[piano intro] -[Deborah] Next on "North Carolina Weekend," Join us from the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art.

as we take you beyond the guidebook.

We'll witness a rare Cherokee festival, visit a book cafe in Durham, and sample cheeses in Columbus.

Coming up next.

- [Narrator] Funding for "North Carolina Weekend" is provide in part by Visit NC, dedicated to highlighting our state's natural scenic beauty, unique history, and diverse cultural attractions, from the Blue Ridge and The Great Smoky Mountains across the Piedmont to 300 miles of barrier island beaches, You're invited to experience all the adventure and charm our state has to offer.

[bright upbeat music] ♪ - Welcome to "North Carolina Weekend," everyone.

I'm Deborah Holt Noel.

And this week we are taking you beyond the guidebook to places away from your typical touristy spots.

We start our adventure at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem.

Better known as SECCA, this multimedia contemporary art gallery offers exhibitions, experiences and educational programs.

Now SECCA is really two parts, part modern, part historic home, all transformed into one remarkable space for art and imagination.

Founded in 1956, SECCA stands at the intersection of contemporary art and culture.

This is the historic Hanes' House built in 1931 by former textile industrialist, and Winston-Salem mayor, James G. Hanes.

The house is now part of this vibrant art scape.

Now let's take a step back in time to celebrate the traditional ways of the Snowbird Cherokee, whose songs still resonate at the Fading Voices Festival in Robinsville.

Now this was the first time that this festival was actually recorded and we're very honored to share it with you.

[soft music] - Fading Voices is a demonstration of arts and cultures that are disappearing.

Well, a demonstration to show the people how the Snowbird lived way back in the old days.

Well, the Snowbird Cherokee, I was told by the elders, was a people that hid in these woods during the trail of Cherokee removal.

I hope they realize we still exist in these mountains, the Cherokees, as more traditional ways.

I think that's very important.

- Were trying to keep the art from being lost.

The world is changing so much and our elders are passing so fast.

We would like to have the younger individuals see something that they might wanna pick up and keep the voice from fading.

[soft flute music] ♪ - This event takes place every year on the end of May.

It's always on the weekend, the last Saturday of the month.

And the first year you come, every tries to treat you like family.

We're open, and with open arms.

We don't look at color, race or nothing like that.

Everybody that comes is now a part of the family.

We're all one brothers and sisters.

[soft music] - My mother is Lois Klenahaski, and she started the Fading Voices Demonstration Day 35 years ago.

My mother was very active in Snowbird community.

She loved her community.

She loved being Cherokee.

She felt like everybody should know about our history and our culture.

So she really promoted that as much as she could.

It started out as just a one-year event.

And then she just, year after year, she just continued on and it kept growing.

And she actually funded it out of her own pocket.

She passed away in 1999, but it has continued, which is amazing to me.

The activities that are ongoing throughout the day are still the same ones that were in the original Fading Voices Day, the first one.

So we haven't deviated from that.

Everything is just like it was 35 years ago from the first one.

[soft music] - The first time I ever done the Fading Voices, I was so intrigued about learning about the past.

You'd be introduced to women that cook the traditional bean bread, chestnut bread, fatback.

And they done a lot of the crafts, making flutes, doing river cane baskets, pottery, wood carving, the bead work, or the basket making, or playing the stickball or the fish game, talking the Cherokee language.

That's what makes it so special.

Everything is fading.

Time is evolving and we want more of our people to understand, and our kids to understand there's more than life than playing video games and doing stuff like that.

Come out here, learn the culture.

It's here to keep our tradition alive.

Every time you make a point, come back to the center field, after it falls down.

This was for disputes.

The villages would get together and they play this game.

Whoever won the game, won the dispute, without the cracked horns.

- I'm I'm really proud of this community.

And I'm real proud of what we do for our Fading Voices.

This festival's for antibody interested in the old fashioned way and stuff like that.

So yeah, just anybody, it don't matter who it is.

- [Shorty] The festival was created to show the respect for our lost ones and our elders and letting them know that, "Hey, we haven't forgotten what we was taught and how we was raised."

And I'd love for people to come out and enjoy it and see it.

Just come to Fading Voices.

You will love it.

It will blow your mind.

[soft music] - The Snowbird Cherokee Fading Voices Festival is usually held the last Saturday in May at Little Snowbird Baptist Church in Robinsville.

For more information, go to grahamcountytravel.com.

Did you know, SECCA is part of the North Carolina Museum of Art and admission is free.

So that's always a plus.

Now let's jump from artists to authors.

Come with me to a new, independently-owned bookstore and coffee shop in Durham called Rofhiwa Book Cafe.

[soft music] - [Woman] Everything in here, there is great intention.

From the ground up, from the inside out, black people contributing to the making of this entire space.

