June PineStraw 2023

June ���3

FEATURES

65 this I know for sure Poetry by Jaki Shelton Green

66 Reflections at 40 By David Kiner

Four decades of photos, art and fun

74 The Great Unknown By Jim Moriarty

What surprises lurk in Pinehurst’s next U.S. Open?

78 It Takes a Village By Bill Case Geneva McRae, Demus Taylor and Taylortown

82 Pretty as a Picture By Deborah Salomon Hospitality in gracious surroundings

93 June Almanac By Ashley Walshe

Cover Photogra Ph: Twins by Neva SCheve

Photogra Ph thiS Page: sunflowers by SuSa N bailey

DEPARTMENTS

23 Simple Life By Jim Dodson

28 PinePitch

31 Tea Leaf Astrologer By Zora Stellanova

33 The Omnivorous Reader By Anne Blythe

37 Bookshelf

41 Hometown By Bill Fields

42 Art of the State By Liza Roberts

45 In the Spirit By Tony Cross

48 Focus on Food By Rose Shewey

51 Out of the Blue By Deborah Salomon

53 Birdwatch By Susan Campbell

54 Naturalist By Todd Pusser

61 Golftown Journal By Lee Pace

106 Arts & Entertainment Calendar

116 SandhillSeen

119 Pine Needler By Mart Dickerson

120 Southwords By Tom Allen

Gotta Make It Ugly to Make it Pretty Stay tuned for finished pics!

PINEHURST • $455,900

3 DEERWOOD LANE

Wonderful, 3 BA / 2 BA brick home on a large double corner lot in Pinehurst No. 6 offers a bright and open floorplan all one on level.

PINEHURST • $125,000

TBD RIVIERA DRIVE

Lot is located in a beautiful cul-de-sac and is convenient to shopping, dining and First Health hospital and medical facilities.

SEVEN LAKES NORTH• $52,000 TBD FIRETREE LANE

Great opportunity to own large lot nicely situated in 7LN location.

SEVEN LAKES WEST • $60,000

113 BANBRIDGE DRIVE

Remarkable opportunity to own a triple golf front lot in sought-after 7LW community. Includes 115 Banbridge Drive and 117 Banbridge Drive.

WHISPERING PINES • $435,000

8 MARTIN DRIVE

Beautiful, 4 BR / 2.5 BA brick home situated on a nice large lot in Whispering Pines. Great covered patio, complete with an outdoor fireplace.

PINEHURST • $565,000

219 JUNIPER CREEK BLVD

Beautiful, 5 BR / 3 BA golf front home situated off the 4th tee of #6 course. Spacious layout with elegant finishes throughout.

PINEHURST • $115,000

45 RIDGELAND STREET

Beautiful lot in gated community of Forest Creek. Lot has been cleared and is located in a cul-de-sac that offers tons of privacy.

PINEHURST • $535,000

255 JUNIPER CREEK BOULEVARD

Wonderful, 3 BR / 2.5 BA brick home on a beautifully landscaped corner lot, just under half an acre, in desirable Pinehurst No. 6. Home offers a great light and open floor plan.

PINEHURST • $395,000

715 ST. ANDREWS DRIVE

A unique and charming, 2 BR / 2 BA golf front home nestled among the pines along the 15th fairway of Pinehurst course No. 5. This A-frame home offers beautiful views inside and out!

Luxury Properties

Moore County’s Most Trusted Real Estate Team!

GOLF FRONT

PINEHURST • $695,000

100 PITCH PINE LANE

Beautiful, 5 BR / 4. 5 BA brick home in nice location with a spacious layout. Transferrable PCC membership.

JACKSON SPRINGS •$212,000

168 SECOND WIND COURT

Picturesque lot located perfectly in a gated equestrian community. Offering a peaceful and serene setting amongst the towering pines!

PINEHURST • $275,000

45 BECKETT RIDGE

Great, golf front lot in desirable and amenity rich, Fairwoods on 7!

PINEHURST • $850,000

30 WALNUT CREEK ROAD

This lovely custom-built, 4 BR / 3 BA brick and stucco home is located on a beautifully landscaped lot on a quiet street in desirable Fairwoods on 7!

PINEHURST • $298,000

TBD GRAHAM ROAD

Great corner lot in historic Old Town Pinehurst! It is just a few blocks from the heart of Village of Pinehurst with its quaint shops, pubs, and restaurants.

SEVEN LAKES WEST • $795,000

133 SHAW DRIVE

Charming, 3 BR / 2.5 BA waterfront home in desirable Seven Lakes West offers a light, open floorplan with fantastic views of Lake Auman across the back!

PINEHURST • $850,000

110 HIGH POINT ROAD

Exquisite 4 BR / 3.5 BA custom brick home in a prime location. Beautifully remodeled with lots of high-end finishes and exquisite details.

PINEHURST • $1,300,000

260 QUAIL RUN

Grand gated estate on 3.2 acres in beautiful location offering tons of privacy. Built in 1920, the 8 BR / 6.5 BA home has been beautifully restored – you have to see it to appreciate it!

PINEHURST • $1,225,000

116 BROOKFIELD DRIVE

Beautiful newly constructed, 4 BR / 3.5 BA home with open living concept. Hardwood and tile floors throughout and featuring a great patio in back with beautiful brick fireplace, perfect for entertaining!

MAGAZINE

Volume 19, No. 6

David Woronoff, Publisher david@thepilot.com

Andie Stuart Rose, Creative Director andiesouthernpines@gmail.com

Jim Moriarty, Editor jjmpinestraw@gmail.com

Miranda Glyder, Graphic Designer miranda@pinestrawmag.com

Alyssa Kennedy, Digital Art Director alyssamagazines@gmail.com

Emilee Phillips, Digital Content emilee@pinestrawmag.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Jim Dodson, Deborah Salomon

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

John Gessner, Laura L. Gingerich, Lolly Nazario, Tim Sayer

CONTRIBUTORS

Jenna Biter, Anne Blythe, Keith Borshak, Tom Bryant, Susan Campbell, Bill Case, Tony Cross, Brianna Rolfe Cunningham, Mart Dickerson, Bill Fields, Meridith Martens, Mary Novitsky, Lee Pace, Todd Pusser, Joyce Reehling, Scott Sheffield, Rose Shewey, Angie Tally, Kimberly Daniels Taws, Daniel Wallace, Ashley Walshe, Claudia Watson, Amberly Glitz Weber

ADVERTISING SALES

Ginny Trigg, Advertising Director 910.693.2481 • ginny@thepilot.com

Samantha Cunningham, 910.693.2505 Kathy Desmond, 910.693.2515

Jessica Galloway, 910. 693.2498 Terry Hartsell, 910.693.2513 Erika Leap, 910.693.2514

ADVERTISING GRAPHIC DESIGN Mechelle Butler, Scott Yancey

ADVERTISING COORDINATOR

Rebah Dolbow • pilotads@thepilot.com

PS

Henry Hogan, Finance Director 910.693.2497

Darlene Stark, Circulation Director 910.693.2488

SUBSCRIPTIONS

910.693.2488

OWNERS

Jack Andrews, Frank Daniels III, Lee Dirks, David Woronoff In memoriam Frank Daniels Jr. 145 W. Pennsylvania Avenue, Southern Pines, NC 28387 www.pinestrawmag.com

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Return of Jimmy the Lawn King

Fresh-cut grass stirs up memories

by Jim DoDSoN

It started with a simple phone call from our neighbor across the street. Mildred Horseman had seen me mowing my family’s yard and wondered if I might be willing to mow her lawn. Her husband, Gene, was just home from the hospital and under strict doctor’s orders to rest for a month. She even offered to pay.

It was early summer, 1968, and I was 15. We were new to the old neighborhood where everybody had lush green lawns. I’d been mowing lawns since age 12, trusted not to destroy anything or chop off my own toes.

“I’ll send Jimmy right over,” said my mom. “No need to pay him. He loves mowing the grass.”

That was partly true. I liked mowing grass. I also liked money, which I needed to buy the beautiful classical guitar I had my eye on at Moore Music Company. It was $95, a whopping $800 in today’s dollars.

So off I went with our crotchety old Sears & Roebuck power mower, which normally took forever and required a number of impolite muttered oaths to start. Mr. Horseman sat on his screened porch watching me unsuccessfully crank until I had to rest my arm. He finally got up and stepped outside.

“Jimmy,” he said. “Come with me. I’ve got just what you need.”

In his garage sat a bright green Lawn-Boy power mower, one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.

“She’s got a few years of age on her, but will almost always start on the first pull. I keep her tuned up.”

He was right. One pull and she started. Gene Horseman went back to his club chair on the porch and I got busy on his lawn, marveling at the way his Lawn-Boy cut grass. When I finished and put his mower back in the garage, he waved me onto the porch. Mrs. Horseman had brought out lemonade.

“So what do you think?”

“Great,” I said. “Wish my dad would get one of those.”

“They’re pretty reliable,” he said. “One of the oldest brands in America, invented by a guy who built the first outboard motors for boats.”

As I drank my lemonade, I learned Gene Horseman was a retired business professor from Michigan. The Lawn-Boy mower, he explained, was created before WWII by a Wisconsin man who built Evinrude outboard engines. “I knew him when I was young. He became quite the successful businessman.”

Gene Horseman handed me a ten dollar bill. Sadly, I was compelled to explain that I was unable to take his money due to a mother who didn’t care a fig if I became a successful businessman.

“In that case,” he said, “how about we do a deal. You mow my lawn this summer and you can use the Lawn-Boy to mow lawns along the street. Sound good? I’ll even buy the gas.”

It did sound good, a potential gold mine at ten bucks a clip. But I didn’t know any of the neighbors yet.

“Print up some fliers,” he said. “Or, better yet, I’ll have Mildred get on the phone. You’ll have a job or two in no time.”

Within a week, I had two paying jobs, half a dozen regulars by the middle of summer. At ten bucks a pop, I was the richest kid on the block. By July, the Yamaha classical was mine. My mom took to calling me “Jimmy the Yard King.”

It was my first real job.

SIMPLE LIFE

I also had my first real crush that summer on a cute girl from Luther League named Ginny Silkworth. Ginny had a great laugh and a solid right hook. When I asked her to go to the movies, she laughed and punched me sharply on the arm. We went to see Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet at the Cinema on Tate Street near UNCG, an evening somewhat diminished by the fact that my father had to drive us to the theater and never stopped chatting with my date.

That summer was long and hot for America, one of the most tumultuous in the nation’s history. Rev. Martin Luther King and Sen. Bobby Kennedy were both gunned down by assassins that spring, and an unpopular war in Vietnam took an even ghastlier turn. Race riots erupted in Cleveland, Miami and Chicago.

But it was also the summer that Ginny Silkworth and I went to see The Graduate, the Beatles released “Hey Jude,” and I snagged a second job teaching guitar to kids and senior citizens at Mr. Weinstein’s music store. Between mowing and teaching, my pockets overflowed. I started saving money to buy my first car.

Something about the orderliness and smell of fresh-cut grass and the satisfaction of a job well done permeated my teenage brain and grounded me in a way that made my narrow world seem oddly immune from all the bad news on TV.

It was the first and last great year of Jimmy the Yard King, though its impact was lasting.

Perhaps this explains why, when my wife and I built a postand-beam house on a high forested hill near the coast of Maine — my first home ever — I created a large garden that featured more

than half an acre of beautiful Kentucky bluegrass and fescues.

By then I’d graduated to a serious deluxe John Deere lawn tractor that gave me more than a decade of mowing bliss. A sad parting came, however, when we packed up to move home to North Carolina and discovered there was no room in the moving van for my dear old John Deere.

I seriously considered driving my Deere all the way to Carolina, but finally gave up and sold it to our snowplowing guy for a song. I still have dreams about it.

Today, back in the old neighborhood where I started, I own a modest suburban patch of grass I can mow with my Honda self-propelled mower in less than 18 minutes.

It’s a fine mower, but nothing compared to Gene Horseman’s marvelous Lawn-Boy. Professional lawn crews now roam our streets like packs of Mad Max mowers, offering to relieve me of my turf obligations for 75 bucks a pop, roughly what it once took me a full week to earn cutting grass. They seem offended by an old guy who loves to mow his own yard.

Sometimes, when I’m cutting grass, I think about that faraway summer and Ginny Silkworth, my laughing first date. We stayed in touch for four decades. Ginny became a beloved teacher in Philadelphia and passed away a few years ago. I miss her laugh, if not her punch.

Maybe the smell of fresh-cut summer grass does that. Whatever it is, if only for 18 minutes once a week, Jimmy The Yard King is back in business. PS

LOCATION

‘HOMEWOOD’’ is a sophisticated Colonial Revival style 7300 square foot outstanding Estate on 7.5 acres with magnificent private gardens. The main mansion was built in 1930 without regard to cost as a showplace for the Sandhills area. Gracious 6 bedrooms, 5 ½ baths, expansive deck overlooking pool and gardens.

$2,895,000

Charming, Historic, one-of-a-kind Estate on over two acres just one and one half miles from the historic Village of Pinehurst. Located off Donald Ross Drive, the ‘’old Parson’s Estate’’ is a rambling, all brick home set amidst beautiful gardens and waterfalls overlooking a tranquil pond. $1,895,000

Location, Location, Location. This LOT is the crown jewel. Surrounded by an oasis of Golf and steps from the newly renovated Pinehurst National Clubhouse. Walk to the 1st tee, walk to the 10th tee, walk to lunch, walk to dinner and walk to all club activities. MOVE-IN-READY. Seller has invested over $700,000 in renovations sparing nothing in either materials or quality of design.

$1,795,000

If you want to KNOW Pinehurst,

310 CREST ROAD KNOLLWOOD HEIGHTS

4 AUGUSTA WAY PINEHURST

135 SAINT MELLIONS PINEHURST NO 9

Jim

PinePitch

Book It

The Country Bookshop will be hosting several authors during the month of June. You can listen to Ed and Ryan Mitchell talk about their new cookbook Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque on Sunday, June 11 from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.; David Wright Falade discussing his book Black Cloud Rising on Wednesday June 14 from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; Elin Hilderbrand signing copies of her book The Five-Star Weekend from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Monday, June 19; and Annabel Monaghan talking about her book Same Time Next Summer on Wednesday, June 21 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. The Country Bookshop is at 140 N.W. Broad Street, Southern Pines.

Hail Fellow Well Met

Don’t despair if you didn’t get one of the tickets to hear David Sedaris discuss his book Happy-Go-Lucky at 2 p.m. at The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad Street, Southern Pines, on Saturday, June 3. Sedaris will have a signing line and promises to stay until the last fan has come and gone or his hand cramps into something resembling a gardening claw. For further information visit www. ticketmesandhills.com.

Tripping the Light Fantastic

It’s the end of the academic year and what better way to celebrate than swaying cheek-to-cheek? Gary Taylor Dance’s students will perform Romancing the Dance, Junior at BPAC’s Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst on Saturday, June 3 from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. But that’s just the beginning. Enjoy the blend of blues, funk and jazz in Gary Taylor’s Romancing the Dance performed by his company Saturday evening from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. and again on Sunday, June 4 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. All seats are reserved. For more information go to www.ticketmesandhills.com.

The Art of Perseverance

On Thursday, June 15 at 5:30 p.m. at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines, artist in residence John Lee will discuss how he taught himself to paint with his non-dominant hand

following a stroke. He’ll be joined by Dr. Miller Johnstone III, Dr. Karen Sullivan and Dr. Henry Tellez for a panel discussion about how the central nervous system may recover and adapt. Attendance is free and open to the public though registration is required. For additional information go to www.weymouthcenter.org.

What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks

The Uprising Theatre Company puts Romeo and Juliet by you-know-who in a fresh perspective when Shakespeare in the Pines returns to the stage on Friday, June 9 from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Tufts Memorial Park, 1 Village Green Road, Pinehurst. There will be additional performances on June 10-11 and again on June 16-18. So, wherefore art thou? For more information go to www.vopnc.org or www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Who’s Afraid of Carnies?

Austin Powers. But kids 12 and under can gather to enjoy games, food and fun with a carnival vibe at the Downtown Park, Southern Pines, beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, June 9. After the carnival there will be an outdoor showing of Luca. It’s free, people. For more information call (910) 692-7376.

Festival in Vass

The town of Vass will host its annual summer festival on Saturday, June 10 from noon to 6 p.m. at Sandy Keith Park, 3600 U.S. Highway 1. There will be a car show, vendors, food trucks and a kid’s zone. For additional information visit www.townofvassnc.gov.

Hitting the High Notes

The recital and finalist round of The Young Musician’s Festival Concert will feature between 30 and 40 area musicians performing for credentialed adjudicators at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 4 at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. There will be cash prizes awarded in four divisions from the third through the 12th grades. Admission is free but registration is required. For info go to www.weymouthcenter.org.

Juneteenth Celebration

The 3rd Annual Juneteenth Celebration begins at 2 p.m. Monday, June 19 (of course) at The Cardinal Park, 657 S. Walnut St., Pinebluff. Free for the whole family, there will be music, food vendors and storytelling. Festivities last until all the dancing is done. For more information go to www.thecardinalpark.com.

Gemini

(May 21 – June 20)

A random fact (because it’s clear you collect them): Butterflies taste with their feet. As the social butterfly of the zodiac — and one plagued by an ever-wagging tongue — suffice it to say that Geminis know the taste of their feet. But for every foot-in-mouth moment you suffer, your wit and charm never fail to bail you out. When Mercury (your ruling planet) enters Gemini on June 11, your blundering will subside. In other words: They’ll be eating from the palm of your hand.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Delete the app.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Please remain seated while the ride is in motion.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

Let it be a surprise.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Just add water.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Scrolling isn’t a hobby.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Take a long, deep breath.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

It was already broken.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Don’t spoil your supper.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Exit the hamster wheel.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

Butter your own biscuit.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Two words: car karaoke. PS

Zora Stellanova has been divining with tea leaves since Game of Thrones’ Starbucks cup mishap of 2019. While she’s not exactly a medium, she’s far from average. She lives in the N.C. foothills with her Sphynx cat, Lyla.

Flying Toward Catastrophe

The real canaries in the coal mine

By A nne Blythe

Many of us turned a more enthusiastic ear toward the chorus of birds in our midst during the early days of the pandemic. With the routine rumble of traffic muted to a minimum, their chirps, trills and full-throated songs offered a sense of solace in an unfamiliar world.

In their new book, A Wing and a Prayer: The Race to Save Our Vanishing Birds, Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal tell us we should lean in and pay close attention. Their calls, or lack of them, their habits and changing habitats herald the health of our environment, write the avid birders and veteran journalists.

The husband and wife team, based in Raleigh, got the bad news out of the way at the start. In the last 50 years, a third of the North American bird population vanished.

“That translates to three billion birds of all sizes and shapes, in losses stretching from coast to coast, from the Arctic to Antarctica, through forests and grasslands, ranches and farms,” the couple writes in the introduction, noting that some birds are transcontinental travelers. “As one veteran biologist, John Doresky, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Georgia, told us, ‘We’re in the emergency room now.’”

