Tag: Department

Pleasures of Life

PLEASURES OF LIFE

Greensboro’s Perfect Pastry

The apple fritter at Donut World can love you back

By Brian Clarey

Gigi Williams knows exactly what she wants.

She breezes right through the front the door of Donut World’s Battlegrounds Avenue location, past dozens and dozens of donuts — twisted ones, rolled ones, the standard one-hole punch — and beelines to a particular spot in the long, glass case.

“May I have an apple fritter, please,” she says, gesturing to the dozen fritters behind the glass, arranged in a glistening grid on a parchment-papered baking tray.

“Make it two,” her partner jumps in, peering into the display cases. “And a cup of coffee.”

Behind the counter, Luz Martinez gathers the order. The couple hunches over their fritters at a corner table before a day of shopping. But the real reason they made the drive into Greensboro from Oak Ridge this morning is in their hands: It’s the fritter.

“I’m shopping,” Williams says, “but I can’t do it without this.”

After culinary school, she spent decades working in high-end kitchens around the country before settling in Oak Ridge with her partner. And of all the dishes she’s tried from kitchens all over the world, this simple one keeps her coming back.

“She started asking for an apple fritter yesterday,” her partner reveals.

Martinez confirms. Indeed, the apple fritter is the most popular item on the Donut World menu, which should come as no surprise to the thousands of Gate City residents who have already discovered it on their own or through the advice of a trusted palate. The day began with about 10 dozen of them; now, at the noon hour, she is halfway through her inventory.

This apple fritter stands alone among the offerings at Donut World: cake and rise donuts, buttermilk bars, filled donuts, twisted donuts, little donut holes topped with glaze, Jimmies, crystalline sugar, fruity cereal, chopped peanuts, shaved coconut, crumbled Oreos and straight-up chocolate chips, all of which are uniformly excellent. But the fritter? It is a near-perfect example of the form, elegant in its simplicity, impeccably portioned, faultlessly prepared and highly accessible — you can get one in your hands at either the Battleground Avenue or West Market Street location for a couple of bucks.

•

There is nothing fancy about a fritter. It’s nothing but a bit of dough or batter, folded with an ingredient or two and then deep-fried. You can fritter just about anything, savory or sweet. There are corn fritters, blueberry fritters, conch fritters, pumpkin fritters, chicken fritters, banana fritters, cheese fritters, with variations around the globe. You could arguably label croquettes as a type of fritter, along with tempura and pakora.

The apple fritter is perhaps the lowest common denominator of fritter, available at every donut shop across the nation, in the packaged pastry section of the grocery, even inside the occasional vending machine.

But a first encounter with the Donut World apple fritter might leave the customer wondering if they had ever truly eaten a fritter before.

Its soft, light interior is encased in a toasty, brown bark formed when the crenellations in the dough succumb to the deep fry, its crunch intensified by a thin layer of glaze icing. The ratio of apple filling to dough is practically Fibonaccian — enough so that you get some in . . . almost . . . every bite, but not so much as to turn the whole thing into a mashed-up jelly donut.

“I just love pulling it apart,” says Williams, tearing into her fritter. “That first bite, you can tell it’s handmade, not machine-made.”

•

Shop owner Lean Ly brought the recipe with her when she and her family moved to Greensboro from San Luis Obispo, Calif. She comes from a long line of donut-makers — her family owns the Sunrise Donuts chain in Southern California — but she wasn’t thinking about donuts when she first got here. They came across the country for her husband’s job, and Ly wasn’t sure how she would contribute to the family finances. The answer quickly became clear.

“We did not see any family-owned donut shops in Greensboro like we had in California,” she says, “so I bring one into the area.”

The first shop, on West Market Street, is where the apple fritter began to make a name for itself in Greensboro. It quickly became the flagship store’s best-selling item.

The reason for the pastry’s popularity is simple as pie: “People love them very much,” she says.

The recipe is extraordinarily simple, with just three ingredients: dough (not batter), apple filling and cinnamon.

“You mix them together, you let them rise, fry until golden brown and then pour glaze all over them,” she says. Just like everywhere else. “The difference is the care and love we put into them.”

I suspect the “care and love” translates into the perfect fry time — just long enough to develop that magnificent, crunchy bark but not so long that the fritter becomes drenched with oil, first one side and then a practiced flip to brown the other.

“That’s just technique,” Ly says. “When you do something for so long and with so much love, you know exactly how long to fry them, and exactly when to spin them.”

Back in the donut shop, Williams has finished her apple fritter and is ready to begin her shopping. But before she does, she has a request on this day for a reporter working the pastry beat.

“Please,” she says, “do not share this secret. Not everyone needs to know. I want to be able to get my fritters.”

Sorry, GiGi — that’s not how we do things around here. Something this delectable needs to be shared.

Simple Life

SIMPLE LIFE

My March Awakening

Finding the Kingdom of God in my own backyard

By Jim Dodson

Every year as March returns and my garden springs to life, I think of the remarkable woman who changed my life.

Her name was Celetta Randolph Jones, “Randy” for short, a beloved figure in the city of Atlanta’s business, arts and philanthropic circles. Five years my senior and leagues ahead of me in terms of spiritual growth, Randy was introduced to me by my editor, Andrew Sparks, during my first week on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday Magazine staff.

