Poem January 2026

POEM

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The Other Side of the Mirror

“Let’s pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze . . .
And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away,
just like a bright silvery mist.”

    — Lewis Caroll, Through the Looking Glass

 

There’s always a reason I’d rather stay home,

as I brush my hair, gaze into my reflection, sit

before the dresser where I combed my curls

as a girl, forever getting ready for the life

that hadn’t arrived yet. Mirrors remained

unfazed, as I exchanged one image for another,

changed my hairstyles and hats, traced fingers

along a scar, abandoned myself for imperfections.

I have come close to escaping into another world,

always about to leave or about to live, my eyes

child-like, clear as glass, considering what time

it must be . . . to keep from disappearing

into my own unbreakable stare.

— Linda Annas Ferguson

Dream Home

DREAM HOME

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Dream Home

A Loewenstein lives on in Irving Park

By Billy Ingram • Photographs by Amy Freeman

When newlyweds Daniel and Kathy Craft set out in search of their dream home, one both idealized yet narrowly defined, it may have seemed like that impossible dream enshrined in song. What they had in mind was a place that offered a warm hearth and an enriching environment where they could raise a family, but the type of home they desired wasn’t being built anymore, and the remaining ones were being eradicated at an alarming rate. They were longing for a Loewenstein.

In those rare instances when Triad realtors happen across a listing for a “Loewenstein,” the name is spoken in revered tones. There were other mid-century architects crafting magnificent homes locally and across the Southeast, celebrated artists held in just as high regard — Charles C. Hartmann and Harry Barton being obvious options — but for sweeping super-structures limited solely by one’s imagination and, only occasionally, the laws of gravity, Edward Loewenstein was, and remains, in a class unto himself.

The unfolding of the 1950s ushered in an era of unprecedented prosperity buoyed by an abundance of unrealized real estate, an atmosphere where there could be no greater testimony to a family’s success than the home they had designed and constructed for themselves. And no address came packaged with more prestige for platforming those affluent architectural assertions than a cautiously expanding Irving Park neighborhood street encircling the Greensboro Country Club, established in 1909.

A disciple of the Modernist movement typified by Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra and other avant-garde West Coast architects, Edward Loewenstein graduated from Chicago’s Deerfield Shields High School and MIT with a B.A. in architecture in 1935. He established his Greensboro architectural firm in 1946 after having served during WWII and marrying Francis Stern, stepdaughter to denim impresario Julius Cone. He was determined to break away from the Arts and Crafts, Mission Colonial and Tudor Revivals going up north of downtown.

After completing a dozen or so conventional dwellings, as luck would have it, he was approached in 1950 by a young couple, Wilbur and Martha Carter, who had three children and a hankering for a homestead that would instill an air of distinction on their heavily wooded, 1.28-acre lot facing Country Club Drive and extending back to Cornwallis.

Given a choice between two wildly divergent designs, one a Georgian Revival fitting snugly into the neighborhood’s stately but somewhat staid motif, the Carters chose the more radical schematic Loewenstein presented them with. “I think there were other houses in Greensboro that had Modernist tendencies, but it seemed he was the only one at the time that was [dedicated to] it,” says Patrick Lee Lucas, author of the definitive book on Greensboro’s Modernist maestro: Modernism at Home: Edward Loewenstein’s Mid-Century Architectural Innovation in the Civil Rights Era.

Following the precepts of international modern style, the Carters’ house was defined by a flat roof, an open floor plan, curtain windows and minimal ornamentation. Architects of the time were guided by the “rule” that “form follows function,” which prompted designers to consider what a building should achieve for the user before what it should look like. Blueprints called for a horizontal, L-shaped structure fronted with a low-pitched roof atop a screened (eventually glass) solarium, which featured bluestone flooring that stretched into the central living room. Obscuring an already sunken, single-leaf front door, an 8-foot-high brick wall extended from the front yard into the home for a short way to distinguish the bedroom corridor from communal space.

Toward the rear, hidden storage and built-in bookshelves abounded, and at the base of the windows inside the den a brick planter was enclosed. Back-to-back fireplaces were embedded in a load bearing wall facing both the living room and den. The spacious kitchen was floored in 9-by-9-inch, brown-and-marble-patterned, vinyl-asbestos tiles made by Armstrong. Employing industrial-use tiles and natural stone floors indoors were uncommon home accoutrement. The children’s rooms were connected via a Jack-and-Jill bathroom.

Rather than clearcutting, as was the custom, all of the imposing oaks on the property remained in place. “Loewenstein seemed particularly adept at using underutilized lots in Irving Park,” Lucas points out. “These were the tree lots that no one wanted or they were sold off from a bigger parcel as the neighborhood further subdivided.” Gravitating toward rugged grounds with unusual features, says Lucas, “Part of his goal, both from a Modernist sense but also from a sensitivity to the environment, was to build around the trees.”

“Of all the houses that he designed, it’s the most unusual in that it has two living rooms next to one another,” Lucas notes. “One was essentially an outdoor room, so it meant that there were times of the year it couldn’t be used because it was just so cold and hard to heat in the ’50s.” The resulting perception was an innate spaciousness that gave the sense of being outside while inside the home, its wide-open interiors defined not so much by walls as where people chose to congregate.

The Carter abode was such a radical departure from the norm it was practically an affront. “Some of the neighbors were like, what? And others were like, this is cool,” Lucas states. “So there was a little tug of war in that sense.” In correspondence concerning what he referred to as his “Dream Home,” Loewenstein lamented that he “received violent comments in both directions from neighbors and friends.” The Carters themselves were pleased as “they wanted it to be not something traditional,” Lucas reiterates.

Vindication arrived after the house won an American Institute of Architects North Carolina Design Award in 1951, was featured in Architectural Record in 1952, and then bestowed a 1955 Merit Award from Southern Architect magazine. Resistance to Loewenstein’s futuristic fancies melted as a subsequent Modernist home was taking shape on Princess Anne Street in nearby Kirkwood, where homeowners petitioned the Greensboro Zoning Commission to allow for a departure from the contemporary Cape Cod conformity sanctioned by its neighborhood planners.

From the beginning, Loewenstein was the first in North Carolina to hire Black architects. “Some had employed African American draftsmen before World War II, but he was the first to do it in a major way,” Lucas points out. Many, like Clinton Gravely and W. Edward Jenkins, went on to great acclaim in Greensboro with their own firms. “It was a form of protest or nonconformity in terms of the way that he operated, employing these guys who wouldn’t have an architecture firm to work for because there wasn’t one that would hire them.”

Lucas posits that marrying into the influential Cone family allowed Loewenstein to buck the system “and probably not suffer the consequences of other societal forces relative to how the rest of us had to operate.” Hailing from Chicago, where race relations were far less volatile, Lucas muses, “Maybe he was doing what he was doing and just let the chips fall where they may.” Or, perhaps, being the only prominent Jewish architect in North Carolina, it was a logical extension of his own status as an underdog.

With Loewenstein’s reputation and workload steadily growing across the Southeast he took on a partner, Robert A. Atkinson Jr. In 1950s in Irving Park alone, the firm of Loewenstein-Atkinson was responsible for ground-breaking Modernist designs such as the sumptuous Ceasar and Martha Cone house on Cornwallis (demolished for a cul-de-sac in 1994), the Sidney and Kay Stern residence at 1804 Nottingham, UNCG’s 1959 Commencement Home at 612 Rockford, the John and Evelyn Hyman home at 608 Kimberly Drive and the game-changing Robert and Bettie Chandgie hybrid two blocks away at 401 Kimberly.

Embracing Modernism allowed for a lessened emphasis on interior decoration. “What we’re going to do is just celebrate nature without having to actually reproduce it inside,” Lucas maintains about the minimalist philosophy, creating frameworks adaptable to any aesthetic. One can’t help but wonder what it was like back in the 1950s, before suburban street lamps dulled Irving Park’s nighttime skies, the warmth inside these homes contrasting with nature’s soaring flora bathed in moonlight refracted through panoramic glass apertures.

In 2004, with three kids in tow, the Crafts became only the second owners of Loewenstein’s self-described “Dream House” he had crafted for the Carters, but not without considerable effort. “We’d been looking for years,” Kathy recalls. The journey home began when they were newlyweds, but didn’t end until seven years later. “We were 28 years old and we just couldn’t turn around and buy a Loewenstein at that time.” Still, they researched, attended open houses and watched frustratingly as, one after another, Modernist monoliths fell out of favor and were leveled in favor of developing the land they occupied.