The Gyllenhaals might start their story in the ER, but their book does not dwell heavily on a doomsday scenario. Instead, they offer an optimistic outlook as they chronicle the research, new technology and conservation laboratories they explore during two years of cross-country and intercontinental travels.

The grasshopper sparrow and spotted owl serve as their

bookends for a wide-ranging story reported with exacting detail about the work of “the ranks of biologists, ranchers, ecologists, birders, hunters, wildlife officers and philanthropists trying to protect the continent’s birds from a growing list of lethal threats and pressures.”

Anders and Beverly got involved with birding more than a decade ago while living in Washington, D.C. They were transitioning from long careers in journalism to “a lifestyle geared toward three Bs: birds, books and banjos, which Anders had played since high school.” Disclosure: One leg of their journalism path brought Anders to the News & Observer in Raleigh, where I worked for him and admired his dedication to solid reporting and storytelling. That commitment is evident throughout A Wing and a Prayer.

They take us along with them on a journey in their Airstream from North Carolina to Florida, through the heartlands to Kansas, and then further west to California, where they store their home office on wheels while they continue their trek through Hawaii.

They introduce us to colorful conservationists in muddy bogs, grassy fields and craggy bluffs while also giving readers a peek inside the offices of pivotal conservation organizations and ornithology labs.

Many of these scientists and conservationists could be the backbone for books of their own about trying to stop birds from being added to the list of extinct species. They introduce us to Ben Novak, a scientist in his mid-30s who grew up in North Dakota and now lives in Brevard, North Carolina. After falling in love with the passenger pigeon as a teen, he has developed intricate plans to build a lab in western North Carolina, hoping to use genomics to bring the bird back from extinction.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PETE CROSS

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OMNIVOROUS READER

Not all of the conservation projects are as futuristic as Novak’s. In Hawaii they are about to release clouds of mosquitoes bred in laboratories to combat avian malaria. The goal is for the lab-created male mosquitos carrying an incompatible bacteria to mate with females that, in turn, will lay eggs that won’t hatch. In the process the conservationists hope to save some of the island state’s most threatened native birds. Hawaii, the Gyllenhaals point out, is the extinction capital of the world with 100 of the 140 native bird species having already disappeared. And, in the Southeast, the U.S. military has been heavily involved in efforts to save the red-cockaded woodpecker through controlled burns and managed forests on bases like Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune.

While the Gyllenhaals stress that it is often the bigger birds — the bald eagle, the illusive ivory- billed woodpecker or the California condor — that get much of the attention, the smaller birds that hide easily in their habitats need more vocal advocates to save their species.

Their two-year journey, covering more than 25,000 miles, gives glimpses of many different birds including the Cerulean warbler, a tiny songbird that breeds in Appalachia and the eastern U.S. hardwood forests before making a long journey to winter in South America. The Gyllenhaals traveled to Ecuador to see firsthand the conservation efforts to protect the brilliantly colored birds that winter in the mountain forests there.

“We returned home inspired by the work under way to save birds,” the Gyllenhaals write. “We met folks who ruin their knees scrambling along dangerous cliffs, agonize over algorithms, confront adversaries at gunpoint and sometimes get their eyebrows singed off. They welcomed us into their lives for days at a time and shared their hopes, frustrations, and determinations.

Taken together, their experiences help make the case for birds — not only as nature’s workhorses and cultural icons, but as living bellwethers of the environment at a pivotal time.”

If you care about the birds in your midst — those in plain sight as well as those not so easy to see — A Wing and a Prayer is a must read.

“The Three Billion Bird Study stripped all mystery from the troubled state of the hemisphere’s birdscape,” the Gyllenhaals conclude. “There’s still time to respond, but that time is now. It’s clear what steps are making a difference and what will help avoid another half-century like the last one. Halting the collapse of our birds will not be easy. But as the scores of researchers, birders, wildlife experts, hunters and philanthropists are proving every day, a turnaround is within reach if we’ll listen to what the birds are telling us.” PS

Anne Blythe has been a reporter in North Carolina for more than three decades covering city halls, higher education, the courts, crime, hurricanes, ice storms, droughts, floods, college sports, health care and many wonderful characters who make this state such an interesting place.

A West Coast Lifestyle Boutique

June Books

FICTION

Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, by Lisa See

From a young age, Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose and they vow to be forever friends. No mud, no lotus, they tell themselves: from adversity beauty can bloom. But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife — embroider bound-foot slippers, pluck instruments, recite poetry, give birth to sons, and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights. How might a woman break free of these traditions and lead a life of such importance that many of her remedies are still used five centuries later? Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is a captivating story of women helping other women.

Love, Theoretically, by Ali Hazelwood

The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. In another life, Elsie offers her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people-pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs. It’s a pretty sweet gig — until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and arrogant older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who rules over the physics department at MIT, standing right between Elsie and her dream job. She’s prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but . . . those long, penetrating looks? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?

The Quiet Tenant, by Clémence Michallon

Aidan Thomas is a hard-working family man in the small upstate New York town where he lives. He’s the kind of man who always lends a hand and has a good word for everyone. But Aidan has a dark secret. He’s a kidnapper and serial killer. Aidan has murdered eight women and there’s a ninth he has earmarked for death: Rachel, imprisoned in a backyard shed, fearing for her life. When Aidan’s wife dies, he and his 13-year-old daughter Cecilia are forced to move. Aidan has no choice but to bring Rachel along, introducing her to Cecilia as a “family friend” who needs a place to stay. Rachel recognizes Cecilia might just be the lifeline she has waited for all these years. As Rachel tests the boundaries of her new living situation, she begins to form a tenuous connection with Cecilia. And when Emily, a local restaurant owner, develops a crush on the handsome widower, she finds herself drawn into Rachel and Cecilia’s orbit, coming dangerously close to discovering Aidan’s secret.

Liberty Biscuit, by Melanie Sue Bowles

Katherine Pearl Baker — Kip for short — is the only child on her family’s rural peach farm. She longs for a pet to ease the loneliness. Hiding in the woods on the Fourth of July, Kip encounters a bedraggled donkey with one eye and a floppy ear. Immediately smitten and compelled to protect him, she feeds him biscuits and takes him home. When it is discovered that the donkey fled an abusive owner, Kip’s father reluctantly allows him to stay. Kip is elated when her grandfather agrees to help her foster the donkey, who she names “Liberty Biscuit,” along with two emaciated horses removed by the local sheriff from the same home, as the cruelty case goes to court. A court order to return the horses, and even worse, Kip’s beloved Liberty Biscuit, to the owner who had starved and beaten them throws Kip’s world into turmoil. Proceeds from his book support Bowles’ charity, Proud Spirit Horse Sanctuary.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS What Were You Expecting? First Words for New Parents,

by

Cameron Spires

This little gem will have sleep-deprived new parents laughing until they cry (or crying until they laugh). The absolute perfect first read-aloud bedtime book, the striking art is for baby while the simple text is all grown up. (Ages infant-adult.)

Daddy & Me, Side by Side, by Pierce Freelon

Camping, fishing, trekking over rocks and through the woods is fun, but even more fun when Daddy is there. Daddy & Me celebrates family traditions and shared experiences and is perfect for Father’s Day or any day. (Ages 2-6.)

Pluto! Not a Planet? Not a Problem!, by Stacy McAnulty

Outer space comes alive in McAnulty’s “Our Universe” series. Fun facts and out of this world trivia will make any reader an expert on Pluto, a unique celestial orb. (Ages 4-8.)

Monster Camp, by Sarah Henning

Ghost stories around the fire are requisite activities at most summer camps, but what if you realize the monsters at your camp are actually your fellow campers? That’s what happens in this hilarious, slightly spooky summer sleepaway tale that is the perfect read for a long summer night. (Ages 9-12.)

The Storyteller, by Brandon Hobson

Ziggy is just a regular kid, well, a regular kid who encounters talking coyotes, singing frogs, prophesying snakes, truth-telling horses, a very interesting grandma, and Cherokee spirit people, the Nunnehi. Funny, sad, wise, and jam-packed with adventure, The Storyteller may be the very best book you’ll read in 2023. (Ages 10-14.) PS

Art, Medicine, & Inspiration: Stroke Recovery Through Art

June 15 • 5:30 - 7:30 pm

Exploring the intersection of art and medicine, this event features John Lee, our artist-in-residence, who taught himself to paint with his non-dominant hand following his stroke. Dr. Miller Johnstone III, Moderator, and panelists Dr. Karen Sullivan (neuropsychologist) and Dr. Henry Tellez (neurologist), will explore how the central nervous system may recover and adapt, to return function and quality of life. Sponsored by Foundation of FirstHealth Free Admission / Registration Required.

Writers-in-Residence Reading

June 21 • 5:30 pm

Join us as Writer-in-Residence Dudley Marchi, Professor of Humanities at North Carolina State University, explores the significant French heritage in North Carolina, an important part of our state’s cultural history.

Free Admission/Registration Required.

Summer Camps

June 19-23 & June 26-30

Three Camps: Young Composers (music), Write Stuff (writing), and Art Smart, (digital art). Camps are available to two age groups, 7-12 and 13-17, and offered for full-day or half-day participation. Prices begin at $35 for half day. Scholarships are available for students recommended by a teacher or clergy.

Live from the Great Room

June 28 • 7 pm

Enjoy Cocktails and Entertainment in a Vintage Setting, as we welcome Mike Block & Sandeep Das, a dynamic, cross-genre duo that originally met as members of Yo-Yo Ma’s Grammy Award-winning Silkroad Ensemble. Featuring a combination of the Tabla, a pair of Indian drums used in Hindustani Classical Music, and Cello, as well as Vocals. Doors open at 6 pm. Tickets start at $30. Cash Bar.

For tickets and registration visit weymouthcenter.org

Compiled by Kimberly Daniels Taws and Angie Tally.

you to our sponsors: Cindy & Robert Candler; Richard J. Reynolds III and Marie M. Reynolds Foundation; Gerald Claude Kirby Trust; Penick Village; North Carolina Arts Council; Arts Council of Moore County; Marion Stedman Covington Foundation; Donald and Elizabeth Cooke Foundation; The Pilot 555 E. Connecticut Avenue, Southern Pines, NC

MLS

MLS

The Boys of Summer

In a league of their own

By Bill Fields

I’ve had a few moments when I flipped the script, most occurring in a small ballpark on Morganton Road in Southern Pines across from the National Guard Armory, where kids still play baseball today. Win or lose, though, on that compact field of dreams the crack of bat on ball and pop of ball in glove was a soundtrack of fun.

The site was home to the Southern Pines Little League field more than a half century ago when the Pirates, Cardinals, Dodgers and Braves duked it out on Monday and Friday evenings from spring into summer, games at 6:00 and 7:45. The lights really kicked in for the second match-up, especially early in the season, making it seem a bigger stage.

We were boys chewing Bazooka bubble gum, savoring the stirrup socks that made us look like major leaguers, hoping some pixie dust would fly out with each pat of the rosin bag, and quenching our thirst with some not-so-cool water from the dugout fountain.

Each season started the same way. There would be a trip to Tate’s Hardware on N.E. Broad Street to purchase a pair of rubbercleated baseball shoes. We’d put on our flannel team uniforms and parade through downtown on a Saturday in May, then scatter to sell candy door-to-door to raise money for the Little League.

It was a long time before travel teams or meddlesome parents who want to make the games about them. Our moms and dads didn’t argue with umpires or second-guess coaches. They sat in the bleachers or in their cars beyond the field. They volunteered in the concession stand or as the public address announcer. They cut the grass and chalked the foul lines.

The outfield fence — 180 feet from home plate when I started Little League and lengthened to 200 feet before I was done — was covered with advertisements for local businesses not protective padding. I one-hopped a couple of hard hits off the metal barrier in left center but never hit a dinger in my three years with the Braves. I am a man without a home run or a hole-in-one but still hold out hope for the latter.

My most meaningful at-bat probably came in my first Little League season when I was 10, after moving up from the Minor League Tigers. We were playing the always formidable Pirates coached by Willis Calcutt. Their ace pitcher, a strapping boy who could have passed for a second-year Pony Leaguer, had a no-hitter going deep into the six-inning game. I somehow managed to make contact with one of his fastballs, hitting a blooper just over the second baseman into shallow right field.

I was better with glove than bat, a confident infielder who played second and a little shortstop before settling at third base when I wasn’t pitching. (I threw a knuckleball that, on my good outings, fluttered just enough to keep batters guessing.)

The Braves won the 1970 Southern Pines championship thanks to fellows who could really play like David Smith, Jay Samuels and Ian McPherson. (I’m far right, top row.) It didn’t hurt our chances that two of Coach John Williams’s sons, John Wiley and Mike, were part of the Braves. Coach was a de facto assistant to David Page and always willing to spend extra time working with us.

I made the All-Star team as a 12-year-old third baseman in 1971 when I had the privilege of playing for Jack Barron, whose many years of devoted community service in the Sandhills included being coach of the Dodgers for a long time. Mr. Barron did everything he could to prepare the All-Stars in our practices.

I’m not sure I knew there was a Warsaw, N.C., until we suited up in our blue and white Southern Pines uniforms and packed into a couple of station wagons for the two-hour drive east and our first game. But I'm certain I'd never seen a curveball on Morganton Road like the opposing pitcher threw that afternoon. I struck out in my one hapless at-bat, and my teammates didn’t fare much better. Our post-season didn’t last long.

But our disappointment, I recall, didn’t linger either. There was a stop for supper, at a restaurant that sold Andes Mints for two cents apiece at the cash register. We stocked up. Someone in the backseat figured out if a mint was released just so on top of the car, it would travel such that it would be sucked back into the wagon’s open rear window. The trick amused us for miles. If only we had solved the curve ball problem as proficiently. PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

There aren’t too many highlights sprinkled in my sporting life. The enjoyment, perhaps by necessity, has come from playing not winning.

Visual Language

Jennifer Meanley creates kaleidoscopic realities

By liz A RoBeRts

Intimate but

alienating, lush and allegorical, Jennifer Meanley’s paintings appear to capture the moments upon which events hinge. Figures, often out of scale with their environments, gaze at odd angles within untamed, kaleidoscopic settings, more consumed with their interior lives than with the discordant scenes they inhabit. Animals, alive and dead, sometimes share the space. Something’s clearly about to happen, or might be happening, or perhaps already has happened. Are her subjects aware?

“There is often a sense of lack of synchronicity between how we experience our bodies and how we experience our mind, our emotional states,” Meanley says. Her paintings “often register that paradox, whether that’s with the animals, or the symbolism with the space itself . . . or whether the figure seems to be looking and registering and connecting” to reality. Or not.

At UNC-Greensboro, where she teaches drawing and painting, Meanley paints these large-scale depictions of human experience. Simultaneously capturing the spheres of action, memory, participation and observation, she invites a viewer to examine the parts and absorb the whole. Like

poetry, her works reveal themselves in stages and elements: image, rhythm, tone, vocabulary, story. Color plays a major role. “I’ve always had a penchant for really saturated colors,” she says, especially as a way to indicate atmosphere, like light, air, wind and the grounding element of earth.

Does she begin with a narrative? Not really, or not always. In a painting underway on her working wall — in which a caped, gamine figure gazes upon a flayed animal, possibly a deer, within a riotously overgrown landscape — the New Hampshire native describes her impetus: “I was thinking of this sort of crazy Bacchanal,” she says, “or of a surplus, imagination as a kind of surplus.” Anything is possible in the abundant realm of the imagined, she points out. The real world is another matter.

It’s no surprise to learn that Meanley writes regularly in forms she compares to short stories that emerge from streams of conscious-

ness. It’s a process she describes as if it’s a place where she goes: Language is “like a field that I experience, stepping in and noticing punctuation, noticing the spaces between things, or the pauses, the way breath might be taken. That’s all really, really fascinating to me.” When she’s teaching, she tries to create a corollary to visual language in much the same way: “What does it mean to literally punctuate a drawing, in a way that you would take a sentence that essentially had no meaning, and make it comprehensible?” she asks her students. “Through timing, and space, and rhythm, and breath.”

All of which connects to physical movement, another practice Meanley credits with fueling her creative process. Long walks with her dog in the woods spark marathon writing sessions, which then engender drawings and paintings.

In the last year, her writing sessions have taken on new impor-

tance, Meanley says. Writing “is a way for me to deepen my personal exploration of my own psychic space, which is the origins of the paintings as well.” Though she doesn’t intend to publish these writings, Meanley is open to the possibility of including some of her words in new paintings. “I think the world that I’m exploring has to do with the idea of psychological interiority and how that can find representation” through words and images. In the meantime, the kinetic activity of walking continues to fire her imagination.

It has also attuned Meanley to the natural environment of the South, so different from what surrounded her in New Hampshire, where she grew up, and where she also earned her BFA at the University of New Hampshire, or even at Indiana University, where she received her MFA. In and around Greensboro, she finds nature so lush, so green, so impressive. “I started realizing that there’s this battle within the landscape. Just to even maintain my yard, I feel like I’m battling the natural growth here. It did amplify that sense of tension, of creating landscape as a narrative event . . . as an important space to contemplate hierarchies of power.”

Summer, with its time away from the demands of academia, provides Meanley with more time for outdoor exploration and for contemplations of all kinds. She’s also looking forward to having time to tackle larger works, with the hope of a solo exhibition later this year or in 2024. “Doing a solo show is an endeavor,” she says. “Right now I’m gearing up.” PS

This is an excerpt from Art of the State: Celebrating the Art of North Carolina, published by UNC Press.

Migratory Inflection, oil on Canvas, 18 x 24 inches, 2019.

Beloved, oil on canvas, 72 x 190 inches, 2017.

By tony CRoss

Almost all cocktails on menus in today’s bars and restaurants are a spin on the classics — my keg cocktails are no exception. A few months back, my company debuted a spin on a vodka tonic. It wasn’t anything super fancy or anything — we added St. Germaine Elderflower liqueur and our small batch tonic syrup, TONYC. The result was delicious. Here’s how to make your own elderflower tonic at home followed by a couple other classics worth a tweak or two.

Elderflower Tonic

All you’re doing is adding three-quarters of an ounce of Elderflower liqueur. That’s it! Well, kind of. It seems like there are myriad tonic waters (and syrups, for that matter) on the market. Decisions, decisions. If you want the quick way out, Fever Tree tonic water is a no-brainer. However, this is how God intended you to make the drink, with the devilish addition of TONYC.

1 1/2 ounces vodka

3/4 ounce St. Germaine Elderflower liqueur

3/4 ounce TONYC syrup

4 ounces sparkling water

Classic Remix

Making something out of something

In a Collins glass, add all ingredients, give a quick stir, and then add ice; top with sparkling water, and lightly stir again; take the peel from an orange, expressing the oils over the cocktails, and placing peel into the glass. Cheers!

