Month: April 2018

By Allison Miszewski

Chances are that one wouldn’t notice Wake Zone Coffee House without actually looking for it. Within one of the smallest plazas in Apex, N.C., Wake Zone is nestled alongside a gas station, a nail salon and two permanently closed restaurants. If you know about it, it’s likely because someone has told you about it.

Or it’s because you’re low on fuel and have swerved down the plaza’s steep entrance to fill up the tank. Perhaps the two aquamarine beach chairs gracing its entrance at the end of the shopping strip have caught your eye.

Brightly colored posters alert that there are warm mochas inside, the perfect remedy for an abnormally chilly afternoon. As you walk in, a smiling barista greets you.

A taste of paradise

The loud buzzing of espresso machines competes cheerfully with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” playing on the speakers. A warm breeze wafts from the large ceiling fan that resembles the spinning motor of a boat.  An eclectic collection of quotes and objects adorns the turquoise walls. Among the décor are ocean sunset paintings by local artists, a large Cuban flag, a string of baseball hats from places like Bass Pro Shops and Atlantic Beach, and a painted scroll of Jimmy Buffett lyrics.

The lamps resemble swaying palm trees.

You must be by the sea.

Paul Peterson, the owner of this tiny getaway, rushes from the drive-thru window to the front register with three iced hot chocolates in his hands. Despite the crowded environment, he remains collected in his jeans, leather sandals and Bob Ross t-shirt that endorses the painting of “happy, little trees.”

“It’s always nice when people say that they like your coffee,” Peterson said. “But lots of people can make coffee that tastes good. However, not a lot of people can make someone feel comfortable, not every place can make someone feel special. We want to be that third place, in between home and work, that makes people feel welcomed and like they can be themselves.”

Peterson is not an island native, far from it. After completing a bachelor’s degree at Illinois State University, he went on to earn a master’s degree in urban planning at the University of Louisville. After living in Maryland for a decade, he worked in Washington D.C. for a division of the where he managed construction programs. Only three years ago did he move to North Carolina as director of facilities for the Kenan-Flager Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Peterson ultimately wanted a more “chill” occupation that was a closer commute from his family’s home in Apex. So, on Oct. 1, 2017, he purchased Wake Zone from its original owners.

“I always enjoyed the vibe and theme of the place, and I felt like it matched my personality,” Peterson said. “It was coffee without pretention. Here, our customers get to have fun with it.”

He also added that there would be no “looking down upon” people who like to make specialty drinks; flavor creativity would be welcomed at Wake Zone.

Coffee connecting community

Harriet Scott, a girl with a tie-dye bandana pulling her curly brown hair away from her face, places a blended mocha with a marshmallow shot onto the seashell-covered counter. Her cheeks are sprinkled with freckles and her persona radiates sunshine.

Originally, Scott didn’t see herself working at a coffee shop after graduating from a small, Catholic college in Rhode Island with a bachelor’s degree in religious studies.

“Ministry doesn’t always pay the big bills,” Scott said. “So, I looked for a job that had similar values, one of them being building community.”

Wake Zone, with its dedication to making customers like family, was the perfect fit. Her favorite moment working as a barista so far has been when one customer became a close friend through “divine intervention.”

“This girl randomly came up to me, saying that she had been coming in everyday and that God put it on her heart to make a connection with me,” Scott said.

Such connections seem to develop often at Wake Zone. Maybe this is a byproduct of the café’s intentional engagement with the local community. It sells homemade products, ranging from jewelry to knitted hats to keychains, crafted by artisans all across the Triangle.

“The idea was to make the ‘craft stand’ a focal point for the community,” Peterson said. “It is about giving small vendors, crafters and college kids trying to work their way through school an opportunity to make money doing what they love.”

Local and loved

Rose and Dave Weitzel, known as The Laser People, have been supplying customized tumblers for Wake Zone since August 2017. Residents of Cary, North Carolina for 25 years, they acquired a laser cutter for their home from China. Why? In the beginning, they planned just to create birthday and anniversary gifts for people they knew, but soon their hobby evolved into a real business.

“By word of mouth, we started being asked to make things for people outside of the family,” said Rose Weitzel. “We can engrave or etch on just about everything. We have done cutting boards, signs, glasses, pocket knives — the list is endless!”

The best product that the husband-wife team got asked to create was a marriage proposal on a tumbler. They loved being able to be a part of that special moment, they said.

“Our customers are very involved in the design process, which makes the final product even more meaningful,” said Rose Weitzel.

The staff at Wake Zone and the artisans they support clearly seem to believe that customers are more than what the contents of their wallets can purchase.

The secret syrup

A caffeinated beverage, paired with a staff that knows customers by name, seems to have brewed a tranquil, poetic atmosphere.

