Follow the Yellow Brick Road

To the 25th anniversary production of CTG’s The Wizard Of Oz

By Quinn Dalton

 

Justice Reeves-Burke, a sophomore at Weaver Academy and one of two Dorothys cast in Community Theatre of Greensboro’s production of The Wizard of Oz, knows what it’s like to grow up in the theater. At 15, and now in her seventh year in the production, she’s been acting for literally half a lifetime.

She credits her mother, Adriane Reeves-Burke, for her start. “My mom had been the stage manager in Oz the year before,” Reeves says. Her first role? A munchkin. “I was in the Lullaby League, and I was also a crow,” Reeves recalls. That was the first three years. The second three she spent in the Women’s Chorus — they are on stage when Dorothy makes her first entrance running down the aisle. She auditioned for the Dorothy role at age 12, 13 and 14 before being offered the role this year. “I finally got it,” she says. The excitement is clear in her voice. So is the confidence. She has followed her passion and she’s kept coming back year after year — for the joy of it, mainly — and she’s ready to make her own run down that aisle.

Reeves-Burke’s story echoes the story of so many actors, stage crew members, volunteers and family members who, over 70 seasons, have formed the family that is the Community Theatre of Greensboro.

CTG executive director Roz Fulton came to Greensboro as a student at N.C. A&T, graduating in 2000 with a B.S. in family and consumer science education. CTG was the only place she applied to, hired as an administrative assistant. When she joined, the annual Wizard of Oz production was only in its fourth year, and it was also the only CTG production that provided an abundance of roles for children.

Over the next few years, she saw so many talented young people play their hearts out as a munchkin, poppy or crow. But there weren’t many opportunities for kids in other CTG productions. “I wanted to see all the kids shine.”

In 2005 the education director role came available and she asked the CTG board to consider her. “I always had a creative side to me,” she says. “They gave me the chance.”

Their first youth production kicked off in 2008 with High School Musical. Many other famous musical productions adapted for younger audiences have found their way onto the stage through Music Theatre International’s Broadway Junior series.

With all of this developing talent, Fulton launched CTG’s Centerstage Youth Performing Group and began adapting those performances to compete in the Junior Theater Festival, a national competition held in Atlanta in which youth theater programs perform 15-minute versions of full-length performances. To be clear, these short versions are not simply a selection of scenes. They are in fact a 15-minute version of a full-length production. The youth actors help with selection, and Fulton scripts each one. The actors practice under a tight schedule to prepare. In 2020, Fulton and her talented troupe will also attend Junior Theater Festival West in Sacramento for the first time. “It’s the most exciting thing we do,” she says.

Passing the Wand

This year, 19 years after newly graduated Fulton decided CTG was the only place she wanted to apply, she became CTG’s executive director, stepping smoothly into the role formerly held by Mitchel Sommers, who still directs Oz as he has every year since the first production in 1995. Which means Fulton and Sommers have been taking us down the yellow brick road for longer than many of the cast members have been alive. And this is a big year — it’s CTG’s 70th season and the 25th production of The Wizard of Oz.

“It’s the longest continuously running Wizard of Oz production in the world,” Sommers says, and he’s put in the time to know. He is always looking for other longer-running productions as he’s worked year after year to keep this classic production fresh.

This involves frequent changes to sets, choreography, costumes and even adding to the cast. Last year for example, the newly minted Emerald City Ensemble added dance and comic sparkle, and this year some major set design updates will wow audiences.

The scale of CTG’s Oz is in and of itself dazzling. Because of its popularity, it’s the one show staged at the historic Carolina Theatre. The roughly 100-
person cast is only a sliver of the picture. Backstage, two sets of 25 volunteers work in different teams, one on each production weekend, assisting with props, set and costume changes, with lighting and sound crews hired in.

Then there are the parents, bless them, who get their munchkin or flying monkey to practice every afternoon and on weekends as the show dates near, and may volunteer as well. Often, it’s truly a family effort. In Roz Fulton’s case, daughter Morgan did a munchkin/poppy turn while husband Jevon was one of the Fly Guys — the volunteers who run the rigging that puts the air under the Wicked Witch’s broom.

All told, between cast, crew, professional technicians, volunteers and of course CTG staff, each production directly involves around 220 people. That’s, of course, not including the thousands of audience members — multiplied by 25 years. That’s a lot of people coming together to share the wonder of one of the most famous stories in the world, one that happens to be not just about going home, but knowing where your home really is.

There’s no Place like Home

Mitchel Sommers has seen first-hand how thousands of young and adult actors have found their home in theater. “Many people who perform with CTG, and not just with The Wizard of Oz, their lives may not be ideal,” Sommers says. “This lifts them up to a better place. Sometimes it’s just a matter of learning basic life skills — how to dress themselves or how to read or how to just have a conversation.” Often, he says, it’s as simple as walking into a world they wouldn’t know otherwise. “Some of our actors come to practice from a shelter and they live for being part of this production. When they come here they’re on the same stage and singing the same songs as people who have grown up in a mansion and had every advantage.”

And the stories. Too many to count. Too many to mention. The grandmother who’s brought her granddaughter to every production for 20 years. The mother who, as a little girl, was in the cast of Annie, the first production Mitchel directed, and years later performed in Oz with her daughters. The friendships and even families that found their start on that stage. The people he runs into everywhere he goes, locally and in far-flung places, who tell him about their own experience in the show, or about their child’s, or how it was the first play they ever saw, made possible by CTG’s free school performance during the week before opening night.

Mitchel found his home too — in CTG, in Oz, and the theater, always the theater. Every story is another reason he stays with it. “This is how we share what it’s like to be human,” he says. “We are all transformed on the stage.”

Justice Reeves-Burke, who shares the role of Dorothy this year with High Point’s Penn-Griffin School for the Arts’ junior Mackenzie Mullins, agrees. The two Dorothys split their performances over the two weekends — partly so there is an understudy in case of sickness, and partly to allow more opportunity for actors to shine. She says she might never have found her passion if both of her moms hadn’t suggested she try it. So she wants to pay that favor forward to anyone wondering if there might be a place on stage for them. “Try it,” she says. “It’s taught me so much. And when it comes together it’s the best feeling in the world.”  OH

Quinn Dalton is the author of two story collections and two novels, most recently Midnight Bowling. She also co-authored The Infinity Of You & Me under the pen name JQ Coyle with fellow UNCG M.F.A. grad Julianna Baggott.

 For information on showdates: November 16 – 24. https://www.facebook.com/pg/communitytheatreofgreensboro/events/?ref=page_internal

Singing Tables

A poetic meditation

By Jaki Shelton Green

I’m never cooking alone, even at my most solitary moments. I am surrounded by generations of cooks, their wisdom, laughter, and their flawed and perfect recipes lifting my hands and heart savoring each ingredient as I realize that each ingredient represents all the joys, sorrows, healing and restoration of my life’s journey. These unseen hands hold me in passionate surrender to generosity as family and friends gather at my table reminding me that food creates community, holds my sense of identity, and conjures sensory surprises over and over again. The ghosts of other tables, other kitchens remind me that we are all just ingredients, and what matters is the grace with which I cook the meal.

My food odyssey is a soundtrack re-mix like the texture of an autobiography offering a throw-back to prayer-song, dance, birth, death, sex and rock and roll. The backyard chicken coops, vegetable gardens and mini orchards are long gone like my elders and the neighborhood of my childhood. What remains is me . . . the brown woman-child writing down the sizzle of cast iron skillets, the bold of the beet, the hot of the pepper pot, the earthiness of walnuts, the bitter of arugula.

Food helps me to express my past and present. Food helps me to create communal ties and honor my ancestral roots.

“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!

Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

Born of his Spirit, washed in his blood” — Frances Crosby

My grandmother, Eva White Tate, hosted the Ora Shanklin African Methodist Episcopal Missionary meetings, which gathered monthly on first Monday evenings during the springs and summers of my youth. An agenda of devotions, song, prayer and Scripture segued into Old and New Business, projects to raise money for their many charitable activities, missionary dues, and a “love offering” for the sick. My grandmother, mother and aunts raced around all day preparing food and setting an elegant table for the elaborately coiffed church ladies in their flawless pristine summer linen, pastels, crepe de chine, patent leather and sexy slingbacks that made ticky-tacky squeals across the glistening, freshly waxed wood floor.

This monthly soiree featured milk glass vases holding peony globes and arrangements of snapdragons, Queen Anne’s lace and foxgloves strategically placed on the crisp white linen tablecloth adorning the antique oak dining table, monogrammed linen napkins, and the heirloom silverware that was left to my tiny hands to polish on a monthly basis. I was impressed that the deviled eggs required their own unique platter, designed especially for — deviled eggs. Mounds of homemade chicken salad garnished with apples, pecans and grapes, potato salad, pear walnut salad, canapés of cucumber-dill cream cheese, pimento cheese, stuffed olives, and perfectly browned chicken legs were presented on sparkling crystal and carnival glass serving platters.