At that time in the spring of 1977, Randy was running The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation and had stopped by the magazine to introduce herself and plumb my interest in historic preservation.

“Something tells me you two are bound to become best friends,” Andy wryly observed, a prophetic remark if there ever was one.

In short order, Randy became my best friend and confidant, the one person I felt comfortable with discussing matters of life and death, heart and soul. Our love affair was a case of what the ancients called agape, transcending romance and superficial attraction. Besides, Randy was secretly dating an Episcopal priest, which I kidded her about relentlessly. She loved to give the needle back about the young women I went out with in those seven years of our deepening friendship.

Though she never married, “Aunt Randy” was the godmother of half a dozen of her nieces and nephews and, eventually, my own daughter, Maggie.

During my first few years in the so-called “city too busy to hate,” I frequently wrote about the darker side of the booming New South — race violence, corrupt politicians, unrepentant Klansmen, the missing and murdered, and young people who flocked to the city seeking fame and fortune only to lose their way and sometimes their lives.

A life-changing moment came one Saturday night when I was waiting for a squad from the city morgue to pick me up for a story I was working on about Atlanta’s famed medical examiner. As I stood in my darkened backyard waiting for my dog, McGee, to do her business, I witnessed my next-door neighbor, an Emory University med student, being gunned down in an alleged drug hit. He died as we waited for the ambulance to arrive.

Not surprisingly it was Randy who helped me make sense of this. The morning after my neighbor’s murder, I’d opened my Bible to the Book of Matthew for the first time in years and was struck by a reference that Jesus repeatedly makes about the “Kingdom of Heaven.” That evening at dinner, I grumbled, “So where the hell on Earth is the so-called Kingdom of Heaven?”

Randy simply smiled. “It’s already here, my love. Inside us. You just have to see it.”

I was a wee bit annoyed by her calm assurance.

Randy was a classy and calm Presbyterian with an unshakable faith in God’s grace. I was a backslid Episcopalian who hadn’t darkened a church doorway since the murder of my girlfriend during our college days.

Purely because of Randy, however, I attended services the next Sunday at historic All Saints’ Episcopal in downtown Atlanta — a place where the doors were always open to the homeless. I soon took a job writing about the suffering of the Third World for the Presiding Bishop’s Fund for World Relief, and even made a vow that, going forward, I would only write about subjects and people who had a positive impact on life. Randy Jones was my inspiration.

I lived up to that vow, and even briefly entertained taking myself off to the Episcopal Seminary until a crusty old bishop from Alabama suggested that I could “probably serve the Lord much better by writing than preaching.”

My pal Randy gave her famous, sultry laugh when I mentioned his somewhat frank comment — and she agreed with him.

During my final years in Atlanta, Randy and I met at least once a week for lunch or dinner to talk about the events of the day and the mysteries of this world. She also spent several Christmases with my family in North Carolina, attended both of my marriages, visited my young brood in Maine and joined us for a joyous spring vacation at our favorite Georgia beach.

In many ways, she became the Dodson family godmother and probably the closest I’ll ever come to knowing a living saint — though she would respond with her sultry laugh at such a silly notion.

Over the decades, as Southern springtime returned, wherever I happened to be in the world, Randy would track me down by phone. She’d finish our talk with a couple meaningful questions: So, Jim, are we any closer to the Kingdom of Heaven? And . . . How is your beautiful garden growing?

She and I had visited public gardens together many times. Randy hailed from Thomasville, a small South Georgia town known as “City of Roses,” and knew that once I’d swapped big-city life for small-town living, I’d become a committed man of the Earth like my rural kin before me. There was no going back, she knew, on gardening or faith.

As my spiritual life grew and deepened across the years, I’d come to believe the Kingdom of Heaven might indeed be nearby. It’s no coincidence that Jesus mentions it 32 times in the Book of Matthew. His partner, Luke, simply calls it the “Kingdom of God” and makes clear — as Randy did — that it “lies within” everyone.

My favorite reference comes from the Gospel of Thomas, when Jesus’ followers pester him to explain where the “Kingdom” exists:

Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.

Wherever it exists, I have my late friend, Randy Jones, to thank for putting me on a winding path to the Kingdom within.

And I’m not alone.

Randy Jones passed away peacefully in October 2022. Her funeral service at Atlanta’s First Presbyterian Church was packed with people whose lives Randy had touched, from business leaders to artists, from church members to childhood friends, including a half a dozen godchildren and yours truly. The sanctuary overflowed with stories of her generosity and quiet wisdom, each person recalling how Randy’s kindness had shaped their own journeys. The service was a testament to the wide effect she had not only in Atlanta but in the hearts of everyone fortunate enough to know her.

Including a former backslid Episcopalian.

2026 Department Simple Life

Omnivorous Reader

OMNIVOROUS READER

The Theft That Wasn’t

The tale of the lost and found Picasso

By Anne Blythe

Most of us have heard that old cliché “Kids say the darnedest things,” but few of us could imagine getting the kind of phone call that Whitcomb Mercer Rummel Sr. received in March 1969 from his eldest child. There was nothing cliché or cutesy about it.

“Hey, Dad, I accidentally stole a Picasso,” Bill Rummel said to his father nearly 57 years ago. What happened afterward is a bit of creative skullduggery that has been concealed in the annals of one family’s history far longer than one of the key participants would have liked.