Looking around, one can’t help but notice the pleasant, wide variety of visitors Wake Zone attracts. Two older gentlemen with long, white beards are discussing the news. There’s a group of high school students clicking away in unison on their sticker-covered laptops. There’s also young couple laughing nervously on what seems to be their first date.

“As soon as you walk in, it feels like you’re in Wilmington,” said Natalie Hoffman, a loyal customer and social work major at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. “Meeting friends there is like going to the beach, if it were feasible by a cup of great coffee and only five minutes down the street.”

After taking a last sip of mocha, you pack up your things to head back into the frigid sleet. You feel warmer than expected. Maybe it was the tropical atmosphere. Maybe it was the genuine kindness shown by the employees.

Regardless, you’ll never want to simply pass by this hidden gem from paradise ever again.

Edited by MaryRachel Bulkeley

By Chris Cotillo

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Among the hundreds gathered to rally for gun control in Polk Place on Thursday afternoon, dozens held signs.

“I don’t hate guns, I just like kids more,” one read. Another noted that “math is the only thing students should fear in school.” Some were simple (“Enough.”), some were personal (“I vote in one year. Be ready.”), and some were a bit more radical (“Disarm the police!”).

But one sign, held by a young African-American man who would only identify himself as a UNC Chapel Hill sophomore named Jimmy, got the most attention with his sign. It read, “Gun control equals slavery. F*** that.”

At first, Jimmy stood in the back of a large crowd gathered to listen to local politicians, student leaders and survivors of last month’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Then he realized he wasn’t being seen enough. So about midway through the two-hour speech, he went toward the South Building, turned around, and made his message visible to a crowd that had spent the last hour shifting back and forth between sobbing at emotional testimonies and chanting for change.

As it turned out, Jimmy’s sign served as a provocative prop designed to cause discussions and arguments with other rallygoers. And as Jimmy soon proved with the dozen or so gun control advocates who approached him, it worked.

“Honestly, I don’t care about the sign,” Jimmy said. “I don’t even care about the argument on the sign. The thing that I came here to do is to let people know that most gun owners don’t value bullets more than people’s lives. We want to find a solution as well.”

Curiosity over sign creates thought-provoking conversations

Andrew Bryant and Connor Schorer, two freshmen at UNC-CH, attended the rally for the same reason as almost everyone else in attendance: to advocate for stricter gun laws in the wake of the Parkland shooting. They were surprised to see someone holding a sign like Jimmy’s and decided to approach him.

“The sign did its job,” Parker said. “It was provocative and encouraged me to go over and ask him what the hell he was talking about.”

Parker and Schorer were among a group of seven arguing with Jimmy, who had by that point gained a couple of supporters himself. Both said that their conversation was intellectually stimulating, but criticized Jimmy for not being able to support his claims.

“He went back on himself a lot,” Schorer said. “At one point he said opposing stricter gun control laws would save lives but that it wouldn’t stop anything. Later he said that if it saved any lives, he’d give his gun up.”

Jimmy set up shop to the left of the speakers at the South Building, with rallygoers confronting him every couple of minutes. While he said some protestors had gotten “heated” during their conversations, he said that the arguments were generally productive.

“Not everyone is going to agree all the time,” Jimmy said. “There are going to be situations where some people just don’t see a potential solution until after it’s enacted and works. I do think that, in an age where people are becoming more and more isolated and separated, it’s valuable to have one-on-one conversations. It can break down a lot of things you wouldn’t be able to break down on YouTube or Twitter.”

Bryant seemed to find the conversations helpful as well.

“It’s very hard to think of an answer [about guns] because it requires so much knowledge and research that not all of us have the time to devote to that,” Bryant said. “I like that I actually got to talk it out with someone I disagreed with. I think that’s a productive way to deal with this problem.”

Shootings in America far too common in comparison to some countries

For students like Jimmy, Bryant and Schorer, the debate on gun control has always been a part of life in America. College students today have been alive for seven of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, with current seniors at the school having been in college for five shootings that have killed a total of 163 people over the last four years.

But for UNC-CH senior Shubhang Mehta, who was raised in Melbourne, Australia, the thought of a school shooter never crossed his mind.

“Never, mate. Never,” Mehta said. “You come to a country like America and come to a university and hear these other shooters at different universities and different high schools. It’s scary to think that any one day, someone could come shoot up where you go to school.”

Australia has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, largely due to legislation introduced after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre that restricted the private ownership of semi-automatic and pump-action weapons. Some have suggested that the U.S. enact similar strict legislation, an argument that Mehta agrees with despite the large difference in population size between the two nations.

“I think there’s truth in the argument that gun control works,” Mehta said. “To any Australian, it’s second nature to say you shouldn’t have guns.”