The inlaid glass sideboard was majestic with a centerpiece of magnolia, camellia and gardenia blossoms fresh cut from my grandmother’s flower garden and hosting cut glass pedestals of scrumptious coconut cake, petit fours, homemade (pink, green, yellow) mints, fresh strawberries, chocolate-covered peanuts, and my grandmother’s famous secret recipe egg custard. Pitchers of brewed mint tea and punch bowls bearing icy rainbow sherbet flanked both sides of the dessert display waiting to be admired and devoured by the white-gloved missionaries.

This pageantry of memory continues to feed my upper-crust soul. This pageantry was the backdrop for all the whispered gossips and secrets of uppity church women in between “a piece of this and a little dab of that.”

“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy

Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high

Oh, your daddy’s rich and your ma is good looking

So hush little baby, don’t you cry.” — Dubose Heyward

The smell of coffee brewing, bacon frying and hot biscuits browning were the only summer alarm clocks in our house. The first few weeks following school vacation, my brother and I spent lazy days playing between our house and Aunt Alice’s house or hanging out at Uncle Ervin’s Service Station pretending to be proprietors behind the counter taking money for gas, candy, milk, bread, but never the cigarettes. That fun would be interrupted when “the garden came in” with lima beans, snap beans, wax beans, okra, peas, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, cantaloupe, cabbage, lettuce, watermelon and corn. The litany from porch to porch throughout the neighborhood addressed to our bored little brown bodies was, “Shut up whining, your little bellies will be glad to get this food come wintertime. Don’t put those hulls in that bowl.” So we pouted in-between snapping, shucking, peeling and rinsing so the grown folks could can, freeze, stew and preserve.

These were the summers when our “Up South” Northern kin folks took a notion to jump in a car or hop a bus or train and show up unannounced, usually with five or six children in tow. Our family had abundant land and food, so this uncouth behavior never daunted my mom, grandmother and aunts. They knew how to “hold their mouths right” and bring forth their best masks of civility so refined that no one ever read their furious annoyance hidden beneath the labor of love they laid out for two or three weeks presenting daily breakfast, lunch and supper smorgasbords of cured smoked ham and red-eye gravy, scrambled cheese eggs, grits, salmon croquettes, biscuits, bacon, sausage, homemade peach, strawberry, blackberry, pear jelly and preserves, stewed apples, potato cakes, cinnamon rolls and toast. The “guests” would feast and then retreat to the front porch, into the yard, watch television, or return to bed to sleep away their city blues.

With the guests “out of the way,” the women folks washed dishes, swept crumbs, cleared the table and talked in hushed ridicule and dismay about their hungry citified relatives. After they caught their breaths and a few of the leftover table scraps, they started the operation for lunch or “just a little something to tide them over,” which was usually homemade egg, tuna or chicken salad, the optional ham and cheese sandwich, tossed salad, chilled watermelon and cantaloupe, iced tea and fresh lemonade served outside on the porch.

Fried chicken, fried fish, turnip salad, chicken and dumplings, stewed tomatoes, potato salad, rice pudding, fried okra and squash, pound cake, apple pie and yeast rolls made the “Up South” folks remember where home really was. They never suspected by our good manners how their unannounced visits interrupted our summer explorations, building camps and forts in the woods, fishing, skinny-dipping, catching tadpoles, making June bug whistles, chasing lightning bugs and baking mud-pies all day in the sun.

“If you want to know

Where I’m going

Where I’m going, soon

If anybody ask you

Where I’m going

Where I’m going soon

I’m going up yonder

I’m going up yonder

To be with my Lord” — Tremaine Hawkins

Death often disrupts my family and community. We gather with food because food is the ultimate and final expression of how we love and the culture of our community. Feasting with the dead even now and in my past continues to provide me a way to reconnect and maintain connections with my ancestors and my daughter. My family and extended tribes have never needed a copy of “Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral.” It’s in our blood . . . we know what we know about the power of fried gizzards, leftover meat loaf, turkey necks, fried croakers, okra gumbo and moonshine.

The laying out of the dead and the laying out of the food pulls me closer and closer to that vortex of all things familiar and comfortable. These are forever images imbedded in my mind’s rolling video screen of the deaths of my father, grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins and my daughter.

When my precious daughter Imani died, people came with their stories of her life neatly folded in the corners of picnic baskets. They delivered their stories of her whimsy, her sass and her bravado rolled inside a fresh loaf of sourdough bread, slithering across roasted vegetables laced with slow-drizzling balsamic, baked inside a piping hot strawberry rhubarb pie. The stories were alive inside the food. Imani loved food. Imani loved to feed people, so her stories became the food itself … roasted with superfluous green garlic, cilantro, cumin, basil, a rack of lamb Imani threatened to throw at her brother one Easter, the duck medallions I cooked for the last Christmas meal of her life with us, or the wild salmon steaks she’d hide in the freezer.

What I know that I know is food heals. Food covers the wounded heart. Food holds the raging storm and invites Spirit to the table.

“I will love you anyway

Even if you cannot stay

I think you are the one for me

Here is where you ought to be

I just want to satisfy you

Though you’re not mine

I can’t deny you

Don’t you hear me talking baby?

Love me now or I’ll go crazy” — Chaka Khan

Appearance. Taste. Texture. Symbolism. Succulence. The Interaction of Colors. The Dance Behind Oven Doors. Edible Metaphors. Velvety. Heavy Cream. Spice Jars. Simmer. Pan Fry. Cold Wash. Knead. Roll. Curl. Caramelize. Braise. Soak. Stir. Roast. Open Fire. Hot Oil. Blend. Fold. Mortar and Pestle. Pine Nuts. Raspberries. Almonds. Champagne Grapes. Mango Preserves. Muscadines. Tomatoes. Expresso. Le coq au vin. Charred Romaine. Mousse. Rose Water. Artichokes. Truffles. Butter. Candied Ginger. Chocolate. Dirty Rice. Brie. Cherries. Figs. Saffron Threads. Cinnamon. Nutmeg. Chutney. Parfait. Hazelnuts. Orange Peel. Lime Zest. Gar-licky Collards, Ambrosia, Chow Chow. Red Rice. Rosemary Sea Salt.

I love the way these words, sounds and ancient cooking rhythms sing inside my mouth . . . and honey chile’ don’t forget the Honey.

“If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him. The people who give you their food give you their heart.” — Cesar Chavez

I remember the first meal I ever prepared for my husband. Lots of talking and long glances over a table full of lush sensuality. Mango gazpacho. Grilled salmon with a black bean-ginger-garlic glaze. Roasted asparagus. Brussels sprouts, beets, feta and walnuts drizzled with fig balsamic vinaigrette. Basmati rice. Yeast rolls. Arugula salad. Sparkling pear cider. Mixed berries dusted with coriander.

Once upon a time, I prepared a “last supper” for a lover I was kicking to the curb. It seemed best to leave a taste of me on his lips. Filet of beef in puff pastry and Madeira cream sauce. Caramelized shallots, carrots and mushrooms. Roasted lemon-garlic artichokes. Grand Marnier cheesecake.

My first memory of a romantic meal was sharing a tomato sandwich made with tomatoes I’d grown in a small bucket as a child with a little boy visiting my grandmother with his grandparents. I was mesmerized by his seersucker plaid shorts and matching bowtie. Crisp white shirt. White crew socks. White bucks. Magic happened between us when the juicy tomato dripped down his long elegant hands and he slowly licked the essence of my first harvest.

My husband and I love to cook. Our food landscape is forever changing, moving, reinventing itself, but what remains always is “sauce” so rich and soulful that it requires the licking of fingers, eyelids, noses, jelly-roll laughs, and oceans of soft fluttery kisses. Our food adventures continue to awaken our passion . . .

“Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. ‘I said, ‘I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.’ May your breasts be like the clusters of the vine, the fragrances of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine. May the wine go straight to my lover, flowing gently over lips and teeth. I belong to my lover, and his desire is for me.” — Song of Songs 7:7-10

We stroll into each other’s perfumed gardens gathering wild honeycomb. Whether dining by candlelight in our intimate dining room or sitting at a makeshift table in the woods with dandelions my love has picked on the way, we savor the bread between us. The anticipation of a romantic meal is oftentimes aphrodisiac enough. We can’t stop smiling and casting knowing glances at each other the whole time we are preparing the meal. Late at night I flow through celestial whipped dreamy clouds trailing the scents of rose and lavender as I fold gently into the crevices of pillows stuffed with crushed rosemary*.

*According to ancient scribes, rosemary was a love potion for engaged or married couples, symbolizing remembrance and fidelity.  OH

Poet and teacher Jaki Shelton Green is North Carolina’s ninth poet laureate and is the recipient of a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.

This piece was previously published in The Carolina Table: North Carolina Writers on Food (2016); Eno Publishers.

Rising From The Ashes

Ravaged by fire and flood, High Point’s formerly “lost”Dalton-Bell-Cameron House is reborn as a resplendent designers’ showhouse

By Nancy Oakley   •   Photographs by Amy Freeman

 

For Margaret Bell Lewis, it is a symbol of an idyllic childhood; for Benjamin Briggs, a “miracle” of historic preservation; for Ray Wheatley, a challenge that had to be met. For High Point at large, the Dalton-Bell-Cameron House is a crucial link to the past — and a rallying point for the community.