Jungle Bird

This tiki hall of famer (and I’m totally quoting liquor.com on this) was created in the 1970s by bartender Jeffrey Ong at the Aviary Bar located inside the Kuala Lumpur Hilton. But it was tiki guru Jeff “Beachbum” Berry’s book Intoxica that brought the Jungle Bird out of hiding. The drink originally called for “dark rum” and a ton of pineapple juice — four ounces. Berry switched the specs, calling for Jamaican rum, and scaling down the pineapple juice. The other three ingredients are fresh lime juice (which adds tartness), Campari (the amaro adds some bitterness), and demerara syrup (equal parts demerara sugar and water), to round everything out. Over the past decade I’ve seen lots of riffs on this drink, and they all look tasty. If you want to get jiggy on your own, perhaps try another amaro besides Campari, or you might want to swap out or infuse your rum. Banana infused rum could be delicious! What follows is Dante’s Jungle Bird from the Greenwich Village bar Dante NYC. I found this recipe on punch.com, which, by the way, has a ton of great cocktails on its website. The original recipe is shaken but Dante’s is not. Why? Probably because they only use one-quarter ounce of lime juice, instead of the traditional one-half ounce. That small amount of juice doesn’t need to be aerated, which is achieved by shaking your cocktail.

3/4 ounce rum (preferably Plantation Stiggins’ Fancy Pineapple Rum)

1/2 ounce Campari

1/4 ounce Zucca Rabarbaro Amaro

2 1/2 ounces pineapple juice

1 barspoon lime juice

Combine all ingredients in a small water glass over ice; stir to integrate; garnish with orange wedge, Luxardo cherry and pineapple frond.

Caipirinha

Brazil’s national cocktail is one of my favorite drinks. I love cachaça (a sugar cane-pressed rum native to Brazil) because of this cocktail, and it’s my go-to when I reach for the rum in my bar. Simple to make, the caipirinha has only three ingre -

dients: cachaça, lime, and sugar. Easy enough, and lots of ways to make this your own. Any fruit that you enjoy could work — think strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, etc. You can also infuse a sugar syrup with the fruit, a move that would cut down on the amount of fruit smashed in your cocktail glass. Either way, there are lots of ways to tackle the caipirinha. Traditionally, the cocktail is built in a glass with the quartered limes and sugar muddled, the cachaça and ice added, and then stirring. I prefer to use a simple syrup, do a quick shake and dump everything into a rocks glass. Here’s a take I did on the caipirinha years ago, called “One Way Trigger.” By infusing my cachaça with pineapples and using a ginger syrup, I was able to completely transform the cocktail, while keeping it a three-ingredient drink. Here’s how to make it:

2 ounces pineapple-infused cachaça*

1/2 ounce ginger syrup**

6 lime wedges

In a shaker, combine limes and ginger syrup together and gently press (and twist) muddler, making sure to extract juice and oils from limes without pulverizing them; add pineapple-infused cachaça and ice; shake hard for 5 seconds and pour everything into your rocks glass.

*Pineapple-infused cachaça: Dice one pineapple, place in a container and add 750 milliliters of cachaça; seal container and let sit for five days; strain out pineapples through cheesecloth and add the infused cachaça back into the bottle; keep refrigerated for a longer shelf life.

**Ginger syrup: Take and peel 100 grams of organic ginger; dice and add to pot; add 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water; bring mixture to a boil and let simmer for 5 minutes; let cool and strain out pieces of ginger; keep syrup refrigerated. Will hold for 2-3 weeks. PS

Tony Cross owns and operates Reverie Cocktails, a cocktail delivery service that delivers kegged cocktails for businesses to pour on tap — but once a bartender, always a bartender.

I Dream of Falafel

Iconic street food from the Levant

By Rose shewey

Do you know what North Carolina and North Africa have in common? We’re on the same latitude. Consider that for a moment! If you’re looking out onto the Atlantic Ocean in North Carolina you’re on par with Morocco. When inquisitive friends and family from overseas ask about the climate in our part of the world, I typically tell them that we may as well be in Casablanca. You know, if Casablanca was muggy.

I was so fortunate to visit North Africa and parts of the Levant in my younger years. I had just turned 18 and set up shop at the Costa del Sol in Spain for the summer. I vividly remember the day I was lounging at the beach in sunny Marbella; it was a particularly clear day, not a cloud in sight and the morning haze had just dissipated. As I gazed across the azure tinted Mediterranean sea, I saw her. I saw Africa and she was calling my name. Within less than 24 hours, I was on a ferry crossing over from Gibraltar, Spain to Tangier, Morocco. I was unaccompanied with little more than a small backpack, clutching on to my passport, ready to set foot on African soil.

North Africa is hands-down one of the most exotic and colorful places I have visited. While I have many rich memories of this trip, traversing the northern tip of Africa all the way from Morocco to transcontinental Egypt, what stands out the most is the allure of the Arab and Mediterranean cuisine, particularly the many different renditions of falafel I tried. No, I didn’t make it to Israel, the alleged home of the falafel where, rumor has it, you cannot turn around without ending up in the queue of a falafel shop. However, despite its popularity in Israel, most agree that falafel probably originated in Egypt. In fact, if you happen to go to a McDonald’s in Cairo, you’ll find McFalafel on the menu, bizarre as it may seem.

There are many reasons to love falafel. The most obvious is that these golden-baked, crispy balls drizzled with tahini sauce and stuffed into a fluffy pita or served as part of a meze are bursting with flavor. Falafel are also a fabulous gateway to a more plant-based life-style; with their meatball-esque texture, they leave little to be desired. June 12 marks the annual international falafel day, but why wait; there is no wrong time to enjoy the world’s oldest (and perhaps healthiest) fast food.

Falafel (Makes about 20 balls)

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups dried chickpeas, soaked overnight

1/2 cup onion, finely chopped

4 garlic cloves, crushed

1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

1/2 cup cilantro, finely chopped

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cardamom

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

2 tablespoons chickpea flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Avocado oil for frying (optional)

Drain the chickpeas and add them to a food processor along with the onions, garlic, parsley and cilantro. If you have a small food processor, mix in batches; pulse each batch for about 30 seconds until the ingredients are finely chopped and hold together well. Once processed, add the spices, chickpea flour and baking soda and mix by hand; if the mixture feels too dry, add 1-2 tablespoons of water. Cover and refrigerate the mixture for at least 1 hour before processing.

Using your hands or an ice cream scoop, form balls or patties (about 1 tablespoon of mixture per ball).

You can now deep-fry or bake your falafels. To deep-fry, add about 4 inches of oil to a heavy-bottomed pot and heat the oil to 350°F. Cook falafels in batches, for about 3-4 minutes until they are golden brown. Transfer to a paper-towel lined plate and serve immediately.

To bake the falafel, pre-heat the oven to 425°F. Place the falafel on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, brush the top of your falafel with oil and bake for 25 minutes. Flip falafel halfway through baking. Serve right away. PS

German native Rose Shewey is a food stylist and food photographer. To see more of her work visit her website, suessholz.com.

Batting Cleanup

Spotless . . . in the eye of the beholder

By deBoRA h sA lomon

By June, “spring cleaning” should be done and dusted . . . right? The windows gleam, the carpet wafts shampoo. Begone dust bunnies that overwintered under the bureau. Same to soap scum ringing the tub and spilled jam glued to the refrigerator. The sofa has been moved, revealing kitty’s favorite toy and some petrified Halloween candy. All the shelves Swiffered, even the highest, uprooting a mosquito graveyard.

These tasks were accomplished on a sunny Saturday by family members, conscripted, cajoled or bribed.

Pizza for lunch, maybe?

Ah, spring cleaning, that archaic rite which, it seems, survives in name only. Because “clean” is a touchy subject — everybody wants clean surroundings, but nobody wants to do it.

I wanted to do it. Having three children in three-and-a-half years — then adding a rambunctious Airedale puppy — interfered. Nevertheless, every morning I gave the bathrooms a once-over, and late every afternoon, with most of the toys put away, I managed to vacuum, which gave the illusion of clean when Daddy came home to a hot supper. Then baths, stories, bedtime and collapse.

That’s just the way we did things in the ’60s.

Finally, I hired a “cleaning lady” who came every second Friday, from 9 to 3. Anna had emigrated from Eastern Europe to Canada after World War II. I assumed she flew in from heaven on huge white wings, to ease my travail. Anna, well into her 50s, was big, strong, energetic. She tuned her transistor radio to a Polish language station and attacked my house with a vengeance, I think in gratitude for the lunches: a big bowl of hearty homemade soup, rye bread for dunking, a meat sandwich, and garlicky coleslaw from a European deli. She finished off with a bearclaw (Danish filled with almond paste) and strong tea.

Food talks, even inspires.

After lunch I went out grocery shopping. When I returned, Anna was gone and the house smelled like Ajax and Pledge — more glorious than Chanel.

Anna demonstrated that cleaning isn’t just a profession or a necessity. It can be an art.

After she retired I hired helpers, since I was working full time, then gave up. They weren’t any more energetic than I was. Their clean didn’t squeak. They weren’t Anna.

Now, cleaning services are the mode. A crew of young men and women spill out of a truck with a snazzy logo. They bring supplies and implements, breeze through a big house in an hour or so, collect the cash and fly away, like Mary Poppins on her aeronautical umbrella.

They definitely don’t want lunch.

Some folks take clean to an obsession. I envy them, sort of. They are a ready market for Roomba (self-propelling vacuum) as well as Swiffer diversifications for wet and dry floors, blinds, hard to reach tchotchkes, et al. They remove stains with Mr. Clean Magic Erasers and suck up spills with Bounty paper towels. The aromas wafting through their hallways come from plug-ins, not meatloaf.

Others are neat freaks, where everything has its place and the kitchen harbors no junk drawer spilling over with twist ties, rubber bands, birthday candles and packets of soy sauce.

How do you live without a junk drawer? I have two.

Age has sapped my energy. The kitty and I don’t make much mess in our small apartment. I’m still fussy about the (one) bathroom and (tiny) kitchen. I push the carpet sweeper more often than the vacuum. The oven cleans itself, and I don’t keep jam in the refrigerator. Maybe books and magazines pile up, but so what? Makes me look literary. True, sometimes the late afternoon sun reveals a film of dust on the coffee table where I keep stylized animal figurines, collected over many years, many miles. So I close the blinds and the dust disappears.

Spring cleaning? Never got around to it. I’ll wait till fall. PS

Deborah Salomon is a contributing writer for PineStraw and The Pilot . She can be reached at debsalomon@nc.rr.com.

By susA n CA mPBell

chirpity, chirpity, chirp.” Or is it “teakettle, teakettle, teakettle, tea?” Or maybe “cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheese?” Regardless of exactly how it sounds, this bright, cheery song belies a small and drab bird — the Carolina wren. This diminutive critter is rufousy-brown with banded wings and tail. The thin, decurved bill is well-equipped to probe nooks and crannies for its favorite food: insects. Not only do they flit around in trees and vines looking for caterpillars, but they will clamber around on windows, doors and porch furniture for spiders and flies.

Common throughout the Piedmont year-round, Carolina wrens, the state bird of South Carolina, are frequently overlooked — until spring, when their songs can be heard echoing from forests and fields to neighborhoods here in central North Carolina. And a rarity among songbirds, both males and females sing, providing double pleasure. In fact, sometimes they can be heard in duets, advertising their territory, vocalizing repeatedly, any time from dawn to dusk.

At this time of the year, Carolina wrens are a common sight as they seek a protected spot to construct their nests. They frequently prefer houses, sheds or something else manmade over vegetated habitat. Though it may seem foolhardy to us, barbeque grills, bags of potting soil, an old coat or hat may actually provide a perfectly suitable nesting spot. The female will carry in small leaves, pine needles, grasses, moss or even feathers of other birds to create a large, bulky cup nest. She’ll finish it off with a partial roof to hide the eggs and young more effectively. Wrens don’t seem to mind people coming and going, a seemingly welcome

Playing a Cheerful Tune

The Carolina wren sings from dawn to dusk

trade-off for the protection humans provide from predators. Peek into one of their nests and more likely than not the female or brooding young will just stare back at you.

Sometimes nesting adults demonstrate great resiliency, or even cunning, in adapting to manmade structures. More than once, a Carolina wren female has chosen a nook on one of the trams that circle the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro as a nesting site. The nesting adults sit tight as the vehicle bumps around the property during incubation. Once the young hatch, adults who leave the nest to find food simply wait for the tram (and nest) to return to the parking area to feed their young.

It should not be surprising, then, that these resourceful birds will find their way indoors during spring. If they can, they will squeeze under a door or through a cracked window in order to use the corner of a shelf in a shed or mudroom of a house. When fledging day arrives, the parents simply call the young from the nest and show them how to slip outside. Be prepared for the whole brood to find its way back in and crowd into the nest to roost for days, or even weeks, thereafter.

Each winter I get calls about mysterious critters sleeping on high ledges or porches and carports. Described as small brown balls, these unidentified sleeping objects almost inevitably turn out to be roosting Carolina wrens. After a yawn or two, wrens tuck their heads under their wings to roost, puffing themselves up and looking decidedly unbirdlike. They may also spend the night hunkered down in a potted plant or basket, frightening the daylights out of anyone who, next morning, comes upon them unaware.

Every year around the holidays, I’ll get a call or two about an unexpected Christmas guest. Seeking the warmest spot they can find, Carolina wrens often decide to huddle up in someone’s Christmas wreath. When subsequent visitors open the front door, the wren instinctively flies toward the brightest light — inside the house, occasioning merry and sometimes frantic holiday antics as everyone shares their favorite scheme for getting the bird back outside where it belongs.

So, if you have ever noticed these birds before, you should not have to go too far to find one — unless it finds you first. PS

“Chirpity,

Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photographs at susan@ncaves.com.

The Gateway Bug

stoRy A nd P hotogRAPhs By todd P usseR

Thememory has stayed with me for decades. It was a humid summer night in the early 1980s, and we had just finished a dinner of grilled hot dogs in the backyard of our Eagle Springs home. Cacophonous calls of whippoor-wills echoed through the pines while billions of stars lit up the night sky. Wanting to cool off from the oppressive heat, which was still prevalent late into the evening, I decided to take a dip in the backyard pool. As I flipped on a mercury vapor bulb mounted to a tall pole, the entire backyard was instantly flooded in brilliant light.

As I climbed up onto the diving board, it came streaking in from the corner of the yard like a shooting star. Swooping low over the pool, it suddenly arched high, crashed into the light with an audible thud, and tumbled down to the concrete, where it came to rest on its back, legs waving feebly back

and forth in the air. “What is that thing?” I wondered aloud.

Jumping off the diving board, I walked over and carefully flipped the hefty 2-inchlong insect over onto its belly. It had a yellowish-green body covered in black spots. A pair of long horns extended out from its head, giving it the appearance of a miniature rhinoceros. At the time, it was among the largest insects that I had ever seen. I would hate to be driving down a rural road at night in a convertible and get walloped upside the head by one.

I picked the insect up and placed it into a mason jar. The next day I proudly showed it to my parents, who, for some strange reason, were not nearly as thrilled as I was with the monster invertebrate. Soon afterward, it was released into the woods behind our house. While thumbing through the pages of a field guide at the school library, I later learned that it was an Eastern Hercules beetle that had interrupted my nocturnal swim.

Most people fear bugs. Many loathe them. Insects found in homes are immediately squashed under foot or dispatched with a well-aimed can of Raid.

All this fear and loathing is learned behavior, taught to us as children. Granted, some insects should be treated with caution, like

A spectacular insect can lead to a lifetime of wonder

yellowjackets, capable of delivering a painful sting, or mosquitoes that can harbor disease. But even these maligned critters play critical ecological roles. As hard as it may be to imagine, their extinction would have profound effects on the overall health of the planet and our own well-being.

A respect for all forms of life, including insects, is something my partner, Jessica, and I have tried to instill in our daughter, Ella. The summer before last, while filling up with gas late one night out on the outskirts of the Dismal Swamp, I found another

male Hercules beetle. Attracted to the bright lights of the gas station, the behemoth was slowly crawling across the parking lot when I noticed it. Scooping it up, I brought it home to show Ella the next day. I still smile at the thought of her eyes widening in surprise at seeing the goliath insect, her little mind instantly filling with joy and wonder.

Kids have an innate curiosity of the natural world. But in this digital age, children are becoming more and more disconnected with nature. Less time is spent outdoors and more time is spent

staring at a computer screen. To remedy this, Jessica and I take every opportunity to introduce our daughter to the wonders of nature, wherever that might be. A trip to the beach is not just for swimming and building sandcastles, but also for watching pelicans fly low over the waves and for picking up colorful shells washed ashore by the tide. A family walk through the neighborhood is a chance to spot squirrels foraging among a canopy of oaks and pines. Sunsets in July are opportunities to catch fireflies in the backyard.

All these seemingly little things, those brief moments of taking the time to simply observe the world around us, can really add up and profoundly shape impressionable young minds. My fondest childhood memories involve those innocuous moments in nature — everything from catching bluegills with my dad in an Eagle Springs farm pond on Saturday morning to watching my first dolphins frolic in the Myrtle Beach surf. And, of course, the giant beetle crashing my pool party. That childlike wonder has stayed with me for nearly five decades now and only grows stronger with each passing year.

How kids respond to nature and how they teach and raise their own children will shape how our societies function and will ultimately affect the overall well-being of this planet. It is my sincerest hope that our daughter continues to grow and maintain a sense of awe, respect, and love for the remarkable world around her. In time, I hope she passes that love for all living things down to her own children — even a love for big bugs. PS

Naturalist and photographer Todd Pusser grew up in Eagle Springs. He works to document the extraordinary diversity of life both near and far. His images can be found at www.ToddPusser.com.

BY JOHN GESSNER

On the Clock

Going to the head of the line

By lee PACe

Aputt will drop at Los Angeles Country Club late on the afternoon of June 18 and another U.S. Open champion will be crowned. Some 2,500 miles to the east, knowing eyes will watch the proceedings and acknowledge the gesture: Next.

“That’s when it will really sink in,” says John Jeffreys, course superintendent of Pinehurst No. 2, site of the 2024 Open. “It’s exciting and energizing when you think that it’s actually here.”

Golf course architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, who orchestrated a significant restoration of No. 2 in 2010-11, have each had occasion to come through Pinehurst in the winter and spring of 2023 and walk the grounds. To reflect on the work they did over a dozen years ago and how it was received for the backto-back U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open in 2014 and how it’s been maintained since brings a smile to their faces.

“It just looked to me like, ‘Go play,’” Coore says. “The presentation is just perfect. It hasn’t changed in nine years. If anything, it’s better.”

Adds Crenshaw: “It looked fabulous. There’s not much to do. The bunkers look great. The wire grass is terrific. The greens are beautiful. The outskirts are just striking. Every time I get around it, I get inspired.”

Jeffreys takes comfort knowing there’s not a massive to-do list during the year leading up to a major championship. There are no rough lines to draw in, no lush grass to promulgate, no tiger tees to bring out of storage.

