Tag: Department

Chaos Theory

Dirty Laundry

It’s all about knowing when to fold and when to hold

By Cassie Bustamante

I recently came across a meme that depicted the sign for infinity, a sideways figure eight. Above it read: “The symbol for laundry.” Accurate, I thought. With three kids, it’s never-ending.

But I can’t complain because before we were even married — when we were living in sin in the nation’s seat of sin, New Orleans — my husband, Chris, and I set up a system that has worked well now for over 20 years.

Of course, “set up” is a bit of a stretch. We didn’t exactly thoughtfully lay out a plan. It went more like this:

Freshly laundered clothing strewn on the bed in front of me, I begin folding a pair of Chris’ jeans in half the long way and then into thirds. My hands, well-manicured and soft, no visible signs of aging (Hey, this is my memory, OK?), maneuver while my Sony CD player shuffles through discs. Absentmindedly singing along to Frou Frou’s “Let Go,” I’m in the sort of meditative trance only a tedious task can produce.

Suddenly, Chris’ judging eyes bore into me and pull me right back into my body. I can see him biting his lip, trying to hold in whatever it is he’s thinking. After a beat, he says, “Can you pass me those jeans?” And he proceeds to shake them out and meticulously refold them, seams aligned exactingly.

Frankly, I should have seen this coming. Our relationship began — brace yourself — when Chris was my boss and I was his intern at the Hanes Mall Abercrombie & Fitch kids’ store back in 1999, just a few years after the most infamous intern scandal of our time. He was the one who taught me how to fold the perfect denim wall. There was a science — an art form, really — to lining those pairs of jeans up just so. When stacked in the wall together, they were the perfect height, filling the space between shelves, each pair a uniform thickness.

“What’s wrong with how I did it?” I ask. Though, honestly, I know I’ve never quite mastered the art of folding clothes with that crisp prêt-à-porter look he’s capable of achieving. (Don’t tell him that. We don’t need any gloating around here.)

“I just like them, um, a certain way,” he says, clearly choosing his critiquing words carefully to maintain unwedded domestic bliss.

“Then why don’t you fold the laundry?” I sputter, not really a question, mind you.

“OK,” he answers and, surprising me, immediately takes over.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I stifle any witty retort — a real challenge for me — and simply say, “OK, then. All yours.”

From that moment on, Chris has been designated laundry-folder in our house. It’s a role that fits his very particular Virgo personality to a tee, a perfect use of his skills.

And, in the end, we both win. He gets his denim folded just the way his heart desires. And I get out of untangling and sorting endless piles of laundry. Well, mostly. I do have to refold my T-shirts because I have learned that Marie Kondo’s method really does make it easier to find clothing in a stuffed drawer. But I’ll never whisper a word about it. He can keep his job. OH

Cassie Bustamante is editor of O.Henry magazine.

Simple Life

The Ever-Changing Garden

May the work never be done

By Jim Dodson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim Dodson is the founding editor of O.Henry.

2024 Department Simple Life

Art of the State

Gateway to Mysteries

John Beerman deeply sees and paints the natural world

By Liza Roberts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2024 Art of the State Department

Omnivorous Reader

The Color of Music

Symphony of Secrets plucks at the heartstrings

By Anne Blythe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2024 Department Omnivorous Reader

Wandering Billy

The Organ Pipes Are Calling

Nothing could be fina than to play the Carolina

By Billy Ingram

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Birdwatch

Harbingers of Spring

Return of the red-winged blackbirds

By Susan Campbell

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

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

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

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

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

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

2024 Birdwatch Department

Home Grown

Just the Beans

Upping our daily grind

By Cynthia Adams

Our kitchen counter is dominated by a coffee machine large enough to be in a Starbucks.

It grinds, perks, foams and noisily squirts. It is shiny and intimidating.

If this machine were a Hollywood star, as I am pretty sure it thinks it is, it would be Sofía Vergara.

The fully loaded, foreign-made espresso maker came from Williams-Sonoma. When Don came home with it, he stared at the enormous box before uncrating the behemoth, breathing shallowly. He sank down onto a stool. It was a moment. Finally, he gently eased it out of the packaging, barely exhaling, before carrying it to its place on the counter.

He handled it with the care and caution of an acolyte bearing incense or an offering to the altar. I murmured something about the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet, contentedly drinking McDonald’s coffee each morning. Don’s dumbfounded expression shut me up.