The Craftsman structure, says Wheatley, co-owner, along with his brother, Steve of Spruce Builders, is a house that “everybody knows.” Situated on 1013 Johnson Street just back of the iconic J.H. Adams Inn, it is, as Preservation Greensboro’s Briggs confirms, the earliest example of the Craftsman style in High Point. “It has Mount Airy granite foundations with grapevine mortar, indicative of the Craftsman style — and of craftsmanship,” he says.
It is a cleaner style — a reaction to the fussiness of earlier Victorian confections  — that favored hand-wrought details and furnishings over those that were mass-produced. Briggs points out other architectural details such as the Asian-inspired, wide overhanging eaves and sawn rake boards and “an amazing” living room mantel flanked by two pilasters that were fashioned with a technique called stop fluting, which infills the cavity of the flute. “The top,” he adds, “is decorated with an egg and dart motif.” Even rarer: the absence of a mantel shelf around the firebox.

Such details were revolutionary in 1913, the year that a young attorney and rising politician, Carter Dalton, began construction on the house, but over the ensuing two decades, the Craftsman bungalow would influence residential building throughout the city.

It would also become a fulcrum for the neighborhood. “Johnson Street,” Briggs observes, “reads like a sentence. This is the middle of the sentence.”  The Prairie-style, Burnett-McCain House across the street, and the aesthetic of the Dalton-Bell-Cameron Craftsman create what he calls an “a nice conversation between these two houses.”

Margaret Bell Lewis, whose family lived in the house during the postwar years, knows a thing or two about the interplay of neighborhood residents. “Johnson Street was full of young families,” she says of her childhood during the late 1950s and early ’60s. “We all played together and had a great time,” she recalls. “We all had big backyards. We could run across the street, because people didn’t tear up and down like they do now.” She remembers the Craftsman’s large rooms, including a playroom upstairs and a laundry room that her parents added to the original structure. “When they did that, they paved the concrete walkway,” she says, recalling how she and her siblings, Irene and Ted, “put our hands in the cement.”

She would relay this detail to Ray Wheatley, who was initially skeptical that the children’s imprints would be buried beneath a heap of burnt and rotting timbers when, a year and a half ago, he was enlisted to restore the house that he deemed “a lump of coal.”

For not once, but twice, the Dalton-Bell-Cameron house fell victim to fire. In the mid-1990s, shortly after it avoided demolition to accommodate a proposed parking lot, a group of vagrants lit a fire in the middle of a side room. The damage from the fire was relatively contained, as Briggs affirms, and another savior of the property appeared in the form of Mary Powell Young DeLille, a rising young Realtor, who bought and restored the house. “I was single when I bought it, got married and had two kids,” she recalls of the 10 years she lived there. Under subsequent ownership in 2013, a second fire occurred. It could have easily spelled total destruction of the Craftsman jewel. Speculating that the conflagration started in the master bedroom, Wheatley says the flames spread between the deck and the kitchen “and took about half the roof of the house.” Preservationists appealed to representatives of the house’s owner, but a full-scale restoration was out of reach. The roofless structure exposed the interior to the elements. “For six years it was open to rain,” Wheatley recalls. “It basically rotted.”

Many, including city officials, considered the house a lost cause — except for Margaret Lewis and her husband, Rick. “People think I’m crazy, but I don’t think I am,” she says, pausing. “I didn’t want to see it torn down. It was a very important street for me growing up, my siblings and my friends.” The Lewises bought the house from the High Point Preservation Society, which had raised money over a five-day period to purchase it, a “fun, but nerve-racking,” endeavor as Briggs recalls, but a testament to High Point’s “can-do spirit.” The couple then appealed to the Junior League of High Point, for which Margaret had once served as president, to stage a designers’ showhouse, along with Aspire Design and Home magazine. But first, they engaged the Wheatleys’ Spruce Builders to tackle the structural damage.

“I was honored they asked me to,” says Ray Wheatley. “I said, ‘I can fix it . . . I don’t know how much it will cost, but I can fix it.’” Framing was the biggest challenge. The years of water damage had taken a toll such that Weeks Hardwood Flooring had to replace almost all of the flooring systems (only the originals in the dining room were intact). “The staircase was sinking, plaster was falling off the walls,” Wheatley recalls. Most of the house — molding, doors, for example — couldn’t be salvaged. But the foundation of Mount Airy granite held. And once the charred debris was cleared away, a surviving slab beneath the deck of the house revealed three signatures: “Margaret,” “Irene” and “Ted.” The names of the Bell children, written in wet concrete years ago remained.

Wheatley and his subcontractors worked on the house for about a year until it was ready to be gussied up last month by 21 designers, many of them familiar local names — Allen and James, Leslie Moore of L.Moore Designs, Nicole Culler, Libby Langdon — while others, such as David Santiago and Courtney McLeod brought a New York flair to the interiors. Surveying the final preparations just prior to the opening of the fall High Point Market, Briggs expressed his delight with the house’s transformation, standing on its second floor, looking out at the rebuilt raking eaves at the surrounding cityscape. “I can see the four-pointed steeple of the First Presbyterian Church. It’s a great layering of history.” He recallsbeing in the house some 20-odd years ago, as a young preservationist taking its measurements. “I’m from High Point,” he reflects. “This one is special.” Ray Wheatley concurs: “I hope it stands for another hundred years,” he says of the house that he literally raised from the ashes. Both men give credit to its new life to Margaret and Rick Lewis, and she, to the community that initially doubted her mission. “I’m thrilled that so many people have said, ‘I’m so glad you did this,’” she says. “I just wish Mom and Dad were alive to see it, but . . . they may just be up in heaven, watching us.”  OH

For more information: jlhp.org/showhouse2019/ or highpointishome.com

Gallery

Extreme Close-Up

For photographer and painter David Wasserboehr, God is in the details

By Nancy Oakley

 

A patch of blue becomes a patchwork of aqua, white, violet and a subtle trace of pink. And red isn’t merely red, so much as a series of streaks in white and crimson and orange. You don’t realize that you’re looking at the lip of a glass vase and the base of a flower petal set inside it — until you cast a glance at David Wasserboehr’s companion photographs of entire blooms and stems. But these, too, reveal the meticulous wonders of Nature’s construction — the fuzz on the anthers of stamen, the tiny yellow ruffles dancing around the edges of a variegated red tulip, the fine ribs of a lily’s white petal.

“I’ve always loved detail,” says Wasserboehr, a classically trained painter who seized on digital illustration when the genre was in its infancy. Having learned from “really cool, old painters” when he was earning his B.F.A. at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (Southeastern Massachusetts University in his day), Wasserboehr worked in traditional media, such as oils and watercolors, parlaying his skills to ad agency gigs. “I did everything by hand,” the artist recalls of the early days in his career.

But the tools of his trade were changing, as the advertising world embraced digital technology. And Wasserboehr would also make the great digital leap forward, particularly in the mid-1980s, when he moved to Greensboro.

He had been living in New Jersey when his sister, Pat, a UNCG art professor, called and invited him for a visit, adding, “I have someone I’d like you to meet.” That someone was to become the artist’s future wife, Bonnie Burkett. She had no interest in living in New Jersey, so Wasserboehr relocated to the Gate City, picking up a freelance assignment at the News & Record.

The newspaper, he explains, “was one of the first to get a bank of Mac computers. I began setting type on the computer.” He was an immediate convert to Apple Macintosh systems and invested a whopping sum of $17,000 for one of its initial rigs (computer, color monitor, scanner and black-and-white laser printer); by the early ’90s he had learned digital illustration on Adobe’s first graphics programs. As one of only a few folks in town at the time who had such skills and the proper equipment, Wasserboehr carved out a lucrative freelancing career making digital illustrations for various clients, Pace Communications among them. “Now everybody does it,” he says. But the experience led to an epiphany: “I saw the future and it was filled with digital tools combined with classical training.”

These days Wasserboehr “bounces back and forth” between the old and the new, painting miniatures as small as 2 inches or 54 millimeters, and creating digital paintings (using a software program called ArtRage). The artist also combines his craft with his love of history. He was once asked to restore an “old, damaged and faded photograph.” After scanning it and “drawing out the old information in the pixels still hiding in the scan,” Wasserboehr brought to life a portrait of his client’s grandmother; it revealed a cameo brooch — the very one his client kept in her jewelry case, never knowing until that moment it had belonged to her grandmother.

Helping clients, Wasserboehr says, adds meaning to his life. So much so that he lends a hand to the Greensboro History Museum restoring documents (“a lot of Dolley Madison stuff,” the artist clarifies). Working from scans of old, worn documents, some from the 1700s, Wasserboher creates facsimiles that can be exhibited, giving the originals a break from unrelenting light and humidity, and general wear and tear. “I’m restricted,” he says, explaining that his work “must include tears and dirt on the documents.” So realistic are his reproductions that one of the archivists had to check to see which documents were the originals; Wasserboehr’s boss had other ideas, jokingly suggesting, “If you need another line of work, you could probably be a counterfeiter!”

But his wife, Bonnie’s “insane” passion for gardening led him to macro photography. “We go to Walmart to look for housewares and the next thing you know, we’ve got $50 to $60 worth of plants,” Wasserboehr says. “I go out in the yard and dig holes.” A few years ago they fashioned two beds in their backyard, “where we could plant roses, lilies, mums, cornflowers and other beauties,” Wasserboehr recalls. As the plants grew, he noticed some daylilies occluded by some shade. Their pale color caught his eye and prompted him to reach for his camera.

