Author Archives: zonker

Essential ingredient: Eggplant

by Kaitlyn Goalen photographs by Juli Leonard It may not have the juiciness of a tomato or the intoxicating perfume of a ripe peach, but the eggplant is among my favorite late summer ingredients. It wasn’t always so. Until fairly…

Varmint bites back: It’s so good at Soo

  by Dean McCord The place is in a run-down mini strip mall scheduled for demolition in the not-too-distant future. It’s between a head shop and an old-school record store. It has the tiniest, most cramped parking lot, perfectly ripe…

Gigs: The pork enforcer

by Allie Higgins A Piggly Wiggly parking lot in Warsaw, N.C., might not be the most obvious place to spend a sweltering summer afternoon, but it’s a great spot to meet Raleigh’s own Ann Edmondson. As coordinator of the North…

The laser’s edge: where art and science meet

by Ann Brooke Raynal photographs by Lissa Gotwals As with most stories about art, this one begins with the human eye. In this case, the eye belongs not to an artist but to a leading laser pioneer, whose vision is…

Swamp Mallows

text and photograph by John Rosenthal In 1996, Gibbons Ruark, Raleigh native and well respected poet, wrote a splendid poem called Swamp Mallows. It was inspired by the remarkably beautiful Ben Berns painting of the same name in the North…

This is your life

by Maureen Sherbondy Place your hand in the fire imagine it is a river that can only burn the skin of one who fears and sees flame. Jump out of the plane. No parachute. Fall and grab what you need…

Hope and a ’68 Impala

by Settle Monroe The radio never worked and the air conditioning was shot in the 1968 Chevrolet Impala my father inherited from his grandmother.  But when I was a 5-year-old girl riding to kindergarten with my dad, its run-down condition…

Patterns

by Tracie Fellers “Why?” That’s what my mother says when I tell her, while we finish our Sunday dinner – post-Thanksgiving plates of turkey, oyster dressing, collard greens, and sweet potatoes. Mom and I had joked that my maternal grandmother and…

All stitched up

The last 18 months have been a whirlwind for Stitch Golf founder and Raleigh resident Charlie Burgwyn. In that time, he and his partner Steve Pena have created a multi-million-dollar business, selling more than 200,000 hand-sewn leather golf club head…

The power of one: Meg Lowman’s pioneering legacy

by Liza Roberts photographs by Nick Pironio Meg Lowman believes in a lot of things: The sanctity of the treetops. The importance of insects, curiosity, resilience, and adventure. She believes in “no child left indoors” and “the power of one.” And kismet. “I find…

Working with art: Art, everywhere

photographs by Nick Pironio  In 1959, when Capitol Broadcasting Company founder A.J. Fletcher opened a lush and expansive azalea garden to the public on five West Raleigh acres surrounding WRAL-TV studios, he said he did it to pay “a tribute…

More, please! Chocolate: A most delicious cottage industry

by Scott Huler  photographs by Lissa Gotwals Danielle Centeno tastes in shapes. Centeno, head chocolatier of Escazu Artisan Chocolate on North Blount Street, has synesthesia – a conflation of two senses – that causes her, when she eats, to experience not just taste…

Keeping cool in Raleigh city pools

photographs by Tim Lytveninko The history of public pools here is a rich one, spanning more than a century, and reflecting all of the social and economic changes of the times. In 1891, Richard Stanhope Pullen built Raleigh’s first public…

Of course it’s art: Tom Shields and his chairs in the trees

by Amber Nimocks photographs by Juli Leonard You scan the surrounding trees and spot other chairs likewise suspended, their rungs seeming to run through the trunks, at various heights and angles throughout the small, sparse clump of forest. It takes…

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