Now in his third year at UNC-CH, Mehta is subject to the ongoing gun debate just like those who grew up in the U.S. He said his friends at home would be shocked to see how much of a hot-button issue guns are here.

“They’d honestly react the same way as me,” Mehta said. The fact that people have to have this discussion and that it’s such a lively discussion with such equal sides…it’s just ridiculous.”

As school shootings continue to increase throughout the years, so do the amount of people standing up for stricter gun control, creating a movement for change.

“You are making a difference,” Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger told the gathered crowd Thursday. “Now keep going.”

Edited by Brittney Robinson

 

 

 

 

By Jess Gaul

It is the height of World War I, and tensions have risen in North Carolina.

The future of UNC-Chapel Hill is uncertain as students receive on-campus military training. It hardly seems to be the time for major campus investments, let alone the construction of a permanent building.

But UNC-CH President Edward Kidder Graham is resolute — now is not the time to ignore the university’s higher purpose of learning, and classrooms are needed to meet this mission.

At his insistent pleading, the North Carolina General Assembly gives UNC-CH $500,000 toward permanent improvements at the university. The first building to appear is Phillips Hall with a bill of $138,589.78.

And with this act, the enigma of Phillips Hall begins.

Something about Phillips attracts feelings of distress among university students. Perhaps it is due to the presence of the building’s math and physics departments or the confusing navigational experience the building provides.

Designed by Charles Christian Hook, a renowned architect based in Charlotte, Phillips is a building on the cusp of collegiate gothic architecture. Its regal face and arched entryway give it a look of importance and mystery.

Phillips is named after three men in one family who each taught at the university — James, Charles and William Battle Phillips.

Exploring the interior

Throughout the dim hallways of Phillips Hall, bright red signs alerting “DANGER” cover doors and warn entrants to the possibility of hazardous materials.

Teal tiles line the tops of the hallways of the biomedical engineering labs and seem to mark the place of a time passed.

Completed in 1919, the basic structure of Phillips Hall has stood through almost 100 years of campus transformation, from racial integration to the full inclusion of women in the student body. It was home to UNC-CH’s first computer in the early 1960s.

In many ways, it feels like an old gentleman who has been shuffling slowly for way too long. Many students think it’s about time for that the old guy to take a breather.

In his calculus recitation, sophomore Evan Grimes experienced an uncomfortable atmosphere.

“It would either be ridiculously hot or ridiculously cold,” Grimes said. “It was like 85 or 87 degrees in this room. And the teacher was visibly sweating.”

“(Phillips is) an old man in the final stages of life in the nursing home.”

Phillips used to be the pinnacle of modern architecture. In its prime, it was home to male students of applied science, engineering and physics.

All in all, the face of the building is not objectively ugly. Made of stable brick and limestone, the university would likely pay millions to construct Phillips today.

Clara Schwamm, a junior math minor, first encountered Phillips Hall while on a tour of UNC-CH before entering college. Knowing her interest in math, she decided to explore the building.

She was immediately intimidated by the arched front stairway and the prominent entryway sign silencing hall dwellers – “QUIET WHILE CLASSES ARE IN SESSION.”

“It didn’t feel super welcoming,” she said.

Schwamm said she found herself questioning if she really wanted to pursue math in college.

“You walk in, and it’s immediately bleak in there,” she said. “Math is not a subject that people tend to be excited about.” And the moody vibes of the interior may not be helping things.

The not-so-modern interior of Phillips stands in stark contrast with newer, brighter buildings such as the FedEx Global Education Center on campus.

Despite its physical attributes, sophomore math major Stanley Sun has positive feelings about Phillips based on his personal experience.

“The building physically is kind of a wreck, but I love it just the same,” he said.

A native of Portland, Oregon, Sun struggled to adjust to North Carolina during his first semester. He thought of home often and was trying to make connections in his new environment

“One of my friends remarked to me that (Phillips) looked like an Oregon high school in the 50s, and that’s when I really fell in love with it,” Sun said.

After declaring his major, Sun began to make friends with people in his department and see improvements in his social and academic life.

“At that time, I felt like Phillips was my only home away from home,” he said.

A building of its time

In 1919, many students lived in north campus dorms such as Old East, Vance and Steele. Much of what is located on today’s central and south campus did not exist.

“(Student life was) just much more central in terms of the experience of the campus,” Wendy Hillis, a former historic preservation officer for UNC-CH, said. “Campus kind of ended on Cameron Avenue.” Cameron Avenue is the street that runs in front of the Old Well.

Hillis, now the university architect at Tulane University, said that it is important to understand what campus life was like in the early 20th century in evaluating Phillips’ character.