- [Ileana] I really like the a way that they represent everybody.

And it's really nice to see that.

- What I'm always trying to do is to put the books together in ways that suggest conversations, ways that may be surprising.

I hope that when somebody comes out of Rofhiwa they feel like they've just been immersed in something.

And that is an all encompassing experience and communing with black art and black literature in all its forms.

And I'm talking visual art.

I'm talking about the kind of music that we have on our playlist.

I'm talking about the art, the books on our shelves.

So it really is an attempt to create an immersive experience across the various forms of black art and literature.

- Welcome to Rofhiwa Book Cafe.

We are located at the corner of Driver and Angier, the bustling Driver, Angier corridor.

[soft music] A significant thing happened.

My grandmother died in 2017 and that threw me into a certain kind of spiral.

I thought, "Okay, well, I may not have the entirety of my life to collect these books and be able to put together this reference library.

So I started to think then about what it would look like to put it together.

That's where the idea of a bookstore came along.

It just made sense because we're in Durham.

It's a historic city.

It's just got so much happening in the way of black life and black history.

- I'm a mixed media painter, sculptor, and musician.

My work is here at Rofhiwa.

I called it Afro Expressionism.

It's centered on the humanity and experiences of black people in America and throughout the diaspora.

I hear people say sometimes within our community, like, "I don't wanna see no more trauma."

The way I address it is can't heal nothing you don't reveal.

- [Ileana] What I noticed when I first came up to visit, it was like an eye and it's crying, I think, and it explains a lot.

There's like them all over.

And this is a really magnificent piece, really creative.

- There's so much about this space that I love.

And some of it came together very intentionally and some of it came together very haphazardly.

One of the things that I'm also very excited about in the space is our tables.

So we worked with a young queer black artist out of New York.

On the tables you'll see imposed the map of Haiti.

This is our cafe space.

So we just walked out of the books.

We're in the cafe now.

This is a whole different vibe.

- [Deborah] Get to this vibe here.

- [Beverly] This is our coffee program, like I said.

Lattes, Americanos, cappuccinos, - Keeping it simple.

- Keeping it simple.

- And basic.

- No frills.

So I mentioned earlier, we've been exploring and putting together books for our youngest readers.

So when the parents are buying a coffee or tea, they might wander over here to actually watch kids waddle over here and grab a book.

And that's what they want that day.

It feels really nice.

- I love Rofhiwa.

I'm a neighbor.

I live down the street and also I'm a teacher at Maureen Joy Charter School, which is just a couple blocks away.

We walk down here most weekends and come in for a snack and some coffee and reading books.

So it's just a wonderful addition to the community.

- I think it matters so much just for kids to see themselves reflected back.

- It's fun to read different books because in school, there are only sometimes only certain types of books you can read.

- Beyond being a bookstore and a coffee shop, we also host various community events.

We host book talks, we have an ongoing speaker series.

We are a live music venue, we host film showcases, we have arts exhibits.

So there's always something going on at Rofhiwa.

- Um, excuse me.

I just wanna say that I really like your art and it's really beautiful.

- Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I really appreciate y'all saying that.

- You're welcome.

- You're welcome.

[soft music] - I'm always trying to demonstrate the depth of black literature.

- She did a good job.

She did books for adults and for kids.

So everybody, when they come in here, they will have an option to choose from.

- You're not here to be educated and beaten over the head.

You really are here to commune with people in all of their complexity, in all of their humanity.

- I had this idea in my mind.

I didn't know where I was gonna do it, I didn't know where I was gonna put it.

And here I am in Durham and there's nothing like it.

[soft music] - Rofhiwa Book Cafe is at 406 South Driver Street in Durham and they're open daily.

For more information, give them a call at [919] 391-8945 or visit them online at rofhiwabooks.com.

Another must-stop beyond the guidebook is along the Western North Carolina Cheese Trail.

Looking Glass Creamery's Fairview location is an easy 12 mile drive from Asheville, but for a truly delightful experience beyond the cheese plate, you're gonna wanna hit their farm in Columbus.

Let's take a look.

[soft music] - [Andy] The food you enjoy and the food we need actually comes from a place.

You can't be a sustainable small farm without people understanding that that's what really matters when it comes to your food source.

[soft music] - [Jen] We are a farmstead cheese or dairy.

Farmstead means that the milk that you're using in your products comes only from your farm, from your cows.

[soft music] Right now we're milking 23 cows.

And all that gets processed into cheeses here.

- [Andy] This is what 248 gallons of milk will get you.

[soft music] - They definitely enjoy animals and being with them and interacting with them, which is kinda why I like dairy, is 'cause you do build a long term relationship with one particular animal.

You get to know them really well.

[soft music] - I'm glad our path took us this way.

[soft music] Yeah, its impressive.