Whit Rummel Jr., a filmmaker who lives in Chapel Hill, and Noah Charney, an American art historian and fiction writer based in Slovenia, have written The Accidental Picasso Thief: The True Story of a Reverse Heist, Outrunning the FBI and Fleeing the Boston Mob to share that story with the rest of the world.

Disclosure: I have known Whit Rummel, the author, for many years, relishing in his stories and adventures. Although I’ve heard bits and pieces of this story before, this is the first time I’ve been able to soak it all in.

As Whit Rummel, the only surviving member of the trio that pulled off the so-called “reverse heist” writes, the book — part memoir, part true crime — “is the story of one of the oddest art crimes in American history.”

It’s a tale Rummel has wanted to share in full for decades but couldn’t — for reasons ranging from fear of the famous mobster Whitey Bulger, to respect for a brother’s wishes and a dogged hunt for the location of the painting. In June 2023 The New York Times ran a story titled “Hey Dad, Can You Help Me Return the Picasso I Stole?” but Rummel had more to say.

It begins in 1969. Whit Sr. was an empty-nester with his wife in Waterville, Maine. He was the owner of a popular restaurant near Interstate 95 and an ice cream store with in-house creamery serving up unique and enticing flavors like Icky Orgy.

Bill Rummel was in his mid-20s at the time, working as a forklift operator at Logan Airport in Boston moving crates around the world for Emery Air Freight. A historic snowstorm hit the East Coast, leaving chaos in its wake. As flights were delayed and diverted, Bill loaded several flats into the trunk of his car from pesky “orphan” piles clogging up the outbound area. Wrapped up in one of those flats was a Pablo Picasso original, Portrait of a Woman and a Musketeer, that was en route from Paris to a gallery owner in Milwaukee.

Unlike his younger brother, Whitcomb Mercer Jr., Bill wasn’t particularly interested nor appreciative of art and didn’t realize a valuable painting was in his possession. When he found out what he’d inadvertently done, he called his brother, a passionate art lover, who was at Tulane University at the time. After several phone calls, Bill and Whit decided it was time to call their dad, a man they called “the fixer.”

Whit Sr. and his wife, Ann, had moved to Maine in the ’50s and raised their sons there. The boys had a mischievous streak in them, perhaps inherited from a father who relished taking them on “wild goose chases.”

Whit and Bill, now in young adulthood, needed their father’s guidance. What should they do with the stolen Picasso? This was no wild goose chase. They had heard the FBI was on the hunt for the painting. To make matters worse, rumor was that Whitey Bulger’s notorious Winter Hill Gang also was searching for it, threatening anyone trying to move in on their airport turf.

“Our father, after all, was the grand fixer. The one guy who’d always been there for us, pulling us out of whatever kind of jam we’d found ourselves in (and there had been many),” Whit writes. Their dad reeled off several options. One was keep the painting, bury it under the floor of the Waterville restaurant and uncover it some years later, feigning shock and surprise. The other option? “He said maybe there was a way to return it. Without letting anybody know who took it,” Bill told his brother.

That’s the option they chose. Whit Jr. got instructions from his dad. “I want you to write a brief note to accompany the return of the painting,” his dad said. “Nothing long or complex. Just a few mysterious sentences to put them off the track of someone like Bill.”

To this day, Whit chuckles at the note he composed with intentional “grammatical quirks.”

PLEASE ACCEPT THIS TO
REPLACE IN PART SOME OF THE PAINTINGS REMOVED FROM MUSEUMS ACROSS THE COUNTRY. — ROBBIN’ HOOD.

Whit Sr. and Bill would don costumes, fake mustaches and fedoras, get in a Chevy Impala and set off to return the Picasso at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. An unexpected sighting of an employee near the loading dock upset their plans, but eventually the painting made it to the museum. A blurb announcing its return was in the news, and the Rummels went on with their lives, though their dad would die suddenly just a few years later, in 1972.

As the years went by Whit wanted to make a movie about the unwitting theft, but his brother wanted it to remain a secret, though Bill did do an interview about the incident with This American Life that never aired. He passed away in 2015.

There are some differences in the version Bill told then and what Whit remembers from their phone calls when his brother first told him he had “a friggin’ Picasso.” In the book, Whit shares both versions of how his brother recounted coming into possession of the crate. Though Whit never accuses his brother of knowingly taking the painting, he acknowledges there could be doubts about his intentions.

The book details the surviving Rummel brother’s search for the painting now and his hope to one day have his picture taken in front of it with his son, another Whit Rummel, and a nephew who shares their name, too. If that were to happen, the three — named for “the fixer” — would be “smiling proudly and loudly now, because our story has finally been told.”

For anybody who cares about art, the creation of it, and the quirkiness that makes families special, it’s a story worth telling, reading and even telling again.

2026 Department Omnivorous Reader

Almanac February 2026

ALMANAC

February 2026

By Ashley Walshe

February leans in close, icy breath tingling the nape of your neck, and asks you to pick a door.

“A what?” you blurt, turning toward the raspy voice. No one. But that’s when you see it. A door straight out of a fantasy novel.

Approaching slowly, you take in the intricate details and lifelike carvings: apple blossoms and honeybees; pregnant doe and spring ephemerals; fiddleheads and fox kits.

Wood as frozen as the earth below, your fingers ache as they trace the grooves and ridges, then fumble across a secret panel. Beneath it? A round peep window with an unobstructed view to spring.