“For 100 plus years of the university’s founding … so much of the early development was on the Franklin Street quad,” she said. “It took so long to build that out.”

Across Cameron Avenue, students had meals at Swain Dining Hall, cheekily nicknamed “Swine Hall.” Education students flocked to Peabody Hall to the west of Phillips and attended commencement at the original Memorial Hall just steps to the east.

Hillis also emphasized the importance of considering the time in which Phillips was built and the transformations its walls have witnessed. It was the early 20th century when women were still not allowed to fully enroll in the university, personal computers were an unknown concept and modern comforts like air conditioning were not included.

“The way students work now and the way students learn is so different than when these buildings were built,” Hillis said.

David Owens, chair of the building and grounds committee, sat in math class on a Saturday afternoon in Phillips Hall, watching people walk to football games.

Owens said that Phillips is an older building that probably needs renovation.

“It’s just a very old building that has good bones in the sense that the basics of the building are in good shape, but the interior space is very old and tired and probably needs a significant rehab,” Owens said.

The building and grounds committee is a faculty advisory group appointed by Chancellor Folt that makes recommendations to the Chancellor about when to construct or demolish a building.

Owens said that sometimes a decision is made to keep a building due to its architectural significance, such as the Campus Y. It doesn’t match the symmetry of the rest of Polk Place, but it is important enough to the community to keep it.

“We try to renovate, rehabilitate, restore where possible,” Owens said.

Today, building plans prioritize open space, natural light and large gathering spaces. Phillips doesn’t have a lot of these characteristics because they simply weren’t a priority when it was designed.

Urban legend proclaims a blueprint mix-up between UNC-CH and another school is behind its confusing design. It is unclear whether this is true, and Owens said it is likely not the case.

The survival of Phillips

In March 2016, The Daily Tar Heel reported that a committee met to discuss the closing of Phillips based on constant complaints.

Owens says, however, that this meeting was separate from the building and grounds committee and was likely part of updates for the campus-wide master plan. The lack of word over the two years following this meeting indicates that these suggestions were not incorporated into the official university grounds plans.

Despite its physical problems, recent improvements such as new math and physics help rooms show the potential of Phillips’ interior.

Schwamm compared Phillips to Lots-o, the antagonist stuffed bear from Toy Story 3.

“It was abandoned and then became evil,” Schwamm said. “But it can be redeemed!”

Edited by Megan Cain

 

By Heather Prizmich

A group of seven Duke University students gathered inside a room designed as a study from the late 19^th century. A tall man walked into the room wearing a deerstalker, which is commonly associated with Sherlock Holmes. In a fake Cockney accent he said, “Dun Dun Duuunn!”

He continued after a pause, “Billionaire Chester Covington has been murdered and the police need help solving the homicide. You all have 60 minutes to figure out who the murderer is and escape the room. Good luck.”

Hetherton walked out of the room, slammed the door and locked it.

Just yards away from Duke University’s East Campus is Bull City Escape, an escape room business owned and operated by Alice Cheung.

The business, currently ranked No.1 in “Fun and Games” in Durham on TripAdvisor, is giving people a chance to exercise their minds through thematic puzzle solving.

“We provide real life escape rooms, where a small group of people are locked in a room,” Cheung said. “They need to search the room for clues, they need to solve a series of puzzles, riddles, combination locks. And their ultimate goal is to unlock the door and let themselves out.”

The rooms are all themed and given different difficulty ratings. The current rooms are (in order of easiest to most difficult): Lunar Lockdown, Enchanted Kingdom and A Study in Murder.

Cheung is a native of Long Island, New York, and graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in education. She became an escape room enthusiast while traveling across the country when she worked in marketing and recruiting at the University of Pennsylvania and then Duke University.

“I traveled a lot, so I would see if there was an escape room around, and the more I played the more I grew to love this concept, and I knew that Durham and the Triangle at large would just eat it up and love the idea of an escape room,” Cheung said.

Grant Hetherton, the British imposter from the Study in Murder escape room, said he applauds Cheung for her dedication, because she takes on a lot of tasks to keep the business going strong.

“Well, I think you have to be a sort of nexus of an interesting Venn diagram to own a business like this,” Hetherton said. “Not only is she a boss, not only is she the owner of the business, but she’s designing all the games, too. I know I couldn’t do it. I’m not sure how she does.”

The room where it happens

“We need our first clue,” said the student in charge of the walkie-talkie helping the group communicate with Hetherton, who was watching their progress on a monitor in a back room.

He cleared his throat, preparing his character’s accent, and talked into his walkie-talkie.

“Time is precious,” he said. “You have 35 minutes left.”

From the monitor, the group could be seen looking at one another and talking out what the clue meant. There were multiple forms of time—a clock, pocket watch and an hour glass filled with sand—and they seem confused as to which item they should look at.