Fate stepped in after the Crafts met Lee Carter at what had been his childhood home. Kathy knew after just a few feet into the front door that this was the one. None the less, Carter wasn’t exactly a motivated seller. Witnessing what had happened to other comparable properties, he only, months later, made the decision to allow the family home to change hands, but with one stipulation — that it not be desecrated or demolished. “It was sort of destiny, it was the right timing and it was the right house,” Kathy says.

In the suitably spacious backyard, the Crafts discovered the Carters had installed a small horse stable and utility building. Structural alterations undertaken by the Carters decades earlier, overseen by Loewenstein, included decreasing the width of the wall alongside the front door while increasing the length of the roof covering the solarium. In the 1980s, brickwork inside and out was painted white. A pantry door off of the kitchen still retains the Carter family’s important names and contact information scrawled across it, reminders of a time when only five numbers were required to dial neighbors.

Foundational tweaks the Crafts have instituted are minimal. All of the window panes have been replaced and the vinyl-asbestos kitchen flooring was removed in favor of a terrazzo-like porcelain tile. After seven decades, a smattering of those old growth trees have been uprooted by necessity, flooding the home with natural light. “I never turn on a lamp until the sun goes down,” Kathy says.

In the early 2000s, Kathy owned the Eastern Standard Gallery located in downtown’s Southend community, where she showcased, among many other exemplary artists, her brother-in-law Michael Coté’s furniture. In fact, he constructed their intricately inlaid wood dinner table. “He was not trained, never schooled. He just picked up woodworking and made that table,” says Kathy. Redeploying the matching high back chairs for accents, the Crafts instead assembled table-side a half dozen transparent, Baroque-influenced Philippe Starck Ghost Chairs with curved armrests. As actress Katherine Hepburn famously attested, “Men are unhappy sitting at a dining room table if their chairs don’t have arms.”

Behind that table, imbuing an Asian influence, is an a four-panel vintage Baker Furniture screen that Douglas Freeman painted for Daniel’s birthday in 2010. A happy match with what the Carters had acquired in 1964 and left behind that adorns the den, a Japanese byōbu from MoMA depicting Heian-period courtiers leading a formal procession. “That is actually paper adhered to the wall, then framed,” Kathy explains.

The solarium is punctuated by a painting awash in muted tones, “an abstract of the marsh by Walter Greer,” says Kathy, “a well-known artist from Hilton Head Island. Dad loved his work.” Nearby are two Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs and an ottoman, reflexively reflecting an overall retro sensibility to the decor, embellishments emblematic of a sense of playful permanence and space-age proportionality this home embodies.

The Crafts’ three children have graduated college and scattered to careers in various locales, but this in no way feels like an empty nest. If anything, a welcoming environment for a potential influx of grandkids.

The mid-century Modernist movement was, for many, an optimistic harbinger for the wondrous World of Tomorrow promised us by the 1939 World’s Fair, Disneyland and Reddy Kilowatt (“Live better electrically!”). Finished in 1954, Loewenstein’s own home on Granville Road features a driveway long and wide enough to land a flying car comfortably, should it come to that. 

In his waning days, Frank Lloyd Wright was quoted as saying, “The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.” Loewenstein was more laconic: “Dedicated architects die unhappy. They never get to unleash creative juices because of pressure to please clients.” He gets right to the heart of what gives the Carter House its cultural significance, so cutting-edge for the period — nobody knew enough about the direction the upstart architect was headed to get in his way.

In the end, Loewenstein’s instinct for “bringing the outside inside” backfired in terms of longevity. Eventually, some would argue inevitably, the spacious landscaping these houses were integrated into far exceeded the commercial value of the structures.

“It used to be,” Lucas says, “if you were one of these Modernist houses designed by this weird guy, Loewenstein, no big deal. We’ll just tear it down and build something bigger there.” Now the name conveys a level of esteem in the way Rolex, Ferrari and Tiffany have become synonymous with style and stature. “Most of the calls I still get are from realtors trying to prop up their property with a Loewenstein connection. So it’s kind of moved on in that regard.”

As realtor Katie Redhead related to me a few years ago about the current marketplace mindset regarding Loewensteins, “We started seeing homes that were in Westerwood, a house on East Lake Drive — let me tell you, those houses went off the charts, people went nuts. Right now we’ve got such a high demand, if one did come on the market, I think it would be well received.  And I probably wouldn’t have said that 10 years ago.”

As for the Crafts, they won’t be selling any time soon.

Throwing Stones, Sweeping Ice

THROWING STONES, SWEEPING ICE

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Throwing Stones, Sweeping Ice

In the Gate City, curling is very cool

By Ross Howell Jr.  •  Photographs by Bert VanderVeen

Did you know you can hone your viewing skills for the 2026 Winter Olympics right in downtown Greensboro?

Most Tuesday evenings from November through January, you can bundle up and head out to LeBauer Park’s seasonal skating rink, where teams with monikers like Curl Jam, Of Ice and Men, Rolling Stones and Sultans of Sweep compete in the Greensboro Curling League.

I’m guessing that your experience with curling is like mine — you’ve watched it on TV every four years. Maybe this will help.

Think of playing cornhole on an ice rink, where you slide the bags instead of throwing them, mix in checkers or chess, where your opponent’s pieces can block your move, factor in the chance that you might slip and bust your butt, and you’ve pretty much got curling. Well, sort of.

Alternating individual players slide (“throw”) heavy, handled objects (“stones” or, familiarly, “rocks”) across the ice (“sheet” or “rink”) toward a ringed target (“house”), winning points for the stones that remain closest to the center (“button”). Teammates assist the throwing player by scrubbing (“sweeping”) the ice in front of the stone with brushes to influence its path and speed toward the house.

Got it?

To refine my vague understanding of the game, I drive over to Old Town Tavern on Spring Garden Street to meet the team that the tavern sponsors — Gate City Curling.

When I walk out on the patio, I’m greeted by Chris “Skipper” Ratliff, the team captain, who works in the financial aid and scholarships office at UNCG.

Turns out, Gate City Curling is one of the original teams in the Greensboro Curling League.

Around the time of the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, Chuck Burch, manager of the Greensboro Ice House, an indoor skating facility on Landmark Center Boulevard that features two National Hockey League-size ice rinks, put out a call on Facebook for people who might be interested in seeing a demonstration about curling.

Ratliff saw it and convinced his friend, coworker in financial aid and now teammate, Spencer “Wildcard” Smith, to join him at that first session.

“We go, they do a brief demonstration and ask, ‘Who’s interested?’” Ratliff says.

“Spencer’s and my arms shot straight up,” he continues. “We started the team from that.”

Initially, there were just six teams that played a couple of matches during the season.

Teammate Raina “Queen” Barnett, who works in the registrar’s office at UNCG, recalls the humble beginnings of the league.

“The stones were actually stainless-steel salad bowls filled with concrete,” she says. One bowl was inverted over the other and joined at the seam with layers of painter’s tape.

“The handle was PVC pipe,” she adds. “It was all very backyard. We’d get brushes for sweeping the ice from Home Depot.”

“Yeah, you could break the handles putting too much force on them,” quips team member Angel “Viking” Fuentes, a general contractor who’s a native of Mexico City.

“And we still use Sharpies to draw the circle targets on the ice,” Barnett adds.

Backyard? I’ll say.

An Olympics-grade curling stone made of the rare, quartz-free granite found in only two quarries in the world — in Scotland and Wales — will carry a 5-figure price tag.

But, despite its salad bowl origins, the sport has caught on.

For the 2025-2026 season, the Greensboro Curling League boasts 16 teams of four to five players each. The season lasts for weeks and culminates with a two-day tournament, where the championship team is awarded the Mitchell/Walden Memorial Cup, named in honor of the late Katelyn Mitchell and Rob Walden, who were original members of the league. The winning team’s name is inscribed on the cup and the members hold it for a year, much like the Stanley Cup in professional hockey.

And the stones these days are greatly improved, thanks to a grant from the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro.

“Ours are recreational league stones like they have in Canada,” Ratliff says. And these stones aren’t cheap, either. They’re priced at around $500 apiece.

While they enjoy the new trappings, both Ratliff and Smith emphasize that their matches are not like what you see on TV.

For example, Gate City Curling has never competed inside a covered facility, not even the Greensboro Ice House. In fact, the team relishes the special challenges that curling outdoors presents.

