Steve Garrity of Circle City Books in Pittsboro, NC
“I like turtles—I saved a big turtle a couple of years ago. We have a creek behind our house, and a big snapping turtle was close to the road, so I picked it up, and it came around and tried to get me. I couldn’t believe it. I almost dropped it, but I put it in the back of the pickup and I drove it down to the creek and set it free.
I used to be a biologist at the Smithsonian, so that’s why I like critters. I spent most of my time in the country of Panama doing marine biology. I studied snails, crabs, fish and seaweed, and how they all interacted. Then what happened was the marine lab where I was working on the Caribbean Sea was affected by a big oil spill, so they hired me to study all the animals that got [injured] by the oil spill and how soon the environment would recover. I helped them get a lot of money from the oil company. My wife and I did that for three years. We went to Hawaii, we went to the American Samoa, we worked in Florida for ecological disasters, and we’d document the damage that was done when these idiots would spill oil and the government would slap them with a multi-million dollar fine to clean it up.”
Abigail Barnhill of Blue Dot Coffee in Pittsboro, NC
“The thing that I’m most looking forward to in my life is that my mom is taking my family on a cruise in January. [A relative] got diagnosed with cancer in February. When they first found it, the doctors thought it was sarcoma, which is really deadly, but then they found out it was actually testicular cancer which is still bad, but it’s way better than sarcoma. He’s been going through surgery and chemo. My mom booked the cruise in anticipation of all of us finally going on a family vacation. The idea is that [he] will be better by then, and it’s giving [the family] something to look forward to while [he] is going through chemo.”
Ian Michael Patrick Hopper of Cafe Diem in Pittsboro, NC
“My given name is Ian, but I go by Ducky…. It’s kind of a long story, a Pretty in Pink sort of thing…. I’m a barista, but I’m also a musician, a poet and an artist, kind of a jack of all trades. As far as that goes, [making art] is kind of like making coffee, I just like creating things…. It’s the same thing with music and poetry, you just kind of grab components and make things out of it.
My best advice is just to be confident—don’t take too much to heart. Listen to what people say so you can examine where it’s coming from. That’s definitely some advice I would have given a younger duckling: to have faith in yourself.”
– By Ava Johnson & Riley Wolfgang