The machine claimed a huge section of counter space; a kitchen squatter, as large as the microwave and nearly as heavy.

The lengthy instruction manual and its detailed warranty were scrutinized, analyzed, memorized. It was actually some months before Don left town and I attempted to use the shiny beast myself, safe from his watchful eye. He was the barista in charge of all coffee making — and I remained too intimidated by the thing.

This Australian-engineered coffee machine had more doohickeys and programmed features than my car. Well, close.

I dialed, adjusted, waited as it did its work. But the machine instantly loathed me, producing an espresso so intense and unpalatable I shouted “Mio Dio, quell caffe e forte!” And I don’t even speak Italian.

The Australian machine only likes Don, presumably because he has relatives living near Sydney. Mine live near Hell’s Half Acre. I gave up and drove to McDonald’s for a latte as soon as I regained my ability to speak English.

Ostensibly, we had invested in this finicky contraption to end the high cost of daily “designer coffees.” It would take a mathematical whiz to calculate exactly how long it would take to make it worth it.

Realistically, we have not saved one thin dime but are instead dipping into our retirement fund. The cost of the machine was only the beginning.

Because the machine deserved — no, demanded — specialty unroasted beans. “You do not put regular gas into a Ferrari,” Don spluttered.

How could I think of using ordinary roasted beans from the local market? Whose antioxidant value was already diminished?

My ignorance launched Don into mansplaining.

He explained free radical damage. And polyphenols. The benefits from green beans might be preventatives against all the worst illnesses: cancer, heart disease, diabetes. He took a deep breath.

So, if we didn’t buy roasted beans, I asked, did this mean we needed unroasted beans?

Of course, he replied. “They’re called green beans.” I believe he briefly closed his eyes, collecting. Then what? I asked, shooting a dirty look at the Australian which seemed to be smirking at my ignorance.

This led to the next phase of our coffee journey. Don first experimented by roasting green beans in a popcorn popper, something YouTube had suggested. That was soon deemed too difficult to control . . . beans went from lightly roasted to charred in seconds.

Did I mention the green beans were not inexpensive, especially factoring in the cost of shipping? Coffee is a commodity folks. Globally traded.

We swiftly replaced the hot air popcorn popper with a bona fide roaster, which also must be carefully attended despite all the fancy gee jaws and settings. It’s Australian, too, and nearly as cheeky as the coffee machine.

The roaster was installed in the basement near bags of green coffee beans specially ordered from Sweet Maria’s in California. (Until the first invoice from the Californians, he roasted coffee for nearly anyone who mentioned a love of java.)

The roaster required a contraption Barista Don built to divert the smoke, snaked across the basement ceiling to the chimney flue and overwhelming the basement.

But I do not murmur complaint, for therein lies the true payoff of coffee roasting. The dazzlingly aromatic smell, redolent of various coffee types, sometimes infused with the round notes of fine chocolate, rises through the floors of our very old house, suffusing the air.

I inhale deeply. This is the exact smell I hope carries me off to the afterlife when I die.

Back upstairs, the Australian is soon fed its favorite beans. It will grind, perk, foam and noisily squirt. And it will produce a perfect cup, often what caffeine lovers call a “God cup.” I wait obediently, grateful, actually.

Barista Don and I have reached a kitchen accord.

For just a sip of the freshly roasted goodness in my cup, you’d do the same. The machine — that Australian diva that took over our kitchen — has rightfully earned her seat at the table. OH

Cynthia Adam is a contributing editor to O.Henry magazine.

2024 Department Home Grown

O.Henry Ending

Hog Wild

…and happy as a pig in mud

By Cynthia Adams

Early life on a farm taught me this: Never get caught swimming with the hogs.

Especially wearing a brand-new swimsuit.

Hearing titters in a children’s shop, my folks pivoted from a rack of Easter dresses to discover me in the display window wearing a blue-and-white “swimming soup” taken straight off the mannequin. My father conceded. “Look, if she wants it that badly, I say we buy it.”

At age 4, that would be the last time I found a new bikini joyful.

Mind you, we had no swimming pool. My grandmother had a pond replete with water moccasins. Where snapping turtles tangled fishing lines. The best I could hope for was a sprinkler.

It was wonderful being a child on a small farm with goats, milk cow, horses and hogs. Our father raised Landrace hogs, which prolifically produced white piglets. Whenever a new litter was born, which was often, Daddy would take me to the barn to admire them, wriggling and pink beneath red heat lamps. I adored them long before discovering Charlotte’s Web.