“Charlotte has a curling league, but they’re all indoor like you see in the Olympics,” Ratliff says. “That’s just not how we do it,” he continues. “We battle the elements. It’s a lot more exciting.”

“The ice changes constantly, throughout the night,” Ratliff adds. “It really comes down to which team can adapt first.”

Teammate Kevin “Hammer” Shoffner, who’s the marketing manager for Habitat for Humanity, chimes in.

“It might be 60 degrees one week,” he says. “Then, all of a sudden, we’re back to freezing.”

“One thing we’ve learned is that you can’t curl in the rain,” Ratliff adds. That’s because there’s no grain on the ice to slow the stone.

“And you cannot curl in the snow,” says Barnett. Its accumulation impedes the glide of the stone.

“A heavy snow we had years ago was terrible for curling,” Shoffner says.

“The stone wouldn’t go five feet,” Ratliff remembers.

As locals know, snow in the Piedmont often turns to slush: “It was like throwing on cat food!” Smith laughs.

“That’s what’s unbelievable,” says Fuentes.

“Even in the worst conditions,” he continues, “you just get out there and think, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m doing this!’ The weather doesn’t matter.”

Another attraction for Gate City Curling members is the sense of community they feel participating in the league.

“It takes a unique person to go outside at 9:30 at night in 30-degree temperatures and stand on ice,” says Ratliff.

“You play other sports, people can be hyper competitive,” Shoffner comments. “But this is organic. It’s not super pressure, we’re out there having fun.”

Fuentes offers a different take on this quirky community.

“What I get the most fun out of is telling people that I play curling,” he laughs. “And people go, ‘What? Curling? No, really, that can’t be real.’”

“There’s definitely shock value,” says Barnett. “People say, ‘What? Curling? In Greensboro?’”

While the teammates enjoy the notoriety and the relatively laidback competition, they’re still in it to win it.

Shoffner is known for his powerful throw and is usually designated to throw the all-important last stone, called the “hammer,” which can displace all the stones in the house.

Smith is the team’s rock, paper, scissors champion, the game by which the team determines the order in which individual members throw their stones and what color stones the team plays with.

Barnett has perfected the crucial first throw, reliably placing a stone to set up the team for a potential point.

Fuentes is the team’s finesse guy, known for finding his way to the button.

Ratliff handles the team’s promotion while consistently ranking among the top three sweepers in the league.

“We’re a pretty well-oiled machine because we’ve been doing this for seven years,” Ratliff explains.

“If we get that win on a Tuesday night, I got a little spring in my step on Wednesday,” says Fuentes.

“I may be the most competitive on the team,” Ratliff says. Since he’s captain, you’d expect that.

“I don’t know anybody who goes onto the ice and doesn’t want to win,” Barnett claims. “We still have that drive, but it’s not so competitive that it sucks all the fun out.”

“Friendly rivalry,” Smith concludes.

In competition, there are nuances that are missed by the uninitiated. Most of us would note the loudly barked directions and sometimes frantic sweeping, but we would probably miss the hand signals teammates use.

“There’s a lot of noise out on the ice at any given time,” Shoffner says.

Not only is the outside lighting dim, the Sharpie-drawn house is barely discernible from the thrower’s position. So hand signals can be critically important.

“Sometimes, you throw it and you think you’ve got it in the house, and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I’m on the button!’” says Smith. “And your teammates are like, ‘Dude, you’re 5 feet away, what are you talking about?’”

“You cannot do it by yourself,” Barnett emphasizes. “Even if your eyesight is perfect, you cannot see.”

“If you’re the one throwing and your teammate is sweeping,” she continues, “it’s like an optical illusion.”

“Your teammates are really your eyes and ears,” Barnett concludes.

So what’s the future look like for Gate City Curling?

Already, Monday nights on the rink have been set for novices to try their skills and maybe develop new teams for the Tuesday-night league.

“What I’d like the community to know is the Greensboro Curling League is a thing,” Ratliff says. “It’s been run by some really cool, independent and dedicated people who came together, created it and have run it successfully for seven years.”

“For me, seeing curling growing and having ice hockey come back to Greensboro is exciting,” Shoffner says. “It’s not exactly a movement, but there’s a rise in winter sports.”

“It’d be great if the Gargoyles had us out for a little curling exposition on the ice at half time,” says Smith.

“News 2 did a live feed of the tournament one year; maybe they’d do it again,” Ratliff muses.

“We already do one,” Smith says. “It’s just a tripod and a camera, right?”

“Yeah,” Ratliff answers. “I slipped on the ice and broke my tripod.”

Smith grins.

“I’d forgotten you fell,” he says. “Thanks for reminding us.”

“Breaking a tripod instead of a collar bone, that’s better,” Fuentes says with a laugh.

Curling in downtown Greensboro may not be the Olympics. But it’s plenty entertaining. And if you show up on a wintry Monday night to give it a try, or on a Tuesday just to hang out by the rink and watch, you’ll warm the hearts of some very dedicated people.

Barbecue, Bourbon, Boutiques

BARBECUE, BOURBON, BOUTIQUES

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Barbecue, Bourbon, Boutiques

A journey into Jamestown

By Danielle Rotella Guerrieri

Photographs by Laura Gingerich

On a crisp, chilly day with a deep indigo-blue sky overhead, I maneuver my car through a couple of smooth turns into historic downtown Jamestown. Oak and cedar behemoths line my path before being replaced by skinny, black rod-iron light posts, all protecting the quaint village center, comprised of nine one-or two-level buildings. Historic Jamestown, a mere 12 miles from downtown Greensboro, is one of the oldest established communities in the Triad, a hidden gem tucked between Greensboro and High Point, offering enough locally owned eateries and boutiques to make it worth blocking out a whole day on your 2026 calendar.

Since the COVID pandemic ended, Jamestown has been focusing on revitalization in the form of newly emerging shops and eateries — an impressive transformation I’ve witnessed in the short four years since I lived there.

Excited to explore, I meet my friend, Janna, for a full day of shopping and exploring. But first, we fuel up on caffeine at Kindred Coffee. Engulfed by the smoky, rich, chocolatey aroma as we walk in the door, we’re greeted by owner Greg Pittman’s friendly face behind the counter. Pittman and his mom, Marsha, opened Kindred in late 2022 after their online coffee subscription and Cause Roast coffee truck business took off.

“We wanted to create a space where people felt loved and cared for when they’re here,” says Pittman. Jamestown didn’t have a dedicated coffee shop at the time, so it was an easy transition to shift their coffee operation to the space at River Station Twist. After sipping my cuppa espresso, I’m rarin’ to go.

At Second Chance Closet, a boutique-like thrift store that opened in the former Wells Fargo building in 2024, all proceeds go toward Chance Walters Ministry, operated by owners Kacie and her husband, Chance Walters. “The reason we succeed,” says Kacie, “is word of mouth and being part of such a tight-knit community.” Filled to the brim with clothing for all ages, it doesn’t look like a former bank until you veer to the right and notice the formal wear section housed in an old vault. Janna finds a long, alabaster sweater coat for $12.99, and I snag a funky, avocado-green, animal-print sweater for $6.99 — deals we definitely can’t pass up.

Guilford + Main, a large clothing and home goods shop that opened in 2021, is owned by Lisa Perdue and run by her daughter, Alexis Turner. Silver Gallery, its sister store, has been a shopping staple at Friendly Center in Greensboro for 25 years. But, notes Turner, “We have more space here than Silver Gallery, so we can carry more things.” A pair of earrings, gold spikes glimmering on a cream-colored loop, draws my attention, while Janna picks out a few $5 silver dangles from their sprawling bracelet bar.

Strolling back down Main Street, it’s hard to miss Jamestown artist John Firesheets’ enormous sea-blue mermaid-and-squid mural painted on the side of The Soap Lady. Flanked by inviting black front porch rockers, Soap Lady’s creaky screen door announces our arrival to owner Susan Stringer, who’s greeting us with a genuine ear-to-ear grin. In business in Jamestown for 27 years, Stringer expanded to her larger storefront in 2012, where she’s been selling her handmade artisanal soaps and lotions ever since, and has added pottery, soy candles, cards, and many other locally crafted goods to her inventory. Stringer makes all the soaps, body wash, shower gel, sugar scrub, lip balm, body powder and bath bombs using an olive oil base and other natural ingredients. “We have a lot of people going through issues like cancer and radiation, and they can’t use fragrances,” says Stringer, “and using a real soap makes a huge difference.”

