Details
What: Jeans for Justice art exhibit and gala auction and fashion show
When: The all-denim art show is on display from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday in May. The gala is 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 20.
Cost: It’s free to see the jeans. The May 20 event is $5 for students and $15 for all others
Where: Newton Conover Civic and Performance Place, 60 W. Sixth Street
Why: Money from the gala and the auction goes to the Rape Crisis Center of Catawba County and the performance place.

Up for auction
Among the jeans to be auctioned off are a pair signed by members of Joe Gibbs’ racing team. The autograph of NASCAR favorite Kyle Busch is on the back pocket.

Newton
The curvy figure of a woman stretches down the right leg of a pair of jeans.
A man mirrors her on the left. No arms are showing.
Maybe their hands are tied behind their backs. Flames dance at their feet.
“Hear,” it says above the woman. “Me,” the man seems to cry.
Their tears are the color of blue fire.
The man who painted the stirring images on these Lee jeans is a survivor of sexual assault.
He joins dozens of other artists who made denim their medium for this month’s Jeans For Justice art exhibit at the Newton-Conover Civic and Performance Place.
The Rape Crisis Center of Catawba County and the performance place are sponsoring the exhibit, a fashion show and an auction. Teen and adult survivors of sexual assault are among the artists whose work hangs clothesline-style from the gallery walls and ceiling.
Each piece of artwork is a pair of jeans. Each also is a statement about rape and sexual abuse, the emotions that tear its victims apart at the seams and the healing that patches them back together.
“A big part of art is expressing something,” said Brian Mahnke, director of programs at the performance place. “Art has always been a great way to release anything, to express anything.”
Razor-sharp nails line the sides of a tiny pair of children’s pants. Blood-red thread dangles from a jagged rip. The size 3Ts hanging below bear ominous handprints in turquoise and gold, a reminder of the smallest victims.
Beside them is a pair with one leg labeled Abuse. “Don’t tell your mom,” it says and, “I’ll let you sit on my lap and drive.” The other leg is labeled Healing. It says, “Taking control.”
Twenty-eight-year-old Steven Hoke’s denim creation is a tonic for the stomachs turned in the wake of these powerful pieces.
His “Kelly’s Jeans” are like a love letter to his wife. He used a bleach pen to draw a sockeye salmon — Kelly’s favorite fish — in the style of the Japanese prints he admires.
Nearby, a darker pair of denims boasts the boot shape of Italy in puffy paint, a matching outline of North Carolina and in glittering letters the word “Independent!”
“Some of these are deep and dark,” said Amy Fisher, executive directors of the Rape Crisis Center. “Some are bright and shiny. It really does reflect everything survivors go through.”
When organizers auction off the jeans, including one pair autographed by Kyle Busch and other members of Joe Gibbs racing, the money will help make sure services including counseling, support groups and legal advocacy remain in place for people struggling to heal.
It also will help the performance place keep giving people ways to heal.
— Ragan Robinson |

Why jeans?
The Jeans for Justice movement grew out of an Italian court decision in 1999 to overturn the conviction of a 45-year-old driving instructor convicted of raping an 18-year-old student.
The high court based its decision on what the teen was wearing, ruling that it is impossible to take off tight pants such as jeans without the cooperation of the person wearing them.
Following the ruling, a group of female Italian lawmakers wore jeans to parliament, prompting women all over the country to join in a skirt strike. Female TV personalities began to don only denim. A housewives federation offered a prize to any designer who could come up with easy-off jeans and held a jean march to the justice ministry.
In the years since, the protest has since spread across the globe in the form of Jeans for Justice.

Details
Who: Adults only
What: Wildflower workshop with lecture and Blue Ridge Parkway hike
When: 7 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, May 15 lecture and the 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, May 17 hike
Where: Catawba Science Center and Crabtree Falls on the Blue Ridge Parkway Transportation is provided.
Cost: $30 for science center members and $35 for non-members
Deadline to register and pay: Tuesday, May 13
If it rains: Organizers will schedule an alternate date.

By Ragan Robinson

Hickory
We see the bashful head of a nodding trillium, the fragile, puffed, pink heart of a lady slipper, the candy-colored buttons of a fat mountain laurel.
What we can’t see this time of year, the secret those shy wildflowers won’t betray when we stoop to inspect the delicate veins on their petals, is their mad dash to preserve the species. It is a silent action movie, a season of “24” with a growing tree canopy in place of an ever-ticking digital clock.
Naturalist Bruce Beerbower with the Catawba Science Center puts it this way: Wildflowers have to expand their leaves, grow their buds, open their blossoms and get pollinated so they can reproduce, all before the hardwoods waking above them can stretch their leafy arms far and wide enough to block the sunshine.
Maybe it’s a little more like “Rock of Love” without eyeliner or birth control. And prettier stars.
Beerbower didn’t say that part. He and Karen McDougal probably watch the real world more than reality TV. They team up this month for the Catawba Science Center and Hickory Metro Higher Education Center wildflower workshop and hike.
Don’t let the promise of a lecture keep you home for “Lost” May 15 when you could be boning up on your outdoor skills. Sure, there will be some Latin – the formal names for flowers such as coneflower and bee balm pop into the minds of Beerbower and McDougal before the names our grandparents used. That’s a necessity if you want to really talk wildflowers, given the proliferation of names for every variety.
But McDougal and Beerbower, who have been looking at and studying plants and flowers since they were children, have plenty of interesting information. Among the subjects they’ll touch on are what is edible and what is not, how wildflowers are and have been used, the mythology surrounding them, where to look for them and how they got those colorful names to match their colorful petals.
Ever heard of sarviceberry or serviceberry?
In the mountains, this bush got its name from the warm weather during which it blooms. The berry shows up about the same time of year the traveling preacher could get to the rural communities for services.
In coastal areas, the same plant is known as shad berry after the fish that come upstream to spawn.
McDougal and Beerbower have lots stories.
And you can’t Tivo spring.

What to bring
Water
Lunch
A snack
A magnifying glass
A fanny pack, small backpack or other bag to free up your hands
Sturdy shoes. No sandals
or flip-flops.

What’s the hike like?
The Crabtree Falls hike is 2.5 miles round trip and is semi-strenuous.

Can’t make the wildflower hike? Here are a few flowers you might see at Catawba County parks or in your back yard:
Dwarf-flowered heart leaf ginger
When you first notice this federally protected plant, you’ll see more of a pretty, white veined leaf. You have to pull back the leaves at the base to see the little brown jugs that are its flower.
You’ll see it: In rich soil, shaded areas, boggy spots and north-facing slopes.
Blooms: Spring

Lady Slipper
This showy member of the orchid family is a wildflower favorite. You’ll recognize it from its hollow pink pouch.
You’ll see it: Often at the base of a tree, particularly pines. Yellow varieties often grow near water.
Blooms: Early spring

Catesby’s trillium
Three delicate pink petals on a nodding flower with three large green leaves give this blossom a gorgeous color combination.
You’ll see it: In damp places such as creek bottoms
Blooms: Spring. The flowers are coming off their peak at Bakers Mountain Park but should be blooming well as Riverbend Park.

Pinxster wild azaleas
These are prettier versions of the ones in front yards across the Southeast
You’ll see it: In higher elevations
Blooms: Mid-spring. It ought to still be around at Riverbend Park.

Mountain Laurel
When the weather is right, these thick bushes with pink-striped flowers blanket mountainsides. The drought likely left them less abundant this year but they’ll still be common and they’ll still be beautiful.
You’ll see it: On mountainsides in higher elevations
Blooms: April and May. Some should be flowering now at Bakers Mountain

Indian pipe
An easy-to-spot flower often confused with a fungus, this stark-white wildflower is one of the most unusual you’ll find.
You’ll see it: In shaded, moist rich woods, particularly beneath pine trees
Blooms: Late May and June at both Bakers Mountain and Riverbend

Native sunflower
You’ll see it: In all kinds of soil, including compressed soil at Bakers Mountain and by the cow pasture at Riverbend.
Blooms: Late June, after the summer solstice
Pink Turtleheads
They look exactly like they sound with several waxy-looking flowers on one spike.
You’ll see it: Along stream margins
Blooms: June and July

Sensitive Briar
Called sensitive because its leaves will curl up when touched, this flower is as unusual as it is pretty.
You’ll see it: In dry dusty soil, at least where it grows near the road into Bakers Mountain.
Blooms: July

Fraser Sedge
The fuzzy white flowers look like pompoms on the green, leathery leaves. Many scientists will say it doesn’t grow below 3,000 feet but it’s in its last days – if it’s even still around – on Bakers Mountain at 1,000 to 1,200 feet.

Sources: Ranger John Sutton of Bakers Mountain Park and Ranger Lori Owenby of Riverbend Park

Details
What: Catawba Valley Storytelling Festival.
When: 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Friday with a new storyteller every 30 minutes.
Where: Murray’s Mill, 1489 Murray’s Mill Road, Catawba.
Cost: $5
Why go: You won’t simply be listening. Storytellers have audiences sing, talk and respond to keep their acts engaging.

