December PineStraw 2016 by PineStraw Magazine

Situated on 18 acres and convenient to local golf courses, shops, & the Village of Pinehurst; Quail Haven Village is also located close to major medical facilities & unique arts and cultural centers. Residents have access to all levels of care offering security for the future and enabling residents to live independently longer.

Continuing Care retirement Community There may come a time when you require additional care or assistance. Here we strive to make this transition as east as possible through a number of services. HOME CARE Our Licensed Home Care services range from medication reminders to personal care assistance FAMILY CARE HOME Our cottages create a small residential home in an intimate environment. Our staff is on-hand 24 hours a day and is trained to provide Memory Care support as needed. SKILLED CARE The Inn at Quail Haven Village provides health and nursing care in addition to personal care and support. REHABILITATION Our dedicated, highly experience team works one-on-one with our patients to provide in- and out-patient physical, occupational and speech therapies.

For more information contact Lynn Valliere.

155 Blake Boulevard, Pinehurst, NC 28374 910.295.2294 | www.qhvillage.com

Jamie McDevitt Broker/Owner

“I love being home for the Holidays...” “From home to home, and heart to heart, from one place to another. The warmth and joy of Christmas brings us closer to each other.” “From everyone at McDevitt Town and Country Properties... Merry Christmas!”

- Jamie

Foster

Hilltop Farm 1519 NC Highway 73

This one of a kind estate sits on 61 beautiful and private acres just outside of Pinehurst. This spectacular 5 bedroom, 5 bath home boasts a gorgeous 6 stall barn, a 200x180 riding ring and acres and acres of mature pasture with miles of trails. Offering a transferable Pinehurst Country Club Membership. MLS # 177362.

Jamie McDevitt | 910.724.4455 McDevittTownAndCountry.com | Jamie@JamieMcDevitt.com | 107 NE Broad Street, Southern Pines, NC

As an independent community bank, we’ve had the pleasure of helping our Moore County clients realize their dreams.

Checking & Savings Accounts Lending Insurance Mortgages

A new year awaits, full of possibilities. See you in 2017.

To learn more, visit

LOCALFIRSTBANK.COM

TEN BRANCHES SERVING MOORE COUNTY AND MORE THAN 75 ACROSS NORTH AND SOUTH CAROLINA.

Wealth & Trust Debit & Credit Card with Rewards

Securities and insurance products are offered through INFINEX INVESTMENTS INC., Member FINRA/SIPC. INFINEX INVESTMENTS INC. and FB Wealth Management, a division of First Bank, are afﬁliated entities. We do not provide tax advice. Consult your tax advisor. Investment and Insurance Products are: Not FDIC Insured

Not Bank Guaranteed

Not Guaranteed by any Government Agency

May Lose Value Not a Bank Deposit Equal Housing Lender. Member FDIC.

THE

UNHURRIED

PACE

O F C E N T U R I E S PA ST

FREE WITH EVERY TREATMENT The moment you arrive in Pinehurst, everything seems to slow down. Your pulse drops. Your mind clears. You forget all the worries of the day. And then your Spa treatment begins.

Located adjacent to the historic Carolina Hotel • Village of Pinehurst, North Carolina • 877.467.0206 • pinehurst.com *Applies to Spa treatments of 50-minutes or longer. Excludes salon services. Valid Monday-Friday.

Book one Spa treatment and receive 35% off additional services.*

December 2016 Features 77 The Gray and the Brown Poetry by Terri Kirby Erickson

88 Home for Christmas

By Deborah Salomon Worldwide religious art backdrops the holiday in Whispering Pines

78 Small Gifts

By Jim Moriarty There’s an old saying that good things come in small packages. So do amazing acts of kindness

86 Lady of the Pines

By Bill Fields How Southern Pines artist Doris Swett created the most enduring image of the longleaf pine, leaving a legacy of helping others in her native Sandhills

98 Botanicus

By Ross Howell Jr. How North Carolina became the fertile crescent of the Fraser fir

101 Almanac

By Ash Alder The meaning of mistletoe and Narcissus, how to befriend the year’s darkest night

Departments 17 Simple Life

55 Proper English

21 Instagram Winners 24 PinePitch 29 The Omnivorous Reader

57 Notes From the Porch

By Jim Dodson

By Stephen E. Smith

31 Oh Harry

By Harry Blair

33 Bookshelf

By D.G. Martin

37 Papadaddy’s Mindfield By Clyde Edgerton

39 Hometown By Bill Fields

41 The Evolving Species By Amy Lyon

43 Vine Wisdom

45 In the Spirit

49 Pleasures of Life

51 The Kitchen Garden

By Robyn James

By Tony Cross

By Sam Walker

By Jan Leitschuh

By Serena Kenyon Brown By Bill Thompson

59 Out of the Blue

By Deborah Salomon

61 Mom, Inc. By Sara Phile

65 Birdwatch

By Susan Campbell

67 Sporting Life By Tom Bryant

71 Golftown Journal By Lee Pace

102 123 133

Arts & Entertainment Calendar SandhillSeen PineNeedler By Mart Dickerson

135 The Accidental Astrologer By Astrid Stellanova

136 SouthWords By Jim Moriarty

Cover Photograph by Tim Sayer 6

December 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

20 Years and Counting…

and we still have all your favorites!

Opulence of Southern Pines and DUXIANA at The Mews, 280 NW Broad Street, Downtown Southern Pines, NC 910.692.2744

at Cameron Village, 400 Daniels Street, Raleigh, NC 919.467.1781

www.OpulenceOfSouthernPines.com

Serving the Carolinas & More for 20 Years — Financing Available

ExpErtisE...when it matters most

CCNC: 5 Acre Golf Front Estate offers stunning view of the par five 11th hole on the Cardinal Course, combined with incredible architecture and design. Great flow. Spacious & magnificent outdoor living spaces define this contemporary. $1,450,000 Scarlett Alison 910.603.0359

CCNC: 5 Acre Estate overlooking the 10th geen of the Cardinal Course. 4BD/4BA/2Half BA’s with gourmet kitchen, mulitple living area, formal dining, cherry hardwoods, geothermal heathing, pool and much more. $1,325,000 Scarlett Alison 910.603.0359

17.76 Horse Country Acres: Private & Tranquil with rolling pastures, 2-stall barn & riding trails galore. Warm & inviting décor. Stone fireplace in Living Room. Master Suites on each level. Many unique touches throughout. Deck, Firepit, Hot Tub & patio. $1,250,000 Debbie Darby 910.783.5193

CCNC: Amazing Golf front home, “Fair Hill”, offers 4Bdrms, 4Full&2Half Baths, open plan, spacious master suite, office/bar, pool. Porch & Terrace overlook Cardinal’s 10th faithway, tee box and green! $1,100,000 Carolyn Hallett 910.986.2319

Waterfront on Lake Watson: Over 5,000 sq.ft. with 4BD/4.5BA’s

CCNC Golf Front Transitional: 4,000 sq.ft. with 3BD/3.5BA’s. Located on the 6th hole of the Dogwood Course. Updated kitchen, living room with fireplace, Carolina room and pool with spa. View at: www.75LinvilleDrive.com $715,000 Scarlett Alison 910.603.0359

Fairwoods on 7: Nestled on a prime golf-front site overlooking the 9th hole and pond. Quality built and beautifully appointed. Elegant, comfortable living and lovely features for entertaining define this excellent home. PCC Membership availabe for 1-9. $695,000 Kay Beran 910.315.3322

Weymouth French Country Home: Step back in time with all the conveniences of today! Gleaming hardwoods, gourmet ktchn w/Wolfe Gas Range. 2-Fireplaces, Master on main level. Basement for storage. Beautifully maintained - Just looking for someone to make it their new home. $673,000

Debbie Darby 910.783.5193

and great lake views. Understated elegance with showcase kitchen, family room, living room/dining room, library/office, and a private workshop. $750,000 Scarlett Alison 910.603.0359

Pinehurst: The Village of Pinehurst is just steps away from this cleverly expanded and upgraded home on a quiet cul-de-sac. Warm and inviting interior! Outside patio overlooks koi-filled pond & waterfall. PCC Membership available. $650,00 Kay Beran 910.315.3322

Southern Pines: Home Of The Year award by the MCHBA. Warm stone & shake exterior and a wide front porch say, “Welcome Home!” Living room with vaulted ceiling, stone fireplace, wide plank flooring and exposed wooden beams. 3BR/3BA. $650,000 Bill Brock 910.639.1148

Southern Pines: 910.692.2635 • 105 W. Illinois Avenue • Southern Pines, NC 28387

December 2016 . . . .©2015 . . . .BHH . . . Affiliates, . . . . . .LLC. . . . An . . independently . . . . . . . . .operated . . . . .subsidiary . . . . . .of . HomeServices . . . . . . . . of . .American, . . . . . . Inc., . . .a .Berkshire . . . . . .Hathaway . . . . . .affiliate, . . . . and PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills a franchisee of BHH Affiliates, LLC.

www.BHHsprG.com

Lake Pinehurst Waterfront: Magnificent water views from all living areas! 3200+sf, 5BR/3.5BA’s, open plan, high ceilings (Living Room up to 17’), main level has hardwood floors. Beautiful finishing touches! $625,000 Eva Toney 910.638.0972

Deercroft Country Club: Spacious water front home with an abundance of living space. Gorgeous cherry floors on main level, superb kitchen sure to please the culinary enthusiast. Formal dining room, study & huge living room. Sandy beach area and large boat dock. 4BR/4.5BA. $499,000 Linda Criswell 910.783.7374

Weymouth Heights: Curb appeal in a great neighborhood.

Southern Pines: Renovated Vintage home. Offering 3 Bedrooms

Situated on a 1.88acre lot, large workshop with HVAC, over-sized garage. 3 Bedrooms and 2.5 Baths. Visit: www.170HalcyonDrive.com for more. $415,000 Frank Sessoms 910.639.3099

& 2.5 Baths, Morning Room, Office, Reading Room & Workshop. Serene and Private Setting. Close to the Campbell House, Weymouth Center and 2 Blocks to fabulous Broad Street. $425,000 Mav Hankey 910.603.3589

West End: Looking for privacy, acreage and a 3,000+sq.ft. home with all the modern conveniences of new constrction, look no further! Situated on almost eight acres, this home has been completely renovated! Natural light in every room and many upgrades! 4BR/3BA. $389,000 Linda Criswell 910.783.7374

Southern Pines: Beautifully updated home situated on 1.5 acres. Nestled in the Pines at the end of a cul-de-sace with only 8 homes on the street. Lovely Kitchen, Carolina Room, and Studio. 3BR/2.5BA. $379,000

Casey Barbera 910.639.4266

Raeford Area: Fantastic Waterfront Property on 10+Acres! Great Room has hardwood floors and a stone Fireplace. 3 Bedrooms, 3 Baths, plus an In-Law Apartment. $449,500 Eva Toney 910.638.0972

Whether you are a golf or horse enthusiast, this property has it all! Combined turn-of-the-century elegance with modern conveniences of today gives this one-of-a-kind property its unique and very special features. A circa 1896 Farmhouse with wide planked antique heartpine flooring, beamed ceilings and fireplaces in every room. Lovingly restored and expanded in 2000. Barn can be leased if not utilized by owner. Five bedroom, five and a half baths. $1,699,900 Jerry & Judy Townley & Debbie Darby 910.690.7080 910.783.5193

Pinehurst: Wonderful location! All brick home enhanced with hardwood flooring in living areas and bedrooms, and a Carolina Room with brick flooring. Adorable back yard “Shed” is ideal for an office, studio or gardening room. Perfect retirment/2nd home! $339,000 Jerry & Judy Townley 910.690.7080

Stunning Pinehurst Home: Full PCC Membership available. Finishing touches include cathedral ceiling in living room, gas fireplace, lovely master suite with upgrades galore. Private fenced back yard with deck, all tucked in a cul-de-sac location. 4BR/2.5BA. $385,000 Debbie Darby 910.783.5193

7 Lakes South: Golf front on over an acre lot. New England style home with 2,800+SF, heated basement for storage/hobby, Rutt cherry cabinets. Charm & Versatile living space. Living room w/frplc. NEW: Septic, Heat Pump, Roof, Exterior Paint, Fridge. Perfect Family Home! $249,500 Debbie Darby 910.783.5193

Pinehurst: 910.295.5504 • 42 Chinquapin Road • Pinehurst, NC 28374 Berkshire Hathaway HomeSercies and the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices symbol are registered service marks of HomeServices of America, Inc.® Equal Housing Opportunity.Housing Opportunity.

Top of The hill

in Weymouth Heights

M A G A Z I N E Volume 12, No. 12 Jim Dodson, Editor 910.693.2506 • jim@pinestrawmag.com Andie Stuart Rose, Creative Director 910.693.2467 • andie@pinestrawmag.com Jim Moriarty, Senior Editor 910.692.7915 • jjmpinestraw@gmail.com Lauren M. Coffey, Graphic Designer 910.693.2469 • lauren@pinestrawmag.com Alyssa Rocherolle, Graphic Designer 910.693.2508 • alyssa@pinestrawmag.com Contributing Editors Deborah Salomon, Staff Writer Mary Novitsky, Sara King, Proofreaders Contributing Photographers John Gessner, Laura Gingerich, Tim Sayer Contributors Tom Allen, Harry Blair, Tom Bryant, Susan Campbell, Bill Case, Tony Cross, Al Daniels, Annette Daniels, Mart Dickerson, Clyde Edgerton, Bill Fields, Robyn James, Susan Kelly, Jan Leitschuh, Meridith Martens, Diane McKay, Lee Pace, Sara Phile, Joyce Reehling, Stephen E. Smith, Astrid Stellanova, Kimberly Daniels Taws, Angie Tally, Ashley Wahl, Sam Walker, Janet Wheaton

David Woronoff, Publisher Advertising Sales Pat Taylor, Advertising Director Ginny Trigg, PineStraw Sales Manager 910.691.8293 • ginny@thepilot.com

920 E. Massachusetts Avenue • Southern Pines This handsome Dutch Colonial, 3862 sq ft, 4 BR, 3.5 BA, was extensively renovated in 2006. Two wings, one housing a spacious ground floor master suite, the other a dream kitchen with family room flank the original structure. The kitchen has a farm table breakfast room, adjoining mudroom/laundry and French doors opening to a slate terrace. Highlights include an enclosed garden courtyard, hardwood floors, sunlit rooms, slate roof and guest house. The terraced front yard, stone retaining walls and slate stairs overlook the circular drive and the heart of Weymouth Heights. All new plumbing, electrical, windows, heat and air. Whole house generator. Offered at $850,000

To view more photos, take a virtual tour or schedule a showing, go to:

www.clarkpropertiesnc.com

Maureen Clark

Deborah Fernsell, 910.693.2516 Terry Hartsell, 910.693.2513 Perry Loflin, 910.693.2514 Darlene McNeil-Smith, 910.693.2519 Patty Thompson, 910.693.3576 Johnsie Tipton, 910.693.2515 Advertising Graphic Design Mechelle Butler 910.693.2461 • mechelle@thepilot.com Brad Beard, Scott Yancey Subscriptions & Circulation Darlene Stark, Circulation Director 910.693.2488 145 W. Pennsylvania Avenue Southern Pines, NC 28387 pinestraw@thepilot.com • www.pinestrawmag.com ©Copyright 2016. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. PineStraw magazine is published by The Pilot LLC

when experience matters

Pinehurst • Southern Pines BHHS Pinehurst Realty Group • 910.315.1080

December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

110 N. Highland Road

90 Ritter Road East

Historic Southern Pines 1920’s Colonial Revival on 1.91 The Red Brick Cottage is a lovely English acres in Weymouth Heights. 6 BR, 5.5 BA, 5227 sq ft. Tudor on 1 ½ lots. Built in 1920, 4 BR, 4.5 Slate roof, 3 fireplaces. NEW LISTING $1,150,000 BA, 2 fireplaces, 2 car garage. $1,298,000

235 Quail Hollow Drive

101 Kincaid Place

55 Pine Valley Circle

20 SW Shaw Road

CCNC traditional on 2.2 acres, 4476 sq ft, 4 BR, 4 BA. Main floor master suite, stunning foyer, study, kitchen opens to family room, garage apt. $925,000

Historic Hill Crest Cottage in Old Town exudes “Old Pinehurst charm” in every detail. 1917, 4BR, 3.5 BA, 2 acres. Offering includes front lot. NEW LISTING $795,000

940 E. Connecticut Avenue

85 Lake Dornoch Drive

Forest Creek golf front, 1.1 acres, 5 BR, 4 BA, 2.5 BA, Lovely Irish Georgian country house on 12.21 Golf front CCNC with lake view. 4023 main house, CCNC Pinehurst Exquisite total renovation of 4BR, 4.5 BA, Colonial on 2.5 2 fireplaces, game room, kitchen/family room, garage acres in Weymouth. Built 1998, 3 stories, 3 BR, 763 guest house addition. One floor, 3 BR, 3.5 BA guest apt. Great porch. Built in 2002. $998,000 2.5 BA, 3 fireplaces, 4 car garage. $1,150,000 main, 1 BR, 1 BA guest. $1,100,000 MLS 173907 ac golf front. $1,450,000.

Fine Properties offered by BHHS Pinehurst Realty Group

212 Plantation Drive

840 Lake Dornoch Drive

Mid South Club French Country Home of the Year. CCNC golf front on Cardinal Course. One floor 3480 sq ft, 4 BR, 3.5 BA, 11 ft ceilings, 3 fireplaces, living, remarkable kitchen, paneled study. 3BR, pool, study. MLS 174121 NEW PRICE $599,000 3.5 BA, 3 car garage, NEW PRICE $1,100,000.

8 North South Court

14 Appin Court

Maureen Clark

910.315.1080 • www.clarkproperties.com

12 Masters Ridge

177 Cross Country Lane

Golf front with water view in Mid South Club. Private Horse Country estate on 10 acres including 5 BR, 5 BA, 2 half BA, 3 car garage, pool, built lovely lake. Faulk designed 4 BR, 4.5 BA, 5640 sq ’05, 1.15 acre lot, 6860 sq ft, elevator. $1,500,000. ft home built in 1970. $1,200,000 MLS 174326

15 Bel Air Drive

Mid South Club golf front 15th Hole. South- Pinewild golf front on 3.24 acres. 4 BR, CCNC Cape Cod on 1.5 acres, 6th Hole Dogwood. ern Living home, 4 BR, 3.5 BA, brilliant de- 3.5 BA, pool, 3 car garage, bocce ball court. 5 BR, 3.5 BA, ground floor master suite, open kitchsign. NEW PRICE $587,500 MLS 164156 en, pool, 4423 sq ft. PRICE REDUCED $699,900 NEW PRICE. $750,000 MLS 165567

700 East Indiana Avenue

Southern Pines, 1.46 acres. 1950’s modernist home, 3606 sq ft, one level, 5 BR, 4 BA, pool. PRICE REDUCED $438,900. MLS 166364

141 KendAll CT RaefoRd • Amy Stonesifer 3 bed/ 2 bath - $124,500

407 MCreynoldS ST CaRthage • Amy Stonesifer 4 bed/ 2 bath - $149,000

146 dyAn ST RoCkingham • Amy Stonesifer 3 bed/ 2 bath - $175,000

406 yAdKin rd southeRn Pines • Amy Stonesifer 4 bed/ 2.5 bath - $269,900

683 AShe ST southeRn Pines • Amy Stonesifer 3 bed/ 2.5 bath - $292,000

5 norfolK CT PinehuRst • Amy Stonesifer 4 bed/ 3 bath - $310,000

217 Springwood wAy southeRn Pines • Amy Stonesifer 3 bed/ 2.5 bath - $365,9000

155 CArdinAl rd southeRn Pines • Amy Stonesifer 4 bed/ 2.5 bath - $360,000

102 S. glenwood Tr southeRn Pines • Amy Stonesifer 4 bed/ 3.5 bath - $515,000

101 winSTon dr West end • Kelly Curran 3 bed/ 2 bath - $205,500

4 ShAdow ln WhisPeRing Pines • Kelly Curran 3 bed/ 3 bath - $280,000

101 diCKerSon dr West end • Kelly Curran 3 bed/ 2 bath - $279,000

serving moore county and surrounding areas!

AlwAyS A STep AheAd

MAISON 12 AroniMinK ln PinehuRst • Amy Stonesifer 3 bed/ 2.5 bath - $250,000

REALTY GROUP

213 Springwood wAy southeRn Pines • Amy Stonesifer 3 bed/ 2.5 bath - $339,900

There are 467 real estate agents in Moore County. Amy Stonesifer is among the top 5. 116 denniS CirCle West end • Kelly Curran 3 bed/ 2.5 bath - $465,000

Why? Because Amy and her team at Maison Realty Group have a unique relationship with the ever-growing military community in our county, and an uncommon grasp of the market as it relates to our military families. We represent the highest number of home buyers coming to the area who are active duty, and we get the job done every time with a laser-focused dual mission: to sell them homes, and to sell their homes. And if you’re not in the military, you get the same tireless service we offer to our soldiers, not to mention the benefit of our military network.

135 Swoope dr southeRn Pines • Kelly Curran 5 bed/ 3 bath - $385,000

Ask us how we’re different, and about our unique grasp of the local market. We are honored to work for those who faithfully serve our country, and we’d be honored to work for you.

910.684.8674 | www.maisonteam.com 135 E Pennsylvania Ave | Southern Pines, NC 28388

Martha Gentry’s H o m e

S e l l i n g

T e a m

Moore County’s Most Trusted Real Estate Team! !

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Pinehurst • $425,000

5 Victoria Way This elegant 4 BR / 3.5 BA Cotswold townhome is the ultimate in carefree living! The home features hardwood floors, 10’ and 12’ ceilings, deep crown moldings and a brick patio area off the keeping room that offers a great deal of privacy.

st con

Pinehurst • $369,000

6 riViera DriVe This gorgeous 5 BR / 3.5 BA home is located in the ever popular Pinehurst No. 6. The entry leads you to a vaulted living/dining combo with a kitchen that features beautiful cabinetry with slow close door and drawers. A definite must see!

Pinehurst • $415,000

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Pinehurst • $449,000

59 GlasGoW DriVe Precision Custom Homes presents this beautifully renovated 3 BR / 2 BA plus 2 ½ BA home is located on the 2nd Green of the Magnolia Course at Pinewild Country Club.

175 linDen roaD At 3.36 acres this beautiful historic 9 BR / 9.5 BA Pinehurst home is located on the largest Estate in Old Town. This two story colonial home needs significant updating but is well worth the effort and investment to have such a unique showplace.

southern Pines • $374,900

seVen laKes West • $349,900

121 James creeK This beautifully updated 4 BR / 3.5 BA home is nestled back from the road in the highly desirable neighborhood of James Creek. The home offers lots of space that includes a home office, playroom, gym and formal and informal living space.

14 Killearn court This lovely, southern style 4 BR / 3.5 BA home offers great curb appeal with a deep front porch with columns and is in a great location at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in Pinewild Country Club.

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Pinehurst • $399,500

497 lonGleaf DriVe Spacious 4 BR / 3.5 BA home in the amenity rich community of Seven Lakes West. This home features the best of interior comforts and exceptional outdoor living space. Don’t miss this unique home in this beautiful community.

seVen laKes West • $395,000

174 James DriVe This lovely and unique 4 BR / 3 BA home is located on 3 lots – almost 1 ½ acres – and offers over 3,500 square feet of living area in the gated community of Seven Lakes West.

aberDeen • $348,000

106 bonnie brooK court This beautiful 4 BR / 3.5 BA Charleston Style home is located in the picturesque side-walk community of Bonnie Brook. This unique home has been meticulously maintained and complete with white picket fence accents and upgrades throughout.

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Pinehurst • $339,000

67 GlasGoW DriVe Charming 3 BR / 2 BA home located in the lovely Pinewild community. Newly renovated, the home features hardwood flooring, custom cabinetry and white marble countertops in the kitchen as well as new carpet and custom cut glass shower door in the master. This home is a must see!

seVen laKes south • $335,000

116 Dartmoor lane Gorgeous 3 BR / 3 BA single level brick home on the 12th fairway of Seven Lakes Golf Course. This beautiful home offers a spacious kitchen with cabinets galore as well as an over-sized screened porch with stunning cypress flooring.

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seVen laKes West • $339,000

140 beacon riDGe DriVe This gorgeous custom built 3 BR / 2.5 BA home has beautiful curb appeal and great landscaping but the interior is really the star! Open and bright with long views of the golf course, hardwood floors throughout the lower level and loads of ceiling to floor windows.

#1 In Moore coUnty reaL eState For oVer 20 yearS!

Luxury Properties maRTHa genTRY’S Home Selling Team

Moore County’s Most Trusted Real Estate Team!

southern Pines • $1,200,000

155 hiGhlanD roaD Harking back to the glorious era of the 1930’s, Broadhearth is a stately historic Southern Pines landmark with 9 BR / 8.5 BA and is located on 2.4 parklike acres on the highest point of Weymouth Heights.

Pinehurst • $995,000

145 brooKhaVen roaD Stunning custom brick 5 BR / 5.5 BA home in Fairwoods on Seven is located on an oversized, private lot and overlooks the 15th fairway of the #7 course. This beautiful home offers lots of upscale features and is a must see!

Pinehurst • $1,100,000

Pinehurst • $999,000

966 linDen roaD If you love golf and cars, this is the perfect place. This stunningly rustic 4 BR / 4 BA home sits on 3 private acres and features a saline swimming pool, oversized 7 person saline hot tub and a heated and cooled six car garage and list goes on and on. This is a car lovers dream!

Pinehurst • $649,000

3 WooDWorD Place Charming craftsman style cottage new construction home features 4 BR / 4.5 BA in desirable Forest Creek! Interior lot offers over 3900 sq. feet with an open and spacious floor plan.

80 braemar roaD Incredible golf front home in Fairwoods on 7. This beautiful 4 BR / 5.5 BA home features top of the line finishes, mouldings, marble, hard-wood slate flooring.

Pinehurst • $499,900

31 abinGton DriVe Gorgeous custom built 3 BR / 3 Full 3 Half Bath Contemporary home on Lake Pinewild in Pinewild Country Club. Beautifully maintained with trey ceiling and gas log fireplace in living room, formal dining room and updated kitchen with built-in breakfast bar.