“I had always loved photography,” says Wasserboehr, who had owned a film camera, and as a tech enthusiast was turning his attention to the high quality of digital photographs. He had been captivated by an online tutorial by Long Island-based photographer Melanie Kern-Favilla, whose work features striking macro photos of flowers set against a black background (a box with a black interior). “So I built a rectangular box and raided my wife’s garden for daylilies,” Wasserboehr explains. He positioned the box on the table in his dining room, which doubles as a studio, and which catches the morning light on one side. Placing the flowers inside the black box, Wasserbohr learned to manipulate where the light falls by placing shades — trays, a piece of cardboard, gauze — on top of the box or on its sides. Using his two favorite macro lenses (A Tamron 18-270mm 1:3.5-6.3 lens and a Canon macro EF 100mm 1:2.8 USM lens), he adjusted the setting on his Canon T6i to “manual” and began snapping away. “On the second or third try, it just popped!” the artist recalls. “You know when you go ‘Whoa! This is cool!’ I knew I was on the right track.” 

He continued nabbing “perfect specimens” from his wife’s garden (“she’s been a really good sport about it, he adds), favoring taller, vertical flowers — such as the daylilies and tulips, that are sculptural in appearance. “They’re more in-your-face,” Wasserboehr concedes. His painterly eye prompted him to experiment with composition, zooming in on just the lip of that vase, or the base of a petal, for example, to create a surreal effect reminiscent of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings. Wasserboehr says he might shoot from unusual angles — lying on the floor, standing on top of a stool — to achieve just the right composition.

But his photographs aren’t merely exercises in technique. Wasserboehr tries to avoid any kind of color correction, using Photoshop and Lightroom as little as possible. Otherwise, he says, the flowers “lose their innocence.” His primary aim? “I want to tell a story with these plants.” Such as the peace lily that a friend had given him and his wife some 25 years ago. One day, Wasserboehr happened to notice three leaves on it, each at a different stage: one with a newly unfurled white blossom, another fading to greenish-gray, and a third, shriveled and brown. He plucked all three, placed them into his rectangular black box and started shooting. The result is a poignant statement of the fleeting nature of life. “I am fascinated by the beauty of the full life cycle of the flowers, including their final, wilting moments,” Wasserboehr says. “As I get older I’ve discovered the aging process is very similar to a human being’s . . . all elegant and beautiful!”  OH

Nancy Oakley is the senior editor of O.Henry.

For more examples of David Wasserboehr’s work, please visit  fwgraphics.myportfolio.com/work.

The Neighborhood Where You Live

The Gardens of Westerwood

Earthly delights proliferate in this century-old neighborhood

Story and Photographs by Lynn Donovan

In October 1919 an ad appeared in a Greensboro newspaper introducing Westerwood and its newly named streets — Crestland, Woodlawn, Hillside, Courtland. A.K. Moore of Guilford Insurance and Real Estate Company proudly announced the winners of a contest held to rename the area streets of the neighborhood formerly known as The Cedars and Oakland Park. By the summer of 1920 Westerwood boasted 23 houses that were either finished or under construction — Craftsman bungalows, Tudor cottages and Colonial Revival dwellings, with a few unusual designs added to the mix.

One hundred years later, the neighborhood is thriving. To celebrate its history and longevity, residents recently opened their gardens to the public. We happily joined the walking tour.

 

Maria Fangman
210 North Mendenhall

The creation of one of Greensboro’s best chefs, the shady, backyard, cottage-style, garden is filled with perennials. The front yard has loads of sun and herbs, roses and a constantly changing bed of perennials that bloom throughout the entire year.

 

 

 

 

 

Charlie Heddington & Debbi Seabrooke
515 North Mendenhall

This permaculture garden is arguably the most unusual garden in Westerwood. By definition, a permaculture garden is a diverse, low-maintenance perennial food garden that imitates natural ecologies. The Heddingtons’ patch of earth produces 15 kinds of fruit, a wealth of herbs and flowers, as well as row upon row of annual vegetables. It captures and stores rainwater through bamboo pipes and carpet ponds.

 

 

 

 

Patti Midgett & Dan Nicholson
310 Hillside Drive

This backyard encompasses a beautiful, terraced hillside featuring beds of perennials that overlook the future Greenway. The terraces tame the slope by incorporating found and repurposed materials. The front yard is a colorful mix of flowers, herbs and vegetables chosen to attract bees and other pollinators.

 

 

 

 

Diane & Tracy Peck

512 Woodlawn Avenue

This Zen garden is loosely inspired by a traditional Japanese garden and features a tranquil koi pond. Shade-loving plants found here include Japanese maples, hydrangeas, hellebores and ferns. In early spring the sunny front garden is brimming with tulips and irises.

 

 

 

 

Chris & Robyn Musselwhite

415 Woodlawn Avenue

This backyard garden is a multipurpose urban space with flowering trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables. Perennials and annuals share the part sun/part shade yard. A fountain, stone terraced kitchen garden, whimsical birdhouses and an outdoor living space complete this inviting green space.

 

 

 

 

Susan Foust

1005 Fairmont Street

Taking up the entire backyard, a hand-dug pool under a canopy of shade trees is bordered by a brick walkway flanked by beds of Japanese maple and star magnolias. The terraced front yard features beautiful blooms provided by annuals surrounding hand-laid brickwork. Hidden in the back corner is a petite dwelling complete with chickens living in a small coop.

 

 

 

Victoria Clegg

306 Crestland

This English cottage garden is one of the most charming gathering spots in all of Westerwood. The front and back yards are full of perennials, herbs, bulbs, ground covers and more. An old chicken coop and decrepit garage have been transformed into a spellbinding space that is used almost year round. With the addition of a magical garden shed and touches of whimsy, this garden is hard to leave.

 

David Barnard

1405 Northfield Street

This low-maintenance, mixed-use backyard garden is geared for entertaining. A stonework patio and fire pit are the center pieces that are surrounded by dogwoods, Japanese maple, hydrangea, ferns and hosta to create texture. Stepping stones imprinted with the Barnards’ children’s hand and feet prints add whimsy to a functional space.

 

 

 

One Thing More

Fall under the spell of one of Greensboro’s oldest neighborhoods at the 10th annual Westerwood Art & Sole celebration. On October 5, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., you can stroll the leafy environs, visit artists’ studios, peruse locally made art and listen to front porch music. Info: facebook.com/westerwoodartandsole.  OH

Lynn Donovan is a contributing photographer for O.Henry magazine and Seasons Style & Design.

Fresh Start

Gardening guru Ellen Ashley creates her very own spot in Paradise

By Jim Dodson   •   Photographs by Amy Freeman

 

“This house,” declares Ellen Ashley with an emphatic grin, “is really perfect for me, including what it doesn’t have.”

Sunlight streams through the 13-foot windows of her spacious open-concept kitchen and great room, flooding the gallery-white walls and the two adjoining sections of the gorgeous brick-and-glass contemporary house with afternoon light.

With a grin, Ashley ticks off a list:

“There’s no basement, no attic, no creepy places I might have to crawl into if the power goes out and, best of all, no steps — oh, wait!”

She laughs, glancing around as if to check. “OK . . . just one small step to the front porch and two steps to the pool! It’s the perfect house to age well and grow old in!”

Her afternoon visitor, an old friend, is impressed — both with the clean lines and economical beauty of her spectacular new house off a winding road in Summerfield and Ellen Ashley’s usual brio for life, home and garden. Before he can ask what the Triad’s beloved gardening guru loves most about her elegant new country digs, she volunteers: “It’s actually what this house has that makes it really so special and wonderfully livable, beginning with tons of light and air.”

She mentions the simplicity factor of her sleekly modern kitchen (“I’m in love with my induction stove!”) and airy great room, both of which are equally ideal for entertaining students from her gardening seminars or an intimate dinner gathering with friends. An equally efficient space is the customized pantry/laundry room combo where her collection of antique vases is displayed on glass shelves. Then there’s the dramatic black tile fireplace in the wall that produces several different flames and lighting effects depending on the desired mood, and the handy remotes that control virtually everything from door locks to lighting.

By design — her design — the walking tour is brief.

One end of the house features a two-car garage, (“Look, no steps! Perfect for my mom when she comes to visit!”), and a guest bedroom rendered in the dreamy hues of a summer sky, with 10-foot tall windows that open to the breeze and an elegant guest bathroom that leads to a high-roofed screened porch with a slowly turning Big Ass Fan, overlooking her heated saltwater swimming pool.

The other end of the house boasts the indefatigable gardener’s purple-and-celery-colored bedroom, (“my happy colors!”), a simple spa-like bath area, massive walk-in closet with an colorful wardrobe, a workout room with an elliptical machine in its nook and a cozy office with cool northern light filtered through a pine forest.

Whatever else may be said for a native Virginian who two decades ago gave up a busy career in sales in Dallas in order to move to Greensboro and immerse herself in the life botanic, this 2,600-square-foot marvel of glass and brick seems intimately connected to its surroundings, perfectly at home in nature.