By Ragan Robinson

Catawba
Our ancestors had story keepers to preserve their ancient histories and explain the turbulent world around them.
Our grandparents, or maybe our great-grands, had front porches and long summer nights to braid tales of troublesome Cousin Henry or whip-smart Uncle Marvin.
Our children have iPods and Xboxes, DVD players to ease the tedium of long car rides and television channels devoted entirely to their entertainment.
Organizers of the Catawba Valley Storytelling Festival aim to get between young people and the ear buds.
“It’s really to promote this dying tradition of how history used to be passed down,” said Jason Toney, assistant director of the Catawba County Historical Association. “As we move forward with technology, we’ve gotten away from the face-to-face.”
This is the 10th year for the festival. Weather permitting, it’s the first time the event will be open to anyone besides second and third graders in Catawba County schools. Rain closed last year’s planned public venue.
The amphitheater at Murray’s Mill, where storytellers will regale audiences with music, yarns from American Indian and slave traditions, the celebrated Jack Tales and other favorites, seats 150 to 200 people.

Look who’s talking
About 50 storytellers apply every year. Toney picks 20 to 25.
They are dynamic men and women who, alone, can fill a stage and adjust their stories depending on the listeners.
Sylvia Payne is one of them. The 66-year-old retired librarian has been telling stories for some 30 years, since before attention spans dwindled and every story had to be cleaned up and sanitized for little ears.
No harrowing Jack Tales with the hero lopping off heads today.
The woodcutter no longer cuts Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma out of the wolf’s stomach.
The stories still have lives of their own, she said. They change with the audience and the teller and the year they’re told but they remain lessons in morality and history.
Payne likes to point out how we’re all storytellers, whether we’re doing it around the water cooler at work or around the dinner table at home. She encourages people to recognize and preserve their own family tales.
She has a great (if unsanitized) story about her dad, who could take apart and rebuild a bulldozer in his workshop and who, at least for the story’s sake, always kept a bucket of water for hot pieces of metal.
The bucket came from the particularly disturbing sight of a frog that mistook a hot bit of iron for a fresh bug. Payne’s dad and his buddies watched that blistering piece of metal burn clean the toad’s throat.
She won’t be telling children that one this week.
But maybe what she does say will have them switching off the DVD player on the way home. 

Book sales
Sponsor: Friends of the Hickory Public Library
What: Fourth Saturday Book Sale
When: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday
Where: Patrick Beaver Memorial Library, 375 Third St., Hickory
Why go: Paperbacks are 50 cents, children’s books are $1, hardback books, CDs, VHS videos and DVDs are $2.

Sponsor: Newspapers in Education
What: Book Sale
When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. May 14 - 16 and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. May 17.
Where: Catawba Valley Community College in the west wing
Why go: Paperbacks are 50 cents; hardbacks are $1

Bring your books to Hickory Crawdads games May 4 - 7 and get $1 per book subtracted from your ticket price (limit one seat)

By Ragan Robinson

A few of the volumes have notes scribbled in the margins and favorite paragraphs underlined. A paperback titled “Euripides V” preserves a brittle, brown poplar leaf. Tiny white stripes like laugh lines run the length of a mystery novel’s spine.
They are the stories’ stories. They are windows into the lives of other readers who loved and cradled the copies, who spent the last few furtive minutes of a long lunch hour on just one more page, just one more chapter, who woke up some mornings with a paperback for a pillow after sleep, a late-night page turner’s only natural predator, finally won the battle.
A back room in the Patrick Beaver Memorial Library is temporarily home to thousands of books donated to the Friends of the Library for the monthly fundraising book sales. The friends shuffled and sorted Wednesday in two rooms and a hallway full of fiction and non, self-help and health, sheet music and poetry, Disney and Dr. Seuss.
Cozette Sinclair, a retired librarian with a handful of titles including “Helen Keller” and “My Monster Mama Loves Me So,” is excited about the condition of the latest round of children’s books.
“Sometimes they’re a little more well loved than others,” she says. “These are in such good condition.”
Friends President Mary Ann Crane passes by with a hardback for the fiction shelf. She spies a slim volume Sinclair has set aside. She gasps, loud enough to make most people jump and look around for the mouse or, judging from her reaction, the elephant charging her way. Not the Friends of the Library members. They are used to people for whom the perfect gift book or the long-searched-for title is like a celebrity spotting, only longer lasting.
Crane remembers the woman who found a book her mother wrote and the man who picked out one about sailing he had been hunting for years. Her big find on Wednesday was a book about bluebirds, just the right present for a friend who’s been helpful.
For readers without her eye, Friends board member Paula Finegan put together gift baskets that pair three commonly themed books with a mug and cocoa or coffee and, in some cases, an artistic bookmark she created from the spine a of Readers Digest condensed version of the classics. She has them for girlfriends, cat lovers, men, mystery lovers, new moms and more. Wrapped up and tied with ribbon, they sell for $5.
“The bow is worth that,” says Norma Frank, another member and sorter at the library on Wednesday.
Other books are priced from 50 cents for paperback to $2 for hardbacks. The stories’ stories come at no extra charge.

By Ragan Robinson

Hickory
Less than three minutes took nearly a year of Joseph Condeelis’ life.
The Hickory man owns and operates Light Productions Video Services, the company contracted to create animation for the movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” The documentary stars the monotone Ben Stein of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” fame.
“Expelled” makes a case for the scientific community virtually blacklisting scientists who question evolution or embrace the idea of intelligent design.
The subject matter is controversial, at least within scientific and creationist circles.
What can’t be argued is Condeelis’ work in the film.
In one clip, a human cell’s membrane is a 3D checkerboard of ethereal green fibers. In another, bright yellow strands of RNA unfurl and wave like worms on a fishhook, only prettier. Something Condeelis calls a microtubule peels back to blossom into something that resembles a cerulean and canary-gold space-age daylily. On his computer screen, DNA is made up of twinkling blue threads binding iridescent, coral-colored crystals.
Richard Dawkins, the British evolutionary biologist and outspoken atheist sometimes called Darwin’s Rottweiller, panned “Expelled” on YouTube, calling it “a very, very shoddy, poor inartistic piece of work.”
His only praise was for the animation.
“By far, the best scene was when they had a film of the interior of a cell and how it works, which was a really beautiful piece of work,” he said.
Dawkins appeared on the YouTube video with biologist, University of Minnesota associate professor and science blogger PZ Myers. They credited Harvard University with the animation. On his blog, Pharyngula, Myers later wrote that the “Expelled” animation is not the same as the Harvard piece . He called it a “brainless copy” and a look-alike video.
Premise Media released a statement saying the company invested significant time and money into the research and original creation of the animation.
Condeelis said the images he animated came from storyboards the production company provided. The science was new to him.
“I couldn’t even spell science,” he said. “I didn’t know much of anything about what’s in our cells. It’s just mind boggling what’s going on in your cells and mine and we have trillions of them.”
The computer software he uses would be no less mystifying for most of us. For Condeelis, who has been doing animation for seven years, the project took more than 11 months. He said he got used to 12-hour days and seven-day weeks. And that was with three freelancers to help.
“Expelled” is his first major motion picture. His videography and animation have appeared in movies before but those have been straight-to-DVD releases — “Harvesters,” a documentary about the African Pokot tribe, “Exodus Revealed: Search for the Red Sea Crossing,” “Unlocking the Mystery of Life,” “The Privileged Planet,” “The Case for a Creator” and “Exodus Revealed: Search for the Red Sea Crossing.”
For “Harvesters,” he went to Africa.
For “Exodus,” Condeelis said he filmed underwater in Egypt’s Red Sea.
Condeelis won’t say what he got paid to animate “Expelled.”
He will say it’s his biggest paycheck ever. 

1. The Avett Brothers: A longtime MerleFest favorite, this stompin’, screaming folk rock (sure guys, if that’s what you want to call it) trio from Concord never lets you get bored.

2.  The Carolina Chocolate Drops: Giggle about the name if you will but their blues-tinged jams are anything but gimmicky.

3. Jim Lauderdale: This guy knows no boundaries. He might don a bejeweled, Porter-Wagoner-inspired suit and sing you a real AM-station kind of classic country song. He might break into some bluegrass. He might jump on stage with Donna The Buffalo for a little noodling around with the jam band.

4. Old Crow Medicine Show: A rousing string band, Old Crow is back in the mix after a 3-year hiatus. Listening to them perform their best stuff (“Wagon Wheel” comes to mind) is sort of like taking a shot of good vodka. It lights a fire in your chest and then it makes you wonder why that feels so good.

5. The Wilders: For a band that grounds itself firmly in the early years of recorded country music, they’re anything but traditional. Four words: Head-banging bluegrass players. When The Wilders whoop it up, they sound great but they’re almost more much fun to watch. 

Wilkesboro
For lovers of country, bluegrass and Americana, it feels like Christmas is coming. Only Santa is an 85-year-old blind guitar player who everybody calls Doc.
Doc Watson founded MerleFest 21 years ago to memorialize his son Merle Watson, who died after rolling his tractor down a hill in 1985. This year Doc reached into his bag of goodies to bring some 100 acts to 13 stages over three days.
We must have all been very good little music fans this year.

Details
What is it?
MerleFest is arguably North Carolina’s biggest traditional music festival. Founder and guitar legend Doc Watson calls it traditional-plus. You’ll hear bluegrass, alternative country, blues, Celtic, folk, old-time, singer-songwriters and other roots music genres.

When is it?
Gates open at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, April 24 and the last show is scheduled to end at 11 p.m. Gates open at 9 a.m. Friday and Saturday, April 25 and 26 with the last shows ending after midnight. Gates open at 9 a.m. on Sunday, April 27 with music scheduled to end at 6:45 p.m.