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Pinehurst • $535,000

42 oxton circle Located on the 11th hole of the Holly Course at Pinewild Country Club, this lovely 3 BR / 2.5 BA custom home offers beautiful views and appealing outdoor surroundings.

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105 laWrence oVerlooK This lovely 3 BR / 3 BA home has one of the best lots on Lake Auman and enjoys beautiful wide water views with a coveted southern exposure. The home is absolutely immaculate and beautifully maintained.

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seVen laKes West • $525,000

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Pinehurst • $515,000

145 Quail holloW DriVe Enchanting 3 BR / 2 BA sun-drenched home in prestigious CCNC, nestled in the back of 1.5 acres on the golf course. A large terrace encompasses the back of the house overlooking the pond and Holes 5 and 15, great for outdoor entertaining.

520 lonGleaf DriVe Enjoy life to the fullest in this gorgeous 3 BR / 3.5 BA award winning and impeccably maintained custom home with over 4,000 square feet.

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seVen laKes West • $495,000

Pinehurst • $649,000

19 mcmichael DriVe This gorgeous all brick 4 BR / 4.5 BA custom home enjoys lovely views of the scenic pond as well as the golf course. The gourmet kitchen has custom cabinets, granite countertops, tile backsplash, built-in desk area and a walk-in pantry. This is a wonderful home!

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West enD • $795,000

106 rachels Point Drop dead gorgeous Bob Timberlake design! This 4 BR / 2.5 BA home sits on 1.8 beautifully landscaped acres that slopes gently to the water and includes an outdoor kitchen on the patio, a private dock and beach with a fireplace.

www.MarthaGentry.coM

Re/Max Prime Properties, 5 Chinquapin Rd., Pinehurst, NC 910-295-7100 • 800-214-9007

MarthaGentry.coM • 910-295-7100 • Re/Max Prime Properties 5 Chinquapin Rd., Pinehurst, NC

"THE GREATEST GIFT WE EVER GAVE OUR FAMILY WAS MOVING TO PENICK VILLAGE" A Faith-Based Not For Profit Life Plan & Continuing Care Retirement Community

500 E. Rhode Island Ave. Southern Pines, NC (910) 692-0300 www.penickvillage.org NOW OFFERING HOME CARE, (910) 692-0370

simple life

The Great New Year’s Dirt Clod War

By Jim Dodson

This was the year my dad’s rural

Illustration by Meridith Martens

relatives, several distant aunts and uncles, a Biblequoting grandmother and five girl cousins from the country came to our house between Christmas and New Year’s Day. I barely knew them. I was almost 13, my brother Dickie was 15. We were informed by our mom in no uncertain terms that we had to be good hosts and proper young gentlemen for the duration of their visit. She had that look in her eye that said she meant business.

Five girl cousins in one house, if only for a couple days during an otherwise unblemished holiday week, is a serious challenge to the mental stability and character formation of any boy approaching teenagehood. Dickie at least had a Life Scout project to work on, which took him out of the house most of the week. I wasn’t so lucky. It was 1965. America was still buzzing about the Beatles. I was smitten with George Harrison and taking Wednesday afternoon guitar lessons at Harvey West Music downtown. I tried sticking to my bedroom to play along with “Rubber Soul” but the oldest girl cousin kept coming in without knocking and sitting cross-legged on the floor just to stare at me. It was unnerving. My mother said she “just really likes you, it won’t kill you to be nice to her.” Her name was Cindy. She was about my age — the oldest girl cousin — but she scarcely spoke, just sat and stared at me with her huge round eyes as I fumbled my way through “In My Life.” The other country girl cousins, meanwhile, occupied my tree house and turned it into a teahouse for their dolls. They played board games and poured imaginary tea. I came home from my Wednesday afternoon guitar lesson and

found them there acting like my tree house was Buckingham Palace and they were visiting the Queen. I wondered how I could survive the week. By Saturday morning I had to get out of the house, so I grabbed my baseball glove and bat and prepared to head for the park to play roll-the-bat with my buddies Bobby, Chris and Brad. I hoped Della Marie Hockaday might be there, too. I’d just given her a genuine imitation sapphire dimestore ring that meant we were kind of an unofficial thing. My friends and I played roll-the-bat most Saturday mornings, but the country cousins weren’t leaving until later that afternoon. “Listen,” said my mom, “maybe you should take the girls to the park with you. They’re a little bored. They might like to play baseball with you guys.” I wondered if my mother had lost her mind from having all those rural uncles and aunts and a Bible-quoting grandmother under the same roof. She clearly wanted them out from underfoot while she prepared the big lunch that would send them all home. “Come on, sweetie,” she said. “Do this and I’ll make you a chocolate pie and you can stay up and watch ‘Bonanza’ tomorrow night.” Sunday night was a school night and her chocolate pie was the ultimate bribe. We made the deal. As agreed, I led the girl cousins and their dolls to the park, hoping with every ounce of my being that Della Marie Hockaday wouldn’t be there to witness my complete humiliation. The park was across the creek from a new housing development where the earth had been churned up into mounds of fresh, angry red clay. Some other kids from another part of the neighborhood were over there messing around one of the new houses. I recognized Randy Fulp. He was the spawn of the devil, the meanest kid at my junior high school, always trying to intimidate younger kids. The school we attended was a tough school full of scrappy white mill kids and a large number of black kids. This was years before public schools in North Carolina officially desegregated. You learned to survive by keeping your mouth shut and avoiding trouble. Fortunately, I played JV football that year

PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . December 2016

BOWNESS CUSTOM HOMES

BUILDING memories for 35 years!

New Homes & Remodeling | Value Makes the Difference 18 December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills Pinehurst, NC | 910-692-3782 | www.bownesscustomhomes.com

simple life

for the Jackson Junior High Trojans and earned enough street cred so that Randy Fulp wouldn’t mess with me. I had a couple of oversized teammates who would happily have pounded him into the red clay of South Greensboro. Not long after the girl cousins found spots on the hill to watch and my buddies and I began playing roll-the-bat, a large red dirt clod landed at my feet as I was preparing to hit a ball. I kicked it aside and looked across the creek, where Randy Fulp was grinning like a jackass with his friends. He threw another dirt clod that I had to step out of the way to avoid being hit. There is almost nothing as deadly as a dirt clod made from authentic sticky red clay earth from the upper Piedmont region of North Carolina. It can blind, maim or simply wound for life. Naturally, I picked up the dirt clod and threw it back at Randy Fulp. I missed. He laughed. All hell broke loose. Suddenly dirt clods were raining down on us and we were throwing them back. I turned to see the girl cousins and their dolls fleeing the scene of mayhem. All but one, that is. Cindy was standing beside me in the creek bed, grinning as she formed hard clay clods with her bare hands. She turned and winged one with stunning accuracy at our attackers. It splattered on the windshield of a bulldozer where they were crouching. They scattered like frightened birds. Cindy had an unbelievable arm, far more accurate than any of the boys in the fight. Her finest moment came when she caught Randy Fulp with a fireball to his throwing arm and he let out a yelp, turned and led the retreat around the corner of the unfinished house. By the time we climbed out of the creek, both of us were soaking wet and streaked with red clay mud. Even more amazing, everyone else had vanished, including my friends. Cindy and I walked home together. I wasn’t surprised to learn that she played softball on her junior high school softball team back home. She was also her class president. My mom was so put out at me, however, she made me strip down to my orange-red underwear before she would let me back into the house. Cindy’s dress was equally filthy, but she got to go inside and change. The Great New Year’s Dirt Clod War was the topic of lunch that day and many years thereafter. Cindy and I sat together and watched the Rose Bowl on TV. I almost hated to see the country girl cousins — one at least — go home. More than a decade passed before I saw Cindy again. We met at the last family reunion I attended before heading off to college. She was going to N.C. State hoping to become a small animal vet, but not planning to play softball. She had a boyfriend and was much prettier than I recalled. At one point she asked me if I remembered the New Year’s Day when we got into a dirt clod fight with some boys across the creek, getting so filthy my mother made me strip off before I could come into the house. “Yes, I do,” I replied. “That scarred me for life. Worse than any dirt clod.” She laughed. “It was kind of unfair. I was dirtier than you were. But wasn’t that fun?” I heard from Cindy a few years ago. She was a new grandmother living in Indiana. She’d read a book I’d written about taking my young daughter and aging golden retriever on a 6,000-mile cross-country fly-fishing and camping trip across America one summer. The book had just been made into a feature film. She asked me to autograph her copy of the book. She said Faithful Travelers was her favorite read. I happily signed her book and sent it back, thanking her for saving my skin during the Great New Year’s Dirt Clod War. PS

blockade-runner.com

CAMERON ART MUSEUM and NEW HANOVER GARDEN CLUB present

Art of the Bloom Join us January 5-8, 2017, as Blockade Runner Beach Resort hosts this first annual event, welcoming artists, decorators, garden clubs and educators from around the region. Photo courtesy of Joshua McClure

Contact editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com. PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . December 2016

December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Instagram Winners

Congratulations to our December Instagram winners!

Theme:

Firepits & Fireplaces #pinestrawcontest

Next month’s theme:

“Sweet & Savory Food”

Submit your photo on Instagram at @pinestrawmag using the hashtag #pinestrawcontest (submissions needed by Thursday, December 15th)

Lin Hutaff’s Pinehurst Realty Group 110 E Mccaskill Rd Village of Pinehurst. Gorgeous custom cottage built by Billy Breeden in 1998 in the heart of Old Town. arboretum, putting green. separate apartment over garage. 3Bd, 3 1/2 Ba.Offered at $575,000.

23 WEllinGTOn Rd Forest creek. Perfect lock-it and leave-it or year round residence. club Membership included with accepted offer. 4Bd, 3 1/2 Ba. Offered at $467,500.

15 Mcnish dR Talamore. Golf Front, large rooms, ample storage with large workshop below. stunning entry. large carolina Room. 4Bd, 3 1/2Ba. Offered at $435,000

“Know Lin” 910.528.6427

190 WiREGRass Rd arboretum. Quality custom home ideal for retired couple. 2 Master suites, sun porch, semi-finished bonus rm. Priced below cost. 3BD, 2 1/2 BA. Offered at $379,900.

12 canTERBuRy ciRclE New on the market, custom, office off the Master Bedroom. kitchen opens to the Fmily Room nEW PRicE $315,000.

Re/max Prime Properties www.linhutaff.com linhutaff@pinehurst.net

Featured Homes 360 Lake Dornoch Drive

Country Club Of North Carolina, Pinehurst Located on the 12th hole of the Dogwood Golf Course! This all brick home offers a grand entrance and lovely living room with French doors to a private deck and screened in porch. 3 Bedrooms, 3 Bathrooms, 5,000+ Sq.Ft.

MLS# 175849 $730,000

210 Grove Road

Pine Needles, Southern Pines This custom built home has it all, including a wrap around front porch, gourmet kitchen, and lovely master suite. Also features an office/study, large rec room with wet bar, and a bonus room. Large deck and fenced in backyard. 4 Bedrooms, 3.5 Bathrooms, 4,000+ Sq.Ft.

MLS# 177288 $545,000

55 Bel Air Drive

650 S Fort Bragg Road

Country Club Of North Carolina, Pinehurst Immaculate home on the 6th green of the famous Dogwood Course! Offers a large living room, Carolina room, master suite with Jacuzzi tub, 3 car garage, and much more! 4 Bedrooms, 4.5 Bathrooms, 4,500+ Sq.Ft.

Southern Pines Stately home on over 6 acres with double doors leading to brick floored entry. Features 2 laundry rooms, brick patio, and separate guest cottage. Zoned for and easily transferred into a bed and breakfast! 5 Bedrooms, 6.5 Bathrooms, 5,000+ Sq.Ft.

221 National Drive

105 Lee Overlook

MLS# 175707 $1,000,000

Pinehurst National Golf Club, Pinehurst Unique custom-built golf front home features a large atrium in the heart, large windows throughout, and multiple beautiful gardens inside and out. Also offers a stunning kitchen, large stone fireplace in the living room, and two master suites. 3 Bedrooms, 3.5 Bathrooms, 3,000+ Sq.Ft.

MLS# 176199 $585,000

MLS# 177779 $750,000

7 Lakes West The best view Lake Auman has to offer! This custom all brick home features a gourmet kitchen, media room, huge bedrooms, wet bar, private office, living room with floor to ceiling windows overlooking waterfront decks! 3 Bedrooms, 4.5 Baths, 5,000+ Sq.Ft.

MLS# 177944

$1,099,750

Call today for a private showing of these beautiful homes!

Coldwell Banker Advantage 100 Magnolia Road, Suite 1 Pinehurst, NC 28374 Toll Free: (855) 484-1260 (910) 692-4731 22 December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills www.HomesCBA.com 130 Turner Street Southern Pines, NC 28387 (910) 693-3300

PinePitch Holly & Ivy Time Travel Go back in time for a good cause when Given Tufts celebrates the season at its annual Holly & Ivy Dinner, Tuesday, Dec. 6, at 6:30 p.m. in the Evergreen Room of the Holly Inn. The evening includes “old-fashioned” parlor entertainment (magic, songs and readings) and a delicious meal recreated from a menu at the Holly Inn circa 1915. Period dress is encouraged but not necessary to have a great time. Tickets are $125 per person and are available now, online only, at www.giventufts.org. For additional information, call (910) 295-3642. Space is limited.

Holidays at The Rooster’s Wife

Dec. 2: Jeanne Jolly and the Mistletoes in the Jolly Holiday Review bring a big voice to the season with the band to match. There will be mistletoe, and a special holiday cocktail from Reverie’s Tony Cross. Dec. 4: Jonathan Byrd and Corin Raymond put the low in loneliness, and the high in hijinks with their unforgettable stories, poetry and guitar slinging. Dec. 11: A new album brings jazz wonder Peter Lamb and his Wolves to Aberdeen. Horns, vocals, keys and more horns! Full band show for your holiday pleasure. Dec.31: Perennial favorites and two-time International Bluegrass Music Association performers of the year, the Gibson Brothers, end the year with a matinee and full-blown New Year’s Eve party. The afternoon show begins at 2:46 p.m. The New Year’s festivities begin at 8:46 p.m., with a break for Champagne and tasty treats from Thyme and Place. Hold onto your party hat, as the Brothers are joined for an all-star jam with Hank and Pattie, Laurelyn Dossett, Alex McKinney, Alex Bingham to ring in 2017.

Will Ferrell and a Winter Wonderland

The Arc of Moore County’s fifth annual Christmas Movie and Snow Spectacular is Saturday, Dec. 17, beginning 11 a.m. at the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad Street, Southern Pines. There will be caroling, a visit from Santa, a screening of Elf at 11:30 a.m. and refreshments, too. A winter festival on the green (white) space — covered with snow for sledding — will follow the movie. A bouncy house, face painting, live entertainment and food trucks Stacks Cheddar, Dawg Wagon and Ouida’s Wildfire Pizza will make it a fun day for the whole family. Tickets are $10 with all proceeds benefiting individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Access to the green space activities only is $5. For tickets and more information, visit www.thearcofmoore.org or The Arc of Moore County, 673 S. Bennett St., Southern Pines, or call (910) 692-8272. Tickets will be available at the event but seating at the Sunrise Theater is limited, so booking in advance is recommended.

Elvis Christmas

Vision 4 Moore presents “An Elvis Christmas Special” featuring Todd Allen Herendeen, whose drive, dynamic voice and excellent showmanship have earned him wide acclaim, including the No. 1 hit “My Name is America” during his 15 years of performing professionally. Join him on Sunday, Dec. 18 at the Robert E. Lee Auditorium at Pinecrest High School, 250 Voit Gilmore Lane, Southern Pines. Music begins at 2 p.m. General admission tickets are $20, reserved seating section $30. Group rates are available for 10 or more. Purchase your tickets in advance at The Country Bookshop, Southern Pines; Sandhills Winery, West End; or Given Memorial Library, Pinehurst; or by credit card on our website, www.vision4moore.com (no additional fees added). For additional questions call (910) 365-9890 or email info@vision4moore.com.

First Eve

Bring friends and family to celebrate the New Year with music, games, activities and entertainment — then a countdown to the Pinecone Drop — on Dec. 31 (naturally) from 6-to-8 p.m., downtown Southern Pines, at the train station. No possums will be endangered

December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Reindeer Fun Run

Christmas at Shaw House

A community event for everyone from serious runners to recreational walkers, families and pets. The 5k Reindeer Fun Run/ Walk beginning at 9:30 a.m. curves through Aberdeenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s historic downtown neighborhoods with rolling hills and wide turns. The 12ks of Christmas Run beginning at 9 a.m. incorporates the 5k route along with a scenic tour of Bethesda and the Malcolm Blue Farm. Both courses finish on a sloping downhill toward downtown and the historic Union Station. For kids, the 1/2 Mile Egg Nog Jog & Kids Zone at 10:30 a.m. is a holiday must and fan favorite. Costume judging begins at 9:30 a.m. Awards presentation begins at 11 a.m. All proceeds go to the Boys & Girls Club of the Sandhills. Register at http://reindeerfunrun.com.

Enjoy period decorations, warm apple cider and homemade cookies at the annual Christmas Open House at the historic Shaw House, Friday, Dec. 9, through Sunday, Dec.11, from 1 to 4 p.m. Tour three house museums built between the 1700s and 1800s to see how early Southern Pines and Sandhills residents lived. Admission is free. Shaw House is located at 110 W. Morganton Road and South West Broad Street in Southern Pines. For information, call (910) 692-2051, email info@moorehistory.com, or visit www. moorehistory.com.

Open House at Bryant House

Get into the old-time Christmas spirit with the annual open house at the historic Bryant House and McLendon Cabin, from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 4. The Moore County Historical Association and Friends of the Bryant House host the event free of charge so every Yule visitor can get a little taste of how early settlers celebrated Christmas. Decorations are based on old-timey materials and traditions. There will be refreshments, live music, a historical interpretation and tours. The Bryant House and McLendon Cabin are at 3361 Mount Carmel Road, in Carthage. Built in the 1760s, the cabin is the countyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s oldest dwelling remaining on its original site. Next door on the same lot is the Bryant House, a bigger dwelling dating back to the 1820s. For information, call (910) 692-2051, email info@moorehistory.com, or visit www.moorehistory.com.

Murphy Family Encore

The annual Murphy Family Christmas Concert is Dec. 4 at 3 p.m. Doors open at 2:15 p.m. General admission tickets are $15 and VIP tickets are $20. Proceeds benefit the Sunrise Theater. The family will be performing American popular standards, jazz, alternative rock, gospel-influenced Christmas arrangements, traditional carols, and Brazilian bossa nova and samba.

Sound of Sandhills

Classical guitarist Dr. Adam Kossler performs Thursday, Dec. 1, at 7 p.m., at Sandhills Community College, Owens Auditorium. Kossler has been a top prize-winner in a number of international guitar competitions, including the Boston Guitarfest, Columbus Guitar Symposium, East Carolina Guitar Competition, Music Academy of North Carolina Guitar Competition, Texas International Guitar Competition, Music Teacher National Association Competition, and the Appalachian Guitarfest Competition. Kossler performs regularly as a solo artist, as a member of the NOVA Guitar Quartet, and with the Kossler Guitar Trio alongside his father, Bill, and brother John. He has been featured on several prestigious concert series, including the John E. Marlow Guitar Series (Bethesda, Maryland), Isle Newell Concert Series (Appalachicola, Florida), and the Seven Hills Guitar Series (Tallahassee, Florida). Admission is free.

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162 NW Broad Street • Downtown Southern Pines 910.246.2002

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T h e O m n i v oro u s R e ad e r

Legend of the Working Class

When M, a cross-species monster, moves from N.C. to Pennsylvania, the plot thickens

By D.G. Martin

In his insightful review of J.D.

Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis in this magazine last month, Stephen Smith questioned whether that book explains the unexpected success of Donald Trump’s campaign for president.

Meanwhile, I have been thinking that another new book might give us insight into the white male blue-collar world where Trump’s appeal rang loud and clear. North Carolina native Steven Sherrill’s The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time tells how a fictional and Greek legendary half-bull, half-man called the Minotaur adapts to life in a modern white workingclass community. In case you do not remember the Minotaur, he was the offspring of a queen of Crete, who, subject to a curse from a vengeful god, fell madly in love with her husband’s prize bull. The resulting offspring grew up to be a feared monster that devoured children. In the Greek legend the Minotaur was killed to end his evil ways. But, in Sherrill’s story, the Minotaur has survived and lived for thousands of years, roaming from place to place. He is immortal and destined to struggle forever to live as an outsider alongside fully human colleagues. Back in 2000, in his novel, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, Sherrill brought the fictional Minotaur to our state as a line cook in a seedy restaurant called Grub’s Rib just off the interstate near Charlotte. The Minotaur lived in a mobile home in a rundown trailer park. His co-workers called him M and got used to his bullhorns, funny-looking face, and tortured way of speaking. They had their own set of challenges, not unlike those described in Hillbilly Elegy. Just as his co-workers adapted to M and accepted him as a fellow-worker, readers set aside disbelief, identify with the creature, and observe the world of a struggling working class through his eyes. Still, M is destined always to be something of an outsider, a condition that painfully troubles and enriches his story and his relationships with the blue-collar characters that surround him.

This September, 16 years after The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, its sequel, The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time, hit bookstore shelves. Sherrill, who now lives in Pennsylvania, teaches at Penn State-Altoona. M has moved up there, too. He is now a professional Civil War re-enactor in a tourist-centered “historic village.” Every day M puts on his Confederate uniform and goes out on the field to do his job. He dies. Over and over again. In the rustbelt around the village and battlefield near Altoona in central Pennsylvania, M observes and interacts with the struggles of the working and out-of-work people he encounters. Almost all are at the edge. One broken car away from a financial crisis. One lost job away from disaster. M’s struggles are special. Only half-human, he still has fully human desires and aspirations. He is lonely and longs for companionship. He is helpful and considerate. He adapts to disappointment. But, as Sherrill leads us to understand in this, his second Minotaur masterpiece, M is always going to be “other.” Always an outsider. M lives at the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge, a shabby motel just off a busy highway and within walking distance of the historic village and battlefield. The motel owner, Rambabu Gupta, gives M a place to stay in return for M’s handyman repair work. M can fix almost anything, including automobiles. When a dirty, filthy, broken down Honda Odyssey van careens into a parking lot near the motel, an attractive redheaded woman and her wild, brain-damaged brother get out, and a weird love story begins. M sets about to fix the car. He wanders through his favorite places, auto junkyards, to find the right parts. As he fixes her car, the appreciative redhead and M begin to develop feelings for each other. Could a cross-species friendship work into something more? Sherrill uses his great storyteller gifts to make his readers wonder, and maybe hope. But the poignant climax is dark and sad. Back to the recent election, M seems to have no interest in politics, but his desperate, disillusioned, and angry co-workers and neighbors in Pennsylvania’s rustbelt could understandably have found hope in Donald Trump’s message. If they had made it to the polls on November 8, their votes would almost certainly have helped Trump steal Pennsylvania from the Democrats and Hillary Clinton. PS D.G. Martin hosts North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs Sundays at noon and Thursdays at 5 p.m. on UNC-TV.

