Goodnights is officially opening in its new underground Village District digs soon—and starts off with a bang via some big names worth the ticket. Make a night of it—or even a staycation—with these selects on where to sip, nip and nightcap for a night of live-comedy laughs.
120 inspiring speaker talks. 24K cups of joe. 7K+ community members… the perf equation for infinite reasons to celebrate what has been 10 years since the ever-inspirational CreativeMornings Raleigh chapter was founded and hosted by Matt Tomasulo in 2012, followed by Taylor Medlin, Jonathan Opp and Vaishali Patel. Today, the “world’s largest face-to-face community” is hosted locally by Alysse Campbell and sees community creatives gather monthly in 225 cities across 67 countries worldwide for inspiring and empowering talks to galvanize entrepreneurs doing good work. To cheers 10 years, the local chapter held a 10-year anniversary bash at The Factory—and we fete their fine community impact by taking a look at some of our fave CreativeMorning words of wisdom.
“Stop following your dreams. … What I want you guys to do is develop your dreams. Build your dreams. Don’t follow them. Work on them.”
—Tobias Rose, principal and creative director, Kompleks Creative, @tobias_rose
“I encourage you to recalibrate and find that compass. Allow it to guide you toward your [younger 5- or 50-year-old version’s] dream.”
—Joshua Gunn, hip-hop artist; entrepreneur; community organizer; VP, Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce, @jgunnisbetter
“We think of roots as where we come from… but really roots are the things that connect us to something that then fills us up and makes us our best selves.”
“There’s something to be said for… actually engaging with the community you want to benefit.”
—Nick Neptune, director of outreach and community engagement, Dorothea Dix Park Conservancy, @nick.neptune
“So often we want to look for the answer outside of ourselves. We hope we can buy something or someone will tell us… the magic words we need to hear in order to be self-satisfied. But all of that is going to come from within ourselves and it all starts with the intention to be ourselves.”
Charitable giving is down. Way down. It’s another highly unfortunate outcome of the pandemic that hits those who need it most the hardest—the less fortunate. And, yet, ironically, the need is greater than ever before. Homelessness and food insecurity have skyrocketed—as have the number of children going to rest their heads at night without beds to sleep in. To put the giving downturn in real-data perspective, North Carolina drew $34+ million in charitable donations between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021—down a whopping $10.8 million in overall giving from the year prior, per the most recent report, released end of November 2021. Of course, some of this decline is a direct result of charities’ inability to hold galas, auctions and the like, and will thus naturally improve upon the return of those events.
It was a “difficult year for recipients of charitable works, the fundraisers, the charities—they had volunteers before and some of those are now recipients,” said Secretary of State Elaine Marshall upon the release of the 2021 report (the 2022 annual report will be released at the end of November). “But North Carolinians are still generous at heart and willing to help their neighbors.”
And the charities have made the most out of the money they have received. For context, in 2019, on average, over 80.53% of money donated went to the charitable cause or project, with less than 20% going to the charity’s overhead—an all-time high for the state that exceeds the national rate.
Now, as we put the pandemic behind us, we have to get back there. So whether you’re feeling fortunate and able to give or looking for where to land that Q4 tax-deductible donation, we implore you to dole your dollars to the local community to breed growth and change here at home. There is no shortage of choices.
“I don’t care if your passion is children, whether it’s homelessness, whether it’s animals, veterans—just on and on,” says Marshall, “we do have a lot of opportunities because we’ve got a lot of good, loving hearts in this area.” ’Tis the season of charitable giving—give it to Raleigh. sosnc.gov
$10.8 MILLION LESS DONATIONS
Shelter & Home
The Green Chair Project
Helps put kids’ heads in beds for a good night’s sleep, and provides essential furnishings for family homes. Donate gently used furnishings or $250 for Sweeter Dreams Beds, thegreenchair.org
The Women’s Center
Assists at-risk and homeless women with safety and stability by providing basic needs and extended support. Donate supplies and funds, wcwc.org
Eat here—give a meal. Raleigh’s first and only pay-what-you-can cafe reinvents how our community is fed. Sponsor a PLACE Card to hand out or leave at cafe, tableraleigh.org
Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina
Hunger matters—and the Food Bank provided 81+ million meals to families & individuals last year. New this year, Pop-Up Markets fill gaps for families via direct distribution in the community. Donate funds or food, or shop the Food Bank Shop, foodbankcenc.org
“Raleigh always shows up to help.”