“The main difference from ’14 is the greens,” he says. “This is the first time the U.S. Open has been played on ultra-dwarf Bermuda. Generally they’re a little firmer, a little faster than what we had before. We’ll concentrate leading up to the competition on improving the quality of the ball roll-out, working on the texture of the leaf.”

John Bodenhamer, chief championships officer for the USGA, remembers that the lead-up to the 2014 Open was warm and dry. The unknowable is what Mother Nature will deliver next spring.

“We were blessed with weather that allowed us to control the firmness and playability of course No. 2,” he says. “If the weather is different, we will adjust accordingly. The one aspect of No. 2

that we will be studying very closely once again are the sandy natural areas. We will want to make sure that they are prepared in a manner that presents an appropriate penalty for missing the fairway. Otherwise, we plan to just let Pinehurst be Pinehurst, as Donald Ross’ masterpiece will surely produce another memorable U.S. Open.”

A decade after the last Open, the golf world will find a village and club much the same as it ever was — like in 1962, when the USGA first came to Pinehurst for the U.S. Amateur and in 1999, when it staged its first U.S. Open on Donald Ross’ tour de force. There are still no golden arches in the village. There are still no right angles at street intersections. The carillon in the Village Chapel still rings on the hour.

“How many times today do you hear some hot young star in any sport hear the name of a Hall of Fame player in his sport and say, ‘Who was he?’” muses former USGA Executive Director David Fay. “When you get to Pinehurst, that changes. It’s impossible not to get caught up in the great history. It’s everywhere. It’s where you look, it’s in the air, it’s in the turf, it’s in the images on the walls, it’s in the church bells. You can almost feel the ghosts coming out.”

But there is so much that’s different, too, since the golf world saw Martin Kaymer cruise to victory the third week of June 2014 and Michelle Wie capture her first major championship seven days later.

For one, by the time the first tee shot is struck on June 13, 2024, the USGA itself will have opened a new Golf House Pinehurst on ground just a 5-iron from the resort clubhouse. Ground was broken in June 2022 on a building designed to harken to Pinehurst’s earliest structures, with wide verandas punctuated by columns, hipped-roofs, dormers, textured clapboard and shake siding.

There’s a new traffic circle between the Carolina Hotel and the golf hub to the south, and the big one at a major thoroughfare intersection just over a mile to the east toward Southern Pines has been widened and has some 50,000 vehicles moving through it daily. (And shouldn’t we call them “roundabouts” in tribute to their British heritage and Moore County’s considerable Scottish roots?)

Out the south door of the clubhouse is the innovative nine-

PHOTOGRAPH

GOLFTOWN JOURNAL

hole Cradle Course that opened in 2017 and has since been a Disneyland of golfers of all ages sipping beverages and clipping wedge shots, and beyond that is the No. 4 course rebuilt by Gil Hanse to blend seamlessly with its No. 2 neighbor — wiregrass here, craggy bunkers there and nary a straight line on the horizon. The Carolina Hotel will have completed a multi-year renovation with all the guest rooms rebuilt and new public areas with a coffee house, porch seating and fire pit.

One building on Magnolia Road in the village sat vacant in 2014, its former existence as a steam plant long buried, and just down the street, the Manor Inn remained boarded up, this 1923 inn a victim of the 2007-09 global financial crisis. Visitors now can eat smoked pork with a terrific blackberry-infused barbecue sauce at the Pinehurst Brewing Company, which opened in 2018 in a building that in 1895 provided steam for the town. The Manor was refurbished and reopened in 2020 with finely appointed guest rooms and the North & South Bar proffering a menu of nearly a hundred whiskies from around the world.

My, the dominoes that have fallen since that 2009 decision by Pinehurst owner Bob Dedman Jr. and resort President and COO Don Padgett II to tear up the elegantly groomed No. 2 with all its grass, water and fertilizer and crack open a time machine that would take the course back to its mid-1900s heyday.

“I thought, what a bold stroke to attempt to take Pinehurst No. 2 back to the way it looked for all its glory days — after sand greens, that is, we don’t want to go quite that far,” Fay says. “It would be much the same as how Oakmont showed its boldness by pulling out all those Christmas trees planted in the 1950s.”

Padgett began to wonder after the 2005 U.S Open at Pinehurst if the excessive use of long grass to fight immense ball flight distances had gone too far on a course known for having width and a visual palette that perfectly reflected its Sandhills heritage. Fortunately, Fay and fellow USGA officials Mike Davis and Jim Hyler agreed with the idea and were on

THE RED FOX COURSE

THE GREY FOX COURSE

GOLFTOWN JOURNAL

board in February 2010 when Coore & Crenshaw began rebuilding the course. The look, playability and the course’s ability to stand up to modern talent and equipment were applauded by competitors, spectators and the national media.

Padgett uses the word radical to describe what’s happened in Pinehurst in the last decade-plus.

“Bob Dedman feels like it all started with No. 2, we were doing something radical to the place,” says Padgett, now retired and playing a lot of golf in Pinehurst. “There’s nothing more radical than what we did. It changed the way he thought about things. ‘Let’s go all-in’ was the mindset. Pinehurst is way more current than it’s been probably since the 1940s. In recent times, we’ve always had a hint of a museum. It’s not that way anymore. Pinehurst still draws on its history, but the actual experience is pretty current. There’s a lot of life in the place.”

There’s a new No. 10 course being built by Tom Doak on a site in Aberdeen; it will be open in time for the golfing deluge in June 2024. Coore was seen in April rattling around the woods himself, poking for ideas and a routing for Pinehurst No. 11.

Of course, there are lots of details to iron out over the next 12 months. Like, how will the practice range, situated on the south side of the clubhouse for the 2014 Open, fit onto The Cradle? How will the USGA tip its cap to the 25-year anniversary of Payne Stewart’s victory in 1999? How will it look and feel when the World Golf Hall of Fame, launched in Pinehurst in the early 1970s, comes full circle and reopens in the new USGA facility? And how many of the par 4s will Jon Rahm reach with his driver?

Look toward Los Angeles on Father’s Day and try not to get run over by the falling dominoes. PS

Lee Pace has written over four decades about all of the golf architects at Pinehurst, from Donald Ross to Gil Hanse. Contact him at leepace7@gmail.com and follow him on Instagram at @leepaceunc.

Announcing

Our New Spring Rates

We are excited to announce our new spring rates are now available. Book your tee time online and save. Our online booking engine allows you to see all available tee times, rates and player types. It’s quick, fast and convenient.

Warm Carolina spring weather is here this week. Bring a friendand visit us here at Whispering Pines. Our friendly staff would love to have you. See you soon !

At checkout, be sure to select one of our instant rewardsjust for booking online. See you on the 1st tee.

Courtesy of the Town of Southern Pines

THURSDAYS

604 W. Morganton Rd Southern Pines, NC (Armory Sports Complex)

9 am - 1 pm I ALL YEAR

SATURDAYS

Downtown Southern Pines

SE Broad & New York Ave Southern Pines, NC

8 am- Noon | April 15th thru October

For more info on vendors, special events, and closures please visit: www.MooreCountyFarmersMarket.com

Come meet our NEW vendors including Bluebonnet Coffee! Live music on Saturdays from 10 AM till noon.

this I know for sure

We are the breath the skin the muscles the heart the hands the unmeasurable bones whispering across the Atlantic Ocean. We are the bellies of Middle Passage ships. We are the blue door of no return on Goree Island. We are the mornings that broke with our living and our dead fastened together. We are the eyes bearing witness to sharks following our human cargo waiting for the feast of dead or sick bodies tossed overboard. We are the shadows in the back of the eyes of daughters throwing themselves and their babies overboard. Our blood is the red that stole the blue of the ocean. We are scattered bones rising up from the bottom of the Atlantic revealing a pathway marking the route. We are the fruit of those bone trees planted deep in the fertile Atlantic. We carry a DNA of survival, strength, extraordinary will. From forced migration to slave market we are all the links of all the chains of the past and future. Binding spiritual links from the bones in the Atlantic to the bones of slaves in a place like Galveston Texas where ancestral whispers became the wind… Caressing tired bones with a timeless spirit of rebirth and love. The wind heard first. Whispering from the trees, from the ground beneath their feet, whispering…

Freedom Freedom Freedom

The wind knew and rattled tiny bones beneath the feathers of birds. The wind knew. Giving voice to the rain falling creating fertile freedom ground. The wind whispered to every butterfly, every insect pollinating from flower to flower. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Eagles stopped in midair to listen to the wind’s song… Freedom came today. Freedom came today… And because our people are a chosen people we could understand the dance of the trees, the tremble of the water. Hoes stopped striking. Hands stopped picking. Feet stood still. A mighty storm named freedom rained over them. Soaked them clean. Mothers kissed hope into the air above babies’ heads. Grandmothers and grandfathers stretched prayers into a sky that would not bend. Men asked where will this freedom live. Children asked what does this freedom taste like. What does this freedom smell like. What does this freedom sound like. What does this freedom look like. Mama, tell me what this freedom gonna feel like. We screamed a jubilee into the clouds. We shed the skin of a slave. We shed the rags of a slave into the river. Our freedom skin was a shining brand-new nakedness that outshined the sun. We be clothed in freedom’s gold. On Juneteenth dead bones came alive and flew on the wings of Sankofa birds all the way back to the river where blood is born… All the way back to the womb that never forgets. We are the Juneteenth resurrection… We are the ancient prayers answered. We are the cup overflowing inviting generations to this feast of freedom.

— Jaki Shelton Green

Brooks Slave Ship by Stephen Hayes. Woodblock. 2010

Reflections at 4

By DaviD K iner

Four decades of photos, art and fun

What do you feel and visualize when you hear the words solitude, neglect, passion, joy, surprise or isolation? Do you think you could capture each in a photograph? You could. We all have the gift of imagination and creativity and, like all beautiful artwork, photography tells simple stories.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Sandhills Photography Club. Established in 1983, it’s an integral part

of this community, attracting photographers of all skill levels, from an amateur with a cellphone to gifted professionals with a trunk full of gear. “We have a wonderful complement of experience and skill levels among our members,” says Jacques Wood, president of SPC. “Regardless of experience level, club members love photography, are ready to learn new techniques, and enjoy sharing and seeing the work of others.”

Brian Osborne, owner of The Photo Classroom and founder of the Professional Photography Group,

Charlotte’s largest professional photography team, had this to say about the club: “Over the years, I have spoken to a wide variety of camera and photography clubs but SPC is hands down my favorite. The thing that I love most about this organization is not only the community they share, but their earnest desire to learn and grow.”

Photography has changed dramatically over the past four decades but the principles have remained the same — finding ways to capture moments, stopping time through light, composition, texture and color. In 1983 the Club began with nine members and grew quickly to 25, with many knee-deep in the chemicals found in their darkrooms. Today the club is 100 strong and its members are knee-deep in pixels instead.

Local artist and founding member of the Artists League of the Sandhills and SPC, Betty Hendrix, remembers those early days. “We were still using slides to view our work, or physically bringing photos in for display. And the word Zoom was a children’s TV program,” she says.

Linda Piechota has been a member of the club for 34 of its 40 years. “I recall, way back then, being kind of ambivalent about entering a contest, and showing my first photo. How silly of me. We are more like a family than a club. None of us could have imagined how things have changed with technology. But one thing that hasn’t changed is the passion I see in our members.”

The club is impressively comprehensive with its own website, a monthly newsletter called “In Focus,” workshops, field trips, exhibitions and competitions. The William Stoffel Awards, named after one of the club’s co-founders, are presented annually to members accumulating the greatest number of competition points in

Jill Margeson • A Serious Nap, Galapagos Island

Debra Regula • Colorful Caterpillar

each of the competitive tiers. The competitions are held every other month with the themes identified in advance. It’s the job of the photographer to capture what they feel best describes that theme. Submitted photographs are judged by an outside professional who both encourages and provides constructive feedback, an essential part of the growth of the members.

Like a composer who writes musical compositions, photographers don’t simply take snapshots. They can capture distant galaxies or extreme closeups. The heavens are vast and astonishing, but so are the tiniest of details found in the pistil of a flower or the mystery in the face of an insect. To see what others don’t is a common theme among those who fall in love with photography. You become increasingly aware of what’s around you.

Donna Ford • Splish Splash

Marti Derleth • NC Zoo-Gorilla Concentration

Neva Scheve

• Chimpanzee

Dave Powers

• Stay Close Son

John German • Mekita and Cub, NC Zoo

John German • Pilings

Dale Jennings

• Rising Tide

Jim Brown • Furman Tower

Gisela Danielson

• Templo de Santo Domingo

Darryll Benecke • The Painter

Susan Bailey • Woman at Work

Pat Anderson • The Passion of Cuban Ballet

Diane McCall • Little House on the Prairie

Dale Jennings • Kids Will Be Kids

Susan Bailey • Sunflowers

Gary Magee • Natures Underground

Mary New • Spring Sunshine

Jim Davis • Mom and Chick Talk

Debra Regula • Ice Cold

Neva Scheve • Courting Anhingas

Kathy Green • Feathers

Grace Hill • Please Mom

“Hard work and staying with it is the key, and not being afraid to shoot, shoot, and shoot more,” says Walter Morris, an early club member and its second president. Once, on a two-week trip to Africa, Morris took over 7,000 photos. He kept “the 20 I liked. What makes a photo great? Well, you know it when you see it.”

Like all artistic endeavors, photographers grow by learning from others and exploring new scenes. “In this club, we learn so much from each other,” says Susan Bailey, coordinator of the club’s outings and a board member. Her love affair with photography started over 40 years ago. She’s in charge of full-day or half-day outings that range from trips to the beautiful gardens in Raleigh or Durham, pontoon excursions on Jordan Lake, or even the marvels of the North

Wendell Dance • Strawberry Splash

Matt Smith • For Lily

Matt Smith • Migraine

Donna Ford • Celestial Journey

Carolina Zoo. “It’s wonderful to go on the club’s group outings,” says Bailey. “There is as much laughter as there is the clicking of our cameras.”

The club is also known for its two- or three-day field trips, headed up by Gary Magee, another long-standing member and a former two-term club president. This past spring the members went to Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. Other trips have taken members to the North Carolina mountains, its beaches, or even to the marshes and dunes of Amelia Island, Florida. “The idea of traveling in a group is very special,” says Magee. “We can dine together, stay at the same hotel and enjoy the beautiful gifts of living in the South.”

As with most of today’s activities, new technologies have continued to be a driving force for all the members. During the pandemic, the Sandhills Photography Club quickly adopted Zoom. Now its members and guests, far and wide, can participate

in the vast number of activities the club offers. “Zoom made such a positive impact on us. At first it was just a means to stay together, to hold our sanity. But to our surprise it has expanded our membership base,” says Jerry Kozel, co-chairman of the club’s competition committee. “We have folks from all over the United States, South Africa and Australia involved.” Zoom also allows the club to reach out to professional photographers from all over the country who serve as judges in its bi-monthly competitions. “These are men and women with enormous experience who give such worthwhile advice,” says Kozel. “We store that information on our website so members who have missed a meeting can watch it at a later date.”

Technological advances extend well beyond communications software. Today’s cameras are getting smaller, more

sophisticated, and moving to mirrorless models. Improvements in image sensors and lenses are astronomical. Cameras have more automated features like face and object recognition. Who knows what artificial intelligence software will bring? But one thing never changes — the conversation between the artist and the viewer. In the meantime, the members of the SPC will continue to find solace and joy in their love of photography. PS

David Kiner is a member of the Sandhills Photo Club and a former faculty member at Syracuse University. He happily resides in Southern Pines and can be reached at dbkiner@gmail.

The Sandhills Photography Club meets the second Monday of every month, with the exception of December, at the Sandhills Community College Ball Garden Visitor’s Center, 3245 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Monthly meetings alternate between competitions and presentations and are live on Zoom. For further information go to www.sandhillsphotoclub.org.

The Great

AU.S. Open is guaranteed to surprise. It’s built into the DNA. Because an Open is just that — open — it is the moon shot destination of every Tin Cup Roy McAvoy, every Caddyshack Carl Spackler, every Goat Hills assistant pro, every whistlestop, RV-driving, 4 o’clock in the morning coffee-drinking golfer with 14 clubs, a rainsuit that doesn’t leak and the most peculiar of ideas: that they can flat-out play this idiotic game. And every U.S. Open will have one of those guys you never heard of up on the leaderboard, posting a low score and a sweet story. In the 2005 U.S. Open at Pinehurst’s No. 2 course, that guy was Jason Gore. And the story was bigger than he was.

A refugee from the PGA Tour’s minor league —the Nationwide Tour in those days — with the thick-chested physique of a stevedore and a neon smile as wide as all 88 keys on a baby grand, Gore’s self-deprecating grace quickly earned him favorite son status when he joined two-time U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen and tour veteran Olin Browne (who may be more famous these days as the father of the country/soft rock singer Alexandra Browne) at the top of the leaderboard after 36 holes. Golf World, the ultimate insider’s magazine first published in Pinehurst in 1947, described Gore as a “cross between Cinderella and the Michelin Man.”

It was an apt description, since the tires were among the few things left when Gore’s car was ransacked in Asheville en route to the national championship he would make, in many ways, his own. After getting through second stage qualifying in Atlanta, Gore flew to Knoxville, Tennessee (site of that week’s Nationwide tournament), to pick up his car, a black Ford Expedition with dark tinted windows and fancy chrome wheels. He, wife Megan and their 8-month old son, Jaxson, who was sporting two ear infections, headed east on I-40. “There was a thunderstorm coming through and it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and the walls are starting

What surprises lurk in Pinehurst’s next U.S. Open?

By Jim moriarty

to close in,” Gore recalls, so they stopped and checked into a hotel. Exhausted, they left most of their belongings in the car. In the morning Megan went to get a change of clothes and came back in tears. “They’d punched out the keyhole on the driver’s side and popped it open, tore out the dash, the Alpine stereo, took everything except the baby seat,” says Gore. “They cut themselves when they were tearing out the dash and there was blood and wires hanging everywhere.” Missing were all of Megan’s clothes and Jason’s briefcase with his laptop and his U.S. Open credentials. As luck would have it, his clubs had gone ahead of him with his caddie, Lewis Puller.

PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVEN GIBBONS/USGA

Unknown

Amateur. His accomplishments earned him a spot on the victorious U.S. Walker Cup team at Quaker Ridge Golf Club where he accounted for 2 1/2 points. Then, the morning he was leaving for Boise, Idaho, to play in his first professional event, his mother, Kathy, found his father, Sheldon, on their living room floor dead from a heart attack.

“I had kind of a rough start to my golf career,” Gore told the media in ’05 when speaking about his father. “It’s taken a little while to get over that and try and become myself again.” At the age of 31, Gore had already bounced back and forth between the PGA Tour and its primary satellite twice. That he could play well wasn’t a shock. But could he play well enough to win a U.S. Open?

Gore rolled into Pinehurst in the jerry-rigged SUV version of Apollo 13, talking his way past a phalanx of security guards. “Go ahead,” one uniformed officer finally told him, “we heard about you.” By the weekend, every golf fan in America had.