Where is it?
Wilkes Community College, Wilkesboro

How much is it?
That depends.
$35 is Thursday’s general admission price
$45 is Friday’s general admission price
$50 is Saturday’s general admission price
$40 is Sunday’s general admission price
$130 is the Friday, Saturday and Sunday general admission price
$150 is the four-day general admission price
$225 is the less expensive four-day reserved seating price (that means you get to sit in rows 36 to 56 at the biggest stage)
$250 is the most expensive four-day reserved seating price (that means you get to sit in row 35 or closer at the biggest stage)
– Ragan Robinson |

Desiree Orengo’s fingers dance to the sound of Klara Ledford’s voice. When her character is angry, her hands slice through air with authority. When she is dreamy, they draw long, smooth lines.
The sign language steals a tango’s rhythm, a ballet’s delicacy.

3 reasons to see ‘Searching for Eden’
By Ragan Robinson

1. You’ve probably never seen this kind of play“Searching for Eden” has two roles and four actors.
Orengo and Ledford play Eve while Bowe Aldridge and Jacob Thiesen take on the part of Adam.
They act simultaneously. Both pairs share the same stage. Nineteen-year-old Ledford and 21-year-old Thiesen have the speaking roles while 24-year-old Orengo and 22-year-old Aldridge share the signing.
It means they have to know more than their lines. To stay in time, Ledford and Orengo had to work out a system of cues big enough for Orengo to notice but small enough that the audience won’t.
Director Mia Self had to make her actors realize they are all playing the part. No one is just interpreting, she said.
Aldridge and Orengo had to figure out how to translate phrases such as “put words in my mouth.” When words come from your fingers, that saying doesn’t make much sense.
When Self came up with the idea of double casting the roles, she wasn’t sure how things were going to work.
For that matter, she wasn’t sure how things were going to work after she cast the actors and started rehearsal.
Deaf and hard-of-hearing students aren’t excluded from productions at Lenoir-Rhyne.
The college will provide an interpreter, Orengo said. But with “Searching for Eden,” students who can’t hear don’t have to take their eyes off the stage to know what’s happening. They can lose themselves in the action, the way most of us are used to experiencing theater.
People who hear can also benefit from the exposure to sign language, said Shawn Frank, who directs Lenoir-Rhyne’s support services for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. It’s an exercise in understanding. “Sometimes people are reluctant to even talk to deaf people,” Frank said.

2. You’ve definitely never heard this kind of play
Lenoir-Rhyne music graduate and college staffer Joseph Dorsch wrote an original score for the production. The 30-year-old horn player thinks of the musical instruments as characters in the play.
He uses the feminine flute for Eve, the more masculine trombone and French horn for Adam.
“I wanted to musically personify the actors,” Dorsch said.
The toughest part of his job was fitting the music he wanted to write into the time the play allowed. He needed maybe 30 seconds of something dreamy. Then he needed a minute and a half of music hat conveyed love.
“It’s like a conversation when you know you only have two minutes to talk to the person,” Dorsch said.
“You kind of have to be succinct so it doesn’t get miscommunicated.”

3. You’ve never thought about Adam and Eve this way before.
Ledford calls it a romantic comedy.
Playwright James Still adapted Mark Twain’s “The Diaries of Adam and Eve” for the first act of this witty production. It has the earth’s first couple bickering in their first real conversation.
Eve wonders why Adam is always sitting around. Adam wonders why Eve always has to be doing something. Still wrote the second act on his own.
It features a middle age Adam and Eve in the modern world. Eden is a resort known as “E.” The pool of water where Eve was born? It’s a Jacuzzi.

By Scott Parker
Special to Super Buzz

A Typical Day
Rise at 5:50 a.m. Drive from hotel to extras parking. Get on bus and go to sign-in. Tell PA (I call them minders) “Commissioner Parker”. They look you up and give you a payroll form. Assemble for group to be led by a minder to wardrobe. Take form to Marion at wardrobe table. She files. Go to my wardrobe in Wardrobe Tent. Quickly change into period outfit and walk to Holding. The first sight of hundreds of people in 1920’s outfits was stunning; now it’s no big deal. Get breakfast.
Now you WAIT. Read papers, talk, walk around, go to bathroom, walk outside and talk with crew. Crane to see what’s going on the set. PA’s are constantly coming in and calling for “Fans!” or “Groundskeepers!”, etc.; but not for you, “Commissioners”. Finally, after 2 days of this, you hear, “Commissioners!” You and your associates hastily don suit jackets, heavy overcoats, hats, gloves; and rush to the set. Upon arriving and standing for a few seconds, the command comes from a DA, “Don’t need ‘em; send ‘em back.” You trudge back to the infamous Holding Area. Despondent and always exhausted.
There are 3 types of Extras. Deep Background, Background, Featured, and Speaking. I’ve been all of them except Speaking.
Then the big days. “Commissioners!” On set, “Costume (I call them Flitters) are flitting all around. Touching up women’s makeup. Straightening my tie or hat. One even put a little makeup on me just before a main scene. When she did that, I knew I was “Hollywood”.
Great Fun!
The cameras, that have always been far away while we did background and deep background shots, are now positioned like guns, right on us. Three of them! Director Clooney, Assistant Directors, PA’s are right up on us; smiling, giving us detailed directions, telling us how great we are. “This is your Hero shots folks, for your families.” It’s wonderful!
I’m right next to The Commissioner (Great Actor Peter Gerety) and we discuss how it should go.  I’ve been adlibbing background scenes, on my own, for days but now I’m collaborating with a Principal Actor..  Then it begins just as it has for days; but we are no longer “background.” We are now the ones that all the shooting is related to.  “Stand By!  Here We Go!!  Picture’s Up!  LOCKED OUT!  ROLLING!  ROLLLLing!!!  Rolling!!  Rolling.  Background!  Action!” For me, the acting scenes are exhilarating, easy, and fun.  “CUT!  Reset!  Back to 1!”
Talked briefly with Max Casella of the “Sopranos”.  Told him he was giving “Mack” just the right amount of unease due his lies.  He smiled and said, “Thank you.”
Director George goes over to watch the dailies (what we just shot). When he’s doing this, I always focus on his face.  He bursts out laughing.  He likes it! 
Then we do it again, a little differently. Then we do it again, a little differently. Then we do it again, a little differently. Then we do it again, a little differently.  Then George says, “Turn it around.” Now the same scene is shot from the opposite angle.

When Peter does an important speech, on his own, he makes comments to me as to how he thought each take went.  I usually agree with each assessment and tell him how I think he did.  At one point I encourage him by saying you took control of that stage.  He liked that.  Spoke to George a couple of times and he spoke back. Renée Zellweger hits her leg hard on some object, in her path as she hurriedly exits.

“Thank you!” Back to Holding.  End of the day.  “Women and children can leave!” (10 minutes go by.) My 5:30’s can leave!  (Those that arrived at 5:30 that morning.) (10 minutes go by.) My 6:00’s may go!  et cetera.  The whole morning processing is now reversed.  Get to Hotel at 7:30.  Couple of hours for shave / shower / TV.  To bed and it all begins again in a few hours.

George maintains a loose, fun set. He’s often joking and screwing around. Sometimes, as background we could use more direction but they don’t seem to care as much as we are background. Often, the DA’s contradict each other or change their minds. “Just pantomime this one … No! Talking is OK. Pantomime it!”

This is the most exhausting work I’ve ever done. Everyone is dead on their feet. The crews work incredibly hard. Each location change means everything must go, from wardrobe to seven generators. They are like a carnival.

In Holding there are the Readers, the Talkers, the Laptops, the Starers, the Puzzles, and the Sleepers.  Like any large group, especially the Military, rumors abound.  We have Minders at various levels of “rank” telling where to go, where to line up for lunch, what to do / stop doing, etc.  Three bathroom stalls for 500 men.  Blisters on my feet.

Will anything, I was in, survive to the final film?  Who knows?  Check it in April 2008.

It was awful and it was Grand!

So You Want To Be An Extra

Want to know what it’s really feels like to be an Extra?  Get up while it’s still dark and put on a wool suit and heavy wool overcoat.  Hat and gloves too.  Find a nice place in the sun and stand for an hour.  Now walk some distance and sit for a while.  Stay in the sun.  Now, walk to a nearby High School Cafeteria and hurriedly eat your lunch amidst the cacophony.  Keep most of the students with you the rest of the day.  Go home when it’s dark.

Movie Magic & Confusion

In a school auditorium, very similar to the one I knew in grammar and high school, the heavy maroon drapes are taped back to reveal a bright “sun” (a powerful light set up outside to represent the sun and create atmosphere in the Press Conference).

So You Want To Be An Extra

Want to know what it’s really feels like to be an Extra?  Get up while it’s still dark and put on a wool suit and heavy wool overcoat.  Hat and gloves too.  Find a nice place in the sun and stand for an hour.  Now walk some distance and sit for a while.  Stay in the sun.  Now, walk to a nearby High School Cafeteria and hurriedly eat your lunch amidst the cacophony.  Keep most of the students with you the rest of the day.  Go home when it’s dark.
A “policeman” asks me for the time.  I told him that the last slate showed about noon.  He said, “Noon!?, I thought it was about 4:30.” Remember, our days start at 5:00AM and this was his first day on a movie set.  He had been watching the “sun” which was (locked) low in the sky.