Outside looking in

Hetherton chuckled at the monitor.

“They were just so close to their next clue, but the person it seems they’ve made their leader just pointed them to the wrong part of the room,” he explained. He’s waiting for them to ask for their second clue.

The place grew noticeably noisier as more customers came in. The next appointment was a birthday party for a 12-year-old girl. The sitting area was filled with purple balloons, presents, preteens and their parents, who were waiting for the go-ahead to leave.

Cheung’s other employee, Sheryl Howell, went into the cramped sitting area to talk to the kids. She seemed to have a hard time drawing their attention away from their smart phones, but after one kid after the next nudged one another, Howell finally had their attention.

She told them what to expect in Lunar Lockdown and then handed the lucky parent, who needed to supervise them, a walkie-talkie.

Cheung said that they allow anyone 12 years old and older to participate, but they need at least one adult with them until they’re 15 years old.

“These puzzles were created by me with adults in mind,” Cheung said.” I test all puzzles on my employees, so if it’s hard for them to solve, then it might be too hard for young teenagers. Only about a third of people are able to escape the rooms, and not one of the all-teenager groups have escaped successfully yet.”

Running out of time

With 15 minutes left to escape, the Duke students asked Hetherton for a second clue.

“Set up another case bartender,” Hetherton said, quoting comedic actor W.C. Fields. “The best thing for a case of nerves is a case of scotch,”

“Thanks,” replied the student.

“It’s going to be close, but I think they might just get it,” Hetherton said. “They’re on a good pace.”

Cheung, passing by, looked at the monitor, too, to see which clue they were on.

“I give them another five minutes,” she said.

First, they solved who the murderer was and then, with just 90 seconds left, they managed to escape the room.

Some of them walked out with their hands over their head like they had just finished a race. Hetherton had said that the rooms are like a mental marathon.

The group took signs off the wall that said “We escaped!” and “Yay!” before scrunching up together in the sitting area and taking their victorious group picture.

Bull City Escape, located at 711 Iredell Street, is opened Thursday and Friday nights and on Saturday and Sunday. Games are $25 plus tax per person with a minimum ticket purchase requirement to book a room. Enchanted Kingdom and Lunar Lockdown each require a minimum of three people to book and A Study in Murder requires a minimum of four. To book an appointment, click here.

 

Edited by Allison Tate

 

By Michelle Dixon

Courtney Kohout, owner of Courtney’s Cookies, has a voice that stands with pride and confidence of who she is and what she has to offer. She knows not every customer who tastes her gluten-free organic cookies will love them, but she believes most people will.

The many days spent learning how to bake from her grandmother are evident in the soft, fluffy texture of her cookies.

But her ability to educate her customers on healthy eating comes from a different experience.

Learning from recovery

Kohout was once a teenager who ate ice cream sandwiches and cheesecakes. Out of guilt, she stuck her finger in her throat to force herself to throw up the cheesecake she ate.

“That’s twisted to say,” Kohout said. “But it tasted good after I threw it up. It was sweet and creamy.”

Kohout struggled with an eating disorder from middle school to college. But after overcoming the disorder, Kohout used her knowledge of healthy eating and baking to create Courtney’s Cookies, a business that uses organic ingredients to create vegan gluten-free cookies.

At 8 years old, Kohout was diagnosed with precocious puberty, a condition that caused her bones to overdevelop. Once a month, her dad’s mother, who was a nurse, injected her with hormones to counteract the growth of her bones.

Over time, she gained weight from the symptoms of the injections, but, at that age, she wasn’t bothered by her weight. When her attention directed to boys in middle school, her size mattered.

Like many other girls, she spent her time drawing hearts around the names of cute boys in her diary. But she believed her weight prevented any boy from noticing her.

So, she would eat one ice cream sandwich for the whole day and tell her mother she ate dinner at school. Desserts and treats replaced her meals, while her size remained the same. Kohout said she weighed 140 pounds and was overweight. Her thick curly hair was the only part of her that was thinning.

She found a new diet in high school that required her to eat 40 percent protein, 30 percent carbs and 30 percent fat. Her size went down, and boys, who once saw her as invisible, started to notice her.

But her health was still unstable. Kohout was now obsessed with memorizing nutritional facts and counting the amount of calories in her food.

“Do you know how many calories are in a cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory?” Kohout said. With her eyes widened, she said over 800 calories and 100 grams of carbs.

“Knowing what I knew about nutrition, I was just like ‘I can’t keep that inside my body,’” Kohout said.

Kohout would throw it up any junk food she ate. At one point, she didn’t need to use her fingers to vomit. “I could just make it happen,” she said.