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O h harry

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Happy Holidays

Janice storrs

910.315.9577 Landseer Properties, LLC

590 orchard road southern Pines Stunningly Renovated, Large Contemporary on almost an Acre. Perfectly situated in Weymouth Area near Downtown. ~3800 plus Heated Square Feet, Offering 4-5 Bedrooms, 3 Full & 1 Half Bath.

www.590orchardroad.com www.landseerProperties.com

carolyn raGone

910.603.4114 Carolyn Ragone Real Estate, LLC

133 otter drive, seven lakes West – $368,000

Brick home with views of Lake Auman, Over 3000SF, 4BR/3.5BA, gourmet kitchen, fenced back yard. Close to gate , rec center with pool, playground, tennis, and marina. WWW.carolynraGone.com

! D CE U D RE

Binky alBriGht

910.315.2622 Binky Albright Properties, LLC

linda covinGton

910.695.0352 Covington Investment Prop.

lynette Williams

910.690.3113 Fox Creek Real Estate

11 Greenville ln. Pinehurst #6 Golf course

Brick home with 3 BR, 2 BA. Spacious eat-in kitchen.Lots of light, great floor plan. Lg, 2 car garage. MLS# 172848 $249,000 WWW.BinkyalBriGht.com

3705 younGs road – sold

Wonderful Horse Farm with 3 stall barn. $745,000 3 Br/3 Ba, 5 acres. Less than a mile to Downtown So. Pines. WWW.covinGtonnc.com

10-90 acre Plot – $6,800 Per acre

Great location for an affordable horse property close to Southern Pines and Ft. Bragg. lynettWllms@aol.com

anita emery

910.639.1751 Area Real Estate Partners, Inc.

Becca and sean leen

919.949.6713 Landseer Properties LLC

kristi snyder

910.624.5411 Everything Pines Real Estate

3 hiGhland drive, WhisPerinG Pines - $229,900 3BD/2BA all Brick 1950SF “Cottage” home. Lovely private setting with an expansive Deck overlooking the Pond and 11th Green of the CCWP Pines Course. Split Bedroom plan, Formal DR, GR w/Gas Fireplace. New Septic system 2016, 30 Yr. Roof 2011, 19 Seer Heat Pump 2009. View Details at: www.seetheProperty.com/209159

12 kilberry drive, Pinewild cc - offered at $699,900

Ultimate Home & Amenities, 5+ Bedroom | 5+ Full Baths, ~5,800 hsf Featuring a Home Theatre, Gym, & In-Law Suite, on almost an Acre Lot Pinehurst & Pinewild Country Club Memberships for Transfer

www.12kilberrydrive.com www.landseerProperties.com

984 rays BridGe road, carthaGe - $280,000

Immaculate, Large & Private .6 acre Corner Lot - Build in 2002, ~2,200+ Heated Sq Ft, in Farm Life School District. One-story living, plenty of space for entertaining. Offering 4 Bedrooms, with 2 Full Baths and Bright Sitting Area/ Sunroom. MLS #: 178230

WWW.everythinGPines.com

B oo k sh e l f

December Books By Romey Petite

Forever Words, The Unknown Poems, by Johnny Cash

Very rarely are we permitted a window into the imagination, craft and creative process of one of the true greats, in this case, the Man in Black himself. Forever Words is a treasury of dusted-off relics and artifacts unearthed from the Cash family’s archives. It contains the debut of 40-50 poems, and a trove of new songs penned by the singer-songwriter and legendary lyricist. The book also includes reproductions from Cash’s diary, including his original sketches and conceptual art. The collection is edited by and contains a foreword written by poet Paul Muldoon (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and T.S. Elliot Prize). Die-hard fans of Cash — this is one to watch out for. George Lucas: A Life, by Brian Ray Jones The author of New York Times best-seller Jim Henson: The Biography tasks himself with delving into the legacy of another creative visionary — the mind behind the Jedi, the Force, adventures to vast worlds beyond galaxies far, far away and lost treasures that lie in arks, tombs and temples of doom. This isn’t just about Lucas’ blockbuster hits, though. Jones charts Lucas’ transformation from a struggling student to pioneer of film and visuals, beginning with his earlier experimental films at the University of Southern California. Jones shows how he nurtured his passion of combining words with visuals and learned from fellow masters of the art, whether telling us how Francis Ford Coppola whipped the young director into shape or the handshake that began his partnership with Spielberg. Fans, aspiring artists, and those nostalgic for the movie magic of this wizard of special effects will appreciate Jones’ thorough, moving, definitive portrait of the artist. Metaphors Be With You, by Dr. Marty Grothe Dr. Marty Grothe, whose forte is the category of words and language, has compiled a list of no less than the finest and most formidable examples of metaphor usage for dabblers and language enthusiasts alike. Grothe, a resident of Southern Pines, will be celebrating his release party at The Country Bookshop at 5 p.m. on Dec. 8. Metaphor is one of the most effective flowers of rhetoric, the bedrock of both homespun wisdom and eloquent, persuasive writing. This event is a rare bloom — not to be missed! The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis With The Undoing Project Michael Lewis returns to make his newest foray into the realm of financial journalism. Lewis has written numerous other New York Times best-sellers, including the book that inspired the critically acclaimed film The Big Short (2015) — which ran at the Sunrise back in February. In The Undoing Project Lewis tells the tale of the two key figures that reshaped Big Data Studies, illuminating the collaboration between a pair of psychologists specializing in mathematics and

behavior, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. He traces their truly seamless partnership — one that resulted in the publication of seminal studies on the process of decision making, cognitive bias, and predicting reoccurring system errors — research that has influenced much of the author’s own body of work. A Most Improbable Journey, by Walter Alvarez Professor Walter Alvarez, scientist, historian, one of the foremost minds in geology today and originator of impact theory, has taken aim at presenting the big picture. His enthralling new read, A Most Improbable Journey, concerns an exercise in mapping out time itself by positing the concept of big history. He categorizes the vastness of time and space into four categories: the cosmos, earth, life and humanity. The book begins with an anecdote of Alvarez chasing the fragments of the Mimbral discovery in 1991 — an asteroid that smashed into the Gulf of Mexico at the end of the Cretaceous period (66 million years ago) and prompted the dinosaur’s mass extinction. Through putting the Earth, even the universe, in perspective, Alvarez reminds us that human history itself is only a fraction of what the past can teach us. Grape, Olive, Pig, by Matt Goulding Grape, Olive, Pig, an Anthony Bourdain book, is written by Matt Goulding, co-founder and editor of Roads and Kingdoms online journal and author of the bestselling Eat This, Not That! series. A sequel of sorts to Rice, Noodle, Fish, Goulding has returned with a book navigating a plethora of tastes as numerous as there are cultural identities in Spain. It’s a whirlwind of dishes, destinations, histories, myths and meals meant to be enjoyed over long conversations late into the night — bread, blood sausage, fried pork, salads doused in olive oil and coarse salt. It’s a book for the hungry, but not the faint of heart as it gives the reader a look into the “sacrifice” required to bring such delicious food into being. It is also very much the love story of how Matt Goulding met and wooed his wife, Laura, a native Catalan. Read it and dream of the Iberian Peninsula, whether it’s the winding alleyways of Barcelona or the rustic Basque Country. Rao’s Classics, by Frank Pellegrino Jr. In Rao’s Classics, Frank Pellegrino Jr. debuts more than 140 new recipes — creative yet quintessential approaches to linguini, lobster, eggplant and veal. Pellegrino, owner and operator of the famous New York family business and food product line, has published previous entries in this series of cookbooks, including The Rao’s Cookbook, Rao’s: Recipes from the Neighborhood and Rao’s on the Grill. His newest entry tells of the family’s restaurant and this third generation proprietor’s family history. Tables at East Harlem’s Rao’s may be in high demand, but with these recommendations from the chef, you can bring their delightful Southern Italian recipes home to your very own table.

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The Christmas Fox, by Anik McGrory. One by one, field and forest, the animals make their way to the barn, bearing gifts for the newborn baby. The cow brings hay, the bluebird brings a sweet song and the lamb brings cozy wool, but the shy little fox seemingly has nothing to offer, or does he? This beautiful take on the Nativity story from the animals’ point of view is the perfect addition to every family’s Christmas collection. Ages 3-6. Penguin Problems, by Jory John. Some problems are serious, some are silly and some, well, some are just penguin problems. When the water is too salty, the sea too dark, when you are a bird that cannot fly and when everyone you know looks EXACTLY THE SAME, well, those are penguin problems. This fun picture book is sure to make even the grumpiest young reader giggle. Ages 3-6. Land of Stories: A Treasury of Classic Fairy Tales, by Chris Colfer. Holiday gift-giving time is the perfect time to revisit much-loved classic tales, and what are more loved than classic fairy tales? New York Times best-selling author Chris Colfer has compiled a collection of 35 stories, including Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Jack and the Beanstalk. Readers young and older will enjoy curling up in front of a fireplace in a deep leather chair with this stunningly illustrated book. Ages 3-adult. The Sweetest Christmas Eve, by Annie Hallinan. It is Christmas Eve and after a long search, the mouse family has finally found a house of its own. With pink, green, purple and yellow walls, a fireplace of brown bricks surrounded by shiny tiles and room for everyone, it seems perfect. But when they are discovered by a (gasp) human, the mouse family’s holiday peace is threatened. As often happens on Christmas Eve, something magical secures the mouse family’s sweet home forever. Annie will be signing copies of The Sweetest Christmas Eve at The Country Bookshop from 12-2 p.m. on Dec. 10. (ages 3-8) PS

December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

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December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

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papadaddy ’ s M i nd f i e l d

Who Grabs First? It all depends

By Clyde Edgerton

The following conversation took place

Illustration by harry Blair

at Rosehaven Assisted Living in rural North Carolina between three Papadaddys:

“What do you do when the TV news is on and your granddaughter is around?” “Or grandson?” “What I do is change the channel.” “What I do is give a lecture. I tell my grandson if he’s not charming, he will lead a sad life, maybe even become greedy, and start thinking he’s got to grab, grab, grab. Greedy men grab. Charming men charm. In the South, real men charm.” “In the North, too.” “I wouldn’t know.” “Well, real women charm, too.” “Who grabs first if everybody’s standing around charming each other?” “Who’s on first?’” “What’s on second.’ I remember that one. Abbott and Costello.” “No, who grabs first?” “Grabs what?” “I don’t know — depends.” “I’ll slap anybody that grabs my Depends.” “I heard they leak.” “Powerful men know how to grab. That’s what made America great. We came over here as illegal aliens and stole all the land and went on to get even greater. Onward Christian Soldiers! Women wouldn’t have done that.” “Aw come on.” “Wouldn’t you like to see your granddaughter grow up to be president?” “Of what? “Walmart?” “What’s on second?” “Bobby Riggs won that tennis match.” “That’s right. He beat Billy Bob Thornton.”

“Billie Jean King.” “Billie won.” “That’s what I said.” “I’ll be glad when this match is over.” “Me, too.” “Me, too.” “People would rather watch a car wreck than a pretty sunset.” “They’ll slow down for a car wreck.” “TV executives get real rich by knowing that.” “People used to buy what they knew they needed, like flour and potatoes and green beans. Now they shop for stuff that some slick commercial convinces them they want.” “Now you can stay home and buy, buy, buy.” “Walter Cronkite was different — he was calm.” “Wolf Blitzer talks like his name sounds.” “I listen to PBS.” “Why?” “I like calmness.” “Now PBS has commercials, too.” “Selling is an art and a science that is the bedrock of communism.” “Nobody teaches our kids how to detect lies.” “We teach kids how to take tests. They learn to shut up, sit still for three hours, and then line up.” “That’s what we do around here.” “Don’t badmouth teachers.” “Right. A lot them are afraid of losing their jobs because they won’t shut up, sit still, and stay in line.” “Let’s go eat.” “I vote for that.” “What are we having?” “Depends.” “Count me out.” PS Clyde Edgerton is the author of 10 novels, a memoir and most recently, Papadaddy’s Book for New Fathers. He is the Thomas S. Kenan III Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at UNCW.

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Hometown

Special Sandhills Delivery Remembering the happiest week of the year

By Bill Fields

A plastic rocking

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF BILL FIELDS

horse was as close as I ever came to getting a pony for Christmas, which is not to say Santa Claus didn’t deliver.

He was as reliable as a birthday, whether we had spoken at Collins Department Store in Aberdeen, at a gathering in the Sunrise Theater for the children of Proctor-Silex workers, or somewhere in Sanford on an out-of-town trip. It didn’t matter if his weight was down or his beard was spotty or his footwear looked more like cheap galoshes than proper North Pole fashion. I gave him a list, and he gave me a candy cane. But during the weeks leading up to Christmas, the anticipation was sweeter than any treat. There was no internet in the 1960s, of course, no method where a world of toys and sporting goods was within a few swipes or keystrokes. But there was no shortage of ways for a kid to discover what was out there, what to pine for. In the run-up to Christmas, the content of commercials on the Saturday morning cartoons shifted from breakfast to playtime, from Frosted Flakes to G.I. Joe. Other things we could see up close, too. I had read most of Great Quarterbacks of the NFL on a shelf in The Country Bookshop before I got it as a gift. I don’t think my parents ever grasped my fascination with a pair of genuine Wilson wristbands at Patch’s Tog Shop. I kept going back to the electronics aisle at the Western Auto, where a reel-to-reel tape recorder seemed like the neatest thing in the world. Stopping in a Sky City discount store while visiting relatives during the holidays offered a wide look at athletic gear, including individual golf clubs that were my start in the game. No place, though, was better than Aberdeen 5 and 10, which had a back room called “Toyland” open during holiday season and was full of Tonka trucks, board games of every stripe and Daisy B-B guns — the kind of things for which the money from an allowance and doing chores would never be enough. That well-stocked dime store was as close as it got to seeing the Sears Wish

Book come to life. It was this annual catalog of What-Seemed-Like-Everything that, once it arrived on the heels of Halloween, I pored over until the pages were crinkled, favorite items circled in Magic Marker. His baseball days over, I knew Ted Williams from the Sears book as a pitchman for the company’s fishing and hunting equipment. How smart Santa Claus must have been, given that he was likely relying on a folding map from a filling station not designed for a presbyopic old fellow. But in a town full of streets named for states up north, he always found mine, regardless if — for my family — it had been a year of college tuition, car repairs or a stove that unexpectedly went on the blink. Santa’s visits were always comfortably complete. He never forgot to fill the red felt stockings with our green-glittered names, and there was a thrill in dumping out the contents to discover a 19-cent ballpoint pen, a few new marbles or a ChapStick. There would be bags of candy, fruit and nuts under the tree, more than we’d see the other 364 days of the year — Hershey’s Kisses and thin mints, navel oranges and tangerines, whole walnuts, pecans and Brazil nuts. After a morning of savoring what Santa had brought — his presents were never wrapped — the afternoon was about sharing with the other kids in the neighborhood. It was the best kind of Show-and-Tell, as long as a Super Ball didn’t go down the storm drain or the Twister mat didn’t get torn during its maiden game. No toy ever quite lived up to its billing on TV or a catalog listing. Some came close, including the tape recorder that Santa splurged on. But if someone can tell me today how to make an Electric Football runner dart for a long gain instead of moving in a wobbly circle, I’m all ears. A real football game, the Orange Bowl, signaled the sad end of the school break. As a new year started, though, we were fueled not only by citrus but a bit of magic that lasted longer than any toy. PS Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north 30 years ago but hasn’t lost his accent.

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December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

T h e E v o lv i n g S p e c i e s

A Time of Light and Latkes A Hanukkah Story

By Amy Lyon

At my fifth-grade

Illustration by harry blair

winter assembly we lined up single file, each with a candle in an aluminum holder, and walked through the darkened auditorium singing, “When you walk through a storm hold your head up high and don’t be afraid of the dark.” At 10 years old I was awed to be entrusted with a live, yellow flame, especially since it was a dark time for me. It was my first year at a new school, and a few classmates, who I thought were new friends, were bullying me.

We sang, “Though your dreams be tossed and blown, walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone.” This reflects the essence of Hanukkah — hope, light and renewal. The Jewish holiday Hanukkah is celebrated for eight days, lighting up the darkest time of the year. During each night at sundown, we light one candle of the eight-pronged candelabra called a menorah, until the eighth night, when all the candles blaze bright. We do this to remember the miracle that happened in Jerusalem 2,200 years ago when the ancient Hebrews, led by Judah the Maccabee, reclaimed the temple in Jerusalem from their enemy. When it was time to light the menorah, the eternal flame, there was only enough oil to last for one night, but instead it lasted for eight. When I was growing up, my family numbered into the dozens, and we’d all gather at my grandparents’ home to light the menorah, exchange gifts, play the holiday game called dreidel and eat special foods. Dreidel is a four-sided spinning top, and on each side is a Hebrew letter that is an acronym for “a great miracle happened here.” The side where the top lands dictates how much of the pot of candy or pennies the spinner gets to take out or put in: all, half, none or the dreaded put one back in. No one goes hungry on Hanukkah, because this is the holiday of the latke, the famed potato pancake. It’s the latke, that is, if you are descendant of the Ashkenazi and trace your roots to Eastern Europe, as does my family. Or, if you’re from the Sephardim branch, who long ago migrated south from the Middle East through the warmer Mediterranean countries, then your family fries up doughnuts, called sufganiyot. One way or another the holiday is a deep-fried affair. That winter I was surely in my grandmother’s kitchen helping make

the latkes, since her kitchen was the center of my universe and — in essence — still is. Nana was always putting on, wearing or taking off an apron, and there was always a kind, accepting smile on her face. On Hanukkah everyone wanted to be in the kitchen, if not as a self-anointed latke maker, then hanging out at the threshold to snatch one of the sizzling pancakes fresh from the pan. Latkes are a simple affair I learned to make by watching Nana’s hands as she laboriously grated potato and onion, delicately broke open the eggs and — with practiced elegance — flicked just enough leavening agent, sprinkled snowflakes of flour, added a pinch of salt and flaked in black pepper. She’d cup just enough batter in the palm of her hands, squeeze out excess liquid, and drop it into the pan of hot oil. Then she’d watch and wait. At just the right moment, when edges began to brown, she’d pat the pancake once or twice with her spatula. Then, when she knew it was right, she’d flip it over, pat it again and let the other side get crispy. And from there to the platter with the topping of choice. There are two camps when it comes to latke toppings, the savories who enjoy sour cream, or the sweeties who prefer applesauce. I fall into the applesauce group, preferably homemade. In my 20s I opened Amy Cooks for You, a specialty food store and catering company, and for Hanukkah we turned out scores of latkes, of course my Nana’s recipe. In the years when my son, Max, was growing up, we started the tradition of having our own Hanukkah party for friends and family. Along the way, the simple brass menorah that I received as a bat-mitzvah gift the year I turned 13 was joined by a paper doll of Judah the Maccabee, the warriorhero with honeycombed pants, shield and a long sword. One year the guests numbered close to 50, which made it a 250-latke occasion. It isn’t Hanukkah unless the aroma of fried onions and potatoes soak into the furniture and draperies, emanating for days. This year I’m in particular need of the warmth and inspiration of the gleaming brass menorah, of traditions and remembrance of miracles. In February my mother died and my internal light is dimmed by a rendering sadness. I look forward to placing the tattered-but-persistent paper Judah the Maccabee on my table, spinning the dreidel and grating, flicking, sprinkling just the right amount to make the latkes. And when we light the candles of the menorah, once again, the darkness will be dispelled. PS Amy Lyon is the author of The Couple’s Business Guide, How to Start and Grow a Small Business Together and In A Vermont Kitchen, Foods Fresh From Farms, Forests, and Orchards. She’s lived in Wilmington for ten years and can be reached at amylyon@gmail.com.

PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

December 2016

V i n e W i sd o m

A Glorious Glühwein Christmas Add a little “glowing wine” to your holiday traditions

By Robyn James

This holiday season, consider add-

ing some European customs to your festivities for an Old World feel. Here’s a concoction that dates back to the 1400s in Germany and the 1300s in cookbooks in Great Britain.

Glühwein, known throughout Europe and South America by many other names, is a staple at Christmas and throughout the winter months. Glühwein literally means “glowing wine” in German and is reported to be originated by folks who had red wine that was on the cusp of spoiling, so they added cinnamon sticks, cloves, star anise, oranges and sugar, then heated the wine up to make it palatable so it would last longer. Occasionally they would drink it “mit Schuss” (with a shot) of rum or another liquor. The glowing wine term stems from the contraption (irons with long handles) they used to heat up over a fire and then dip into the Glühwein mix to mull it (warm it up). Throughout all the little villages in Germany, there are pockets of charming outdoor markets that sell goods and feature their own Glühwein by the glass and the bottle during the holidays. Each individual market has its personal recipe of Glühwein and the signature little pottery mug you can purchase to drink its particular Glühweins. They are coveted German souvenirs. What food does Germany pair up with Glühwein? Yum, “Lebkuchen,” a chewy German spice cake, along with roasted almonds, potato pancakes and “stollen,” a very dense fruitcake. In Sweden the typical accompaniment is gingerbread and “Lussebullar,” a type of sweet bun with saffron and raisins. Norway pairs its Glühwein with a traditional cold rice pudding. Glühwein is not exclusive to Germany and England; it is common in the Alsace region of France and many other European countries, including Sweden, Denmark, Romania and Hungary. They all have their native names and twists on the recipes. In France it is referred to as “vin chaud,”

meaning “hot wine.” The French back off on the honey and sugar in their Glühwein, preferring a drier version. It’s not the norm but you can find some German markets that sell white Glühwein, and a little bit is imported to the United States. A small amount of spices and fruits are just infused into a full-bodied white wine. While Glühwein is a very traditional drink for the entire Christmas holidays, there is a traditional German version for New Year’s Eve called “Feuerzangenbowle” that uses the same recipe but incorporates a rum-soaked, cone-shaped sugar loaf that is set on fire and drips into the wine. In Great Britain they traditionally use a combination of orange, lemon, cinnamon, nutmeg, star anise, cloves, cardamom and ginger. They may boil the spices in sugar syrup before they add the red wine. They have been known to blend the spices with port, brandy or ginger wines. They often use a tea bag of spices added to the heated wine and served in porcelain or glass mugs with a garnish of an orange slice studded with cloves. St. Lorenz winery out of the Mosel region of Germany exports its Christkindl Glühwein into the United States in a colorful one-liter bottle priced under $10. This wine is already infused with cinnamon, cloves, oranges, lemon and sugar so all you have to do is gently warm it up and break out the gingerbread cookies! Give Glühwein a try this holiday season! PS Robyn James is a certified sommelier and proprietor of The Wine Cellar and Tasting Room in Southern Pines. Contact her at robynajames@gmail.com.

December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

In The Spirit

The Spirit of Giving A little tippling under the tree

By Tony Cross

This time of year is stressful. I don’t

Photograph by Erin Brady

think I need to delve into the reasons why, but one thing is for sure: Alcohol consumption increases during the holidays. Everyone has his or her reasons, and many are the same, but I’ll tell you mine. Even though I gripe about all the Christmas commercials in every advertisement from mid-October through the new year, the truth is, I like it. I enjoy gift-giving too much; I put an extreme amount of pressure on myself to get the “perfect” gift for my friends and loved ones. If you are like me, I hope these gift ideas will please the budding mixmaster on your list. Fair Game Beverage Co. Carolina Agricole Rum 375 ml, $23 Distiller Chris Jude from Fair Game Beverage Co. has been in the distilling biz for about two years now, and keeps surprising me with his fantastic new spirits. In June, he released an amber rum made with Panela cane sugar. In September, Fair Game released a very small batch (887 bottles only) of North Carolina’s first rum agricole. Now, rhum agricole (the French term) is typically produced in the Caribbean and translates to “agriculture rum.” Fresh sugarcane is used when making this rum, and Chris gets his from Catoe Farm, in Middendorf, South Carolina. He describes this rum as “slightly sweet, grassy,

and just a little bit funky.” I couldn’t agree more. This is a great sipper, and a lovely base for any rum-style cocktail or punch. Ask your local ABC to get you a bottle before they’re all gone!

Ice Cube Trays, Southern Whey Some might find large ice cube molds a bit odd, or even pretentious. Ice is ice, right? Wrong. Having the wrong type of ice in your glass can definitely ruin your drink. How’s that? Let’s first start with your freezer. If your ice is exposed to different odors from some dinner experiment that you froze back in 2015, those aromas will seep into your ice. Make sure to keep a tidy freezer, and use filtered water. It does make a difference. The style and size of your ice is a crucial element when playing bartender. Shaved ice is wet, and will quickly over-dilute your drink. What’s the point of shelling out extra money for a fine spirit when all you’re going to do is ruin it with bad ice? Easy fix: Take a stroll over to Southern Whey in downtown Southern Pines. In addition to brandied cherries, bitters and my own TONYC syrup, they carry ice molds. Large blocks of ice (think 2x2 inch) keep your fine whiskey cold, while slowly diluting your drink as time travels on.

Yarai Mixing Glass, Koriko Hawthorne Strainer, Hoffman Barspoon, Cocktailkingdom.com, $77 For the negroni, old-fashinoned, or Manhattan lover, this is the gift for them. Let’s start with the mixing glass. The Yarai has many different styles and sizes. I’m recommending their more basic style. It holds 19 ounces, so when ice is added, you can stir a couple of cocktails at a time. The glass is thick, and dishwasher safe. I’ve had mine for almost four years. The barspoon is made from stainless steel, and is very lightweight. Paired with the mixing glass, you’ll be able to stir cocktails with ease. I’m choosing the Koriko strainer for two reasons, the first being it’s a perfect fit into the Yarai glass when you’re about to strain the liquid into the

In The Spirit

glass. Another reason to pick this strainer is that the coils are tightly wound to catch the smallest of ice granules, herbs or anything else you wouldn’t want floating on top of your shaken cocktail. Bonus use: The two holes above the coils allows you to do a split pour. Go ahead, and show off.

Barolo Chinato, Nature’s Own, $42

Contemporary • traditional • HandWrougHt

A few years back, I toyed around with the idea of putting a “Baller Manhattan” cocktail on my menu. The thought was to use a high-end rye whiskey, with a touch of hard-to-get absinthe, and the finest vermouth. The vermouth would have been Barolo Chinato. This really is luxury, folks: a D.O.C.G. (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) Barolo that’s infused with rhubarb, cardamom, ginger, cinchona bark, cocoa, and spices. This fortified wine is incredible on its own, but pair it with homemade chocolate pudding, and forget about it. Now, back to that Manhattan: The complexity of this vermouth elevates the cocktail to another level. Wine distributing company Bordeaux Fine & Rare can deliver this to any bar and restaurant, but for the home imbiber, we’ve got you covered at Nature’s Own. Needless to say, I opted out of the high-end Manhattan drink, but instead used the Barolo for another drink, The Green Beret, in honor of my father, friends and other ass-kickers of the nation. I have two versions of this cocktail; one is shaken and the other is stirred. Both contain Green Chartreuse. Here’s the recipe of the stirred version that includes Barolo Chinato.

The Green Beret Green Chartreuse 1 1/2 ounce TOPO Eight Oak Whiskey 3/4 ounce cocoa nib-infused Campari 1/2 ounce Dolin Rouge 1/4 ounce Barolo Chinato Lemon peel Take a double old-fashioned glass and rinse it with Green Chartreuse. Do this by pouring the Chartreuse (or misting it) into the glass, swirling it around so it touches almost every interior surface, before tossing it out. Be sure to use the minimal amount, so you do not waste any of this goodness. In a mixing glass (like the Yarai), combine all other ingredients, add ice, and stir until liquid is cold, and proper water dilution is achieved. Place a large cube of ice in your rinsed glass, and strain the liquid from the mixing vessel into the glass. Express the oils from a peel of lemon over the cocktail, dropping the peel into the drink afterward. PS

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December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

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December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

P l e as u r e s o f L i f e

A Christmas Tale By Sam Walker

Before Chaptico,

Maryland, became a quaint village amid old manor houses and rich farmland, it was a gathering spot for Native Americans to hunt and fish the waters of a tributary of the great river that flows southeast from what would become the nation’s capital.

On high ground beyond the water a church was built in 1640. Fields were cleared and planted as stalwart people began to work the land and waters. They still do. This tract of Lord Proprietary acreage was overseen by High Sheriff Sir Philip Key, great-grandfather of Francis Scott Key, who emigrated from England in 1726. Ten years later the “old” church was replaced with a handsome brick structure designed by Christopher Wren, architect of St. Paul’s in London, or so the story goes. The front porch beneath the steeple and belfry led to high arched 10-inch-thick doors that opened to reveal rows of boxed pews and a raised altar at the east end. The bell tolled each Sunday calling folks to worship. It still does. The churchyard holds the remains of both gentry and scoundrels, including the pirate Gilbert Ireland, who was buried according to his wishes in the upright position. A wrought iron chair rests beside a family headstone awaiting the ghost of a woman who comes to keep watch. The British savaged the town on their way to burn the capital during the War of 1812, stabling their horses inside the church. During the Civil War a Confederate spy was granted sanctuary there by a church lady from a nearby manor. Gradually, homes framed the village side roads, a post office opened, and later a country doctor began his practice. The village market, a way station for locals and travelers, justifiably boasted about its fried chicken. One year the doctor organized a way to mark the holiday season by lighting a large evergreen at the main crossroads. Folks gathered for carols and to swap stories, but none better than the time the little church decided to revive the Christmas pageant.