Our bellies soon start growling, so we stop for lunch at Southern Roots, one of several eateries on Main Street. Full Moon Oyster Bar, Simply Thai and Black Powder Smokehouse are just as enticing, but walking into Southern Roots is similar to breezing through your favorite aunt’s sunlit beach house — you feel right at home. But, please, keep your shoes on! Owner Lisa Hawley uses her family’s Southern recipes, supporting local farmers and sustainable agriculture. As Hawley puts it, “Our food is prepared with love.”

Our charming waitress, Sydney, takes our orders. Janna can’t resist her favorite gluten-free meal: flat iron steak with a bourbon glaze, cheese grits and Crowder beans, while I select a cup of chicken-and-dumpling soup and a chicken salad sandwich half on buttery, toasted sourdough.

Satiated, we walk a few doors down for a sweet treat, as the mix of sweet and savory scents emanating from Cakes by B’s Blue House Bakery tickles our cold noses and lures us inside. There, we find owner Bridgid Murphy, who co-owns it with husband Bob, whipping up her rosemary goat cheese quiche. Murphy has been satisfying the town’s sweet tooth in her adorable blue house for the last 10 years, preparing everything from caramel-and-pecan-pie bars to savory gluten-free cheddar biscuits. “Our quiches and chocolate chip cookies are incredibly popular,” says Murphy. “We also have a fun one called ‘What the Heck.’“ What the heck, you’re wondering. “It’s devil’s food cake,” she says, “with cookies-and-cream filling and vanilla buttercream on top.” When she first opened, she aimed to have a bakery that doubled as a community haven, and she delivers with baking and decorating classes, meet-the-candidate events during election season, food truck festivals and a trunk-or-treat every Halloween. We snag a batch of Murphy’s famous chocolate chip cookies before our next shop.

Feeling like we entered a high-end art gallery, we step into Bottone Home, a design and decor store with “home vibes on point” owned by Kody Bottone. After we ooh and aah at the exquisite leather chairs, funky modern vases, smooth-edged end tables and enormous wood sculptures, Bottone tells us the shop opened just last year and the company also manages interior design projects. My eyes are immediately captivated by Greensboro artist Erin Beck’s paintings, featuring broad brushstrokes of deep burgundies, vivid emerald greens and auburns, beautifully capturing florals, nature and still lifes. Her paintings make a vibrant splash against Bottone Home’s modern, neutral furnishings.

As 5 o’clock looms, we head up the street to meet our husbands for drinks and dinner. Crafted cocktails call our names as we enter Barrell & Co., where we’re struck by low lighting and smooth jazz and the calming, clean, soothing aroma of tobacco mixed with vanilla. Opened last year, owners Ket Jones, Matt Lokercome and Paul Lothakoun designed the space for enjoying elegant cocktails while phones take a back seat and conversation takes hold. Old fashioneds and smoked fashioneds are ordered, although, not being a huge bourbon fan myself (yet!), I sample a few varieties, courtesy of Jones, and I discover I just might like Eagle Rare.

Black Powder Smokehouse is our dinner pick — a high-energy barbecue restaurant so good they opened a second location in Asheboro. The smoked turkey breast, jalapeno sausage, and pork spare ribs beckon, but we opt for the ever popular, beef brisket, barbecue pork and chicken. Opened in 2019 by pitmaster Keith “Big Brisket” Henning, in a converted 1920s gas station, the establishment features beautifully preserved old gas pumps and massive garage doors that open for outdoor seating on warm days. Four sauces line each table, from house signature sweet sauce to “The Heat,” a hint of fire for spicy enthusiasts. Between us, we share crunchy, cool coleslaw — an excellent heat cleanser — golden-to-perfection tater-tot casserole and an elevated take on mac-and-cheese, smoked gouda kicking it up a notch.

As a yawn stretches across my face, we make plans to return another time for drinks at Potent Potables followed by live music at The Deck. Bags and belly full, I start my short drive home, the historic Jamestown street lamps flickering and fading in the rearview.

Jamestown History

Laid out as a community in 1792 by prominent Quaker George Mendenall, the official town of Jamestown was chartered in 1816 and named for George’s father, James. At Mendenhall Homestead, the home of George Mendenhall’s son, Richard, built in 1800, I’m accompanied by two tour guides, Will Ragsdale and Jay McQuillan, members of the Historic Jamestown Society. McQuillan serves as president, and Ragsdale is the grandson of William and Mary Elizabeth Ragsdale, who previously owned the property and later donated it to the Historic Jamestown Society, which they helped start.

Walking through a sunken summer kitchen in the original part of the house, I imagine Richard taking off his wide-brimmed hat to duck into the cramped room. He expanded the home before marrying Mary Pegg in 1812, adding a parlor and sitting rooms downstairs, as well as bedrooms upstairs, which, in addition to the couple’s seven children, sometimes housed their many out-of-town visitors.

“Quakers welcomed any travelers in; it was part of their makeup and religion,” explains Ragsdale, “Quakers were also focused on education and human rights, believing that women were just as capable and able to learn and do everything men could do.” A black-and-white photo from the 1840s shows the first faculty of Guilford College, half of them women. The school was founded by Quakers, including members of the Mendenhall family.

Stored in the property’s Bank Barn, the Stanley Murrow false-bottom wagon serves as a reminder of how Quakers helped transport enslaved Black people to freedom in the early to mid-1800s. May we all take a note from the Quakers and support those in need through compassionate service and think of everyone in our community as a “friend.”

A Culinary Course in Community

A CULINARY COURSE IN COMMUNITY

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A Culinary Course in Community

Tina Firesheets and Ling Sue Withers weave women’s stories into supper

By Cassie Bustamante

Photographs by Bert VanderVeen & Nancy Sidelinger

When Tina Firesheets first watched the documentary, Bite of Bénin, an idea took root. “I don’t let go of an idea,” says Firesheets, who describes herself as a “writer, daydreamer and creative thinker.” She immediately texted longtime friend Ling Sue Withers. Thus began the conversation that would eventually turn into disCOURSE dining, culinary experiences for women, by women, where culturally diverse dishes are served with a side of sensory storytelling.

“I reached out to Ling Sue because we both love food and we both love culture,” says Firesheets. Plus, she adds, “If you want to get anything done, you want her to be involved.”

“I sat down and watched [the documentary] in one night,” says Withers. “And I cried.”

The film centers around North Carolina Restaurant & Lodging Association (NCRLA) 2023 Chef of the Year Adé Carrena. Carrena, a Durham-based chef whose Neo-African chops won her the top spot on Food Network’s Chopped last summer, currently serves as culinary director of Triangle Central Kitchen, a nonprofit dedicated to turning food waste into culinary training and community meals. She was adopted at the age of 10 from Bénin, West Africa, because her birth parents desperately wanted a better life for her. Instead, says Withers, Carrena and her younger sister were adopted into a “horrible” household in America.

Carrena’s story of adoption — and eventually healing — especially moved Withers, a Chinese American “Air Force brat” with family in Taiwan who grew up in the tiny town of Maiden. Like Carrena, she, too, had also experienced “a lot of childhood trauma.”

Firesheets, who grew up in Western North Carolina, was adopted from Korea; her adopted mother was Japanese and her father white. She, too, felt a connection with Carrena. At the time, she had been working as associate creative director for Pace Communications and had been introduced to Carrena through a project Pace was doing with NCRLA. “We just kind of bonded that day because we’re both adoptees and we both kind of had traumatic adoptee experiences,” says Firesheets.

Both Firesheets and Withers felt a strong desire to spread Carrena’s message. “It’s really about healing and how she healed through food and how food helped her reconnect to her country and her family,” says Firesheets.

At the root of it all, though, was the shared passion the disCOURSE founders have for food — and not just food, but unique culinary experiences meant to be savored.

Once, as a birthday gift to Withers, Firesheets took on planning an Atlanta excursion, although Withers is by vocation a professional planner. Withers is a festival organizer who has worked with the North Carolina Folk Fest since its inception and has also amped up her resume with Greensboro’s Solstice Festival and the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society. “Taking a trip? I will make you a spreadsheet,” she says. “Pregnant? I will make you a spreadsheet.”