Returning home

When Kohout attended college in Miami, her emotional health declined even more. After graduation, she returned home to Ohio and searched for a holistic way to achieve a healthy lifestyle. For an entire summer, she learned about different diets and decided her version of a healthy lifestyle would be eating what she wanted in moderation.

“I spent all of those years being restrictive, and I just couldn’t live like that anymore,” Kohout said. “I couldn’t be afraid of food anymore.”

When she moved back to Miami, she worked as a health coach for Liana Werner-Gray, author of “The Earth Diet.” Kohout said Werner-Gray asked her to promote a Spanish flour called tigernut.

Kohout used the baking skills she learned as a child to experiment with this new flour. Kohout’s mother, Susie Kohout, said Courtney spent hours cooking with her grandmother. Kohout said her grandmother lives in the house behind her parents’ home, so she would invite Kohout to make cookies with her. She said her grandmother was like Mother Teresa in the kitchen, always patient with her as a beginner.

Her grandmother passed on the knowledge of cooking to Kohout’s mom and her aunts. “I think my grandma has this idea of ‘You’re part of this family, so you’re going to cook,’” Kohout said.

A healthy twist on an old recipe

Under her grandmother’s guidance, Kohout learned how to bake chocolate chip cookies with basic ingredients: white flour, white sugar, eggs and butter. But Kohout wanted Courtney’s Cookies to be different from traditional chocolate chip cookies and the flavorless taste of gluten-free cookies. So, she used the tigernut flour as a substitute for white flour and mixed together oat flour, vanilla, chocolate chips and other ingredients to create a smooth, thick dough.

Regular dough is thinner and has no substance because of refined ingredients, but her dough retains its wholesome consistency, she said. The finished product is a nutrient-packed cookie that leaves behind sweet subtle traces of vanilla and chocolate on the tongue.

Marley Palmer, Kohout’s former roommate, said she needed only one cookie to experience full satisfaction. Palmer said the rich smell of Kohout’s cookies would infiltrate every corner of their apartment. She said her friends, who lived next door, could smell the cookies from their apartment and would ask Palmer to bring some over.

Most people who tasted her cookies urged Kohout to start a cookie business, but the intense labor of starting a business discouraged her from trying. Meanwhile, her fiance, Frank Leon, was also considering the risks of helping her develop the business, but he trusted in Kohout’s cookies and decided to go all in.

A business is born

Leon quit his job at Carnival and began filling out paperwork to start the business in May 2016.  Five months later, Courtney’s Cookies was established.

When the business started, it took up to 14 hours to produce 400 cookies in Kohout’s oven. Fights and emotional breakdowns erupted between Kohout and Leon during bake days, she said.

Then, a customer recommended a commercial kitchen for them to use, and they were finally able to have order during their bake days.

When Kohout arrives, Leon has an 80-quart bowl ready for her to mix ingredients. “He prepares the numbers, and I just bake,” Kohout said.  “I just honestly throw everything in the bowl and bam, they’re just good.”

Kohout said their cookies are now in five local stores in Miami, and she hopes to expand. They sell six different flavors: chocolate chip, chocolate raspberry, chocolate mint, chocolate coconut, peanut butter chocolate and sunflower seed raisin.

When she sells her cookies at events, some of her regular customers are already familiar with their favorite flavors, some ask for direction on what to choose, some ask for health advice and others seek conversation. But each customer is welcomed with a self-assured smile and a simple question by Kohout: “Would you like to try a free sample of gluten-free cookies?”

Some of her favorite customers are the ones who dislike the taste of vegan products. After they try it, she said they can’t believe her cookies are vegan and gluten-free.

“That’s like my mission with Courtney’s Cookies,” Kohout said. “To get rid of that stigma that healthy food can’t be delicious.”

Edited by Mimi Tomei

By Trent Brown

Captain Jack Sparrow from “Pirates of the Caribbean” and Negan’s baseball bat named “Lucille” from “The Walking Dead” aren’t usually mentioned in the same breath. However, in the white house on the corner of Lindsay Street, they’re talked about together all the time.

Jacqueline “Jackie” Lucille, a Havanese dog, is one of the many pets owned by a UNC student that you might come across while walking through campus on a sunny afternoon, taking a trip to the outdoor patio at He’s Not Here or even in classrooms. She makes her own case for being one of the most special pets in Chapel Hill.

Physically, Jackie doesn’t hold a lot of common characteristics with her namesakes. Standing less than 1 foot tall and no more than 4 inches wide, the tiny mound of fur greets anyone who enters the door with her toothy smile and a bark (or two!). However, it only takes about 10 seconds—or even less if you pet her fast enough—for Jackie to become a friend of yours. She likes to skip the acquaintance stage.