Scenes to look for in the movie:  Commissioners’ Entrance to the big game/ Stretcher, Sideline / Bulldog, Stadium /Commissioners’ in stands Excitement-Disillusionment* /

Background Scenes:  Press Conference* / Stadium Exit / Sidelines / Going to the game

*Have Call Sheet / Script

What: Hickory Hops beer festival
When: 1 to 7 p.m. Saturday, April 12
Where: Union Square, downtown
Cost: $25 in advance until April 7 and $35 at the gate
Get tickets: At the Olde Hickory Tap Room or Amos Howards Restaurant and Brew Pub at 2828 U.S. 70, SE, in Long View or at http://www.hickoryhops.com

By Ragan Robinson
Super Buzz Staff Writer
Hickory
Hickory Hops taps the first keg of the spring festival season April 12, when more than 30 brewers bring their best beers to town. More than 100 different kinds of the sudsy stuff will be there for the tasting.
It works like this: You pay $25 in advance or $35 at the door. You get one 2.5-ounce glass and unlimited samples of any beer available.
The sixth beer festival has more breweries this year. Twenty-two of them come from North Carolina but Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Maryland also are on the list.
And these aren’t just salespeople, promises Bobby Bush, the Hickory beer enthusiast charged with enticing brewers to participate. Each brewery must send a person who can answer questions and talk about the brewing process.
“They’re here because they love to share their beer,” Bush says, “They love to talk about the beer.”
Many also are award winners in the Hickory-based Carolinas Championship of Beers. The March 15 judging by brewers and certified beer judges awarded 27 gold, 30 silver and 47 bronze medals, all to be announced the night before the festival at a spot Bush calls the best beer bar in town. It’s in his basement.
The party is private but festival-goers can look for the medals at each brewers’ tent during Hickory Hops and check the program for the winners.
Competition organizers save the best in show awards for the day of the festival.
“The beers are getting better,” says Mike Ruff, a certified beer judge of Charlotte.
The crowd’s getting bigger, too. The event can’t hold more than 1,800 people, says Connie Kincaid, executive director of Hickory’s Downtown Development Association.
Last year, it got that big. Organizers had to pull out glasses from the year before, Bush says.

Who’s Coming?
From North Carolina
Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company, Asheville
Azalea Coast Brewery, Wilmington
Big Boss Brewing Company, Raleigh
Carolina Beer Company, Mooresville
Catawba Valley Brewing Co., Morganton
Carolina Brewery, Chapel Hill
The Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery, Farmville
Foothills Brewing, Charlotte
French Broad Brewing Co., Asheville
Front Street Brewery, Wilmington
Green Man Brewery, Asheville
Heinzelmannchen Brewery, Sylva
Highland Brewing Company, Asheville
Mash House Brewery, Fayetteville, N.C.
Olde Hickory Tap Room, Hickory
Liberty Steakhouse Brewery, High Point
Natty Greens Brewing Co., Greensboro
Pisgah Brewing Company, Black Mountain
Red Oak, Whitsett
Rock Bottom Brewery, Charlotte
Top of the Hill Brewery, Charlotte
Weeping Radish Brewery, Jarvisburg
From South Carolina
Thomas Creek Brewery, Greenville
R.J. Rockers Brewing Company, Spartanburg
Blue Ridge Brewing Company, Greenville
New South Brewing Company, Myrtle Beach
From Tennessee
Smoky Mountain Brewery, Gatlinburg
Depot Street Brewing, Jonesborough
From Georgia
Atlanta Brewing Company
Terrapin Beer, Athens
SweetWater Brewing Company, Atlanta
Moon River Brewing Company, Savannah
From Maryland
Clipper City Brewing Company, Baltimore

Ben Eustice was the only Carolinas Championship of Beer judge from Hickory on March 15. The 39-year-old attorney is a certified beer judge, brewer, craft-beer convert and, admittedly, a beer snob.
How did you become a certified beer judge?
I did it when I lived in Florida seven or eight years ago. It’s the Beer Judge Certification Program. I was in a home-brew club down in Tampa. It’s part of learning to make better beers. It was probably an eight-week course. You take this test at the end and then you have a certain amount of judging points. I think you have to judge in at least five competitions.
What kinds of questions are on the beer test?
A lot of it was kind of like biochemistry. It’s not as difficult as, like, a bar exam, but for a test I took for fun it was pretty tough. I think it had, like, six to 10 essay questions and every 45 minutes you’re getting a beer you have to judge.
You judged in the Carolinas Championship of Beer. Did you drink a lot?
You’re just drinking something like a millimeter in a glass. In the morning I tried, I think, 18 beers. I think I had brown ales. Your taste buds get tired.
You had 18 different beers in the MORNING?
It was probably about 10 o’clock and then we did the Best in Show at like 1:30 with lunch in between.
What’s your advice on how Hickory Hops participants should taste the beer?
I usually smell it. You know, kind of rotate it in the glass. I don’t drink it fast, just taste it. There are a lot of beers to try. A lot of people think they don’t like beer. If I’d only tried Bud, Coors Light and Miller, I wouldn’t like it either.
People who think they don’t like beer should go out to Gail’s Hops and Grapes and try a framboise. It tastes more like a raspberry wine cooler than a beer. There’s a Peche, which is peach, and a Kriek that has cherries in it. It’s almost like drinking champagne.
Are you a beer snob?
When I go to a sports event if I can’t find a nice beer, I won’t drink. So I’ve turned into a beer snob. It started when I started making beer, when you kind of acquire a taste for more flavor. My wife would tell you 10 years ago I just drank Coors Light.
What kinds of beers are in your fridge?
I have a kegerator. It’s when you have a tap coming out of a small fridge. I have two 5-gallon kegs right now. It’s a brown ale that I brewed and I have some leftovers from the Carolinas Championship of Beer.
What did you keep from the competition?
Whatever I could get.

— Ragan Robinson | 322-4510, x5403 |

There’s a lot of beer out there. It’s coffee flavored and fruit flavored. It has herbs and spices. It’s blonde and dark and amber and almost black. It’s Scottish style, Bavarian style, English style, American style. Some of it’s called “imperial.“
Here are a few of the most common kinds and what you can expect them to taste like:
CASK-CONDITIONED
These are beers you won’t find anywhere except the brewery or the beer fest. This year’s cask-conditioned varieties will be at individual brewers’ tents instead of in a special spot. They are allowed to ferment on their own instead of being force-carbonated. It means they’re flatter than beers you’re used to. They’re also served warmer. As a result, the cask-conditioned beers have more flavor.

WHEAT BEER
Usually considered summertime ales, wheat beers have a lighter taste and are more thirst quenching. Different strains of yeast give different varieties their tastes.
Belgian or Belgian white gets a citrus taste from orange peel and coriander.
Bavarian has a clove, floral or fruity taste

PALE ALE
American style is heavy on the hops. These beers have a strong bitter taste.
English style is still hop-heavy but milder and less bitter.

INDIA PALE ALES (IPAs) or IMPERIAL or DOUBLE INDIA PALE ALES
Extra hops give these a more bitter taste than you get with a pale ale. They also have a higher alcohol content. Why? The English originally brewed IPAs to send to India. Think about what happens to beer when you forget it in the trunk of your car. Now think about how skunky the stuff was when it got to India in the 18th century. Beer connoisseurs don’t tend to say skunky but you know what we mean. Turns out hops helps preserve the beer and extra alcohol doesn’t hurt either.

BROWN ALES
American types are bitter compared to the English.
English styles are sweeter with more of a malt or caramel taste. Think Newcastle.

PORTERS
These are among the darkest beers. They have a heftier, more roasted taste than a brown ale. They’re neither sweet nor bitter.

SOUTS
A stout beer is the next step in darkness.
Dry stouts are harsher.
Cream stouts have, as the name suggests, a little bit of lactose Think Guinness.
Imperial stouts have more alcohol and more hops for a more bitter taste.

Source: Bobby Bush

HICKORY
Shannon Myers, a former standout on the Lenoir-Rhyne Football Team, may be seen as a football player in the upcoming movie “Leatherheads.”
Myers, who graduated from L-R in 1997, was drafted by the NFL and spent several years as a professional football player. Although his football career is now behind him, Myers got a chance to relive some of those experiences as an extra in “Leatherheads.” The movie, starring George Clooney and Renee Zellweger, is a romantic comedy set during professional football’s formative years in the 1920s.
Myers was one of 50 athletes chosen for football player roles out of some 2,500 who tried out. It took about five months of on-and-off shooting in different North Carolina and South Carolina cities to film the game scenes, he said.
“I learned it was a lot of sit around and wait,” Myers said. He would report to the set at 6 a.m. to get his hair and makeup done. The daylong shoot would typically start at 7 a.m. “The hardest part was getting up that early,” he said. Myers appears in several game scenes.
He was one of five of the original players called back to appear in the climactic game at the end of the film. That final game took a week to shoot in Charlotte. The script called for a game played in the mud, so all the actors had to wear mud-soaked uniforms that weren’t washed for a week. Myers often found himself facing off against Clooney in the mock games. The stars weren’t athletic, so the extras wound up teaching them how to move like football players.
Professional football was a lot different in the 1920s, Myers said. The padding and helmets were primitive by today’s standards, and there wasn’t much of a passing game. The coaches in the movie are depicted as fighting and drinking on the sidelines.
The acting was easy compared to the real experience of playing a professional football game. “It was a whole lot easier on the body!” Myers said with a chuckle. “You weren’t there to hurt each other. You were there to pretend.” If a play didn’t go exactly right, they just reshot it. “You just don’t get do-overs in real life,” he said.
Myers had his real professional football career after being drafted by the Miami Dolphins in 1995. He suffered a serious kidney injury in training camp that sidelined him for awhile. He returned to Lenoir-Rhyne and graduated in 1997. He then played in the Canadian Football League for the Edmonton Eskimos in 1997 and 1998. Afterward, he played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Oakland Raiders before being traded to the New York Jets. From there, he went to the NFL Europe league, where he played for the Rhein Fire in Düsseldorf, Germany. In recognition of his football career, he was inducted into the Lenoir-Rhyne College Sports Hall of Fame at Homecoming 2007.
In 2001 he returned home to North Carolina. But his competitive spirit led him to a new venture, as a tire changer in NASCAR. Myers has been on several Nextel Cup teams over the years, working for Kyle Petty, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Martin Truex Jr. Myers was part of Earnhardt’s team in 2003 when they won the Daytona 500. He was also on the Truex team when they won the Busch Series Championship in 2004 and 2005. Myers is now a tire changer for driver John Andretti of BAM Racing. Myers now lives in Mooresville

Gina Travis sat on a train in Tobaccoville feeling like maybe she was
dreaming, like anything could happen. She just couldn’t wait to find out what. A couple of weeks before, she was your everyday working mom and wife. That morning she’d been through hair, makeup and wardrobe like a regular movie star. She and her butterflies were alone in a back-row seat when she heard the voice. “Good morning ladies.” It was George Clooney.
Anything was already happening.