Gore was the kind of player known to golf’s cognoscenti, if not to the general public. He and his Pepperdine University teammates won the NCAA team championship at Conway Farms Golf Club in Chicago in ’97, with Gore making double bogey on the last hole to lose the individual title to Clemson University’s Charles Warren by a shot. He won the California State Open and California State Amateur that year along with the Pacific Coast

After his second round of three under par 67, Gore low-keyed it by describing the other time he led the U.S. Open. He was one of the first players on the course at the Olympic Club in ’98, drove it through the fairway into a bunch of “crap” (as he described it) on the opening hole, pitched out and holed a 90-yard wedge shot for a three. There was a leaderboard on the second tee and his name was at the top. Gore with a red -1. “So, this is old hat for me,” he said with that wide grin. His run in ’98 was short-lived. A 77 that day put a quick end to his Olympic feats.

On Friday evening Gore made a foray to fill his car with gas and get a prescription at Eckerd's for Jaxson’s ear infections. Had he been promoted to recognizable celebrity status? “I got a couple of waves when I was putting gas in the car,” he deadpanned.

Unknown to Gore, on Saturday while he was on the course the Golf Channel had his Expedition cleaned and pressed. “They took my truck, fixed the air conditioning and put a new stereo in. It was so awesome,” he recalls. “They had me up on set on Saturday night

Jason Gore on the fourth tee in the third round of the 2005 U.S. Open.

after I played and showed me the video. It was Rich Lerner. Rich covered the NCAAs in ’97. We were all kids. It was just the nicest gesture. I’ll never forget that.”

Lerner, golf television’s most gifted essayist, has fuzzy recollections of their good deed. “I do remember that being a part of the J. Gore story that everybody fell in love with — how good-natured he was about all of it,” Lerner says. “He was down on his luck but he didn’t wear it that way. He came across as a guy who had all the good fortune in the world and that’s what I think resonated with so many people.”

Gore’s two-over-par 72 on Saturday put him at level par for the championship and three shots behind the leader Goosen, the odds-on favorite to add Pinehurst to the championship venues he’d collected at Southern Hills Country Club and Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. They would be playing together in the final twosome on Sunday. That it was Father’s Day was not lost on Gore.

It didn’t go well for either player. Goosen, the quiet, intense South African who, as a young boy, survived being struck by lightning, didn’t survive Pinehurst’s greens. His 81 dropped him from first to a tie for 11th and opened the door for the eventual champion, New Zealand’s Michael Campbell, to stroll through.

It was worse for Gore, described this way by Golf World: “The solid tee-to-green game Gore had sustained for three days abandoned him, and he hit only four fairways and eight greens. Despite a front nine 40, Gore still was only three off the lead, but four bogeys, a double and a triple coming home — capped off by a sloppy four-putt on the 72nd green — made for a sour end to his dream.”

That four-putt also cost him five bucks. “We hadn’t had much to say to each other all day,” Gore remembers of his Sunday with Retief. “We’re in the final round of the Open so we’re not going

to talk about the weather, right?” Then, as they were walking from the 15th green to the 16th tee, both having played themselves out of it, Goosen turned to Gore and said — and here Gore produces a very fine South African accent in his retelling, “Have you ever played cricket?” Gore told him he hadn’t, to which Goosen replied, “We’re having a helluva a day of cricket because we both have so many overs.”

Gore started laughing and asked Goosen if he wanted to play the last three holes for five bucks. Might as well play for something, right? That made Goosen laugh. And so the game within the game was on. They were tied playing the 18th where Gore’s four-putt six lost to Goosen’s par four. Did he pay off? “I saw him at the TaylorMade trailer at Disney. I walked in and handed him five bucks. He laughed and took it,” says Gore. As luck would have it, they were paired together two years later in the final round of The Players Championship. Gore asked if he could get his five bucks back. Goosen said sure. Gore shot 70 and finished T23. Goosen shot 71 and ended up T28. “I still haven’t seen my five bucks,” Gore says with that Cheshire cat grin. “At this point I don’t even want him to pay me because it ruins the story.”

After his final round 84, after Campbell had wrapped his arms around the silver trophy and Tiger Woods’ caddie, Steve Williams, had wrapped his arms around his fellow New Zealander Campbell, after the throngs had fled the village of Pinehurst, Gore stopped in the dark downstairs bar at Dugan’s Pub for a quiet beer and even quieter reflection. “That day was such a blur,” he says. “It’s not that I didn’t play well, I just played incorrectly. I tried to win which, at Pinehurst in a U.S. Open, you don’t do that. You have to stick to your game plan. I learned a lot that day.” After Dugan’s Gore went back to his hotel room at the

Jason Gore tees off on the second hole during the final round of the 2005 U.S. Open.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN MUMMERT/USGA

Pine Needles Lodge. Campbell, joined by a cast of thousands, was in the room directly above Gore’s. “I got to hear him party all night,” he says.

Turning a negative into a positive was something Gore had done after losing the NCAA individual title and he did it again after losing the U.S. Open. He won three times on the Nationwide Tour in July and August of ’05 (his seven career wins on the developmental tour are still a record), then won the 84 Lumber Classic in September for the only PGA Tour victory of his career. Though Gore was born and raised in California, his mother was from Monroeville, east of Pittsburgh, not too far from the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort, site of the 84 Lumber. Gore visited for a month every summer as a kid, cutting his teeth at nearby Manor Valley Golf Course. He was the favorite son once again.

“After I won, I thought I had to continue to get better and do more stuff and I kinda lost my game,” Gore says. Shoulder and back injuries didn’t help. By 2018, he was in the insurance business. Then the USGA came calling, asking Gore to become its first managing director of player relations, a position he held for three-and-a-half years before taking a similar job — senior vice president, player adviser to the commissioner — at the PGA Tour. People who run championships often don’t see things the way people who play in them do. Gore has helped both organizations clear that hurdle.

“My wife and I were high school sweethearts. We grew up in Southern California, born and raised there,” says Gore, who moved east with Megan, Jaxson and his sister, Olivia, after the USGA hired him. “Until we lived in New Jersey I thought snow came out of those machines.”

Now Gore has temporary digs in Ponte Vedra, Florida, and commutes back and forth to New Jersey. His personal possessions in the condo are sparse: a wooden block with Vin Scully’s farewell line from his last L.A. Dodgers’ game and a few guitars. Musically, Gore refers to himself as a 12-handicap. “I’m the guy who shows up in the pro-am with the $10,000 set of clubs and thinks he’s going to beat the pro. That’s me with guitars. You walk into my house in New Jersey, you’d think Slash lived there. I just think they’re works of art. I love them.”

Gore describes his son, Jaxson — he of the double ear infections who’s almost 19 now — as someone with high-functioning autism. “He writes screenplays. We got him a talk-to-text. He’s super, super sharp but there’s a chance he could live with us for the rest of his life, which is fine. He can’t cook an egg but he makes up for it in so many different areas. He sees life through a different set of glasses and it’s awesome. He’ll sit in the basement and just write and create and I’m, ‘Come on, Jax, let’s go out somewhere and see reality.’ And he goes, ‘Dad, I don’t really like reality.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, me neither.’”

In 12 months, Pinehurst No. 2 will become reality once again for the best players in the world. “It’s the U.S. Open,” said Gore in 2005 with a grin that still refuses to vanish, “crazy things happen.”

If we’re lucky. PS

Jim Moriarty is the Editor of PineStraw magazine. He can be reached at jjmpinestraw@gmail.com.

Jason Gore at his condo in Florida

IT TAKES A Village

By Bill Case

Geneva McRae, Demus Taylor and Taylortown

Demus Taylor

Geneva McRae

Having been gone so long she couldn’t remember when she left, Geneva McRae decided it was time to come home to Taylortown — the African American community of 650 souls where she had spent her formative years. Decades before, the untimely death of Geneva’s father, Charlie, caused her mother, Lowverta McRae, to relocate from Taylortown to New York City along with her six children. Lowverta sensed her kids stood a better chance of advancing their fortunes up north rather than in the Sandhills, where employment opportunities for Blacks were mostly limited to low-paying service jobs with the Pinehurst resort.

For the energetic and adventurous Geneva, New York proved a godsend. She would thrive there during a remarkable career in public service. First, she served a three-year hitch in the U.S. Army that featured culturally broadening deployments in England, France, and Germany. Following her discharge, McRae attended night school at City College of New York where she received a degree in education. While taking graduate studies in public administration at NYU, she taught at a city elementary school.

After passing a civil service examination she was hired by the New York State Employment Service where she steadily rose through the ranks holding management positions of ever-increasing responsibility, including the supervision of the agency’s first Job Corps unit. Her success caused a sister public entity to come calling. She took a two-year leave of absence to run South Bronx’s “Hunt’s Point” program for job training and health needs.

Shortly thereafter, McRae was recruited to serve as deputy director of New York City’s Model Cities Program. In that role, she helped underprivileged women receive the training necessary to become nurses. She also administered programs providing medical internships for minority candidates. “That’s where I got my education — my baptismal if you will — in community work,” McRae told The Pilot staff writer Huntley Womick in a 1990s interview.

Given her well-developed social network, McRae’s friends assumed she would remain in New York after retiring in 1978 at age 63. But the Sandhills called her home. She owned a tract of land in Taylortown — left to her by Lowverta — who instructed her daughter to never sell it. McRae built a house on the property and, when it was completed in 1982, she moved in. Her roots in Taylortown, however, stretched well beyond her ownership of land.

“Our forefathers, mine included, founded this community in the early 1900s, and built homes and churches,” she told The Pilot. The founders left “a pioneering spirit that continues to live in the hearts of the people.”

Taylortown’s strong religious ethos also attracted McRae. She expressed pride that the town’s people are “taught to love God and love the community.” Throughout its history, Taylortown has been home to an array of vibrant, well-attended churches including House of Prayer, Galilee Baptist, Spruill Temple Church of God, and Spaulding Chapel AME Zion. Geneva became a devout member of the latter, serving on its board of trustees.

Spaulding Chapel AME Zion had also been the chosen church of the town’s founder Demus Taylor — at 6 feet 5 inches, a larger than life figure. He was born into slavery, perhaps as early as

1821, though the exact date is unknown. His ancestors were from the West African Ebu tribe. Among Demus’ “owners” was James Taylor, brother of the 12th U.S. President, Zachary Taylor. According to one account, Demus’ ownership changed hands five times before his emancipation. After gaining his freedom — and the ability to trade his labor for wages — he worked in the turpentine trade, notching trees at a nickel apiece. Like Paul Bunyan, the lean, powerful Taylor could do the work of three men, notching hundreds of trees daily with his trademark axe. Apparently Demus was too productive for his own good. His employer determined the per tree stipend was too generous and trimmed Taylor’s compensation to a flat rate of $2 per day plus all the rations the man with the axe could eat.

When James Tufts came to Moore County in 1895 and founded Pinehurst, the aging Demus saw an opportunity for a new gig. With golf emerging as the resort’s primary attraction, Taylor (by then presumably in his mid-70s) decided to try caddying. He became a good one, often looping for Donald Ross. According to Golfdom magazine, Taylor ingratiated himself with the legendary golf professional and budding architect, becoming Ross’ “top Sergeant” at the resort’s caddie shack.

At first, Taylor and numerous Black workers resided at the “Old Settlement” — an area adjacent to what is now the 15th hole of the No. 3 golf course. Around 1905, Taylor bought property from Tufts located across current Route 211. Like a latter-day Moses, he led a migration of Black workers to this land, initially referred to as the “New Settlement.” Eventually, the transplanted residents began calling the area Taylortown, a fitting tribute to Demus.

Taylor died in 1934 and the stories reporting his demise gave a range of his age from 106 to 113. Numerous Taylortown men would follow Demus’ example by caddying at the resort including Hall of Fame loopers Robert “Hardrock” Robinson, Willie McRae (unrelated to Geneva), and Sam Snead’s man, Jimmy Steed. Over the years, the community would become home to scores of other resort employees: maids, laundry workers, masons,

Demus Taylor PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY THE PILOT, MOORE COUNTY HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

and laborers. Robert Taylor, Demus’ son, founded a school for Taylortown children. And, before moving to New York City, Geneva McRae graduated from that institution — the Academy Heights High School.

When McRae returned to Taylortown in 1982, she discovered her New York-honed community service skills were in high demand. In 1984, she joined the five-member board of the Taylortown Sanitary District, an entity founded in 1963 for the purpose of providing the first water service and streetlights for the town. She was elected chairperson of the board in 1985.

The advent of the Sanitary District marked an early step toward self-government for Taylortown’s inhabitants. Its establishment provided the necessary governmental entity to borrow money to construct the water lines and repay the loan. The Pinehurst Community Foundation pitched in to assist its Taylortown neighbors by paying for a legally required engineering study. Prior to the time the district came into being, “only six or eight houses had indoor plumbing,” according to early district board member Floyd Ray. Many residents had been forced to carry water from a pump or neighboring well to their homes for cooking, drinking, and bathing.

The Sanitary District represented real progress but residents of Taylortown hoped the time would come when the community could independently provide other governmental services. The county sheriff was primarily responsible for policing, but deputies patrolled the community sporadically at best. Far flung Moore County Emergency Services provided fire protection with additional assistance from Pinehurst. Periodic attempts to provide such services locally had failed to get off the ground.

In the 1960s, for example, community leaders urged Moore County officials to appoint a part-time deputy sheriff to patrol Taylortown. The sheriff and county commissioners were amenable to the concept but indicated the officers’ compensation would need to be borne by Taylortown residents. Had the community then possessed the status of a municipality with taxing authority, funding for the officer probably could have been arranged. But it was not, and the initiative went no further.

In 1980, former Taylortown resident Perry Barrett launched a heroic, though ultimately futile, effort to establish a local fire department in his hometown. Barrett, then a head carpenter for the Nassau County (New York) maintenance department, got wind of the fact that New York-based fire departments were jettisoning and junking a couple of their fire trucks. Perry saw an opportunity to create a fire department in Taylortown and persuaded the authorities to give him the trucks. After making repairs, he got behind the wheel of one of the pumpers and began the long journey south. The truck’s engine blew en route and an exasperated Perry was marooned alongside the highway. He eventually managed to get the trucks to North Carolina, an achievement that garnered national publicity. North Carolina governor Jim Hunt awarded Barrett the Order of the Longleaf Pine, but his exploits would go for naught. Absent municipal status, Taylortown was in no position to operate, house, or staff safety forces of any type.

Such disappointments led civic leaders to consider the possibility of incorporating Taylortown as a municipality and momentum in that direction increased after Pinehurst proposed a new planning and zoning ordinance in 1981. As a municipality, Pinehurst under state law could zone unincorporated areas located less than one mile from its boundaries, thus including much of Taylortown.

This situation annoyed town resident Ruth Jackson who expressed the frustration shared by many in her community. “Who is representing Taylortown?” she inquired at the public hearing on the zoning ordinance. “We’ve requested water, sewer, and police services from Pinehurst several times. And every time, we’re told to go to Carthage. Now you come looking for us when it’s something we don’t even want.” Jackson further noted that hearings were being scheduled on weekday afternoons when Taylortown laborers couldn’t leave work to attend.

Given her successful role as Sanitary District chair, Geneva McRae realized she would be expected to take the point in any incorporation campaign at the North Carolina legislature. So she, together with Sanitary District commissioner Micajah Wyatt, took charge. Geneva’s background in community organizing came in handy. “I’ve never worked as hard on any job and put in so many

In 1981 J.O. Quin and Perry Barrett haul a ladder truck to Taylortown.

First village council members: Jesse Fuller, Frances Johnson, Floyd Ray, Geneva McRae and Daniel Morrison

hours,” she told an interviewer. “But it [was] a labor of love.”

She and Wyatt formed the Taylortown Executive Committee which sponsored fundraising activities to pay for a survey of Taylortown’s boundaries. Next, Geneva turned her attention to the churches — familiar ground for her. She asked for and received assistance from the Ministerial Alliance, a group established in the ’70s consisting of Black ministers from Taylortown and other Moore County churches. The alliance members would prove vital to the effort. McRae also met with Raeford mayor J.K. McNeil to prepare a feasibility study to support incorporation.

In June 1986, a petition to incorporate Taylortown was submitted to the North Carolina General Assembly. State Representative James Craven of Pinebluff adopted Taylortown’s incorporation as his personal cause by introducing proposed legislation to make it a reality.

In one meeting on the bill, Pinehurst mayor Charles Grant sought to derail it, claiming that state law did not permit incorporation by a small community located within one mile of a larger one. Craven countered that the cited law only applied when the larger community had a population of at least 5,000, which Pinehurst (at the time) did not. Mayor Grant argued that incorporation would cause problems with overlapping police jurisdictions. The resourceful McRae was prepared to respond. “If police will be a problem, why does Pinehurst tell us this is not in their jurisdiction for police services?” she asked.

Rev. H.C. Johnson, a Ministerial Alliance member, also spoke in support of Taylortown’s bid for municipal status, and did so emphatically. “I don’t want Pinehurst telling us what to do. We poor folks made Pinehurst what it is. We worked for nothing, $40 a week. We made it what it is and want to leave it there.”

However, the opposition of Pinehurst, coupled with the fact that the General Assembly was in short session resulted in the bill going nowhere. While frustrated, McRae and other incorporation proponents were not discouraged. “We were so determined to make Taylortown a municipality that we did everything required of us and more,” she told a writer for the Citizen News-Record

Craven’s bill was finally taken up for consideration by the General Assembly the following year. A series of legislative committee meetings on it necessitated attendance by McRae and members of the Ministerial Alliance. Bishop Larry Brown, minister at Taylortown’s House of Prayer, was among the faithful attendees. Brown estimates he made at least 25 trips to Raleigh. In a recent interview with Pilot reporter Laura Douglass, the bishop indicated that more than one opponent of Craven’s bill questioned whether a town of Black people would be able to govern themselves. But the presence and advocacy of Brown and his fellow men of the cloth gave a spiritual dignity to Taylortown’s presentation, impressing the legislators.

Eventually, Pinehurst dropped its objection to the concept of Taylortown’s incorporation, but the village remained opposed to Craven’s bill when it was amended to include within the proposed municipality three vacant parcels comprising 31 acres located on the north side of Route 211. Pinehurst was itself attempting to annex the parcels, now the Pinecroft Shopping Center that includes the Harris Teeter grocery store.

The question of which town should wind up with the 31 acres constituted the last roadblock for McRae and the other proponents of incorporation. A key Moore County state senator, Wanda Hunt, also the chairwoman of the Senate’s local government committee, was feeling pressure from both sides. She wanted to vote for Taylortown’s incorporation, but because a property owner in the disputed area (who happened to be a Hunt supporter) preferred that his property remain in Pinehurst, her vote was up in the air. Moreover, the North Carolina League of Municipalities was siding with Pinehurst. After what Craven would describe as “a lot of lobbying,” he convinced both the League and Hunt to support his bill. With them on board, the state senate unanimously approved Craven’s bill 40-0. The inclusion of the three valuable parcels within Taylortown’s corporate limits would furnish a welcome boon to the new municipality’s tax base.