 

Out back, beyond the shimmer of her saltwater pool, is a gated garden where late-summer zinnias, hibiscus and canna lilies linger on with a few valedictory blooms. Beyond this is is a wide natural meadow teems with wildflowers, asters, black-eyed Susan, broom sedge and Joe Pie weed humming with hundreds of bees and butterflies gathering up the final sips of summer’s sweetness.

What’s remarkable to discover is that, three years ago, none of this was here. Only a thick pine forest and the remains of an abandoned tobacco field occupied this remote spot in the country.

This splendid transformation came about because Ellen Ashley herself was in transition, amicably ending a 26-year marriage to husband Jim and seeking a “fresh start” somewhere near the pretty house and property where she grew a glorious garden and conducted her popular Learn-to-Garden classes for almost a decade.

She explains that the couple’s original plan was to buy local acreage and build a more efficient house that suited both of their lifestyles. Ashley’s passion is gardening and teaching; Jim’s is financial planning and flying his airplane. “After a lengthy search, the property we found turned out to be just five driveways or so away,” she explains. “When the four-and-a-quarter acres came on the market, we jumped on it before even selling the other place.”

In the process, the couple realized that what they also desired was to go separate ways. “It was one of those situations…” she explains. “It was one of those situations many couple find themselves in where each one has grown in different ways over the years. In many ways, Jim and I are closer and better friends than ever.”  Evidence of this, she notes, is that her ex graciously insisted that she take his half of the new property to build a house that suited her tastes and needs. Jim moved to a townhouse in the city.

“So what began as a project for both of us became, in essence, a fresh start for us both.”

She began this process by drawing up her own custom house plans.

“There were things I definitely wanted — lots of light and open spaces, a one-story house with a pool and screened porch that could see each other, huge windows, low maintenance, no wooden decks, a central vacuum system and a garden you could see from almost every window.”

To bring her vision to life, she hired Gary Jobe Builders and found the ideal site contractor/advisor in Todd Powley. “He was fantastic. I tried to think of everything I could possibly ever want or need in a house. When I asked for changes, he always found a way for them to work. He’s the kind of thoughtful builder who helps you bring your dream alive.”

By the time house’s foundation was laid in the late summer of 2018, Ashley was busy laying out the garden spaces and planting the four acre domain with screening plants — Chindo viburnums, junipers, nandina and Japenese maples — along her driveway and the property’s perimeter. Not surprisingly, she also dug up and imported lots of plants from her original garden just down the road and transformed an old tobacco barn at the back of the property into a storage shed for her gardening classes. 

Invariably there were a few minor hitches along the way, including delays over moving power lines and a new well that periodically produced brown water for more than three months. “The plants could live with brown water but I couldn’t,” she quips. “Try filling a pool with brown water or a nice white soaking tub!”

Today, barely one year on, Ellen Ashley’s “fresh start” is rapidly growing into the kind of elegant destination where guests and students alike feel drawn to just sit on the porch and contemplate the view, or set off to wander the gardens and natural meadow out back in search of natural treasures.

“Yesterday,” she explains as the walking tour pauses near a veggie garden that is overflowing with several varieties of figs, tomatoes and peppers, “I had a class of 10 students who gathered seeds from the various sunflower annuals. I think they enjoyed being here.”

Who wouldn’t? one wonders.

“It’s even great in winter,” she says, picking peppers and cherry tomatoes for her afternoon guest to take home. “Because the pool is heated, I can look out my windows on the snowiest days and see turquoise water.” The pool’s water, she explains, is heated by a natural solar system that circulates the pool water through black pipes located on the roof of the house.

“I come out here almost every night for a swim,” she explains. “The water is always warm and soothing. It’s the perfect way to end a day.”

“No brown water?”

She laughs. “Not anymore. It’s like paradise.”  OH

To find out more about Ellen Ashley’s popular Learn-to-Garden classes, contact her at: Ellen@Learntogarden.net

Sylvan In The City

A Greensboro woman branches out by building an eco-friendly Airbnb, the area’s top wish-listed space

By Maria Johnson   •   Photographs by Amy Freeman

 

Though it’s billed as a tree house, The Roost doesn’t qualify in the traditional sense.

It’s not tacked onto, leaning against or held aloft by a tree.

But the second-story apartment — Guilford County’s most wish-listed Airbnb lodging — is indisputably a house of the trees.

First, it’s bracketed on three sides by pines and maples, so guests get a squirrel’s-eye-view of the world.

Second, most of the building materials that Amanda Jane Albert and her crew used come from trees — hence the warm, resin-rich smell that greets you when you walk in.

Then there’s the gnarly tree branch that seems to sprout from one corner of the living room. The branch came from a dogwood that Amanda Jane and friends cut down when they started on the two-story building in 2015.

“We gave it a prominent place inside,” she says of the tree.

Last but not least, there’s a potted ficus happily photosynthesizing in the living area.

So the pad is about as tree-ish as a space can get without inviting woodpeckers and errant kites to take up residence.

The Roost does, however, host humans, lots of them, who book the one bed/one bath, $85-a-night property nearly every weekend and often during the week.

Being Airbnb’s top wish-listed property in a county doesn’t necessarily mean the lodging receives the most bookings, a statistic Airbnb won’t release.

But it does mean Airbnb users have tagged the property as the place they’d most like to stay, should they come to the area, another measureof popularity.

The wanna-stay status squares with what guests have told Amanda Jane.

“People just really appreciate its uniqueness. They’re not surrounded by drywall and paint,” she says.

“They love being up in the trees. They feel like they’re in a retreat, this place for solitude and quiet. And that’s what I wanted it to be . . . a place for relaxation.”

In the beginning, Amanda Jane — a native of Louisiana who moved to North Carolina to build homes for Habitat for Humanity — wasn’t sure what the place would look like. Her then-boyfriend, also a builder, had constructed homes in colder climates.

Together, they wanted to experiment with making an Earth-friendly, energy efficient home suited to Greensboro’s weather, and they wanted to pay for it by listing the space via Airbnb, an online marketplace for hosts who have homes or rooms to rent, typically for short-term stays.

After casting around for a site, her boyfriend said, “Why don’t we build in your yard?”

Amanda Jane’s 1952 home — in a modest neighborhood near State Street in north central Greensboro — was within walking distance of a grocery store, coffee shop, restaurants and other amenities. The Revolution Mill complex will be an easy walk or bicycle trip away once a greenway is built from Elm Street to Yanceyville Street and beyond, as city planners propose. So Amanda Jane’s location was prime.

The building site was another matter.

Her backyard held a one-car garage and attached lean-to.

If she and her crew razed those outbuildings, they could build a one-story apartment on the spot, but the slope would require considerable foundation work.

That’s when Amanda Jane hit on the idea of lofting the structure on stilts. That way, leveling it wouldn’t be such a chore, insulating it from underneath would be easier, and space below the apartment could be used a workshop and storage room.

Amanda Jane drew the plans, literally, with a pencil. Tapping her Habitat experience and her interest in nature — she holds a degree in forestry management and ecology from Texas A&M University — she sketched at least 20 iterations before hitting on a compact, functional and aesthetically pleasing design.

Next, she secured a loan from her mom and recruited friends to help with the project. She also spent hours tracking down building materials that were nontoxic, energy-efficient and environmentally-sustainable.

She ended up with a list of suppliers that included local and overseas businesses.

Her crew started construction in October 2015, and they finished in March 2016.

The result was a 426-square-foot apartment done in a style that could be described as “industrial-cottage” — lots of timber, metal and natural fibers woven together to create a warm and efficient space.

Forethought oozes from every feature.

The exterior is sheathed in cork, which is harvested sustainably, without felling the trees that produce it. The material is naturally insulating and insect resistant.

Inside the apartment, more natural material awaits. The floors are tongue-in-groove pine topped with a nontoxic, whey-based sealant.

The walls are shiplap pine, whitewashed with a plant-based pigment.

The ceilings are unfinished poplar.

The windows and doors, ordered from a German company, are highly efficient with triple panes and all-wood frames.

The space is heated and cooled by an electric split unit, and two HRVs, or heat recovery ventilators, that keep fresh air circulating.

“Because we made such an air-tight building, we needed a fresh-air supply,” says Amanda Jane.

Guests who crave more air can enjoy a covered deck that’s almost as wide as the enclosed space.

“That’s a trick when you have small house,” says Amanda Jane. “With a large outside space, you can double the living space.”

The television show He Shed She Shed, a production of the FYI Network, taped The Roost while it was under construction. The show’s staff donated the stainless steel cable railings that corral the deck. They also contributed some building materials and decorating accessories.

The apartment contains little freestanding furniture — the sofa, shelves, bed and nightstand are built in — but the interior is still visually interesting.

Standouts include the kitchen counter, which is made from old slate roof tiles, complete with nail holes.

Kitchen shelves are planks of salvaged barn wood resting on steel pipes that jut from the walls.

The base cabinets are made from formaldehyde-free plywood manufactured with natural glues and stained with a homemade concoction of vinegar, coffee grounds and tufts of steel wool that oxidized to darken the mixture.

In the living room, a hefty slab of live-edge timber rolls on an iron track to conceal a utility closet.