By Ragan Robinson
Record Staff Writer
Sherrills Ford
Gina Travis’ flapper haircut is growing. So is her excitement about a little screen time in the new George Clooney movie.
The Sherrills Ford mother of two and her husband, Keith Travis, got cast as extras in “Leatherheads” when Hollywood came to Statesville, Salisbury, Tobaccoville and other North and South Carolina sites for last year’s filming. The movie, a romantic comedy set in 1925, opens April 4.
Gina made some definite sacrifices for her bit part. A casting person promised her the scene she would be in wouldn’t get cut — but 12 inches of her blond hair would. Gina also gave up her full-time job as a dental hygienist when she couldn’t make her work schedule jive with the filming timetable.
Was it hard to do? Nope, she says, “I was like on cloud friggin’ nine.”
She held on to her enthusiasm even when it turned out the job wasn’t always as much fun as the pampering she got in hair and makeup.
The couple had to be on set at 5:30 a.m. The location was top secret. Extras had to call the night before to find out where to meet. When they got to that spot, everyone would go somewhere else for the actual filming.
Cell phones and cameras anywhere on set were strictly forbidden. The Travises say there were even “spies” mixed in with the extras to spot rule breakers. People caught taking photos had the pictures deleted and would be kicked off set with orders not to come back.
The gig pushed Gina, who did some modeling when she was younger, to pursue a career in acting. She went to Charlotte, got an agent and started showing up at auditions around the area and in Wilmington and Atlanta. She’s been in five different movies since “Leatherheads,” including a speaking role in the small-budget family film “Mandie and the Secret Tunnel” with Guiding Light and All My Children actor Martin Thompson. You also can hear her scream in the straight-to-DVD “April Fool’s Day,” a remake of the 1980s teen horror flick.
Keith kept his job as a trooper with the N.C. State Highway Patrol in Catawba County, although his coworkers did take to calling him Hollywood.
Just wait until they see him — fingers crossed — on the same train with George Clooney. Or just George, as Gina calls him. The train scenes had fewer extras than most — only about 25 in all — so they guess their chances of showing up on film are pretty good.
Even if viewers only catch a glimpse of Gina’s yellow and blue-striped hat or her redder-than-red flapper lipstick, it was worth doing just for the brush with fame. Gina even exchanged a few words with Clooney after she watched him leave the area where crews were filming, jump a ditch and buy lemonade from some kids peddling the drink nearby. She’d been watching the kids all day, hoping someone would help them out. She told “George” she was glad he’d done that. He made a little joke about what he would’ve put in the lemonade when he was a kid before moving on — a much more friendly response than some of the principal actors in “Leatherheads.”
She was taking a chance just talking to him. One of the rules was that extras weren’t supposed to speak to actors unless spoken to first, say Gina and Travis. But it’s like she told her boss when she picked “Leatherheads” over her job.
“All my life my mouth has gotten me in trouble. One day it’s going to make me rich.”

Will you spot ‘em?
Sherrills Ford residents Gina and Keith Travis expect to be in “Leatherheads” train ride scenes with only about 25 other extras.
She’s wearing a yellow hat with a navy blue ribbon wrapped around it and a navy blue dress with a yellow accent at the bodice. She’s also got on a pair of brown leather, vintage 1920s heels. They were too small but Gina lied about her shoe size and squeezed her size-9 foot into the size-8s. She really liked these shoes.
He’s wearing a gray wool suit and vest with matching hat, a peach-colored shirt and a maroon tie. 

Hickory
Explore the wonders of ultra high-speed photography during Stopping Time: The Art and Science of “Doc” Edgerton’s Life Work, a joint exhibition hosted by Hickory Museum of Art and Catawba Science Center.
Stopping Time explores the work of educator, engineer, inventor and photographer Harold E. Edgerton through nearly 100 high-speed photographs, interactive demonstrations and special programs.
As a professor of electrical engineering at MIT in the 1920s and ’30s, his work with the stroboscope led to the invention of ultra-high-speed photography and sonar devices and offered a new way of looking at the world.
The museums’ collaboration of art and science includes two components for visitors to explore. In its Coe Gallery, Hickory Museum of Art presents “The High-Speed Photographs of Harold ‘Doc’ Edgerton and Those He Influenced.”
Catawba Science Center’s Edgerton Gallery, named in honor of the famous photographer, presents hands-on interactive exhibits in “Experimenting with High-Speed Phenomena.”
Entry to this joint exhibit is included in the science center’s general admission fee, which for non-members is $5 for adults and $3 for seniors and youth.
The Hickory Museum of Art is located in the SALT Block Arts & Science Center of Catawba Valley, 243 Third Avenue, NE. Regular hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. Admission is free every day. For additional information, call 327-8576 or go to HickoryArt.org.
Catawba Science Center is a nonprofit science and technology museum in the Western Piedmont with traveling exhibits, a digital planetarium theater and North Carolina’s only marine touch tank with live sharks and stingrays. Learn more at CatawbaScience.org.
The center is in the Arts and Science Center of Catawba Valley, on the SALT Block, 243 Third Ave., NE, Hickory.

Hickory
People used to come here to headbang. Now the folks on stage turn heads with their weekend female impersonation shows.
Owner David Johnson doesn’t like to call Club Chameleon a gay bar. He prefers alternative lifestyle club. It’s in the same building The Underground, a heavy metal club, occupied until September 2007.
Johnson helped run them both. He says the heavy metal music actually limited his audience more than the drag queen and drag king shows the place hosts now.
Plenty of heterosexual people show up for the Friday night acts, which usually involve a few different performers dancing and lip syncing to popular songs. When it was The Underground, metal fans — and only metal fans — came out.
Straight people even have a little extra incentive to come to the drag shows, according to Johnson.
“They want to see if the guys can really pull it off,” he says. “The women want to see if the performers can look better than them.”
They do.
Club Chameleon crowds vary from as few as 12 to as many as 200, the owner says. And he sees all ages — 18- to 60-year-olds. There’s no AARP discount, he jokes.
Drag diva Mr. Charlie Brown (right), who you might have seen on HBO or the Travel Channel, was the most recent big draw.

9 questions with a drag queen
Stage name: Mr. Charlie Brown
Age: 58
Online: http://www.myspace.com/mrcharliebrownatl

Where did your stage name come from?
When I started drag in Nashville, Tenn., I had the name of Renee Walker. But city law required all performers to use a man’s name with a Mr. on the front. So I kept it 38 years.

You bill yourself as The Ultimate B****. Why is that?
I’m a b**** on the mic. But it’s all in good fun. You may not know me when you walk in here but you’ll remember me when you leave.

Have you had any cosmetic surgery to look the way you do?
No. I had gastric bypass surgery four years ago. I lost 160 pounds. Everything else is all me.

How long does your look take?
From the minute I get through shaving, it’s an hour and 15 minutes. If I’m rushed, 40 minutes.
Is it OK with you that straight people come to see your show? Do you feel like they’re gawking?
I live for straight people. That’s who I tear up the most. In Atlanta, I’ve got as big a straight following as I do a gay following. I get them good. Then I thank them and tell them to bring their friends next time, that I’ll get them, too. And they do bring their friends.

Is it OK with you that straight people come to see your show? Do you feel like they’re gawking?
I live for straight people. That’s who I tear up the most. In Atlanta, I’ve got as big a straight following as I do a gay following. I get them good. Then I thank them and tell them to bring their friends next time, that I’ll get them, too. And they do bring their friends.

How did you get into this?
I walked into a club one night and they announced they needed a sound man. I did the male parts on stage and the sound at first.

Do you perform full-time?
I do. I work four or five, sometimes six nights a week. I’ve only started touring in the last three or four months.

Is that unusual? Do most of your fellow performers have day jobs?
Most do. It’s extremely hard to get in the business now. There aren’t as many clubs as there used to be and it takes a lot of devotion.

Why did you get into this?
For me, it’s a challenge because I sit there as a bald-headed man looking into a mirror and then I just transform.