Maggie Kane, founder, A Place at the Table
37K Wake County ChildrenUnder 18 Years Old Who Are Food Insecure
Inspiration found in this “light, funny, with a side of serious” pod covering everything from current events to The Bachelor, as local host Lindsey Hein chats up athletes running the gamut from Olympians and World Record-holders (NBD) to everyday and elite runners—and everyone in between. sandyboyproductions.com
Cheri Beasley vs. Ted Budd. Lt. Mark Robinson on his rise in politics. An Olympian on athletes killed by terrorists. These are just some of the recent episodes on host Tim Boyum’s politically charged podcast in which the NC veteran reporter and anchor loosens his famed bow time to give us some real talk from NC’s biggest power players and why they do what they do—and how they impact our communities—to riveting effect. spectrumlocalnews.com
From her perch ITB, award-winning theater podcaster Lauren Van Hemert—called a “pioneer” for her community-based cultural arts takes and candid convos about diversity and inclusion in theater—takes you behind the curtain with Broadway vets (hey, Lauren Kennedy!), TV icons (think Ed Asner), Tony Award-winners and global recording artists. A showstopper, indeed. beltlinetobroadway.org
Cook’s Mill Whiskey brings bourbon back home to NC.
What’s neat? Buying your wife an abandoned 1700s grist mill from Preservation North Carolina as a 10-year anniversary gift to upfit for weekend getaways—then discovering its condition and pivoting to salvage and revitalize it by producing a NC bourbon whiskey from corn grown, harvested, distilled and bottled in state.
So goes the origin story for brand-new NC bourbon Cook’s Mill Bourbon Whiskey—named for that very pre-Revolutionary Alamance County grist mill NC native Jason Queen bought in Mebane, halfway between where he and his wife grew up (Burlington and Hillsborough, respectively).
“When we bought it, we finally got in and it was like they had just left the day before,” says Queen of the historic mill—one of only two remaining of the original 41 in the county. “All the hand sifters, corn bags and everything were still there—so we knew we had to figure out how to restore it and get it functioning again.”
Given grist mills aren’t exactly lucrative, Queen started imagining ways to restore the building without losing his shirt, he says. Inspirited by then new-to-scene Social House Vodka and New Southern Revival’s Jimmy Red Corn’s success stories, merged with his background in restaurants and, well, the corn (naturally)—Queen’s aha moment: a whiskey company with a portion of the proceeds going back to the cost of renovating the actual mill.
Inspired by the proud tradition of farming and distillation in our state, Cook’s Mill officially splashed on the spirits scene in October after being kept under wraps for years. A straight bourbon whiskey aged in new white-oak charred barrels for two years minimum, Cook’s Mill’s first iteration blends supreme flavor as a 3-year-old bourbon made with NC native corn and a dose of history.
Born “from the hills, fields and mills of NC,” this spirit is bringing bourbon back home to NC. (Fun fact: If it weren’t for Prohibition and the moonshiner migration, we would still be one of the leading whiskey makers in the country.)
But Queen isn’t bringing any run-of-the-mill bourbon. While upward of 99% of bourbon whiskey companies rely on GMO horse-feed corns, Cook’s Mill will be a game-changer as future iterations unfold—digging deep into our state’s agriculture to resurrect seeds for sheer sipping satisfaction.
Across the state, the team is already working on farming myriad non-GMO heirloom corns native to NC—a cornucopia if you will—to yield ideal bourbon whiskey flavor profiles. To do so, Queen and his team partnered with experts at NC State who have dedicated their careers to native NC heirloom corns. The team isolated seven heirloom corns housed in a university vault in small amounts and offered them to Queen and his team for them to grow.
“These are real true heirloom seeds, original genetic varieties of these corns, that we have unique ownership of,” says Queen, “and there are only like a handful of some of these corns. They’ve never been commoditized—you can’t get them out of a catalog.” In fact, he explains, they were probably used by the pre-Prohibition NC moonshiners and distillers—and allowed to go out of production because of the dense GMO corns that are so much easier to grow.
“It’s unique that we’re experimenting with these different heirloom corns and using them in a very traditional manner—in regards to bourbon-making—as we move forward with our small batches,” says Queen, acknowledging the spirit’s shelf volume. “This whole business we’re launching is really focused on high-quality small-batch runs of these native North Carolina heirloom corns. And the North Carolina connections are very important to us.”
Queen and his team don’t plan to stop with one bourbon, one flavor profile or even one plan. “The goal is to really take an innovative approach—not unsimilar to the wine industry—trying different climates, soils and corns across the state,” he says, “then comparing once they start to age, and really starting to identify which ones are best and where and why.”
And, of course, to restore the mill—and, in a full-circle moment, eventually use it partly as the grindstones to create the brand’s whiskey “mashbill” (aka mix of corn, grains, etc.). “Historic preservation serves a fundamental function in establishing a community’s sense of identity in the present,” says Queen—“and its idea of what it wishes to be in the future. The grist mill to us doesn’t just represent Mebane or Alamance County, it represents all of the Carolinas and its diverse communities. More so, it represents the best parts of us and our history, and what we want to carry into the future—that determination, that resourcefulness, that grit.”
“There’s a very long rich history of producing corn spirits in North Carolina and it’s just kind of been allowed to fall by the wayside,” adds Queen. “Our state was a really important area for it a long time ago—and it’s not being celebrated the way it should.” Until now. Find it on shelves (or ask for it) at any local ABC store statewide, cooksmillwhiskey.com