Bone-cold and weary, you press your face against the cold glass and glimpse a drift of wild violets, trees gleaming with sunlit leaves, a bouquet of ruby-throated hummingbirds.

“Yes, please,” you nearly sing, reaching for the frigid brass knob. Your heart sinks when you find that it’s locked.

Rapping the knocker for what feels like ages, desire becomes agony.

You wait, desperate for the door to open — desperate to bypass the bitter cold and step into the warm embrace of spring.

That’s when you remember the voice.

Pick a door.

Of course, there’s another. You spin on your heel and set out to find it.

As you walk, you notice how the frost resembles glittering stardust; the moon, a silver smile in the crystalline sky. How naked trees stand in praise and wonder of what pulses, unseen.

This is the doorway, you realize, feeling your breath deepen, your heart open, your jaw and belly soften.

There is peace here, at this threshold of endings and beginnings, where life moves slowly, where early crocuses burst through the wintry soil. Peace and wonder. But only if you choose it.

Early Signs of Spring

Love and birdsong are in the air. On mild days, mourning cloaks trail yellow-bellied sapsuckers, sipping maple, birch and apple sap from tidy rows of wells.

No vintage perfume smells as delicate and sweet as the trailing arbutus blooming in our sandy woodlands. And — oh, dear — a striped skunk rejects an unwanted suitor.

Soon, toads will begin calling. Gray squirrels will bear their spring litters. Bluebirds will craft their cup-shaped nests.

Spring makes her slow and subtle entrance, even when we can’t yet see it.

Year of the Horse

The Year of the Fire Horse (aka, the Red Horse Year) begins on Tuesday, Feb. 17. According to the Chinese Zodiac, 2026 will be a spirited year of passion, dynamism and boundless freedom.

In other words: It won’t be a year for the sidelines.

Souls born this year are said to be bold, adventurous leaders, quick-witted and headstrong, magnetic and rebellious. Parents of Fire Horse children: Let it be known that they can’t be tamed.

2026 Almanac Department

Tea Leaf Astrologer

TEA LEAF ASTROLOGER

Aquarius

January 20 – February 18

Buckle up, space cadet. The new moon eclipse on February 17 is going to be what the normies call “a moment” — especially for you. Yes, you’re different. We know, we know. But when you’re done trying on hats for the thrill of it, a seismic shift will occur in the quirky little core of your being. Reinvention is no longer performative. It’s the only path forward. Believe it or not, the world is ready for the weirdest version of you. Are you ready?

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Wear the lacy blue ones.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

A little dab will do.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Milk and honey, darling.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Don’t forget the reservations.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Three words: breakfast in bed.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

You can buy yourself flowers.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

Order the fancy entrée.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Just tell them how you feel already.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Edible is the operative word.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Try flirting with a deeper perspective.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Hint: polka dots.

2026 Department Tea Leaf Astrologer

Home Grown

HOME GROWN

Kissing Fashion Crimes Goodbye

Confessing to questionable dressing

By Cynthia Adams

A few friends met at a wine bar where our topics flowed as freely as the wine. We’re a book club, yet we discuss (in no particular order) books, travel, headlines and get-ups we deeply regretted having ever worn outside the house.

It took getting wine-d up to confess regrettables we not only had worn but that we still had hanging in our closets. Bohemian garb the late Diane Keaton might have managed to swan around in, but not us mere mortals.

Somehow, crimes of the heart figured into our respective fashion offense confessionals.

I will not name names, but, among other things, one friend confesses to wearing Boogie Nights-like neon running shorts with pantyhose, topped by a yellow scoop-neck shirt (sporting a frog graphic). This was her “kiss outfit,” so-named not after Kiss the band, but because it was worn to sneak with her sixth-grade boyfriend to the attic for a long-planned smooching session.

She lost her nerve and bolted before kiss consummation, a shame because the boyfriend moved away and became an actor in Friends.

“He was much more complex than the character he played,” she insists as we mopped tears of laughter from our eyes.

Another friend, who formerly owned a vintage clothing store, thought nothing of wearing a head-to-toe tie-dyed ensemble. “I thought I looked great,” she says, laughing and choking on a sip.

Tie-dye, overalls, suede jackets with long fringe were all cherished fashion staples. She especially enjoyed sporting a beloved polka-dotted tent dress.

A favorite admission following a pinot noir: “If the hemline of my skirt was longer than my fingertips, then it was too long.” We envision our friend twirling away in her polka-dotted dress and laugh even harder.

My own confession centers around a big yellow school bus and Johnny Teeter, my first big crush, who drove No. 15 to Bethel Elementary.

Love for Johnny drove me to commit a most regrettable fashion misfire.

As Mom tamed my hair into a ponytail most mornings, Johnny honked the horn and waited. My skinny knees knocked together as I ran down the gravel drive, kicking up a cloud of dust. I was breathless by the time the bus door swung open; not due to exertion but the thundering of my heart as Johnny flashed his beautiful pearly whites. He had many assets, but I thought he had the most amazing smile I’d ever seen.

If I got into a scuffle with Buddy the bus bully, Johnny would stop the bus and intervene, pulling me safely to a seat.

Johnny was the perfect guy.

Regrettably, he thought I was too young, which increased my ardor to prove a 12-year difference between a 6- and 18-year-old meant nothing.

But how?