With the first fine spring day, inspiration struck. Donning the new swimsuit and a tiny, cherished diamond birthstone ring, I headed straight for the hog pond. And sank right in.

The muck pleasantly sucked at my bare feet like a welcoming, living thing. My ponytail floated behind me as I joyously heaved handfuls of mud from the pliable pond, exultant.

As for the hogs? I knew them since birth as gentle, intelligent creatures, much like E. B. White’s Wilbur. They watched on as if to say, “See? See why we like it so much?”

At some point, my older sister, six years my senior, appeared at the pond’s edge wearing her cowgirl boots. “ARE YOU CRAZY?” she screamed. Seldom a tattletale, mine was a crime demanding to be reported. She shot away, black pigtails flying behind her, hollering, “MAMA!”

Before I could extract myself from the muck and broker a deal, Mama came running faster than I had ever witnessed. She was at the pond before I could fully balance, hair streaming, streaks of red mud dribbling down my chin.

Staining my brand-new swimsuit.

Confronting the spectacle before her, Mama shuddered, then glowered.

“Cynthia Anne! Get. Out. Of. The. Hog. Pond. NOW.”

As any child knows, Mama Justice requires no reading of rights; no legal representation, no cooling off period before judgement is rendered.

There are only two possibilities: Guilty as charged, or asleep.

I was marched to the spigot for a vigorous hosing down after stripping off my beloved swimsuit. (“Well, I hope you’re happy,” Mama seethed. “That’s ruined.”)

I remember being plunked into the white porcelain bath. She declared war on my skin and nails, doggedly persisting even after the muddied bath water ran clear.

Suddenly, with a sad shiver, I sneaked my right hand behind me: The suit wasn’t all that was lost.

Of course, Mama saw. “Cynthia Anne. Where’s your ring?”

Gone.

Her lips stretched into a disapproving line. “This is what happens when your Daddy spoils you.”

Afterward, an imposed bedroom confinement, meant for contemplating of crimes.

Later, the trooping before my father for a full confession. (A sympathetic smile flickered, but, once charged, even Daddy couldn’t overrule Mama Justice.)

There were my sister’s snickers to endure.

During my exile, springtime rains began, forming beguiling puddles in the graveled driveway. As if custom-made just for me.

I thought of my barnyard friends, free to abandon themselves to the embracing muck! How I longed to do the same.

Helpless against all that pleasure, a 4-year-old with the perfect outfit snuck out into the rain to claim the perfect puddle. OH

2024 Department O.Henry Ending

Life’s Funny

What’s in a Name?

Ask Dewey. Or Michael.

By Maria Johnson

A new acquaintance suggested that we go to an event together.

“You should bring Dewey,” she said.

I looked at her, puzzled.

“You know, your husband,” she prompted.

“Oh,” I said, laughing. “Yeah, OK, but that’s not his name.”

Now it was her turn to look stumped.

“Don’t you call him Dewey?” she asked.

“Yeah, I do,” I confirmed. “But his real name is Jeff. I call him Dewey. But no one else does. Well, except our sons. It’s kind of a pet name.”

If she thought about rescinding her invitation, she was graceful and did not.

And, by the way, Dewey and I had a great time with her and her husband, who, for some reason, she called by his real first name.

Seriously, I get why people address each other by their given names. That’s what names are for. When parents give their kids a name, they presume that’s what other people will call them.

And most people do.

Which is fine.

Heck, I call most people by their given names — when I can remember them.

But people I’m fond of or I know really well? Mmm, not so much.

That’s why I had to laugh when I read about Nikki Haley’s husband.

His real first name is William.

Most people call him Bill.

But when Haley met him, she told him he didn’t look like a Bill.

She asked him what his full name was.

He told her William Michael.

She said he looked more like a Michael, and from then on, she called him Michael.

I totally get it.

And for what it’s worth, I think she’s right. Look at his picture. The dude is a complete Michael.

Apparently, everyone else thought so, too, because from then on, other people called him Michael, too.

Which is cool. Other people can use a person’s new name, especially if it’s a new public name.

Which is not the same as a new private name.

Example: Michael, public name.

Dewey, private name.

I mean, you can call Jeff “Dewey” if you want to. But I doubt he’d answer. And if he did, I’d be crushed.

It’s complicated.