But, this time, Firesheets took on the daunting task of creating a spreadsheet for the spreadsheet queen herself, filling it with must-visit restaurants, including notes about where they needed to eat while the food was fresh and where they could load up their coolers to haul it home. “I knew then,” says Withers, “lifelong — life-long — friends.”

On another trip, the two visited the mountain town of Sylva, where Firsheets introduced her pal to her favorite restaurant, Dalaya Thai Cuisine, owned by James Beard Award-nominated Chef Kanlaya “Gun” Supachana. In the dead of winter, the place was hopping, no indoor seating available. Undeterred, the two claimed an outdoor seat. Who cares that they could see their breath? Next thing they knew, other diners followed suit and soon the patio was as packed as the dining room. Worth the bitter chill? Definitely. “Her food is so stinking good,” says Firesheets.

At home in her Greensboro kitchen, Withers, too, is an excellent cook. Firesheets admits that she’ll “drop anything” to attend one of her pal’s famous dinner parties. “If I had plans elsewhere, I would just cancel.”

Fueled by their shared love of food and ignited by Carrena’s story, the two women jumped into action. Firesheets had formerly been involved with Ethnosh, an organization that hosted ticketed events highlighting local and mostly immigrant-owned restaurants until COVID shuttered its operations in 2020.

Less than four years later, disCOURSE began plotting its very first event featuring Chef Adé Carrena at Machete, which owner Tal Blevins generously allowed them to use, in January 2024.

Venue and chef locked in, the two women began reaching out to potential guests, hand curating a group of women who exhibited, according to Firesheets, “diversity in culture, professions, experiences.”

On top of that, says Withers, their theme mirrored Carrena’s own story: healing. And they wanted “to bring together women to have a serious connection.” So, they skipped the alcohol — opting instead to serve mocktails — played the documentary and gave Carrena the floor in between dishing out her Neo-African bites.

“We had an idea of what we would like to accomplish,” says Firesheets, “but she leveled up the storytelling.”

It was Carrena’s idea to incorporate an African handwashing ceremony before food was served. “Most people had never experienced that,” says Firesheets.

Ashley Madden, who was in attendance at that very first event, believes ritual is important to women in general. “Just to have that experience and to start with that cleansing, everyone is starting with a fresh slate,” she says. “I thought that was really beautiful.”

Madden also notes that she came away having made new friends — a mother and daughter who were seated at her table — and she was introduced to a chef she wasn’t familiar with prior. “Ade [Carrena] has gone on to do Food Network and I feel like I am just in her corner,” she says. “I am just cheering her on.”

During that first disCOURSE dining event, Withers, who prefers to be in the background observing, watched as women made connections and held thoughtful conversations around various subjects. “It’s exactly what we had wanted.”

But that begged the question both women wondered aloud. “How are we going to top that?”

Just a few months later, in May 2024, they hosted their second event, a kimchi tasting at Potent Potables in Jamestown. The chef was Eunice Chang, owner of The Spicy Hermit, a Durham-based company that creates traditional and seasonal kimchi using fresh, locally farmed produce. (Kimchi is a traditional and often quite spicy Korean form of pickled vegetables.)

To make the meal more substantial, Withers pan-fried sausages from Moonbelly Meat Co., a woman-owned business based in Durham. And this time, the women introduced alcoholic beverages.

“We did a kimchi michelada [beer paired with lime, salt and hot sauces] because The Spicy Hermit also has a kimchi bloody Mary mix,” says Withers, adding that it “was really awesome.” A couple other cocktails and mocktails were on the menu, too.

The Spicy Hermit event also introduced occasional workshop add-ons. After a February 2025 event featuring an array of dumplings by Durham-based Sister Liu’s Kitchen, Chef Cuiying Liu, who came to America from China in 2013, taught attendees to handmake their own. Madden opted for the add-on and admits that hers weren’t quite as good as Chef Liu’s. “Although mine were great because I made them,” she says, “but, gosh, it just made you appreciate what goes into that!”

To build on the sense of community disCOURSE was creating, Firesheets and Withers began adding conversation cards to tables. For example, at their May 2025 event featuring Durham based Chef Silvana Rangel-Duque, the Colombian owner of Latin-infused, plant-based Soul Cocina, one card read: When Silvana moved to Colorado in 2009, she began cooking because she really missed Colombian cuisine. What dish do you miss from home (perhaps from your childhood)? Are you able to recreate it?

Of course, as any entrepreneur can tell you, growing something from nothing is often a case of two steps forward and one step back.

And disCOURSE has not been without its setbacks. At their 2024 summer event featuring Greensboro’s Shafna Shamsuddin, owner of cardamom-infused frozen dessert company Elaka Treats, they ran into some technical difficulties. “We could barely get it scooped in time to serve it,” says Withers. “It was starting to melt already.”

In the end, Withers said they had a blast but learned something: “We’re skipping summer!”

Then there was the 2025 closing event, which had been planned to a T for October 19. The chef was none other than Winston-Salem’s Jordan Rainbolt, owner of Native Root, who uses indigenous ingredients of the Southeast. Rainbolt, whose own native roots are Cherokee and Choctaw, had been the 2024 finale chef, hosted at Moonbird Sanctuary. Firesheets and Withers describe that event as “magical.” But, for whatever reason, this time around, the tickets just weren’t selling as anticipated. They were going to have to cancel.

Was it a tough decision? “We made it actually in about 5 minutes!” quips Withers.

“I didn’t see it as a failure or disappointment,” adds Firesheets.

While most things have worked out for disCOURSE dining, Firesheets says that they don’t stress when it doesn’t. “It’ll be what it is. Even when things didn’t fall into place with this last one, you know.”

Now, they’ve got their eyes focused on the future — the immediate future, that is, as they take it “season by season.” They’re currently on the hunt for a coastal Carolina chef. “We just need to find her,” says Firesheets.

So, why bring in women from outside Greensboro when there are many talented female chefs right under our nose? “We wanted to bring chefs from outside the area so that women here could hear their stories,” says Firesheets. After all, it’s the cultural stories that are at the heart of disCOURSE. Plus, she notes, their events have to offer something attendees can’t otherwise access by going to a locally owned restaurant or food truck. As she puts it, they need “some reason to come to our event and pay more.”

But, she teases, though they are tight-lipped as of now on who it is, they’ve decided to include a Greensboro-based chef in the 2026 season of disCOURSE. They can, however, spill who their 2026 opener will be — none other than Chef Kanlaya “Gun” Supachana, made possible, Firesheets says, by a private donor who wishes to remain anonymous, but is a fan of the disCOURSE mission. (That event is scheduled for the afternoon of Sunday, February 22, at Machete.)

While those ticket sales help Firesheets and Withers pay their chefs and venue hosts fairly, they admit to needing support to be able to keep going and to bring in even more chefs.

“Ling Sue and I actually make very little,” says Firesheets.

“There was one where we walked away with 33 bucks each,” adds Withers. Enough to grab an order to go from the featured chef? Yep, “and that’s pretty much what we do, exactly what we do!”

Thankfully, their goal is not monetary. “It started from a place of inspiration, passion, and when it ceases to be that, then we won’t do it,” says Firsheets.

First-time disCOURSErs Lindsay Morgan and pal Emily Morris ventured to last spring’s Soul Cocina event held in the backyard of Double Oaks on a sweltering day. While they spent time catching up after not seeing one another for a while, a solo attendee sat with them and asked if she could join the conversation. That wouldn’t happen at your standard Starbucks, says Morgan.

Morris agrees. “A lot of community was built here and that’s amazing.”

Marci Peace, who has attended a few disCOURSE events, says, “It’s so important right now to have space to have conversations. With everything, with people pitted so much against each other, it’s important.”

From the beginning, Firesheets and Withers have served course after course of connection, conversation, community and cultural cuisine with a goal of sharing women’s stories. Theirs, it seems, is still being told, bite by bite.

Winter is for the Birds

WINTER IS FOR THE BIRDS

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You can always count on a blue-headed vireo to make sure you don’t miss your morning alarm. After all, the early bird gets the worm.
This red-shouldered hawk ruffles some feathers as it swooshes in on his prey.
Considered to bring good luck, a red cardinal shows off surrounded by heaps of frosty snow.
This female northern cardinal, though not as vibrant as her male counterpart, is unmissable with a beak as bright as hers.