One fine morning, I slipped out of the house wearing my mother’s purloined girdle (pinned up) and sexy stockings. It was my version of a kiss outfit, hoping to strike Johnny with just how mature I had grown in recent weeks. As I crossed the road with shoulders high, hoping to catch his eye, the thing fell down, puddled around my brown penny loafers.

I had certainly caught his eye.

Johnny jumped out, bundling the girdle and hose into my book bag. Red faced, I took a seat on the bus as Buddy bellowed with laughter.

Was it love that was driving me and my friends to assorted, well-intended, fashion mortifications?

Like toting my awkward leather prison purse — the one my father tooled during his unfortunate incarceration at Maxwell Air Force Base.

Dad, you see, was a free spirit — so free he stopped paying his income tax until the actual Men in Black from the IRS came to our door and served notice that his life was about to change.

Say what you will about minimum-security prisons: The godawful fact was that Dad just so happened to be incarcerated with White House counsel Charles Colson. My father protested to the warden that being sent to the same prison as a Nixon defender was cruel and unusual punishment.

He and Colson peeled potatoes while dissecting the finer points of Watergate. They made prison purses and string art. Despite a wary truce, Dad never trusted Colson’s “jailhouse religion.”

When Dad returned, he presented the leather bag to a daughter who had missed him so with pride. After all, he had spent much of his three months at Maxwell making it. The purse accessorized my permed hair, maxi dresses, pink corduroy hip huggers. It could have been worse.

But I never wore a girdle and hose again, not even in the name of love.

2026 Department Home Grown

Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

By Cassie Bustamante

“Help! I need a furniture therapy!” Angelique texts me early one recent morning. Even earlier for her since she moved from Maryland to Colorado a year after our family jumped ship from the Old Line State to the Old North State. But we’re both early risers, especially now that we’re middle-aged, and those predawn conversations are frequent — focusing on anything from perimenopausal insomnia and parenting to what smutty books we’re currently reading. Or, as in this case, which Facebook marketplace chairs will look best at her dining table.

When Gail, a mutual friend of ours, got wind that I was packing up and heading to the rolling hills of rural Myersville, Md., she said, “You’ve got to meet Angelique! She has a vintage business, just like you. You two will hit it off.” Plus, I discovered, Angelique had three kids, two who were the same ages as mine — Sawyer and Emmy, just 6 and 4 at the time. It felt like a fated friendship. And yet, things didn’t simply fall into place.

Once our boxes were unpacked, I dialed the number Gail had given me and burbled on as I do when I’m nervous and unsure of myself. “Hi, I’m Cassie, and Gail has told me so much about you and I’d love to hang out sometime and our kids are the same age and . . .” Yep, oral diarrhea, technically diagnosed as logorrhea, and I just can’t make it stop. But I suppose that’s better than the actual kind.

As luck would have it, I discovered that Sawyer and Angelique’s middle daughter were on the same soccer team. And at practice one afternoon, Angelique was there on the sidelines — tall, goddess-like, striking with dark-chocolate hair and, although I don’t quite recall the outfit, I do remember thinking at the time, “that’s pretty chic for soccer practice.” Angelique, I began to realize, had impeccable style, both in fashion and, I learned as the months went by, in what had become increasingly an interest of mine, interiors.

I fought the immediate urge to run over and say hi. And I didn’t. In fact, we didn’t really become good friends for months after that. As I sat on a blanket with Emmy watching Sawyer run down the soccer field, I took one look at myself and the word that came to mind was “frumpy.” Ill-fitting jeans, a worn T-shirt and hair that had been plopped up on top of my head just to keep it out of my tired face. Ultrachic Angelique seemed clearly out of my leggings-count-as-pants league.

But, as the years trotted along in Myersville, our kids got to know each other in school. Soon, Emmy was asking to play with Angelique’s youngest daughter, Genevieve. The girls were too young to make those plans themselves but old enough to choose their own playmates. I can’t remember who broke the ice first, but once we started chipping away, the rest melted.

Slowly, Angelique and I got to know each other. What started as a mutual passion for design and fashion blossomed into a deep interest in what else we held dear and what terrified us. We are both dreamers who thrive on the creative back-and-forth more than the final product. But where I am all fire and have a “go” kind of energy, Angelique is a soft place to land, contemplative, compassionate and an incredible listener. Day by day, week by week, month by month, as we allowed ourselves to become more vulnerable and share our innermost trials, tribulation and triumphs, we became trusted confidantes through all of life’s beauty and messiness.

When she became caretaker for her elderly father, I listened as she navigated a new stage in life. And when I suffered several miscarriages, Angelique’s nonjudgmental, empathetic ear saw me through. In fact, so thrilled that baby Wilder was finally growing in my belly, she insisted on throwing me a baby shower. I assured her I didn’t need one and was met with, “But I want to do this for you, Cassie.” While it may have taken years, Gail was right. No, off the bat, we didn’t hit it off, but practice makes perfect and now we’re each others biggest cheerleaders.

One of our favorite outings was to make the hour-long trek to Ikea, lists in our hands and dreams of affordable Swedish-made furniture and decor in our heads. The drive offered the opportunity for coffee and conversation. On one occasion, as we glided south on I-95, the topic of women supporting women came up — after all, we both co-owned female-led businesses. I said something to the effect of, “Sometimes it’s a case of feeling mutually intimidated that can lead to two women missing out on what could actually be a great friendship.”

