November 2012 PineStraw by PineStraw Magazine

November 2012

Volume 7, No. 11

DEPARTMENTS

7 11 17 19 21 24 29 31 35 37 39 45 47 51 98 113 127 128

Sweet Tea Jim Dodson

PinePitch PinePoll Cos and Effect Cos Barnes The Omnivorous Reader Stephen E. Smith Bookshelf Hitting Home Dale Nixon The Kitchen Garden Jan Leitschuh Vine Wisdom Robyn James Out of the Blue Deborah Salomon Life of Jane Jane Borden Birdwatch Susan Campbell The Sporting Life Tom Bryant Golftown Journal Lee Pace Calendar SandhillSeen PineNeedler Mart Dickerson SouthWords Sean Smith

FEATURES

55 The Vineyard Road Poem by Jim Dodson

58 Paul Brown By Deborah Salomon

The Art of Real Living

70 Pinecrest Inn By Jim Dodson

The Inn that Feels Like Home

76 Equine Center By Nicole White

Good Horse Sense

82 Russell Home By Deborah Salomon

Full Cry Farm

94 November Almanac By Noah Salt

Vita Speaks, Saying Grace and the Birth of Autumn

COVER PHOTOGRAPH AND PHOTOGRAPH THIS PAGE BY LAURA GINGERICH 2

November 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

The DUXÂŽ Bed can deliver the best nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sleep you will ever experience. Each DUX Bed contains thousands of springs that dynamically support your body, contouring to its natural curves while still maintaining firm support. You wake up refreshed and relaxed. Our artisans have hand crafted each DUX Bed from the finest materials since 1926. Your comfort, our pleasure.

DUXIANA at The Mews Downtown Southern Pines 910.725.1577

PineStraw M A G A Z I N E Jim Dodson, Editor 910.693.2506 • jim@pinestrawmag.com

Andie Stuart Rose, Creative Director 910.693.2467 • andie@pinestrawmag.com

Cassie Butler, Photographer/Graphic Designer 910.693.2464 • cassie@pinestrawmag.com

Kira Schoenfelder, Graphic Designer 910.693.2508 • kira@pinestrawmag.com

EDITORIAL

Deborah Salomon, Staff Writer Stephen E. Smith, Staff Writer Ashley Wahl, Associate Editor Sara King, Proofreader Mary Novitsky, Proofreader CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

John Gessner, Laura Gingerich, Tim Sayer CONTRIBUTORS

Cos Barnes, Tom Bryant, Susan Campbell, Geoff Cutler, Mart Dickerson, Robyn James, Pamela Powers January, Jan Leitschuh, Dale Nixon, Lee Pace, Jeanne Paine, Noah Salt, Sean Smith, Nicole White

PS David Woronoff, Publisher ADVERTISING SALES

Michelle Palladino, Sales Representative 910.691.9657 • mpalladino@pinestrawmag.com Terry Hartsell, 910.693.2513 Kerry Hooper, 910.693.2508 Perry Loflin, 910.693.2514 Peggy Marsh, 910.693.2516 Darlene McNeil-Smith, 910.693.2519 Johnsie Tipton, 910.693.2515 Karen Triplett, 910.693.2510 Pat Taylor, Advertising Director ADVERTISING GRAPHIC DESIGN

Stacey Yongue, 910.693.2509 Mechelle Butler, Clay Culberson, Scott Yancey CIRCULATION & SUBSCRIPTIONS

Darlene Stark, Circulation Director 910.693.2488

PineStraw Magazine 910.693.2467 173 W. Pennsylvania Avenue Southern Pines, NC 28387 pinestraw@thepilot.com • www.pinestrawmag.com ©Copyright 2012. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. PineStraw magazine is published by The Pilot LLC

PINEHURST

SOUTHERN PINES

SEVEN LAKES NORTH

Stunningly elegant new construction in beautiful Forest Creek. Located on the 13th hole of the North Course, this home features an open floorplan with huge window walls to enjoy the expansive views. An upscale kitchen features Nolte cherrywood cabinets, granite countertops and Miele appliances. Wonderful master bedroom and bathroom. A very special home! 3 BR / 3.5 BA $625,000 www.430MeyerFarmDrive.com

Lovely Jose Camina built home on a heavily wooded lot. Open floor plan, crown molding, hardwood floors, granite countertops, upscale master bathroom. Separate cottage-style detached garage/workshop/studio. Great location - close to downtown Southern Pines and an easy commute to Fort Bragg! 4 BR / 3.5 BA $399,000 www.497ClearfieldLane.com

Picture perfect describes this immaculate home in Seven Lakes North. Nestled at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, this home offers a large, private, well -manicured yard, spacious new deck, beautifully updated interior with granite counter tops in kitchen and baths, hardwood floors, plantation shutters, new metal roof. Super nice! 3 BR / 2 BA $175,000 www.129ShagbarkCourt.com

SEVEN LAKES WEST

PINEHURST

This spacious home is on a gorgeous oversized Lake Auman lakefront lot with over 200' of water frontage! The living room features a large bay window, and large brick fireplace with gas logs, raised brick hearth, and wood mantel. The kitchen features a large center island, veggie/prep sink, large eat-in area, and lake views. Best buy on the lake! 3 BR / 3.5 BA $380,000 www.127PhillipsDrive.com

Charming lakefront cottage in impeccable condition with beautiful custom upgrades throughout - crown molding, plantation shutters, Pella windows, hardwood floors, 11-zone irrigation. One of the most beautiful yards on the lake! Extensive patio and deck areas for maximum enjoyment of the gorgeous open water views. A very special home! 3 BR / 3.5 BA $630,000 www.103FeatherstonPoint.com

A very charming and welcoming home! This open floor plan home has a spacious main level master bedroom and 2 guest bedrooms upstairs. The well planned kitchen has plenty of storage. A nice fenced back yard has lovely, colorful landscaping with raised beds.

PINEHURST

WEST END

PINEHURST

This lovely custom contemporary sits on a beautifully wooded site with a small brook meandering along the back of the property. You can enjoy the peace and quiet from the spacious screened porch or expansive deck. Inside, the open floor plan features a great room with vaulted ceiling, hardwood flooring, vaulted ceiling and a walk-in bar, wonderful for entertaining! 4 BR / 3.5 BA $454,000 www.35WestlakeRoad.com

Step back in time with this lovely “farmhouse” nestled on over 4 acres of wooded land! This home has it all – a pond, spacious outbuildings, and is located just minutes from Pinehurst and Southern Pines. Pristine and movein ready – a very special spot! 3 BR / 2 BA $275,000 www.231MaplewoodLane.com

This one story brick home is in immaculate condition and sits on two lots. The owners have done many great updates including the addition of an office off the master bedroom and a beautiful, full-sized in ground pool with an adjoining hot tub, decorative iron fencing, great landscaping for privacy, and an enclosed sun porch. Lots of room and light - open floor plan - super house! 3 BR / 2 BA $349,000 www.355DiamondheadDrive.com

SEVEN LAKES NORTH

PINEHURST

This great home in a great neighborhood is cute as a button! Beautiful bamboo hardwood floors greet you on entry and continue throughout the main living area. The spacious and open living room features a vaulted ceiling, large brick fireplace with tile surround and wood stove insert, crown molding, recessed lighting, two ceiling fans, and sliding doors to the screened porch. This great house at a great price is ready for the next owner! 3 BR / 2 BA $124,900 www.105ScuppernongCourt.com

This well-kept home offers wonderful privacy and has a nice oversized deck for easy entertaining or just relaxing. A super floor plan in popular Village Acres! Great family neighborhood and one of the best buys!

What a lovely setting for this well-built and spacious home in a great neighborhood! The oversized yard has plenty of dogwoods and wonderful privacy in the back. A large, open great room has a cathedral ceiling, and an inviting Carolina room is the perfect place to relax and enjoy all the season! The great price reflects the need for cosmetic updating. 3 BR / 2 BA $185,000 www.350SugarPineDrive.com

3 BR / 2 BA

www.8JuniperLane.com

$158,000

3 BR / 2 BA

www.250FoxRunRoad.com

$165,500

View Floor Plans and Virtual Tours of Our Listings and See ALL Moore County Listings and Community Information at 6

WWW.MARTHAGENTRY.COM

SweeT TeA chroNicleS

home BY JIM DODSON

So, fellow traveler, where is your home?

It’s a question I sometimes ask myself in November, the month in which I feel most at home in my own life for a lot of reasons that probably have more to do with family history, tradition, weather and my wife’s good cooking than anything else. And yet, I’m asking something much deeper than where you live. The answer, of course, is different for everyone. Home is where you long to be, or where you come from, the place you know best, the people you love most, none or all of the above. It’s where you understand the local customs and the locals understand you. Home is in your heart, your head, your history, your very DNA. When you have to go there, according to poet Robert Frost, home is where they have to take you in. On the other hand, argues poet Maya Angelou, every human being longs to be at home wherever you find yourself. Few things in life feel as enchanting and comforting as the idea of home — just being there, or going back there, or simply dreaming of making one of your own someday. Conversely, if the home where you grew up was living hell, few topics can evoke as complicated feelings as the notion of home — memories of unsettled disputes, unresolved issues, and love either withheld or unexpressed, all silent factors that leave their mark on a life like a lash. In Thomas Wolfe’s final novel, You Can’t Go Home Again, published posthumously in 1940, the protagonist George Webber writes a successful novel based on element of his childhood experiences in Libya Hill, earning him fame and fortune but also letters of scorn and even death threats from the folks back home. Over the years since the book’s publication, not surprisingly in a country where upward mobility is viewed as a badge of success, the book’s famous title became part of America’s cultural expression, morphing into a popular figure of speech that equated the idea of returning or longing for home as a sign of failure. In fact, Wolfe had no such idea in his head — he was merely commenting on the fragile impermanence of human experience and the quicksilver of our passing lives, the homing instinct buried in all of us. The title, in fact, comes from the denouement of the novel in which Webber simply realizes home is an unrecoverable treasure, a paradise lost yet forever propelling us: “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood . . . back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame . . . back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time — back home to the escapes of

Time and Memory.” Few words possess the powerful simplicity and emotional freight — not to mention inevitable baggage — of home. “Home is an emotional state,” writes psychologist and spiritual thinker Thomas Moore, “a place in the imagination where feelings of security, belonging, placement, family, protection, memory, and personal history abide. Our dreams and fantasies of home may give us direction and calm our anxieties as we continually look for ways for satisfying our longing for home.” Home, by its unseen bonds and implied connective tissue, is also a copywriter’s dream word, a concept that powerfully resonates with American consumers in particular, a nation of would-be homebodies. America is, after all, the “Home of the Brave,” Pinehurst the “Home of Golf in America.” Fenway Park calls itself “Home of the Red Sox,” Burger King merely the “Home of the Whopper.” Home speaks. We listen. Check out the magazine racks at your local grocery store and you’ll count no less than a dozen popular magazine titles devoted to the art and science of making the perfect home, an entire industry devoted to the how-to of making your home a showplace or an ideal getaway from the madding crowd. Some of the first books published in Colonial America, in fact, were rustic primers on domestic homemaking, guides meant to instruct a young nation of homesick European immigrants on how to make a home in a new wild place. Two centuries later, give or take a Hepplewhite sideboard, a savvy Martha Stewart artfully transformed herself into the “Goddess of Graciousness” and a commercial icon by simply updating and aggressively marketing traditional homemaking tips and skills gleaned from old copies of Ladies Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens and other popular women’s magazines that have been a staple of domestic American life since the founding of the Republic. In a broader current context, the home-building and real estate industries — supposed plinths of the American economy — are considered firm bellwethers of our national economic health. If people are buying or building houses, the theory goes — i.e., finding home — they are probably feeling good about themselves and their financial prospects, their very futures. Fortunes have been made and squandered on just this notion, as have the lives of nations. Countries choose to go to war for lots of reasons, including disputed land and the assets of their neighbors. But across time, the the overarching reason most use to justify their actions is the goal of simply protecting home, defending

PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November 2012

sweet tea chronicles

their national sovereignty and defending one’s way of life and values. During my 59 years of life, I’ve lived in some interesting places — on a screened porch during the last days of college, in a one-room cabin heated by a wood stove on a winding river in Vermont — and just about every kind of house or apartment you can think of in big cities and a couple of foreign countries. Wherever I happened to be, Miss Angelou might be pleased to hear me state, I always tried to make myself feel at home to some small degree, even if that was easier said than done. My home right now is a rambling old house in Weymouth, a handsome place with worn floors and a fine back terrace, loaded with the kind of antique character and charm that puts me in mind of Madeleine’s old house in Paris all covered with vines, a book I read to my children when they were growing up in the house I built for them in Maine. We rent this house from a nice Pennsylvania couple that loves it dearly, I suspect, and it’s been a most comfortable home — both shelter and spiritual refuge — for almost five years. The upstairs bedroom where I make my home office (and am writing this essay) is quite possibly the best writing space I’ve ever had, the perfect writer’s burrow. It has lovely eastern light and overlooks the back garden where I spend so much of my free time, a ceiling fan overhead, a set of simple white-washed walls, a calming air, a radiator that clanks softly like Marley’s ghost in winter. And yet, perfect as it is for the moment at least, this isn’t the home I dream about. Two other homes crowd all others out. One lives in my recent past, the other lies in the mist of an undetermined future. One is the beautiful post-and-beam house I built on a forested hill near the coast of Maine, the first and only house I’ve ever owned, a home I helped create with my own hands, imagination and sweat of my brow. It’s where I felt certain I would live out my days until my allotted time was up. But I was wrong. Life changed and we left this home, sold the house and handed over the keys to a couple who owned a large motor home and a pair of Doberman pinschers. I still see this house in my nighttime dreams from time to time; I wander its rooms looking at things that were once so familiar but now feel profoundly changed and almost unwelcoming, slowly receding — perhaps simply proving that a house is just a house, after all, and in the end it’s purely the human element of living there that renders it a home. My memories of 15 great years in this house are strong and cherished, and though I dream of having a garden and house like that one again — note to self: plus a workshop and new John Deere lawn tractor — I sincerely doubt I’ll ever go back and take a look at that place again.

sweet tea chronicles

Six years ago, on the other hand, influenced by the same kind of gravitational pull that perhaps both sustained and tortured brother Thomas Wolfe, we moved home to North Carolina, the place where I grew up and my kinfolk populate the red clay of the Piedmont, both above and under it. This old house in Southern Pines — and this town itself, with its famous sheltering pines and quaint New England-named streets and well-bred manners — has been nothing short of a blessing to my family, the perfect re-entry hatch to a place I always secretly hoped I might someday, somehow, return to. By following my heart home, as it were, allowing the sure hand of Providence to direct our steps, I now find myself up in Greensboro two or three days every week doing the very work that wound up bringing me back to my old stomping ground, the place that holds my fondest memories. Sometimes I drive by an old house I used to admire in the neighborhood where I grew up and note its need for a little TLC, and think: I always loved that place. We should buy that house and make it home. The nice single lady who bought my childhood house just around the corner has invited me to come by some Saturday and dig up some of my mom’s beloved peonies for my own garden — the one I hope to have someday wherever, if ever, we buy a house again and settle down for good. Will this be the one? Impossible to say. I’ve given up worrying about where home will be next year or the year after that. In the meantime, with apologies to Thomas Wolfe, what I’ve learned about home is that you can and must take its spiritual beauty with you wherever you go and wherever you are, plant it in the soil and water it faithfully, offering a prayer of simple gratitude for being alive and with those you love, however long you have them, a tale as old as the Pilgrims and relevant as the waves of modern immigrants who still arrive on our shores blinking uncertainly in the morning sunlight, looking for a new definition of home. For us — and probably you, too, neighbor — that definition is forever changing, growing, shifting. Our four children have grown up and flown the coop to college and busy work lives. At this writing one is making a film in Istanbul, another commuting to work in Manhattan. Two others are in school in upstate New York. We see less and less of them but share a broadening home. They come to visit more irregularly and at the holidays and the house is once again filled — far too briefly — with their laughter, arguments and suddenly grown-up voices. What a glorious sound it makes. It fades and I go upstairs to my favorite writing room above the garden. For now, this November at least, that is all I need for home. PS PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November 2012

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November 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills The NEW HOMES Specialist “Only the Pines Cover the Sandhills better!”