Costumes were sewn. Children cast for parts — though some balked at their assigned role. Rehearsals commenced. The simple design of a narrative accompanying the Nativity tableau, with the organ leading familiar carols, promised all would come off without a hitch. The steeple bell rang out the Sunday welcome and the church was jampacked. Lights dimmed and quiet settled in. “O Come, All Ye Faithful” boomed forth. Heads turned and necks craned as angels in white holding tobacco sticks affixed with large glittering stars crowded into the altar area. Another carol welcomed all sizes of shepherds. The disgruntled one, who had wanted to be Mary, chose that moment to express creative differences and walked out in a huff. While angels and shepherds jostled for position during yet another carol and some reverent narration, the audience beamed as Mary and Joseph arrived. She cradled a swaddled doll to be gently laid in a strawfilled milk crate set between two chairs that ordinarily held the posteriors of clergy, or a visiting bishop. Even before the three kings finished their march, things began to unravel. It seems Mary had been up all night with a fever and was now falling asleep at her post, nearly dropping the unraveling baby. Ever alert, Joseph snatched the child by one arm then poked Mary with the other to wake her up. She, at that point, simply left. Dismayed, Joseph took this as his cue to follow her, leaving the baby face down in the bishop’s chair. When the tiniest shepherd loudly appealed — “Daddy, I’ve got to pee!” — all the heavenly host and abiding shepherds came undone and so did the audience. Everyone stood for a heartfelt “Joy to the World.” The narrator wished all a Merry Christmas, and the little church exploded into thunderous applause with hugs all around as Santa arrived at the top of a ladder on a firetruck. PS Sam Walker, a retired minister, maintains a curiosity about life and is an old friend of PineStraw.

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December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

T h e k i t c h e n g ard e n

The Gift of Garden Presents for the kitchen gardener in your life

By Jan Leitschuh

Gardening is like any passion — it comes with snazzy and useful accoutrements.

If you are gifting someone with a kitchen gardening passion, your selections range from stocking stuffer to “oh, honey!” Dial your appropriate dose. Anyone who grows vegetables loves fresh food, and handling the fruits of one’s labors is more a pleasure than a chore. Chopping, scraping, dicing, peeling, julienning — all render the raw garden product into components for a terrific meal. So, I’d put a great kitchen knife for food prep right up there with the garden hoe. My go-to tool in a kitchen full of expensive, passed-down Henckels knives is a simple and lightweight ceramic paring knife. It’s sharp as hell, lightweight, handy and nimble, has a great feel in the hand, is tough enough to halve a squash or fine enough to peel an apple. It makes vegetable prep a delight. It’s inexpensive. Ceramic knives are fashioned from a zirconia powder, and then fired and sharpened. If a diamond is a 10 on the hardness scale, then a ceramic knife is an 8.5. Ceramic knives don’t corrode, and they keep an edge longer than steel. Nor do they react to fruit acids. Beyond that, the indefinable, tactile pleasure of dicing an eggplant or a tough-skinned tomato with a sharp ceramic is the element that keeps me reaching for my light, white-bladed knife over and over again. Gardener’s hands are hard-working tools, too. Exposure to mud, cold and sand is rough on hands, cuticles and nails, drying them ragged. Thorns and stickers poke holes in our tender epidermis, forcing us to get a tetanus booster (yes, it’s possible to get tetanus from a thorn stick). So, gloves are always a thoughtful gift, even as we lose the last pair in the junk drawer and wear a mismatched glove on our right hand to pull the spiny okra or cut free a thorny eggplant. You could have a fight on your hands. A true gardener loves the feel of good soil — cool, fluffy, rich and free of rocks, sifting through the fingers. It’s

an aesthetic pleasure. Unfortunately, the practice is rather hard on the hands. Most gardeners compromise, starting out in their gloves and then shucking the right one the moment a delicate task such as tying twine is required. The discarded glove lies hidden under the peppers, getting rained on and baked, until discovered, ruined, in the fall when pulling up the plants. So, the timing is right for a new pair. A simple cotton pair from the hardware store is the first option. They are, er, dirt cheap and work for general use. They help prevent the worst effects, but can quickly become sodden when transplanting in damp spring soil. If you choose these, be rash, buy a half-dozen for cycling through the wash. The more useful sort of glove has a waterproof barrier that keeps hands dry. The palms and fingers of a cotton glove are dipped in some sort of rubbery compound, usually nitrile, and function as a pretty good barrier. They look cool, grip quite well, and since the back of the hand is cotton and not smothered in nitrile, breathe fairly well. They also come in candy colors — turquoise, bright yellow, purple, pink, etc. — so you can buy several pairs for a stocking effect. The most luxurious gloves are goatskin leather. For some reason goatskin is popular as a garden glove material, perhaps because it is both thin enough to be useful, soft enough to be comfortable, and tough enough to allow one to pull weeds or clip thorny things. It breathes better than the rubbery gloves. Extra little luxuries are a cotton lining, which the Brits favor, and a little drawstring adjustment at the wrist for best fit. They are still fairly cheap, $20 to $30. A padded kneeling bench is a terrific gift, also around $20 to $30. A good one has handholds on the side to assist those trick knees in rising. Once up, you can flip it over as a little padded sitting bench. A gift certificate to a seed company will ensure a pleasant January, flipping through seed catalogs by the fire compiling the shopping list. Sniff around to discover their favorites. Moving up the gift scale, every gardener would find a pruner handy for snipping tough stems like eggplant, pruning grape vines or fruit trees and the like, besides general home landscape use. The gold standard here is the Swiss-

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December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

T h e k i t c h e n g ard e n

made Felco 2 bypass pruners. Hardened steel, with the classic red handle, these pruners are endlessly handy. There is a notch for cutting wire. They can be kept super sharp, and clean cuts help wood heal. This is a professional grade tool. Get a hip holster while you are at it, so your gardener can feel like a boss and never be at a loss. What Sandhills gardener wouldn’t welcome a load of really good compost? We’re not talking the “topsoil” sold in bags at the discount store but real, honest-to-goodness eggshell compost. I’ve used Brooks Contractor of Goldston, and split a dumptruck load with a friend. T. H. Blue may also have something for your giftee. But know what you are getting into. The truck needs access to your garden to dump, and you’ll need some energy to spread it and till it in. Come to think of it, renting a strong body with a tiller for a day is not a bad idea for a welcome gift. But back to compost. There are other businesses and barns in the area that may have compost. Call around to locally owned garden centers, ask friends, ask N.C. Cooperative Extension. And if you don’t want to deal with a large pile, it’s perfectly fine to gift a few bags of mushroom compost to dig at leisure. Finally, we come to the “oh, wow!” gift for any gardener. That would be a small walk-in greenhouse. I’ve seen them as inexpensive as $100 (JCPenney, out of plastic) and you go up from there. My little pleasure was a sturdy plastic house called The Germinator (about $300), and it tucked into a sheltered nook with the garage on the north and the house on the west. Because it was sheltered, it required only a few nights of supplemental heat from a portable heater with an extension cord to keep things from freezing. Black 50-gallon pickle barrels filled with water were the pillars of my back shelves and offered thermal mass. They released heat at night and absorbed it during the day. My husband gifted me a remote thermometer with a readout I put in the kitchen window so I always knew when things were too hot or too cold. A greenhouse really needs flat ground to perform well. You also need to monitor temperature and adjust manually on these simple structures. Fancier models offer sturdier walls and more automated temperature controls. These are the gifts that keep on giving. And, best of all, you may be the recipient next summer of some mighty fine produce. Visions of sugarplums don’t hold a candle to that first homegrown tomato. Win-win! PS Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

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December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

P r o p e r E n g l i sh

The Proof of the Pudding And don’t spare on the Christmas Brandy Butter

By Serena Kenyon Brown

“I am always

surprised to hear British cooking maligned by Americans: So many of our best dishes, especially in the South, are absolutely English.” — John Martin Taylor, Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cooking.

If you happen to be leafing through the pages of an early American book of receipts for your fall and winter menu plans, you might be struck by how many of the dishes we still eat today. Fricassee, velvet cakes, pilau, fried oysters, kohlrabi. There are also a large number of dishes that graced the American table in days of yore, but would now be considered strictly British fare. Mrs. Rorer’s Cookbook of 1886 gives a recipe for shepherd’s pie and another for bread sauce. In The Virginia House-wife, first published circa 1824, Mrs. Randolph offers the reader a glorious receipt for using up leftover roast beef. And the Yorkshire pudding? Sure enough, it’s there. Look for Batter Pudding in Mrs. Rorer’s Cookbook. Or try Mrs. Rundell’s American Domestic Cookery (1823). That venerable lady also offers a Batter Pudding with Meat that sounds a lot like the British classic Toad-in-the-Hole. While plenty of British dishes have remained part of American cuisine, many more have fallen away. In those early books there are whole chapters devoted to puddings, yet open up a modern American cookbook and you’ll be unlikely to find much beyond the familiar bread pudding. A pudding might be crumbly and cakey or oozily moist. It is generally boiled or steamed, but can also be baked. The sweet variety tends to be cooked in cotton cloth as opposed to the intestine or stomach that traditionally encases the savory kind. As the nights stretch into the cooling days, few things make a more warming, rib-sticking ending to a feast than a dark, glossy pudding. It’s time for a restoration. The holidays aren’t far away. Let’s return the plum pudding to the American table. You’ll find many delectable recipes, both old and new, online — look for “Christmas pudding” as “plum” is an archaic term for a raisin or currant. If you’d like to try your hand at an authentic 19th-century plum pudding, something Dickens himself, the godfather of the holiday banquet, would have recognized, Mrs. Hale gives the most comprehensive method in The Good Housekeeper of 1839: “As Christmas comes but once a year, a rich plum pudding may be permit-

ted for the feast; though it is not healthy food; and children should be helped very sparingly. The following is a good receipt. “Chop half a pound of suet very fine; stone half a pound of raisins; half a pound of currants nicely washed and picked; four ounces of bread crumbs; four ounces of flour; four eggs well beaten; a little grated nutmeg — mace and cinnamon pounded very fine; half a teaspoonful of salt; four ounces of sugar; one ounce candied lemon; same of citron. “Beat the eggs and spices well together; mix the milk with them by degrees, then the rest of the ingredients; dip a fine, close linen cloth into boiling water, and place it in a hair-sieve; flour it a little, then pour in the batter and tie it up close; put it into a pot containing six quarts of boiling water; keep a tea-kettle of boiling water and fill up your pot as it wastes; be sure to keep it boiling, at least six hours—seven would not injure it. “This pudding should be mixed an hour or too (sic) before it is put on to boil; it makes it taste richer.” What would also make it taste richer is the addition of a fine brandy. In a brief survey of historic receipts it seems Southern cooks were much more freehanded with the liquor than their Yankee contemporaries. In this grand tradition the British still so saturate their puddings that they can be made a year or more in advance. Silver charms are stirred in for luck. Especially lucky for the person who finds them — and their dentist. Before serving, the pudding is doused with yet more brandy and set alight. Carry in the pudding triumphant, blue flames dancing around it (though do be careful if you’ve decorated with a lot of greenery). Allow the flames to subside, then dig in. Whether your pud be Prohibition or 100 proof, you will need some brandy butter to accompany it. A word of warning — you may find your holiday guests making late-night raids on your fridge for this. It’s irresistible, especially in wee hour spoonfuls straight from the saucer.

Brandy Butter

4 ounces softened unsalted butter 4 ounces powdered, caster or soft brown sugar 2 tablespoons brandy Mix the butter and sugar and beat until soft. Add the brandy very slowly and mix it in. Cover and refrigerate. It will keep for about a week, though it won’t be around that long. PS Serena Kenyon Brown is an Anglo-Southern writer. Before her recent return to Blighty, she was senior editor at PineStraw magazine in Southern Pines.

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December 2016P��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Notes From the Porch

The Cold Truth About Winter All I want for Christmas is a little warm weather

By Bill Thompson

Some folks think that to really catch

the Christmas spirit we need to have cold weather. Well, as Sportin’ Life says in “Porgy and Bess”:“It ain’t necessarily so.”

The main thing I catch from cold weather is a cold, the sneezing, wheezing, coughing kind. Although my doctor tells me we don’t catch a cold because of the cold weather, I don’t believe him. He says the cold is a virus we catch from other people; that it is passed person to person. I look at that kind of like the chicken and the egg. Somebody had to catch it first from something, and my money’s on cold, wet weather. It can be difficult to summon the Christmas spirit in cold weather. One thing that is not conducive to a merry season is the effect on water pipes. I know that frozen water pipes are not a factor for many people, particularly those who have city water and insulation. But for people like me who live in old houses out in the country, frozen pipes are a fact of life. It is hard to be jolly and joyful when you can’t get the shower to work or even get enough water to fill a basin to wash or shave your face. I know it sounds incongruous for me to be complaining about the lack of modern conveniences, since I am always extolling the virtues of the past. However, in those olden days, not having the convenience of a shower was something you more easily could predict before you went to bed and could, therefore, make adequate arrangements for your ablutions. If, by luck, you are able to make yourself presentable to the public without water in the house, you must face the challenge of getting from the door of the house, across the porch, down the steps and to your car. I have heard that in

Minnesota (a place of forbidding cold and icy mornings) folks can just push a remote control button and their cars will start automatically and everything will be nice and warm and ready to go when the driver gets to the car. (I know. We can buy such conveniences down here, too, but, unfortunately, I didn’t think about that when I bought my car in the middle of a Carolina summer.) I don’t even have a garage or carport at my house. My car sits outside all night accumulating frost and/or ice on the windshield. That means that after I have negotiated my way from the door of my house, across the slick porch and down the slippery steps, I have to scrape the windshield and start the car and give the motor enough time to warm up and give the heater time to, at least, take the chill off the car seat. Scraping the ice off the windshield with a putty knife is not a good idea. It takes a long time to clear ice with an instrument that is only one inch wide, and there is a good chance that you will put permanent scratches on the glass. Somebody told me a shortcut to getting the ice off the windshield was to turn on the windshield wipers and throw a glass of water on the windshield while the blades are moving. That is not a good idea. First of all, windshield wiper blades are made of rubber and they stick to the icy glass, allowing the arm to detach itself and scrape its steel edge across the glass. Secondly, the only thing the water does is clear the frost away, leaving a film of ice which, though transparent, still hinders a clear vision of the road and creates a blinding glare if the sun is shining. Of course, the main reason I don’t do the water thing is my pipes are frozen; I don’t have any water. Fortunately, the Christmas spirit, which, like a cold, I do seem to catch year after year, is warm enough to overcome even the chilliest weather. Merry Christmas. PS Bill Thompson is a frequent — and wise — contributor to Salt magazine.

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December 2016P��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Out of the Blue

The Gift of Giving

What and how to give? Our field expert wraps up the subject

By Deborah Salomon

The art of gifting is a gift — but one that can be learned. Or at least improved. The whole Black Friday shopping extravaganza gives me the willies; this puzzles, since my list is short and usually complete long before Turkey Day. I do enjoy watching people shop, however, while questioning their motives. Are the gifts required? Are they governed by price? What catches the eye? Do children even know about toys that don’t come doubled shrink-wrapped in a box? I gladly share my gift giving and receiving experiences, which apply not only to Christmas, but birthdays, anniversaries and other occasions. Some you won’t like.

When in doubt, be practical: I’ll never forget the Mothers Day when I begged the family, please no flowers, overpriced restaurant dinner or bathrobe. I really, really needed a good vacuum cleaner. With three small kids and a shaggy dog I would use it every day. They were appalled, which meant whatever they planned suited them, not necessarily me. To this day, when I tell the story, people express sympathy. Rubbish. I loved that vacuum cleaner. Listen: I guarantee that sometime during the year your recipient will drop hints. “I burned another skillet — just can’t seem to find a good one.” I exchange small gifts with a high school friend in Atlanta. She travels in the dinner-party fast lane, tells me she loves to bring an unusual wine. Lo and behold, I found some adorable wine totes in the supermarket — even an insulated one — at about $7 apiece. Three bags made a lovely gift. Never “surprise” your honey with something expensive but difficult to return: My daughter’s car was in dire straits so I gave her mine, figuring I’d keep the terminal one going, somehow. It died. I was stranded for weeks. Then one night my husband drove up in a new car, which sent me over the moon, except it was bottom-of-the-line sub-sub-compact, two-door, no radio or AC. So sweet, but for the same price, I could have found a better deal. Dollars don’t count: We were invited to a 50th birthday party. I was instructed to purchase a gift that looked its substantial price. Instead, I suggested digging up some old photos (mainly sports teams), having them blown up (with funny captions) and laminated to fiberboard. My idea got shot down, in favor of a cashmere sweater. Well, didn’t somebody else do a similar collage that was the life of the party, at half the price. Vow today to shop all year: Last summer I saw a wooden box, about 7-by-10 inches, with the letter M carved into the top, on a clearance shelf, for $6. I filled it with old-timey candies from Fresh Market and gave it to my “M”

buddy. She was thrilled! Haven’t you walked through a store — any store — and spotted a beach towel, a scarf, a fancy flashlight, a college or professional team T-shirt, a canvas grocery tote, a golf head cover, a pottery coffee mug usually on sale, all right there, no Google or Amazon required? Then you can get up at 2 a.m., stand in line, stampede the doors and grab that obscenely huge TV, go home and enjoy it because your shopping’s done. Make a dream come true: One gift-giving experience stands out. My father loved watching sports. From a desperately poor background, he didn’t just pinch pennies, he hugged them. In the mid-1950s, we were the last on the block to buy a TV. Twenty years later, my father resisted replacing it with color because, “Color hasn’t been perfected.” Football, boxing, baseball remained monochromatic. I knew the real reason. So on his 80th birthday I contacted a Zenith (“The best,” he believed) dealer and arranged to have a color model with remote control delivered and installed. I could hear the smile in his voice when he called. “Y’know, I think color’s been perfected,” he said, above the roar in the background. Suffer the children: I pity them their surfeit of riches. I grew up in New York City, in the 1940s, as World War II ended and post-war prosperity reigned. Manhattan was a magical place, a secular cathedral to Christmas for people of all faiths. The animated department store windows along Fifth Avenue; the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall followed by the Nativity Pageant with real donkeys; gorgeous shopping bags from Lord & Taylor, B. Altman, Best & Co.; real chestnuts roasting over real fires tended by vendors in raggedy gloves. Ice skating at Rockefeller Center followed by ridiculously expensive hot chocolate and almond bear claws at the café surrounding the rink. But my happiest memory was knowing that P.L. Travers had published a new Mary Poppins in time for Christmas. I could hardly wait. For the first few days I flipped pages, glancing at illustrations, to preview the joy. Then I read it at one sitting, again and again, until memorized. I hope today’s children can tear themselves away from Kindle and similar electronic devices to savor — nay, worship — a book the way I worshipped Mary Poppins. Please find one for the child on your list. Minimal gift wrapping. No shipping, handling, downloading or charging. Season-spanning. One size fits all. Pure magic in a format that although not new, has definitely been perfected. PS Deborah Salomon is a staff writer for PineStraw and The Pilot. She may be reached at debsalomon@nc.rr.com.

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December 2016 P��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Mom, Inc.

A Delicious Mystery

What’s really in the basement of the Amish house we rent every Christmas?

By Sara Phile

illustration by romey petite

A three-story white renovated 19th century

farmhouse sits on over 100 acres of rolling hills in Geauga County, Ohio. When you walk into the entryway of the farmhouse, you will see around six pairs of assorted snow boots to the left, a closet on the right, and a small bathroom straight ahead. Walk a few more feet and you will turn left into a small kitchen with deep white sinks. After walking through the kitchen you will enter the dining room, with a large Amish-style table, not with chairs, but benches, lined on each side, a bedroom straight ahead, and a narrow set of wooden stairs that lead to three additional bedrooms and another bathroom. My favorite room, the glassed-in porch, complete with a porch swing, is to the right, and faces the front of the house. A large piano and fireplace decorate the living room. Its assorted bookshelves with a hodgepodge of books line various walls. Murder

mysteries, gardening books, histories of the First World War, and even a three-ring binder with around 40 typed pages of the history of the farmhouse all contribute to the quaint, cozy place.

The last two Christmases my husband, boys and I spent a week in the farmhouse, just a few miles from where my in-laws live. We rented the house, and my in-laws came over to eat, play board games, eat, watch movies, eat, open presents, and eat some more. My husband grew up among the Amish, so he is used to the horses and buggies on the roads, the large Amish farms, and the Pennsylvania Dutch language. I, on the other hand, along with my boys, remain fascinated. When my youngest son was around 3, he would yell out, “Look! Cowboys!” whenever he saw Amish men. Over the years our interest in the Amish people and their lifestyle hasn’t waned. The farmhouse is maintained by an Amish family across the road, and during our holiday stays at the house, they have checked in with us periodically. The first time they appeared at the front door, I was so startled that when my sister-in-law asked who it was, I just motioned for her to come quickly. She scurried over, opened the door, laughed at me, and Fanny and Jeremiah stomped snow off their boots on the entryway rug and said they needed to get something out of the basement. The door to the basement is on the left side of the kitchen. After disappearing for a few minutes, they trudged back up the creaky stairs with a few gallons of Neapolitan ice cream. “Thank you! Enjoy your stay!” they said, as they smiled and left. It was then that I noticed the sign. It was handwritten in black Sharpie on a piece of white printer paper and taped to the door to the basement. “Don’t go

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December 2016P��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Mom, Inc.

downstairs, private.” David, my oldest son, and I saw it at the same time. His eyes widened, and I knew what he was thinking. “You want to go down there, Mom, don’t you?” “Yes. Do you?” “Yes, can we?” “I don’t know. We may get in trouble.” “What do you think is down there?” “I don’t know. Ice cream, for sure. But I don’t know what else.” “Can we see?” We discussed the ramifications. What if there were people actually living down there? Now that we thought about it, we had been hearing strange sounds in the farmhouse. Some scuffling around and it sounded like it was coming from downstairs. Hmmmm . . . What if there were dead bodies down there? What if what we found scared us forever? Or maybe there was nothing but freezers of ice cream. But if that was the case, why the sign? Maybe the Amish family was comprised of ice cream addicts who just needed a place for their stash and didn’t want anyone else eating it. Or, maybe there was a whole new world down there. Maybe . . . Maybe . . . Maybe . . . We wanted to check it out when no one else was around because certainly others would disapprove of our plan. We made an appointment to meet in the kitchen one night after every one else went to bed. Except that particular night we both fell asleep early. We tried a few more times, but our plans were halted by nosy family members. We left the farmhouse that year with no answers. As the following year passed, maybe once a month I thought of the farmhouse. I smiled at the fun memories we had there. But then that nagging question reappeared, what is in that basement? I thought David had forgotten about it, but one night in June, as he was getting ready for bed, he asked, “What do you think is in the basement in that Amish house? Want to see next time we go?” At the farmhouse last Christmas, the sign was still there, black letters formed into words: “Don’t go downstairs; private.” The sign looked more intense, more pronounced that year. Was it the same sign? Or did someone rewrite it? David’s and my discussion continued. Should we check it out or not? We debated. We planned. But we never actually followed through. Something kept coming up. A few days ago mom-in-law called and asked about our Christmas plans. There’s a really good chance this will be our third annual year at the Amish farmhouse. When I told the boys, David smiled and his eyes twinkled. “Mom, do you think . . . ?” he trailed off, but raised an eyebrow. “Maybe.” PS Sara Phile teaches English composition at Sandhills Community College.

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December 2016P��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

B I R D WA T CH

Merry, White-Breasted and Bright For the white-breasted nuthatch, there’s no nut too tough to crack

By Susan Campbell

What is that little bird scrambling, upside

down along that branch — or hanging wrong-side-up from the suet feeder? A nuthatch of course! Take a closer look. If it is a mixture of gray, black and white, it is likely a white-breasted nuthatch. This handsome bird’s bright white breast contrasts with a gray back and wings — capped off with a black nape, neck and crown. Males and females, young and older birds — they all look identical.

White-breasteds, with their distintive “yank, yank, yank” calls, can be commonly found throughout most of the United States. The name “nuthatch” is derived from “nut hack,” which describes the way they often feed. Watch how these birds wedge potential food items into crevices in the tree bark and use their powerful bills to work their way into the fleshy, oily tidbits. These energetic little birds may also cache seeds (feeder seeds in particular) during colder weather by jamming dozens into the furrows of the bark of nearby trees. Nuthatches just like their cousins the titmice and chickadees, are cavity dwellers. They love nest boxes and use them not only during the nesting season but for roosting. Family groups of up to six individuals remain together both day and night until early spring. And as a result, they can be quite noisy as they call repeatedly to keep track of one another as they move across the landscape. Furthermore, during the nonbreeding season, they will flock up with titmice and chickadees. There is certainly safety in numbers for all of these small birds. And the more eyes there are, the more likely they’ll find food. These little birds not only eat a variety of seeds but caterpillars during the warmer months. They can readily be attracted to the all-around favorite black-oil

sunflower seed at feeding stations. But they also love suet: high protein food that was once made with the fat that surrounds the kidneys of cows after it’s rendered. The irresistible “no melt” suet I offer is a homemade mix of lard and peanut butter studded with grains. Nuthatches cannot get enough of it – any day of the year! During the winter months, there are actually three species of nuthatches you might expect in our region of the state. The smaller brown-headed nuthatches are also year-round residents of pine forests here, but the more northerly redbreasteds may appear as well. Red-breasted nuthatches only move in our direction in years of poor northerly cone production. This is looking to be one of those years! I have already heard one in Southern Pines and several folks have reported them at their feeders in central North Carolina in recent weeks. These little birds, which are intermediate in size between white-breasteds and brownheadeds, have a white eye line and rosey chests. Red-breasted nuthatches love black-oil sunflower seeds as well as suet. They can be quite feisty and frequently dominate any feeders they take a liking to. Until one or two red-breasteds make an appearance, enjoy the antics of our local nuthatches scrambling around, often upside down, on the oaks and pines!