Amanda Jane created an accent wall by troweling lime plaster over laths, the old-fashioned way.

“Plastering is a lost art,” she says, noting that the lime also absorbs moisture in the air.

In the bathroom, three walls are cloaked with galvanized — and therefore rust-proof — corrugated metal salvaged from Peacehaven Farm in Whitsett.

Perhaps the sweetest touch of recycling is found next to the bed. Amanda Jane clipped a lace remnant to a rope that hangs, like a hammock, inside the window.

“The lace is from my great aunt. It was just lying around. I thought, ‘This is pretty.’ The rope was just lying around, too,” she says.

Amanda Jane has a talent for sniffing out reusable materials, whether in stores, on curbs or in construction-site dumpsters, says her friend Tay Halas.

“You’ll be driving down the road, and she’ll go, “Oh! Look at that!’” says Tay, who helped to frame The Roost.

Amanda Jane says her keen eye is fed by an open mind on the subject of what constitutes a building material.

For three years, she spent several weeks in Utah building straw-bale homes for low-income people. She pulls what she has learned in different climates and cultures into every project.

“I like the problem-solving and creativity of it, of saying, ‘I know I need something to function in this space. Now let’s look in different places to see what might work,’ “ she offers.

She launched her own business, Inhabit Living Solutions, about the time she finished The Roost; the apartment has been a good marketing tool for her skills.

So far, she has completed three projects: two garage adaptations for friends who created Airbnb rentals; and another garage upfit for a couple who moved, with their young child, into the smaller space in order to rent out the property’s main home, which they’d been living in.

Amanda Jane gets building permits for all of her projects like any other builder. She’s had no problem dealing with the city, she says, but she believes local government could do more to encourage affordable housing; reduce sprawl; help families accommodate loved ones; and create new income streams for people.

Updating codes on accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, in residential areas would be a good start, she says.

“I know there’s flexibility within Greensboro’s vision, but I don’t think anyone has advocated strongly for it.”

She points to cities like Portland, Oregon, where government encourages denser development to take advantage of existing city services.

“You gotta use what you got,” she says.

The total cost of The Roost was $65,000, slightly more than it would have been with conventional building methods, Amanda Jane says, but the payback has been a steady stream of Airbnb customers who’ve rated the property 4.99 out of five stars. The monthly income covers utilities for both the apartment and Amanda Jane’s home, as well as the loan repayment to her mother — all while stepping lightly on the planet.

“I do see it as a good investment,” Amanda Jane says.  OH

Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. She can be reached at mailto:ohenrymaria@gmail.com”

October Almanac

By Ash Alder

 

On mornings such as this — brisk, charged — the mourning doves that line the city wires suddenly take to the air, 50 or more of them in pastel twilight, swirling in wide, graceful circles as if stirred by some unseen hand, the sky some vast, invisible cauldron.

The sight is both delightful and haunting, and you feel as though you are witnessing some kind of living spell, a sacred ritual performed by Earth and her sentient beings.

This spell is called October. Perhaps you know it well?

Red and golden apples

Red and golden leaves

Ashes from the burn pile

Honey from the bees

Three caws from the raven

An acorn from the squirrel

A whisker from the black cat

Aster from a girl

Pansies from the garden

Barley, wheat, and rye

and what’s an incantation without

Grandma’s pumpkin pie

 

 

Bats in the Eaves

Spiders spin their webs in the rafters year-round, yet as Halloween approaches, neighbors deck their yards and porches with fake webs and creepy-crawlers, and supernatural beings sure to scare the trick-or-treaters.

But a word on the plastic bats: Why not welcome the real deal instead? Aside from being adorable — they’re like winged squirrels with tiny fox-meets-bear-meets-pig-like faces — bats play a key role in natural pest control.

Consider installing a bat box in the eaves of your house and witness the mosquito population decline come next summer. If you build it, they will (hopefully) come. Especially if you plant night-scented flowers that attract moths and other night-flyers. Best if there’s a nearby water source. And please, for the sake of the bats, no fake webs. Check out the Bat Conservation International website for information and resources: www.batcon.org/resources/getting-involved/bat-houses.

 

Before the Frost . . .

Dig up summer bulbs and the last sweet potatoes, compost fallen leaves, and in this transient season of light and shadow, plant, plant, plant for spring.

Daffodils, tulips, crocus and hyacinths.

Radishes, carrots and leafy greens.

And to color your autumn garden spectacular, blanket the earth with pansies.

 

Battle of the Pies

Let’s get right to it: pumpkin or sweet potato? Since my mother never baked either one (or any pie, come to think of it), naturally I love them both. (Yes, I’ll have another slice of that orange whatchamacallit.) But ask me to choose one pie over the other and watch my eyebrows do a funny dance.

I couldn’t begin to describe the differences.

Turns out there are many, and that this infamous Battle of the Pies has caused many a great divide at many a Thanksgiving table.

It’s pie, folks.

But I did a little sleuthing:

Pumpkin pie is spicier, denser, less caloric, decidedly Northern.

True Southerners cry for sweet potato, the sweeter, airier, more nutritious of the pies.

Except, apparently, for my maternal great-grandmother, who reportedly baked two pies at a time, both pumpkin — one for the table, one for my uncle.

“Tommy could eat an entire pie in one sitting,” says my mom of her younger brother. “Nothing made my Grandmother Barlowe happier than the joy in his eyes when he saw her pumpkin pies.”

“Unfortunately,” Mom added, “I just don’t care for them.”

The long and the short of it, in this season of pumpkin-spiced everything, I can’t help but wonder why sweet potato latte isn’t such a buzzword.

(Wo)man’s Search for Happiness

Oh, the lengths we’ll go to find — and keep it — for a little while

By Cynthia Adams

I’ve been on a quest about happiness for a long time. Not a project, not a preamble, just a working definition that would illuminate the good life. When it comes to capturing what Psychology Today deemed “that elusive state,” and Thomas Jefferson declared the inalienable right (!) I’ve discovered some detours on the road to happiness.

I even met a guru named Gaura.

Thank Jefferson for my obsession. And ad man Charles Saatchi for declaring he was more interested in the happiness of pursuit.

Here’s a roadmap.

1. Avoid the Unpleasant

Live long enough, and you’ll learn a few things. Here is what I am certain does not make you happy:

• Drinking pickle juice. (I did this to promote my gut biome.)

• Investing in a new nose unless it is a red clown nose. (Surgery for a deviated septum left me admittedly improved, but the Bob Hope-like ski slope nose did not leave me sniffing the sweet smell of success like Hope.)

• Impulsive experimentation with hair styles and color. (I did this during a winter funk. It deepened my funk.)

• Shopping sprees — unless it is to buy various brands of ice cream. (More on that later.)

• Mediums in the road. A Montgomery County farmer gave me directions admonishing me to strictly avoid “that thar medium in the road.” He probably meant median, but I skirt them thereafter nonetheless.

2. Party in an Envelope

Happiness comes in tiny pieces. I had only to stroll through my neighborhood of Latham Park (chalking up two scientifically proven methods toward claiming happiness — walks in the park and sunshine) that led me to a eureka moment, inspired by a neighbor, Kimberly Lewis and her birthday cards.

A candy-making, dog-loving, genuinely happy person, Lewis makes a signature candy and leaves it at the doorstep during the holidays, works with animal rescue and is always the first onto a dance floor. When her friends’ birthdays roll around, she sends them cards stuffed with sparkling confetti.

I think of the confetti as a ‘party in an envelope!’” says Lewis. Think of the bright bits of colored paper, the exuberant stuff of New Year’s Eve and the very hallmark of celebrations, as the B-12 of happiness. (The English word “confetti” — borrowed, by the way, from Italian — is the plural of “confetto.” It is derived from the Latin confectum and was a sweet confection thrown out to crowds during carnival. That’s a tiny shot of happiness expressly for wordsmiths.)

According to a designer named Ingrid Fetell Lee, Lewis is onto something. In a recent Ted Talk, Lee explains that confetti makes us happy. Incorporating its bright primary colors and shapes into institutional places — hospitals and schools, for example — jollies things up. No more gunmetal gray or sickly sea green.

3. Embracing a Medium in the Road

On another saunter in Latham Park, I encountered Gaura, a Hare Krishna devotee, as he was seeking a mulberry tree. Gaura had been feasting on mulberries along the park path. “A superfood,” he declared. As we directed him to Smith Street and cracked jokes, he grew serious. “You must be wise to be witty,” he said, and thanked us profusely for being “gurus on my path.”

4. Ben Franklin

The self-help section of any bookstore reveals to see how obsessed — and conflicted — we are with happiness.

When my sister’s house was being cleared following her sudden death last winter, I was surprised to discover one of the books on her bedside table was Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. Opening it, I found my sister’s favorite pewter Celtic bookmark inside along with some scribbled notes.

The find puzzled me. We both enjoyed humorists like Rick Bragg — and I also found some of his works she’d recently read. But the mystery was, what to make of my sister’s seeming happiness? She had the kind of robust laugh that fills a room. I was eager to know what the book contained.