Believe in Magic

The Pied Pipers

Let’s Sing, the 2010 Carolinas District Quartet Champions, will headline the Golf Capital Chorus’ annual show, to be held on Saturday, November 3, at 7 p.m. at the Pinecrest High School auditorium. The show, “A Salute to Those Who Served,” is GCC’s principal fundraiser and benefits local charities. Tickets: $15/general; $10/students. Robert E. Lee Auditorium, 250 Voit Gilmore Lane, Southern Pines. Information: (910) 295-3529 or www.golfcapitalchorus.org.

A la Mode

Nina Campbell, one of the world’s most respected and influential interior designers, won’t be in London on Thursday, November 8. She won’t be in New York either. She’ll be right here, at the Weymouth Center in Southern Pines. In addition to her brilliant sense of style, Campbell is renowned for her contagious wit. Meet her in the flesh for an 11 a.m. brunch at which she will discuss and sign copies of her latest book, Elements of Design, (tickets: 60); or meet her for cocktails at 6 p.m. (tickets: $85), same place. Brunch and Cocktails with Nina Campbell benefit the Companion Animal Clinic. Tickets are available at The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines or at www.companionanimalclinic. org. For more information about the artist, visit www. ninacampbell.com.

Weymouth’s Christmas House, the largest annual fundraiser for Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, keeps getting better and better. Thursday, November 29, through Saturday, December 1, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., see more than just the halls of this 1922 Georgian mansion decked with boughs of holly. See more than twenty rooms inside the old home of novelist James Boyd and his wife, Katharine, decorated by area garden clubs, floral designers and interior decorators. Post tour, relax and enjoy live holiday music in the Great Room, or browse Boutique Noel upstairs, a new feature where handicrafts and quality-made gifts are available for purchase. Those who want a sneak peek of the house can do so at a black-tie-optional gala on Wednesday, November 28 (tickets: $50). Weymouth’s popular Candlelight Tour happens on Friday, November 30, from 7 to 9 p.m. — wine, cheese and dessert, anyone (tickets: $30)? Tickets to the general tour are $10 in advance or $15 at the door. Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, 555 East Connecticut Avenue, Southern Pines. Tickets/Information: (910) 692-6261 or www.weymouthcenter.org.

Soup in a Bowl

Soup’s on at the Campbell House on Sunday, November 4 from 4 to 6 p.m. for a fundraiser that’s sure to make you feel all warm and tingly inside. Here’s how it works: First, you pick the bowl you’d like to use — yes, just one — from a spread of colorful and texturally intriguing wares, all of which came from area potteries. Next, you fill it with soup — choose from an assortment of locally made bouillons, purées, chowders, chilies and bisques. The last step is easy: break bread and enjoy delicious soup with your friends and neighbors. Tickets, which include cocktail hour, live music and dinner, are $25 for Arts Council members, and $30 for non-members. Proceeds benefit the Arts Council of Moore County. Tickets are available at The Country Bookshop (140 Northwest Broad Street, Southern Pines) or through the Arts Council of Moore County, (910) 692-ARTS or www.mooreart.org.

PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November 2012

You are cordially invited to Celebrate! FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital Auxiliary cordially invites you to the

2012

Holiday Ball Friday, December 7, 2012 The Carolina Hotel Ballroom Cocktails, Dinner & Dancing 7 oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clock in the evening

For ticket information and sponsorships, please call: 910.695.7510 Proceeds from the Holiday Ball will support FirstQuit for Teens

Moore Regional Hospital Auxiliary - celebrating 82 years of service to our community

Muses of the Sandhills

Great expectations

The shops of historic downtown Southern Pines will kick off the holiday season with entertainment and yuletide cheer on Saturday, November 24, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for the annual Holiday Open House, which precedes the ever-popular tree lighting ceremony from 5 to 7 p.m. Marvel at the varied display of Christmas trees lining the streets. Delight in the songs of carolers. Meet Santa, who will be available for photos at the train station at 4:30 p.m. And don’t miss special performances by the Pinecrest High School Ensemble, the Moore County Choral Society, and The Golf Capital Chorus, Moore County’s own barbershop harmony chorus. Info: www.southernpines.net.

On Friday, November 4, the Arts Council of Moore County presents the opening reception for Inspirations, Musings and Reﬂections, an art exhibit featuring the works of oil painters Sharon Ferguson and Marilyn Vendemia. Opening reception, which is free and open to the public, will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Exhibit remains on display through December 14. Campbell House Galleries, 482 E. Connecticut Avenue, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-2787 or www.mooreart.org.

Just Do it

You could wait for the New Year to make fitness a priority. Or you could let the Sandhills Race Series inspire you to get a head start. The Pinehurst Turkey Trot, which includes a One-Mile Fun Run in addition to three competitive races, begins and ends at Cannon Park on Saturday, November 17. As if personal fulfillment weren’t incentive enough, overall male and female winners in each race — 5k, 10k and Half Marathon — get to take home a frozen turkey. And the Reindeer Fun Run happens in downtown Aberdeen on Saturday, December 1. Distances include 5k, 12k and a half-mile Egg Nog Jog for the kids. Plus, proceeds from the race, named after Santa’s faithful North Pole critters, benefit the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Sandhills. For more information, and to register for either event, visit www.sandhillsraceseries.com.

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

One-Man Show

It Takes A Village

Six days after Santa hits the streets of Southern Pines for pictures at the train station, he’ll be in downtown Pinehurst for the Village Tree Lighting, which happens on Friday, November 30, from 3 to 6 p.m. Expect Christmas carols and holiday cheer. Unless you happen to be on Santa’s Naughty List. Info: (910) 295-7462 or www.pinehurstbusinessguild.com.

And Now For Something Completely Different

So you think you’ve seen The Nutcracker? How about a production that invites the audience to participate? A ballet that keeps you on your toes, so to speak? Taylor Dance presents an interactive twist to a timeless holiday classic on Friday, November 23, through Sunday, November 25. Tickets are $22 for adults and seniors on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. Students and children get in for $15. All seats are $15 for the Saturday matinee at 2 p.m. Robert E. Lee Auditorium, 250 Voit Gilmore Lane, Southern Pines. Information: (910) 695-1320.

Gary Carden has stories. He was raised by his grandparents in Sylva, North Carolina, where he grew up picking June apples, singing hymns and talking to his grandfather’s chickens. And he also heard a fair amount of Cherokee and Appalachian folklore from the old folks. Little wonder he got so good at spinning tales, which he’s been spinning into plays for years and years. In fact, the 77-yearold playwright recently received the 2012 North Carolina Award for Literature. Watch Carden perform scenes from his own plays on Sunday, November 18, at 3 p.m., an event that kicks off the 2012-2013 Ragan Writers Series at Weymouth. Tickets: $10. Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Avenue, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6261.

5k 12k

Kids Egg Nog Jog

Saturday, Dec. 1 | Aberdeen 9:00 a.m. – 12ks of Christmas Run 9:15 a.m. – 5k Fun Run/Walk 10:30 a.m. – Chick-fil-A Kids Egg Nog Jog 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. – After Party Chick-fil-A Kids Zone, Games, Music & Santa!

Last year 2,200 runners and walkers from 25 states shared in the fun! Join us on Saturday, December 1 in downtown Aberdeen to celebrate the season and our community at the 6th Annual Reindeer Fun Run! 100% of proceeds go to benefit the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Sandhills in Southern Pines and Aberdeen.

How do you want to retire? Pine Poll

It started simply, dear readers. A simple staff conversation about our favorite Thanksgiving dishes. From there it escalated, went online and — viola! — the first Pine Poll was born. Here are the results. Be sure to visit our Facebook page to participate in our December poll.

Collards 29 votes Andie Rose

Green Bean Casserole 25 votes

Cassie Butler

Sweet Potato Casserole with Marshmallows Jim Dodson 24 votes Creamed Onions 8 votes

Illustrations by kira Schoenfelder

Kira Schoenfelder

Ashley Wahl

Free yourself from home ownership worries and spend more quality time with the ones you love. Relax and enjoy the holidays, visit with family and friends, and dine on a delectable meal prepared by our award-winning chef. Choosing a secure, maintenancefree lifestyle at The Village at Brookwood lets you stay connected with those who matter most. The Village at Brookwood — This is how we do retirement.

CranberryPear Sauce 6 votes Tofurkey 1 vote

Noah Salt

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November 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Larose & Company Independently Owned & Operated

COS ANd eFFeCT

People and Pennies First The joy of clerking at the Coalition boutique

English Foxhound

graphite on Canson paper

Pamela Powers January FINE

BY COS BARNES

ne of the neatest jobs I have is serving as a clerk in the boutique at the Sandhills Moore Coalition for Human Care. Our customers are friendly, helpful and fun. They assist me in folding purchases, taking garments off racks, and they comment on the selections of others as they parade through our rooms, reminding me of the atmosphere of the Loehmann’s I have shopped for years. One day a young woman came in. She was to be the only attendant in a wedding and was asked to wear black. We found her a fetching dress with a slit up the back and matching jacket. We had just received that day a lovely shawl, priced at $4, which completed the outfit. For $14 we had her ready to shine, and as she left us, I reminded her, “You won’t get that kind of TLC at Neiman Marcus.” Another shopper, a first-timer with us, came in looking for a suit for an interview. My friend and co-worker, Jean, put her in a navy pin-stripe and added a pink blouse for softness. She looked so young and fresh, and we were thrilled at our selections for her. The young woman was riding a motorcycle the next morning to Raleigh for the interview. When I awoke on the morrow, my thoughts and prayers were immediately with her, for it was pouring down rain. I still wonder how things went.

A mother came in another day searching for a hat of some description for her daughter, whose fiancé had been killed in an automobile accident, to wear to his funeral. We did not find the right hat, but I have not forgotten that mother’s angst in trying to help her daughter through a difficult time. I have dressed my two young granddaughters in adorable clothes from the Coalition. One bathrobe was taken to a slumber party by the 6-year-old, and she wore it the entire time. I have found these two girls elegant long velveteen numbers trimmed with fur for Christmas, mod swimsuits, neat coats and jackets, and all for a song. I have a hard time with the post office because of the prices they charge me for my inexpensive items to be mailed to Atlanta. My colleagues kid me about my lack of prowess at the cash register, but they know I count out the change the way it should be counted out, with the pennies first, the way old-timers were taught to do it. My co-worker, Jean, is much more conscientious than I am about straightening stock, rearranging merchandise, and putting things where they should be. I mostly talk to the trade, for I often meet old, old acquaintances who touched my life in former years, and I delight in catching up with them. PS

ART

PORTRAITS

PETS

www.pamelapowersjanuary.com

910.692.0505

110 MCLEAN ROAD OLD TOWN PINEHURST

PHCC Membership Available

Mint Condition, light & cheerful, gourmet kitchen, formal dining room, 3 BRs, 2BAs, 2 workshops, two car garage. Adjoining lot available for purchase.

Cos Barnes is a longtime contributor to PineStraw magazine. She can be contacted at cosbarnes@nc.rr.com.

PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November 2012

You’ll fi nd more than 50 of the best brands here, including one you can’t find anywhere else. Adidas • Peter Millar • Sport Haley • Tail • Tehama • Puma • Titleist • Tommy Bahama • Under Armour • FootJoy • Straight Down Pinehurst Collection • SDI • Zero • Maui Jim • Oakley • Brighton • Dooney & Burke • Putterboy Collection • Vera Bradley • Isda Cole Haan • Lilly Pulitzer • Iliac • Aveda • La Bella Donna • J. Lindeberg • Ashworth • Oxford • Polo • Ashworth • Adidas • Ahead American Needle • Bobby Jones • Callaway • Cutter & Buck • EP Pro • Fairway & Greene Gear • Greg Norman • Imperial • Nike

The Pinehurst Shops are full of shirts, shoes, jackets, spa products, bags, gifts and accessories from brands like Vera Bradley, Adidas, Nike, Peter Millar and Cole Haan. So come in and find your favorites. Village of Pinehurst, North Carolina • 910. 235.8154 • pinehurst.com

The OmNivOrOuS reAder

Captains Courageous

in Bland Simpson’s latest coastal epic, the lives of two remarkable men shaped by the Civil War are lyrically revealed

BY STEPHEN E. SMITH

“i don’t worry

about the sales of Civil War books,” the editor of a university press told me. “Civil War buffs will buy anything written on the subject.”

That was fifteen years ago, and I have no idea if the editor’s statement is still true. The world of publishing has been transformed in ways we could never have suspected when the editor made his assertion regarding book sales. What I do know is that Bland Simpson’s latest offering, Two Captains from Carolina: Moses Grandy, John Newland Mafﬁtt, and the Coming of the Civil War, is deserving of a wider audience. Born in Elizabeth City, Simpson has published a shelf of books set in coastal North Carolina — The Great Dismal; The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey; Into the Sound Country; Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals, The Mystery of the Carroll A. Deering; The Inner Islands: A Carolinian’s Sound Country Chronicle; and The Coasts of Carolina: Seaside to Sound Country. He’s written, or had a hand in writing, umpteen critically acclaimed musicals that have been performed off Broadway and at regional theaters. He’s the Kenan Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and he served for a time as head of the university’s creative writing program. He’s also a longtime member of the Tony Award-winning string band the Red Clay Ramblers and has toured with them throughout the United States and Europe. And he’s accomplished all this with seeming ease. If Simpson has scattered his shot, there’s no detecting it in the quality of the work he’s produced.

Two Captains is, simply stated, the best writing Simpson has produced, a lyrical narrative that’s truly a joy to read. And he couldn’t have chosen two more remarkable personages about whom to write. Born in 1789, Moses Grandy’s early life was spent in slavery. Ill-clothed and physically abused, he was hired out as a freight boatman working in the Great Dismal Swamp. Still he managed to save enough of his earnings to twice purchase his freedom, only to have his money confiscated by his owners and his freedom denied. On the third attempt, he was freed and traveled to Boston, where he became involved with the anti-slavery movement. In 1843, he published Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy; Late a Slave in the United States of America to raise money to purchase his wife out of slavery, thus establishing himself as a spokesman for the millions of slaves whose miseries went unrecorded. John Newland Maffitt was born at sea on a ship bound from Ireland to New York and was adopted by an uncle who lived in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Entering the Navy as a midshipman at age 13, he served aboard the USS Constitution. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1843, and spent 14 years conducting hydrographic surveys near Wilmington, North Carolina, and in the Charleston and Savannah areas. Disillusioned when he narrowly avoided dismissal from service during a pre-Civil War purge of the officer corps, Maffitt resigned his commission in 1861 to join the Confederacy, where he served as captain of the blockade runners CSS Florida and CSS Owl. After the war, he settled in the Wilmington area. Both men have been the subject of previous biographies. In 1906, Maffitt’s widow published The Life and Services of John Newland Mafﬁtt, and more recent biographies include High Seas Confederate, Sea Devil of the Confederacy, and The Life and Times of John Newland Mafﬁtt. In addition to Grandy’s personal narrative, there are at least two biographies, . . . and

The Omnivorous Reader

Remember that I Am a Man and Boy in Chains. What Simpson brings to his readers is an intimate knowledge of North Carolina’s coastal region and the ability, based on solid research, to imagine pivotal moments in Maffitt’s and Grandy’s lives, as when Grandy’s wife is sold to a slave owner from a distant plantation: “Captain Grandy walked out into the road and stared after his wife and all the rest as they drifted away up the long straight canalbank trace toward its vanishing point, till after a few minutes he could no

. . . Simpson has produced, a lyrical narrative that’s truly a joy to read. longer tell whether they were still moving, or if they were just some sculpted misery in the long lane ahead of him.” Or this contrasting passage describing the moment Maffitt falls in love: “Perhaps they knew the moment was upon them even then, perhaps not — but they would know it in a trice. Who could ever say what kind of word or motion in the sensual life of talk and gestures suddenly separate a pair of people from the horde and turn them loose as lovers, each to each only? This one instant, Captain Maffitt’s placing the cape around Emma’s shoulders, was, finally, for them all that it would take.” This use of the “nonfiction novel” format enlivens the narrative and breathes life into the characters. But Simpson doesn’t compare and contrast the lives of Grandy and Maffitt. He leaves those judgments to the reader, who will find these compelling portraits of two North Carolinians possessed of courage and dedication lifted into the realm of poetry. PS Stephen Smith’s most recent book of poetry is A Short Report on the Fire at Woolworths. He can be reached at travisses@ hotmail.com. PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November 2012

BOOKSheLF

New releases for November BY THE COUNTRY BOOKSHOP

FICTION Divine Vintage: Following the Wine Trail from Genesis to the Modern Age by Joel Butler and Randall Heskett. What happens when a Biblical scholar and one of the top masters of wine get together? This fascinating book studies different types of wine and the different roles wine has played through the Bible and other historical texts and examines wine’s part in shaping civilization in both the ancient world and today. Why was Jesus’ first miracle turning water into wine? How did the Roman Army create the first wine connoisseurs? This book is bound to give you interesting conversation for church and a dinner party. Fascinating, well-researched and a pleasure to read, this is a wonderful book.