One thing I’ve learned: Often, there’s a namer in the family. This is one of the first things that Dewey (that’s Jeff to you) and I realized we had in common. We were the namers in our families. Maybe because we’re both first children, and while being a firstborn comes with a lot of pressure, it also carries some privileges.

Therefore, Dewey/Jeff renamed some of his family members Maude, Lay-Otee, Carico, Sheep Pup and Deo Bahee.

My family included Lil’ Greek, Shrimp and Dossie, aka Dosito Mikhail Yakovich.

Hey, it was the Cold War era. And yes, I said the whole name every time I used it. Much to his chagrin.

That’s the thing about renaming people in your immediate family. They don’t necessarily have to like their new monikers. They just have to tolerate them.

If I were completely honest, I’d admit that renaming is a wee flex, a mini Declaration of Independence that says, “I’m not calling you what the rest of the world calls you.”

But even more important, new names are expressions of fondness, closeness and a unique shared history.

Take the example of a dear friend and her brother, who are very close.

Privately, he addresses her as “Fool,” based on a family story that resembles a fever dream.

She calls him “ hole,” emphasis on the “ .”

In her contact list, he’s listed as “A-hole,” but her cell phone’s voice assistant pronounces his name “A-holey.” So my friend tells her phone to “call A-holey” when she wants to talk her to baby brother.

Is that love or what?

Inside my own family, I call Jeff “Dewey,” which was derived from the boys calling him Dad, which morphed into Doodad, which was shortened — ta-da — to Dewey. Who else would know that?

He calls me Sweetch, a form of Sweetie.

Awww.

We have multiple pet names for our sons, most of which we use in private, partly out of respect, partly because we’ve received withering looks for using them in public.

Take the time I summoned one son, now a New Yorker, by his pet name when he was walking too fast for us down the crowded sidewalks.

“BADOODIE! HOLD UP!” I hollered.

Apparently being hailed as Badoodie by your mom on the streets of Brooklyn is not a hip thing.

Neither is calling a grown man Ta-Ta in front of his girlfriend.

In other words, context is everything. You have to modulate nicknames according to who’s present.

Renaming people outside your family is different beast all together.

In these cases, a degree of playfulness and acceptance is needed, or the name won’t stick, even if you apply it with affection.

I’ve been lucky in that department. I think of some of my earliest pals: Gurr, Beck, Mishur, Limpy, Kince and Polly. None of those were their given names, but if I called them on the phone today, I dare say they’d brighten at the sound of those tags.

Later came Betho, Goof, Conchita, Der Lovely, Lyd, DK, Fash, Little Boy and others.

Today, you might hear me refer to Special K, Peegs, Little Debbie, Weez, Cootie, Rev K or Queenie Bee.

As for me, I’ve answered to many names in my lifetime: Goof, Conchita and Fash (often nicknames are reflexive, applying to both parties), along with Moom, M.J., Mojo, Mo, M, Mahrear and Mish.

While some of them are more attractive than others — “Mahrear” reflects a former colleague’s delight at how our boss’s Virginia accent made my name sound like his backside, as in, “That writer is a pain in Mahrear” — all of them make me smile because they tickle memories of the people, the stories and the closeness we’ve shared.

And ain’t that the name of the game? OH

Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry magazine. Email her at
ohenrymaria@gmail.com.

2024 Department Life's Funny

Tea Leaf Astrologer

Aries

(March 21 – April 19)

Let’s get right to it: The new moon and total solar eclipse in Aries on April 8 may well clean your fiery little clock. If you’ve been dodging a difficult conversation or wavering on a big decision, ready or not, this cosmic punch will set things in motion for you. On the other hand, if you’ve been showing up for the hard work, trust that the universe is rearranging itself in your favor. But consider adding “patience” to your birthday wish list.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Use your context clues.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

There is no short straw.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Unsecured objects may be dislodged.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

You’re rage-cleaning again.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

Look under the couch.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Ever tried binaural beats? Pink noise? Whale sounds?

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Repeat: Tending to my needs helps everyone.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

It’s time to flush the system.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Work from top to bottom.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Three words: peppermint, sage, ginger.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

It is decidedly so. OH

Zora Stellanova has been divining with tea leaves since Game of Thrones’ Starbucks cup mishap of 2019. While she’s not exactly a medium, she’s far from average. She lives in the N.C. foothills with her Sphynx cat, Lyla.

2024 Department Tea Leaf Astrologer