeks.

Hanukah’s brightness usually occurs in late November or December, depending on its coincidence on the Hebrew lunar calendar, 25 Kislev, corresponding this year to December 15 to 22, with the first candle kindled on December 14.

Although Hanukah is a post-Hebrew-Bible (Torah) holiday, the metaphor of bright light in the year’s shortest days warrants sharing and receiving its fortified reflection in Christmas brightness. For years, a joy of the season has been kindling the Hanukah candles with non-Jewish friends, especially when the leader candle (Shamash) and all eight candles are burning brightly on the eighth night. The glow from everyone’s eyes confirms the warmth of engaged humanity.

Again, this Hanukah, I happily return to that Christmas Day on McDivitt Avenue, when I couldn’t wait to check out the new toys under my friends’ trees. I can still hear Dad’s voice echoing clearly in my mind, even though he’s been gone for more than 46 years: “Wait until this afternoon or tomorrow to be with your friends. You have plenty of time.”

I did then and will continue to. 

Wild Wonders

WILD WONDERS

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Making Magic

Thomas Dambo’s installation of seven giant trolls across North Carolina is the biggest in the United States

By Ayn-Monique Klahre

At the edge of the woods, the troll peeks out: a baby by the standards of her kind, but, at over 12 feet tall, she’s giant to most of us humans. In one hand, she’s holding onto her mother’s tail, which winds deep into the trees — all the way to the hidden spot where Mom sleeps with one eye open, attentive to her children. This baby troll’s siblings have gone further afield to play, and their father is foraging nearby.

These trolls are not alive, of course, but a multifigure sculpture called The Grandmother Tree from Danish artist Thomas Dambo. There are five of these trolls in Raleigh’s Dorothea Dix Park, one in the Southwest Mill District of High Point and another at the Crescent Communities River District Community in Charlotte. Taken together, The Grandmother Tree is the largest permanent installation of Dambo’s trolls in the United States.

The idea to bring the trolls to North Carolina came when Dix Park Conservancy Art Task Force chair Marjorie Hodges and her husband, Carlton Midyette, visited the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay. There, they came across a Dambo troll installation called Guardians of the Seeds. “We saw the trolls and it took us 30 seconds to say, We need these for the park,” says Midyette. He worked with philanthropist Tom Gipson to lead a campaign to finance a project of that scale for Raleigh. Visit High Point spearheaded bringing its troll, Little Sally, to the area, working with the David R. Hayworth Foundation and DRIVE High Point Foundation for fundraising, with the Southwest Renewal Foundation facilitating the site selection. In Charlotte, developer Crescent Communities saw its troll, named Pete with the Big Feet, as a natural extension for its vision of the River District, which is in a mixed-use town center called Westrow, bordering the Airline Bike Park. “Big Pete is more than just a striking public art piece,” says Rainer Ficken, senior managing director of The River District. “He’s an invitation for Charlotte and its visitors to engage with the land in a new way, to explore our public trails and to reflect on the impact each of us has on the environment.”

Part of what attracted Dambo to this project was the way his installations would be part of reinventing and reengaging with these urban spaces. The 308-acre Dix Park, for example, was a longtime site of a state psychiatric hospital. “I loved the story about how this park used to be something else,” he says. “It’s a land of reinvention and restoration,” says Kate Pearce, executive director of Dix Park for the City of Raleigh.

For each of his installations, Dambo crafts a narrative around the trolls that offers a sustainability lesson and a little mystery, too. In his telling, the North Carolina trolls are all protecting the Grandmother Tree, the oldest and wisest tree in the forest, who is hidden in another forest in the area, disguised as a regular tree. Each of the seven trolls wears a medallion around its neck that contains pieces of the same heritage tree. Taken together, they share the location of the Grandmother Tree. (We’ve been told it’s in Raleigh, but that’s as much of a hint as we got.) The medallions were made by Billy Keck and Melody Ray of Raleigh Reclaimed, a company that makes furniture using salvaged woods. 

In part of the poem that tells this story, Dambo says:

But one species, all trolls, has learned to fear through evolution 

Invasive, a pollution, you must never trust a human 

A human seeks the oldest trees, to kill and cut them down 

and chop it up in tiny pieces, haul it, burn it in their town 

And so the trolls have cast a spell, enchanted the grandmother tree 

So no human can find her; now she looks like any other tree 

But every time the moon is dark, the red wolves howl and bark 

This is the sign that sparks the start, the trolls to search the park 

 

Each of the trolls came together through a robust community effort. Dambo and his team of professional troll-makers designed the creatures and built the frames, then used local volunteers to build the trolls on site. In Raleigh, Habitat for Humanity Wake County used a mix of staff and skilled volunteers, plus a wider volunteer effort to do the rest. When the signup to volunteers opened, there was so much interest that the server crashed. (“It was like buying a Taylor Swift ticket,” laughs Midyette.) “We rotated our entire construction staff to work on the project,” says Patricia Burch, CEO of Habitat Wake. “It was unique, exciting and a lot of fun — so cool to have a hand in building them.” In Charlotte, Crescent Communities solicited volunteers from their own staff, as well as nonprofit partners including Daniel Stowe Conservancy, Catawba Lands Conservancy, Sustain Charlotte and the Tarheel Trailblazers.

Dambo’s team also worked with local organizations to source the reclaimed materials to build the trolls. In High Point, materials were provided by Wise Living, Reliance Timber, Triad Timber & Millworks, Hood Distribution and Southwest Renewal Foundation. In Charlotte, Crescent Communities used its own construction waste, as well as recycled material donations from D.H. Griffin and She Built This City. In Raleigh, Habitat Wake and its ReStores donated much of the material, as did Raleigh Reclaimed, which sourced rot-resistant woods such as cedar, oak and locust for the project. “We use materials that otherwise would go into landfills or the waste stream, so we had a built-in process for collecting these materials,” says Ray. “It just made sense to partner on the project.” Additionally, Kentucky Bourbon Barrel chipped in 17 tons of old bourbon barrels (most of which went into making Raleigh’s mama troll’s 620-foot tail), and Midyette donated the remains of a fallen-down barn and about a mile of old fencing he had on his property. 

In Raleigh, it took about 400 volunteers and three weeks to build the five trolls (not including work Dambo and team had done in Denmark ahead of time). “Every single stave was put in by a volunteer,” says Midyette. A lot of volunteer work went into the making of the more than 300 sections of the mother’s tail, for which the bourbon barrels were completely disassembled and reassembled to fit the landscape. “This was great for the community volunteers, since it was safer than being up on scaffolding,” says Dambo. “The trolls are not meant to be perfect — I always like to see the dents and cracks — because when you zoom out, you don’t see the imperfection.” In the end, it took more than 24 tons of lumber and 50,000 screws to make those five trolls.

The goal with The Grandmother Tree is to draw visitors to these natural areas — and for these visitors to experience the same sense of magic and wonder as Dambo did going into the forest as a child, he says. “Bringing Little Sally to life reinforces our focus to create experiences that blend creativity, sustainability and community pride,” says Melody Burnett, president of Visit High Point. Agrees Pearce: “It’s about bringing magic back into spaces.”