Winter is for the Birds

Lynn Donovan focuses on our bright-beaked buddies

By Joi Floyd

With the brisk, wintry temperatures approaching and the holidays in full swing, you’re sure to hear about the partridge in a pear tree — over and over again. But the real tweet of the town comes from our favorite chirping, warbling friends. Though most birds of a feather flock together, you’re bound to find one or two different breeds cozying up next to each other for warmth. Whether gathering leaves and tiny twigs for nesting or feasting on tasty nuts and seeds, these sweet tweeties stick close together. Photographer Lynn Donovan captures our precious woodland buddies in action as they face the snowy — we can hope — season.

A Cooper’s hawk keeps a keen eye on his surroundings.
A creature stirring? Something has piqued this cedar waxwing’s interest and made it peer over the end of the branch.
There’s nothing stronger than a pileated woodpecker’s beak — except maybe the urge to dye our hair red.
A red-tailed hawk nestles on a branch as the winter season draws closer.
It’s hard to miss this American crow as he trots through the pure white snow.
What could bring more winter wonder than a white-breasted nuthatch playing in the snowfall?
A brown-headed cowbird hunkers down as sleet falls from
Two turtle doves? These are two mourning doves and two is always better than one.
In a wintry world of gray, brown and white, a bright eastern bluebird is sure to catch your attention.
This raging turkey vulture is hard to miss as it confidently stretches its wings post-landing.

Lowe and Behold

LOWE AND BEHOLD

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Lowe and Behold

A Greensboro home sparkles from a dash of family tradition with a merry-making twist

By Cassie Bustamante   •   Photographs by Amy Freeman

The stockings on Charlie and Linda Lowe’s mantel are hung by the chimney with care. But they aren’t your ordinary, run-of-the-mill stockings. Nope, these five-of-a-kind stockings, in a soft, gold tone, are shaped whimsically, curved like an elf’s boot, trimmed and monogrammed in an orange-coral. And let’s not forget the pleated, black-and-white striped cuff.

The gold stocking fabric came from a Greensboro Symphony Guild Super Sale, back when they were held at Printers Alley. “I went with a friend of mine,” says Linda, “and there was a pair of drapes for next to nothing, like 20 bucks, and it was that beautiful, quilted fabric.” She snagged the deal, knowing she could Maria von Trapp those curtains and give them new life somehow. “It had all the trim and everything.”

“That is how an artist shops,” says Charlie. “They see other things in things.” His blue eyes twinkle proudly. And the beard on his chin? Well, it’s as white as the snow, naturally. Though Charlie, Linda’s jolly little helper elf and husband of 39 years, wears his a little more closely cropped than Saint Nick’s.

More symphony drapery panels surround the base of the couple’s Christmas tree, serving as a make-shift skirt. Mercury-glass beads in red and silver swag from bough to bough. The beads, purchased sometime in the 1960s from Friendly Shopping Center’s Woolworth’s, which Linda and her mom frequented, are a glimmering reminder of childhood Christmases. Linda says she inherited her love of Christmas decorating along with the beads from her mother, who passed away 30 years ago.

“My mom always played the organ in the living room where the tree was,” says Linda, “and she said I would just lie down under the tree and look up at the lights.” Her mom also told her how she’d cry at the first signs of the tree’s imminent death as it dropped needles on her.

Of course, some mementos are perhaps better cherished only once a year. A bell, also from 1960s Woolworth’s, plays — very annoyingly, says Linda — “Jingle Bells” when you pull its chain. As the keeper of the family bell, to this day, she calls her older brothers on Christmas and plays it over the phone as a prank. “Sixty plus years of doing that!”

Charlie, too, has fond memories of his boyhood Christmas tree. His parents both grew up on farms without much else to their families’ names, so when it came time to celebrate the holidays with their only son, Charlie recalls the tree overflowing with gifts for him. “My parents lavished me,” he says. But his mom brought one of her favorite farm traditions with her into her young family — a fresh cedar tree.

His mother, who passed away in 2016, regaled him with stories from her own childhood about cutting and hauling the chosen tree straight from the family’s farmland. “She and her sister finally got to the age to be trusted with an axe,” says Charlie, “and they would go out on the farm, and find the tree that they loved, and down it went.” And how old did one have to be to wield an axe? “Oh, they were probably 6, 7 or 8.”

“I saved all of her — what’s now vintage — Christmas stuff,” says Linda of Charlie’s mom’s decorations, everything from plastic candelabras with red bulbs to ornaments.

Linda and Charlie have been celebrating Christmas together for almost four decades. Married since 1986, they have, between them, three grown children — Alex, Rebecca and April — four grandchildren and one great-grandson. Linda was a customer at the camera shop where Charlie worked as a sales associate. He’d ask her out and she’d say no, but, eventually, as with the film in the lab, a romance developed.

After a quick courtship, the couple married and began their lives together. Both are retired now. “I retired early because of Mom and Pop,” says Charlie, who cared for his parents in their final years. Linda retired from a long career as a graphic designer that included 20-plus years with the News & Record.

But, as young parents, they were always on the go. Dropping their young children off with the grandparents, they’d haul cameras, lighting and lenses to shoot weekend weddings together. “I don’t know how we did it, but we did,” says Linda.

They worked long hours, but still found the energy to infuse some holiday magic into their own children’s memories. Before the internet even existed and clever Christmas ideas were easily found, Linda’s mother was making Santa’s boot prints on the hearth by setting down a pair of boots, sprinkling something white — perhaps confectioner’s sugar or flour — around them, lifting them off and leaving behind evidence that the jolliest elf had, in fact, been there. Linda took a cue from her mom and did the same for her kids using sprayable fake snow.

Plus, Linda decked the halls of their home and did the holiday shopping for the kids and extended family. “I look back and I am like, good grief.”

Charlie looks at his wife knowingly. “That’s what moms do,” he says. “They fill in the space.”

But Linda doesn’t just fill in the space. Her decorations, especially the ones she’s made herself, are over the top, and changed out year after year. As she unboxes her attic-full of holiday decor each year, she says, “I just pick things up and reinvent the wheel.”

In fact, when Linda sees something she likes, she wonders how she can recreate it in her own unique way. One item she knocked off her to-do-my-way list? A fox doll. Linda, who used to horseback ride, has collected hunt scenes and equestrian decor for years, and had always coveted a fox dressed for the hunt. When she couldn’t find exactly what she wanted — “they always look like bears or something” — she set her mind to making one by needle felting, something she’d never done before.

“Of course, I jump right into things,” she says. “I don’t start small.” She made one tiny bird as practice and then went full speed into crafting her fox, who sits on her entry bench for the holidays, greeting guests. He’s a few feet tall and his face is expertly crafted with a naturally sly expression. A riding helmet sits atop his head and, of course, he’s wearing a red riding jacket with gold buttons, all of it needle-felted. No small feat for her first foray into the craft.

Upon the encouragement of a friend, Linda, who used to belong to Daughters of the American Revolution, decided to enter her fox into their annual D.C. craft show in the doll category. “And it won best of show,” she says, as in winner of the whole shebang.

“Another art form that she dabbled in. She has the touch,” says Charlie. Whereas in the North Pole, Santa gets all the credit, Charlie simply can’t resist touting his own “Mrs. Claus’s” talents.

There is also the large painting in her kitchen nook. She’d gone to High Point Market with a friend and spotted a heron painting. “Gosh, I could do that,” she recalls thinking, and set up an easel right there in her kitchen to get the lighting just right as she painted. To add a touch of Linda Lowe signature whimsy, she put the bird in a blue-and-white basin, bubbles pouring out.

“But you know, in reality, they’re tromping around in mud all day,” muses Charlie. “They have got to do something! You gotta get that goop off somehow.”

A footbridge in the background of the painting is coral, a color Linda particularly loves. To set her kitchen table for the holidays, she used festive wrapping paper as a runner, edging it with scalloped, peach-colored ribbon she scored at Anthropologie. “Of course, I bought every roll!”

In the dining room, swags of greenery and blush-colored faux pomegranates adorn an unsigned vintage painting of, they’re guessing, George Washington. The fruit picks up on the colors in Linda’s custom cornices, though they weren’t custom built for this space, and — this should come as no surprise — were found at an estate sale, Parker Washburn’s to be exact. She, of course, Linda bubbles, was the daughter of Leon Oldham, founder of Leon’s Beauty School, and Aileen “Mrs. Leon” Oldham, and the estate sale was located inside the old, stone home the couple once lived in on Elm Street.