It was a dreary read. Rubin road-mapped a self-flagellating flog to become happier. Among Rubin’s recommendations were to nag less, which her husband acknowledged helped his own happiness, work out more and keep the house shipshape and organized. It was obvious she had a number of compulsions to be perfect. By the end of the book, I wanted to send Rubin’s much-nagged husband a sympathy card.

If self-improvement is, in fact, the road to happiness, then I’ll put my money on Ben Franklin’s 13 virtues. To recap, they were: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility. In a dogged pursuit, Franklin charted and recorded his efforts to happiness. (An editor comments “Knowing Poor Richard, no doubt temperance and chastity had their share of marks.”) But the view was worth the climb. In later years, Franklin admitted he’d fallen short of his ambition “yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.”

5. Warts and All

In a recent editorial meeting, O.Henry editor Jim Dodson mentioned a title on his reading list, The Second Mountain by David Brooks. “He explains the difference between joy and happiness,” says Dodson. “Joy is better.” He advises not to confuse the two.

If the consensus is that joy is longer lasting, perhaps Franklin was onto something, reconciling the good and bad, the inevitable failing in the attempt to be perfect. He had out-Rubined dour Rubin, charting his successes and failures on the way to finding virtue. And he found time for nude “air baths!”

6. Happy Hour

Most days, I’m happy. Admittedly, I’m not a zippity-do-dah morning person, but a let’s-talk-after coffee sort. If my happiness was a car, it would be a trusty diesel — once jollied up, fully fueled and caffeinated, I’m pretty damn happy till Happy Hour.

Oh, Happy Hour! It’s wrapped in the clichés of blinking neon martini glasses, bottomless pitchers and mounds of tortilla chips.

But literary types know it is as old as writing itself. It seems that the idea of a happy hour is Shakespearean — straight out of Henry V! “Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour . . .”

Here again are two more scientifically proven methods to happiness: a glass of wine, or better yet, sharing a glass of wine and enjoying pals. Ben Franklin offered that wine is a “constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” Tippling a little among those whose company you enjoy can lead to a few laughs. Which brings me to. . .

7. Laughter

I became a Certified Laughter Leader after a chance airport encounter with Dr. Patch Adams. (Remember the 1998 biopic starring Robin Williams as Dr. Hunter Doherty “Patch” Adams?) Though he was on his way to minister to the sick in some of the world’s most cheerless, impoverished hospitals, the good doctor truly believed that laughter was the best medicine and invited me to take his laughter training course.

He and fellow volunteers (and you can add volunteering to yet another scientifically proven step to happiness) dress as clowns “to bring humor to orphans, patients and other people.” He calls his program, “clown care.”

Dr. Adams is also the inspiration for our dog’s name, Patch Adams, a pup who is eternally happy, my husband says.

I took the laughter training. The thing is, deep laughter promotes deep breathing, which may not transport you to happiness but it does promote less . . . unhappiness.

8. A Warm Puppy

And though it was Peanuts gang creator Charles Schulz who coined this one, I had only to look to Jane Gibson, a much-loved Hospice and Palliative Care Center staffer, to put it in context. She copes with seriously sad issues on a relentless basis. But she is invariably able to find a silver lining in the darkest cloud. For Gibson, the key to her happiness is humor.

“I always find talking to someone with a good sense of humor gets me back up,” she offers. Her husband, Paul Gibson, is known as a master of the witty comeback and wry observation. Just ask Jane: He suggested naming their new puppy Kayak upon registering Jane’s shock one Christmas morning. “It was the same bewildered look I gave him when he gave me a kayak another Christmas,” she laughs.

9. Catch a Sense of Humor

This goes beyond Paul Gibson’s quip or Patch Adams’ panacea, laughter, but the spark that engenders both.

This is what Gaura was talking about.

But where does it come from?

Get your catcher’s mitt out and be ready. For it is “caught, not taught,” I learned from found Helen Canaday, a beloved UNCG professor who directed the successful on-campus Nursery Program while teaching about child development. Psychologists would often observe the toddlers in her charge, determining and analyzing aspects of personality. Canaday believed humor was vital to a healthy adulthood and meaningful life. One needed to be in possession of one’s wits, she reminded me. She was of a generation who still described someone dull as a “half-wit.”

She personally was a full wit, possessed of a wonderful, ready laugh. If anyone would know what was funny, Canaday would, having made a lifelong study of children. 

And she always made me laugh with her observations about the foibles of adults.

Then she commenced to answer my question, but with difficulty, which was unusual. She started with the dictionary.

“I do have what Mr. Webster has,” she said finally, “which is, ‘the mental quality or faculty of experiencing or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous;’ something designed to be comical, amusing or witty.”

I pressed that I wanted to know what she — not Webster — thought.

“Well, I was trying to, and I haven’t finished working up a definition,” she faltered. “I do think that humor is caught not taught . . I think it is learned vicariously.”

She offered something fascinating. “You can teach children to be respectful, to be friendly, to love. You can teach children all the other aspects of the personality, but I don’t think you can teach them humor.”

Then, the good professor observed that certain humor is innate, saying “even babies will laugh.”

Canaday added something I underscored in my notes. “I know people who never, ever enjoy humor,” she said ruefully. “I think they participate, but they don’t have a feel for it.”

A feel for it.

Having a feel for humor — is that it? Do we feel our way towards happiness? Uh oh. Scratch that. It sounds lascivious, just writing it, but you know what I mean, and (bonus!) it did make me giggle.

10. If All Else Fails — Ice Cream

If you do a Google-search of good humor, the first 10 entries all concern ice cream brands. (Remember Good Humor?) I once attempted to eat my way to good humor-fueled happiness in the third grade by saving all my lunch money up for ice cream. And my husband took the factory tour of T. Wall and Sons Ice Cream (once the largest manufacturer of ice cream in the world) so many times when he was a boy (probably eight times) that they finally waved him through for the complimentary ice cream at the end. Day after day.

A child of any age can be forgiven for believing ice cream is a path to happiness. Whether your choice is chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, Rocky Road or Cherry Garcia, it sort of is. Even the writers at Psychology Today concede this much: “small indulgences” are potential happiness boosters. Not to mention the sugar high.

11. Natural Highs — and Lows

All those scientific researchers must be pretty damn happy with their lists of other proven recipes for happiness that include making your bed, rumpuses (think: fun) and travel — unless you’re waylaid by TSA agents or your flight is cancelled. And for millennia, circles. (It’s a 40,000-year fixation; Manuel Lima explains the reasons we are attracted “to curvilinear shapes” over angular ones. Which brings me full circle to Psychology Today that beat Second Mountain-eer Brooks to the punch. They had already summited. Happiness “is not the result of bouncing from one joy to the next; researchers find that achieving happiness typically involves times of considerable discomfort.”

Was I just one pickle juice swig away from a good gut and all-encompassing happiness? Did I, as Canaday said, have a feel for it?

I felt something, I truly did! A smile tickled up from the corners of my mouth as pickle juice trickled out and I contemplated me, white water and a new kayak.  OH

Cynthia Adams is fascinated that Happy Hour is illegal in Kansas. It is also illegal for Kansans to serve wine in teacups, which automatically makes her happier.

For Love of Past Lives

For Steve Lynch, history is an everyday pleasure and privilege

By Jim Dodson   •   Photographs by John Koob Gessner

Not long ago, on a tip from a local historian, I called on a man named Steve Lynch who lives in a pretty, middle-class neighborhood off Alamance Road, a few miles north of the pre-Revolutionary-era (1771) battlefield of the same name.

I’d been led to believe that Lynch might be able to tell me something about a celebrated relative of mine named George Washington Tate, a surveyor, grist mill owner, furniture maker and prominent citizen of the county in the 19th century.

My great grandmother, Emma Tate Dodson, had been his daughter, and according to family lore, she was supposedly a Native American, an infant when Tate brought her home from one of his “gospel rides” out west to help establish Methodist churches in the wilderness of the Blue Ridge hill country.

All I really knew about her papa, old George Tate, was that he was famous for his furniture-making and owned one of the most important grist mills on the historic Haw River. It was a fording spot of the ancient east-west Trading Path used by Indian tribes and settlers in the 18th century — including my own immigrant Scottish and English forebears who came down the Great Wagon Road to the region in the 1750s. Greensboro’s Tate Street is reportedly named for this rural Carolina polymath.

My hope was that Steve Lynch could fill in a few blanks and maybe answer a question or two about my respected ancestor.

What I found instead was another polymath in the tradition of Tate himself, a patriotic native son of Mebane, a Vietnam combat vet, 33rd degree Mason, former police detective and history nut extraordinaire for whom the past is not only alive and kicking, but also a source of daily happiness. He enthusiastically shares it with visiting groups and individuals who find their way to perhaps the most charming personal museum in the state.

It’s housed inside “Lynch Lodge,” a pair of Amish-built sheds their owner artfully fused together in his backyard some years back. He added a pretty front porch where Lynch and bride, Betsy, can sit and admire the handsomely landscaped approach through a leafy garden that features a full-scale flag pole and live boxwood shrubs rooted from Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, George Washington’s Mount Vernon and the governor’s palace at Williamsburg.

That was the first of many of nice surprises, each one more interesting than the last, when I called on him on a quiet summer afternoon.

Stepping into the Lodge, my eye went straight to an opposing wall where there was a beautiful portrait of George Washington hanging in a large gilt frame.