While I hadn’t actually been referring to us, Angelique, in the passenger seat, sheepishly peered at me out of the corner of her eye and quipped, “Yeah, let’s not let that happen again.”

That’s the moment it dawned on me. All that time I’d lost thinking I wasn’t worthy of Angelique, she had been intimidated by me. She saw me as smart, casually stylish and totally confident in who I was. Turns out, that intimidation was just mutual admiration.

I pick up my phone, press Angelique’s number and wait for her to pick up.

2026 Chaos Theory Department

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Greensboro Is Your Oyster

And The Pyrle aims to cultivate Elm Street

By Billy Ingram

“I regarded home as a place I left behind in order to come back to it afterward.” – Ernest Hemingway

Game-changing.

Will that jaundiced misnomer ever cease being bandied about when depicting every precious pearl newly strung to downtown Greensboro’s asymmetrical necklace? Fifty years ago that meant widening sidewalks to create a mall-like experience; truly a game-changer in that it caused retailers to hightail it elsewhere.

Equally emblematic yet undeniably more effective are 21st-century sparklers lit with optimistic expectations for jumpstarting the heart of a city: LeBauer and Center City Parks, the Downtown Greenway pedestrian path, a $22-million baseball stadium, free shuttle-bus rides and Lewis Street’s impressive redevelopments. A new hotel here, a refurbished dry cleaners serving shoyu there — I delight in them all.

While downtown nightclubs light up late nights, there are scant advantages for nearby businesses. Tanger has been a boon, but its positioning at downtown’s outer edge results in attendees transacting predominantly with municipal parking decks. Sauntering southward on Elm reveals vacated storefronts with restaurants rarely slammed. I’ve witnessed first-hand downtown’s glacial evolution from a zip code to be avoided three decades ago into an uneven periphery, one that is populated with pulsating pockets of genuine excitement tucked in and around a central business district seemingly adrift, lacking a metaphorical pair of jeans, if you will, to stitch those pockets onto.

A seismic shift in that dynamic is all but assured as The Pyrle emerges from its makeshift shell later this month, a 1,000-person-capacity music venue and event space at 232 South Elm, just south of Crafted The Art of the Taco. Its mission? To cauterize that chasm currently preventing performers with audiences too zaftig for Ziggy’s from gigging here but lacking in fannies needed to pack Tanger’s 3,000 seats or top off the Coliseum’s 23,000-capacity arena.

The Pyrle (named for Pyrle Gibson in honor of her contributions to our local arts scene) is a total and consummate reimagining of a palatial, dearly-departed department store built almost a century ago for Montgomery Ward; a four-story monument to 20th-century merchandizing that was, for decades, a darkened abyss until Triad Stage stoked some semblance of life into its cavernous maw beginning in 1999 and lasting through 2023’s le scandale. Over the last year, the entire 35,000-square-foot interior was gutted then reanimated, arising not only as a rarified, state-of-the-art performance platform, but also encompassing staging areas for community events and even two unrelated office spaces.

Durant Bell is one of five active investors in this high-stakes venture. “I grew up in Greensboro, went away for school, lived in D.C. for about four years and then moved back about 20 years ago,” he says. In fact, all of The Pyrle’s principal players are longtime Gate City residents and/or boomerangs such as general manager Dominick Amendum, who attended Greensboro College then “moved away, had the first stage of my career before returning about six years ago. I jumped on board with these guys in March of 2024.” One keen interest all of these principals have in common? “We love music,” Bell insists. “One of the great connectors amongst us was finding ourselves going to a lot of shows outside of Greensboro.” And, they thought, why not bring those shows here?

Lacking a mid-plex like The Pyrle has resulted in indie, post-punk, R&B and EDM fans making weekend exoduses, sometimes hours long, just to see their favorite acts. The Pyrle partnered with The Knitting Factory, a well-established national talent broker. What that means is that Greensboro will become a logical stop for touring bands. “Coming from Richmond to Wilmington to Asheville, we can pick up a lot of these regional bands that are already on that pathway,” says Amendum. “So we got really excited about this opportunity to be a catalyst for Elm Street and for the city.”

Let’s face it, a vibrant live-music culture is one major reason Durham is booming, yet Greensboro, despite numerous well-intentioned pavings, remains perpetually tethered to the proverbial starting gate. “To have a healthy music ecosystem,” Bell claps back, “you need a continuum of venue sizes so that you’re attracting artists at all different [levels].” Initially, The Pyrle will mount around two shows a week, ramping up to a goal of about 150 shows a year. “Officially, we are a genre agnostic,” Amendum adds. “We’re going to try a lot of everything over these first couple of years.”

Those in the know can snag tickets to four free February shows (visit thepyrle.com/events). Then, after Americana singer-songwriter Anders Osborne closes out the month, early bookings continue to reflect that refreshingly eclectic POV — reggae royalty The Wailers, country crooner Ricky Skaggs and alt-rockers Silversun Pickups, for instance. Sprinkled throughout are North Carolina-rooted headliners such as Southern pop-rockers The Connells and the so-called “most underappreciated band on the face of the planet” Watchhouse. Plus, hop over to catch the tantalizing twang of Chatham Rabbits with Holler Choir opening.