On July 13, 1987, Taylortown became a municipality. As was her style, McRae gave credit to everyone but herself for the achievement but, absent her organizational skills and tenacity, incorporation likely would have remained a pipedream.

As a result of incorporation, the Sanitary District was disbanded. To run the municipality’s affairs, a five member village council was established, initially consisting of McRae, Floyd Ray, Jesse Fuller, Frances Johnson, and Daniel Morrison. The new council selected McRae to be the town’s first mayor. Described by one writer as “a willowish wisp of a woman who, nevertheless, packs a wallop,” McRae would serve two terms in the post.

Her tenure was an active one. Under her leadership, Taylortown entered into a formal fire protection agreement with Pinehurst. That arrangement continues to this day. A police department was established after the council figured it could pay an officer of its own less than it would pay in a contract for law enforcement with the county. McRae would persuade county officials to establish a voting precinct inside Taylortown. Olmsted Village was annexed into the village. The council authorized new recreational facilities and, with financial assistance from the Sandhills Garden Club (arranged by McRae), beautification of the community became a priority.

Over the years following McRae’s departure from municipal government, many other improvements have taken place within the community. A new village hall was completed in 2000. Pinecroft and Harris Teeter occupied the once heavily contested 31 acres. Government funding was obtained to update the water system and additional streetlights were installed. Today, Taylortown Museum honors Demus Taylor and other community founders like the remarkable McRae who passed away in 2008 at the age of 93. And another gain to the community occurred when Perry Barrett, once the young man who brought fire engines to Taylortown and is now in his 90s, moved — like Geneva — from New York back home, an echo of McRae’s own words: “I love Taylortown and I love its people. I wouldn’t live anywhere else. This is home.” PS

Pinehurst resident Bill Case is PineStraw’s history man. He can be reached at Bill.Case@thompsonhine.com.

Pretty

By DeBorah salomon

Photogra Phs By John gessner

as a Picture

Hospitality in gracious surroundings

The Country Club of North Carolina residential enclave reads like an architectural history of North Carolina, from elongated ranches to mid-century modern, a 1950s genre developed at N.C. State. Showplace homes speak A-frame chalet to antebellum frilly, New England saltbox to French chateaux, log cabins to painted brick with interiors ranging from formal to fun. Not surprisingly, some homes display multiple styles, defying or at least resisting classification. Jane and Paul Whit Howard boast just such a home, built in 1991 on 1.7 acres. It’s refreshing, spacious, light, practical, retro, inventive, livable and, most of all, beautiful. Its kitchen may be modest in size and its bathrooms not quite spa but colors and

fabric designs vibrate with the intensity of the jungle paintings of Henri Rousseau. The living room is sunken and hardwood floors have a whitewash. Deep tray ceilings speak to quality and detail.

The grey exterior offers few clues but a portrait of well-worn golf bags between foyer and living room does. The Howards are both from eastern North Carolina, now retired. For decades their primary residence was Raleigh, with regular treks from beach to mountains. They brought their penchant for Southern hospitality with them to Pinehurst.

“I love to entertain,” Jane says. “I’m more of a Southern cook than a Julia Child. This kitchen is very adequate. It has everything I need.” Everything included shifting space to create a butler’s pantry for storage and another for food.

Instead of glamorizing the kitchen, the Howards poured resources into a defining feature, a covered veranda comprising living room, dining/cooking area, wood-burning fireplace and an uncovered conversation pit with fountain. Its square footage approaches a two-bedroom apartment. This addition earned its keep during the pandemic, when

friends gathered once a week en plein air for casual dinners and COVID-talk. A third outdoor space resembling an English tea garden, in place before the Howards’ acquisition, is ideal for morning coffee.

With retirement looming and a son, Witt, who was an avid junior golfer at the time, the Howards were ready to leave their red brick ranch in Raleigh behind. They ruled out the beach. “Too much sun, heat, crowds,” Jane says. They knew Pinehurst from renting a weekend retreat. After visiting friends at Eastlake — “It felt so good to be here,” Jane recalls — she began looking at properties “on the QT.”

In 2017 they found the one at CCNC with a modified, elongated ranch layout. “I knew this was a party house from the beginning,” Jane says. It had been on the market for three years. She recognized its “good bones” required only bathroom upgrades and cosmetic work.

No problem. “We love to do that, the designing and creating,” Jane says. “My husband

is a mechanical engineer — and a frustrated architect.” Her flair for interior design, fueled by a career as a worldwide travel consultant/tour leader, is evident, beginning at the front door where a wide pane of beveled glass with no covering allows maximum light to flood the entranceway.

Since they are only the second owners, the house hadn’t been put through interim, perhaps unwise, remodels.

The “designing and creating” part involved a trade-off: Jane craves green and pink, long a favorite in gracious Southern homes of the midto-late 1900s. Paul Whit was ready for change. Jane retained her favorite color combination in the dining room, as background for a magnificent breakfront and other family antiques in dark woods, with a table set in silver napkin holders and gleaming crystal. In contrast, instead of sedate florals, for the dining room and elsewhere Jane chose bold fabrics featuring a green that trended more avocado-olive than lettuce. A pair of small, upholstered chairs brings her trademark green into the kitchen-family room, brightened by blue and white pottery.

In return for color concessions, “I got my rose garden,” Jane beams — 16 bushes in a raised bed on its own patio, with space to sit and admire.

Paul Whit had another request: A comfortable/casual atmosphere where men could put their feet up. That relaxed, hospitable vibe explains the informal living room with simple navy blue sofas, built-ins filled with books and family photos, a games table for bridge and Jane’s baby grand piano. On the veranda maintenance is simplified by chairs and sofas with cushions enclosed in wicker lattice.

No amount of outdoor dining or green accents are preparation for the guest bedroom used most often by the Howards’ son and his wife, Hadley. “Mom, I want dark walls and blackout shades,” he said. Mom’s response — breathtaking: navy blue walls and white carpet complemented by a geometric modern painting. Walls in the master suite glow a Caribbean aquamarine, also surprising. In a few months Jane and Paul Whit will repurpose an office adjoining the master suite as a nursery for their first grandchild and trade sleep space with the new parents.

Now, if only Jane knew for sure why one bathroom had a door opening onto the yard. Probably in preparation for a pool, which never materialized. Nor do the Howards plan to add one. “We’re over that,” Jane says.

At a time in life when most couples think condo or cottage the Howards — active and outgoing — still require more than elbow room. Jane plays pickleball, Paul Whit loves golf. They both enjoy yard work. The entire property is fenced for two lucky Lab-retrievers. Their house welcomes a crowd. And as the day winds down, fans whir on the veranda, ice tinkles in the glass, the dogs stretch out on the cool floor . . . and life looks good. PS

ALMANAC

June

By a shley Walshe

June is a daydream; a picnic; a long, sweet song.

Beyond the sunlit meadow — thick with thistle and crickets

and Queen Anne’s lace — the grandfather oak has gone moony. Most days, he is patient. Steadfast and uncomplaining. But on this day, when the painted lady drifts past the sea of red clover, he is fraught with expectation. The children of summer are coming.

As they float through the meadow, blankets and baskets in tow, the oak is awestruck. They could go anywhere. Bring their banquet to the altar of some other worthy tree. But they don’t. As they make their way through towering thistle, past bee balm and poppies and raves of day lilies, the grandfather knows: The children of summer will be here soon.

They come singing. Come with just-picked daisies. Come with a spread of luscious offerings:

A palmful of wineberries.

Pickled cucumbers.

Mint, marigolds and beets.

Roasted potatoes.

Dandelion shortbread.

Honeysuckle and homemade mead.

In the shade of the grand old tree, the children sprawl in dappled light, laughing and feasting and giving thanks. For them, hours pass like minutes. For the oak, time stands still.

When you’ve seen as many summers as he has — not to mention all the winters — these are the days you live for. Days of abundance. Days of praise and cicadas. When youth is a state of the heart, each breath is a banquet, and nature gets a glimpse of its own reflection.

Citronelly! Citronelly!

A summer without mosquitos isn’t a summer. No way around ’em, but we’ve got allies. Citronella, anyone?

Also known as scented geranium, citronella is one of the bestknown pest repellents to add to the garden. But there are others.

• Basil: Not just for pesto! This fragrant, prolific herb deters both mosquitos and flies. Learn how to trim it for larger yields.

• Rosemary: Likes it hot. Thankfully, the woodsy aroma that we know and love sends the swamp devils onward.

• Marigolds: Easy to grow? Check. Better yet, their lovely flowers attract predatory insects.

• Bee balm: Out with the nippers, in with the bees and skippers.

Tell you what I like the best — ’Long about knee-deep in June, ’Bout the time strawberries melts On the vine, — some afternoon

Like to jes’ git out and rest, And not work at nothin’ else!

— James Whitcomb Riley

Other plant allies include lavender, mint, lemon grass, catnip, sage and allium. Play around to see which plants work best for your garden. Besides mosquitos, what do you have to lose?

Strawberry Moon

The full Strawberry Moon rises on Saturday, June 3. It won’t be pink, but it will appear golden just after sunset, reaching peak illumination by midnight.

A new moon on Sunday, June 18 — Father’s Day — means clear skies for stargazing. See if you can spot Boötes (the herdsman), Libra (the scales), Lupus (the wolf) and Ursa Minor (the little bear) this month. Bonus points for a firefly constellation. PS

JAMIE MCDEVITT

MCDEVITT TOWN & COUNTRY PROPERTIES & PUTTER GIRL

After ten years in the corporate grind working for companies like Reebok and K-Swiss in Los Angeles, Jamie McDevitt found herself seeking a slower pace. Drawn to the equestrian and golf communities, she made a crosscountry move to Pinehurst. In addition to twenty-seven years experience selling Real Estate in Moore County, she’s returning to her roots in athletic apparel with the launch of her new venture— Putter Girl.

• Real Estate Career: Specializing in golf and equestrian properties, often taking clients out to play a round or ride the trails.

• What Sets McDevitt Town and Country Properties Apart: Being a small, boutique firm with a desire to help people make great lifestyle choices, where clients are not just a number.

Putter Girl

• What Led you to This Career: “I was shopping one day in my favorite golf pro shop and noticed that most of the women’s golf apparel had masculine logos on them. I thought to myself, why not make a women’s only logo and brand?”

• Mission: To provide fun, comfortable performance golf apparel at an affordable price

• What Sets Putter Girl Apart: “Because I play golf, I am constantly looking for the most comfortable fabrics...just because a golf outfit LOOKS good, doesn’t mean that it is comfortable to play in. At Putter Girl it IS comfortable.”

• On the Horizon: The summer product line just launched featuring a new micro fleece pullover. Shop the whole line at PutterGirl.com.

• Advice For Women Starting their Career: You don’t have to do it all….just do it well.

• Biggest Lesson in Business: There are ups and downs, but every decision, whether good or bad, is just a way to grow.

Photos by Lolly Nazario

LEAH HERSHMAN, D.O.

VASCULAR INSTITUTE OF THE PINES

Dr. Leah Hershman is a fellowship trained, board certified vascular surgeon from Tennessee with over 15 years of experience. She has been in the community for 6 years and in 2022 she followed a calling to open Vascular Institute of the Pines.

• What Led You to This Career: “Watching my grandfather’s physician taking care of him for many years with vascular issues.”

• Education: University of Pikeville College of Osteopathic Medicine, General Surgery Residency at Detroit Medical Center and Vascular Surgery Fellowship at the prestigious Arizona Heart Hospital, known as one of the best vascular and endovascular training centers in the United States.

• Mission: “God called us to serve. Let us treat you like VIP!”

• Medical Services: Vascular surgery with a focus on venous insufficiency and lymphedema.

• What Sets VIP Apart: “I, myself, have a clotting disorder so I have a special interest in the field and am able to put myself in that patient’s position...our patients are like family!”

• Special Licensing, Qualifications and Awards: Board Certified in Vascular Surgery, a Registered Physician in Vascular Interpretation, a member of the American Vein & Lymphatic Society and a recipient of the Top Doc award for Excellence in Medicine.

• On the Horizon: VIP is growing— new team members joining this month!

• Most Rewarding Part of Being a Woman in Business in this Community: Being able to make even a small difference in someone’s life.

• Advice for Young Women Starting their Career: Never lose sight of who you are, His purpose for you and surround yourself with a wonderful team going in the same direction.

• Family: Leah’s husband, Curtis, is a caddy at Pinehurst. They have a seven-year-old son, Brysten, and a Great Dane, Maverick. Her parents and the rest of both her and Curtis’ family still reside in Tennessee, where they are from.

6 Regional Drive, Ste C | Pinehurst, NC 28374 910.338.3381 | www.vascularinstituteofthepines.com

Photo by Lolly Nazario

CARRIE KIRBY KIRBY CONSTRUCTION AND PREMIER REAL ESTATE OF THE SANDHILLS

A Moore County native with sixteen years of residential real estate experience, Carrie Kirby is an owner of Kirby Construction and co-founder of Premier Real Estate with a local couple, the Jacksons.

• Mission: Dedicated to serving clients with superior service with integrity and honesty to help them best navigate the intricacies of each transaction

• Areas of expertise: New construction, investments, residential real estate, luxury properties

• What Sets Carrie Apart: The wealth of knowledge and industry connections that comes from working alongside her husband, Jacob Kirby, in the construction field which serves as a great advantage to her clients

• Proudest Career Moment: “When people say that they cannot wait to own or build a Kirby home!”

• Biggest Lesson Learned in Business: It takes years of being disciplined and consistent, working hard, building strong relationships, taking it day by day, and reaching those small goals to reach the BIG goal

• Advice for Young Women Starting their Career: Never compromise your values and integrity; always be yourself!

MEREDITH BOLTON & LEAH DANAK

THE MEREDITH BOLTON TEAM ACADEMY MORTGAGE CORPORATION

After starting families, Meredith Bolton (left) and Leah Danak both found themselves looking for a new career that allowed for flexible work hours, and was also impactful to the community. Meredith joined the mortgage industry two years ago and founded her own mortgage team this past winter, where she asked Leah to join her as a loan office assistant.

• Education: Meredith has a BA from Meredith College, Leah a BA from East Carolina University and a Graduate Degree from Auburn University.

• Background: Pre-families, Meredith had a career in pharmaceutical sales and Leah was a small business owner in Greenville, North Carolina.

• Mission: To make the American dream of homeownership come true for individuals and families here locally.

• Areas of Service: Mortgage lending, military relocation, VA loans, conventional loans, first time homebuyers and investors.

• What Sets Us Apart: A tailored process allowing a customized loan experience for each client and excellent service while maintaining expediency— “We offer a 10 day closing- start to finish.”

• Noteworthy: A new office right in the heart of Pinehurst, on Market Square.

• Advice for Young Women Starting their Career: “Think big! If you want a career, go get it. If you want to be an excellent mother and have a strong family, go do that too. Don’t believe that having children is of secondary importance to having a thriving career. You can do both and do both well.”

Photo by Lolly Nazario

PINELAND PROPERTY GROUP

• Mission: To guide clients seamlessly through the home buying or selling process, utilizing a vast knowledge of local real estate and years of experience in the market along with a team or transaction coordinators.

• Areas of Expertise: Luxury properties, land, commercial, military buyers and sellers and new construction.

• What Sets Us Apart: ”Our deeply rooted team, bonded by our shared sense of duty and dedication, are equipped to handle any market, and provide best-in-class real estate experience.”

• Best Thing About Being Women in Business: “It allows us to open doors for other women who want to be self-employed outside of the home while still managing work/life balance. PPG prides itself on empowering women and military spouses in our community.”

Pineland Property Group, founded by Ashley Donovan, Jessica Marsh and Kristina Webster in 2022 is Moore County’s first Veteran, Native American and all-women owned and operated real estate firm.

From left: Michelle DiPietro, Mandi Akrami, Jessica Marsh (owner), Kristina Webster (owner), Ashley Donovan (owner), Jodi Franklin, Bobbie Callahan, Tricia Hernandez, Lindsey Sievers (not pictured: Michelle Bunch)

Photo by Kaitlyn Blake

MELODY MCCLELLAND

Melody McClelland co-owns Pines Sotheby’s Realty with Keith Harris, who has had over 20 years of experience in real estate. They opened the firm in 2018. Last year they sold over $78 million in real estate.

• Background: A Southern Pines native who attended Episcopal Day School, The O’Neal School and earned a degree in Hospitality from The University of Alabama.

• What Led You to this Career: “My family has owned and operated Pine Needles Golf Club and Mid Pines Inn for over 60 years... I was ready to create my little slice of history for the next generation – my children and their children.”

• Mission: Offering a commitment to excellence in the marketing and sale of fine homes, farms and estates utilizing the highest standards of professionalism and with a dedication to serving our community.

• What Sets Pines Sotheby’s Apart: An ability to artfully present distinctive properties through a network of exceptional people, masterful marketing (regardless of price point), and the Sotheby’s International brand access.

• Areas of Expertise: Deploying impeccable design sense and a strong eye for aesthetics to transform a lived-in home to a show-ready home.

• Proudest Career Accomplishment: “My agents are what I’m most proud of. They are all skilled brokers immersed within this community, ensuring a smooth transition with exceptional results…they’re the most important aspect of our success.”

• Advice for Young Women Starting their career: To take a step back and be thankful.

• At Home: Melody’s husband Jack, is from England and owns Pines Insurance Group. They have three children: a son, Alfie (3), and daughters, Bobbi (2) and Missy (5 months).

Photo by Lolly Nazario

EVE AVERY

EVE AVERY BOUTIQUE

Everyone knew Eve Avery was destined to be a boutique owner by her eye for fashion. She moved from Wilmington to Southern Pines in 1991 and when the opportunity presented itself, she opened her boutique in 2001, and went all in.

• Mission: Offer collections of clothing meticulously chosen for women of all ages, shapes, sizes and personalities to feel comfortable and confident.

• Shopping Services: Private shopping parties, personal shopping and individualized customer service

• What Sets Eve Avery Apart: The store’s eclectic, European and distinguishable vibe.

• In the Community: Eve has been on the board of United Way for about four years, has been a sponsor of The Miss Moore County Organization for the past 20 years and is a supporter of The Humane Society, BackPack Pals, Companion Animal Clinic Foundation, Kiwanis and Hospice.

• Best Thing about Being a Woman in Business: “...continually seeing the impact my business has brought to so many over the years. I’ve dressed so many women going through different stages of their lives. Could be a woman needing an outfit for her son’s wedding, to change their look because their life has changed, or just someone whose body has changed and they just need some guidance.”

131 NE Broad Street

Southern Pines, NC 28387

910.693.1277

@eve_avery_boutique

JESSICA YOCKEY DESIGN

MARKET

Jessica Yockey is driven by the thrill of the hunt as an antiques dealer. She’s been the manager of Design Market in Aberdeen for seven years and has her own 1,200 sqft booth in the store.