The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of Handwriting by Philip Hensher. One day the critic and novelist Phillip Hensher realized that he had no idea what his best friend’s handwriting looked like. It was a profound moment for him, and he decided to look into handwriting. What is the history? What was he missing by not knowing his friend’s handwriting? Handwriting today is taught in only five schools. And as I type this book recommendation, I am eager share with you the past and future of handwriting. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham. This will be THE Christmas book this year. Sewanee graduate and managing editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham treats every reader to a fascinating portrait of a complicated man in his look at Jefferson. We are all fascinated by Jefferson, the man who understood liberty and possibility. He was the father of the ideals of liberty, the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark expedition, and settling the West. He knew the genius of our new nation lay in the undiscovered and the unknown. His elegant style, his time in Paris, his beautiful Monticello home, and the fact that he collected and sent seeds all his life, make him a fascinating subject in the hands of Meacham, a master of the biography.

Custer by Larry McMurtry. The man who wrote Lonesome Dove brings you a nonfiction piece and with 150 four-color illustrations, this book should do plenty to paint the picture of the man that was George Armstrong Custer. In addition to a well researched account of the Battle at Little Bighorn, the reader also will be treated to personal accounts of McMurtry’s experiences while he was researching the book. Buddy: How a Rooster Made Me a Family Man by Brian McGrory. Buddy was hatched as a science experiment and then was to be kept as a pet, but rather than the hen that was expected, Buddy turned out to be a rooster — an alpha rooster. McGrory, who was soon to marry the veterinarian who owned Buddy and with two young daughters, must come to terms with this male rival. In doing so, McGrory learns to accept his new family, and all the changes to his life. A great read for all. Flight Behavior: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver. Dellarobia Turnbow has given up her college education to be a young wife and mother in a small Tennessee town. Eleven years into her marriage and still several years shy of 30, she decides to accept a rendezvous at a secluded cabin in the woods. But on the way to the cabin she sees a glorious sight of thousands of butterﬂies on trees. The forest looks to be on fire; she sees it as a sign and never makes it to the cabin. Back at her home, she learns her dominating father-in-law plans to clear cut the forest for cash. She suggests a field study of the woods and the discovery of the butterﬂies, actually there as a result of global warming. Her idea creates a scientific and media firestorm that causes her to re-examine her life and who she is. Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan. Fresh, young, beautiful, brilliant Serena Frone is recommended for a position in the British Intelligence Agency MI5 and is assigned to a new project, Sweet Tooth, designed to fund young writers, academics and journalists and to manipulate the cultural conversation. Serena’s task? To bring the novelist T.H. Hardy into the fold. One of those rare novels that commands attention even after the last page, this clever novel poses the questions, “What story is really reality? Can you ever trust anyone?”

BOOKSheLF

The Buzzard Table by Margaret Maron. Return to Colleton County to join Judge Deborah Knott and Sheriff’s Deputy Dwight Bryant and the whole family. New on the scene are two New Yorkers, one a hot-shot photographer visiting her ailing aunt. At dinner one evening a long-lost nephew with an English accent returns to the aunt while there to study new Southern Vultures. Suddenly a murder happens. And we begin to wonder who everyone really is. The Last Man by Vince Flynn. Flynn returns with his 14th Mitch Rapp book! In this espionage thriller, Rapp, a CIA counter terrorism agent, heads to Afghanistan to track down a missing agent. This author is a hit across the board, but if you want some entertainment, check out the Pinterest board that shows fans reading Vince Flynn all over the world (or playing tennis, or eating . . . )! Autographed copies will be available at The Country Bookshop, so please call to reserve your copy today. Fox Tracks by Rita Mae Brown. Rita Mae Brown is back with her eighth book in her foxhunting mystery series. Brown lives in Virginia and is an active fox hunter. Check out her mysteries and live the world of fox hunting with murder and intrigue.

CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULT Bear Says Thanks by Karma Wilson. Lovable Bear, star of past New York Times best-sellers, Bear Snores On and Bear Stays Up For Christmas, Christmas throws a feast to show his friends how thankful he is for each of them. There is only one problem; his cupboards are bare. With charming illustrations of Bear and all his friends solving their problem together, young readers will delight as they listen to this wonderful read-aloud story. Ages 3-6 Boot and Shoe by Marla Frazee. Boot and Shoe are the best of friends. They live perfectly quiet lives in their perfectly ordered house with their perfectly prepared meals offered at exactly the same time every day. Perfect, that is, until an unruly neighborhood squirrel intrudes! Written and illustrated by Caldecott Honor medalist Marla Frazee, this tale of chaotic fun is perfect for ages 3-8. True Legend by Mike Lupica. From New York Times bestselling author and ESPN commentator Lupica comes another fantastic sports story for middle-grade readers. Drew “True” Robinson has true talent for basketball. So much, that he has been recruited to transfer to an exclusive private school on the West Coast. One night after a pick-up game with an “old guy” in the park, Drew begins to wonder if he has let the glamour of fame and fortune get in his way of real success. Ages 10-13 PS

Featuring work of all Full Members Opening Reception

Friday, November 9th 6 – 8 pm

Opening Weekend

November 10th 10 – 4 pm November 11th 10 – 3pm Show runs through Dec 28th Great place to get Christmas gifts and gift certificates

Stop by to get your raffle ticket for this painting titled “The Garden Trove” Oil by Harry Neely Drawing on Sunday November 11th at 3 pm 26

Great Smiles Are Always In Style! • Smile Makeovers • Porcelain Veneers & Bonding • Cosmetic Fillings (Front and Back Teeth) • Non-Mercury Fillings • Crowns & Fixed Bridges • Bleaching (Whitening) • Root Canal Therapy • General Cleanings & Preventative Care • Non-Surgical Periodontal Therapy • Digital Imaging (90% less Radiation) • Partials and Dentures • Cerec Single Visit Onlays & Crowns

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W h E N y o u h AV E S o m E t h I N g thIS SPECIAl, It’S hARd to gIVE thANkS FoR It All o N j u S t o N E d Ay.

At our continuing care retirement community, we’re thankful every day of the year. For our neighborhood of caring residents. For our team of longtime, dedicated professionals. And, for the support of our local community and beyond. All of this comes together to make one of the most well-respected retirement communities around—one that’s posed for the future. We’d love for you to be a part of it. Call today to learn more about us, our great living options and amenities at (910) 692-0386 or (910) 692-0382. Visit us soon at www.penickvillage.org.

PENICK VILLAGE A Continuing Care Retirement Community

500 East Rhode Island Avenue | Southern Pines, NC 28387 | (866) 545-1018 toll-free

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

h i tt i n g h o m e

Thankful

One word says it all

By Dale Nixon

Iam thankful that I wake up every

Illustration by kira schoenfelder

morning thinking that something wonderful is going to happen to me. It usually doesn’t, but I am thankful that I think this way.

I am thankful that I am of good health and sound mind. (Some may argue about the mind.) I am thankful that I have a loving family. I could brag, but I won’t. I am thankful for my friends, both old and new. I am thankful for every pine tree, every fl ower, and every blade of greengrass no matter how hard it kicks my sinuses. I am thankful for each season and each holiday that gives me a reason to celebrate. I am thankful for every wine maker in the world. I am thankful for books and libraries and hometown book stores. They offer me adventure, romance and places I have never or will never see. I am thankful for Kindles and Nooks, but not as thankful as I am for books, libraries and hometown book stores. I am thankful for my smartphone. Now that I can use it, I never want to lose it. I am thankful for artists, musicians, and yes, even athletes who do what I could never do. I am thankful for writers who have mastered their craft. I am thankful for our Carolina beaches with their rolling waves and white sand. I am thankful for our Blue Ridge Mountains and their panoramic view. I am thankful to be living in a country where I have a vote. And as bad as times seem, I still have a vote. I am thankful I was born in this country because it is still the best pla-

cein the world to live. I am thankful to be born Southern, to talk Southern and to live the Southern way. I am thankful for my Northern friends because they are fearless and you always know where you stand. I am thankful for sweet tea, pinto beans, turnip greens, fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits, cornbread, pound cake and pecan pie. I am thankful for greasy hamburger joints and hot dog stands. I am thankful for the nighttime and all of the mysteries that it evokes in my mind. I am thankful for the daytime when I really feel alive. I am thankful for Motown, Mozart and Hank Williams, Sr. I am thankful that my husband loves to dance with me. I am thankful for the people who protect us and the educators who teach our children. I am thankful for makeup and hair color and contact lenses. I am thankful for 3/4 sleeve shirts and body-shaping underwear. I am thankful for T.J. Maxx, Ross Dress for Less and Marshall’s discount stores. I am thankful for red dot clearance sales. I am thankful I have been given the opportunity to write this column for you every month for 6 1/2 years. I am thankful for the best editors I have ever worked with. I am thankful for the readers’ emails, letters and notes. But I am especially thankful that I wake up every morning thinking that something wonderful is going to happen to me. It could be today . . . Happy Thanksgiving. PS Happy Thanksgiving. PS Columnist Dale Nixon may be contacted at dalenixon@carolina. rr.com.

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November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

The kitchen garden

Down Home Asian Greens Go a little East this year

By Jan Leitschuh

In the Thanksgiving greens department, collards

may be a favorite Southern side dish, and who are we to tamper with beloved family tradition?

But the open-minded might leave room to consider Asian greens for the rest of late fall and early winter. Easy to grow and loaded with nutrition, these tasty Oriental transplants thrive in the tricky Sandhills soil and capricious climate. The dedicated kitchen gardener can have fresh table greens nearly year-round. And so lovely are they in cold weather that a porch container of Chinese greens can serve double duty — as ornament, and condiment. One of the pioneer growers of Asian greens in this area is John Blue of Highlander Farms. John is the sixth-generation Blue to farm his particular patch of ground on N.C. 22. Several years ago Blue was casting about for produce options to supplement farm income, after the loss of lucrative tobacco subsidies confronted Sandhills farmers with some stark choices. After all, tobacco was one of the items that grow well here in the sand, and many things just . . . don’t. Commodity row crops did all right here, but the return per acre for corn and soybeans was just not enough to keep area farms vital and thriving. What, then, to replace tobacco? After some frustration with spinach and lettuce in our changeable climate, Blue gave Asian greens (along with strawberries and other produce) a try on the recommendation of Cooperative Extension agent Taylor Williams. The Oriental greens were a success from the get-go, making themselves right at home in the Sandhills. Gorgeous Asian greens with non-Southern names like bok choy, kai lan, yukina savoy, mizuna, brassica rapa, and more can now be found at area farm stands and markets. Highlander’s Blue found the Oriental greens “sturdy. They stood up well to the sudden heat that can come in spring.” Early hot spells can ruin a greens crop here, due to bolting. Bolting is when the plant switches from the vegetative to the reproductive phase; the leaves turn bitter, and the plant’s nutrition shifts away from the leaves and instead toward blossoms and seeds. Fall is a terrifi c season for greens here in the Sandhills, but another Tar Heel problem rears its cultural head: germination. Many of the cool-weather crops are fi nicky, failing to germinate in the blasting heat of August when they are sown. August-sown spinach, for example, has a very low rate of

germination, sometimes hardly justifying the cost of seed. While kitchen gardeners can break dormancy by chilling small batches in their refrigerator for a day or two in soaked paper towels, this is not practical on a farm scale. Planting transplants is also unfeasible on a large scale, due to cost. And here is where the Asian greens surprise yet again — they germinate reasonably well in August from a direct sowing. Growing steadily in the fall, one final cultural surprise emerges, says Blue. “They also stand up to the cold pretty well too,” leaving them less vulnerable to early frosts, which can devastate a crop. In fact, so tough are the Asians that such greens can often be harvested through Christmas and sometimes even into the new year, depending on the hardness of the descending cold. So hardy are some of these greens that specialty farmers in far colder climates than ours manage to harvest them all winter long — what excuse do we have in sunny zone 8a? In Elliot Coleman’s book Four Season Harvest, Coleman notes that Tatsoi, also called spinach-mustard or spoon mustard, is one of the most cold hardy and the easiest of all the greens he has grown. He recommends direct seeding it in the garden in early fall or late summer, covering it with a good row cover and then harvesting all winter (in zone 5). The plant has dark green spoon-shaped leaves which form a thick rosette, and has a subtle yet distinctive fl avor. In 45–50 days a gardener can begin to harvest leaves, and — withstanding temperatures down to 15°F, tatsoi can be harvested even from under the snow. Also good for this method, says Coleman, is Chinese cabbage, or bok choy, a mild relative of our western cabbage, or komatsuna, a relative of turnips. Direct seed these hardy vegetables one inch apart in good garden soil and then thin and eat as they grow. The fi nal spacing for a good-size plant is approximately eight inches. “Sturdy.” Just what we treasure in a Sandhills garden crop. For us kitchen gardeners, yet another bonus, except for a few holes, often these crops can be brought in with minimal, or no, pesticide use. When required, an organic-approved Bt (bacillus thuringiensis) spray can be deployed for cabbage worms, but little else is required. Like any “green,” Asian greens require a good dark soil rich in welldecomposed organic matter, to feed nitrogen to the plant. Some blood meal might help speed things along. A reasonable liming program is also necessary: These greens are a good source of calcium, so it must be in the soil to show up in the plant! Aside from that, add the usual potash or potassium that always leaches from our sandy soil in our torrential rains. Sulpomag is a good source. Organic matter will also help your soil hang onto nutrients in

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

The kitchen garden

the face of a deluge, so attention to this essential is never amiss. So they grow well here. How do they taste? As with the more familiar collards, turnip or mustard greens, most Asian greens are members of the cabbage or mustard families, collectively known as brassicaceae or crucifers. That means they will have that slightly bitter taste that marries divinely with vinegar, smoky meats, sesame oils, red peppers, ginger, soy sauce, fresh oregano and/ or garlic. Take your pick of fl avors, and mix and match. Some, like tatsoi, can be enjoyed raw, or added to soups. Though from the same family, each green has its own personality. Cabbage-like with fi rm white stalks and dark leafy tops, bok choy can also be fermented into spicy Korean kimchi, a peppery delight and extremely rich in benefi cial bacteria for digestion. (There are many recipes online for homemade kimchi). Mild, spinach-like yukina savoy can be used in quiches and other dishes, much like spinach. Kai lan is also known as “Asian asparagus,” and the stalks can be sautéed or steamed. Following a chef-driven, nationwide interest in specialty and ethnic vegetables, recipes for the specialty greens abound. Another factor is the burgeoning U.S. Asian population, bringing their food traditions with them to be scooped up and highlighted by alert chefs. All are great steamed, stir fried or used raw in salads. Beyond taste, the greens are wickedly good for you, and help detox from this foreign-chemicalladen world. Says the useful website “World’s Healthiest Foods,” greens from this family “have high amounts of vitamin A, vitamin C, folate, fi ber, and calcium to name a few. Vitamins A and C are well known antioxidants that work to eliminate free radicals in the body, which are known to cause cell damage and are linked with many diseases. Mustard oils contain glucosinolates, which appear to reduce the risk of certain cancers by helping the liver perform its detoxifi cation processes.” The perfect simple side dish: Rinse, rinse, rinse your greens free of Sandhills grit in a pot or sink full of water. Drain. Sauté some thinly sliced garlic and ginger in a little oil. Add some red pepper fl akes. Meanwhile, chop greens fi nely for quick cooking. Throw in greens and wilt down, perhaps adding a little chicken broth. When fi nished, dress with a little rice vinegar or apple cider vinegar, soy sauce and toasted sesame oil. While giving thanks, offer up an utterance for this unusual three-and-a-half season Sandhills climate, where fresh greens can be pulled out of the snow in winter. PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

race to recovery

joint replacement program

capeable of getting you back in the game Whether your passion is golf, tennis or even taking walks with your spouse, when the pain of arthritis makes you consider hip or knee replacement surgery, there’s really only one choice. Only one joint replacement program in the Sandhills has been awarded two Gold Seals of ApprovalTM from The Joint Commission, the nation’s premier accreditation agency. And Cape Fear Valley is designated a Blue Distinction CenterSM for Hip and Knee surgery by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina. Just two of the many reasons we’re CAPEable of keeping you in the game. For a referral to an orthopedic surgeon who is part of Cape Fear Valley’s award-winning Race to Recovery joint replacement program, please call Carelink at (910) 615-link (5465) or toll free at 1-888-728-well.