“Let me show you something,” Lynch said with a chuckle. The framed portrait had a nifty trick. It was set on hinges inside a larger matching frame, rather like a hidden safe.

“Here’s why.”

Attached to a linen binding on the back of the original framed painting, which dated from 1789, was the actual obituary of George Washington from a Philadelphia newspaper.

“I bought it at an auction in Mebane and got tired of having to pick it up off an easel to show people what’s on back,” he genially explained. “So I took it to a cabinet maker who came up with a clever solution.”

“You seem to have a thing for the name George Washington,” I commented, noting that the entire wall surrounding the portrait was covered with various paintings and antique pen and ink sketches of the nation’s first president. Lots of other Washington memorabilia was on displayed, too — antique tins of George Washington pipe tobacco, whiskey bottles and liquor decanters bearing the great man’s likeness, china plates with portraits of Mount Vernon and Martha Washington, an 1819 twin-volume History of the America Revolution featuring the writing of our founding president, at least a dozen statue heads, including a brass bank. Standing on the floor was a copy of Gilbert Stuart’s famous unfinished portrait of Washington.

“A fella I visited who owned a plantation house down in Little Washington gave that to me — just took it off the wall and sent it home with me,” Lynch offered, shaking his silver-topped head wonderingly.

Further along the wall, Lynch showed me an ancient pen-and-ink drawing of General Washington that was given to him by another friend that infected him with the collecting bug, setting him on the road to building his museum to house his growing and expanding collections.

“I do love George Washington,” Lynch said, stating the obvious.” Sure, he as our first president, but he’s also “someone everyone admires and should emulate in the way he lived. It’s also because I’m rather partial to the name,” my host explained.

With that, he showed me the first photograph I’d seen of my illustrious ancestor, G.W. Tate, whom I learned was his great-great-grandfather, as well. “Emma Tate’s sister was my great-grandmother, which makes us cousins,” he announced with a wide country grin.

He showed me two other Tate artifacts that left me momentarily speechless — and answered a lot of questions in an instant. One was a framed U.S. Patent certificate for a grain threshing machine that improved the famous one invented by Cyrus McCormick in the early 1800s.

The other items were Tate’s pocket watch, mess kit and solid brass telescope from his service in the Confederate States Army, given to Lynch by his grandfather. On the spot, I learned that Tate had served as a full colonel in the North Carolina 11th regiment.

Finally, he showed me a 19th-century map of Guilford and Alamance counties that revealed that Tate’s mill wasn’t where I’d always thought it was — and had visited near the I-85/40 bridge over the Haw, first as a boy and more recently, a few years ago when I began research on the Great Wagon Road.

“Tate’s Mill was nearby, though — actually on Haw Creek,” Lynch informed me. “I know a man who can take you to see where it was located.
I believe some parts of it may even be visible.”

The tour continued to the opposite end of the room to the “Franklin Corner” where lots of similar artifacts and memorabilia of Benjamin Franklin were on view.

That area led to a section filled with items gathered from Lynch’s distinguished 40-year career in law enforcement, including his 30 years as a detective for the Burlington Police Department and 11 more working as chief investigator for the Alamance District Attorney’s office. Displayed in this area were handcuffs (“They were on some pretty colorful people”) and a small pistol that a subject fired at Lynch during his first day on the job.

On the opposite side of the far end of the room was his “military corner” that displayed various uniforms, gear and items from the Vietnam era, including his year in combat for the 501 Infantry division of the 101st Airborne in 1969, one of the toughest years of the unpopular war.

“Just had four college boys from N.C. State and a veteran of Special Forces come by the other day to have a look at these things,” Lynch reflects, staring at the wall with visible emotion. “They all thanked me.”

At this point of the museum tour, I asked him to pause and sit for a spell so I could learn more about where his love of country and passion for history came from. This was the day after the Memorial Day weekend. The flag outside Lynch Lodge was still at half-mast.

Steve Lynch, I learned, was born on Clay Street in Mebane in 1949. Upon graduating from Eastern Alamance High School in the spring of 1967, he wrote a letter to J. Edgar Hoover and found a job working for a year in the fingerprint lab at FBI headquarters, before a romance lured him back home to Burlington.

“About that time, I got an official letter from President Johnson and soon found myself on the way to Vietnam. I was happy to serve.”

He was 19 years old. Within days of arrival, he was choppered to a unit fighting along the Ho Chi Minh Trail deep in the jungles of the A Shau Valley, west of the coastal city of Huế near the border with Laos, a key infiltration spot for the Vietcong and scene of some of the war’s fiercest fighting.

That year, American personnel fighting in Vietnam reached its peak of 543,000. Back home in America, antiwar protests also reached an early peak, filling the streets of America.

Steve Lynch grew quiet, speaking solemnly, rapidly blinking his eyes. “The nice guy that flew over there with me in the helicopter died the first day in action. We were new recruits. These were hardened soldiers. It was an unwritten rule among the guys who’d been in combat that nobody spoke to you in case you didn’t survive the next firefight.”

Steve Lynch survived the next firefight and many other major ones, including one in which his unit was overrun by the enemy. When his right hand got a serious infection that came close to becoming gangrene, he was airlifted out and treated before being sent back into the fray.

By that point he was an accepted brother in arms. From his first to last day in country, Lynch carried a small family Bible he kept wrapped in plastic. “Whenever we had a quiet moment, the others would ask me to read from the testament.”

The guys in his unit gave him a nickname. He was called “Preacher.” After serving his year, earning the respected Combat Infantryman Badge, Steve Lynch was sent home, only to be diagnosed with severe Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. A brigadier general he met at the Pentagon changed his orders to allow him to spend the rest of his military service under his first sergeant from Vietnam, assigned to Fort Stewart in Georgia. “He was one of my best friends. We’d been through a lot together. That meant a great deal to me.”

Lynch blinked for a few more seconds, his mind back somewhere in a war America tried hard to forget but he never has. Then he looked at me and smiled.

“You know, just a few weeks back I flew out to Missouri to see the chaplain I served with over there. He retired as a full bird colonel with a Silver Star. We had a wonderful visit,” he recalled. “As I told him, looking back, serving my country over there was the thing I’m proudest of in my life. You see the same thing in all the fellas and women who were there. It’s a bond, a love for each other that’s unbreakable.”

When his chaplain was driving him back to the airport for his flight home, Lynch added, they stopped by a patch of woods and sat for a while talking and actually holding hands and praying.

“When you see veterans at the wall in Washington,” he explained, “that’s what you’re seeing — real gratitude for loving friendship and memories of those who didn’t make it back.”

He nodded to a pair of well-worn Army boots on the floor beside me. There were dog tags attached to the boots’ laces.

“That was done so the army could identify your body if part of it was blown away,” he explained.

Lynch showed me a photograph of himself taken five years ago when the Pentagon called up out of the blue inviting him to lay a wreath on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

“I have no idea why they chose me,” he said. “Except for the fact that I was over there and survived. It was a big honor.”

On a happier note, we moved along to a big wooden desk, above which were a series of framed photographs from his years of service in the police. Among his duties, he often was asked to escort dignitaries when they passed through the county. The dignitaries included Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, President George Herbert Walker Bush, President Bill Clinton and local luminaries including former Senator Elizabeth Dole and former North Carolina Congressman Howard Coble.

“I even liked president Clinton,” he allowed wryly. “People back then said we looked like each other. I suppose we did. That always struck me as kind of funny.”

The next section contained some beautiful spiritual artifacts — a framed page from the Isaac Collins Bible of 1791, the first family Bible printed in America, and an original page from the Geneva Bible of 1560.

Lynch made local news some years ago when he gave his family’s O’Kelly Bible to Elon University. James O’Kelly was a fiery preacher and one of America’s earliest proponents of religious liberty — also, I was not surprised to learn, an ancestor of Steve Lynch.

Therefore, I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn, moments later, that he was also a direct descendent of Thomas Lynch Jr., signer of the Declaration of Independence from South Carolina. Lynch and his father, were the only father and son to serve in the Continental Congress.

The tour of Lynch Lodge ended where it began, at a nook by the front door that was designated for great Masons in history — a wall of portraits, artifacts and figurines in the likenesses of Beethoven and Robert Burns; Generals Jimmy Doolittle, Douglas MacArthur and John J. Pershing; Roy Rogers and Mozart and Harry S. Truman.

Just days before I showed up on his porch, Steve Lynch filled the place with dozens of 33rd degree mason and grand masters from all over North Carolina. He even had a special glass engraved to give to each of the participants. Steve Lynch belongs to the same Eagle Lodge in Hillsborough where George Washington Tate — the man where my inquiry began — was initiated in 1857.

As I left, I asked Steve Lynch what is it about showcasing American history that gives him such satisfaction.

“You know,” he replied, “that’s a little hard to explain. History is personal to people. I have groups and people come look at this little museum and always seem to find something that connects them to their history. It’s the story of where we all came from, after all. It makes me very happy to be part of that.”

As we shook hands, he placed something into mine.

It was a well-worn belt buckle from the Confederate Army.

“I thought you might like to have that, considering what you learned about our relative George Washington Tate today.”

He was right about that.  OH