By Ragan Robinson
Super Buzz Staff Writer
Hickory
More than 100 potters and dealers of antique carvings, quilts, baskets and other bits of traditional Southern culture bring their wares to the Hickory Metro Convention Center on Saturday.
For collectors and even novice pottery fans, getting a piece straight from the maker is a treat, says Allen Huffman, who volunteers with the committee that organizes the annual show and a member of event sponsor the Catawba County Historical Association.
It means you can buy it, in many cases, from the hands that shaped it. You can ask questions and find out where the clay came from. Your coffee mug then becomes more than a coffee mug.
Members of the N.C. Carolina Pottery Collectors’ Guild will take questions, too. They can examine shapes, glazes and textures to give people an idea where their other pieces came from and what their histories are. It’s kind of like a pottery version of Antiques Roadshow, except these experts don’t assign a dollar value.

Details
What: 11th annual Catawba Valley Pottery and Antiques Festival
When: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday
Where: Hickory Metro Convention Center,
Admission: $6 for adults and $12 for kids 12 and under
What you’ll spend: Pieces go from $10 to $15 to $3,000
What else: Pottery wheel demonstrations from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., pieces of pottery dating to before the Civil War, representatives from the N.C. Pottery Collectors’ Guild to offer opinions on the possible backgrounds and histories of individual pieces, speaker Henry Glassie, professor of folklore at Indiana University, at 11 a.m. The festival is a fundraiser for the Catawba County Historical Association and the N.C. Pottery Center.

Portrait of a potter
Vale
Potter Charlie Lisk insists there’s nothing very interesting about what he does.
He’ll prove himself wrong if you can get him to talk about where his work started. How it’s a reincarnation of something older than the civilization we recognize. How the pieces that come out of his shop in Vale remain close cousins to the dusty shards we unearth as evidence of American Indians, of ancient Hebrews. He has an electric potters wheel and a gas kiln, sure.
“But you still need good clay, two hands and a mind that says, ‘I’m going to make this.’”
Lisk will bring his face jugs, vases and other hand-sculpted pieces to this weekend’s Catawba Valley Pottery and Antiques Festival. He’ll be extremely busy for about five minutes and then he’ll be sold out, promises festival committee member and pottery collector Allen Huffman.
We’re talking about a potter who, when he started 32 years ago, would go for weeks between customers. He only went to the shows where he could afford to rent a booth.
“You couldn’t hardly give it away,” he says.
Face jugs, the kind he associated with his neighbor and friend, pottery legend Burlon Craig, marked a turning tide for Lisk. They became his most popular — and marketable — pieces. His face jugs went for about $12 in the mid-’80s.
“I went up 50 cents one time and thought, ’God, I’ll go broke,’” Lisk says.
One of his full-size face jugs has a bid of $225 on eBay this week.
To be fair, those are more labor intensive than a regular jug or a teapot or a candlestick. And if Lisk cracks a clay ear, that one turns to junk. Usually. Sometimes he’ll sell it as a VanGogh jug.
The potter likes smattering of whimsy in his work. Another recent jug has more than a dozen small handles. “And you thought you had love handles,” he wrote on the side.

By Ragan Robinson
Super Buzz Staff Writer
Now that we’re not talking about the writers strike anymore, we can go back to not talking about why TV is stinking up the living room. American Idol fans, forgive me. But unless you’re into the same tired old songs or the same tired old fat guys (Who’s the “Biggest Loser?” The contestant or the viewer?), you’d be just as entertained most nights if you spent primetime watching your TV dinner spin in the microwave.
“Come quick, Mama! It’s hotter than when that blond CSI gal fires a pistol.”

30 shows you’d rather be watching

10.  “Moonlighting” (1985-1989)
Sure, Cybill Shepherd’s shoulder pads date this one. But remember when Bruce Willis was charming? And this quirky private investigator show wrote the book on the breath-baiting “would-you-guys-PLEASE-get-together-already” romance.
Available on: Blockbuster.com and Netflix

9. “Quincy, M.E.” (1976-1983)
Dr. Quincy was the father of all those forensic TV shows crowding today’s satellites. Only he did it with sheer brainpower. No online database of vehicle paint components here. No songs by “The Who,” either.
Seasons 1 and 2 available on: Blockbuster.com and Netflix

8. “Eerie, Indiana” (1991-1992)
A 13-year-old moves with his family to “the center of weirdness for the entire universe.” Elvis is on his paper route. A couple of locals sleep inside giant pieces of plasticware to stay young. This one’s silly enough for the kids to like and tongue-in-cheek enough for Mom and Dad to laugh at, too.
Available on: Blockbuster.com and Netflix

7. “My So-Called Life” (1995-1995)
Teen angst at its most tortuous. If Jordan (Jared Leto) isn’t enough to keep you rapt, you can play the “Which One Were You In High School?” game. Try to tell the truth.
Available on: Blockbuster.com and Netflix

6. “30 Rock” (2006-present)
Saturday Night Live’s most clever writer spoofs the sketch-comedy world. Somehow, she also makes Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan super funny. I don’t know if she’s a writer or a witch.
Available on: Blockbuster.com and Netflix

5. “The Shield” (2002-2008)
You think it can’t get any more shocking than the first episode. Keep watching. And get some popcorn so your jaw doesn’t keep dropping.
Available on: Blockbuster.com and Netflix

4. “Sports Night” (1998-2000)
Witty dialogue and meticulous comic timing make this one of the greatest sitcoms ever. And here’s the really cool thing. The title doesn’t even let on that it’s two parts chick show, with unrequited romance and the kind of nerdy guys that couldn’t get any cuter.
Available on: Blockbuster.com and Netflix

3. “The Wire” (2002-2008)
Nobody’s all good. Nobody’s all bad. Kind of like life. Except the rest of us aren’t this cool and our dialogue isn’t this good.
Available on: Blockbuster.com and Netflix

2. “Extras“
Ricky Gervais is the genius behind “The Office” (the British one is funnier — just turn on the subtitles). And he doesn’t let you down with this follow up. You don’t have to wait long for the laughs. The very first episode has Kate Blanchett playing herself playing a chain-smoking nun. A new celebrity stars in every episode. The best one: Patrick Stewart.
Available on: Blockbuster.com and Netflix

1. “Freaks and Geeks” (1999-2000)
Judd Apatow (“Walk Hard,” “Superbad,” “Knocked Up“) cut his directoral and production teeth on this tragically short-lived high school show set in the ’80s. And you can see his clever little fingerprints all over it.
Available on: Blockbuster.com and Netflix

Second Opinions:

Bashar Massarani of Phoenixville, Pa., has more than 800 DVDs in his collection. In his refrigerator? Diet Dr. Thunder. Here is a man with his priorities in order. His list:
10. “Carnivale” You are sitting in the passenger seat of the lead car during one of the most thrilling races ever. The problem is that at the last turn you are thrown out the window, break your neck, and are left looking backwards at the starting line instead of looking ahead to see the end of the race.
9. “Mystery Science Theater 3000” Makes you not mind when people talk during movies.
8. “Firefly” This one would not be on the list if Joss Whedon hadn’t made the movie “Serenity” to tie up the series. The show can be campy at times (mix space and the wild west?) but the writing is good, the acting is good, and Nathan Fillion is darn funny.
7. “Band of Brothers” Fantastic, historically accurate, emotionally moving.
6. “Deadwood” Some people complain that the series ended abruptly, but then again, it is hard to draw a line and say, “Here is where the wild west ended.”
5. “Weeds” A pot dealing mother ... no end to what can occur.
4. “Battlestar Galactica” This show deserves all of the recognition it is receiving. A great look at politics, war, deception. It’s almost like 1978 and 1980 versions never existed.
3. “30 Rock” No comment needed.
2. “Rome” It beats out the “Sopranos” in the drama department. There is never a time during the series where you say, “God, I wish this would hurry up.”
1. “Arrested Development” One of the best (if not THE best) shows on television, period.

Scott Hollifield is the Media General columnist you’ll remember as the guy who let his daughter wear a cocktail dress in the Christmas parade.
He doesn’t need to watch TV. He’s funnier than most of what’s on. But here’s what tops his list anyway:

List my all-time favorite TV shows? You don’t have to ask twice. Well, you really did because I was watching TV and didn’t hear you the first time.
As we begin, I won’t even bother to put the gold standard on this list for fear it will only be redundant with my fellow esteemed list-makers: “The Andy Griffith Show,” 1960-65. Those are the black-and-white, Don Knotts years, and no show was better written and acted. If there have ever been finer, funnier guest appearances on TV than Howard Morris as Ernest T. Bass, I’ve never seen them.
Here’s my top 10, in no particular order. I’m not real rigid about it. Ask tomorrow, and two or three on the list would probably change.
10. “WKRP in Cincinnati” Great ensemble comedy that still holds up. Bailey or Jennifer? That was always a tough decision late at night.
9. “Hill Street Blues” Redefined the cop show. It looks a little dated today, but that’s because it redefined the cop show. The first two seasons are available on DVD.
8. “The Twilight Zone” This one is a no-brainer. “It’s a cookbook!“
7. “The Beverly Hillbillies” It went out on top when CBS purged its rural comedies for a more sophisticated lineup. Granny should have thrown ’em in the cee-ment pond. I’m sure many of you, like me, still celebrate Possum Day.
6. “The Simpsons”
More belly laughs per episode than any other show ever.
5. “Saturday Night Live.”
SNL snobs insist the original “Not Ready for Primetime Players” were best, but I tend to think we only recall the high spots in the early days. Some equally funny episodes came out in later years.
4. “COPS.” Police officers knocking down shirtless drunks? Is there any better entertainment than that? I think not.
3. “The Little Rascals” or “Our Gang” comedies from the ’30s and ’40s. Though they were actually short features for the movies, they count as TV shows for me because North Carolina’s own singing cowboy Fred Kirby showed them every Sunday on WBTV. The best episodes feature Spanky McFarland at about 5 or 6 years old. Though the shows can seem insensitive now for some of the material, the gang was actually groundbreaking for the time, featuring blacks, whites, girls and boys on basically equal societal footing. And a monkey drove a tractor and chased people on a golf course.
2. “The Wild, Wild West” Cowboy secret agents with futuristic gizmos and plenty of fistfights. Yep.
1. The HBO triple threat I’ll cheat a little and go three-for-the price of one. “Sopranos,” “Oz” and “Deadwood” are as entertaining as anything out there on DVD.
Now excuse me while I watch a little TV.