Cape Fear Valley has earned The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval TM

www.capefearvalley.com

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

November 2012

The First Annual

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Facials & Chemical Peels Full Body Waxing Microdermabrasion Dermaplaning Eyebrow & Eyelash Tinting

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ChristmasFest Saturday, December 1 12 noon-5 pm

Enjoy an old-fashioned Christmas in an historic village setting. Carousel, children’s games, live music, festival of trees, Santa & more.

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November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Vine Wisdom

Matching the Meal The right wine will make for a thankful table

By Robyn James

When the holidays

approach, all the foodies come out and experiment with new recipes or tweak the traditional recipes for the big holiday meal.

Photograph by cassie butler

Matching the perfect wine to the meal can be challenging and fun at the same time. Here are some simple guidelines to consider: 1. Drink and Eat What You Like This works with wine just like food. If you detest liver, for example (like I do), there is no wine pairing on Earth that is going to make that dish work for you. If you hate a certain type of wine but feel it matches your dish, you are not going to be a happy eater that day. 2. Look For Balance Consider the weight — or body, or richness — of both the food and wine. The wine and the dish should be equal partners, with neither overwhelming the other. If you balance the two by weight, you raise the odds dramatically that the pairing will succeed. This is the secret behind many classic wine and food matches. Trust your instinct here. Hearty foods need a hearty wine. Delicate foods need lighter, more subtle wines. The cooking method and sauce almost always overshadow the actual main ingredient of the meal, just as a salad with blue cheese dressing is completely different from a salad with a light citrus vinaigrette. 3. Look for Flavor Links This is where pairing can be fun. The aromatics of wine often remind us of foods such as fruits, herbs, spices and butter. You can create a good match by including ingredients in a dish that echo and therefore emphasize the aromas and fl avors in a wine. With a cabernet, for example, currants in a dish may bring out the wine’s characteristic dark fruit fl avors, while a pinch

of sage could highlight hints of herbs. 4. Experiment with Something New Maybe your family always prepares the same dishes every holiday meal, and that is a wonderful tradition, but experiment with a different wine each meal, something new for your family and guests. Almost any good white wine will pair well with turkey; a white Burgundy from France is a good choice as well as unoaked California chardonnay, sauvignon blanc or the unusual Albarino from Spain. Dry, or off-dry gewurztraminer and chenin blanc are very nice pairs. Red wine can be a great match with your turkey; a jammy Spanish grenache, tasty light Oregon pinot noir or big Australian shiraz will bypass the tannic elements that will mess with your bird. Perhaps your dish of choice for the holidays is centered on red meat. Lamb is very popular, as well as a crown roast, the dish my mother enjoyed serving. Now you can consider the tannic wines if those are your liking. A nice California or Chilean cabernet sauvignon, or meritage would be perfect, as well as a nice Washington merlot. Malbec also pairs well, and a sangiovese from Italy will complement the roast perfectly. Now that we have some ideas about what goes with the main meal, let’s take a tip about before and after. Sparkling wine is the perfect aperitif for your meal. It doesn’t have to be French Champagne — you can pick up a nice Loire sparkler for under $10. The bubbles will titillate your taste buds and provide the festive mood for the meal. Dessert wine doesn’t have to be an expensive luxury either. Your sweets can be complemented by a moscato from Italy or tawny port from Australia. Bon appetit and happy holidays! PS Robyn James is proprietor of The Wine Cellar and Tasting Room in Southern Pines. Contact her at winecellar@pinehurst.net.

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November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

out of the blue

True Confessions MadMen in the age of Twitter

By Deborah Salomon

The recent Emmy Awards

marked a sad milestone in TV history. MadMen, the four-time award-winner for best drama series, came up goose egg in 17 nominations.

The better news is that Maddie devotees can commiserate over dry martinis at the 2012 MadMen-themed Holly & Ivy Dinner on Dec. 4 at the Holly Inn, to benefi t Given Memorial Library and Tufts Archives. If only I had saved my Mondrian mini-dress and stretchy patent leather go-go boots. I’m thinking MM lost because their seasons are short and far between. Season 5 ended in June and dates for Season 6 haven’t been announced. Also, the plot — crisp and on point — slid into murky subplots and fl ashbacks. In the meantime, Homeland scored with a fast-action if implausible story line. To understand why MM creeps under the skin you have to be mid-70ish and have experienced Manhattan during the 1960s. Because here, the play’s not the thing. It’s the details. Followers gather and watch together, then critique verities and anachronisms. That’s me, with pen and notebook. Because you don’t record this historical document on an iPad. First, the title: “Mad” comes from Madison Avenue, home to powerful advertising agencies. The industry where admen worked became known as Mad Ave., therefore the characters who worked there qualify as Mad men. Angry isn’t a synonym. I worked in Manhattan (TV public relations) during the summers of 1958-59 — similar atmosphere. Throughout the ’60s I was in and out of New York City, even had a cousin who wrote copy for a small ad agency. I wore the clothes, ate the food, did the hairstyles but never got around to smoking. Smoking is big on MM. True, men and women smoked everywhere: college students in class, patients in doctors’ offi ces, as did the doctors. Business meetings produced a blue haze. I studied the way Don Draper holds his cigarette, squeezing the butt between thumb and forefi nger for the last drag. The way Betty, his Grace-Kelly-lookalike former wife, splays her manicured fi ngers while holding the menthol fi lter tip, gives me chills. But nonstop drinking from a bar in every offi ce seems an exaggeration. Sexism was the norm. Women were pinched, pandered to, ogled at, ordered around, teased, bullied, put down and knocked up, a prequel to “women’s lib.” MM expresses other stereotypes through a black elevator operator, a

kindly housekeeper and the closeted gay “creative director.” Notice the names: Roger, Peter, Trudy, Peggy, Joan, Don, Ken; nary an Aiden, Summer or Madison. Never Emma, today’s most popular name. I remember an Emma from high school. The boys called her “Enema.” And got away with it. Costumes and set decoration are painfully accurate, from pointy cotton bras to prim secretarial suits, old-lady handbags, shirtwaist blouses, taupe hose, Cuban heels and form-fi tting sheaths. Ditto the men in starched white shirts, narrow lapels, narrower ties, Brillcremed hair, shiny wing-tips and felt hats. Spray Net ruled. You can almost smell the Old Spice. Watch the way men swagger and women mince or wiggle. Nobody walks like that anymore. What research, what coaching. Even the cinematography feels dull and fl at, mirroring prevailing technology. Sometimes, the comparisons are heavy-handed: You can’t miss dime sodas from the vending machine. Top honchos make “30” and underlings “4.” A $15 phone bill is outrageous and a Hummer-sized Xerox machine purchased to replace mimeograph is viewed as positively outer-spatial. Which begs the question: How did astronauts married to homemakers with beehives reach the moon? The most fun is sleuthing for slip-ups, which I heard were inserted, one per episode, to test viewers. I caught several, including Don Draper ending a meeting with “We’re done here.” Nobody said that in 1962. During Season 5 Don’s daughter Sally, a confused 13-year-old, comes to meet her 15-yearold boyfriend in the city, to “do it.” Unlikely. And Draper’s second wife is a French Canadian sex kitten named Meagan. Believe me, French Canadians have never named their daughters Meagan. However, Meagan’s teeth are accurately less than perfect. I’m betting the actress wore dental makeup to hide her veneers. Of course to be successful the show has to have broader appeal. I asked a groupie born in 1967 for her take-away: “It showed an era that was ostensibly buttoned-down, with things going on under the surface. Looking back, we can see a darkness leaking out from beneath the façade.” And from beneath the Merry Widows, the Madras Bermudas and Jackie K. capris. Thank heavens for Netflix and On Demand. PS Deborah Salomon is a staff writer for PineStraw and The Pilot. She may be reached at debsalomon@nc.rr.com.

Fresh fashion meets classic style at The Cupola.

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November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

LIFE OF JANE

Still Life

Or, how I learned to flush a toilet with my toes

BY JANE BORDEN

A couple of years ago, I was a real jerk. I’d

ILLUSTRATION BY MERIDITH MARTENS

sit idly while my boyfriend did everything: cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry. I wouldn’t enter a room or vehicle unless he opened the door first. He even had to tip glasses to my lips for me to drink. Sometimes I made my friends and family perform these functions too — and after all they did, I never wrote a single thank-you note. But when I say “jerk,” I don’t mean rude or selfish. I mean the other definition of “jerk.” I was a fool. My boyfriend was acting out of necessity, not chivalry. I’d contracted acute bilateral tendinitis, aka matchsticks combusting in both shoulders whenever I used my hands. Fortunately, I could flush toilets with my toes, or Nathan would’ve had to follow me in there too. After six years as a magazine editor, squeezing seven days of work into five, I’d become keyboard proficient. Unfortunately, I wasn’t keyboard correct. Eventually, my arm muscles, along with the tendons connecting them to my shoulder joints, long abused by millions of ergonomically unsound strokes, went on strike. If only we could have sat down for talks first! But, then, I probably would’ve just made them transcribe it all. I had no idea how self-sufficient I was, how much I did for myself, until suddenly I was useless. I couldn’t carry or bear weight, or apply any pressure. I

couldn’t use silverware. I subsisted on baby carrots, hummus and sliced whole wheat bread — all of which had to be procured and carried home by someone else. Once, a pal came over for the express purpose of opening my mail. The orthopedist ordered me to rest the muscles and tendons, use them as little as possible, which was like, no, duh: every time I did, tiny hillbillies lit bonfires in my rotator cuffs. So there I was, even if by accident, adhering to an archaic code of chivalry. I used to be the girl by the elevator, emphatically replying to the men, “No, no, after you.” Now I was the girl sitting across the restaurant table from the other girl, who nudged her boyfriend, saying, “You never cut my food for me!” I hated it: waiting in front of a heavy door until someone passed, obliged to ask for help. So badly, I wanted to grab the handle and pull. It’s such a small and simple action. And, after about a week of resting, I knew that I could open doors. But it would come at the cost of other actions, like brushing my teeth. The more I healed, the more motions I could perform in a day without overexerting myself. But if I exceeded my allotment, the next day’s batch would be smaller, and also full of hillbillies with torches. Since the pain was not always immediate, took time to develop, I had to guesstimate how much I could safely use my arms without setting back my recovery. I began to see tickets attached to the actions of daily life, each bearing a different number: A number 3 to cut a piece of paper, 22 to chop a tomato, and 2,009 to slice a ball with a tennis racket. But, of course, I’ve never really played tennis. At least now I have an excuse. Still, the plan was working. I focused on incremental gains, and began to heal. That is, until I re-injured myself. A doctor in Brighton Beach, whom my insurance made me see, told me to return to work full time. I did and the next day my tendinitis was worse than at first. But slowly — this time it

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

LIFE OF JANE

took about a month — I began to recover again. Until the re-re-injury: My physical therapist pushed me too hard with the elastic bands, or as I now call them, elastic assholes. Two weeks of total incapacitation grew into almost a year. Back and forth, up and down, strong and weak: My physical ability, or lack thereof, led to wild fluctuations in my mental health. My psychological well-being was solely determined by my shoulders and upper arms. When I waked without pain, I felt elated, invincible, as if I could move mountains, or, you know, a small folding chair. But when every little action roused the fireworks, I grew hopeless. And no one seemed to know what was actually wrong. The tendinitis diagnosis was clear, but the MRI showed only a small amount, nothing that could be causing the problems I experienced. “I don’t understand,” said the orthopedist, “it’s just a little tendinitis.” I started seeing other specialists: a neurologist, an allergist/immunologist, an acupuncturist, two more orthopedists. My case made sense to no one. I felt helpless, out of control — because that’s what happens when you lose agency. You’re rendered passive. And then it’s easy for inertia to keep you still. This is why women started riding bicycles! All but me, of course — too much weight bearing on the shoulders. My low point arrived with summer. It was during a time when the hillbillies had set up camp in my shoulders without sign of moving on. I woke up, put on flats because I couldn’t tie shoelaces, and then reached for the doorknob to leave. But the sudden rise in humidity had swollen the door shut. I knew that yanking it would set me back at least a day, maybe two — and that, as is the nature of doors, it would only need to be opened again. I saw a cycle without escape. I was trapped in my apartment. So I collapsed to the floor and started bawling. If I’d thought clearly, I could’ve looped a belt around the knob and yanked it with my teeth. But all I could think were Nevers: I’ll never pilot a sailboat again; I’ll never paint a room in a future home; I may as well throw away my lacrosse stick; I’ll never be able to travel alone. All of my fears vomited out of me, including the two I’d worked the hardest to ignore: I’ll never write again; I’ll never be able to carry my own child. As a teenager, I promised myself that if I were ever paralyzed, told I’d never walk again, that I’d be the case you read about in newspapers, the patient who proved everyone wrong through willpower. Yet it hadn’t taken much, just “a little tendinitis,” for me to completely give up. I was so focused on the pain, I hadn’t seen the more dangerous development: I’d totally abdicated control. I’d put my fate in the hands of doctors and therapists, when none could even pinpoint the problem. They never told me PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November 2012

LIFE OF JANE

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anything new, yet I kept making appointments. I’d shifted the power to heal me onto everyone but me. Dependence breeds despondence. So I declared: If no one knows what’s wrong, then only I can know what’s right. I mean, that Brighton Beach doctor hadn’t forced me to type; the physical therapist hadn’t held a gun next to those elastic assholes. Next, I decided that if it was going to take years for me to heal, then I’d have to forget I was injured. And in order to do that, I had to become self-sufficient. Nathan never complained about helping me — he is now my husband; I wouldn’t let a guy like that go — but I no longer wanted his help. So we found a messenger bag I could strap around my waist. I wore it to the grocery store, slid items off of shelves until they fell into the open bag, waddled up to the checkout lane, hip-flipped the bag onto the counter, rolled the items out and then let the cashier put everything back in. I memorized which doors to which entrances were push instead of pull. I discovered the amazing tool God has given us in teeth: They unscrew plastic soda-bottle caps, flip stubborn light switches, turn deadbolt locks. And, here’s a tip: If your sink fixtures are as difficult to twist as mine were, try turning on the bath faucet with your foot, and then, while it’s on, filling every glass in the apartment with water; they’ll be too heavy for you to carry, but that’s why you keep straws around. Even when the pain didn’t ease, the depression did. And once that happened, I began to forget. Slowly, I stopped thinking of myself as handicapped. A year and a half later, I’m happy to say that I no longer use my feet for any nonfoot function — except to flush toilets (you really shouldn’t touch those handles, especially not after my feet have). But I do still carry bags around my waist. I no longer think of it as a strange and onerous adjustment, though. It’s just how I live.

Somewhere along the way, I even came to terms with the fact that I probably won’t ever type again. I produced this article the way I do all of my writing (including most of my first book): with dictation software. It takes longer and the results are spotty, but, again, it’s just the way I write now. It’s just the way it is. My life doesn’t always look like it used to, but at least I’m in control of it. Which leads me to believe that I have found the key to happiness: self-sufficiency. Really, it’s so simple that a 2-year-old can tell you: “I want to do it myself.” I hear my niece say it all the time. Sometimes, it’s while I’m carrying her. PS Jane Borden is a native of Greensboro and the author of the highly acclaimed memoir I Totally Meant To Do That.