I never come out of the dairy parlor in a bad mood.

- Unless things break.

- Unless things break.

[Jen laughs] - [Jen] We do have our original location in Fairview.

There's no production happening there now.

It is simply a nice place to enjoy the products we make.

We moved the production down to the farm.

We make everything here.

The dairy is here on the farm in Columbus.

- I love to come out here and just walk around the field.

[soft music] Just the open spaces are so nice.

[soft music] - You get your stuff from the farm store, your cheese plate or your ice cream, and you come out and they have long picnic tables.

And it goes right out to the field where there's trails an incredible view.

They've got Frisbees, pickleball, different things.

And the chalk is always a favorite for my kids.

[soft music] ♪ [bright upbeat music] - We make everything from fresh cheese, and fromage and fetas to cheddars.

We do cheddar curd, we do fresh cheddar curd all the way up to Sbrinz, which is very similar to a Parmesan, a hard-aged cheese that can be aged out two or three years.

So we kind of do the spectrum in terms of ages and styles so that we have something unique to offer our customers and that we can put on a cheese plate and have five different cheeses.

[bright upbeat music] ♪ - [Andy] Our most popular cheeses are our Drover's Road, which is an English milled cheddar, our blue cheese, which is called Green River Blue.

- [Jen] We make it in small batches, but we have people in Charleston and other places who are waiting for the next batch.

and are gonna drive up here to pick it up.

- With blue cheese, you have to individually pierce with a piercing needle, each wheel about a hundred times- - Each side.

- Each side.

So it's very labor intensive, that's why we also limit it.

But that might be why it's so popular as well.

People are like, "I can't get it.

I better get it when I can."

[bright upbeat music] - I think this shows a picture of the ideal way in which a piece of cheese is made.

The milk is from right here.

The cheese is made right here, it's aged right here.

- They come here and see the cows and you see the Creamery where they make the cheese, and then it just comes across the parking lot to the farm store.

That's a really cool process to be involved in and see the whole thing come around.

[bright upbeat music] - Looking Glass Creamery has two locations.

Their cheese shop is at 59 Noble Road in Fairview.

And it's open Thursday through Sunday from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

Their farm and store is at 115 Harmon Dairy Lane in Columbus.

And it's also open Thursday through Sunday.

For more information, visit their website at lookingglasscheese.com.

Maybe your idea of going beyond the guidebook includes, a little rockhounding in the mountains.

Let's go on a rockhound tour with Doc's Rocks.

- Well, I'm just shifting through the clay, is what I call it, and just looking for stones.

And I save every stone.

I don't throw any of 'em away because I don't really know what I'm looking for.

- This is part of our rockhound tour program.

We actually take people out looking for gemstones.

We do one trip a month, all season long.

And we try to go to a different location every time and try to take people, places that we know for sure we're gonna find something, but you never know what you're gonna find.

Roots hill, just all kinds of weird stuff.

Manganese.

- Magnetite.

- Magnetite.

just all this weird stuff that you wouldn't expect to find together right here.

So that's what makes this place so special.

On average, everybody should find at least three to five.

There's always that case that somebody might not find one.

If you don't, let me know.

I'll help you.

[soft music] - Okay.

I'll comb moraine and rubies and lots of quartz, and where there's quarts the other stuff.

A lot of times I find them.

I just hear a ping, and I just look down and there's, like I said, lots of quartz in here.

- All right.

I see you got your ruby.

- Mm-hm - Very cool.

Can I see it?

It's a good crystal structure.

And your sister found this one?

- Yeah.

- Yeah?

So that's what we look for coming outta the ground.

- And it wasn't even underground.

- No?

Right on top?

That's the best way to find 'em.

- Of course.

I'm the queen of citrines.

So I find citrines just about everywhere I go, when we go out.

I'm learning to cut.

So I'm practicing on my cutting machines and I cut it down into stones and faceted gems for jewelry.

- Knowing that my dad is a coal miner, and the family heritage, it's something I've always been interested in.

I grew up, I mean, six years old, I started collecting rocks.

I still got the first rock that I picked up when I was six.

And it's just a passion that's just grown over the years.

[soft music] - It's very relaxing to me.

I know it's hard work, but through the hard work you have something to show for it.

And I personally would not be able to afford the kind of gemstones I wear, if I had to go buy 'em.

- I more really out here just for the fun of it, just to dig.

But I have found a few rubies.

- I think a pot could be made out of this.

- [Man] Did you just find that.

- Yeah.

Ah!

- These things have perfect formation, so they're easy to spot.

All right, guys, I'll be walking around.

If you got any questions, come find me, okay?

Have fun.

- I've got a vein in here.

- Nice.

That's a Sapphire.

Yeah.

Cool.

[soft music] - Doc's Rocks Gem Mine is at 100 Shoppes on the Parkway in Blowing Rock.