Jackie is affectionately referred to as “little cow” by her owner’s friends, due to her white fur covered in black inkblots on both of her ears and down her back. She roams around the room like she’s on a mission to find something—probably attention—abiding by her attention-seeking namesake Jack Sparrow. It’s easy to see why Hannah Bultman, the owner of this bright little pup, keeps her around.

For the past year or so, Jackie has kept Bultman company in their crowded two-story house, after her brother bought the dog and found that he could not take care of her. Bultman decided that she would gladly take in and support the dog; but support isn’t just what Bultman does for Jackie—it’s what Jackie provides for Bultman.

Bultman registered Jackie as an emotional support dog this past year, because the puppy does exactly that for her. “I’m a very introverted person, and I like being alone,” said Bultman. “But Jackie makes it a little more possible to be alone. She’s been really good for me.”

According to the American College Health Association, nearly one in six college students struggle with anxiety. Although there are many ways to cope with anxiety, for Bultman, a chemistry and Spanish major, there is no better way than the presence of a dog, big or small, that just wants to get attention, and maybe give a little back.

And that’s Jackie. She doesn’t like to fetch balls, but instead mashed-down plastic Mountain Dew bottles, or really whatever she can fit her mouth around—even if she really can’t. Occasionally, she will take things from Bultman’s roommates’ rooms and bring it to her Butlman’s door, as a gift. She also finds herself at almost every chapter meeting at UNC’s Phi Sigma Pi National Honor Fraternity, making it more enjoyable for everyone there.

Don’t bring out a balloon though, or you’ll have to coax her out from under the bed. It won’t take too long for her to get her to bounce back to her normal exuberance—a blissful bounce at that.

 Mac, the snake charmer

“I told my mom I wanted a pony or a snake,” said Mac Harrison, now in her third year at UNC, recalling what kind of pet she wanted for her birthday five years ago.

The 4-foot long albino corn snake named Tyrell finds his home in a large tank at Harrison’s house. He’s a good boy, or girl, in Harrison’s eyes, who, due to the ambiguity and difficulty of determining a snake’s sex, has relied on a gut feeling that her pet is a Tyrell and not a Tyreisha.

Unlike a Jackie, or most any kind of furry friend for that matter, Tyrell doesn’t have a conventional personality. However, Harrison is certain that he does have one, and it’s one that loves to spend time with her.

And although you may never see Tyrell getting taken for a walk through McCorkle Place on campus, you might find Tyrell at home watching television with his owner, because that’s his personal favorite pastime. Snuggled inside her hair or arms, because snakes don’t like to sit—they like to hide.

Beginning next year, Harrison will have her snake with her in Chapel Hill at her apartment, because her current dorm does not allow tanks like Tyrell’s, and she cannot wait. The slithery not-so-little guy with orange skin, who only requires food once per month in the shape of a frozen mouse, and shows his affection by simply laying on you, will surely be treated like a king during his time in Chapel Hill.

“I wrap him around my neck like a little scarf and he just hangs out,” said Harrison, as her eyes glistened, longing to be back with her boy.

Capturing cuteness

It started with a fun idea between two friends.

Alex Kormann and Isabel Donnolo asked each other: “Why don’t we start one of those dog Instagram accounts?” The @DogsOfUNC Instagram account began during FallFest in 2016, and now has over 1,700 followers, mostly comprised of UNC students.

The Instagram account’s process is fairly simple. Kormann or Donnolo will notice a dog in the quad, or somewhere else on campus, and they’ll ask the owner: “Hi, can I take a picture of your dog?” Recently they have even begun taking requests for short photo shoots on campus with dogs.

Kormann noted that, interestingly enough, he has yet to be turned down after asking to photograph someone’s dog. He always gets an excited “yes.”

Each dog portrait is then posted to the Instagram account, usually with a short caption of their name and their age, and accumulates over 400 likes at a time. It’s not about the internet fame for the photographers, but more so the catharsis of the process.

In the mix of being a photography major and doing other work, Kormann said that taking pictures of dogs is a “therapeutic way to keep on keeping on.”

The photos come with a bit of fun, too. The picture of Simba, one of the account’s most “liked” puppy, was likely the most memorable photoshoot for Kormann. The little 8-week-old golden retriever ran around for over 20 minutes in the campus’ lower quad, with Kormann trailing behind, never stopping to offer a still shot for a picture. Finally, the puppy stopped, squatted and peed, before finally laying down and submitting to all photography needs.

“The memorability is definitely in the cuteness,” Kormann said, with a laugh.

 

Edited by Liz Chen

By Lauren Moody

“As a child, my dad let me drop the beans in the rows,” Catherine Green said with a soft and sweet Southern twang as she recalled memories of growing up on a tobacco farm in Alamance County during the 1930s and ‘40s. “I got the privilege of dropping a bean every couple inches and covering it up, and that was just fun for me.”