• Background: Third generation purveyor of antiques and vintage; owned Gypsy Charm Antiques.

• Design Market: Moore County’s largest consignment warehouse featuring over 40,000 sqft of new and consigned items, owned by Kathryn King since 2012.

• Areas of Expertise: Jessica effectively brings inspiration and vision to Design Market shoppers, providing valuable input on overall planning of space, color conception and accessorizing.

• What Sets Jessica Apart: An aesthetically blended design style cultivated through multicultural travel

• Biggest Lesson Learned in Business: Don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself.

• Advice for Young Women Starting their Career: Intern in any aspect of your desired career field.

• At Home: “I like traveling the county with my dog, Superbad, and finding treasures along the way!”

MOLLY SCHRADER & MEGAN WEITZEL

RETRO SALON & WINE BAR

Molly Schrader and Megan Weitzel opened Retro in 2013. From a sister-like bond came a business where these fun-loving, party girls can be free spirits. Ten years later, they’re raising a glass to their success.

• What Led you to This Career: A love of beauty, friendship and champagne.

• Services: 3 hairstylists, 3 makeup artists (including Megan & Molly), bridal services, brow services and spray tans.

• What Sets Retro Apart: “We take beauty seriously, but not ourselves…and we have a bar!”

• On the Horizon: New renovations including an updated bar area, and cocktails coming soon along with extended bar hours.

• Advice for Women Starting their Career: Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. Go for the things you want the most and never depend on a man.

• Biggest Lesson Learned in Business: Don’t drink all your profits. Always remember to laugh.

155 East Pennsylvania Ave. Southern Pines, NC 28387

(910) 725-0588

www.retrostudiobar.com

Photo by Tim Sayer

Mandy Bradshaw

Owner A full service Salon & Wine Bar

Cut & Color • Extensions

Facial Services • Brows

Waxing

Merlot Beauty & Wine Bar

111Central Park Ave Unit K Pinehurst, NC 28374 910.420.1182

Lolly Nazario

Newborn and Family Photographer

“Rooted in a desire to have fun and fuel my creative passion to help you preserve and relive your favorite family memories. Photography sessions for your heart and your soul.”

Aslynn Millen

Little Pines Academy & Duskin & Stephens Foundation

Little Pines Academy is a preschool for ages 2-5 that focuses on developing the whole child— academically, socially, and creatively.

The Duskin and Stephens Foundation supports members of the US Special Operations Community through youth scholarships and monetary aid during times of financial and emotional need.

Aslynn.millen@littlepinesacademy.com aslynn@duskinandstephens.org

Paula Brown

Owner

Locally owned and operated since 2012

Offering a wonderful assortment of fashionable, quality brands, including Joseph Ribkoff, Tribal, Habitat, Krazy Larry, Ali Miles, and many, many more!

@LollysLensPhotography LollysLens.com

163 Beverly Lane Southern Pines, NC 28387 next to Fresh Market 910.693.2111

Photo by Courtney Grant Photography

arts & entertainment

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, costs, status and location before planning or attending any events.

TECH HELP SESSIONS. SPPL offers one-on-one Technology Help Sessions. A library staff member will sit with you to assist with accessing eBooks, learning how to use a new device, navigating a computer, and to answer any other basic technology questions. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. To make an appointment come into the library or visit www.sppl.net.

PHOTO HISTORY. 8:30 a.m. - 5 p.m. The historical association will host a new exhibit “Southern Pines Then and Now” featuring photographs taken 100 years ago and what the same area looks like today. Free admission. Water Department, 180 S.W. Broad St., Southern Pines.

CABIN TOURS. 2 - 4 p.m. The Moore County Historical Association’s Bryant House and McLendon Cabin are open for tours and visits. Bryant House, 3361 Mt. Carmel Road, Carthage. Info: (910) 692-2051 or www.moorehistory.com.

JUNE EVENTS

Thursday, June 1

SOUL FLOW. 6:30 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Join a gentle flow guaranteed to soothe the mind, body and soul. A mixture of yin and restorative yoga. Great for all levels. Cost is $12 for residents and $17 for non-residents. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

PRIDE FILM SERIES. 7 p.m. Kinky Boots. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

Friday, June 2

LUNCH BUNCH. 11:30 a.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to dine on different cuisines each month as you visit different restaurants in the area. Carpool with friends or meet at the restaurant. Dining locations will be chosen the week before. Info: (910) 692-7376.

FIRST FIRDAY. 5 p.m. Gabe Lee, equal parts songwriter and storyteller, building a bridge between country, rock and folk. Sunrise Square, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

ART RECEPTION. 5 - 7 p.m. The June exhibit will feature the work of Artists League members and will

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Sunday, June 4

FESTIVAL CONCERT. 2 p.m. The Young Musician’s Festival Concert provides an opportunity for 30 - 40 local young musicians to perform for credentialed adjudicators and receive cash prizes at varying levels of performance, from the third through 12th grade. Free admission, registration required. Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org

Writing Group

be judged by a professional art authority. The exhibit will be on display through June 30. Artists League of the Sandhills, 129 Exchange St., Aberdeen. Info: www.artistleague.org.

Saturday, June 3

KID’S SATURDAY. 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Families are invited to a monthly themed craft event to socialize and get creative. Geared toward ages 3 - 10. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-3642.

DANCE PERFORMANCE. 10:30 - 11:30 a.m. Gary Taylor Dance is having a spring student concert performance of Romancing the Dance, Junior. Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com. Then, at 7:30 p.m. (and again at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 4) Gary Taylor Dance will present Romancing the Dance. All seats are reserved.

MET OPERA. 1 p.m. Die Zauberflote. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

BOOK EVENT. 2 - 6 p.m. David Sedaris is coming to talk about his paperback tour of Happy-Go-Lucky The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

FIRST FIRDAY. 5 p.m. Gabe Lee, equal parts songwriter and storyteller, building a bridge between country, rock and folk. Sunrise Square, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

DANCING SOCIAL. 7 - 11 p.m. Come out for dancing and brownies as Moore Area Shagny Navey. Admission is $10 for those 21 and over. Down Memory Lane, 161 Dawkins St., Aberdeen. Info: (910) 215-4054.

ANNUAL MEETING. 2 p.m. Join the Moore County Historical Association at its annual meeting and “Strawberry Short Cake Social” at one of the oldest graveyards in Moore County. The event will feature a special presentation of the graveyard and reports by the association’s co-presidents. Bring your own lawn chair. Old Scotch Graveyard, 113 Scotch Burying Road, Carthage. Info: (910) 692-2051 or www.moorehistory.com.

WRITING GROUP. 3 p.m. Calling writers and illustrators: Are you interested in creating fiction, nonfiction, poetry or comics? Come to the “Sunday Afternoon Writing Group.” Connect with other writers and artists, chat about your craft, and get feedback about your work. All levels welcome.

Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: lholden@sppl.net.

MOVIE SCREENING. 7 - 10 p.m. See the anniversary screening of The Room. Cameo Art House Theatre, 225 Hay St., Fayetteville. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Monday, June 5

THEATER AUDITIONS. 5 p.m. Auditions will be held for the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

Tuesday, June 6

BRAIN FITNESS. 10 - 11 a.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to a “Brain Fitness Class.” Eve Gaskell will be the instructor. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

EXHIBITION ON SCREEN. 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Tokyo Stories. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

Wednesday, June 7

CRAFT DAYS. Children and their families can come by the library for “Drop in Craft Days” to work on crafts at their own pace. Southern Pines

Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net

Thursday, June 8

BOOK DISCUSSION. 10 a.m. Sandhills Christian Women’s Connection invites you to join a discussion on the book, When Only Faith Remains by Amy C. O’Reilly. The purpose of the book club is to promote fellowship among ladies who enjoy books that provide an uplifting message. Deadline to RSVP is June 5. RSVP to reginapaquette49@gmail.com.

PRIDE FILM SERIES. 7 p.m. Beautiful Thing. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

Friday, June 9

SUMMER CARNIVAL. 6:30 p.m. Kids ages 12 and under can grab their parents and come out for a fun time in the park. Enjoy games, food and fun all with a carnival vibe. After the carnival, stay for the outdoor “Movie in the Pines” feature Luca. Free of charge. Downtown Park, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PINES. 7:30 - 10 p.m. Presented by the Uprising Theatre Company, “Shakespeare in the Pines” will explore Romeo and

Juliet in a fresh perspective. General admission is free. There will be additional performances June 10-11 and June 16-18. Tufts Memorial Park, 1 Village Green Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.vopnc.org or www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Saturday, June 10

COMMUNITY YARD SALE. 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. Enjoy shopping 20-40 outdoor booths offering everything from handmade crafts, modern tools and electronics, vintage and antique collectibles and even an assortment of everyday household items or clothes. A food truck will be on site. The Bee’s Knees, 125 N.C. Hwy. 73, West End. Info: (910) 420-8970.

KICKOFF PARTY. 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Register for “Summer fREADom” at its kickoff party and adopt your reading buddy on the lawn at Sunrise Square. Get a free T-shirt and book buddy to keep. Then read what you want, when you want, all summer long. Explore new concepts and connect with your community at special programs throughout June and July. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

SUMMER FESTIVAL. 12 - 6 p.m. The town of Vass is hosting its annual summer festival. There will be a car show, vendors, food trucks and kid’s zone. Sandy Ramey Keith Park, 3600 U.S. Highway 1, Vass. Info: www.townofvassnc.gov.

HORSE EVENT. SPEA War Horse Event Series. The event continues through June 11. Carolina Horse Park, 2814 Montrose Road, Raeford. Info: www.carolinahorsepark.com.

OUTDOOR CONCERT  6 p.m. Jus Tru Blac performs. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

Sunday, June 11

BOOK EVENT. 3 - 4 p.m. Ed and Ryan Mitchell will be celebrating their new cookbook, Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque. The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Monday, June 12

PHOTO CLUB. 7 p.m. The Sandhills Photography Club monthly meeting will be a competition. The topic is “Leading Lines.” Guests are welcome. Sandhills Horticultural Gardens Visitors Center, 3245 Airport Road, Southern Pines. Info: www.sandhillsphotoclub.org.

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Horse Event

Tuesday, June 13

AARP TALK. 12 - 12:30 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to join AARP for a fraud talk. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

TEEN WRITING CLUB. 4 p.m. Are you interested in creative writing and storytelling, connecting with other writers, and getting feedback on your work? Join us for the “Teen Creative Writing Club.” Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.sppl.net or email: kbroughey@sppl.net.

Wednesday, June 14

BOOK EVENT. 5 - 6 p.m. David Wright Falade will speak about his book, Black Cloud Rising. The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Thursday, June 15

READ BETWEEN THE PINES. 5 p.m. SPPL’s book club for adults meets to discuss this month’s book. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. To join email: mhoward@sppl.net.

LECTURE. 5:30 p.m. This arts and humanities lecture will explore the intersection of art and medicine and will feature John Lee, an artist in residence who taught himself to paint with his non-dominant hand following a stroke, as well as several medical professionals. Free admission, registration required. Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org

CIVIL WAR ROUND TABLE. 6:30 p.m. The guest speaker will be historian and author,

Gordon Rhea, speaking about the Battle of Cold Harbor in 1864. Meeting starts at 7 p.m. Open to the public. Civic Club, corner of Pennsylvania Ave. and Ashe St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 246-0452 or mafarina@aol.com.

PRIDE FILM SERIES. 7 p.m. Disclosure. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

Friday, June 16

HORSE EVENT. Sedgefield at the Park Early Summer NCHJA “C” H/J Show. Continues through June 18. Carolina Horse Park, 2814 Montrose Road, Raeford. Info: www.carolinahorsepark.com.

MUSIC TRIBUTE. 6 - 9 p.m. The Return, a Beatles tribute band, performs. Cooper Ford, 5292 US-15, Carthage. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Saturday, June 17

STORYTELLING. 2 p.m. Join Dan Sellers and Jeffrey Cochran of Carolina Haints for an afternoon of folklore and storytelling. Hear the ghost stories, legends, and unexplained mysteries that make North Carolina spooky. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

CALENDAR

DANCING. 6 p.m. Carolina Pines Dance Club invites you to a fun evening of swing, line, ballroom, shag and Latin dancing. Doors open at 6 p.m. Dance lessons at 6:30 p.m. Dancing until 9:30 p.m. Beginners and experienced dancers, couples and singles all welcome. Cost is $15 per person, cash at the door. National Athletic Village, 201 Air Tool Dr., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 331-9965.

Sunday, June 18

STEAM. 2:30 p.m. Elementary-aged children and their caregivers are invited to learn about topics in science, technology, engineering, art and math and to participate in STEAM projects and activities. The theme this month is parachutes. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

Monday, June 19

BOOK EVENT. 6 - 7:30 p.m. Elin Hilderbrand will be signing copies of her book, The Five-Star Weekend. The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Tuesday, June 20

BRAIN FITNESS. 10 - 11 a.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to a “Brain Fitness Class.” Eve Gaskell will be the instructor. Free of charge. Douglass

Homestyles

Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BINGO. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to play 10 games of bingo. Cost is $4 for residents and $6 for non-residents. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BOOK CLUB. 2 p.m. The James Boyd Book Club meets for this month’s book. Free admission, registration required. Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org

Grads and Dads

TEEN BOARD GAME NIGHT. 4 p.m. BYOG (Bring Your Own Game) or use one of ours. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.sppl.net or email: kbroughey@sppl.net.

Wednesday, June 21

WHITEHALL BOOK CLUB. 2 p.m. SPPL’s book club for adults meets to discuss this month’s book. The book club is open to the public. Whitehall Property, 490 Pee Dee Road, Southern Pines. Info: mmiller@sppl.net.

WRITER IN RESIDENCE. 5:30 - 7 p.m. Join us as writer-in-residence Dudley Marchi, professor of humanities at North Carolina State University, explores the significant French heritage in North Carolina. Free admission, registration required. Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org.

BOOK EVENT. 6 - 7 p.m. Annabel Monaghan will be speaking about her book, Same Time Next Summe r. The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Thursday, June 22

PRIDE FILM SERIES. 7 p.m. But I’m A Cheerleader. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

with other writers, and getting feedback on your work? Join us for the “Teen Creative Writing Club.” Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.sppl.net or email: kbroughey@sppl.net.

MUSICIANS’ JAM SESSION. 6 - 9 p.m. Bring your own instrument and beverage or just come and enjoy the music. Attendees must have the COVID vaccination. Free admission, registration required. Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org.

Wednesday, June 28

yoga. Great for all levels. Cost is $12 for residents and $17 for non-residents. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Monday, July 3

CONCERT AND FIREWORKS. 6 - 10 p.m. Join us for a free concert and fireworks celebration. Children’s activities will include bounce houses and dancing with The Parks Brothers. A large selection of food and beverages will be available for purchase, and picnic baskets are also allowed. Bring lawn chairs and blankets. Gates open at 4 p.m. for parking and fireworks will begin at 9:15 p.m. Pinehurst Harness Track, 200 Beulah Hill Road S., Pinehurst. Info: www.vopnc.org.

Tuesday, July 4

INDEPENDENCE PARADE. 9:45 a.m. - 12 p.m. Honor the USA at the annual Independence Day Parade. Come early and enjoy or participate in the annual pet parade. The Sandhills Farmers Market will open following the festivities. Tufts Memorial Park, 1 Village Green Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.vopnc.org.

Friday, July 14

BLUES FESTIVAL. 5 p.m. “The Blues Crawl” has been re-imagined into a two-day festival hosted by the Sunrise Theater. There will be performances on both the indoor and outdoor stage. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3611 or www.ticketmesandhills.com.

WEEKLY EVENTS

Mondays

WORKSPACES. 7 a.m. - 3p.m. The Given Tufts Bookshop has a new pop-in co-workspace open on Mondays and Thursdays in the upstairs conference room. Bookshop floor and private meeting room by reservation only. Info: www.giventuftsfoundation.com.

Friday, June 23

COMEDY SHOW. 8 - 11 p.m. The Cameo Art House Theatre hosts “The Locals Comedy” a veteran-owned, small business founded by comedians, for comedians. Cameo Art House Theatre, 225 Hay St., Fayetteville. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

LIVE THEATER. 7 p.m. Ancient History. There will be additional performances on June 24 and 26 at 3 p.m. In the loft of the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3611 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

Saturday, June 24

HORSE EVENT. Dressage at the Park I & II. Continues through June 25. Carolina Horse Park, 2814 Montrose Road, Raeford. Info: www.carolinahorsepark.com.

Tuesday, June 27

TEEN WRITING CLUB. 4 p.m. Are you interested in creative writing and storytelling, connecting

HORSE EVENT. NCHJA Annual Horse Show. Continues through July 2. Carolina Horse Park, 2814 Montrose Road, Raeford. Info: www.carolinahorsepark.com.

COCKTAILS AND ENTERTAINMENT. 7 p.m.

Join Mike Block & Sandeep Das, a dynamic, crossgenre duo, to kick off a new series featuring cocktails and entertainment in a vintage setting. Cost is $30 for members and $35 for non-members. Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org

Thursday, June 29

DOUGLASS CENTER BOOK CLUB. 10:30 a.m. Multiple copies of the selected book are available for checkout at the library. The Douglass Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: mmiller@sppl.net.

SOUL FLOW. 6:30 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Join a gentle flow guaranteed to soothe the mind, body and soul. A mixture of yin and restorative

WORKOUTS. 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to get their workout on. Open Monday through Friday. Cost for six months: $15/ resident; $30/non-resident. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

Comedy Show

Sing for Fun

Gallery • Studios • Classes

Art to Appreciate Judged Exhibit & Sale

Opening Reception: Friday, June 2, 5:00-7:00

This exhibit includes the works of all members of the Artists League of the Sandhills and is the only art show at the League that is judged by a professional art authority. Judging the exhibit this year is artist Brenda Behr. Winners for best in each category, as well as best overall, will be chosen and ribbons hung by each selected painting prior to the opening reception. The show will hang through Friday, June 30.