To plan your rockhounding trip with Doc McCoy, go to mccoyminerals.com.

Bring clothes you don't mind getting muddy, and good luck.

Scattered across the grounds here at SECCA, you can find a rotating installation of outdoor exhibits like this wooden sculpture by Charles Brower makes it a really fun place to explore.

And recently when producer Rick Sullivan was exploring a small town in Wake County, he was completely captivated.

So we sent him back to Wendell with a camera to capture its magic.

[soft music] - Wendell can trace its history back into the late 1800s.

Tobacco is the main product in Wendell and has been since its inception.

I've lived in Wendell for about 50 years.

Wendell, in the last, I'd say, five or six years has really changed a lot.

- Over on this side was Dick's Hardware- - [Narrator] Neal Conoley has lived most of his life in Wendell.

He's excited to be a part of the Wendell Historical Society's opening of a museum to tell the story of this community, just 20 miles east of Raleigh.

- Wendell languished like a lot of small towns do.

- [Narrator] A rediscovery is ongoing and lucky for a collection of entrepreneurs who like old buildings, as much as new ideas, things are looking up for Wendell.

- A big part of what we were looking for, was a building that we could provide a historic renovation to.

So when we found this old livery stable and saw the bones, and it just had a ton of potential, we felt like we have saved a piece of the history here and really wanna honor the history of Wendell.

- [Narrator] So did Melody Narla.

- It all just kinda happened at the same time.

- [Narrator] She and her husband purchased four historic buildings before they even had an idea what to put inside them.

She figured it out, and then she revealed her new wine shop, pet supply store.

- [Man] I'm not gonna take it.

[woman laughs] I'm not gonna take it.

- [Narrator] And ice cream shop just after the Bearded Bees opening.

- We just sat here one day, and we're like, "What can we do with it?"

Well, I love wine, and my dogs love dog treats and food, and my husband wants ice cream.

So, yeah, we've made something fit because Wendell is very kid and dog friendly.

So people bring their kids here.

They have ice cream, they'll bring an ice cream while their parents are trying different wines.

They also bring their dogs in here.

The dogs can pick out their treats.

[chuckles] So you can really...

The whole family can come in and pick something.

- [Narrator] Families are fundamental to the downtown vibe in Wendell.

Yet another new downtown business is driven by a bunch of Carters, a family from Ohio that migrated here in search of something different, a small town bakery in a historic building, surrounded by a community of folks they did not yet know.

That's changing.

At least a lot of people know them now.

- We have a lot of Carters here.

We're a family operation, that's for sure.

It's my wife and I, Katie, are the owners.

My mother works here, my daughters, my son.

I have a few nieces that work here as well.

So you're gonna get the family experience.

When you come in here.

We got to talking with the people of the town of Wendell, and they've really been helpful and rolled out the red carpet for us.

- [Narrator] The new business owners I spoke with are all feeling the group hug they seem to be getting from the folks who've been here longer.

Wendell natives are seeing their quality of living improve as the tax base grows.

Here's another new guy, Bryan Coates, the town planner.

He moved here from Raleigh just before the pandemic.

- What got me out here was attractive downtown.

It's a nice community, lots of housing options and outdoor green space.

- [Narrator] As director of planning, Coates is working to refurbish even more buildings in town and create more green spaces.

- We are very fortunate that we have had people who wanna invest in our downtown.

And so the town does have a facade grant program to help businesses renovate the space.

But also our residents in community surveys have said they want more restaurants and dining options as well as outdoor space.

So the town's working on trying to deliver both of those, whether it's new restaurants or new parks.

- [Neal] People are looking for something where they can walk.

10 years ago at night, downtown Wendell was pretty dry, pretty dark.

I think it's becoming more of a community center.

- [Narrator] In some ways, kinda like the way it used to be 50 or even 100 years ago as displayed at the new Wendell Museum opening soon.

- We're excited about the museum because we think that will be another feature people can get behind and can come and learn about the history of the community and see where we've been and maybe where we're going.

- To plan your visit to Wendell go to of visitraleigh.com and look under cities and towns.

Well, that's it for tonight's show.

We've had a great time out here at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, known as SECCA in Winston-Salem.

It's truly a beautiful place to explore.

And if you've missed anything in today's show, just remember, you can always watch us again online at pbsnc.org.

Have a great North Carolina weekend, everyone.

Goodnight.

[soft music] ♪ [soft music] - [Narrator] Funding for "North Carolina Weekend" is provided in part by Visit NC, dedicated to highlighting our state's natural scenic beauty, unique history, and diverse cultural attractions.

From the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains across the Piedmont to 300 miles of barrier island beaches.

You're invited to experience all the adventure and charm our state has to offer.

[soft music] [soft relaxing music]