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B I R D WA T C H

Northern Harrier

The large raptors are a true sign of fall’s arrival

BY SUSAN CAMPBELL

Each year, the first sight of a Northern

harrier coursing over a wide open field is the indication that fall has truly arrived. These large raptors, also known to some as marsh hawks, migrate during daylight hours, traveling on prevailing northerly winds during August and September. They fly thousands of miles from their breeding territories in the upper Midwest and the boreal forests of Canada to large grassy habitats throughout the southern U.S. and Central America to spend the cooler months.

The long tail, long wings and white rump of a harrier are characteristic and unmistakable. Interestingly, unlike the other hawks found in the Sandhills, the sexes look quite different. Females have a dark, mottled dorsal surface that is mostly brown and a tail that is barred with brown and black bands. The face is streaked with brown as well. The somewhat smaller males have a gray head, back and upper chest. Both have white under-parts, the female being streaked with brown whereas the male sports rusty streaking. Harriers not only rely on sight but also sound to find their prey — much like owls. Therefore, the hairs on their face are stiff and create a “facial disc” which amplifies and directs sound toward the ears. Northern harriers eat mainly rodents: mice, rats and even small rabbits and squirrels. They may also pounce on small birds and ducks. In wet areas,

they have been known to drown larger prey such as ducks. Typically they fly very slowly above the ground looking and listening on outstretched wings that form a slight “v” not unlike that of a turkey vulture. These birds with their significant wingspan, therefore, require open areas to forage. Grasslands, prairies, marshes, or riparian areas are likely harrier habitat. In the Sandhills, you might see an individual over hay fields in Horse Country, over larger farm fields around Carthage, the undeveloped wet edges of Lake Surf, or at the Moore County Airport. In the winter months, Northern harriers may congregate in locations where food is abundant. In larger fields and marshlands on our Coastal Plain, a dozen or more birds can be seen floating around during the day. They will share the habitat with other hawks such as red-taileds who are also searching for small rodents or vultures that are literally sniffing out carrion. Furthermore, these same fields may have owls when the sun goes down. For instance, short-eared owls, also winter visitors who also breed farther north, hunt much the same way that harriers do. Even though our open areas are not as extensive here, more than one species of raptor may still be present. Not unlike the grasshopper sparrows and meadowlark found in open country, Northern harriers are not as common in the Sandhills as they once were. And with more and more agricultural land being lost in Moore County, they are likely to become more scarce. Seeing one of these majestic, soaring birds is a reminder: Not only do we need to protect woodlands but also grassy habitats. It has been many years since bison roamed the land, but here’s hoping that we can retain enough grasslands for these handsome winter visitors. PS Susan would love to hear from you. Send wildlife sightings and photos to susan@ncaves.com or call (910) 949-3207.

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

THE SPORTING LIFE

The Soule of a Decoy Or, how one man’s loss is another hunter’s gain

BY TOM BRYANT

ILLUSTRATION BY LINDA BRYANT

The folks on the Weather Channel were

all aglow with the idea that the front that was to roar through the Mid-Atlantic would probably blow at least half a dozen states out to sea. I’ve noticed, especially since they were sold to NBC, that their weather prognosticators spend more and more time, almost gleefully, predicting one catastrophe after another. And, when the disaster doesn’t occur, they say something like, “Well, Jen, we sure were lucky that the people in Des Moines weren’t blown over to Wichita; but they’d better get ready because that low pressure up in British Columbia will be here in a week or so, and that one’s gonna get ’em.” Meanwhile, “Cacciatore” is at the beach looking for some rain to wade in. The Weather Channel, like my old wet dog, Mackie, is beginning to smell.

I wasn’t going to be outdone, though. Thanksgiving was a few short weeks away along with early duck season, and I had a bunch of decoys to rig. Linda was at Sunset Beach for a week with her nieces so I was on my own. Let it blow. I was determined to get some work done. I backed the old Bronco out of my garage to give myself more room, set up a folding table, and began gathering the decoys off the shelves where I had placed them at the end of last season. Boy, I thought to myself, I’ve got a pile of these things to repair. In addi-

tion to several dozen of my own, I also had John Vernon’s mallards that I had brought home from our duck impoundments. Some of the deeks had holes in them from errant shots made by our group. I refuse to point fingers, but Tom Bobo, excellent shot that he is, has been known to sink a decoy every now and then. Wind was blowing pretty hard around the corner of the garage door, but no rain yet. One of the weather girls had said earlier that after this magnificent cold front, our temperature would be about ten degrees below normal. A little cool weather will be appreciated, I thought, after this smoking white-hot summer bled over into fall. I picked up an especially rough decoy and put it in the garage sink to patch with the miracle glue I keep around for beat-up fishing and hunting equipment. More and more of my stuff is beginning to look a little worn, but I’ve been able to handle it with glue or duct tape. I’m gonna have to do something about my old Barbour coat, though. The duct tape I used to patch it after our grouse hunt to Michigan doesn’t match the color. That’s an idea; wonder if they make duct tape in different colors? That’s something for me to check on later. As it began to rain, I got up to shut the side door and then made room to back the Bronco into the garage. The ancient truck had just turned thirtyfive. I’m no longer required to have her inspected, unlike myself, who needs to be looked over at least once a year. I opened the back gate on the truck to use as another table and thought back to the days when we were both a little younger. There’s a photo I have somewhere of Tommy, my son, and Paddle, my first yellow Lab puppy, sitting on the back gate. We were at the Alamance Wildlife Club fishing, and Tom caught his first big fish, a monster bream. We had it mounted and it still hangs in our sunroom. I started rolling out line to attach to the decoys. It looked like I would have just enough. My assortment of weights, though, left something to be desired. Some I had found in my tackle box, and I had intended to use them in surf fishing rigs but never had. Fortunately, our duck impoundments at Mattamuskeet are relatively shallow and really don’t require a lot of weight

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

THE SPORTING LIFE

to hold the decoys in place. In short order, I had most of Vernon’s redone, then I looked over my Greenhead brand. All of them were in good shape, so I moved on to the cork decoys that I had acquired years earlier. They are Bean decoys made by George Soule, and I found them through a classified ad that ran in the Greensboro paper back around 1977. The ad was an original and read: I have to sell all my duck hunting gear. It’s the ducks or my beloved Betsy Sue. It looked as if the fellow was in a real pickle, either the ducks or his marriage. I was fascinated by the ad and always wanted to own decoys made by the famous L.L. Bean carver, so that Saturday I rode over to Greensboro to see the unfortunate duck hunter’s decoys and also to commiserate with him about his decision to bail out of the noble sport of duck hunting. When I drove up to his house, he had all the decoys strung out in the front yard. There were an even dozen mallards, a couple of black ducks, and a dozen blue bills, drakes and hens. There was also a small johnboat painted marsh brown and some camouflaged cloth that he had used to cover the craft for an improvised blind. A decoy bag, hunting pack, hip boots and waders closed out the ensemble. The fella’s yard looked like an early version of a Herter’s store. I was in duck hunter’s heaven. I stepped out of my Bronco and headed right to the decoys. The owner of the gear met me halfway and started right in with his sales pitch. “As you can see these decoys are top of the line and have been used very little.” The guy looked at me dejectedly. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I bought them last year right at the end of the season and only put them in the water a couple of times. That was before I decided to give up duck hunting.” I noticed that the unfortunate fellow kept looking apprehensively toward his house, wringing his hands. “What do you think? I can let you have them for a steal. I need to get ’em on out o’ here.”

“Well,” I replied in my I-don’t-really-need-them voice. “I don’t know if I can swing it or not. I’m a pretty poor duck hunter, really just getting started.” And I was right. Linda, my bride, and I had been saving up for a new refrigerator; plus I had just started a newspaper in Alamance County and had very little discretionary income. Jimmy Carter was in office and times were tight. The garage door opened and a little sports car eased down the driveway. The car stopped right at the street and a pretty little blonde girl with her head wrapped in a scarf leaned over and spoke to us. ‘Why, hey there,” she said in a beautiful Southern accent. “I hope you can buy Sonny’s duck stuff. I’m sure he’ll give you a deal. Won’t you, honey pie?” She then roared off down the street. “Come on, fella,” he said to me. “Make me an offer. I’ll treat you right.” I did and he did. On the way home that afternoon with a Bronco full of decoys, I started thinking about Sonny and his wife Betsy Sue and the trouble it looked like they were having. I never found out what the problem was as I didn’t want to pry. But when I agreed to purchase the decoys, I could see relief flood his face. I stopped at a light on Wendover and looked back at my new purchase. I sure hope that Linda can see the benefit of buying these now and putting off getting the refrigerator. I mean you can buy a refrigerator anytime, but it’s not everyday you can acquire two dozen, top of the line, George Soule decoys. I noticed as the light turned green that I was wringing my hands apprehensively and perspiring freely. Just the excitement, I thought. PS Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Enjoy Responsibly

G O L F T OW N J O U R NA L

Over Hill and Dale

As Durham’s venerable and beloved daily fee course struggles to survive, memories abound

BY LEE PACE

nickname of “The Ditch” came into play on nine holes. The quintessential public golf course fit like a glove with a tournament field that included lawyers and tobacco factory the memory banks to the early workers, professors and plumbers and every species in between. ’80s in the golf world and I can The golf shop itself was another endearremember orange and yellow ing element of the Hillandale experience. balls, hard-collar Pickering Longtime pro Luke Veasey, who ran the shop for decades up to his retirement at the shirts, the advent of the metal end of 1988, had the big-box concept down wood, the hatching of the Great before anyone ever heard of Edwin Watts or GolfSmith. He earned numerous PGA White Shark and my harrowing Merchandiser of the Year awards, clubs flyswitch from a strong grip to a ing off the shelves to the tune of $1 million a year in the late 1980s. neutral one. “Hillandale was the most diverse place “A grip change like that means you need you can imagine,” says Zack Veasey (no relato hit a thousand balls before you play a tion to Luke), who worked in the golf shop as round of golf,” said Gerald Johnson, the ina teenager and later replaced Luke as director structor who used to work at Mike Rubish’s of golf and general manager in 1989. “I driving range on the outskirts of Durham. I would sell golf clubs to a doctor from Hope PGA professional Karl Kimball (right) gives a man a lesson at looked back at him a tad glassy-eyed, gulped Valley one day and to the mechanic who Hillandale Golf Course, where he serves as the Director of Golf. and went back to hitting balls. fixed his Mercedes the next.” It was a special time also because late June The Herald-Sun tournament was held over the Fourth of July week, when the meant another revival of the Herald-Sun Golf Classic. tobacco companies in Durham shut down for vacation. The field of 224 golfers I was a neophyte sports writer on the staff of the Durham Morning Herald, filled up instantly on the spring morning when the newspaper business office before its merger later in the decade with the afternoon Sun. One of my beats began taking entries for that year’s championship. The competition cranked up was local golf. I had taken up golf only a few years earlier, during my senior year with two rounds of qualifying stroke play and then evolved into five rounds of in Chapel Hill, and the more I played the game, the more I wanted to write flighted match play. about it. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to play. The Herald-Sun helped Throughout the week, locals would park their cars on Sprunt, Bellevue, flame both interests. Indian Trail and Hillandale roads and find nearby shade and watch the golfers The Herald-Sun tournament was inaugurated in 1940 as a promotion for the come through. Sunday’s championship matches might draw galleries upward newspapers and over the years crowned champions the likes of Skip and Chuck of a thousand spectators. It was a place to see and be seen. “I’m going to drink Alexander, Mike Souchak and Jim Ferree. It was played two years at Hope me a cold beer and watch the feminine pulchritude,” the bearded mailman Pete Valley Country Club and six at Duke University Golf Club, but for the most Peterson said one year after losing in an early round. Despite a college degree, part had settled on Hillandale, a daily-fee course just west of downtown that I didn’t know what “pulchritude” meant. I made sure to look it up back at the provided the perfect venue. office. I agreed it was a fine idea. The course has been around in some fashion since 1911 and was named by The competition was taken seriously by the competitors. One college-age golffounder John Sprunt Hill for the ebb and flow of the land over hill and dale, er who worshipped Ben Hogan wore a white-on-white outfit every day, including but its current configuration was completed by architect George Cobb in 1961. a Hogan cap and long pants in the 90-degree heat. The newspaper staff brought It was short (6,300 yards from the back tees) but demanded accuracy on several its “A game” as well. I once took umbrage at the editing of my story on a controfronts. The greens were small, and a series of roads enveloped the course, proversial match and faced off with the offending staff mate the next day at the golf viding widespread O.B. panic. An ever-present creek precipitating the course’s

PHOTOGRAPH BY CASSIE BUTLER

Flick through

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

G O L F T OW N J O U R NA L

course, whereupon he threatened to whip my ass then and there. A competitor in the Championship Flight overheard the exchange and played peacemaker before anyone’s eyes were scratched out. I played in two Herald-Suns while covering the tournament in the early 1980s, with one of the experiences still etched in the horror lobe of my brain. When I think of wrecking my dad’s car at the age of 16, of making a “D” in freshman algebra in high school, I think also of losing a four-up lead at the turn in the 1982 Herald-Sun. That was the year I shanked a pitching wedge across Sprunt Avenue on the 12th hole in the first round. My hands promptly turned to iron and my brains to Jello, and I was mercifully closed out on the 17th hole after losing six holes in a row — this to a burger jockey from Roxboro who had a swing with a thousand and one moving parts. It’s against this backdrop I have watched with dismay the news stories over the last year of the potential demise of Hillandale as a viable concern in the public and daily-fee golf realm. The course and its business operations have been hurt by the proliferation of the golf mega-stores and by the Great Recession of 2008. It’s also struggled under a cumbersome business structure that combined a nonprofit foundation, the Hillandale Trust, owning the golf course and a company run by Zack Veasey controlling the golf shop operation. The foundation took receipts from green fees and paid for labor, course maintenance and capital improvements; Veasey’s company made profits from the golf shop, driving range food and beverage and lessons. The arrangement worked in good times — such as those in early 2007, when Karl Kimball joined the golf staff to take over many responsibilities from Veasey, so that Veasey could spend more time on his interests in Global Golf USA, an Internet golf retail operation headquartered in Raleigh. “Back in the day when you were taking money to the bank in a wheel barrow, you didn’t think long range,” Kimball says. “What happens if the economy is hit? What happens if you roll back prices? The foundation was out of money to maintain the golf course. The structure for the entire operation was simply not working. “The retail side had been struggling, sales sliding some every year. Before ’08, there had been economic pressure from the big-box stores. Everyone seemed to think the big-box stores were the better way to go. When I got here, we had a retail inventory of $350,000. Those invoices have to be paid every month, whether you’re moving the product or not.” By the fall of 2011, SunTrust Bank, the trustee for the foundation, could no longer afford to operate the golf course. It considered giving the land back to the city of Durham and let it operate it as a park. Closing was scheduled for October 31, 2011. Fortunately, a serendipitous meeting of Kimball and a Brazilian grocery store magnate provided the spark that has kept the golf course open.

Fun doesn’t stop after retirement. Why should you?

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

G O L F T OW N J O U R NA L

Juliano Hannud brought his 8-year-old son Henrique to Duke Children’s Hospital in the winter of 2008 from their home in Sao Paulo for treatment of leukemia. Juliano wasn’t an avid golfer himself but was familiar with the game and thought it would be therapeutic for his son, particularly given that doctors had restricted the boy’s access to restaurants, movie theaters, malls and other places where people congregate in tight spaces. They soon became fixtures at the course — the father alone for a nine-hole break from tending to his child at the hospital, or the two of them together in a golf cart. The Hillandale staff gave Henrique his first set of clubs. “Golf has many wonderful qualities, and one is that it’s very good for sick children,” Kimball says. “Juliano would park his cart 30 yards away and

leasing it to Kimball and Hannud. The new partners took over management in November 2011 and closed the course down in the summer of 2012. They have put a half million dollars into capital improvements, including rebuilding all the greens and planting them with Champion Dwarf Bermuda. Several tees have been rebuilt and five greens were reshaped, and new maintenance equipment was acquired. “Juliano’s interest in Hillandale is strictly to make sure it’s here for patients and family of the hospital to use it,” Kimball says. “My job is to make it successful.” Today Hillandale is what it always was — a haven for golfers of all ages, abilities, creeds and pocketbooks to enjoy golf. You can walk and lug your bag

for $20 on a weekday. And Kimball and his staff have open arms and free golf clubs to the infirmed youngsters from up the road at Duke’s sprawling medical center. On Wednesday nights the staff and facility entertains patients and their families with refreshments, golf and games. Rounding out the good news is that the Herald-Sun continues, now completely under the auspices of Hillandale Golf Course and is scheduled for June of 2013. Count me in. I have some fond memories to relive and one major demon to exorcize. PS Lee Pace’s new book, The Golden Age of Pinehurst, is available in bookstores and at the golf shop at Pinehurst Country Club.