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December 2016 P��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

S p o r ting Lif e

Black Duck Paradise And three mallards for Christmas Dinner

By Tom Bryant

A brisk wind was blowing out of the

northeast. It had a little bite to it and felt good after the unseasonably warm weather we had been experiencing. Paddle, my yellow Lab, and I were in the backyard loading up the boat. As a matter of fact, Paddle was already in the boat, ready to go. She looked at me whimpering with excitement, wanting to do what she was bred for, go duck hunting.

For me it was the best of all worlds. Tomorrow, duck season would come back in after the early teasers in October and November. Those few short days were just enough to get hunters wired with anticipation for the real season in December. And if that excitement wasn’t enough, it was only six days until Christmas. It’s a wonder I wasn’t in the boat whining with Paddle. We had a good plan. Early in the morning around 4 o’clock, I was to ride up to Hyco Lake, boat in tow, launch at the landing on the north end, duck hunt at our special spot until noon, then motor down to Bubba’s cabin and wait for him to show up toward evening. Bubba’s cabin is located on a creek tributary and sits high on a ridge overlooking the lake. The view in winter with all the leaves off the trees is spectacular. Beginning at the cabin and meandering down the ridge are steps leading to a boathouse and dock where I would moor my little duck boat for the duration of the hunt. Bubba has a big johnboat that we planned to use for the rest of the weekend. It was rare that Bubba missed an opening day, but his textile mill needed him; and try as he might, he couldn’t get away from an important conference call. I would miss his company, but sometimes I enjoy the wild all by myself, and as long as Paddle is along, I rarely get lonesome. My boat is a little Armstrong Wigeon model. She’s only 12 feet long with a

4-foot beam, almost like a layout rig and extremely stable, impossible to turn over. She’s rated for a 10-horse kicker, which will get her up on plane quickly and zip across the water like a little speedboat. With decoys, hunting gear and dog, the little boat is comfortable, and I’ve spent a lot of time in her, pursuing the noble waterfowl. I had already hooked her to the Bronco and was making sure that the fuel tank was full when Linda, my bride, came to the back door with the message that Bubba wanted me to call him back as soon as I could. Wonder what’s going on with that boy, I thought. The decoy spread I planned called for six mallards — hens and drakes, three black ducks, and a couple of Canada geese thrown in just for good measure. I was using my L.L. Bean cork decoys, although they weigh a lot more than the molded plastic models I use when I’m shooting impoundments. On the water, the Bean decoys look more like real ducks. I picked out the ones that I had just had repainted by the Decoy Factory in Maryland. They looked great, and if any ducks were flying in the morning, I was sure they would pay us a visit. It didn’t take long to finish loading the rest of the hunting paraphernalia, then I went inside to give Bubba a call. Paddle refused to leave the boat and would probably stay there until we left in the early morning if I let her. That little dog was excited. “Hey, Bubba, what’s up? I’ve got the boat all loaded and I’ll be trucking out ‘o here at 4 a.m. You sure you can’t go?” “Man, I wish. But duty calls. It also looks as if I can’t get there until late. You know where the cabin key is. Let yourself in and I’ll be there as soon as I can. Steaks and all the fixings are in the fridge. Why don’t you go ahead and grill ’em and I hope to be there in time to help eat ’em. Remember, I like mine rare,” he said, laughing. “I think this is nothing but a ploy to get me to do all the work,” I replied. “If I’m real hungry, I might eat your steak as well as mine.” After a little more conversation about supplies and timing, we rang off and I resumed my efforts getting ready. I slept in the guest room that night, so as not to wake Linda when the alarm clock woke me. By 4:30, Paddle was in her favorite spot, sitting in the

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December 2016 P��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

S p o r ting Lif e

passenger’s seat, and we were on our way to the lake and another great adventure. A half moon was breaking through a low overcast, providing enough light to help in launching the boat; and in record time, I had the little Wigeon tied to the landing dock. I parked the Bronco and trailer next to a fence bordering the gravel lot and was surprised to see that mine was the only vehicle there. I thought for sure there would be more hunters, especially since it was opening day of the late season. The motor fired on the first pull, and I eased away from the landing area, made the turn south and poured on the juice. Running at night in a little boat has a thrill all its own, but it also has dangers that accompany the experience. Constant vigilance to avoid floating debris and other boats had me on the lookout for anything unusual on the horizon. Hyco Lake is a deep-water lake and was built in the early ’60s by Carolina Power and Light Company (now Duke Energy Progress) as a cooling reservoir for their generating plant. Migrating waterfowl use the lake to rest on their way south and are quite prevalent during cold snaps up north. I was hoping the recent snowfall around Maryland would hurry a few my way. Last duck season, Bubba and I discovered a 30-foot-wide water ditch that runs about a mile to the power plant. The canal is used to get cooling water to their generators. It was cabled across to keep out big boats, but our little crafts had no problem getting under. On the east side of the ditch is an opening that leads to a sheltered area of water, almost like a small lake. This is our honey hole, the spot we would later name Black Duck Paradise. The run to the ditch took about 40 minutes, and a grey tint was in the eastern sky as I hurriedly put out the decoys: mallards in a bunch and geese and black ducks off to the side. I pulled the boat into a small slough, and Paddle and I hunkered down under alders that grew on the bank right to the water. We made it just in time to legally shoot and had just got settled with shotgun loaded when whistling wings could be heard right over us. I didn’t dare look up but watched Paddle as her head moved with the flight of the ducks. I could tell that they were circling, so I blew a soft chuckling welcome on my duck call. That did it. They came in low, right in front, wings locked, big yellow legs down like landing gear. It was a classic. Three shots and three big mallards for Christmas dinner. I sent Paddle to retrieve, and she was in the water like an otter. I stood up grinning. It was going to be a great season. PS Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

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December 2016P��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

G o l ft o wn J o u r na l

The Fazio Tradition

North Carolina’s dean of golf course architects reflects on his very productive life

By Lee Pace

To an 18-year-old in the

summer of 1975, Hendersonville was Hicksburg USA and a town lacking any distinction beyond having an excellent high school basketball team (the Bearcats bounced Pinecrest High, yes, that Pinecrest High, in the 1972 state 3-A title game in Durham) and a convenience store on Sixth Avenue quite liberal in dispensing beer to minors. We’d stock up on Budweiser and Slim Jims and cruise up and down Main Street between a city recreation park on the north and the Hardees on the south. I was off to Chapel Hill in the blink of an eye.

“I couldn’t get out of this town fast enough,” I told one of its newer residents some years later. “And I couldn’t get here fast enough,” the fellow replied. It was the early 1990s and golf architect Tom Fazio was showing me around the office he’d opened in Hendersonville in 1985 when, after discovering the appeal of the western North Carolina mountains in designing Wade Hampton in Cashiers in the mid-1980s, he and his wife, Sue, decided the environment was better suited to raise their six children than their previous home in the Palm Beach area of South Florida. Fazio looked out his office window to the west toward the crest of Laurel Park Mountain, golden-tinged on this particular autumn afternoon. “Main Street with a view,” he mused. “What more could you want?”

As I mellowed and matured over the years and returned to visit my mother and marvel over the evolution of downtown Hendersonville — with its serpentine traffic pattern, ceramic bear statues, meticulous landscaping and neat confluence of restaurants and antique shops — I had to admit that Fazio had a point. Often I’d work in a trip back home with a visit to Fazio’s golf architecture firm. Things were so flush as the 1990s golf boom evolved and Fazio had become arguably the world’s foremost modern architect that in 1998 he bought an entire four-story, 1923 neo-classical building at the corner of Main Street and Fourth Avenue and moved his firm’s headquarters to the top floor. I witnessed Fazio Golf Course Designers’ operation in thick and thin. One afternoon in the mid-1990s, Fazio and his staff worked furiously to get some design drawings and documents printed and packaged in time to ship overnight. “Everything builds to a climax waiting for the FedEx guy to come,” Fazio said. And a dozen years later I sat with him in a quieter environment, the golf design business slowing to a crawl during the 2008-09 recession and his staff being lopped off in the aftermath. “What’s different?” he asked rhetorically, cocking his head as if to listen. “The phones aren’t ringing.” On my most recent trip to Hendersonville, on the last Friday of October, I found Fazio in his office signing copies of his 2000 book, Golf Course Design, and minding one of his granddaughters and one of the family dogs. He spoke of the annual winter sojourn to Florida planned for the following week now that all six children are grown and he’s semi-retired — but not until after Halloween night. “Two of my daughters and four grandkids are here,” says Fazio, who lives nearby in Lake Toxaway at least half the year. “We’ll be on Main Street on Halloween night. They block off the streets and have games, trick-or-treating, music, lots of stuff for the kids. The kids have a blast.”

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December 2016P��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

G o l ft o wn J o u r na l

Exactly four decades ago, Fazio and his uncle and golf-design mentor, former PGA Tour player George Fazio, were trying to jump-start a struggling architecture business that had been relegated to remodeling jobs for U.S. Open courses during the early 1970s recession. They were asked to design Pinehurst No. 6 — the resort’s first course away from the village proper — and that course opened in 1979. Soon after Tom took on an ambitious project on the South Carolina coast near Charleston. Wild Dunes was a major success and, presto, his solo career (with George now in retirement) was off and running. On this afternoon, Fazio is ruminating about one simple question: Where have all the years gone? “You blink and all of sudden, your life’s flown by,” he says. He nods toward Nina, his granddaughter. “Just yesterday I was rushing home to see a dance recital. Now that little girl has grown up and has children of her own.” It pains him to look around his universe of friends and clients and see some of his favorites having passed, among them William McKee, the founder of Wade Hampton, dying in 2014 at the age of 62, and Billy Armfield, the founder of Eagle Point in Wilmington, passing this July at the age of 81. “One of my fun jobs over so many years was helping people fulfill their dreams,” Fazio says. “A golf course is a dream for them. We literally build their dreams. It’s really tough for me when we lose guys like this. Every day I go to Wade Hampton, and I can’t believe William McKee is not there. He was younger than me. There’s a vacuum with him not there.” Fazio’s oldest son, 39-year-old Logan, is now leading the design efforts on much of the firm’s work, and long-time associate Tom Marzolf is in charge of a new course at Adare Manor in Ireland, a job where the client essentially has instructed Fazio and Marzolf to build “the Augusta National of Ireland.” Fazio continues as a consulting architect at Augusta National and Pine Valley, and the firm has just completed a course at Davant Plantation near Ridgeland, S.C., and one called Silo Ridge Field Club two hours north of Manhattan. Construction is continuing on The Summit, a high-end residential community outside Las Vegas, and two courses that will occupy the firm in 2017 are set for Long Island and the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas. Logan recently supervised a major renovation to Kasumigaseki Country Club’s East course, the host layout for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. The course opened for play in 1929 and was designed by one of the Golden Age’s leading architects, Charles Hugh Alison. Now at the age of 71, Fazio talks with wide-eyed amazement at the next chapter in travel, technology and the business of designing golf courses. Years ago he refused to travel beyond the boundaries of getting back home for dinner; now he views drone

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December 2016P��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

G o l ft o wn J o u r na l

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clips from Logan of ongoing construction work from far-flung locales. “I show my phone to Sue and say, ‘Can you imagine this? This is live, this is Logan sending us this. We’re looking at a golf hole,’” Fazio says. “He’s showing me how he’s shaping a bunker or moving a tree. Look at this big tree going across the stream, that’s live. It’s unbelievable the technology available. You don’t have to travel as much and go as often.” Fazio has long cast a huge design shadow in the Carolinas and certainly in the Sandhills. There are 18 courses across North Carolina and 22 in South Carolina with the Fazio shingle. In Moore County he’s designed Nos. 4, 6 and 8 at Pinehurst, and 36 holes at Forest Creek Golf Club. “You could take the courses we’ve done in North Carolina or those in South Carolina, and either list would be a nice career for someone,” he says. Next year is going to be an interesting one for Fazio’s North Carolina portfolio as Eagle Point, his 2000 design in Wilmington, will be the site of the Wells Fargo Championship in May, and Quail Hollow in Charlotte, where he has done significant remodeling over the last two decades, will be the venue for the PGA Championship. Then the U.S. Amateur comes to Pinehurst in 2019, with stroke play qualifying being split on Nos. 2 and 8. The latter opened 20 years ago this fall and was dubbed “The Centennial Course” to celebrate Pinehurst’s 100th anniversary. “I was at the Masters one year and I called the office for messages,” Fazio says. “I had a note to call (Pinehurst owner) Bob Dedman. I called him and he asked if I’d be interested in designing No. 8. I was sitting there in one of the great places in golf, Augusta National, and got a call to do a course in another great place in golf, Pinehurst. It was like I had won the Masters. It was a great feeling.” Grandkids, playing golf, some design consultations — it’s a busy life even today for Tom Fazio. We say so long and on my way out of town, I drive past the sprawling Boys & Girls Club complex on Ashe Street, just east of downtown. Over two decades, Fazio has funneled untold dollars into the facility and recently wrote a check toward a new gymnasium. Fazio’s interest piqued in the mid-1990s when he noticed bored teenagers loitering on street corners after school. The clubs touch thousands of youngsters annually with tutoring, arts classes, recreation, athletics and mentorship. “It’s an unbelievable place,” Fazio says. “Of all the things I’ve ever done, nothing comes close to that. Some people have boats and hobbies. I have golf, which is my business. Then I have my kids and the kids of the Boys & Girls Clubs. That’s been plenty for me.” PS

Holiday Book Sale

Nov 27

Dec 31

Seasons Greetings

All Books

Buy-one-Get-one-Free 95 Cherokee Rd. Pinehurst, NC | 910-295-7002 www.giventufts.org | Mon-Sat 10am - 4pm, Sun 11am - 2pm

Holiday Books Available

Proceeds benefit the Given Memorial Library & Tufts Archives | 105 Cherokee Rd. Pinehurst, NC

122 years of planning. Two amazing ways to celebrate.

We’ve been perfecting our New Year’s Eve celebration since 1895. So whether you choose a three-course dinner with jazz music or a gourmet buffet with the Band of Oz, the best parties of the year begin at Pinehurst. Party in the Pines with the Band of Oz $239*

New Year’s Eve in the Carolina Dining Room $199*

Gourmet dinner buffet in the Carolina Grand Ballroom

Three-course dinner

Live music with Band of Oz

Music by the Paul Murphy Trio Both packages include:

Resort accommodations • Champagne toast and midnight breakfast • Overflowing breakfast buffet on New Year’s Day

Call 877.725.6112 or visit pinehurst.com to reserve your spot today.

The Carolina Hotel • Village of Pinehurst, North Carolina • 877.725.6112 • pinehurst.com *Rate is per person, per night based on double occupancy. Subject to tax and resort service fee. Some restrictions apply.

December 2016 The Gray and the Brown All morning long the gray and the brown lower their tapered heads, nibble grass covered in mud from a recent rain. It is warm for winter, but horses know nothing of seasons save the sun is a weightless rider and needs no saddle. Come noon, they canter around the field in tandem, carrying nothing but light. Then they halt like a horse and its shadow, motionless as Paleolithic paintings in a cave — a moment so fleeting and perfect, clouds form in the shape of horses, gallop across the sky in homage. —Terri Kirby Erickson

Small Gifts

There’s an old saying that good things come in small packages. So do amazing acts of kindness By Jim Moriarty • Photographs by Tim Sayer It’s the season of our better angels. But warmheartedness isn’t only expressed by that larger-than-usual tip or that unexpected check and, thankfully, it doesn’t appear just once on a calendar. Our communities are populated by the generous of spirit who give without fanfare and often go unnoticed, though never unappreciated. How fortunate are we to live in a land of small kindnesses? There are not enough pages in this magazine during an entire year to show everyone who helps with their hands or their time or their talents. What follows is a tiny slice of that circle, a sliver of grace, shown here to represent the rest. You know who your are, and so do we.

December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Tom Burke Tom Burke is a specialist. He specializes in bonding. Burke and his wife, Trudy, moved to Pinehurst from Boston 24 years ago after touring the South looking for just the right spot to retire. She was a registered nurse, and he was a salesman for a trucking and shipping company. Intending all along to work a while longer, when they got here she took a job at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital. “I was looking through The Pilot and saw that Pine Needles Golf Club was looking for semi-retired people who could walk four to five miles a day,” says Tom. “Exercise, that’s what I wanted.” That’s what he got. Then, one day, Trudy came home from the hospital and said they were looking for volunteers to rock babies. Fresh from the experience of rocking his own grandson, Burke was keen on the idea. “I went over and applied,” he said. “It’s wonderful. It’s really very soothing.” Of course, baby-rocking is but a tiny subset of the huge number of volunteer jobs at the hospital — and a coveted one at that — but no one does it better than Burke, who has logged 993 baby-hours since 1998. “They give me whoever’s cranky,” he says with a smile. “I get there at 2 o’clock. Get my gown on. Wash up and scrub. I sit down and they put my baby in my arms and I rock them for two hours. It’s unbelievable. I would say 85 percent of the babies are asleep within five minutes. Even the ones that have problems. You can feel it, as soon as they put them in your arms. It’s strictly the human bond. We just completely relax.”

Ken Loyd Ken Loyd learned to play the piano as a boy in Momma Gaddis’ house in Atlanta. “I would sit down and just plunk out melodies, or try to,” says Loyd of the rickety old piano in his grandmother Kate Gaddis’ living room. “My father heard me playing two of his favorite songs, ‘Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech’ and ‘Dixie.’ I was just playing them with one finger but he thought I had possibilities.” That led to 10 years of lessons. After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill, Loyd took a job teaching third grade at Farm Life School, a career that lasted 33 years. The piano became a teaching tool. It’s also a gift, one he shares in the lobby of FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital’s Outpatient Registration. Loyd began volunteering to play at the hospital shortly after the piano was donated in 2000, before he quit teaching. “I’d leave school as soon as I could because there wasn’t much point playing there after 5 o’clock,” he says. “When I did retire, I started coming in the mornings. This is a nice balance in my life. I volunteer at some nursing homes, too. Do sing-alongs at two or three places. “This sort of distracts people from the medical reasons they might be there,” he says. “I think it gives them a little bit of comfort, a little peace of mind. I don’t know what people’s favorite songs are, but after playing for 57 years, you do sort of know the kinds of music that appeal to people.” He’s got a playlist that’s over 300 songs long. “I probably see more smiles than the doctors do.”

December 2016 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Peggie Caple Some people help with a hammer and a screwdriver. Peggie Caple wields a deft ballpoint pen. Caple, who still lives in the house she built next door to where her parents lived in West Southern Pines, worked in the Sandhills Community Action Program in Carthage, the Moore County Schools and at Sandhills Community College, where she was the director of financial aid, retiring from the college after 21 years. A hospice volunteer for over a decade, Peggie began working with the Sandhills/Moore Coalition for Human Care six years ago screening and assessing need. “I love it because that’s helping people who are in need in our community,” she says, sitting at a table in the basement of the Trinity AME Zion Church, another beneficiary of her service. “The applicants come in and I talk with them and see what we can do to help them. We provide food, free clothing and sometimes some financial assistance. But it has to be an emergency, a real need. We want to help them get on their feet. People who have lost jobs or for some reason their life has gone downhill and they just need a helping hand. I enjoy working with an agency that offers that helping hand.” Christmas is her favorite time of year. “I wish we could have Christmas all the time,” she says. “People seem much nicer. A little nice goes a long way. I welcome that.”

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Tom Palmquist Sometimes stuff just needs to be done, and when it does, Tom Palmquist is your guy. After a 20-year management career in Flint, Michigan, working directly for General Motors and another 10 for subsidiaries of the Chevrolet division, Palmquist and his wife, Carol-Ann, retired to Pinewild following the recommendation of some friends from his native western Pennsylvania. “We moved here shortly after retirement, built a home and moved in May of ’02,” he says. Palmquist began volunteering at Community Presbyterian Church but got hooked on the Boys and Girls Club after just a few visits, and now routinely puts in as many as 300 hours during the course of the year. “They’re doing a great job with kids,” he says. “They have so much energy. You go in there when the kids are in there; it’s just unbelievable. They’re working so hard to move that energy in a positive direction with all kinds of reinforcement. I just think it’s an excellent program.” Palmquist reinforces with a paintbrush. “A lot of it comes down to painting,” he says, laughing at his handyman role. “We painted the interior of the old building, for the most part. And I painted for them down at the facility they use in Aberdeen. And repairing things. Ping-Pong tables. They had a sign out at the end of the street between the ballfields on Morganton Road. The hurricane blew it right out of its frame and broke it. So, I’m working on that. I have it at home in my garage, trying to patch it, see if I can save it and put it back where it belongs. Things come loose here and there. Shelves. I don’t know that you can call it carpentry work. I’m not an expert. And I don’t get into anything like electricity or plumbing. A flashlight with three batteries is about my limit.” 82

December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Stephen Fore Food trucks are all the rage these days, but few ever dished up more manna than What’s Fore Lunch? When Hurricane Matthew devastated the interior counties of North Carolina, Stephen Fore, a Southern Pines native, local chef and food truck entrepreneur who got his first Easy Bake Oven when he was 5 years old, hit the road for Lumberton. Fore got a call from Ron Scott, a local attorney who had been sending supplies to Rock Church of God. “I’m up early. I get the message at 4:30, by 6 a.m. the ball is rolling,” says Fore, who talked to store managers at Fresh Market and Lowes Foods. “Within 2 1/2 days, we started serving. We got there at 10:45 Saturday morning and by 1:30 we had delivered 650 plates. People who didn’t have power. People who were displaced from their homes. They were getting put up six to a room in a motel. So, we did a spaghetti plate dinner with green beans and yeast rolls. Coke and Pepsi donated 600 sodas.” With the anonymous backing of a local doctor, Fore returned a week later. “We said we’d be serving by 4 o’clock. A mother with about a 6-or 8-year-old daughter and a son walk in at about 3:35. We’re doing cheeseburger, mac and cheese, green beans, yeast rolls, just another big spread. So, this mother comes in a says, ‘Is it time yet?’ Someone says, ‘No, honey, we’ll be ready in about 20 minutes.’ We’re running back there. To get food ready for 800 people in about an hour is tough. I brought some extra chicken, so I ask, ‘Can I make you a sandwich or something?’ The mother looks at me and says, ‘That would be awesome. My daughter hasn’t eaten today.’ It was 3:30 in the afternoon. I make a chicken sandwich. The little girl comes back about five minutes later, says that was the best chicken she’s ever had and she wants to know if she could have another one. I said, ‘Sweetheart, you can have as many as you want.’” It’s a long way from over. Fore is trying to raise money by Dec.15 so the kids affected by the flood in Lumberton can have something resembling a Christmas. “They have nothing. Literally nothing.”

James Johnson James Johnson grew up in the Bronx, New York, but in March 1971, he was in the 196th Infantry, a member of the Americal Division, fighting to stay alive at Chu Lai, a base in Central Vietnam. “We tried to get them to let us go back in the field but they wouldn’t let us go,” says Johnson, a Purple Heart recipient. “Three-thirty in the morning we got overrun but we held the hill until we could get out.” A disabled veteran, Johnson volunteers an hour a day, making food pickups in his white Toyota truck for the Boys and Girls Club, delivering kindness in cardboard boxes. “I go to Fresh Market five days a week, pick up at 10 in the morning and I’m back by 11 o’clock. I do Outback and Bonefish on Tuesday. Every other week I do Olive Garden,” he says. It’s all part of the plan. “Let them see that there’s more important things in life, there’s a lot of skills and jobs out there you can get,” he says. “You don’t have to do drugs. You don’t have to be around bad people. Go somewhere where you can learn something. “Help somebody else that’s in need,” he says. “It’s like in the war, the Vietnamese people needed food. When you had extra canned goods, you would give it to them. You see how the little kids run up to you and they speak to you. You’ve got something nice, you just turn it loose. You’re not looking for anything in return. Like the Lone Ranger would do. ‘Hi-Ho, Silver. Away!’ You came to do a good deed and you took off. And that’s the way it is with me. I just come to do something good and go away. I’m not looking for anything in return.”