Alamance County was a small farming community where families worked in the fields under the sun during the day and enjoyed one another’s presence on their porches during the cooler evenings. There was a main street where teenagers could be found sipping Coca-Colas at the soda fountain, but what sticks out to Catherine — at 91 years old — is the time spent with her family on the farm.

She is the youngest of six brothers and sisters, and from a young age, she helped her mother in the garden or the kitchen cooking and canning the foods their farm produced.

A little hobby sparks a big tradition

For Catherine or “Cacci,” pronounced like khaki, as family and close friends call her, her passion for gardening turned into a lifelong hobby. It’s a passion that passed to her granddaughter Catie, and also unites Cacci’s retirement community with an annual tomato sandwich party for which Cacci grows tomatoes and hosts each year.

Cacci is the oldest person in her retirement community with a garden plot. She plants 11 different types of tomatoes each year with a plan to share them with her 35 neighbors. The tomato sandwich party is the annual event that they plan their vacations around, and it has become a tradition that began 10 years ago and won’t stop as long as the tomatoes keep growing.

“A tomato that you’ve grown yourself has more flavor,” she said. “I don’t buy tomatoes in the winter. To me they taste like cardboard. But it’s just the sweetness—the longer you leave them on the vine to turn and ripen, the sweeter they are.”

The idea for the party came to be when Cacci’s dining room table, which seats 12, was overflowing with containers of ripened tomatoes because, as Cacci says, “You never put a tomato in the refrigerator.” One day, a neighbor came over and said, “Make me a tomato sandwich,” to which Cacci responded, “We’ll just have tomato sandwiches for everyone.”

To please the abundance of opinions at the party every July, Cacci ensures there’s lettuce and an array of breads, although her classic sandwich is composed of white bread and Duke’s mayonnaise. Due to the debate over mayonnaise between her neighbors, she also buys Hellmann’s and a gluten free brand. Another neighbor argued you can’t have a tomato sandwich without bacon, so they provide the bacon and someone else brings a dessert.

“I didn’t realize it would amount to anything,” she said. “It was just something that I enjoyed doing for the court and they all pitch in and help, and they look forward to it every year.”

Cacci’s love of hard work and busy days

Doing something for others isn’t a once-a-year event for Cacci. Her entire life has been devoted to helping and serving others.

“Her nature is one to always work,” her son Rick said. “We visited Catie, and she stayed in the kitchen the whole time. Her personality is ‘I’m going to contribute via my work effort.’”

During the week, Cacci volunteers her time at her church and the local hospital in Burlington. She also attends five exercise classes a week, including Zumba, core and a high intensity “workout-of-the-week” class.

Her dedication and work ethic inspires her family and everyone who knows her. Last Christmas before her 90th birthday, she held a four-minute plank in a planking contest against her grandchildren.

Cacci passed her “gardening gene” to her granddaughter 

The tomato doesn’t fall far from the vine. The work ethic and gardening gene passed to Catie, who lives on a farm in Monterey, Virginia. She and her husband, Jim, got into the chicken business and plan to have over three thousand chickens this summer. Her passion for gardening developed in college when she decided to go out and dig up the backyard to plant a garden.

“I would definitely say Cacci was my role model when I was younger,” Catie said. “We would talk about gardening and be able to connect even that much more, and I felt like I had more than just the name in connection with her—I had this passionate hobby that we both loved.”

Cacci visited Catie and Jim at their farm in Virginia this winter. She held chickens, drank raw milk, walked their property and saw how they trade with neighbors to ensure freshly sourced food.

Cacci remembers her roots by observing her granddaughter’s future

“She was connecting in all of these great ways that I know is therapy for her,” Catie said. “I know that all of that kind of stuff is therapy for somebody in an older age range to bring back those roots and childhood memories.”

Just as Cacci provides fresh tomatoes to a community who doesn’t have access to a garden or the skills to grow them, Catie and Jim provide chickens to a community that lacks in the poultry department. One day, they hope to bring their community together to host a chicken barbecue just as Cacci throws the tomato sandwich party.

“It’s amazing that she’s chosen to do this,” Catie said. “She pulls together more than just her community—she really tries to get people involved. I love that she’s not just trying to age through life, but she’s actually trying new things at a later stage in her life and she’s continuing very strong.”

The tomato party will go on this year as Cacci’s neighbor offered to help her with the garden by completing the manual labor of digging up the holes. Her strict exercise routine may be re-prioritized behind gardening, or in Cacci’s determined yet humble words, “Either that or get up early and work late.”

Edited by: Savannah Morgan