Gallery Hours: Monday - Saturday 12-3pm

CLASSES: Introduction to Art Series for Kids – Ashleigh Corsino - Ages 8-12

*Exploring values and shapes; sketching with charcoal. July 6, 2:00-4:00 $28

*Learn about color by creating a color wheel using watercolor, then create a simple still life. July 13, 2:00-4:00 $28

*Create a collage and learn about abstraction and shapes - July 20, 2:00-4:00 $28

*Learn about a famous artist and create an artwork using acrylic paint on canvas inspired by the artist. July 27, 2:00-4:00 $28

OIL AND ACRYLIC: Introduction to Oils for Beginners - Linda Bruening - Monday and Tuesday, July 31, August 1, 9:30-3:30 $135

Mixing Luscious Colors in Oil - Courtney Herndon - Saturday, August 5, 10:00-3:30 $54

Next Step-Oil Painting - Linda Bruening - Monday & Tuesday, August 7, 8, 9:30-3:30 $120

Intro to Plein Air Painting - Harry Neely – Monday-Wednesday, August 14, 15, 16, 10:00-1:00 $108

Using Cold Wax Medium with Oils to Paint Abstracts and Abstracted Landscapes - Jude WinkleySaturday, August 26, 9:30-3:30 $81

Beginner’s Acrylic Pouring - Meredith Markfield - Saturday, September 23, 10:00-1:00 $46

Impressionist Landscape Land & Sea - Courtney Herndon - Monday & Tuesday, October 2, 3, 10:00-3:30 $108

WATERCOLOR: Watercolor Basics – Jean Smyth - Monday & Tuesday, July 10, 11, 10:00-3:00 $96

Exploring Gouache - Christine Stackhouse - Monday, October 16, 12:30-3:30 $46

DRAWING: Drawing Basics I - Laureen Kirk - Thursday and Friday, September 21, 22, 10:00-3:00 $101

OTHER MEDIUMS: Basic Cake Decorating - Pam Griner - Wednesday July 12, 12:30-3:30 $61

Next Step Cake Decorating/Flowers - Pam Griner - Thursday, August 10, 12:30-2:30 $39

Beginning Alcohol Ink - Pam Griner - Wednesday, August 23, 11:30-2:30 $46

Intermediate Alcohol Ink - Pam Griner - Wednesday, September 6, 11:30-2:30 $46

Mix It Up! - Carol Gradwohl, Monday & Tuesday, September 18, 19, 10:30-3:00 $104

Intro to Encaustic Wax - Pam Griner - Wednesday, September 20, 1:00-3:00 $40

Silk Painting Introduction - Kathy Leuck - Tuesday & Wednesday, September 26, 27, 9:30-12:30 $103/$110/$117

Mixed Media Mania - Carol Gradwohl - Wednesday & Thursday, October 4, 5, 9:30-12:30 $92

Advanced Alcohol Ink - Pam Griner - Wednesday, October 18, 11:30-2:30 $46

Beginning Scratchboard - Emma Wilson - Thursday, October 19, 10:00-2:00 $53

SING FOR FUN. 9 - 10 a.m. Adults 55 and older can sing for fun while reaping the physical and mental benefits of a choir experience. Learn various songs from all genres. Cost per month is $36 for residents and $52 for nonresidents. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CHAIR YOGA. 9 - 10 a.m. For adults 55 and older. Help offset body aches encountered with desk work. This is an accessible yoga class for bodies not able to easily get up from and down to the floor. Do standing or sitting in a chair. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

STRENGTH AND BALANCE WORKOUT.

11 - 11:45 a.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to enjoy a brisk workout that focuses on balance and strength. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

RESTORATIVE YOGA. 12 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Practice gentle movements that may help alleviate pain and improve circulation and wellbeing. Bring your own mat. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

TAI CHI. 1 p.m. Come learn tai chi. There is no age limit and the classes are open to the public. Aberdeen Parks and Recreation Station, 301 Lake Park Crossing, Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-7275.

GAME ON. 1 p.m. For adults 55 and older. You and your friends are invited to come out and play various games such as corn hole, badminton, table tennis, shuffleboard, trivia games, and more. Each week enjoy a different activity to keep you moving and thinking. Compete with friends and make new ones all for free. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BRIDGE. 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Enjoy games of bridge with friends. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

SOUTHERN SOUL LINE DANCING. 6 p.m. No experience necessary, put on your comfy shoes and groove to some funky tunes with funk master Terry Julius. For adults 18 and older. Cost is $6 for Southern Pines residents and $9 for non-residents. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

MUSIC BINGO. 6 p.m. Music bingo with DJ Mike. Have a blast and try to identify the tune before the next song starts. Southern Pines Brewing Company, 565 Air Tool Dr., Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpinesbrewing.com.

Tuesdays

PLAYFUL LEARNING. 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. Come for a drop-in, open playtime for ages 0-3 years to interact with other children and enjoy educational play. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-3642.

HATHA YOGA. 10 - 11 a.m. For adults 55 and older. Increase your flexibility, balance, stability, and muscle tone while learning the basic alignment and breathing principles of yoga. You may gain strength, improve circulation and reduce chronic pain as we practice gentle yoga postures and mindfulness. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BABY RHYMES. 10:30 a.m. “Baby Rhymes” is specially designed for the youngest learners (birth-2) and their caregivers. Repetition and comforting movements make this story time perfect for early development and brain growth. There will be a duplicate session at 11 a.m. Dates this month are June 6, 13, 20 and 27. An active library card is required. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

HEALING YOGA. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Adults 55 and older can try an entry-level class, for a mind and body workout that fuses dance moves with gentle aerobics, tai chi, and yoga. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

GAME DAY. 12 p.m. Enjoy bid whist and other cool games all in the company of great friends. For adults 55 and older. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

TEEN TUESDAYS. 4 - 5 p.m. Teens in middle and high school can join us every week to connect with other teens in a fun and safe space. Each week is a different topic or activity. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.sppl.net.

TRIVIA. 7 p.m. Trivia with DJ Mike. Current events and pop-culture. Winner gets a brewery gift card. Southern Pines Brewing Company, 205 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpinesbrewing.com.

TABLE TENNIS. 7 - 9 p.m. Enjoy playing this exciting game every Tuesday. Cost for six months is $15 for residents of Southern Pines and $30 for non-residents. For adults 55 and older. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

Wednesdays

FARM TO TABLE. Join Sandhills Farm to Table Co-op by ordering a subscription of local produce to support our farmers. Info: (910) 722-1623 or www.sandhillsfarm2table.com.

CHAIR YOGA. 10 - 11 a.m. For adults 55 and older. Help offset body aches encountered with desk work. This is an accessible yoga class for bodies not able to easily get up from and down to the floor. Do standing or sitting in a chair. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

LEARN AND PLAY. 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Come in for an open play date with your toddler or preschooler where there will be developmental toys and puzzles as well as early literacy tips on display

Sandhills Farmers Market

for parents and caregivers to incorporate into their daily activities. Dates this month are June 7, 14, 21 and 28. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

LINE DANCING. 12 - 1 p.m. Looking for new ways to get your daily exercise in and care for yourself? Try line dancing. For adults 55 and older. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

SLOW AND STRETCHY. 12 - 1 p.m. Adults 55 and older can flow through yoga poses slowly and intentionally, stretching from head to toe. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CHAIR VOLLEYBALL. 1 - 2 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Get fit while having fun. Free to participate. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BRIDGE. 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Enjoy games of bridge with friends. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

DANCE. 2 - 2:30 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Instructor Maria Amaya will introduce you to dance fitness in a class designed for anyone who wants to gently and gradually increase cardio function, mobility, and balance while having fun at the same time. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

LINE DANCING. 2 p.m. The town of Vass will host line dancing for seniors every other Wednesday beginning June 7. Cost is $5 per session. Vass Town Hall, 140 S. Alma St., Vass. Info: www.townofvassnc.gov.

SANDHILLS FARMERS MARKET. 3 - 6 p.m. The Sandhills Farmers Market features some of the many wonderful farms, nurseries, bakeries, meat and egg providers, cheesemakers and specialty food producers our area has to offer. Markets run through October 1. Tufts Memorial Park, 1 Village Green Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.vopnc.org.

LIBRARY PROGRAM. 3:30 p.m. At The Library After School (ATLAS) is an after-school program for kindergarten through second graders who en-

Sit Down and CHILL for The Summer

CALENDAR

joy activities, crafts, stories, and learning. Dates this month will be June 14, 21 and 28. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

TAI CHI. 6:30 p.m. Come learn tai chi. There is no age limit and the classes are open to the public. Cost is $10 per class. Seven Lakes West Community Center, 556 Longleaf Dr., Seven Lakes. Info: (910) 400-5646.

YOGA. 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. Grab your yoga mat and head to Hatchet for a yoga session with Brady. Session cost is $10 and includes a pint of our DILLIGAF lager. Hatchet Brewing Company, 490 S.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.hatchetbrewing.com.

Thursdays

WORKSPACES. 7 a.m. - 3p.m. The Given Tufts Bookshop has a new pop-in co-workspace open on Mondays and Thursdays in the upstairs conference room. Bookshop floor and private meeting room by reservation only. Info: www.giventuftsfoundation.com.

MOORE COUNTY FARMERS MARKET. 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. The year-round market features “producer only” vendors within a 50-mile radius providing fresh, local and seasonal produce, fruits, pasture meats, eggs, potting plants, cut flowers and local honey. Crafts, baked goods, jams and jellies are also available. Market is located at the Armory Sports Complex, 604 W. Morganton Road, Southern Pines.

GIVEN STORY TIME. 10 a.m. Bring your preschooler to enjoy stories, songs and activities. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-3642.

BALANCE AND FLEXIBILITY. 10 - 11 a.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to enjoy a class that will help reduce the risk of taking a tumble and increase your ability to recover. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CROCHET CLUB. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to come with friends to create fun designs and memories. Supplies

are already there. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

MUSIC AND MOTION. 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Does your toddler like to move and groove? Join outdoor “Music and Motion” to get those wiggles out and work on gross and fine motor skills. For ages 2-5. Dates this month are June 8, 15, 22 and 29. An active library card is required. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

ADAPTIVE YOGA. 12 - 1 p.m. Adults 55 and older can enjoy yoga that meets you where you are. We’ll be creating a sense of balance and ease by slowly increasing your range of motion and mobility while maintaining your natural abilities. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CHESS AND MAHJONG. 1 p.m. For adults 55 and older. All levels welcome. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

MEDITATION. 1 - 2 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to connect with nature and with yourself in this 30-minute meditation. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CABIN TOURS. 1 - 4 p.m. The Moore County Historical Association’s Shaw House grounds, cabins and gift shop are open for tours and visits. The restored tobacco barn features the history of children’s roles in the industry. Docents are ready to host you and the cabins are open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Shaw House, 110 W. Morganton Road, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-2051 or www.moorehistory.com.

TRIVIA. 6 p.m. Trivia with Hallie. Current events and pop culture. Winner gets a brewery gift card. Southern Pines Brewing Company, 565 Air Tool Dr., Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpinesbrewing.com.

ORCHESTRA REHEARSALS. 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. The Moore Philharmonic Orchestra has weekly rehearsals. Membership is open to youth and adult community members and there is no fee to join. Wellard Hall at Sandhills Community College, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.mporchestra.com or email moorephilharmonicorchestra@gmail.com.

TRIVIA NIGHT. 7 - 9 p.m. Come enjoy a beer and some trivia. Hatchet Brewing Company, 490 S.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.hatchetbrewing.com.

FARM TO TABLE. Join Sandhills Farm to Table Co-op by ordering a subscription of local produce to support our local farmers. Info: (910) 722-1623 or www.sandhillsfarm2table.com.

Fridays

AEROBIC DANCE. 9 - 10 a.m. For adults 55

and older. Enjoy this low-to-moderate impact class with energizing music for an overall cardio and strength workout. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

TAP CLASS. 10 - 11:30 a.m. For adults 55 and older. All levels welcome. Cost per class: $15/ resident; $30/non-resident. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

QIGONG. 1 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Classes will consist of chair and standing movements that can help soothe achy feet, tight hips and lower back pain and ease restriction in mobility. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BRIDGE. 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Enjoy games of bridge with friends. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

LINE DANCING. 3 - 4 p.m. For adults 55 and older. If you’re interested in learning dance moves and building confidence on the dance floor, this class is for you. Leave your inhibitions at the door and join in. Cost is: $36 for residents and $52 for non-residents per month. Cost is for a monthly membership. Douglass Community

CALENDAR

Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

Saturdays

MOORE COUNTY FARMERS MARKET. 8 a.m. - 12 p.m. The market features “producer only” vendors within a 50-mile radius providing fresh, local and seasonal produce, fruits, pasture meats, eggs, potting plants, cut flowers and local honey. Crafts, baked goods, jams and jellies are also available. Downtown Southern Pines, 156

PineNeedler Answers

from page 119

JUNE EVENTS

June 3, 4 Romancing the Dance

BPAC’s Owens Auditorium

June 4 “The Room” 20th Anniversary Screening

CAMEO Art House Theatre

June 9-11, Romeo & Juliet 16-18 The Village Green at Tufts Memorial Park

June 11 Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque

The Country Bookshop

June 16 The Return (The Beatles Tribute)

Cooper Ford

You can find a comprehensive list of regularly updated events from Sandhills Trolley Company and Cameo Art House Theatre on TicketMeSandhills.com

S.E. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.moorecountyfarmersmarket.com.

SANDHILLS FARMERS MARKET. 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. The Sandhills Farmers Market features some of the many wonderful farms, nurseries, bakeries, meat and egg providers, cheesemakers and specialty food producers our area has to offer. Markets run through October 1. Tufts Memorial Park, 1 Village Green Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.vopnc.org. PS

brought to you by

SandhillSeen

Clenny Creek Heritage Day

Bryant House & McLendon Cabin

Saturday, April 15, 2023

Photographs by Diane McKay

Debbie Wick, Roberta Tozier

Paula Caddell, Donna Pickett

The MacKrell Family

Jesse Wimberley, Kaye Davis

Nia & Carley Sutton, Cindy Novosel

Terry Caruso, Cindy Kendrick

Town Crier Tom Imars

The Ingram Family

Trish & David Landolt

Trent Carter, Hugh Shepard

Markus Novosel, Hugh Shepard, Pete Kauffman, Chris Laton

The McIntire Family

SandhillSeen

Sandhills Dog Fair

Pinehurst Village Arboretum

Saturday, April 15, 2023

Photographs by Diane McKay

Mobile Sandhills Spay-Neuter Angie Wilkerson, Kari Privette, Dr. Cindy Eaton, Anjali Bracewell, Debra Sampson Staff of Moore County Sheriff's Office Animal Services

Stephanie Romero, Denise & Maggie Mikula, Lucy

Moore Humane Society Volunteers and pups

Michael, Heather & Payton Carnall, Cobin

Tony & Kristy Glessner, Jaeger

Paws of the Pines Rescue Dog Walkers

Dr. Taras Raggio and Joey

Ali & Quinn

The Galloway Family

Christie Kalles, Jill Lumgair, Harley Gafford, Copper and Coaster

Bruce & Bryce Fisher, Pinehurst Fire Sparky, Vass Spay-Neuter Drewsky

FlannelWeatherBand Tim Fogarty, Jordan Cranford & Amanda Napoli-Cranford

June PineNeedler Golf Slang

8. Obi, e.g.

9. Following a trajectory

10. Hard to read putt

High Blink-and-you'll-missthem roles

17. Bustles ( hyph)

21. Earthen water jars

23. Bristles

24. Eight on a hole 26. Bread maker 27. Blurred 28. Bicycle pair 29. Pinnacle 30. A putt off the green 31. Bewitch

Puzzle answers on page 113

Mart Dickerson lives in Southern Pines and welcomes suggestions from her fellow puzzle masters. She can be reached at martaroonie@ gmail.com.

Sudoku:

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

Coast

Sanctified

site

53. Sitter’s nightmare

54. Abominable Snowman

55. “-zoic” things

56. Boy

57. “ calls?”

59. ___ v. Wade

60. “To is human . . .”

Home, Sweet Millennial Home

A baby boomer navigates Trader Joe’s

By Tom A llen

Retirement affords me

the opportunity to sleep late, cross a few items off my bucket list, and the most joyful gift, “Tuesdays with Ellis,” babysitting my 11-month old grandson while his parents work. My wife isn’t so lucky. While she’s working, I make the morning drive to Raleigh, pick up my little buddy from a mother’s-morning-out program, then listen to Cool Jazz Radio, courtesy of Pandora, on the trip back to his house. After some play time, Ellis settles in with a bottle, a nap, then a book and more play time before Mom gets home.

As a baby boomer hanging out in the home of millennials, I’ve had my trifocalized eyes opened, and my digitally challenged brain stretched. Sound machines, monitors controlled from smartphones, swaddles and sleep sacks weren’t part of our parenting routine 25 years ago. Squeeze-package baby food may have been around, but jars of Gerber sweet potatoes or peas filled our pantry. Funky organic combos like carrots and kale or apples and mango weren’t on our kids’ menus. I was in my 50s before I ever ate hummus or an avocado, some of Ellis’ first foods.

While my grandson naps, I’m welcome to grab a quick bite from his parents’ pantry or fridge. My first Tuesday found me searching for something a little more appealing than Monday evening’s quinoa and roasted veggies. I discovered a box of Honey Nut Cheerio-like cereal. Alas, oat milk was my only option. Can’t a guy get a bowl of Cap’n Crunch and some 2 percent? And I wonder, can you douse a bowl of Lucky Charms with coconut water? I did find some slices of organic oven-roasted turkey breast. Ah, a turkey sandwich on sprouted wheat 7-grain bread. With mayo? Yes. An opened jar of Duke’s. What a good daughter we raised. Later, my son-in-law offered me a Hu Almond Butter + Puffed Quinoa Dark Chocolate bar. Not bad for an energy bar stamped Vegan/Primal. Primal? Isn’t that a scream?

Like lots of millennials, our daughter is a fan of Trader Joe’s,

or TJ’s for the hip and enlightened among us. Ellis’ parents introduced me to TJ’s edamame (pretty tasty) olive tapenade with Kalamata and Chalikidiki olives (no thanks), mango nonfat Greek yogurt (I’m hooked), and magical chocolate croissants — magical because you take them out of the freezer and place on a baking sheet before bedtime, and the next morning they’ve tripled in size, ready to bake. Move over, Lay’s Potato Chips. You can’t eat just one. Millennials do everything on their phones — banking, shopping, even telling their Pura Automated Home Fragrance Device when to let the lavender scent loose. And, as I learned last summer, adjusting the thermostat is as close as your smartphone.

But generations learn from each other. My kids may not be interested in examining my 50 United States quarter collection or hearing stories about what it’s like to “prime” tobacco, but they do ask questions, to which we sometimes have answers. “Ah, no, the plant we gave you at Christmas is an amaryllis, not a camellia. The camellia is that shrub you have in your backyard, with the blooms you thought were roses.” And sometimes, we respond to questions with a question — “What, you haven’t changed your air filters in a year?”

A plethora of newspaper and magazine articles will tell you millennials don’t want your stuff. It’s true. Granny’s cobalt blue fruit dish and matching candlesticks or Mom’s silver-plated serving tray? Donate to a thrift shop that sells stuff to help others. Minimalists though they be, you might hear them ask for Grandma’s tiny blue ginger jar or her potato masher that looks like it might be (and is) handy for mashing an avocado to spread on toasted, sprouted wheat 7-grain bread. Questions like, “Can I have one of Papa’s old shirts? They still smell like his aftershave,” or, “What are those yellow flowers that bloom around my neighbor’s mailbox? Can you tell me how I can grow some?” are welcome inquiries both sentimental and sweet.

For now, I’ll continue my weekly hangouts with Ellis. Quinoa and roasted veggies are starting to taste pretty good. Oat milk matched with my homemade granola ain’t bad. But grandparenting, ah, that’s still my cup of organic, de-caffeinated, rooibos herbal tea. PS

Tom Allen is a retired minister. He lives in Whispering Pines.