December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Richard and Inge Hester Having moved from Jeffersonville, in southern Indiana, seven years ago to get closer to the grandkids in Carthage, Richard and Inge Hester fell in love with a little red building with a long handicap ramp. It’s the one in back of the Sandhills/Moore Coalition for Human Care, where they’ve been ringing up bargain priced treasures and necessities — not necessarily in that order — two days a week for the past six years. “We fell in love with the Barn, if you can believe that,” says Inge. “I do the lifting and carrying,” says Richard. “I’m the finance manger,” says Inge. “He doesn’t really care about the cash register.” Not all the castoffs that come through the Pennsylvania Avenue door are in, well, pristine condition. Richard pulls a vacuum cleaner out of the corner to show it off. “I took that home,” he says of his private workshop. “Cleaned it completely. Put a new bag in it. Test it. Make sure it works. I sold a Dyson this morning.” “Twenty-five dollars,” says Inge. “You can’t beat that.” Richard honed his skills working for Caterpillar Inc. for 33 years. “I like to tinker,” he says. “There’s a testing area back there where I test VCRs, stuff like that. Small appliances, I take home and fool with. I can’t pass a tool up. I’ve got wood lathes. An old chair comes in, take it home, fix it up. Bring it back.” Anything that hangs around too long goes on the ‘free’ table. “If we have to haul it to the dump, then we have to pay for it,” says Richard. Money is supposed to come in, not go out. The niche they fill is need. “There’s a lot of satisfaction in it,” says Inge. “It’s a good cause, a really good cause.” PS

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Lady of the Pines

How Southern Pines artist Doris Swett created the most enduring image of the longleaf pine, leaving a legacy of helping others in her native Sandhills By Bill Fields

wo weeks after Pearl Harbor was attacked, on a front page dotted with war-related stories — the death of a Navy sailor from Vass, donations for the Red Cross, requests for civilian defense volunteers — The Pilot’s Dec. 19, 1941 edition looked different for another reason too. Gone was a banner of a captain and county map inside a ship’s wheel that had been used as the newspaper’s banner for a dozen years. The nautical theme was replaced with a nameplate that better reflected the publication’s location and also added some cheer at a grim time. “In due keeping with a festive Christmas season,” the newspaper wrote, “The Pilot this week dons a new banner heading and nameplate, especially designed for the paper by a local artist who has won fame for her etchings of long-leafed pines of the Carolinas and Florida. Miss Ruth Doris Swett, Southern Pines native and daughter of the late Dr. William P. Swett, one of the county’s pioneer builders, executed the original drawing of the pine needles, the compass and the map of Moore County which will adorn the top of The Pilot’s front page from now on.” Swett’s creation, debuted between pleas to buy defense stamps and bonds on a paper that sold for a nickel, was a stylish upgrade from the cliché clip-art look of its predecessor. For generations of residents and visitors, the pine boughadorned nameplate — whose map included the hamlets of Samarcand, Jugtown and Niagra — symbolized the Sandhills like Midland Road, Stoneybrook or yielding to the left on Broad Street. That Swett could connote such an effective sense of place when The Pilot commissioned her to revamp its look 75 years ago was no surprise. She was part of one of Southern Pines’ foremost pioneering families. Weary of Northern winters, Dr. Swett and his wife, Susan, moved to Southern Pines in 1892, only five years after the town was chartered. In addition to his medical practice, Swett, a Vermont native, grew peaches, organized the Southern Pines Country Club and was a leader in Emmanuel Episcopal Church. Ruth Doris, known to family and friends by her middle name, was born in Southern Pines on Jan. 11, 1901, the youngest of five children. Two of her siblings died young: Mabel Lois was only a year old when she passed away in 1898; William Louis passed away at 16 in 1907. After Susan Swett’s death in 1915, Dr. Swett married Grace Moseley, in 1918. “Aunt Doris was very young when her mother died, and her father was very concerned about her being by herself,” says Doris’ greatniece, Mary Ruth Prentice. Sadly, it was a short union. While Doris was attending St. Mary’s School in Raleigh, Dr. Swett died suddenly of heart failure at age 67 on April 13, 1921, as he was rousing guests from their rooms at the Southland Hotel when a fire ravaged downtown Southern

Pines, destroying a block of wooden buildings. The Medical Society of North Carolina had a meeting later that month in Pinehurst, where another Sandhills physician, Dr. W.C. Mudgett, praised Swett. “He was sincere, ethical, honorable, despising that which suggested commercialism,” Mudgett said, “forgetting himself and considering only the greatest good for his patients . . . He died in the very manner in which he had expressed the hope that his final summons might come: still active, still in service.” Doris and her stepmother grew very close, the duo once going on a two-year grand tour of the world before the Great Depression devastated the family finances. “They were well-off, and then they pretty much got wiped out,” says Prentice, who inherited some of the poetry books her great aunt purchased on her global adventure. “Her stepmother, ‘Molee,’ we called her, was a lovely lady. She became blind, and Aunt Doris really took care of her in her last years.” Despite the family traumas, Doris Swett developed into a serious and talented artist. She studied at Chouinard Art Institute in California and the Art Students League of New York, and under painter and lithographer Margery Ryerson and South Carolinian Elizabeth O’Neill Verner, a leader in the Charleston Renaissance. William Charles McNulty, a printmaker and editorial cartoonist, was also an influence. Swett worked in various media but specialized in etching, The Pilot reported in a 1935 story, “after inspiring associations with George Elbert Burr in Arizona.” Burr (1859-1939) was a well-regarded American artist known for his Western landscapes who did illustrations for Harper’s, Scribner’s Magazine and Frank Leslie’s Weekly. Swett came to know Burr after he settled in the 1920s in Arizona. The desert and mountain vistas of his adopted home were frequent subjects for his drypoint, a printmaking method in which an artist scratches an image on a metal plate — often copper — with a diamond-tipped needle, or stylus.

December 2016 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Like Burr, Swett focused her drypoint on familiar scenes, the tall trees of her native North Carolina as well as central Florida, where she sometimes wintered and for a time taught etching at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. Swett’s art was frequently mentioned in The Pilot’s pages during the mid- to late-1930s and early 1940s. The Sandhills Book Shop sold prints of her work. “Etchings including her distinctive Pines,” read a 1938 advertisement for the store in The Pilot. “We have them in many sizes, suitable for framing, or for gift cards.” During this period, Swett’s work was exhibited in Charlotte, New York and Boston. One of her etchings of western North Carolina served as the frontispiece for a 1936 book on Beech Mountain folk songs and ballads. That spring, her drypoint prints were part of a show at the Smithsonian National Gallery in Washington, D.C., where Swett drew high praise from critic Leila Mechlin, former longtime editor of The American Magazine of Art. “Without restricting herself to any one kind of tree, Miss Swett has undoubtedly specialized in transcribing the longneedle pine of the South and has done it beautifully,” Mechlin wrote in the Washington Evening Star. “There is something very graceful about these typically Southern trees with their tall straight trunks and magnificently tassled heads. But they are not easy to etch, for they combine both strength and softness. Their long leaves are like needles, but against the sky they appear as soft as velvet to the touch. It is just this combination of strength and lightness that this young etcher gets in her plates — especially in prints showing single branches and plumed twigs.” Eighty years after Mechlin’s favorable critique, Denise Baker, a Whispering Pines artist who works in drypoint and is a retired Sandhills Community College art instructor, agrees. “Her drypoints are exceptional,” Baker says. “I feel her style was very indigenous. It was very much like a sense of place, where she was at the time. It takes physical strength to do a drypoint because you have to get the needle down in the metal but still have that fluidness of line, which she was so very good at. “The woman had to have incredible strength to do the beautiful work in that medium,” Baker continues. “If you’re a painter, you get to watch it in progress. But when you’re working on a metal plate, until you put the ink on and it goes on the press, you don’t really know if all those hours you’ve spent are coming to fruition.” Swett put aside her art to concentrate on caregiving and church in the postwar years, her younger relatives recalling a generous spirit. “She was extremely kind,” says Prentice, who grew up in Red Springs. “Of the three great aunts who would come visiting, she always made you feel

important — your dolls, your stories were important. She was a very elegant and soft-spoken lady, very loving. I never saw anger in her.” Swett’s great-nephew David Barney remembers her as a quiet person, smart, with a keen sense of humor. “She had been a fine tennis player at one time,” he says, “and you could tell she had been an athlete. I didn’t spend a lot of time around her, but I admired her and wish I had known her better.” For many years Swett lived with her stepmother and an aunt, Alice Southworth, in Briarwood, a rambling Spanish Mission-influenced house on Weymouth Road in Southern Pines that had been built as a seasonal residence for Southworth. Filled with antiques, the home had a central skylight in a sitting room but lots of gloomy corners. “My younger brother and I loved roaming around that house,” says Prentice, “thinking we could find treasure or hidden places.” Swett died at age 65 in Moore Memorial Hospital, on April 12, 1966, of a heart attack, two days after being admitted. She was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery alongside her parents and other family members, including her stepmother, who had passed away three years earlier. “Extremely shy and retiring,” The Pilot concluded in its obituary of Swett, “she literally devoted herself to helping others in a mission of kindness and quiet piety.” Swett’s sister, Katherine, the last surviving child, died at 80 in 1968. Following Doris Swett’s death, her Pilot nameplate remained in use for another 33 years. In a typographic makeover of the newspaper, The Pilot replaced the Swett design starting with its Sept. 2, 1999 edition. An updated map inside a compass, sans a pine drawing, was utilized. “We’ve introduced a bolder, simpler nameplate,” wrote then-editor Steve Bouser, “taking care to preserve the flavor of the old.” Three of Swett’s drypoints — “Florida Pine,” “The Lone Palm” and “Long Leaf Pine” — are in the Fine Prints collection of The Library of Congress. Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill has Swett’s “A Winter Park Pine” and “Via Tuscany Pines” in its collection. Several Swett prints have sold at auction in recent years for between $100 and $500. At a reunion about a decade ago, relatives chose as dozens of their great-aunt’s signed prints were divided up among family members. “One of my cousins brought lots of pieces and we all were able to get something,” says Barney. “I’m really glad that happened, because it’s extraordinary stuff — the delicacy and form of my aunt’s work is really wonderful.” And it appeals because of more than technique. Says Prentice: “I was born in Pinehurst. I look at those longleaf pines, and it takes me right back home.” PS

Story of a House

Home for Christmas Worldwide religious art backdrops the holiday in Whispering Pines By Deborah Salomon • Photographs by John Gessner

enturies before Santa, Rudolph, Alvin and Frosty, decorating for Christmas meant festooning the Madonna, Baby Jesus and saints with ribbons and greenery. The custom endures at the lakefront residence of Emi and Colin Webster. “Christmas is a religious holiday, after all,” Colin observes, still allowing a 13-foot tree to dominate a living room with an 18-foot ceiling. Now, their sons grown, only one small St. Nicholas remains. Aside from respecting the sacred, the Websters’ interest springs from art collected while living, working and traveling the globe. For openers, Emi was born in Chile of British/ French/Chilean lineage, schooled in England, Argentina, Germany and Switzerland. She met Colin, of a similar Scottish/European background, in kindergarten, in Chile, where their parents had attended each other’s weddings. “Then we went our separate ways,” Colin says. He reconnected with Emi, an advertising executive, on holiday in Spain in 1986. They married the following year, honeymooned in Wales (where the collecting began) and settled in Chile.

December 2016 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

“Before that, I had a bachelor’s pad,” Colin continues. After marriage “I looked at life differently.” Subsequently, as an executive at Proctor & Gamble and other multinationals, Colin was posted on six continents with artifacts to prove it. Made sense to acquire treasures, small and enormous, while employers subsidized shipping. But with such glamorous options, how did they land in Whispering Pines, on a 4-acre peninsula jutting into Lake Thagard? After an early retirement Emi and Colin (who had also lived in Miami) investigated places to settle. Colin’s father purchased a house in Southern Pines in 1980; Emi and Colin visited often, deciding that after 13 moves and many schools the U.S. was better for their sons’ education. They bought a home in 2001, later 100 acres with the intent to build, which they decided would involve too much maintenance. Then one day they saw a For Sale sign on the prime peninsula property and snapped it up based on the view, knowing the house could be transformed — an understatement, since Colin, bored with retirement, had become a home-builder familiar with the finest materials and workmanship, while Emi had turned to real estate brokerage. No architect or interior designer was required to almost double the existing 3,500 square feet by extending the footprint beyond the core and rearranging interior space to suit their needs and fit their furnishings, which include two glass-topped coffee tables with turned bases made by Colin. By working round the clock, the renovation and additions were completed, unbelievably, in 30 days, while the family lived on the upper floor. “I didn’t have a kitchen so we ate take-away for a month,” Emi recalls. The finished product includes park-like landscaping, a saltwater pool, pool house with dining area. Colin’s method: Never start without a plan in hand. Don’t figure out as you go. Living in the house for several years had uncovered what needed changing. Being an accomplished woodworker helped. When Colin couldn’t find the right mantel he built one. The result appears rather formal, slightly European, described as British Colonial, with PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . December 2016

December 2016P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Georgian overtones and a flash of Latin fire, yet comfortable — a place where the dog can stretch out on a sofa upholstered in High Point. “This is how we grew up, surrounded by Spanish things,” Colin says. “You develop an affinity for them.”

heir most treasured “things,” however, remain museum-quality art, with Colin and Emi enthusiastic docents: A Peruvian Madonna painted, in part, by Jesuits in the late 1600s dominates one living room wall facing an equally massive archangel over Colin’s mantel. Shelves and tables hold santos — figurines of saints common in Catholic South America. Another Peruvian Virgin Mary greets guests in the entrance hall, while a wall niche resembling a shrine displays a French Madonna flanked by Venetian lanterns. Colin brought back exquisite Russian Orthodox icons during an era of political unrest, when their value had plummeted, also Byzantine/Greek paintings and triptychs originating in churches or monasteries. Colin is especially proud of a 16th century Spanish bargueno, or traveling desk, with carved and inlaid olivewood drawers, that would travel with a nobleman’s retinue. From farther east they obtained a hand-sewn Egyptian panel, brass and copper urns from an Arabian bazaar. In the family room, built-in shelves hold their collection of pre-Columbian pottery. Persian rugs on polished cherrywood floors delineate paths from area to area. America, their adopted homeland, has not been neglected. In his office, Colin, a Civil War buff, displays a camp chair with battle names, including Appomattox, carved into the frame; also a Union Colt musket and functioning post-Confederate “machine gun” with bullets, manufactured in 1898 — one of only 10 in the U.S. Delft liquor-bottle miniatures representing houses in The Hague, once given to passengers on KLM, and Royal Doulton Toby face jugs from Colin’s grandmother line the shelves of a kitchen hutch. PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . December 2016

The kitchen itself, with a clear sight line past the family dining room to the lake, is more restrained than luxury food preparation palaces. Colin added panels to the serviceable 24-year-old double Sub-Zero and used a smooth electric cooktop instead of the requisite Viking or Wolf gas range. But two oversize ovens were necessary for Christmas and Thanksgiving meals attended by family and guests, served from a dining room table with a garland running down the center, composed of berries and greenery, designed by Carol Dowd of Botanicals. “Emi likes things that are very natural, organic,” Colin says. “We use wreathes and put tons of greenery (alongside) their stuff,” which complements the ecclesiastical mode better than glitter.

ecorating the skyscraper tree with ornaments commemorating family events, topped by an angel from Germany, takes about two days. Magnolias and fresh flowers are added before the Websters’ famous Christmas party, where the space accommodates 100 guests. On Christmas Eve the family gathers for a traditional Argentinean breaded veal dish and mince pies imported from England. Christmas morning, Colin and Emi sleep in while the boys unload their stockings, including ones for Bantu, the dog, and Panda, the cat. Later in the day, while the surround sound system plays Christmas music inside and out, guests arrive for a turkey (sometimes ham or roast beef) dinner ending with flaming English Christmas pudding. Decorations stay in place until Twelfth Night, Jan. 6, when they are packed and stored, leaving the Madonnas, Magi and santos on their own. “Afterward, the house seems so empty,” Emi says. Because, although they call their home Amancay, after an Andean day lily, . . . this is a house built for Christmas.” PS

December 2016 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

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Oh,

Christmas Tree!

How North Carolina became the fertile crescent of the Fraser fir

By Ross Howell Jr.

hances are the tree you decorated for your home this holiday season is a descendant of natives in the North Carolina mountains. The Fraser fir, Abies frasieri, owes its name to an enterprising, “indefatigable” botanist, a Scotsman named John Fraser (1750–1811). Fraser was born in Tomnacross, near Inverness, Scotland, and moved to London in 1770. There he pursued various trades before — through frequent visits to the Chelsea Physic Garden, founded in 1673 as the Apothecaries’ Garden — he hit upon his true interest, horticulture. Fraser took up a career in botanical exploration and collecting. After returning from his first voyage to Newfoundland in 1780, he founded a commercial nursery in London to sell the plants he brought back. On later expeditions he trekked the Appalachian mountains, following Native American hunting and trading trails, becoming the first European to discover the Rhododendron catawbiense, which he was able to propagate in England, selling the plants for “five guineas each.” During his career Fraser would travel the world, locating plants for clients as diverse as William Aiton, the director of The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, to Catherine the Great, empress of Russia. Fraser is credited with introducing his eponymous fir, along with about 220 other plant species from the Americas, to Europe. His sons continued in their father’s business, and his grandson John would be elected a member of the Royal Horticultural Society. The firs John Fraser discovered grow wild only at high elevations — 3,900 feet and higher — in the Appalachian chain from northern Georgia to southwestern Virginia. Mature trees may reach a height of 30 to 40 feet. Their needles are flattened, like the native hemlocks growing at lower altitudes. From September through November, they bear cones

upright on their branches, like candles on a nineteenth century Christmas tree. North Carolina is the center of the Fraser fir’s habitat, and that’s important. According to carolinanature. com, trees can be found wild in nine counties of the Old North State, but in only one county in Georgia, and in only two counties in Virginia and Tennessee. That’s it. Sadly, like our native hemlocks, Fraser firs are under attack. The number of trees in the wild is being diminished by acid rain, by air pollution, and especially by nasty little creatures called balsam woolly adelgids (whose equally nasty cousins have put native hemlocks at risk). These insects have wiped out whole stands of the Fraser fir, leaving behind only “skeleton forests” on the high slopes of the mountains. Of course, we don’t clamber over bare rock faces on the steep pinnacles of western North Carolina to harvest Fraser firs today. Remember I said it was likely the tree in your house is a Fraser fir? Just how likely is it? The North Carolina Christmas Tree Association notes that more than 50 million Fraser firs are grown in our state, and they represent 90 percent of all the trees grown in North Carolina for use as Christmas trees. These commercially grown Fraser firs can get hefty — as tall as 80 feet, with a trunk diameter of a foot and a half. When you’re relaxing at home this holiday, say, just minutes before Santa’s to arrive, and you’re admiring your Fraser fir’s lights and its sweet balsam fragrance, take a moment to imagine its ancestor, high on a cold North Carolina peak, an upright cone or two pale in the moonlight, reaching toward stars so close they seem to be tangled in its wild boughs. PS Ross Howell Jr. grew up in the mountains of Virginia, where his family usually harvested a native white pine Christmas tree from the farm woodlands, along with running cedar and spicewood berries for decoration.

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Kissing Bough

By Ash Alder

How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon? – Dr. Seuss

Nature Whispers

According to Celtic tree astrology, those born between Nov. 25 and Dec. 23 draw wisdom from the sacred elder. Highly intelligent and energetic, elder archetypes are known as the “seekers” of the zodiac. Variety is this sign’s spice of life, but they’re most compatible with alder (March 18 – April 14) and holly types (July 8 – August 4). Narcissus — aka daffodil — is the birth flower of December. Those familiar with the Greek myth know that Narcissus was a beautiful hunter who fell so deeply in love with his own reflection that it killed him. Speaking of hunters, the sun remains in the astrological sign of Sagittarius (the Archer) until the winter solstice on Wednesday, Dec. 21. Consider gifting your favorite Sagittarian with a potted daffodil, a vibrant spring perennial that carries messages of rebirth, clarity and inner focus. December birthstones include zircon, turquoise and tanzanite — all blue, the color of communication and truth. In 2001, a 4.4 billionyear-old piece of zircon crystal was found in Jack Hills, an inland range north of Perth, in western Australia. Known as the “stone of virtue,” this ancient stone offers grounding and balancing energies to those who wear or carry it.

The ancient Druids believed that the mystical properties of mistletoe could ward off evil spirits, while Norse mythology rendered it as a symbol of love and friendship. ’Tis the season, and nothing spells romance like cutting a sprig of it from the branches of a sacred oak, apple or willow. During the early Middle Ages in England, mistletoe was used to ornament elaborate decorations made of holly, ivy, rosemary, bay, fir or other evergreen plants. Kissing boughs, as they were called, symbolized heavenly blessings toward the household. If you find yourself standing beneath one with someone you adore, consider it a heavenly blessing indeed.

Winter Solstice

As we approach the winter solstice — the longest night of the year — we look up to the planets and the stars to gain insight into the final hours of 2016. The Geminid meteor shower is expected to peak on the night of Tuesday, Dec. 13, until the earliest hours of Wednesday, Dec. 14. Although a full moon will make viewing conditions less than ideal, the possibility of sighting upward of 120 meteors per hour is reason enough to add the Geminid shower to your list of things to do this month. You’ll also want to note that Mercury goes retrograde from Dec.19–31. This will be a good time to review plans and projects. Test your soil. Think about next year’s garden, reflecting on the crops that fared well — or didn’t — in 2016. Consider waiting until Mercury goes direct on Jan. 1 to order seeds.

I Heard a Bird Sing

I heard a bird sing In the dark of December. A magical thing And sweet to remember. “We are nearer to Spring Than we were in September,” I heard a bird sing In the dark of December.

— Oliver Herford, From Welcome Christmas! A Garland of Poems (Viking Press, 1955) PS

101

Arts Entertainment C a l e n da r

Deck the Halls in Pinehurst

12/

Although conscientious effort is made to provide accurate and up-to-date information, all events are subject to change and errors can occur! Please call to verify times, status and location before planning or attending an event.

Thursday, December 1 SENIORS DAY OUT. 8 a.m.–6 p.m. “Carolina Opry Christmas Show.” The Calvin Gilmore theater in Mrytle Beach is transformed into a winter wonderland in this dazzling musical celebration of America’s best loved holiday. Cost: $60/residents; $120/non-residents. Pinehurst Parks and Rec., 395 Magnolia Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-1900 or www.pinehurstrec.org. MUSIC AND MOTION STORYTIME. 10:30 a.m. For all children through age 5. Every other week, this event incorporates stories and songs along with dancing, playing and games designed to foster language and motor-skill development. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235.

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Jonathan Byrd at Rooster’s Wife

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CAROLS AT WEYMOUTH: A HOLIDAY TRADITION. 5:30 p.m. Music, carols, stories and more! Held in the Great Room, Weymouth Center for Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6261 or weymouthcenter.org. ABERDEEN TREE LIGHTING. 6–7:30 p.m. Witness the lighting of the Christmas tree and the arrival of Santa with performances by the Southern Middle School choir and the Bethesda Hand Bells choir. The Depot in Historic Downtown Aberdeen, 100 E. Main St., Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-7275 or explorepinehurst.com. CLASSICAL GUITAR CONCERT. 7 p.m. Dr. Adam Kossler performs. Free admission. Owens Auditorium. Sandhills Community College, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 695-3828 or (910) 692-6185. JEANNE JOLLY @ THE CAMEO ARTHOUSE THEATRE. 7:30 p.m. Cost: $12

Holidays with the NC Symphony

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in advance; $15 at the door. Cameo Arthouse Theatre, 225 Hay St., Fayetteville, Info: (910) 486-6633.

Thursday, December 1 — 15 22ND ANNUAL ART EXHIBIT AND SALE. 12–3 p.m. Monday–Saturday. Artists League of the Sandhills, 129 Exchange St., Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-3979 or artistleague.org.

Thursday, December 1 — January 8 NATURE CONNECTS®: ART WITH LEGO® BRICKS EXHIBIT. 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Larger than life Lego sculptures built by artist Sean Kenney are displayed throughout the Garden, with activities for all ages. Free for CFBG members. Non-members call for prices. Cape Fear Botanical Garden, 536 N. Eastern Blvd., Fayetteville. Info and registration: (910) 486-0221.

December 2016i��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

ca l e n da r

Bolshoi Ballet Nutcracker

12/

Cape Fear Ballroom Dancers

’Twas the Night Before Christmas

12/

Thursday, December 1 — 4

Friday, December 2

WEYMOUTH CHRISTMAS HOUSE. 10 a.m.–3 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; 1–4 p.m. Sunday. See the fully decorated Boyd House and Stables and enjoy complimentary refreshments and music in the Great Room. Cost: $15/member and $20/non-member in advance; $20/member and $25/non-member at door. Weymouth Center for Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6261 or www.weymouthcenter.org.

PLAY ESCAPE. 10:30 a.m. Kindermusik Playtime. For ages 0 to 3. Cost: $35/month; $10/drop-in, includes half-price admission. Play Escape, 103 Perry Drive, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 246-2342 or playescapenc.com. ART CLASS (OIL PAINT). 1–4 p.m. Fridays through Jan. 20 (6 sessions). For all levels of experience, artist Eileen Strickland covers basic information on materials, techniques, color theory and composition. Cost: $47/resident; SAARIAHO’S L’AMOUR DE LOIN SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10 AT 1PM

THE NUTCRACKER SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11 AT 1PM THE SLEEPING BEAUTY SUNDAY, JANUARY 2 AT 1PM

VERDE’S NABUCO SATURDAY, JANUARY 7 AT 1PM GOUNOD’S ROMEO ET JULIETTE SATURDAY, JANUARY 21 AT 1PM

$94/non-resident. Pinehurst Parks and Rec, 300 Kelly Road, Pinehurst. Info and pre-registration: (910) 295-1900 or 295-2817. ANNUAL HOLIDAY OPEN HOUSE. 5–7 p.m. Enjoy fine wine, fine art and holiday fun! Refreshments and wine courtesy of Elliott’s on Linden. Hollyhocks Art Gallery, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 255-0665 or www. hollyhocksartgallery.com. CHRISTMAS TREE LIGHTING. 5–7:30 p.m. The village of Pinehurst Christmas Tree

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PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . December 2016

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Lighting Celebration will include photos with Santa, hay rides through the village center, cookie decorating and musical entertainment. Tree lighting at 6:30 p.m. Admission is free. Concessions available for purchase. Tufts Memorial Park, 1 Village Green Road W., Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-1900.

Friday, December 2 — 4 HUNTER/JUMPER HORSE SHOW. 7 a.m.–7 p.m. Triangle Farms in the Sandhills ‘C’ Horse Show. No charge to come out and watch. Carolina Horse Park, 2814 Montrose Road, Raeford. Info: (910) 556-7321.

CANDY CANE HUNT. 5 p.m. The whole family is invited for outdoor holiday fun. Activities for children ages 4-10 include cookie decorating, crafts, games, photos with Santa, and of course the Candy Cane Hunt. Children must be accompanied by an adult. Memorial Park and Southern Pines Recreation Center, 210 Memorial Park Court, Southern Pines. Info: sppl.net.

Saturday, December 3

THE ROOSTER’S WIFE. 6:46 p.m. Jeanne Jolly performs. Cost: $15 in advance; $20 day of event. The Rooster’s Wife, 114 Knight St., Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-7502 or www. theroosterswife.org.

CHILDREN’S PROGRAM. 10 a.m.–12 p.m. “Wonderful Winter.” Learn about different books to read, characters to meet and activities to do this winter. Bring a friend and sign up for a free library card! Free and open to the public. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-6022.

Friday, December 2 & 3 THE PERFECT PRESENT. 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Dec. 2; 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Dec. 3. The Arts Council of Moore County presents holiday art sale and jewelry extravaganza. Campbell House Galleries, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-2787 or mooreart.org.

THOMAS POTTERY’S CHRISTMAS OPEN HOUSE. 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Enjoy holiday decorations and refreshments; tour the studio; and shop handmade pottery, items from the Winter Scene Collection, handmade ornaments and Lit Christmas Trees. 1295 S. NC Hwy. 705, Seagrove. Info: (336) 879-4145 or explorepinehurst.com.