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Shopping hours: Tues-Fri 10 am-4 pm Sat 9 am-12 pm

The Coalition Resale Shops 1117 W. Pennsylvania Avenue, Southern Pines

Golf Course Superintendent Barry Tucker hangs mile markers indicating the places closest to Hillandale’s heart, which includes Duke Children’s Hospital, where it gives charitably. make Henrique walk to the cart. Sometimes he would drive off and wait for the boy to catch up. Golf built up his strength, it got him out into the fresh air.” Henrique was released from the hospital after three bone marrow replacements — “By any measure, he’s considered a miracle by the staff at Duke,” Kimball says — but he and his father returned to Durham periodically for follow-up treatments. They visited Hillandale each trip. In due course, Hannud learned of Hillandale’s financial distress. Soon he and Kimball hatched a plan to create a new company, Amerazil Golf, that would become the new operator of the golf course and pro shop. The Hillandale Trust donated the property to the city of Durham, which in turn is PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November 2012

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November 2012 Thanksgiving Pantoum We avoided some tragedies simply through repetition without end; And to the youngest of us, with no apparent meaning. Oh, there was rain and, sometimes, it was cold. Simply through repetition, we refilled our plates. No need for the exotic. Oh, there was rain and sometimes cold — even the oldest have forgotten the particulars. We refilled our plates, no need for the exotic: there were the usual dishes, the usual indulgences — even the oldest have forgotten the particulars. Across the state, our family was our guide. There were the usual dishes, the usual indulgences — thank God we were never poisoned. Our family was our guide — and if we disappointed, they kept it to themselves. Thank God we were never poisoned: it was only the day, the moment, that consumed us; and if we were disappointed, we kept it to ourselves — trusted in the oldest to tell our story. It was only the day, the moment that consumed us: we gathered at card tables; the oysters steamed; who could be poor with the oldest telling stories? Mock-heroics & proclamations filling our bellies like knots of bread — we gathered at picnic tables; the oysters steamed; who could be poor? Winter passed, slowly pushed by late November — mock-heroics & proclamations filled our bellies like knots of bread. School started, summer came, our babies had babies of their own. And winter passed, slowly pushed by late November — sometimes we survived simply through repetition: summer ended, school started, our babies had babies of their own . . .To be sure, we were flawed, despite our virtues. We survive simply through repetition because somewhere, beyond our imagination, we will not be together. To be sure, we are flawed, despite our virtues; but it’s only by chance that we’re together to start with — and there’s no market for that. It’s impossible to value.

– terry KenneDy

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In Flanders Fields

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

The Art o f

r e a l

l i v i n g

The down to Earth classicism of Sandhills painter Paul Brown By Deborah Salomon

Photographs by L aura Gingerich

he nude woman reclining against classic drapery folds has a contemporary face, hair, proportions. She could be Angelina Jolie preparing for a friends lingerie ad. Yet the rendering suggests a mode developed by Renaissance masters newly versed in anatomy, who stretched canvas on wood and hand-mixed natural pigments. She is gorgeous, lush, cool yet hot. She belongs in Florence, framed in gilt. What’s going on here? A priceless 16th century drawing? An outtake from a time traveler’s trove? The painting is signed P(aul) Brown, not Paolo di Bruni. Paul, a quietly intense, boyish 45-year-old, wears a John Deere cap, Luella’s Barbecue (of Asheville) T-shirt, rumpled shorts and no shoes — not cape, doublet and the signature Medici headgear. Paul is a classical realist painter, imbued by Southern Pines classicist Jeffrey Mims, educated at the North Carolina School of the Arts, honed in Italy, practiced in London and recently returned to a pond-side ranch house in Whispering Pines where he paints wine, cheese, pheasants and tobacco fields. PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November 2012

Romanée Conti

“My education was based on the 19th century French academies,” Maddie’s Apples

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Château d’Yquem 1983 “My education was based on the 19th century French academies,” Paul says, citing William-Adolphe Bouguereau, best known for an ever-so-much-more-sensual — thanBotticelli’s Birth of Venus. Abstract — or “modern” — art is a non-starter. “No interest. I don’t need it. I had it in my blood to draw things as they were,” Paul states. “Paul has a talent that’s all his own,” comments Judy Broadhurst, of Broadhurst Art Gallery in Pinehurst, where the artist sold his first painting. “I’ve admired him from the beginning for his materials and his seriousness.” This talent produces portraits with the quality of an enhanced photo, a term Paul accepts. His still lifes approach trompe l’oeil. Whatever the label, viewers cannot tear their eyes away or refrain from touching. “Paul is an incredible draftsman whether figures, still life or landscapes . . . but he’s not just a copyist,” says Kamille Corry, of Salt Lake City, Utah, an artist who studied with Paul under Mims and in Florence. “Classical training teaches you how to draw from nature but also to understand what you’re looking at.”

During the golden age of European art, painters like Michelangelo, Titian and daVinci

worked under the patronage system. Gifted young men apprenticed to and subsequently collaborated with the masters — not likely in Moore County, in the 1970s. Yet it happened. Paul, a minister’s son, grew up in the Farm Life area of Carthage. His family encouraged an education enriched by the arts. “When I was 11 I quit the violin and kept the agreement with my mother with something else.” Drawing came naturally. “We knew Paul had a special talent as soon as he held a pencil,” his mother, Carol Brown, recalls. She dabbled in painting: “He would watch me.” But, his mother continues, Paul was an ordinary little boy who occasionally got into trouble at school — for drawing during class.

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

In his food portraits Paul achieves more dimension and tactility than a camera lens.

Ch창teau Lafite-Rothschild PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November 2012

Brown’s loving portrait of wife Serena, a researcher at the BBC. Paul’s first art teacher was a Mrs. Hutchins on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Browns knew the Mims family from church. Jeffrey Mims taught in a carriage house at Weymouth. Instruction was arranged. “I walked into a strange world, the rarified air of an artist’s studio with cloudy apple juice and digestive biscuits,” Paul recalls. Mims began lessons by breaking down a cartoon of Mickey Mouse into circles and sausages. He transferred these geometric forms to the drawings of Michelangelo. Mims’ methods of reproducing classical statues on canvas were uncommon at that time. “Schools put their antique casts away,” Paul says. “Twentieth century teachers had to study secretly, go against the tide.” At 16 Paul was accepted at the N.C. School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, where he studied drawing and sculpture. Then, boarding school in Tennessee and Methodist University in Fayetteville. “I ran into Jeffrey (Mims) again. He said come by the studio.” Mims was working on four 6-by-8 foot murals depicting healing scenes from the Bible. Paul did the borders and stayed on as an apprentice. “I got itchy feet,” he recalls. “It was too soon to settle down. My education wasn’t done.”

Paul was drawn to Italy the way country singers are drawn to Nashville. In the

mother country, beginning in 1988, he studied (and cleaned studios to earn tuition) for

“I walked into a strange world, the rarified air of an artist’s studio with cloudy apple juice and digestive biscuits,”

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Paul Brown by Paul Brown. four years at the Florence Academy of Art, operated by Americans Charles Cecil and Daniel Graves. Afterward Paul returned to Southern Pines, where he established a Broad Street studio and hooked up with a portrait agency. In spare moments he painted downtown skateboarders “with their grunge and goatees.” When the itch returned, Paul considered arts-oriented cities in the U.S., like Boston and Sante Fe. “I wasn’t ready for New York.” Europe appreciated classical realism and England, which he calls a stopping ground for people leaving the Italian school, offered a lucrative portraiture market. “Portraits are a novelty here. In England, people have portraits of ancestors all over the walls.” Paul moved to London in 1994. Skillful, successful, often exhibited and in great demand, he still considered commissioned portrait work “a little bit of a compromise to get the time and money for other things.” Things like still life paintings resembling Dutch/Flemish school realism more than dreamy Cezanne fruit bowls. “This reflects the part of society I like. I am transfixed by being just back from a day out hunting with a brace of pheasants or partridges. Onions are awesome, their translucency, their opaqueness, their paper-thin skin. You think about supper, open the wine and take the cheese out to soften — a wonderful kind of peace and enjoyment of what’s to come.” Paul buys only French brie, which softens to near-melting as no American counterpart, then pairs the gooey cheese with powdery grapes for

textural contrast. In his food portraits Paul achieves more dimension and tactility than a camera lens.

After more than a decade in England, critical acclaim and shows in a dozen countries where his paintings sold for up to $80,000, in 2011 Paul shut down the London studio and brought his British wife, Serena, back to North Carolina. This is home, he says. “I can forget about wearing fleece, see my parents more. I hadn’t had Silver Queen corn in years, or fished for bass in the pond. I missed Pik N Pig and the airplanes. When I see peaches at the farmers market I want to paint them, not eat them.” The past year signaled transition. Paul has produced a number of paintings for a one-man show opening in London with a champagne vernissage. Some paintings will be non-classical and quasi-realistic: landscapes done en plein air around Moore County farms, forests, streams and Pinehurst No.2. This group looks daringly impressionist, as in tobacco fields and a fast-approaching thunderstorm over the Pik N Pig. The artist obviously felt a sense of urgency to complete the image before the rain blew in. Tobacco, he postulates, must be immortalized before North Carolina’s signature crop is gone forever. His florals speak with a dreamy Monet accent.

The Artist’s Studio: Let There Be the Right Light

Surely these paintings of wine, cheese, fruit, game originated in Bruges, Amsterdam or a Paris atelier. Try the faded mansion of buggy factory tycoon Thomas Tyson in downtown Carthage. A hibachi grill and social service agency occupy the main floor. Up the graceful staircase, in high-ceilinged chambers with heat and AC turned off, classical realist Paul Brown produces paintings that sell for five figures. “It’s so hot in the summer I can’t stand it,” Paul’s mother, Carol Brown, says. In the winter the artist wears fingerless gloves and a scarf. Paul’s London studio had all the amenities, including electronics and sleeping space. “This is all I need,” he explains. “I love the quiet, the isolation.” He points to a tall window, covered at the bottom. “See how gorgeous the light is?” Paul doesn’t look the classical painter part. He works in a T-shirt and baseball cap. Sometimes, he turns the dial on his transistor radio to talk shows. Or hillbilly tunes. Or punk rock. His easel stands level with a shelf where brie de Meaux oozes in the heat. “I have to buy French cheese. American doesn’t soften properly,” Paul says. The game birds must be real. He paints peppers, fly rods, garlic, corkscrews, baseball gloves, all illuminated by the strong, clear, constant northern light which drew him to this unlikely place. “I tried working at home (Whispering Pines) but I needed space to walk back and forth. I work standing. If you sit, you don’t see everything.” More astounding than the photo realism of the finished product are his materials. In Italy Paul learned how canvas is made from raw linen. “I’m appalled to see a twenty grand painting on cotton.” Paul pulverizes natural pigments, which are then mixed with linseed oil — no wax, chalk or extenders. He tubes leftovers. “The pigments are just dirt — French dirt, Italian dirt, Dutch dirt and red clay from North Carolina.” Hand-mixed oil paint on a linen canvas approximates hues and textures employed by the Great Masters. He calls the process Slow Art, after the Slow Food movement, which promotes traditional regional foods from the local ecosystem. Other local inspiration comes from Fred’s discount store, across the street. “They have a whole aisle of canning jars. I grew things in England — okra, peppers. This reminds me I have to do some canning.” A still life of Mason jars filled with pickled okra? Stay tuned. — Deborah Salomon

Brown mixes paints from natural pigment powders, as did Europeans centuries ago.

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Onions are awesome, their translucency, their opaqueness, their paper-thin skin.

Wedgwood Onions

Lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Anello

Summer Fruits

Punnet of Peaches

“Classical training teaches you how to draw from nature but also to understand what you’re looking at.” 68

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Tobacco Field “I remember Paul always talking about how your eyes see color,” as used by the impressionist school, Kamille Corry says. “Paul has done a fantastic job with the genre of classical realism,” Judy Broadhurst says. “Now I’d like to see more examples of his moving into landscapes.” Paul Brown has created a singular niche: iconoclast in baseball cap; non-starving artist who paints to sell; lauded classicist who doesn’t romanticize his profession or bestow elaborate titles on his paintings (but dates them with Roman numerals); a hometown boy with a British edge to his drawl. He calls himself first a craftsman. “I’ll leave the ‘artist’ to others,’” Paul says. “Yes, I have an ego but I keep it in check. “This is my job; I work 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. I found what I needed in Europe to make my living and, thank God, I do.” PS

Back in North Carolina Brown paints tobacco fields, peaches and Pinehurst No. 2. PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November 2012

The inn That feels like Home

The beloved Pine Crest Inn celebrates its 100th year

By Jim DoDSon

ot too long ago, I stopped by the venerable Pine Crest Inn to check up on Marmaduke the cat, the friendly orange feline who calls the famous porch of the Pine Crest home. The “Duke,” as I call him, was busy visiting with other Pine Crest patrons so I merely took a seat in one of its comfortable white chairs and waited my turn with an adult beverage on a golden October afternoon. There are few places I would rather sit and wait on a friendly hotel cat, the third of which, in fact, I’ve known in a long acquaintance with the most famous and quirky little golf hotel on the planet. A beloved eccentricity defines the private rooms and public spaces of Pinehurst’s most sociable landmark, which may explain why generations of golfaddicted travelers ranging from Arnold and Winnie Palmer to college golf teams have made the place ground zero for golf in the Sandhills. Anchoring a shady crook of Dogwood Road in the heart of the self-described “Home of Golf in America” since the day it opened for business November 1, 1913, the inn’s simple unfussy bedrooms feel as if they might have been designed by

November 2012 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

leFt toP: PhotograPh by Cassie butler, historiCal PhotograPhs FroM the tuFFts arChiVes

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Photographs by Cassie Butler

...belly up to a bar that has been the spiritual second home to a Who’s Who of golfwriting royalty – the likes of Henry Longhurst, Charlie Bartlett to the late great Charles Price.

your grandmother — or at least with her comfort in mind. Chenille bedspreads, comfy reading chairs, slightly threadbare and utterly comforting, make any visitor feel at home. Its tidy dining room is justly famous for sweetly bossy waitresses who insist you finish your oatmeal before a morning of winter golf, and a kitchen staff that can do magic with any evening dish — e.g., a signature pork chop.

tand in the lobby on any given Friday or Saturday night and you’re standing at one of the golf world’s true crossroads, or at least major stomping grounds, a gathering spot where some guests will be trying their luck at the fabled “Chipping Game” in the foyer fireplace and others will be bellying up to a bar that has been the spiritual second home to a Who’s Who of golf-writing royalty — the likes of Henry Longhurst, and Charlie Bartlett to the late great Charles Price. Their convivial ghosts announce themselves in the raucous storytelling that circulates golf’s most popular watering hole — or it could well be the buzz of patrons and locals who claim the rockers and chairs of the ‘Crest’s famous white porch on virtually any weekend night to swap fairway tales and assorted lies. The joint pours something like 45,000 cocktails a year, a number that would probably boggle (and please) its former owner Ross, a devoted teetotaler but bottom-line kind of Scot. Though I first visited the Pine Crest back in my college days — a place long beloved by my parents, almost since the days Donald PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November 2012

Photographs by Cassie Butler

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Ross owned the place — my symbiotic love affair with the inn began with my first book, Final Rounds, which I wrote holed up in a room beneath the eaves, and finally edited in the spring of 1996. The book was a surprise bestseller, prompting me — unwilling to buck tradition or tempt the fates — to follow exactly the same routine with at least three more books that followed.

all me a literary traditionalist. Or just a rabid fan of the charms of the homely Pine Crest. Whatever the case, in a world that’s constantly under assault from forces of change, the impression that time itself is blessedly held in abeyance at the Pine Crest, happy hostage to truely a kinder and gentler way of life — from the friendly orange cat out front to the relish tray on your dining table — is precisely the kind of thing that brings devoted patrons back season after season. The Barrett family, which purchased the beloved inn in 1961 and has faithfully maintained this gem of an inn with unwavering simplicity and impeccable fidelity, is fittingly still running the show here on the cusp of the inn’s big centennial year of life — commencing this month with a party on November 1. We at PineStraw would simply like to add our voices — and a few choice birthday images — to say thank you to the Barretts and their incomparable inn for being — in a word — such grand guardians of the finest little golf hotel in the land. Ladies and gentleman, a toast. PS

Photographs By Cassie Butler

Dr. Theresa Beachler collects a blood sample for testing.