They’d need new side panels to work for Linda’s purposes, so Charlie suggested he could just make new ones. In his years of working at the camera shop, he’d honed his own carpentry skills by building store walls and fixtures. Plus, Linda recalls at their former home, “He made an amazing gate and fence for our patio.”

Charlie, ever so humble about his own accomplishments, says, “I used to like to piddle a little bit with woodworking and things like that.”

Linda knew Charlie could build her whatever she wanted, but what she wanted was to reuse something with history from an iconic Greensboro home. New side panels in place, thanks to Charlie, she recovered the cornices in a soft blue, floral fabric, piped in red. The blue blends into the Benjamin Moore Gossamer Blue on the walls.

In the living room, the mantel is decked out in nontraditional holiday colors — chartreuse and orange. The built-in bookcases that flank it feature books, blue-and-white transferware and white foo dogs that once belonged to Linda’s mom. But on the white mantel, orange foo dogs stand out and stand guard on either side, swags of greenery draping down with orange ribbon and chartreuse ginkgo leaves interwoven. “I have a thing about things being symmetrical,” she says.

The tree, however, remains traditional. And, she quips, “I only put up one big tree!” For as long as she can remember, she’s decorated the tree by herself. “It’s not a theme tree. It’s always got the same ornaments, same beads.” She especially loves a tree that’s covered in glass baubles reflecting the shine of her rainbow lights.

Did the kids help when they were little? “I would let them hang their stuff along the bottom,” says Linda, then, under her breath adds, “Then I’d go back and fix them.”

“My job is to hand them to her,” notes Charlie.

For years, the couple purchased a real tree, usually from Wagoner’s tree lot. But sometimes, Linda notes, the family would take off for West Jefferson, on a quest for that quintessential Currier and Ives moment, “which never went quite that smoothly!” 

After Charlie’s mother, who still loved the smell of fresh cedar in the home, passed, Linda caved and bought an artificial tree. The one she wanted came prewired with white lights, so Linda figured out how they were attached and painstakingly rewired it with her own strings of colored lights. “A big operation,” notes Charlie.

“I still haven’t found the right topper,” notes Linda. “I’ve never had one that’s like, ‘That’s it!’” An angel, a bow, a star — you name it — nothing has hit that high note. Once, they even hung a Moravian star from the ceiling above the tree.

“And then we just adjusted the tree under it,” says Charlie. “That was a collaborative idea.”

Linda walks into a room featuring four corner cabinets, each cabinet filled to the brim with vintage cameras Charlie has collected, mostly Nikons, but Canons and other models as well. The cabinets, mostly scored at estate sales, are by Greensboro’s iconic Benbow Furniture, now closed.

Does she decorate inside these cabinets at Christmas, too? Nope. “Don’t touch my stuff,” Charlie says with a smirk.

Charlie points to a particular black-and-silver Nikon. “This is [from] like 1951, something like that. This was occupied Japan, after WWII.  Nikon started out making telescopes and microscopes, and then went into cameras because that was something you could sell,” he says. “And we were trying to make their industry work so they could support themselves.”

“I figured I have the rest of the house, I can let him have this room,” she says with a chuckle.

“You’re not going to open that door, are you?” Charlie asks Linda teasingly as they approach the first-floor bedroom, which now serves as Linda’s craft room.

“Yeah, I am,” she says. “You know I am.”

What they both assume is a cluttered mess is actually an artist’s treasure box, overflowing with tools and materials a creative person would have a field day with. One very tall wall is piled high with various small, handmade shelving units, including one her brother made as well as her grandfather’s old shaving stand. Her vision for it? “The Harry Potter wand shop, where everything was just stacks of books.” Fitting, as this, indeed, is where the magic happens. Paints, colored pencils, glues, markers, ribbons, brushes and all sorts of crafting supplies line the shelves. An old, wooden spoon rack holds wax seal molds.

On another wall hangs a gallery of paintings and sketches from throughout the years — some by Linda, some by her mom, who was also an artist — and even a floral painting that’s been in the family for years. Linda also spent time during COVID organizing her family’s history and has rows and rows of photo albums dated by year. In fact, during that time, Linda created two round family “trees,” one for her family of origin and one for Charlie’s. Never one to follow the beaten path, hers are more garden than tree. The names, arranged in a circle, form a sort of labyrinth of hedges that resembles an English boxwood garden. They now hang in the dining room.

On the project table in the middle of her craft room sits a current project — a mirror adorned with shells she’s been collecting for years.

“If I can spill the beans a little bit,” says Charlie, “we’re trying to get a beach house.” The couple has spent the last few months searching for a property on Sunset Beach or perhaps Ocean Isle, something they can vacation at with their family but also rent out.

“I’ve been beach-deprived my whole life and I’m like, ‘You know what? I’m going to the beach!’” Linda says. “I’ve got so much stuff piled up back there!”

“I have always said about Linda,” quips Charlie, “too much is never enough.”

Going to Seed

GOING TO SEED

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Going to Seed

A family strives to protect a way of life in Julian

The first thing you’ll likely notice when you pull up to the rambling, wood-and-corrugated facade of the Julian Milling Company on Old 2nd Street is the cats.

They’re parti-colored and striped, light-colored and dark. They’re napping under a tree, they’re lolling on the loading dock — some perched primly on upturned buckets. There’s even a cat peering down from high up in the rafters.

Here’s the irony.

I’ve driven out to rural Julian to speak with Eric Horney, purveyor of the mill’s most popular product these days — Beardo’s Birdseed.

A little history.

The Julian Milling Company is a landmark. It’s been around since 1895, first milling flour and, later, cornmeal. The first machines were powered by steam — the facility converted to electricity with mills to grind livestock feed in the 1940s. Generations of Guilford and Randolph county farmers have hauled grain — hundreds of thousands of tons — to this very spot, where it has been ground into feed for horses, cattle, swine and poultry.

I can’t tell you how many feline generations have protected the mill, but I can tell you that the Horney family has been involved with the business for three.

Eric’s grandfather, J. Davis Horney, who began working at the mill in 1935, purchased the operation a decade later and was joined by his son James Davis Jr. — nicknamed Jimmy. The two of them worked together, growing the production of the mill, for more than 50 years.

Jimmy, Eric’s father, who is now 83 years old, emerges from back in the mill as Eric gently encourages a couple of cats to make room for me to step up onto the dock.

We shake hands and they invite me to sit a spell.

Jimmy and Eric are big, genial, country men. Jimmy is clean-shaven, but Eric, who is 53 years old, sports a thick beard that would be the envy of any Civil War general you can think of.

These men have seen many changes in agriculture over the years.

Growing up, Eric split his time between Greensboro and Julian after his parents divorced.

“I went to Page High School,” Eric says. “But on weekends, I’d come out to Julian to work with my dad and granddad.”

After graduating from Lees-McRae College with a degree in business administration, Eric returned to work at the mill in Julian.

The period of the 1960s through the 1990s was a prosperous time for Julian Milling Company. The business had not only its milling operation, but also a garden center. People could walk around and buy plants and shrubs while their grain was being milled.

Many of its biggest feed customers were dairy farms.

The mill owned and operated two trucks, each with a capacity of eight tons. Some of the dairies were so large that they received a truckload of feed each day.

“We’d mill the grain, add ingredients like protein, molasses and minerals, and haul it out to a farm,” Eric says.

In 1997, the year his grandfather died, Eric worked full time at the mill, along with two other full-time employees.

But many of the dairy farms were shutting down. And Eric noticed another change.

Saturdays were always the busiest day for grinding livestock feed. When the mill opened at 7 a.m., there would already be a long line of trucks and pickups outside loaded with grain, waiting.

“So one day, I said to my Dad, ‘Now wait, all these people here on a Saturday morning, what do they do all week?’”

Jimmy nods, remembering the conversation.

“And I said, ‘Well, they have full-time jobs,’” Eric continues. “‘They aren’t farmers, they’re weekend farmers.’”

Over time, even the ranks of the part-time farmers diminished.

“The children of the weekend farmers, they didn’t usually go into farming,” Eric says. “They’d take a job, sell the land off to developers.”

We pause for a moment, watching as a Mustang convertible pulls up in front of the mill.

“That’s my brother, Neil,” Eric says.

A couple of the cats move over to the shade of Neil’s car as he makes his way up the steps to the dock.

“Neil’s a full-time pilot for NetJet,” Eric says. “He comes in on his days off and helps out.”

“We’re all part-timers,” Jimmy laughs.