NATURE TALES. 10–10:45 a.m. and 11–11:45 a.m. “Oh, Deer!” Preschool story and nature time. No cost for program, but please pre-register two business days in advance. (Admission to garden not included in program.) Cape Fear Botanical Garden, 536 N. Eastern Blvd.,

Fayetteville. Info and registration: (910) 4860221 ext 20 or www.capefearbg.org. ANNUAL SOUTHERN PINES CHRISTMAS PARADE. 11 a.m. Enjoy local marching bands, festive activities and an appearance from Santa Claus! The parade begins at Vermont Ave. and proceeds down the west side of Broad Street Historic District, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 315-6508. SOUTHERN PINES TREE LIGHTING. 5–6 p.m. Ring in the holidays with festivities along the tree-lit streets, and bring your camera for photos with Santa Claus. The festivities conclude with the lighting of the Holiday Tree. Complete your evening at one of the many great downtown restaurants. Downtown Southern Pines, 235 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-2463 or explorepinehurst.com. LIVING MADONNAS. 7 p.m. The Community Congregational Church will be presenting “Living Madonnas” in the sanctuary. Admission is free. This is the church’s Christmas gift to the community. Community Congregational Church, 141 N. Bennett St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 690-9054. CANDLELIGHT WINE AND CHEESE TOUR. 5:30–8:30 p.m. Enjoy the decorated Christmas House at night! Cost: $35/member; $45/non-member. Weymouth Center for

Landscape Design, Installation and Maintenance Irrigation Landscape Lighting Water Features & Koi Ponds Meditation & Healing Gardens And more…

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Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info and reservations: (910) 692-6261 or weymouthcenter.org.

Sunday, December 4 CHRISTMAS OPEN HOUSE. 1–4 p.m. The Moore County Historical Association and Friends of the Bryant House invite you to get a taste of how early settlers celebrated Christmas. Along with old-timey decorations, there will be refreshments, live music and lots of Yule cheer. No admission charge. Bryant House and McClendon Cabin, 3361 Mount Carmel Road, Carthage. Info: (910) 692-2051 HOLIDAY JUBILEE. 1–5 p.m. Enjoy the traditions of holidays past with music, cooking on the 1902 stove and a Victorian caroling concert on the Poe House front porch with The Coventry Carolers (at 1:30 and 3:30). Museum of the Cape Fear Historical Complex, 801 Arsenal Ave., Fayetteville. Info: (910) 486-1330. MURPHY FAMILY CHRISTMAS CONCERT. 3 p.m. In this Sunrise tradition, the Murphys fill the theater with rich talent that will keep you coming back for more. Cost: $18 general admission; $15 children 12 and under; and $22 VIP. Sunrise Theater, 250 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3611 or sunrisetheater.com.

EXPLORATIONS SERIES FOR ADULTS. 3–4 p.m. “The Health Benefits of Tea.” Teaarista Stephanie Sims of Communitea in Southern Pines will discuss the varieties of real and herbal teas and their health benefits. Participants will enjoy a hot tea tasting and play a Tea Quiz Game to win prizes provided by Friends of Southern Pines Public Library. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235.

Monday, December 5 AFTER-DINNER STORYTIMES. 6 p.m. Children ages birth to fifth grade and their families are invited to enjoy a session that incorporates stories and activities that foster a love of books and reading. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235.

Monday, December 5 — 31

PLAY ESCAPE. 3:30–5:30 p.m. Pictures with Santa. Cost: Free with admission. Play Escape, 103 Perry Drive, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 246-2342 or www.playescapenc.com. SOLO VIOLINIST.4 p.m. Cecelia Tynan performs. Pinecrest High School, 250 Voit Gilmore Lane, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6554 or (781) 727-7221. THE ROOSTER’S WIFE. 6:46 p.m. Jonathan Byrd performs. Cost: $15 in advance; $20 day of event. The Rooster’s Wife, 114 Knight St., Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-7502 or www. theroosterswife.org. ART SHOWING. 4 p.m. Show of artist Jim Henry’s paintings. Pinecrest High School, 250 Voit Gilmore Lane, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6554 or (781) 727-7221.

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JOY OF ART STUDIO. Call for times. Christmas Arts and Crafts at the Joy of Art Studio. Heirloom Angels with your memory fabric by appointment. Dec. 3, Make Angel Art Dolls December; Dec. 10, I Love Angels Mother/Daughter Saturday; Dec .12, Paint with Joy for Adults; Dec. 19, Christmas Pet Paintings into Art Cards; Dec. 19–22, Create and Celebrate Art for the Day; Dec. 26–30, After Christmas Art for the Day; Joy of Art Studio, 139 E. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 528-7283 text or www.joyof_art@msn. com.

Tuesday, December 6 NATURE TALES. 10–10:45 a.m. and 11–11:45 a.m. “Oh, Deer!” Preschool story and nature time. No cost for program, but please pre-register two business days in advance. (Admission to garden not included in program.) Cape

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VillageAtBrookwood.org PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . December 2016

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the most wonderful time of the year with carols and traditional holiday favorites. David Glover, conductor. Call for ticket prices. Huff Concert Hall, Methodist University, 5400 Ramsey St., Fayetteville. Info: (877) 627-6724 or www. ncsymphony.org.

Fear Botanical Garden, 536 N. Eastern Blvd., Fayetteville. Info and registration: (910) 4860221 ext 20 or www.capefearbg.org. CARTHAGE CHRISTMAS PARADE. 6:15–11:59 p.m. Annual Christmas Parade with music, Santa Claus and entertainment. After the Christmas tree lighting at the Historic Courthouse, the parade starts at the Carriage Oaks parking lot (next to Walgreen’s) and proceeds up Monroe St. in Carthage, 4396 Hwy. 15-501, Carthage. Info: (910) 947-2331 or www. townofcarthage.org. HOLLY AND IVY DINNER. 6:30 p.m. “A Night of Parlor Entertainers and Re-creation of a 1915 Dinner.” 1915 attire is encouraged but optional. This event is a special benefit for the Memorial Library and Tufts Archives. Cost: $125/person. The Holly Inn, 155 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info and reservations: (910) 295-6022 or giventufts.org. THEATRE ARTS 1 PRODUCTION. 7 p.m. Open to the public. Family, friends welcome! Tickets $5 at the door. Lee Auditorium, Pinecrest High School, 250 Voit Gilmore Lane, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 6926554 or PHSTheatreBoosters@gmail.com.

Wednesday, December 7 NC SYMPHONY PRESENTS HOLIDAY POPS. 8–10 p.m. Bring the family and celebrate

Thursday, December 8 DAY TRIPPERS. 8:45 a.m.–2:30 p.m. “Best Christmas Pageant Ever.” For teens and young adults ages 14 and over. In this hilarious Christmas classic, a couple struggling to put on a church Christmas pageant are faced with casting the Herdman kids, probably the most inventively awful kids in history. Cost: $24/resident; $48/non-resident (includes admission and transportation, but participants should bring money for lunch). Meet at Assembly Hall, 395 Magnolia Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-2817 or www.pinehurstrec.org.

Polar Express

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SANDHILLS WOMAN’S EXCHANGE. 5 p.m. “Wine ’n Cheese Conversation” with Joyce Reehling. Cost: $25/person. Sandhills Woman’s Exchange, 15 Azalea Road, Pinehurst. Info: Judy Wiggins @ (910) 783-5169. Tickets: (910) 295-4677 (leave message for Karen). THEATRE ARTS II PRODUCTION. 7 p.m. Open to the public. Family, friends welcome! Tickets $5 at the door. Lee Auditorium,Pinecrest High School,

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December 2016 i��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

DR. MICHAEL HENRY

ORTHODONTIST

our Calendar Y k r a M For The

Dr. Henry has practiced orthodontics in Moore County for over 14 years, and provides care for both adults and children. He makes it a goal to operate with technical excellence, working closely with his patients and their dentists to provide optimal and highly customized treatment plans. He offers the latest in orthodontic treatments, including InvisalignÂŽ.

SandhillS ClaSSiCal ChriStian SChool

Valentineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S day

Having grown up in a military family, Dr. Henry has great respect for families who serve, and caters to their special needs. For this very reason, his practice participates in the military insurance network. Henry Orthodontics is currently accepting new patients at both the Pinehurst and Laurinburg locations and happily offers free consultations.

Bowtie Ball

Dr. Henry lives in Southern Pines with his wife, Deborah, and children Ellie (16), Sam (14), and Anna (11).

6pm

Dr. Henry is passionate about his community, and has served on many boards and educational and charitable initiatives throughout the county. He was a co-founder of the live music series First Friday Southern Pines, and still oversees the event every summer.

Dr. Michael Henry

ORTHODONTICS

February | 10 | 2017

n | PinehursT | nC T h e Fa i r B a r

910.692.7965 105 TURNBERRY WAY | PINEHURST orthoisfun.com

Join us for a special night of dining, dancing, and fundraising in support of excellence in Classical Christian education in the Sandhills. sponsored by:

Commercial & Residential Design

catering provided by:

For more info & tickets:

bowtieball@sandhillsccs.org 910-690-6176 www.sandhillsccs.org

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The 2016

Holly and Ivy Dinner A Night of Parlor entertainers and Re-creation of a 1915 Dinner

at The holly Inn

Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016 Cocktails at 6:30pm â&#x20AC;˘ Dinner at 7:30pm $125 Per Person A Special Benefit for the Given Memorial Library & Tufts Archives

1915 attire is encouraged, but optional

Make your reservations at www.giventufts.org For more information call 910-295-6022

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250 Voit Gilmore Lane, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6554 or PHSTheatreBoosters@gmail.com.

Thursday, December 8 — 11 TRIANGLE SANDHILLS HOLIDAY CLASSIC. 7 a.m.–7 p.m. Triangle Farms Winter to Spring A Circuit from Thursday through Sunday. Carolina Horse Park, 2814 Montrose Road, Raeford. Info: (910) 556-7321 or www.carolinahorsepark.com.

Thursday, December 8 — 10 30TH ANNUAL SANDHILLS TEEN CHALLENGE CHRISTMAS BANQUET. 6:30 p.m. Enjoy a delicious dinner and an evening of music by the Teen Challenge Choir and special guest speaker Rev. Don Wilkerson, Co-Founder of Brooklyn Teen Challenge. Cost: $75/table of 8 or $10/person. Adults only. Sandhills Teen Challenge Center, 444 Farm Life School Road, Carthage. Info and reservations: Jamie at (910) 947-2944. To complete your reservation, send checks to Sandhills Teen Challenge, P.O. Box 1701, Southern Pines.

Friday, December 9 PLAY ESCAPE. 3:30–5:30 p.m. Pictures with Santa. Cost: Free with admission. Play Escape, 103 Perry Drive, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 246-2342 or www.playescapenc.com.

PARENTS NIGHT OUT. 5–9 p.m. Need a night out for a date or a chance to get some Christmas shopping done? Let Pinehurst Parks and Rec watch the kids as you take some time for yourself. Your child will have fun playing games, doing an arts and craft project, and will enjoy a pizza dinner and movie. Cost: $15/ resident; $30/non-resident. Pinehurst Parks and Rec. Info: (910) 295-1900. SUPPER WITH SANTA. 6–7:30 p.m. Join Aberdeen Parks and Recreation for a catered dinner from Texas Roadhouse and watch “Frosty the Snowman” as you hang out with Santa! Tickets are on sale at the Aberdeen Recreation Center, 301 Lake Park Crossing, Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-7275 or www.townofaberdeen.net.

Friday, December 9 — 11 CHRISTMAS OPEN HOUSE AT THE SHAW HOUSE. 1–4 p.m. Tour the house and enjoy old-time decorations, music, warm apple cider and homemade cookies. Visit our Gift Shoppe for unique gift items including books of local interest, soaps, note cards, and collectible treasures. Free admission and parking. Shaw House, 110 W. Morganton Road, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-2051 or www.moorehistory.com.

Encore Sunshine Antique & Mercantile Company Buy, Sell or Trade Specializing in Primitive & Country Furnishings Thursday- Saturday 10 to 5 Monday-Wednesday by appointment or chance 115 N. Sycamore St., Aberdeen, NC (910) 691-3100 shop • (919) 673-9388 or (919) 673-9387 cells

Antiques & Newtiques 5336 NC Hwy 211, West End, NC 27376 (at the traffic light)

910-673-2065

Tues-Sat 11am-4pm • Sun 1pm-4pm www.westendpastimes.com

Advertise your antique, consignment or thrift shop on the PineStraw Encore Page! Call 910-692-7271

Friday, December 9 — 30 (except 24 and 25) HOLIDAY LIGHTS IN THE GARDEN. 5:15–10 p.m. Attractions and festivities include a synchronized show of lights and music shimmering over the Cypress Pond, thousands of lights aglow, photos with Santa, S’mores over the fire pit, free crafts for children and holiday selections from the Garden Gift Shop. Call for admission price. Cape Fear Botanical Garden, 536 N. Eastern Blvd., Fayetteville. Info and registration: (910) 486-0221 ext 20 or www. capefearbg.org.

Saturday, December 10 SANDHILLS WOMAN’S EXCHANGE. 10:30 a.m. NC authors reading to children, followed by a visit from Santa and Mrs. Claus. Come shop our artisan gifts and enjoy punch and cookies. Sandhills Woman’s Exchange, 15 Azalea Road, Pinehurst. Info: Judy Wiggins @ (910) 783-5169. ABERDEEN CHRISTMAS PARADE. 11 a.m.–12 p.m. Parade registration deadline is Dec. 2. Forms can be found at townofaberdeen. net. Aberdeen Parks and Recreation, 115 N. Poplar St., Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-7275. THE MET: LIVE IN HD. 1–3:50 p.m. Saariaho’s “L’Amour de Loin” opera, conducted

BARGAIN BOX II NON-PROFIT THRIFT SHOP

Bene fits Moore Cou nty Charities & Nursi ng Schol arship s for SCC Stude nts Donations Accepted During Regular Business Hours

Tuesday-Saturday 10am-4pm 7299-A, 15-501 in Eastwood (Behind Wylie’s Golf Cart) 910-235-5221

Atrium Antiques Hand Made Jewlery and Fine Collectibles 25% off purchases now thru Christmas Visit us: The Atrium 125 Murray Hill Road Southern Pines Monday-Saturday 10-5

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by Susanna Malkki, stars Eric Owens as the knight on a quest of love and Susanna Phillips as his lover on the other side of the sea. Cost: $27. Sunrise Theater, 250 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8501 or sunrisetheater.com. OLD-FASHIONED CHRISTMAS AT MALCOLM BLUE FARM. 1–5 p.m. Come celebrate Christmas in the spirit of the 1820s! Music, decorations, children’s activities and light refreshments. The museum will be open to visitors. Malcolm Blue Farm. 1177 Bethesda Road, Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-7275 or www. townofaberdeen.net.

Mid-State Furniture of Carthage

403 Monroe Street Downtown Carthage 910-947-3739

Inside Kendale Pawn Shop • 919-774-7196

2715 Lee Ave. • Sanford, NC • 919-774-7195

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BOOK LOVERS UNITE. 7 p.m. What is your favorite holiday or gift book? Bring your list of favorites and add to it as others describe theirs. Free and open to the public. Given Outpost, 95 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-7002.

HOLIDAY OPEN HOUSE. 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Enjoy freshly roasted organic coffee, tea and cake; and check out our latest wood-fired pottery pieces. From the Ground Up Pottery. 172 Crestwood Road, Robbins. Info: (910) 464-6228 or www.explorepinehurst.com.

Sunday, December 11

Tara’s Jewelry

CHILDREN’S PROGRAM — KINDERMUSIK. 10:30 a.m. Laura Johnson leads this class, designed for 1- and 2-year-olds. Space is limited. Given Memorial Library. 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info and sign up: Ellen Graham at (910) 315-0990.

CHRISTMAS OPEN HOUSE. 11 a.m.–4 p.m. Take a step back in time at the House in the Horseshoe, decorated for the holidays. Reenactors in Colonial attire will conduct trade demonstrations, cannons and muskets will be fired throughout the day. Light refreshments available. No charge. House in the Horseshoe, 288 Alston House Road, Sanford. Info: (910) 947-2051 or www.nchistoricsites.org.

FAYETTEVILLE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA. 7:30–9:30 p.m. “Waltzing in a Winter Wonderland.” FSO and guest conductor Aram Demirjian, associate conductor of the Kansas City Symphony, present an evening of traditional holiday music. A pre-concert talk with the FSO “Music Nerd” and Aram Demirjian will begin at 6:45. Call for ticket prices. Huff Concert Hall, Methodist University, 5400 Ramsey St., Fayetteville. Info: (910) 4334690 or www.fayettevillesymphony.org.

• Diamond Engagement Rings • Sapphires Platinum Dior • 10K & 14K Yellow & White Gold • Watches & Bracelets • Pearls • Silver • Special Orders• Special Mountings • For Your Hierloom Stones • Rose Gold Wedding Sets

Monday, December 12

BOLSHOI BALLET SERIES. 1 p.m. “The Nutcracker,” in HD via satellite. Christmas would not be the same without the enchanting tale of Marie and her handsome Nutcracker prince and Tchaikovsky’s timeless musical score. Cost: $25. Sunrise Theater, 250 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8501 or sunrisetheater.com. SUNDAY KIDS MOVIE. 2:30 p.m. In this sequel, a blue tang fish goes in search of her family. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235. FAYETTEVILLE SYMPHONY YOUTH ORCHESTRA. 4–5:30 p.m. Students of the Fayetteville Symphony Youth Orchestra perform their winter concert. Huff Concert Hall, Methodist University, 5400 Ramsey St., Fayetteville. Info: (910) 433-4690 or www. fayettevillesymphony.org.

Cinderella at DPAC

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SANDHILLS PHOTO CLUB MEETING. 7–9 p.m. “Holiday Dinner.” Hannah Center at The O’Neal School, 3300 Airport Road, Southern Pines. Info: www.sandhillsphotoclub.org.

Wednesday, December 14 CAPE FEAR BALLROOM DANCERS. 6:30–10 p.m. Formal Dinner-Dance. Highland Country Club, 105 Fairway Drive, Fayetteville. Info: (910) 987-4420 or www.capefearballroomdancers.org.

Thursday, December 15 MUSIC AND MOTION STORYTIME. 10:30 a.m. For all children through age 5. Every other week, this event incorporates stories and songs along with dancing, playing and games designed to foster language and motor-skill development. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235.

December 2016i��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

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MEDITATIVE YOGA. 10:30–11:30 a.m. Six sessions through Jan 26. Carol Wallace teaches slow stretches and gentle yoga postures to help promote a quiet mind and a healthy body. Everyone is welcome. Cost: $35/residents; $70/ nonresidents. Pinehurst Parks and Rec, 300 Kelly Road, Pinehurst. Info and pre-registration: (910) 295-1900 or 295-2817.

Saturday, December 17 FAMILY DAY AT THE LIBRARY. All day. A special event, “Kids Cook – Fun and Healthy Snacks,” will run from 11 a.m.–noon; the Humpty Dumpty Egg Drop Challenge will be part of a Maker session at 2 p.m.; and teens are invited to learn ink marbling at 3 p.m. Craft tables set up all day. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235. CHRISTMAS MOVIE & SNOW SPECTACULAR. 11 a.m. The ARC of Moore County presents Elf, followed by snow-sledding and festivities in Sunrise Square. Sunrise Theater, 250 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Cost: $10 donation includes movie, refreshments, and festivities; $5 donation to access only the activities in the Greenspace at 1 p.m. Info: (910) 692-8501 or 6923611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

Sunday, December 18 SUNDAY FILM SERIES. 2:30 p.m. This film is based on the book Our Kind of Traitor, by author John Le Carré, about a couple who find themselves lured into a Russian oligarch’s plans to defect, and are soon positioned between the Russian Mafia and the British Secret Service, neither of whom they can trust. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235. ’TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS. 3 p.m. A live reading of the classic poem, photo with Santa and other fun holiday surprises! Supporting authors in Moore Schools and other programming. Tickets: $25/ parent and one child; additional children $10. Weymouth Center for Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6261 or www.weymouthcenter.org.

Monday, December 19 AFTER-DINNER STORYTIME & HOLIDAY PUPPET SHOW. 6 p.m. Children ages birth to fifth grade and their families are invited to enjoy a session that incorporates stories and activities that foster a love of books and reading. This program will feature the annual Holiday Puppet

Show. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235.

Tuesday, December 20 JAMES BOYD BOOK CLUB. 2 p.m. “Eighteen poems by James Boyd.” Free and open to the public. Weymouth Library, Weymouth Center for Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6261 or www.weymouthcenter.org.

Wednesday, December 21 NC SYMPHONY HOLIDAY POPS. 8–10 p.m. Bring the family and celebrate the most wonderful time of the year with carols and traditional holiday favorites. Call for ticket prices. Lee Auditorium, Pinecrest High School, 250 Voit Gilmore Lane, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 627-6724.

Thursday, December 22 POLAR EXPRESS. 6:30 p.m. Free and open to the community. Sunrise Theater, 250 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8501 or sunrisetheater.com.

Worship Directory Join us for

A Christmas Celebration

WWW.CAMERONPRESBYTERIAN.ORG 600 CARTHAGE ST. CAMERON NC 28326

December 3rd at 4:00 pm December 4th at 7: 00 pm

CAMERON PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

The Christmas Choir Moore Brass Interpretive Worship Choir

AND CHRISTMAS EVENTS

Share in this joyous musical event featuring

PINEHURST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH 4111 Airport Road · Pinehurst, NC 910.215.4559 · www.pinehurstumc.com

Aberdeen First Baptist Church Sunday, December 4th at 6:00 PM “Hanging of the Greens Service” Thursday, December 15th at 7:00 PM Christmas Cantata “Almost There” Sunday, December 25th at 10:00 AM Christmas Service 700 N Sandhills Blvd • Aberdeen, NC 28315 (910) 944-1421 • www.aberdeenfbc.org

NOV. 27 Luke 1:5-25 DEC. 4 Luke 1:26-38 Cakes & Carols Following Worship DEC. 11 Matthew 1: 18-25 Featuring Chimes DEC. 18 Luke 2: 8-14 Christmas Cantata 5 p.m. DEC. 24 Luke 2:1-20 Christmas Eve Service 5 p.m, DEC. 25 Lessons & Carols Service

“do not be afraid.” Luke 1:30

PINEHURST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

Bethesda Presbyterian Church

Visit

Everyone Welcome

online @

www.pinestrawmag.com

DECEMBER 2016

It’s the perfect way to start The Christmas Season!

Sunday Worship at 11 a.m.

11 • 11am Morning Worship Service featuring Chancel Choir Cantata - Jesus! 18 • 11am Morning Worship Service featuring The Moore Brass, Merry Hearts Pre-School Performance 24 • 5pm Community Christmas Eve Service 24 • 11pm Christmas Eve Candlelight Service 25 • 10am Christmas Day Family Service

Sunday School: 9:45am • Worship Service: 11:00am 1002 N. Sandhills Blvd. (US 1) • Aberdeen NC 910-944-1319 • www.bethesdapres.church

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Tuesday, December 27 WEYMOUTH YOUNG AFFILIATES. 6 p.m. Holiday Social and Meeting. All are welcome to attend. Weymouth Library, Weymouth Center for Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6261 or www.weymouthcenter.org. MUSICIAN SONG CIRCLE JAM SESSION. 7 p.m. Bring your instrument and your beverage, or just come to enjoy! Free and open to the public. Weymouth Library, Weymouth Center for Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6261 or www.weymouthcenter.org.

Saturday, December 30 RODGER’S AND HAMMERSTEIN CINDERELLA. (At Durham Performing Arts Center) This lush production features an incredible orchestra, jaw-dropping transformations and all the moments you love. With Kirk Tours. Cost: $118–$168/person, includes ticket and luxury transportation; dinner at Streets of South Point (dutch-treat). Departing at 4 p.m. from Belk @ Pinecrest Plaza in Southern Pines. Returning approximately 11 p.m. Info: (910) 295-2257 or www.kirktours.com.

Saturday, December 31 THE ROOSTER’S WIFE. 2:46 p.m. The

Gibson Brothers perform. Cost: $30 in advance; $35 day of event. The Rooster’s Wife, 114 Knight St., Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-7502 or www.theroosterswife.org.

practices. Programs will be offered Dec. 6, 13, & 20. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

THE ROOSTER’S WIFE. 8 p.m. The Gibson Brothers in concert, ringing in the New Year with an all-star jam! Cost: $75. The Rooster’s Wife, 114 Knight St., Aberdeen. Info: (910) 9447502 or www.theroosterswife.org.

BROWN BAG LUNCH/GAME DAY. 11:30 a.m. Bring your lunch and enjoy fellowship and activities, including card games, board games and the Wii. The Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

WEEKLY EVENTS Sundays PLAY ESCAPE. 3:30–5:30 p.m. Pictures with Santa. Cost: Free with admission. Play Escape, 103 Perry Drive, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 246-2342 or playescapenc.com.

Mondays BRIDGE. 1–4 p.m. A card game played by four people in two partnerships, in which “trump” is determined by bidding. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

Tuesdays BABY BUNNIES STORYTIME. 10:30–11 a.m. and 11:15 a.m.–12 p.m. This storytime, reserved for ages birth to 18 months, will engage parents and children in early literacy

TAI CHI FOR HEALTH. 10–11:30 a.m. Practice this flowing Eastern exercise with instructor Rich Martin. Cost for single class: $15/member; $17/non-member. Monthly rates available. No refunds or transfers. Cape Fear Botanical Garden, 536 N. Eastern Blvd., Fayetteville. Info and registration: (910) 486-0221. PLAY ESCAPE. 3:30 pm. Arts & Crafts. For ages 2 yr + Cost: $2/child and $1/siblings. Play Escape, 103 Perry Drive, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 246-2342 or playescapenc.com. THE ARTIFACT SHACK. 4–5:30 p.m. Painting Classes for Kids. Subjects include: “A White Dove,” “Grinch Hand with Ornament,” “A Nutcracker.” No classes Dec 27 and 28. Cost: $18, all supplies included. Classes held at The Ice Cream Parlor, 176 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (540) 4543641 or www.theartifactshack.com.

Seasons Greetings!