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

good Horse Sense

At the NC State equine Health Center, a state-of-the-art veterinary teaching hospital, high technology meets hands-on love of horses Dr. Scott Bailey

By nicole White

PhotograPh by JohN gessNer

rom US 1, the NC State Equine Health Center (EHC) seems serene — even quiet. I check in at the front office and go around the corner to meet veterinarian Scott Bailey, and all notions of peaceful pasture animals go out the big bay open doors. Within the hustle and bustle of a large exam room two horses stand in their confines — tails wrapped and tied to the side. Both veterinarians and their students move with purpose around the room examining the mares in preparation for insemination. Computers and medical instruments span one wall while, opposite, a much-frequented steel door leads into the laboratory. The still summer air is pierced by a fiercely eager trumpet call out of a nearby stall. A “whinny” is hardly an adequate description. It seems this stallion knows what all the activity is for. Dr. Bailey grins at me: “Have you ever seen a stallion collected before?” Today, Notorious Playboy, an American Paint stallion owned by a private client in Hoke County, is the object of the staff’s attention. She’s Off Limits, owned by Libby Staples of Southern Pines, is patiently waiting in the open bay. The aptly named mare will never even meet the stallion; they won’t touch, but if all goes as planned she will bear his foal in the spring. It takes three people, all wearing helmets, to complete the collection process. (Dr. Bailey informs me that head trauma is the most frequent injury sustained around stallions.) One of the stallion’s handlers is a clinical technician, down for a theriogenology (or reproduction) rotation from NC State’s College of Veterinary Medicine Raleigh campus. She, along with Dr. Bailey, has gone to the prestigious New Bolton Center in Pennsylvania for

specific stallion-handling training. Other students are watching, studying how stallion collection is handled or continuing to prep the mare that stays confined out of site. Dr. Bailey briefs me quickly. “This particular stallion is actually used to live cover,” he explains, referring to the natural reproductive process. “But artificial insemination is often more effective and is much safer — there is less risk of injury to the stallion by a kicking mare or to the mare who can get her neck and flanks bit or raked by the stallion’s hoofs.” A “teaser” mare, who is also in heat, is brought close to the collection shelter, which houses a large mounting form, called a phantom. Notorious Playboy likes this new girl. Not unlike some humans, this stallion wants a mare he hasn’t seen before. The mare used during his last collection was brought out and promptly ignored, but this pretty new thing has Notorious Playboy throwing his head, trumpeting and trembling all over. The mare’s handler is also helmeted, but the horse is calm and eyes the stallion with some tacit aloofness. When he goes to mount her, she is pulled aside and he uses the huge Saran-wrapped, blanket-covered barrel-like form that is raised up on a 45-degree angle. Notorious Playboy doesn’t seem to care or notice the difference. The mare rolls her eyes with a disdainful “as if!” And I almost start humming MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This.” It is all over fairly quickly and the mare stands by, swishing her tail as if bored. Notorious Playboy looks spent and is led calmly away. The semen collected measures nearly 40 ml, approximately 10 billion sperm. About half will prove to be viable and be enough to impregnate five mares. Notorious Playboy progeny seem a sure thing. The NC State Equine Health Center, a satellite facility of the university’s

College of Veterinary Medicine, was originally created as an equine emergency center for the large population of pleasure and sport horses located in the Sandhills. In the mid 1970s, Southern Pines horse enthusiasts raised $300,000 through hunter/jumper shows with a matching donation from Raymond Firestone. Brick for the buildings came from a Sanford brick plant, and the eighty-three acres that make up the facility were donated by Mr. and Mrs. W.O. [Ginnie and Pappy] Moss, who also deeded the adjacent 4,000-acre Walthour-Moss Foundation. When the University of North Carolina system created the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine in 1981, the facility was turned over for the creation of a state-of-the-art veterinary teaching hospital that would also be an outstanding equine medical center. In the last decade that dream has grown dramatically, with 2011 and 2012 marking the most significant growth yet seen by the facility. After being tapped by the dean of the college in 1992 to fill the position of medical director for the fledgling facility, Dr. Lloyd P. “Jock” Tate immediately got to work updating the medical equipment, introducing research projects, creating space for additional services, and responding to the region’s increased interest in a quarantine location. Now, the full service Equine Health Center offers Equine Breeding or “Therio Service,” ophthalmology, diagnostic testing services and is the only USDA-certified contagious equine metritis (CEM) quarantine site in the state and one of a small number along the Eastern Seaboard. This latter service combined with the reproductive services make up the majority of the Equine Health Center’s caseload. With six physicians rotating every two weeks from NC State’s main campus, half a dozen students at any time, two “house officers” and an intern,

not to mention the twenty-five University-owned horses and ponies that stay on the grounds, the facility is a bustling place. Coupled with the training and competition facilities of the Carolina Horse Park and the Pinehurst Harness Track, as well as the vast expanses of the neighboring WalthourMoss Foundation, the medical capabilities of the Equine Health Center and the larger campus at NC State all aid in making the Sandhills one of the most popular horse communities on the East Coast. “The Equine Center’s three theriogonologists have a combined forty years of experience in this specialized area of reproductive medicine — a wealth of expertise unique in the state of North Carolina,” says Scott Bailey, DVM. “We are a cutting edge facility that can cater to very specific needs of the patient and client.” Although there is an ever-increasing utilization by local equestrians and a much greater understanding by the public of what the facility can offer, Dr. Bailey would like to see the community take even more advantage of the learning opportunity it provides. “I would love to see this facility be used even more for educating the public,” Bailey says. As it is, at least once a year continuing education classes and open houses are offered to the public. “My goal is to be a teacher to everyone,” says Bailey, who loves teaching in the university setting, but misses mentoring clients like he did in his private practice. He is not able to reminisce for long, though. Back in the exam room, Dr. Bailey is already working on another mare, reviewing what he sees on the ultrasound with two students. Though a typical week would see one or two stallions collected, this particular Friday he will collect three in just one day. A fourth year vet student has her arm up to the shoulder in one mare’s rectum. She is “palpating” the uterine body to feel for follicles on the ovaries that hold

Medical laboratory technician Pam Wilser tests for Equine Infectious Anemia, more commonly known as the Coggins test.

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

the all-important eggs. She looks down at the ultrasound in front of her, reaching even farther in. She tells me the uterus is shaped like a Y and that the bifurcation is the tell-tale spot that helps her find her way. She feels the cervix, which is the entrance to the uterus and, when the mare is in heat, is much softer than normal. “It feels like a bunch of soft paper towels,” she says. Meanwhile, in the adjacent lab, Dr. Mohamadou Diaw is studying a sample of the sperm collected from Notorious Playboy through a microscope. The collection process has moved quickly and efficiently into a sterile environment to minimize contact with potential spermicide. Dr. Diaw is judging motility — one of the few ways to measure how fertile the sperm sample is. Both progressive motility and sperm concentration will indicate just how strong a sample Mr. Playboy gave. Tammy Stewart, program administrator at the Equine Health Center, has been at the facility for over two decades and seen it evolve into a main component of the community. “In the early 1990s little was known about this facility by this community,” she says. “That has greatly changed since the university has opened the doors and services to the local veterinarians and general public.” Previously supported in its entirety by state allocated funds, the facility now generates enough of its own revenue to substantially help cover operating costs. At its core, however, it remains focused on being a teaching hospital. That focus is paramount to director Tate’s vision for the future. “The cycle hasn’t been completed, but we have raised more than $100,000 for a new surgery room to be named after the late Southern Pines horseman, Dave Kelly,” Tate says. “Looking forward, our vision is that we would have the facility to conduct day-time surgeries for locals with followup care to be provided by local veterinarians.” The College of Veterinary Medicine, which ranks third among the nation’s twenty-eight veterinary programs by U.S. News and World Report, graduated seventy-six students this past spring. The class of 2016 will grow to one hundred — the first class of that size in CVM’s thirty-one-year history. For each of those students, the Southern Pines satellite facility rotations and hands-on learning environment will be vital to their education. “The Equine Health Center brings students in contact with the horsemen and experts of this area,” says Tate. “This community is the ideal mix for a dynamic educational forum.” It is a mix that promises even greater things for the future of the Equine Health Center as decades of experience merge with state-of-the-art innovation and a plethora of eager young minds. PS Nicole White is a frequent contributor to PineStraw. Kevin McDonnell, animal caretaker and maintenance supervisor, feeds the University-owned horses and ponies at daybreak. PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November 2012

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Equestrian

Full Cry

Main house at Full Cry Farm melts into the landscape. Entrance announces the Russell’s vocation and pleasure

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Farm

Hunt No Further for the Complete Equestrian Environment

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs By John Gessner

f ever a homestead told a life story, Full Cry Farm is it. Correction: Life stories, because Irene and Mike Russell have lived several. His life may have followed the bridle path but hers veers off into pottery, nursing, mega-entertaining and running 90 marathons. They raised two children in a 1,100-square-foot apartment over the horse barn, then built a house so organically hued the beechwood clapboards fade into the pine forest; then a guest house for Mike’s mother; then a studio for Irene. Inside, if every horse, hound and fox in paintings and photographs, on figurines and fabrics, dishes and books, lamps and cushions raised a voice, the cacophony would be heard the length of Young’s Road. Mike, a laid-back Joint Master for the Moore County Hounds, runs Full Cry Farm — a boarding, training and sales facility. Irene, possessing more

In living room built-ins, a family collection of cutglass, hound photos by Caroline Young, Fox paintings by Claudia Coleman and hound drawing by Susan Newell. 84 November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

19th century oversees desk from Virginia and British chest beneath portrait of Pappy Moss by Newton Mayo — a gift from 86 November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills Moss family to Mike Russell.

Pappy Moss, by Newton Mayo.

Desk made on family plantation in Virginia.

horsepower than a Corvette, curates their treasure house where two weddings, two christenings and a funeral have taken place. “She’s like a shotgun that goes off,” Mike says. Irene flits from room to room, providing provenance. “Pappy Moss made this (kitchen) table,” a massive seven-footer. “He made a dozen of them in the fifties at Mile-Away Farm.” Moss, the legend of Moore County Hounds and the Walthour-Moss Foundation, delivered the table to someone’s house for a party but never retrieved it. Years later, Irene purchased the icon on which she makes 1,000 sausage balls for another legend: the Russells’ annual Thanksgiving Day brunch — 28 years and counting — following the Blessing of the Hounds at Hobby Field. Later in the day Irene serves Thanksgiving dinner to a few dozen relatives. Once, she had the dinner catered. Nothing doing, the family indicated. “It had to be the exact same meal my grandmother cooked.” Which reminds her: “That desk is from my grandmother’s plantation in Virginia.”

Fox, covered in moss, and bowls by Russell.

hoa for the backstory. Irene grew up in Virginia, riding. Mike grew up outside Chicago; he was riding polo ponies by his early teens and later accompanied show horses to Southern Pines. They met here. “Our first date was at the Hunt Ball, in 1970,” Irene says. The newly married couple wanted horses but couldn’t afford $5,000 an acre for land closer to town. Instead, they purchased a 27-acre parcel for $1,000 an acre, from Albert Priest in the district once known as Hog Island, settled by Highland Scots. “We were so far out that our son told people we lived in Egypt,” Irene says. Mike spreads out a collection of Native American arrowheads found in the field. “That gave us a sense that we’re not the first people here,” he says. Some arrowheads are other than native stone, suggesting that mountain tribes passed through this corridor on their journey to the sea.

Table by Pappy Moss, soffit pottery by Irene Russell. Full Cry Farm has grown to 40 acres, 14 horses, a passel of Corgis and a litter of fox hound puppies Irene will foster until training age.

A Hunt themes dominate dining room decor, down to China, cutlery and linens.

fter 25 years above the barn, in 1996 the Russells opted for a real house three times the size of their hunt box. Its architecture is contemporary cabin, with a wide front porch, side deck, tall windows, and steeply pitched roof punctuated with skylights. Surrounded by ancient 60-foot longleafs, the house appears small from the outside. Open the front door and all bets are off. Irene didn’t just want a foyer, she wanted an entrance parlor with fireplace and comfortable chairs where they could sit and read. Over the fireplace, setting the tone, hangs — what else? — a hunt scene. On the mantel, another harbinger: pottery pots, from Irene’s kiln. Beside this surprise fireplace stands the hobby horse their son Barron found in a barn stall many Christmas morns ago. “I like the look, when you first come in,” Irene says. The living room, off to the left, dwarfs its upholstered pieces. The challenge is to find an eyeful not populated by pottery or hunt images, or a combination. Perhaps over the sofa, where bright pastel floral abstracts by Mary Page Evans, Irene’s sister, look like city girls at a corral. But Evans is family, another component of the Russells’ décor enriched by handme-down heirloom carpets and cabinets with original wavy glass doors. The dining room table, is draped in hunt-embroidered linens and matching

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

Antique Hunting prints — from England — hunt PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . linens November 2012 89 from an auction.

Free form pottery, bisque and Murphy, one of three Russell corgis.

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

The Russell’s barn, built in 1970, with apartment above where they raised two children. dishes. Silver goblets on the sideboard rest on fox-head bases which echo taxidermies belonging to the Moss and Boyd families. Wood paneling stained a gray-green similar to exterior clapboards draws the outdoors in. Mike can see his persimmon tree. Deer come to the door. Otherwise, Irene chose a palette that flows from one neutral to another. She prefers muted Earth shades over bright primaries in her furnishings and firings. The hickory kitchen is, above all, functional, reminiscent of a hunting lodge. Wood surfaces rule. The soffit shelf groans with pottery, as do free-standing dish cupboards. Freezer and pantries are already stocked with ingredients for Irene’s sausage balls and famous rum cakes, about forty, consumed at the November brunch. In fact, Full Cry Farm seems conceived for November with hunt folk gathered around the season’s first fires.

Irene’s moveable kiln, heats to 2,300 degrees.

queezed between kitchen and screened porch is the master suite, with an outlet to the foyer. In it, a massive-but-Shaker-plain four-poster stands guard over more hounds, more horses and more archival family photos. Their bathtub affords a view; Irene relegated her mother’s linen chest to the bathroom because she “hated” it. Mike and Irene put their bedroom on the main floor near the kitchen, porch and rear exit with an eye to the future. No steps. “Remember, I was an orthopedic nurse,” Irene says. In the center of this circular floor plan is the stairway to guest quarters filled with memorabilia of a different ilk, from a Woodstock poster to a mini-Noah’s ark with animals, a schoolmaster’s desk, rabbits, a row of leather riding boots, more paintings, marathoning souvenirs and items her children left behind. And horses, because not even the bathrooms at Full Cry Farm escape the whinny. A bit much?