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What impact will this have for the mother lode of unparalleled creative artists undergirding our scattershot music scene? Amendum’s answer is encouraging: “That’s a big thing on my radar right now, how we bring the community onto our stage. Whether it’s monthly showcases featuring two or three local bands or as openers for some of these national acts.”

VIP sections, cozy alcoves and aerie overhangs provide for a surprisingly intimate setting with no bad sight lines. “There’s not another venue like this in the Southeast,” says Bell, who even queried touring acts for what amenities they’d like, then implemented those suggestions. “When you look at the hospitality suite we have for artists, people’s minds are going to be blown. The Knitting Factory, who manage venues all over the country, were here last week and they were like, ‘No other venue has an LED screen this size.’ In five years, they will all have them, but we’re on the cutting edge.”

Planning to be open six days a week, The Pyrle’s polish is its cosmopolitan cocktail lounge at the entrance, lacquered in leather and wood grain. “We’re going to do a bar differently than your typical music venue,” Bell says. “People can go back out to the bar and enjoy basking in the afterglow of that awesome show they just saw. Maybe the band is feeling frisky and wants to come down from the green room and have a drink.” Ambient screens are tuned to the stage during performances, but on non-show nights, says Amendum, “I love the idea of an ’80s MTV music video night on Tuesdays or maybe Wednesday nights they’re playing some live show that was taped at Red Rock.”

Won’t be long before word gets around, up and down I-85 and 40, that Greensboro’s got game (for a change).

2026 Department Wandering Billy

Birdwatch

BIRDWATCH

Swamp Song

A liquid stream of notes

By Susan Campbell

To most folks, especially non-birders, a sparrow is just a sparrow — a small brown bird with varying amounts of streaking and a stubby little bill. Not very impressive. However, in Central and Eastern North Carolina, and especially in winter, nothing could be further from the truth.

Although few sparrow species can readily be found during the breeding season in our area, we have 10 different kinds that regularly spend the cooler months here. These range in size from the husky fox sparrow down to the diminutive chipping sparrow. Without a doubt, my favorite in this group is the swamp sparrow, whose handsome appearance and unique adaptations make it a definite standout.

At this time of the year, these medium-sized sparrows are a warm brown above with black streaking — like so many others — but swamps have a significant amount of chestnut apparent in the wings. The gray face, dark eye line and crown streak contrast sharply with the white throat and breast. The tail is relatively long and rounded, a very good rudder for moving around in the tight quarters where these birds live.

As the bird’s name implies, it is usually found in wetter habitat year-round. With longer legs than their conspecifics, swamp sparrows readily forage in the shallows, searching not only for fallen seeds and berries, but also for aquatic invertebrates. Individuals are even known to flip submerged vegetation with their bills in search of a meal.

The song is a liquid stream of notes that we rarely hear during the cooler months. The call note, however, is very loud and distinctive and uttered frequently. I hear far more of these birds calling from thick, wet habitat than I see along our coast. Swamps give themselves away with a metallic “chink.” If they are disturbed, they are hesitant to fly — probably due to their excellent camouflage. Instead, these birds usually choose to run from potential danger. They can maneuver deftly through sticks, stems and branches when pursued.

If a swamp sparrow does fly, it will not be over a great distance. A leery individual will sail to the nearest perch and survey the source of the disturbance, and then it will quickly vanish into thick vegetation.

Birds of wet areas such as these can be attracted to your yard even if you do not live in a coastal or riparian area. They may show up during the spring or fall migration if you can create cover for them. Adding low, thick shrubs such as blueberries or gallberry will help. A simple brush pile adjacent to your feeding station may be enough to get their attention, but in order to really up the odds of attracting a few swamp sparrows, consider creating a small wetland garden. A small depression will attract more than just this species: It will provide for a multitude of native critters and can be used to naturally treat (i.e., filter) household wastewater. Water features of all sizes have become a very popular way to increase wildlife, even on small properties.

Swamp sparrows have been studied for almost a century. It was one of the first species to be banded by ornithologists using modern methodology in the early 1900s. In fact, a banded bird from Massachusetts in October 1937 was relocated in central Florida in January of 1938 having covered a whopping 1,125 miles. This information was some of the earliest data produced on the migration of songbirds in the United States.

The next time you are out walking along the edge of a marshy area or paddling in the shallows, watch and listen for this neat little winter resident. One may pop into view and treat you with a short look.

2026 Birdwatch Department

Sazerac February 2026

SAZERAC

February 2026

Window on the Past

Guilford County has many ties to historical figures, but one of the most significant is the upbringing of former First Lady Dolley Madison. She was renowned for her social grace and writing, which is evident in this poem written to her friend, Madeleine Dahlgren, on Valentine’s Day, 1849.

For Miss Dahlgren

Deliberate on all things, with thy friend,

But since friends grow not thick on every bough,

First, on thy friend deliberate with thyself,

Then, ponder self, not eager in the choice,

Nor jealous of the chosen fixing, fix

Judge before friendship, then confide till death.

Sage Gardener

An earwig can be as irritating as it is haunting, especially at 3 a.m., when you can’t quite remember the correct lyrics to the song: “She once was a true love of mine” swirl around with “parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,” which triggers a mental inventory of the state of my herb garden. Rosemary? Check, big bush of it near the goldfish pond. Thyme? Got it in spades. Parsley? It’s struggling but will rebound. Sage? I’ll need to order seeds or find some plants.