Details
What: Footcandle, Hickory’s new film society
Members get: Admission to 12 screenings per year, admission to a special yearly social event, Meet the Filmmaker opportunities, annual field trips and discounts at local Friends of Footcandle businesses
Annual dues: $65 for single members, $95 for duo members
Why do you have to pay? It costs around $350 to get movies for a one-time showing. That doesn’t include shipping and the cost of renting the theater.
The society meets: The second Thursday of each month
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Carolina Theatre, 222 First Ave., NW, Hickory

On the schedule
March 13: Open House with free admission to “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (see the trailer)
April 10: “I’m Not There” (Ruminations on the life of Bob Dylan, where six characters embody a different aspect of the musician’s life and work.)
May 8: “The Apartment” (A man tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.)
Also expect: “The Manchurian Candidate” (the original) and North Carolina-produced films

By Ragan Robinson
Super Buzz Staff Writer
Hickory
Let’s say you’re at a movie theater, perusing the fake-butter-splattered Junior Mints and the Milk Duds that are apparently made by BMW these days. And right beside the sign that says, “Make it a gallon of Coke for a quarter more” is a plate of, oh, I don’t know, prime rib or a cedar-seared tuna steak.
That’s kind of like the option Footcandle, Hickory’s new film society, wants to offer. The group’s goal: to give Hickory theater-goers a chance to see movies that didn’t make it to the local cineplex or they never got to see on the big screen. Founders Chris Frye, Dylan Trivette and Alan Jackson (yeah, he gets tired of those jokes) are, well, movie guys. They stick around for the credits — all of them. They stand around the theater parking lot for an hour discussing and debating the movie.
Alan, a sportscoated business owner, talks without the least bit of unease about the giddiness a darkened theater provokes — that same eager energy he felt crawling up the back of his neck when he saw his first film, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Chris and Dylan, who work at Jackson Group Interactive, spend their lunch hours watching movies — or sometimes documentaries like “King of Kong” or TV shows like “The Sopranos.”Dylan calls himself a purist. He’d trade digital film for the original format, the ones on which you see the scratches. “I know that film is sort of alive,” he says. “It’s not just a glorified DVD.”
But before you go thinking they’re movie snobs, know that last week they were watching “The Invasion.” “License to Wed” made it into the office DVD player, too. But don’t say I told you. They’re less than proud of that one.
All three have driven out of town — Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Chapel Hill — to see movies that didn’t come to Hickory’s sole first-run theater. When Alan was growing up, there were always a couple of screens for the smaller titles. That’s not the case anymore, he points out, especially in summer when the blockbusters take up seven of 14 theaters. This year, four of the five Oscar nominees for best picture showed in Hickory — and that’s a good year, he says. (“There Will Be Blood” was the outcast).
Even when the best movies show here, living rooms and parking lots are the places where people discuss the titles.
Footcandle meetings offer a place for fans not only to catch a flick but to talk about it, why it’s good or why it’s bad or why it’s a little bit of both.  Even if you hate it, there’s plenty to talk about.
“What we’re really trying to do is provide film as an art form,” Dylan says. “… We want it to be an experience.”
They promise to leave the film geek talk at home in their media rooms.

What’s the heck’s a footcandle?
A unit of measurement for light, typically used in motion picture production. Organizers of the new film society thought the term had a nice ring to it. And they are trying to illuminate the Hickory area with a wide variety of films and interesting discussion.

By Ragan Robinson
Super Buzz Staff Writer
Lenoir
Caldwell County doesn’t have an interstate. It doesn’t have a lot of fancy, white-collar jobs. It doesn’t even have a lot of factory jobs to put cornbread on the table these days.
It does have a long history of rural music and musicians, of players of guitars and mandolins and banjos picking out tunes in a tradition as old as the valleys their sounds bounce around.
Patrick Crouch is part of that tradition. He’s recorded, produced and performed on eight showcase CDs for the annual Caldwell County Traditional Musicians Showcase. The concert celebrates its 10th anniversary Saturday.
For Crouch, the show is like a footlog to his pet project: to record 100 local artists over a 10-year span. This year’s CD makes 88.
“We have people who are lifelong musicians,” he says. “They play music every day the way some people have supper every day.”
Crouch teaches band at Granite Falls Middle School and is a fiddler, guitarist and dobro, banjo and mandolin player for Caldwell County’s Strictly Clean and Decent acoustic trio. He sees the recordings as a way to pay back the musicians from the dirt road of his childhood.
The ones who let him in on their jam sessions back when he was an 11-year-old kid who played Johnny Cash and Bill Monroe along with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
It’s like his love song to the country culture that disappeared a little every time a child of The Depression decided those times were too tough to be remembered. Or fades away some when people shun a Southern accent. Or gets drowned out as the world gets louder and the songs do, too.
“We play this music because it’s just a part of our culture,” Crouch says. “Music is as necessary to some of these folks as air and water.”
Folks like Keith Howell and Doug Trivette, sustaining a style from the “brother duet era” of the 1930s and ’40s. The brother duets — like the Monroe Brothers and Hickory’s Blue Sky Boys — invented the high lonesome sound that came to define bluegrass.
And Tonya Lowman, a bluegrass gospel singer/songwriter with a voice that is by turns powerful and delicate. Her tune “Everyone’s Got a Story to Tell,” inspired the title of this year’s showcase and the CD that accompanies it.
And Cheryl Miller, a country girl who does most of her singing and playing in church. The kind who doesn’t much perform in public but whose song and guitar fills up a stage like a five-piece band.
People around here work hard, Crouch says. When we come to the end of the day, a moment with the music is a chance for reflection.
It’s a chance to remind ourselves where we came from and how to be proud of that place, whether or not there’s an interstate running through it.
“It is,” says Crouch, “a chance to have hope.”

“A Story to Tell” full lineup
Bobby McMillon is one of the most important folk artists in the region. In addition to being the subject of a book and film (“A Tree Accurst“) Bobby was the youngest recipient of the North Carolina Heritage Award. He has performed at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, among other prestigious venues, was featured in the film “Songcatcher,” and served as a guest master artist at the Swannanoa Gathering in 2006. He often performs with Marina Trivette, another traditional singer and collector of Appalachian ballads.

Keith Howell and Doug Trivette have played music together for more than a decade. Although their repertoire includes a variety of musical styles, their delivery shows the influence of the old-time styles popular in the county. Both are craftsmen and play guitars built by Trivette.

Tonya Lowman grew up, as did most of the showcase performers, listening to music played at home. She has had her songs recorded by bluegrass musician Larry Stephenson. Noted performers including Rhonda Vincent are considering some of Lowman’s other songs.

Cheryl Miller is a self-described hardcore bluegrass fan and has written several songs, one of which will be performed on the showcase. She accompanies herself on the guitar and is very active in the music program at her church. She has led several music teams for The Walk to Emmaus, part of The Upper Room ministry. Her daughter, Jessica Ford, will join her on one selection.

Brent and Chris Laws are twin brothers who have played bluegrass music since they were pre-teens. With Brent on banjo and Chris on mandolin, they have been associated with some of the finest young bands around, one of which placed first in the bluegrass band competition at the 2007 Happy Valley Fiddler’s Convention. The Laws are proof that traditional music continues to thrive among a younger generation of musicians.

Strictly Clean and Decent is comprised of Patrick Crouch, Ron Shuffler and Kay Crouch.
The trio is listed on the North Carolina Arts Council touring artist roster and in the Traditional Artist Directory of the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area. Its members have been active in promoting the traditional music of the area.

By Ragan Robinson
Record Staff Writer
Hickory
“Crazy Joe” Howard had a magic trick — and a slightly disturbing bit in which he made his arm look broken. He also gave out coins printed with the Ten Commandments when he stopped by the newspaper office to claim his tickets to see Jon Reep. They were a Valentine’s Day gift for his wife. Guess she’s tired of getting those coins.
You can’t buy tickets to see Reep, the Hickory-raised winner of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing.” But the Hickory Daily Record was giving them away. Sort of. In addition to a drawing that has attracted more than 1,000 entries, we offered the first 15 people who called Friday a chance to show us a trick or sing us a song or do, well, pretty much anything G-rated in exchange for entry into the show.
Jim Hefner remembers seeing Reep running through those sprinklers the comedian later parlayed into his riotous routine. Hefner doesn’t figure he’s got what it takes to make it in comedy, but he was willing to tell a joke for the chance to see his former Mountain View neighbor live. It was a funny one. We’ll have to apologize to him about having the audio turned all the way down on the video camera.
Conover’s Roger Fox, a former waterskiing champ and present golf course resident, had his own politically tinged one-liner to contribute.
“The biggest threat to the United States in 2008 is Osama, Obama and Chelsea’s mama,” he quipped.
Taylorsville’s Mark Holden pulled off a version of “Folsom Prison Blues.”
Susan Knolls had a song, too. Her husband’s having surgery Thursday but he’ll have to be on his own that night. She’s not about to miss the show.
Kirby Kepford, a Hickory attorney with an office full of gags like the broken pen in his fancy glass and wood display and the Simpsons takeoff on a classic Seurat painting, had a litany of his own jokes. In case you were wondering, gorillas apparently have big nostrils because of their big fingers.
Helena Shannon reached back into her memory to recall a snippet of song from her childhood. Something about a little boy needing to go to sleep after a busy day. She will share the tickets with her daughter, Dorothy.
“I like to laugh,” says the 78-year-old mom. “I figured we could laugh together.”
In that case, they’ll have to check our Web site, http://www.SuperBuzzOnline.com, to see the most outrageous stunt. You might remember Conover’s James Riley, 36, as the man who lived in a Pathfinder for 13 days for the chance to win a two-year lease on the SUV.
Now you know him as the guy who shaved his leg for a Jon Reep ticket. He was going to take the pink, Dollar General brand razors to both legs but we ran out of time and almost out of battery power. James, it turns out, is a very hairy man.
Even better? He was doing it for a friend from work, one Sonia Cline, whose daughter wanted to see Reep perform. Sonia, we hope you thank your friend James. And you might want to buy him something for that razor burn.