Chuck & Mary Bolton

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December 2016i��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Pineservices

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Wednesdays BRIDGE. 1–4 p.m. A card game played by four people in two partnerships, in which “trump” is determined by bidding. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376. READ TO YOUR BUNNY PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 3:30–4 p.m. For children through age 5, this storytime focuses on stories, songs and fun, with a special emphasis on activities that build skills for kindergarten. Dates this month are Dec. 7, 14, and 21. Stay for playtime. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235. THE ARTIFACT SHACK. 4–5:30 p.m. Painting Classes for Kids. Subjects include a scarecrow, a patriotic flag, and a turkey. No class Nov 22 and 23. Cost: $18, all supplies included. Classes held at The Ice Cream Parlor, 176 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (540) 454-3641 or www.theartifactshack.com.

Thursdays MOORE COUNTY FARMERS MARKET. 9 a.m.–1 p.m. Fruits, vegetables, meats, crafts, flowers, plants, baked goods and more. Armory Sports Complex, 604 W Morganton Road, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 947-3752 or www. moorecountync.gov or www.localharvest.org. STORY TIME! 10:30–11:30 a.m. For ages 3 to 5. Wonderful volunteers read to children, and everyone makes a craft. Free and open to the public. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-6022. MAHJONG (Chinese version). 1–3 p.m. A game played by four people involving skill, strategy and calculation. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376. CHESS. 1–3 p.m. Don Hammerman instructs all levels of players. You need a chess set to participate. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

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hypnotherapy clinic HypnoSiS WoRkS! iT iS life CHAnging! Raise your self confidence • Deal with fears & anxious feelings Help with grief & loss • Weight loss • Smoking cessation Taking appointments for Adults & Children

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Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist

Black rock

PLAY ESCAPE. 10 a.m. Arts & Crafts. For ages 2 yr + Cost: $2/child and $1/siblings. Play Escape, 103 Perry Drive, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 246-2342 or playescapenc.com. PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 10:30 a.m. Reading selections are taken from our current

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a brighter future

Happy Holidays!

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compassionate home care.

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COOKING CLASS. 6:30 p.m. Chef Clay White leads hands-on preparation of menu items (gnocci, Thai, ravioli, Moroccan, Lebanese, cannolis, or pasta). Reservations and pre-payment required. Call for prices and specific menu. The Flavor Exchange, 115 E. New Hampshire Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 725-1345 or www.flavorexchange.com.

Fridays

325 Page Road Building 3, Suite 206 • Pinehurst cynthiachi14@gmail.com www.dannarhypnotherapyclinic.com

175 W. Pennsylvania Ave. Southern Pines, NC 28387 www.funandhealthyweightloss.com For Free Consultation Call 910-246-3438

Shauna Lovin (910) 633-6990 Shauna.lovin@cottagehill.biz www.cottagehill.biz

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inventory of children’s literature, from the classics to modern day. The Country Bookshop, 140 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3211. BRIDGE. 1–4 p.m. A card game played by four people in two partnerships, in which “trump” is determined by bidding. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

Saturdays WALKING BOOK CLUB. 10 a.m. Meet at the Library for a brisk half-hour walk through beautiful downtown Southern Pines to discuss current reads, make book suggestions, and enjoy being active outside. Wear comfortable shoes and clothing. This month on Dec. 3, 10 and 17. PS

December PineNeedler Answers from page 133

JAZZY FRIDAYS. 6–10 p.m. Enjoy a bottle of wine and dancing with friends under the tent with live jazz music, provided by Blackwater Rhythm and Blues, The Sand Band, Blackwater Rhythm and Blues, The Sand Band, Cool Heat, or Midnight Allie. Cost: $10/person. Reservations and pre-payment recommended for parties of 8 or more. Food vendor on site. Cypress Bend Vineyards, 21904 Riverton Road, Wagram. Info: (910) 369-0411 or www.cypressbendvineyards.com.

Dining Guide

Extraordinary Food in a Comfortable, Casual Atmosphere Chef Driven American Fare

Reservations Accepted for Parties 6 to 16 - Call 246-0497

Gift Cards Now Available!

11am - 10pm Mon • Tue • Wed • Thu • Fri • Sat • and YES SUN & MON TOO!

(910) 246-0497 • 157 East New Hampshire Ave • Southern Pines, NC • www.ChapmansFoodAndSpirits.com 116

Like us on

December 2016i��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Dining Guide let us make your

Holiday Sweet Only the Freshest Quality Ingredients Used

Lunch & Dinner • Monday-Saturday FEATURING Chef Created Daily Specials Gourmet Burgers • Yuengling Battered Cod Wings • Blackened Fish Tacos Ribs • Homemade Soups & Desserts Seared Sriracha Shrimp Skewers & More.

FULL BAR AVAILABLE

MiLitary MonDayS 10% off w/proper iD

The Bakehouse & Cafe E s t a b l i s h E d 19 4 8

Full Service Bakery & Café

www.DoubleEagleGrill.com

Breakfast Tues - Sat 8 - 10:30am Bakery Tues-Sat 8am-3pm • Sun 11am-3pm Lunch Tues-Sun 11am-2:30pm

910-757-0025

120 N. Poplar St. Aberdeen 910.944.9204

Historic Downtown Aberdeen 111 N. Sycamore St.

117

Dining Guide

Restaurant Authentic Thai Cusine

Thank you for shopping at the

U.S. Hwy 1 South & 15-501 1404 Sandhills Blvd. Aberdeen, NC 28315

MOORE COUNTY FARMERS MARKET in 2016 Winter Season

November thru mid-April Thursdays: 604 W. Morganton Road- Armory 9:00 am - 1:00 pm

Smoke Free Environment Lunch

Closed Monday Tuesday - Friday 11:00am - 2:30pm Saturday Closed for Lunch Sunday 11:30am - 2:30pm

Dinner

Tuesday - Sunday 5:00pm - 9:30pm Saturday 4:00pm-9:30pm See our menu on MooCo under Oriental Restaurants

(910) 944-9299

www.thaiorchidnc.com Carryout and Vegetarian Dishes

“Open on Thursday Dec. 22nd for Christmas Week” “Open on Thursday Dec. 29th for New Year’s Week”

ir tive Fla Innova isine • u C ic Class

Wishing You & Yours Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

Local (within 50 miles) in-season produce, kale, collards, Swiss chard, turnips, winter squash, greens, lettuce, sweet potatoes, greenhouse tomatoes, grass fed beef, free range pork and chickens, eggs, baked goods, jams, prepared foods, plants, crafts, pecans, plus others

Join us and Treat your Family & Friends

FirstHealth & Downtown Southern Pines will re-open the middle of April 2016

Lunch Tues-Fri 11:30-2:00 Dinner Wed-Sat 5:30-9:00

Facilities Courtesy of FirstHealth & Town of Southern Pines

910-235-4600 www.ninasinpinehurst.com 111 Central Park Ave, Suite L Olmsted Village, Pinehurst

Call 947-3752 or 690-9520 for more info.

hwwebster@embarqmail.com Web search Moore County Farmers Market Local Harvest www.facebook.com/moorecountyfarmersmarket SNAP welcomed here

it’s not too Late to book your

HoLiday PaRty!

The

Our Place or Yours -

We CateR to youR WHims!

Seasonal Servings

December Pairing Special Aged Blackberry-Ginger Balsamic Vinegar & All-Natural Persian Lime Olive Oil pairing

10% off 30 balsamics • 26 olive oils • olive oil skin care specialty oils • pastas • herbs & spices

thepinehurstoliveoilco.com

105 Cherokee Rd • Village of Pinehurst

910.986.0880

118

Groups • Banquets • CateRing ReseRvations taken

DiningGuide of the

Sandhills

for groups of 6 or more

1720 US 1 South Southern Pines, NC

910-695-1161

TheSquiresPub.com

Casual Dining. serious FooD.

December 2016i��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Arts & Culture

THE NUTCRACKER SUN DEC 11

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY SUN JAN 22

SWAN LAKE* SUN FEB 5

250 NW Broad St, Southern Pines • 910-692-8501 • www.sunrisetheater.com The Sunrise Preservation Group. Inc. is a 501 (c)(3) Tax-Deductible, Non-Profit Organization

119

Arts & Culture

Treat your Valentine to a great night of music at…

Tickets on Sale Dec. 1. Space is Limited!

starring

John Pizzarelli (Jazz guitarist, vocalist & bandleader)

Saturday, February 11, 2017 8:00 PM Cardinal Ballroom at Pinehurst Resort NEW THIS YEAR…RESERVED SEATING!

VIP Seats: $75 each • Preferred Seats: $65 each General Admission: $55 each This event is a fundraiser for the Arts Council of Moore County.

Generously Sponsored by…

claim

yo u r s p o T l i g h T

To adverTise here, call 336-601-1188

120

December 2016i��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

r be Exc A hange St. •

12 9

en •

944-3979

Arts & Culture

Street Exchange

Gallery

ION EXHIBIT16R E B M E 0 2 DEC ecember 1, Thursday, D ecember 15, 2016 D y, da dhills Thurs f the San

Sale eague o Artists L l Art Exhibit and a u n n A 22nd ION

Holiday Pops

IT Y EXH8IB JANUAR y , 20171- 7 ar nu Ja y, 0 Sunda nuary 26, 2 Thursday, Ja s Exhibit”

WED, DEC 21 | 8PM

r’ ors “Instructo casing the instructls n show e of the Sandhil io it ib h ex An ists Leagu of the Art

LEE AUDITORIUM, PINECREST HIGH SCHOOL, SOUTHERN PINES

Celebrate the season with all your holiday favorites, including “Joy to the World” and “ Winter Wonderland,” plus selections from The Nutcracker, The Polar Express, It’s a Wonderful Life, and so much more!

Instructor’s Demonstration Day Sunday, 8 January 2017 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Still Life Impressionist Oil Painting - taught by Harold Frontz – March 1-3, 2017 Plein Air Concepts - Any Medium taught by Chad Smith – May 2-4, 2017

Watercolors with Andrea Schmidt - January 10, 17, 24, 31 • 9:30 - 12:30 Painting on Silk with Kathy Leuck - January 13 • 9:00 - 3:00 Oils with Courtney Herndon - January 18, 19 • 9:00 - 3:30 Oil Pastels with Linda Drott - January 25 • 10:00 - 4:00 Oils with Courtney Herndon - January 26, 27 • 9:00 - 3:30

Contact the League for details and to register! Like Us!

www.artistleague.org

Ask about family pricing! ncsymphony.org | 877.627.6724 Tickets are also available at: Campbell House | 482 E. Connecticut Avenue The Country Bookshop | 140 NW Broad Street

2016-17

SEASON Performing Arts Center

UNCP Department of Music’s

8th Annual Holiday

Extravaganza December 2

JANUARY 26

January 19

N.C. Youth Tap Ensemble

March 21

STOMP

March 27

Russian National Ballet: Swan Lake

April 4

Ellis, Island of Dreams

April 7

Pippin

Visit uncp.edu/gpac or call: 910.521.6361 Discounts for groups of 10 or more. PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . December 2016

121

E S TAT E L I Q U I D AT O R S

y r r e Mistmas! r h C

the

CLOTHES HORSE

Featuring FRANK LYMAN JOSEPH RIBKOFF MING WANG NIC & ZOE AND MANY MORE!

Paul

& Blake

Casual to Dressy

A s s o c i at e s

CELEBRATING WOMEN OF ALL AGES!

ESTATE LIQUIDATION & TAG SALE SERVICES

LADIES CLOTHING & ACCESSORIES

Proudly serving buyers and sellers in Moore and surrounding counties with pride for over 30 years. Licensed & Bonded. Refer to The Pilot Newspaper for current sale dates & locations or go to ThePilot.com Paul Blake 910.315.7044 | Chuck Helbling 910.315.4501

• Beside The Fresh Market • 163 Beverly Ln, Southern Pines, NC 28387

910.693.2111 Monday - Saturday 10-5 facebook.com/ClothesHorseofSPines

Brighten yo u r H o l i days

110 NW Broad Street Southern Pines, NC 28387

910-692-2388 122

December 2016i��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

SandhillSeen

Shelly Gerritsma, Cooper

Razor, Leslie Hammann

2016 Horse Farm Tour To Benefit Prancing Horse Farm Sunday, October 16, 2016 Photographs by Diane McKay

Bev Fox, Anne Strobel, Helen Thomas

Sid & Sandy Newman

Lyn Rudnick, Judy Lewis Linda Gibbs, Ann Robinson

Julia Connelly, Ann Lawson

Ruth Caldara, Rosemary Weber

Ann Fedewa, LInda Wesseder, Jan Maher Karen Shelton, Diane Badden

Pamela Fowler, Eric Stanley

Vinnie, Julia Connelly

123

Christmas Wishes from our Family to Yours!

150 NW Broad Street | Southern Pines | 910-692-9322

710 S. Bennett Street | Southern Pines, NC

USING PREMIER ITALIAN HAIRCOLOR TECHNOLOGY FOR

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Life is more beautiful when you meet the right hairdresser

HairCottage 104 Bradford Village Court, Southern Pines

(910)692-2825

www.thehaircottage.com Please visit our website for location and directions.

124

December 2016i��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

SandhillSeen

Kathryn & Eric Galloway, Whitney Cutler

Emily & Richard Ciuk

2nd Annual Dining in the Brewery Southern Pines Brewery Saturday, October 29, 2016 Photographs by John Gessner

Tyler & Sarah Manion

Walter & Jillian Salas

Yari & Cody McBride

Steve & Courtney Paul

Sonja McCarrell, Micah Niebauer

Ronda & Gerry Hintermeister

Alex & Kearstin Pavlov

Nate & Stephanie Grostzke, Catherine Herrera

Bradley Maples, Ginny & Heath Trigg, Kathryn & Eric Galloway

125

Tis’ Better to Give than to Retrieve

December

Dec. 2: Jeanne Jolly and the Mistletoes Dec. 4: Jonathan Byrd & Corin Raymond Dec. 11: Peter Lamb and the Wolves Dec.31: The Gibson Brothers (2 Shows) The afternoon show begins at 2:46 p.m. The New Year’s festivities begin at 8:46 p.m., with Champagne and tasty treats from Thyme and Place. Joining the Brothers are Hank and Pattie, Laurelyn Dossett, Alex McKinney and Alex Bingham.

Poplar Knight Spot 114 Knight St., Aberdeen 910•944•7502 theroosterswife.org 126

December 2016i��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Tim Reznor, Laurie Deleot

SandhillSeen Paper Canvas Cloth Exhibit Campbell House Friday, November 4, 2016

Photographs by Al & Annette Daniels Lynette Crosby, June Pernice, Catherine Murphy, Liz Haemming

Dian Moore, Patsy Parkhill Jane Waldemar, Marilyn Vendemia, Linda Laskowitz

Marie Travisano, Yvonne Daniels

Lisa Chan, Sara Corce Elaine Schwartz, Beulah Warren

Barbara & Donald Parks

Christina & Avianna Pacione, Lea & Camellia Mullis

Mary Stewart Regensburg, Mary ann & Dick McCrary, Don Tortorice

Michelle McLaughlin

John Shannon, Joyce White

127

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Make their Christmas Merry and Bright with a locally made gift!

Pottery classes start in January. Sign up today! Mon-Sat 10 to 5 or by appointment www.ravenpottery.com Call for more information & class schedule

2 6 0 W. Pe n n s y l v a n i a Av e • S o u t h e r n P i n e s , N C • 3 3 6 - 4 6 5 - 1 7 76 128

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HOURS: M to F 10-6 • Sat 10-5

910-693-7875

www.caredforcanine.com

Dr. Richard B. Gant, Jr. introduces

Paul E. Gauthier D.D.S.

Smiles Bring JOY to the world Merry Christmas Our office has been serving the Sandhills since 1947

Southern Pines Family Dentistry

655 SW Broad St Southern Pines 692-6500

December 2016i��PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

SandhillSeen Daddy Daughter Royal Ball The Pinehurst Resort Sunday, October 23, 2016

Photographs by Al & Annette Daniels

Kailey & Michael Kucharczyk

Lt. Col. Rick Young & Lexington

Jim & Delilah Taft Kinsley Mays, Taylor Owen, Sofia Baker, Madelyn Foster

Mike & Sophia Vogt, Kylie Green

Charlotte & Jason Richardson Katelynn & James Ledergerber

Orlando and Cataleya Jinzo

Carole, Gavin, Kerri & Marilyn McAllister

Lisa, Ayla & Tony Von

Peighton & Harold Lincoln

Clay, Lilly & Heather Blakeney McKell & Clifton Mack

Addilyn, Emma, Tyler & Ashley Baity

129

KIND OF A

AGAIN.

130

December 2016i�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

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131

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132

December 2016i�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

December PineNeedler BINGO! By Mart Dickerson

ACROSS 1 J. Edgar Hoover’s org. 4 Mexican shawl (alt. sp) 10 Butcher’s offering 14 Ashes holder 15 Aviator Earhart 16 Ancient Andean 17 B-51 18 N-17 20 Anger 21 Raids a drug dealer 22 Puts on cargo 23 Reddish-brown color 25 Set, as aspic 26 Bundle of nerves (2 wds)

31 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 46 48

Take the trophy Group of eight Persia, now All there Unraveled cloth edge Balderdash Chill and fever Moments of outrage Healthy berry G-7 “___ to Billie Joe” Stringed instrument Nile snake Sweetie pie

49 Reggae dance 52 French verb meaning “to like/love” 55 Atlanta-based TV station 58 0-30, or 0-40 60 As well as 61 “I’m ___ you!” (2 wds) 62 Spotted leopard-like feline 63 “C’___ la vie!” 64 Small floral arrangement 65 Enlarges vertically 66 “Comprende?”

Puzzle answers on page 116

DOWN 1 Camera film maker 2 Uncle Remus’ ___Rabbit 3 I-85 4 Danced a Brazilian dance 5 Quantity 6 Guns the engine 7 Landed softly 8 Bakers’ wares 9 Place for a loop 10 Like some organs 11 Oklahoma city 12 Teen’s bane 13 Falls behind 19 Southern Pines Brewery offering

Mart Dickerson lives in Southern Pines and welcomes suggestions from her fellow puzzle masters. She can be reached at gdickerson@nc.rr.com. 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 36 38

Approves Characteristic carrier Fab Bitter About, historically Suffix with sect Flavorful Carriages with facing seats Acclimate Wants “Master,” in Colonial India Pack (down), as tobacco

42 45 46 47 49 50 51 52 53 54 56 57 59

Bordeaux offerings at The Wine Cellar Moon of Uranus Bother Hit the Alps “Cut it out!” Reno game Aardvark fare Fungal spore sacs Decorated, as a cake Burrowing animal Barely beat, with “out” ___ bag, carry-on Boar’s mate

Sudoku:

Fill in the grid so every row, every column and every 3x3 box contain the numbers 1–9.

133

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134

December 2016i�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

T h e A c c i d e nta l A st r o l o g e r

December’s Stars The best is possible

By Astrid Stellanova

In the interest of the season, this is a good time

to say something nice. (Long overdue, you might be thinking?) Sagittarius qualities make those born under the sign naturally accomplished, because they have energy and curious minds. They travel through life believing the best is possible. They want to know the meaning of life and will travel far to find it no matter what kind of crazymaking place it might take them. Adventure is their drug and so is challenge. Sagittarians are destined for fame: Miley Cyrus. Andrew Carnegie. John Kennedy Jr. Charles Schultz. Tina Turner. Winston Churchill (And so, in the interest of the season, I left out Sagittarian Ted Bundy.) Merry, Merry, Star Children, till next year! Ad Astra — Astrid Sagittarius (November 22–December 21) Despite your still having your right mind, it sometimes freezes up on you like Grandpa Hornblower’s hip. You’ve been having some abada-dabada moments that leave you wondering if you need help. Sugar, you are fine in the head department. Just focus on opening up your heart and this will be a holly, jolly month. Give yourself a trip somewhere you haven’t been — you just need a new horizon. Capricorn (December 22–January 19) Somebody surprised you with their idea of a gift that looked more like your idea of short-shrift. Do you retaliate? Nooooo, Sugar. You just thank them for the used grill and act like you are thrilled slap to death. Social grace ain’t something you just mumble before a meal. Aquarius (January 20–February 18) Would it kill you to act enthused over the new book club’s affection for trashy novels? Well, actually, it just might. You are a closet intellectual, or think you are, but actually, everybody knows you are a Brainiac. You have been outed. We like you just the same, Sweetie Pants. Pisces (February 19–March 20) Old age sure is coming at a bad time, ain’t it? You worry about keeping enough money in your oatmeal and granola fund. You worry about keeping your teeth. You worry about keeping your sweetheart from paying too much attention to the neighbor. Well, the good news is, your gums are healthy. Aries (March 21–April 19) Nobody likes a hot mess. Actually, they like a cold mess even less. Embroider that on your pillow and remember to just learn this: Saying please and thank you doesn’t just work for first graders. The whole wide world could use more of that. It was your good fortune to get pulchritude in your DNA. (Look it up.) Taurus (April 20–May 20) Here’s a snapshot of your month: You joined a support group for procrastinating but haven’t gone to a meeting yet. What gives with all this putting things off? You know you are usually impulsive, but your get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went. No more shoulda woulda coulda. Snap out of it, Sugar.

Gemini (May 21–June 20) People around you cannot quite believe how nice you’ve been lately. Whether it is medication or just an attitude adjustment, let’s say it was just in the nick of time. You have gotten a little bit of dispensation, Honey, but you can’t pretend you didn’t need to check your bad self. There are still bridges to mend. Cancer (June 21–July 22) Even skanks say thanks. At least, that’s what we say when we gather around for a special occasion like a hog-killing or a reunion. (We are nothing if not proud of certain traditions.) Say thanks to somebody for something and try and act like you mean it, will you? Leo (July 23–August 22) There’s truth, and then there’s something truthy that you have held onto about yourself. You ain’t exactly fooling anybody who knows you. Sugar, just own it. You have a new chance opening up that is going to require some very vigorous self-examination. Virgo (August 23–September 22) Somebody you like made you play two-truths-and-a-lie and you held your breath, didn’t you? You revealed a deep dark something nobody knew. Well, la-di-da. The moment came and went and nobody fell outta their seat. See? Now move on. Libra (September 23–October 22) Here’s a confession: you were switched at birth. With an alien. And it is really you who designed the pyramids in another life. And you were also Queen Nefertiti in another incarnation. Did you buy any of this? Well, I hope not, because it is all hooey. What you actually are is some kind of wonderful, all on your own. Scorpio (October 23–November 21) If only you received the same pleasure from giving that you do from getting. The fact is, you don’t. So, perhaps this month you can rehearse not putting moi first. It’s the right season, Child, to grow up and be selfless. Then, for heaven’s sake, allow yourself a whole lot of credit for finally owning up to it. PS

For years, Astrid Stellanova owned and operated Curl Up and Dye Beauty Salon in the boondocks of North Carolina until arthritic fingers and her popular astrological readings provoked a new career path.

135

s o u t h w o r ds

The Amazing Mr. Whittle

By Jim Moriarty

Near the end of the day, on the top floor

at St. Joseph of the Pines, a man who spent much of his working life in a research laboratory places his wheelchair directly behind the wheelchair of his wife, whose mind has wandered into the mists of age, and puts to fair use the laws of force and motion. With him supplying the force and her the motion, they roll in tandem down the hallway to the sunroom, where he parks them side-by-side so they can look through the broad windows at sunset.

Robert Lamar Whittle — “Just like whittling a stick,” he says as if he was saying it for the first time — turned 99 in October. He goes by Lamar because his father had a prior claim on Bob. Edna, his wife, is 97. They met at a church Christmas party in Sylvester, Georgia. So far it’s lasted 74 years. Mr. Whittle remembers his father’s sawmill near Cedar Key on Florida’s Gulf Coast and the springs near the mouth of the Suwannee River. “The water was so clear you could see the white sand in the bottom 50 feet from the shore,” he says. The lumber business went bust in 1929, sending the family north into Worth County, Georgia. Mr. Whittle remembers for two now, and he remembers pretty much all of it. He worked his way through Berry College in Rome. “It’s still there,” he says. “Still functioning.” When World War II began, the War Manpower Commission put his name on a list of scientific and technical people. “When the Manhattan Project was begun, I was sent down to Columbia University and I spent the rest of the war years there,” he says. “The only uranium we had was in some barrels that were stored on Staten Island. The British had col-

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lected that uranium ore in the Congo. I don’t know if they were afraid the ship was going to be sunk by submarines, but they docked it there on Staten Island and unloaded the uranium. I didn’t play much part in the development of the bomb. I worked mostly on magnetic detection of submarines.” After the war, Mr. Whittle worked with ITT laboratories in Nutley, New Jersey. He and Edna, the dedicated gardener, had three daughters, who all live in North Carolina now. When the researching days were done, they retired to Georgia to raise peaches. But, the next time your commercial airliner drops out of the clouds and touches down on a wet runway like a butterfly, remember Mr. Whittle. “One of the developments that I think was most important was the instrument landing system for aircraft,” he says. That came shortly after the war, 1946 or so. It’s one of the few details he can’t quite lay his hands on. “That became the worldwide standard for blind landings of aircraft. I participated in the demonstration of that in Indianapolis.” One of the researchers Mr. Whittle worked with at Columbia was Gene Fubini. “He was scientific adviser to Jack Kennedy when Kennedy was president,” says Mr. Whittle, and then for President Johnson, too. His father was the Italian mathematician Guido Fubini, who has his very own theorem. “I’ve been with a lot of really first-class people. We were sitting around the table one time discussing a project the military wanted us to do and Gene said, ‘Fellas, before we take on any other projects, it ought to meet three criteria. The first is, is it a job that needs to be done? Some of these are just trivial and a waste of time. Number two, are we the ones to do it? Maybe there’s somebody else better equipped than we are. And third, and most important, is there going to be any fun in it? If there’s not going to be any fun in it, don’t do it.’ “So,” says Mr. Whittle, “I remembered that. If there’s not going to be any fun in it, don’t do it.” Time is the gift wrapped in uncertainty, that we make of what we can. He takes Edna’s hand because hers shakes. “It’s been a good life, I’ll tell you.” PS Jim Moriarty is Senior Editor of PineStraw and can be reached at jjmpinestraw@gmail.com.

December 2016i�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

photograph by Ilana Stewart

Keeping memories for two

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