Now can I go back to sleep?

Not until I get up and listen to “Scarborough Fair” — and learn (just in time for Valentine’s Day) that the four herbs combined constitute a love potion, parsley for comfort, sage for strength, rosemary for love and thyme for courage. And also that Paul Simon once sang the song on The Muppet Show in duet with Miss Piggy, both dressed as Renaissance minstrels.

That’s the sort of thing you discover when, in the middle of the night, you go down the gopher-tortoise hole (because gopher tortoise burrows contain the likes of coral snakes, beetles, skunks, gopher frogs and other critters you’d never find going down a rabbit hole).

Parsley, Petroselinum (from the Greek “rock celery”) crispum: While Greeks fed parsley to their race horses, the Romans spread parsley throughout their empire, convinced it warded off infection and masked the smell of garlic. (Do not try this at home.) In medieval times, it was thought to provoke lust and love. So, who wouldn’t want this excellent companion plant in their garden, warding off asparagus beetles and attracting bees and hoverflies, which everybody knows feast on aphids and thrips? Any chef realizes that it brightens even the most complex dish when sprinkled just before serving and anything grilled benefits from the addition of parsley, butter and lemon.

Sage, Salvia (from the Latin “salvere,” meaning “to be saved”) officinalis: Sage is native to the Mediterranean region, but naturalized throughout the world, including here in North America, where some Indian tribes consider it a sacred herb. In fact, many have adopted the Native American tradition of burning sage for spiritual purification. It thrives in well-drained, slightly acidic soil and needs lots of sun to create maximum flavor. Avoid overwatering or too much fertilizer. Its earthy flavor blends with almost anything and is such an essential Southern spice in pork that the Neese’s sausage people offer an “extra sage” variety. Green cheese? English Derby with sage added.

Rosemary, Rosmarinus (Latin for dew of the sea) officinalis: Just so you know, Napoleon’s eau de cologne was based on rosemary. Greeks thought that wearing a garland of it improved memory and there’s some current scientific evidence supporting that. In medieval times, rosemary was used in both funeral and weddings as a symbol of happiness, loyalty and love, but was also thought to attract elves. Rosemary does not grow well in containers, needing light, well-drained soil. Harvest rosemary just before it flowers for maximum flavor.

Thyme, Thymus vulgaris (although there are hundreds of varieties): Among other mythical and historical applications, thyme was burned to rid homes and temples of insects and snakes; carried by Roman soldiers into battle for courage and strength; used in charms to enable one to see fairies; and seen as an antidote to snake and spider bites. Thyme is hardy, loves sunlight and can spread like a miniature form of kudzu once established. Besides being an excellent food preservative, thyme oil is antioxidant, antifungal and antibacterial.

The song itself? The melody is centuries old and was collected from a retired lead miner by Ewan MacColl, a British folklorist, singer and songwriter. Simon & Garfunkel, in turn, collected and recorded the melody. The lyrics about unrequited love became famous after its inclusion in a movie about the very same thing: The Graduate. Except for the presumed availability of the four herbs in medieval Scarborough in Yorkshire, England, the lyrics contain a lot more advice for the lovelorn than for gardeners, true of most rock’n’roll. But my lady did indeed find me an acre of land, and that’s true love.
— David Claude Bailey

Unsolicited Advice

As soon as the last of the leftover Super Bowl chicken wings are finished, we’ll finally be done with football season and we can then focus on what’s more important: crafting! Galentine’s Day is right around the corner and — we don’t know about you, but after all the touchdown talk — we’re in desperate need of a girls’ night. So while the boys sulk about their team not making it to the playoffs — yet, again — we cooked up some fun activities for you to do with your gal pals.

When was the last time you put your creative skills to the test? Watercolor paint, a couple of canvases and a bottle of wine is all that is needed to uncork a proper sip-and-paint night for the gals. And as the cups fill and the paint strokes the canvas, your abstract art will look a lot like Picasso’s, especially through wine goggles.

Even with the simplest of instructions, baking can be difficult. But as bad at baking as we are, two is often better than one in the kitchen, especially if your friend is a little more skillful with a whisk. As long as you fake it until you bake it, the toughest of recipes can become smooth as batter and you can show that pound cake who’s boss. So grab a friend and make that pie recipe — it’s as easy as, well, pie.

There’s something so freeing about making a mess, especially when it allows for a perfect display of memories. Scrapbooking lets you fly your freak flag without any judgement. It’s all for you, the girls and no one else. We are a patchwork of pieces, so our scrapbooks should be too. Now, pull out the scissors, paper and your hot glue gun and make a mess — a hot mess.

Just One Thing

Renowned artist Joyce J. Scott, nicknamed the “Queen of Beads,” has stitched a path of her own through the quilting world, which obviously includes beadwork. But mothers are often the first to guide us through our crafting journeys, and, with the quilt Monsters, Dragons and Flies, it’s no different. Joyce and her mother, Elizabeth T. Scott, pieced together retrospective work that expands upon the traditional ideas of quiltmaking. With its appliquéd patterns and series of hand-embroidered images, the quilt the mother-daughter duo collaborated on found its way across the country. Catch this piece and many more by other African American quilters at the Weatherspoon Art Museum’s Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South exhibit, on view from Feb. 7–Aug. 1 — an exhibit fit for a queen.

2026 Department Sazerac