Details
To apply, go to www.sqrambledscuares.biz
Click “Be a Contestant” on the left side of the page.
Or Call the toll-free number: (877) 377-9898
Beginning Monday, March 10, area residents can see the show on Charter channel 33.
Sqrambled Scuares airs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 9 p.m.

By Ragan Robinson
Record Staff Writer
Boone
OK, so Wheel of Fortune it isn’t.
You can walk across the Sqrambled Scuares studio in about 10 steps. Members of the live audience sit in folding metal chairs. Contestants, like Freida Moore Culler of Tater Hill, win prizes like Wal-Mart gift cards and free oil changes.
And the grand prize, the Super Scramble Super Stash of Cash? It’s $150.
But so what? Sometimes those metal chairs have $5 bills taped underneath. And plenty of people in Boone are willing to brave the cold, hard weather for the colder, harder stack of cash — or just to see someone else win it. A Thursday night show in late January filled more than half the 40 seats, even with snow blowing sideways outside the inconspicuous, low-slung brick building Sqrambled Scuares shares with a doctor’s office and a JobLink center.
“It isn’t glossy like in Hollywood but that’s what makes it fun,” says host, creator and Executive Producer Buzz Berry. “It is local. The prizes are local. The contestants are local.”
Now Sqrambled Scuares producers want to expand the show’s player pool into Hickory. Area people who make it onto the show will get a free night’s stay at the Broyhill Inn, in addition to their prizes.
Now, maybe we’re not talking new cars or all-expense paid cruises. But former contestants sure don’t mind the gift certificates to Auto Bell or the barbecue joint/pickin’ parlor.
Tyler Hayes, a 20-year-old junior at App State, says they’re nothing to scoff at. He got more than $150 worth of gift cards for food, toys, bowling and other fun stuff.
“Tyler holds the land-speed record for Super Scramble,” says Producer Carrie Brown.
He deciphered “trampoline” in something like three seconds.
It took slightly longer — about a month — to use up all his prize money. He thinks without his girlfriend’s help, he might’ve made it last a couple weeks longer.
Tyler is also brave enough to admit he’s gone to the Web site to watch his episode a couple of times.
“It’s how I impress people,” he says.
He might be serious.
The show has some devoted fans. Mayor Loretta Clawson says she watches from home.
And local singer/songwriter Judy Wolber almost never misses an episode. She likes to be in the audience, partly because she doesn’t have cable and she gets tired of watching DVDs.
Buzz and his wife, Autumn, repaid her support by showing up for her last gig.
Would Pat Sajak do that?

They shouldn’t have Valentine’s Day on a Thursday, right?
You know it’ll sneak up on you. You won’t make reservations.
You won’t have an incredible evening planned. The florists will be out
of their $100-a-dozen roses. Here’s how to make DVD rental night
truly romantic, depending on your definition of romance.

10. “Monsoon Wedding”
This semi-subtitled flick has perhaps the sexiest on-screen kiss ever. And it’ll leave you with a whole new way of thinking about marigolds.
That could save you guys some money this Valentine’s Day.
The lines you’ll repeat later:
‘I know it’s a risk but what marriage isn’t a risk’
‘What a silly ***hole I am.’

9. “Moonstruck”
With equal parts humor and romance, “Moonstruck” delivers its plentiful laughs with perfect timing. Plus, it’s the rare rom com (that’s the hip new way to say romantic comedy) with a protagonist in her late 30s.
The lines you’ll repeat later:
Loretta: “Ma, I love him awful”
Ma: “Oh God, that’s too bad.”

8. ”Star Wars”
OK, so this one dates itself but the nostalgia factor makes it a fitting flick for 30-somethings. The fact you’ve already seen it means you can talk during the movie without missing too much.
The lines you’ll repeat later:
“Into the garbage chute, flyboy”
(Or the more unoriginal) “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”

7. “Urban Cowboy”
Cowboy meets girl. Cowboy loses girl. Cowboy’s pants get tighter throughout. You’ll be looking for the nearest mechanical bull when it’s over.
The line you’ll repeat later:
“My legs are sweatin’, Mama.”

6. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”
This is the kind of dreamy movie that makes your mind thump in rhythm with your heart. It’s sweet without being too sweet and funny without the slapstick you associate with star Jim Carrey.
The lines you’ll repeat later:
‘I apply my personality in a paste.”
“Constantly talking isn’t necessarily communicating.” (Be careful with that one, guys)

5. “Say Anything”
OK, so the truth is if Lloyd Dobler stood outside your window in the rain holding a boombox above his head and playing “In Your Eyes,” you’d call the police. But something about John Cusack’s “I’m-the-coolest-loser-in-high-school” trench coat rank it among the most romantic images of the ‘80s. Who cares it’s a teen flick. This one’s worth a little embarrassment at the movie rental place.
The line you’ll repeat later:
“She gave me a pen. Gave her my heart and she gave me a pen.”

4. “Memento”
This thriller about a brain-damaged man on a quest to find his wife’s killer offers abundant opportunity to bury your head in the shoulder beside you.
The line you’ll repeat later:
“I think it was your sinister moustache.”

3. “Y Tu Mama Tambien”
This one’s for adult audiences and only those adults who don’t get offended or squeamish. Ever. About anything. It’s perfect for the couple who want a good laugh without the sugary sweetness that makes your teeth hurt this time of year.
The line you’ll repeat later:
“She bites a little.”

2. “Shakespeare in Love”
An Oscar-winning film without the uppity, “you’re-not-smart-enough-to-get-it” pretense. You’ll squeal. You’ll sigh. You’ll wonder why you never rented a comedy set in the 16th century before.
The line you’ll repeat later:
“She’s been plucked since I saw her last.”

1. “Casablanca”
Sure, it sounds like taking medicine. It’s in black and white, released in 1942. Not a single car chase or steamy bedroom scene in sight. But “Casablanca” is on all those “greatest films of all time” lists so you figure it’ll be good for you. Leave behind your prejudice and rediscover romance.
The line you’ll repeat later:
“Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time.”

Details
What: Sounds of Hope benefit concert
Featuring: Airspace, The Erin Williams Band and The Ramparts
Cost: $15 for adults, $10 for students
Ages: 12 and up
When: 7 to 11 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2
Where: The Teen Center, Hickory YMCA

By Ragan Robinson
Record Staff Writer

Hickory
Your ears might ring when you leave the benefit concert planned for Saturday at the Hickory YMCA’s Teen Center. That will be the sound of hope.
The money from the multi-band show goes toward scholarships for two Sudanese students. Co-organizer Meredith Adams, a 27-year-old Hickory real estate agent, is dreaming big. She’s hoping to fill the building to its 450-person capacity.
Her partner in the concert, 27-year-old Mary Watson, met the recipients, a young woman and young man, while she worked in southern Sudan, managing a hospital for Boone-based aid organization Samaritan’s Purse.
For the last year, Watson, with help from her parents and other donors, shouldered the cost of their education. She sent 24-year-old Anna Yawa some $1,700 for a year of college tuition. Another Sudanese friend, 17-year-old James Billy, got $400 a year to attend high school. Both are studying in Uganda.
Each asked Watson for help paying for school but they weren’t the only ones.
She says dozens of people appealed to her for the same assistance. In war-ravaged Sudan, students must pay for school. For most, education ends after the seventh grade. When they see Americans, says Watson, they see visions of hope.
Watson saw something in the two she decided to help. Anna, the human resources assistant who loves Celine Dion and whose high school education was a source of pride, would not complain about working weekends. She saved the money from her $110-a-month salary to build a house for her family.
“I just thought, ‘This girl, she’s got a chance in this world,’” Watson says.
And James, the perpetually smiling security guard who — unlike many of his counterparts — never slept on the job and always checked out any small sign of danger. His $30 to $35 per month salary helped feed the other children in his family and buy essentials while James tried to squirrel away money to attend high school.
When she made the commitment to pay for their education, Watson warned the two she didn’t know how long she could keep it up, even though she never considered the possibility that her makeshift scholarship fund would run out, either.
“I had extra faith that God would supply the money,” she says.
Now that she’s temporarily living in Hickory and working a catering job while she looks for other opportunities with Samaritan’s Purse, Watson can’t do it alone. Nor can she expect family and friends to take on the obligation she made.
But she’s not ready to tell Anna and James they can’t go to school anymore, either. She is not content with offering just a taste of hope.