“Yeah, I got my licenses to sell health and life insurance last summer,” Eric says. “But I haven’t sold any policies. I keep hanging onto a dream.”

The dream is to earn a living with his work at the mill.

Yes, for decades the old mill has survived trying times — but maybe the biggest challenge yet lies just half a mile down the road.

The new Toyota Battery Manufacturing Plant.

To see it emerge from the trees and fields while you’re driving in this rural area is surreal.

A campus of 2,200 acres. A capital investment of $13.9 billion. Employment for 5,000 souls. Building restrictions on nearby properties because of the accident risks in lithium battery manufacturing.

“It’s changed the whole world around here,” Jimmy says, shaking his head. “It’s crippled our walk-in traffic.”

“Anybody who lives close by has a ‘for sale’ sign in front of their house,” Neil adds.

Eric nods his head.

“The future is online,” he says. “If no one ever walks through the front door of the mill again, we can still make it.”

Eric has a strategy.

At the Julian Milling Company location, you’ll still find packets of vegetable and flower seeds, hand implements, fertilizers and weed killers — some on the shelves for so long that they’re practically relics. There are also bags of “sweet feed” for goats, cows and horses, chicken feed for laying hens, “scratch” (a mixture of grains and seeds) for chickens, pigeon feed and birdseed.

Eric has focused on his bestselling birdseed for the past couple of years, marketing it online through Etsy and Amazon along with placing it with selected retailers and farmers markets.

“We’ve already shipped our birdseed to all 50 states, Guam and Puerto Rico,” Eric says.

During this time, he’s concentrated on finding local, high-quality suppliers of his ingredients to enhance the freshness of his product. Plus, the mill is a participant in the Got To Be NC initiative with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services.

And Eric has just launched an online platform selling — remember the beard I told you about? — Beardo’s Birdseed.

Eric takes me back to the oldest part of the building, where one of the electric mills is located. This is the machine he uses to mix the ingredients for Beardo’s Birdseed.

“There’s not a blade inside cutting anything — there’s an auger,” he says. “It’s funnel-shaped, gravity-fed, so it just mixes the ingredients over and over.”

“This is basically just like the mixer on the kitchen counter in your house,” Eric says. “But this one holds a thousand pounds.”

He points out the grill opening on the floor where he pours the various grains and seeds into the mill. Once mixed, the birdseed is bagged right on the spot.

Beardo’s is available online by individual order or by subscription and can also be purchased by nonprofits for fundraising purposes.

Dusk is approaching, so Eric takes me back out onto the loading dock, where I say my goodbyes to Jimmy and Neil. Some of the cats stand and take a stretch.

Eric looks up in the rafters.

“Ellie,” he says, “get on down here.”

The cat makes her way gracefully to the dock.

Eric tells me that the rafters are Ellie’s favorite spot. To his knowledge, she’s the eldest of the cats at age 12.

“Someday, she’s going to doze off up there and fall and hurt herself,” he mutters.

All the cats, of course, are just doing their jobs, protecting the mill — as they’ve done for generations.

And that’s something the old mill needs right now.

I think the birds will understand. 

Seasons Greetings

SEASONS GREETINGS

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Since the 1800s, America has been sending the very best

By Cynthia Adams

Dale Kearns, a Greensboro postal carrier, is accustomed to the crushing volume of holiday cards mailed out each and every year by well-wishing Americans — the annual estimate exceeds 1.3 billion.

“One customer on my route sent over 100 Christmas cards last year,” says Kearns, with a business-as-usual shrug.

New Year greetings — which are hardly a new concept, by the way — escalate that figure higher. In local designer Todd Nabor’s private collection of vintage cards, shown here, there are as many New Year greetings as Christmas ones, dating from the late 19th to the early 20th century in age.

Long before the advent of folded cards tucked inside an envelope, a postcard — cheaper and vastly easier to send than a personal letter — changed the game in the late 1800s.

But don’t think that postcard messages were necessarily short.  A 1918 postcard to Mrs. Adeline Shoppell in Greencastle, Ind. wished “Many Happy Days in your New Year,” with the sender squeezing a long message into the cramped space on the reverse side that promised a letter soon.

In 1924, Larisse Justice mailed a poinsettia-embellished postcard to Miss Hazel Hill in Greensboro. “Flowers will early fade away/But my wishes will last for many a day.” 

And what a bargain! Holiday postcards cost only a penny to mail in early-20th-century America, equivalent today to about $.18.   

Seems the whole notion of personal greetings even predates the Egyptians and Romans, who dispatched letters (especially on birthdays) written on papyrus and scrolls via fleet-footed couriers.

The sending of New Year’s greetings is attributed to China’s Emperor Taizon, who inscribed messages on gold leaves to his ministers during the Tang dynasty. The idea caught on with the general population, who wrote messages on rice paper. The practice of holiday messaging slowly crossed cultures and continents. 

While the Romans may have left Britannia, the custom of letter writing remained. Over the centuries, rice paper, papyrus and scrolls gave way to stationery and envelopes.

By the Victorian era, posting personal greetings was what well-mannered folk did come the holidays. But Henry Cole, the busy founder of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, faced a dilemma. Having neither time nor personal couriers to deploy a holiday scroll to his hundreds of admiring friends, he innovated.

Wishing to avoid a social faux pax — failing to send a cheery gift or letter in reply was bad form — Cole, in 1843, conceived of a standardized postcard greeting. As the British “penny post” made holiday communiques cheap and more popular than ever, he had a Christmas greeting postcard designed and printed for his own use, hoping to keep himself in good social standing. 

In time, Brits took to the idea, which further spread throughout Europe. Eventually, German immigrant Louis Prang migrated to America, bringing the concept with him.

In 1875, Prang printed a simple postcard featuring roses and “Merry Christmas.” Americans embraced the concept with gusto. By the early-20th century, postcards were a craze.

The Hall Brothers postcard presses began rolling in 1910. By the 1920s, folded Christmas cards in envelopes had grown in popularity. In 1928, the brothers embossed the “Hallmark” brand on the envelope flap — an idea borrowed from minting gold.

“When you care enough to send the very best,” the slogan we’ve all come to know, debuted in 1944. In the same timeframe, Hanukah cards emerged as options expanded. Slowly, too, Americans began sending personalized cards featuring family photos or supporting a favorite charity — a concept that quickly crossed the pond back to the U.K.

Today, Hallmark alone offers more than 2,000 designs and hundreds of boxed sets. At least 2,500 other American businesses compete for their market share of the greeting card business.

Yet there were greenbacks still left on the holiday table. What said you cared even more than the Hallmark logo?

A holiday-themed stamp. 

By 1962, the United States Postal Service debuted holiday stamps — lagging far behind in recognizing another way to commodify the holidays. Seems Austria lapped us by 25 years, debuting holiday stamps in 1937.

Canada introduced holiday stamps in 1939 and Cuba in 1951.

Today, stamps commemorating Diwali, Hanukah and Kwanza reflect a diverse range of holiday traditions. 

Hewing to tradition, this year’s “Holiday Cheer” stamps feature a Whitman’s chocolates style assortment of all-inclusive images: amaryllis, cardinals, fruit on a branch and a wreath. 

This year, too, philatelists can scoop up re-released favorites “Holiday Elves” and “Winter Whimsy” — miniature pieces of artwork to adorn each and every letter. 

But in an era of hastily composed texts and digital greetings, do recipients still care about receiving old-school, holiday snail mail? 

Overwhelmingly, yes. Online surveys strongly indicate the majority still prefer receiving a paper greeting card, including the younger demographics — who understand digital fatigue as well as anyone.   

Bad news, perhaps, for USPS’s hard-working Dale Kearns. 

But good tidings for those who trouble themselves to find, write, address, stamp and post those millions and millions of cards he and his colleagues deliver to each and every door across the land. 

Seems the very act of putting pen to paper, extending good wishes to one and all, is an act of engagement — of personal connection. For the faithful senders of greetings and recipients alike, a gift.

Poem December 2025

POEM

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A Christmas Night

It was a cold night

And there was ice on the road,

Our car started to slide

As it moved up the small hill,

And the headlights caught the old man

In a thin jacket

Pushing a cart filled with sticks.

There were some bundles and a package

Piled on top, and the old man

Grinned and waved at us

As he pushed the cart

Into the yard of the little house

Where a single light shone.

The tires gripped the road

And we drove on into the darkness,

But suddenly it was warm.