“Oh no,” Irene says. “I still have my running, my pots and my nursing.” Irene earned her RN from Sandhills Community College in 1986 to bring in more income. Orthopedics became her specialty. Then, in 1998, she was thrown by a horse during a show. Her helmet malfunctioned. Irene was hospitalized with a brain injury for more than two months, then had to relearn basic skills. “I figured since I didn’t die I’d go back into nursing.” As for the offending horse, she bought it. Always a gym rat, Irene noticed a friend training on the treadmill for a marathon. “As an ortho nurse I should set an example. Besides, I like feeling healthy.” Unstoppable Irene, now past 50, ran her first marathon in 2000. She has run 46 twelve-minute miles at a single outing. Most recently she ran the Chicago marathon alongside daughter Landon Nesser, running her first. “There’s nobody holding your hand, making you finish the race,” Irene says. “My concept is to finish laughing.” Irene retired from nursing in 2011, freeing up more time for throwing and firing pots in the studio the Russells built under the guest house. Her motive was pure Irene: “I’ve always loved pottery. I got tired of spending money at Jugtown. I can do this.” Irene studied under SCC instructors Carlie Tart, Cliff Stucky and Montgomery Community College instructor Mike Ferree. Her output is phenomenal — both useful and decorative pieces. Even the free-form doggie water basins near the front porch are her creations.

o question, Mike and Irene Russell have made Full Cry Farm (named for hounds in vocal crescendo) a total living/work environment. He’s in the barn at 5:30 a.m., back in the kitchen for lunch. Irene runs on Young’s Road. She sits and looks at her paintings — sometimes rearranges them. Landon and husband Daniel live over the barn where Landon was brought up. They swim in a pool built long ago, for the children. After Mike’s mother died the guest house became a destination for visiting relatives. “So much better when you have a separate place,” Irene comments knowingly. Son Barron, with his wife and son, take over the upstairs in the main house, which has become a mecca for Horse-Country parties as well as a Moore County equestrian history museum and pottery gallery. On Thanksgiving Day, a tent goes up in the field for that famous brunch. “Mike’s happy here,” Irene says. “This is his life.” Obviously. “It’s not a grand house; it’s more of a comfortable house, peaceful, surrounded by woods and creeks that run into the river and finally to the ocean,” Mike adds. “That makes me feel connected.” PS

November 2012 P�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

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Saying Grace

By noah Salt

Our father, fill our hearts, we pray With gratitude Thanksgiving Day; For food and raiment Thou dost give, That we in comfort here may live. � — Luther Cross, Thanksgiving Day Hold on to what is good even if it is a handful of earth. Hold on to what you believe even if it is a tree that stands by itself Hold on to what you must do even if it is a long way from here. Hold on to life even when it is easier letting go. Hold on to my hand even when I have gone away from you — traditional Pueblo Indian blessing

Dame Vita Speaks

“If it is true that one of the greatest pleasures of gardening lies in looking forward, then the planning of next year’s beds and borders must be one of the most agreeable occupations in the gardener’s calendar. This should make October and November particularly pleasant months, for then we may begin to clear our borders, to cut down those sodden and untidy stalks, to dig up and increase our plants, and to move them to other positions where they will show up to greater effect. People who are not gardeners always say that the bare beds of winter are uninteresting; gardeners know better, and take even a certain pleasure in the neatness of the newly dug, bare, brown earth.” — Vita Sackville-West

The Birth of Autumn

One of our favorite garden stories growing up was the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, the ancient explanation for the seasons. The goddess Demeter, Zeus’ sister, was the deity in charge of fertility and the growing season, and whenever she was happy crops were bountiful. Her beautiful daughter, Persephone, was the source of her greatest happiness until the day Hades — god of the Underworld — caught a glimpse of the beautiful young maiden picking wildflowers in a field and snatched her away to his dark kingdom. A grief-addled Demeter was the last thing this world needed, for when she subsequently lost all desire to see things bloom, crops began to fail and the harvest was threatened, frightening mortals and gods alike. In her cell in the Underworld, Persephone wept and refused to eat or even speak to her abductor — who hoped she might agree to marry him. Legend said that anyone who ate anything in Hades would never leave. On the threshold of starvation, Persephone resorted to eating a handful of pomegranate seeds. As the Earth withered, Zeus dispatched his youngest son, Hermes, a skillful negotiator, to strike a bargain with the King of the Underworld. By agreeing to marry Hades, Persephone was permitted to return to Earth six months each year, then return to the Underworld where she ruled a similar time as Queen of the Underworld. Her mother, Demeter, was so overjoyed to have her daughter back, she caused the Earth to warm and bloom and crops to prosper. When Persephone returned to the Underworld, however, she wept bitterly and the world cooled and darkened and plants withered and died. Thus was born autumn — and the other seasons of a garden.

A Fine Garden Read

As garden days fade, November is a great time to make yourself a cup of tea and settle in with a good gardening book. Plenty of them cross our desk, but the one that recently caught our fancy is a small but delightfully intimate and useful book called Gardening with Confidence: 50 Ways to Add Style for Personal Creativity by Raleigh author and gardener Helen Yoest. Most garden books simply focus on conveying how-to information at the expense of why one chooses to make a garden in the first place, and what kind of thinking should go into making it a personal expression of your passion for growing things. A longtime contributor to numerous national and regional gardening publications, Yoest offers 50 highly practical insights that anyone from a rank beginner to a grizzled garden veteran will find helpful and even inspiring. With a deft command of language and a clear eye from years of experience, Yoest provides valuable insight into determining your garden style and covers pragmatic subjects like design and sustainability, bulbs, herb gardens and foundation plantings, all aimed at building confidence in your gardening efforts. Even better, she launches gentle meditations on such esoterica as the importance of understanding sound, movement, light, balance and privacy — and even the challenge of waiting on things to grow — all in quest of forging one’s own style and proper place in nature, musings covering everything from covered porches to mailbox gardens, curb appeal to (my favorite) the beauty of a moss garden. As winter descends, do yourself a favor and pick up Yoest’s delightful book. For an extra treat, drop in to her “Friends of the Arboretum” lecture at J.C. Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, on November 1 at 7:30 p.m.

The Language of Flowers

Emily Dickinson called November the Norway of months, cold and gray. Yet, as months go, the eleventh month typically has more festivals and public events than any other month of the year. And stargazers will tell you the month is one of the finest times of the year for looking at the nighttime sky. It’s a month of transition as the summer constellations give way to the winter constellations, dominated by three popular star groups easily visible in the Northern Hemisphere — Andromeda, Cassiopeia and Pisces. Saturn and Venus — the Morning Star — shine brightly just before dawn. Out in the garden, of course, everything is swept clean and bare, awaiting winter’s descent. But that doesn’t mean an end to the power of the bloom. Some of the brightest flowers of the year will end up in flower arrangements in your Thanksgiving centerpiece, highlighted by sunflowers, roses, Gerbera daisies, carnations, marigolds and mums. In Victorian times, message and meaning were associated with the flowers one chose to send. What message will your arrangement send? Here are a few traditional meanings: Gerbera daisies: Innocence and purity Yellow roses: Friendship and devotion White chrysanthemums: Noble truth Sunflowers: Respect, pure and lofty thoughts Scarlet lily: High-souled aspiration Anemone: Unfading love A strand of ivy: Strength and fidelity A sprig of rosemary: Remembrance

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ART SHOW. GATHERING AT GIVEN. 3:30 p.m. Aldena Frye. NATIONAL FAMILY LITERACY DAY. 3:30 RUTH PAULEY LECTURE SERIES. 7:30 p.m. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. ACURA NATIONAL COLLEGE ALUMNI TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP.

ACURA NATIONAL COLLEGE ALUMNI TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP. 7TH ANNUAL TRAIN &TRACTOR SHOW. MID PINES HICKORY OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP. 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. 52ND ANNUAL ANTIQUES SALE & SHOW. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. ART SHOW OPENING RECEPTION. 6 – 8 p.m.

1 4 5 6 7 8 11 12 13 14 15 18 19 20 21 22 25 26 27 28 29 Sunday

Monday

MOVIE AT THE LIBRARY. 5:30 p.m. Movie to be announced. Robbins Area Library, FAMILY ACT. 7:30 – 9:30 p.m. The Lowe Family performs a variety act. Cole Auditorium, Hamlet. FESTIVAL OF TREES. 10 a.m. – 9 p.m. (Tues. – Fri.); 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Carolina Hotel.

TRAIN &TRACTOR SHOW. MID PINES HICKORY OPEN . CLAY WORKS WOOD-FIRED KILN OPENING. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. ANTIQUES SALE & SHOW. MEET THE ARTIST AT WORK. GEOCACHING WORKSHOP. GOLF CAPITAL BARBERSHOP CHORUS. FESTIVAL OF TREES. 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. Carolina Hotel. ROOSTER’S WIFE CONCERT. 6:46 p.m. Live music from MATUTO. The Poplar Knight Spot, 114 Knight St., Aberdeen.

Tuesday

WOMEN OF WEYMOUTH MEETING. 10 a.m. Speaker: Marcia Rowbottom on “Native American Art as seen through their Jewelry.” Weymouth Center. SANDHILLS PHOTO CLUB MEETING. 7 – 9 p.m. Program: “Another evening with George.” The O’Neal School. CLASSICAL CONCERT SERIES. 8 – 10 p.m. Cantus. Village Chapel.

Wednesday

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FESTIVAL OF TREES. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Carolina Hotel. LUNCH AND LEARN. 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. The Laser Institute of Pinehurst. SUNRISE OPERA EVENT. 1 – 4 p.m. Verdi’s Otello. Sunrise Theater. PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 3:30 – 4 p.m. Southern Pines Public Library.

FESTIVAL OF TREES. ELEMENTS OF DESIGN DISCUSSION. 11 a.m. Nina Campbell Weymouth Center. OLDIES & GOODIES FILM. GATHERING AT GIVEN. FALL WINE TASTING EVENT. 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. NORTH CAROLINA SYMPHONY. 8 p.m. Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony.

FESTIVAL OF TREES. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Carolina Hotel. SYMPHONY OF THE ARTS II. 3 – 5 p.m. Fordham Room at Belle Meade, Southern Pines. ART SHOW & OPENING. 6 – 8 p.m. Artists League of the Sandhills.

PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 3:30 – 4 p.m. Stories, songs, and fun, and then stay for playtime! Southern Pines Public Library. A CONVERSATION WITH THOMAS JEFFERSON. 6 p.m. Join Bill Barker as he portrays Thomas Jefferson at CCNC for cocktails and dinner.

PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 10 a.m. Vass Area Library. THANKSGIVING FLORAL ARRANGING. 10 – 11:30 a.m. Aldena Frye will conduct a Thanksgiving flower arranging class. Sandhills Community College Horticultural Gardens. ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A MOORE COUNTY FIFTH GRADER? 6 p.m. Pinecrest High School.

HOLIDAY OPEN HOUSE. 5 – 7 p.m. Hollyhocks Art Gallery. FREE WINTER MOVIE. 7 p.m. Watch The Polar Express at the Southern Pines Recreation Center. CELEBRATION OF SEAGROVE POTTERS. 6 – 9 p.m. Luck’s Cannery, Seagrove.

CELEBRATION OF SEAGROVE POTTERS. CAMERON CHRISTMAS OPEN HOUSE. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Carthage Street, Cameron. GARY CARDEN COMES TO WEYMOUTH.3 p.m. ROOSTER’S WIFE CONCERT. 6:46 p.m. Live music from New Found Road.

LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS MEETING. 11:45 a.m. David J. Kilarski, CEO First Health, will discuss the impact of affordable health care. JAMES BOYD BOOK CLUB. 2 p.m. Will be reading “Mirror to America,” John Hope Franklin. Weymouth Center.

HOLIDAY POPS EXTRAVAGANZA. 8 p.m. Maestro David Michael Wolff leads the Carolina Philharmonic in selections from The Blue Danube, Schéhérezade, The Nutcracker Suite, and Holiday classics. Pinehurst Resort.

THANKSGIVING CLASSIC. 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. A jumper classic. Carolina Horse Park, Raeford. NUTCRACKER. 2 p.m. Lee Auditorium, Pinecrest High School, Southern Pines. ROOSTER’S WIFE CONCERT. 6:46 p.m. Live music from Jonathan Byrd and SoNia. The Poplar Knight Spot, Aberdeen.

GARDEN OPEN HOUSE. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Find a unique gift of ornaments, garden accents, nature-related toys, books and more. Cape Fear Botanical Garden, Fayetteville.

PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 3:30 – 4 p.m. Stories, songs, and fun, and then stay for playtime! Southern Pines Public Library. CHRISTMAS GALA AT WEYMOUTH. 6 – 9 p.m. Live music, dancing, refreshments and heavy hors d’oeuvres.

CHRISTMAS AT WEYMOUTH. 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. “Believe in the Magic.” The local garden clubs decorate Weymouth in live greens along with festive Christmas decorations. CAROLS AT WEYMOUTH. 5:30 – 7 p.m. An evening filled with music, poetry and songs. MESSIAH. 8 p.m. The NC Symphony. Pinecrest High School, Southern Pines.

NUTCRACKER. 7:30 p.m. Lee Auditorium, Pinecrest High School, Southern Pines.

CHRISTMAS AT WEYMOUTH. 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. “Believe in the Magic.” The local garden clubs decorate Weymouth. DISCOVER OUR STATE WEEKEND. VILLAGE OF PINEHURST TREE LIGHTING. 3 – 6 p.m. Enjoy entertainment in the village with Christmas carols, the tree lighting and a visit from Santa. Downtown Pinehurst. CANDLELIGHT TOUR OF WEYMOUTH. 7 p.m. – 9 p.m. Wine, cheese and desserts following the tour.

Saturday ACURA NATIONAL COLLEGE ALUMNI TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP. 7TH ANNUAL TRAIN &TRACTOR SHOW. MID PINES HICKORY OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP. 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. 52ND ANNUAL ANTIQUES SALE & SHOW. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

3 10 17 24

FESTIVAL OF TREES. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Carolina Hotel. PINE CONE OPEN. 9 a.m. shotgun. Southern Pines Elks Club. FALL ARTS & CRAFTS FESTIVAL. 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Country Club of Whispering Pines. MEET THE ARTIST AT WORK. 12 – 3 p.m. Carolyn Rotter. Hollyhocks Art Gallery. SUNRISE OPERA EVENT. 12:55 p.m. Ades’ The Tempest. Sunrise Theater. SOUTHERN MIDDLE SCHOOL REUNION. COMMUNITY FLEA MARKET. 8 a.m. – 2 p.m. The Fair Barn, Pinehurst. TURKEY TROT. 8:30 – 11:30 a.m. Start is at FirstHealth, Pinehurst. CELEBRATION OF SEAGROVE POTTERS. MEET THE ARTIST AT WORK. 12 – 3 p.m. Diane Kraudelt. Hollyhocks Art Gallery. MOVIE AT THE LIBRARY. Robbins Area Library. A NIGHT OF BLUEGRASS. Sunrise Theater. CAMERON CHRISTMAS OPEN HOUSE. NUTCRACKER. 2 & 7:30 p.m. Lee Auditorium, Pinecrest High School, Southern Pines. MEET THE ARTIST AT WORK. 12 – 3 p.m. Phyllis Andrews. Hollyhocks Art Gallery. TREE LIGHTING. 5 – 7 p.m. Christmas trees displayed along the streets with carolers. Downtown Southern Pines.

Arts & entertainment cA l e N dA r October 28 — November 25

NATIONAL FAMILY LITERACY • ART SHOW. The Next Generation: DAY. 3:30 p.m. Headmaster of the • High School Art Show at Penick Village. A Episcopal Day School, Mike Cerkovnik, new exhibit showcasing the artwork of students from North Moore, Pinecrest, and Union Pines high schools, and the Upper School of O’Neal. The Village House, Penick Village, 100 East Rhode Island Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-0300.

will speak with parents about how to grow great readers. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Info: www.sppl.net or (910) 692-8235.

November 1

Kennedy, Jr. will discuss “The Green Gold Rush: a Vision for Energy Independency, Jobs, and National Wealth.” Kennedy was named one of Time Magazine’s “Heroes for the Planet” for leading the fight to restore the Hudson River. Free and open to the public. Owens Auditorium, Sandhills Community College, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 245-3132.

GATHERING AT GIVEN. 3:30 • p.m. The always popular Aldena Frye

will be demonstrating floral designs for the holiday season. This event is free and open to the public. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-6022 or givenmemoriallibrary.org.

RUTH PAULEY LECTURE • SERIES. 7:30 p.m. Robert F.

ca l e n da r

November 1—3

November 2—December 14

a.m. – 5 p.m. (Fri.); 8 a.m. – 10 p.m. (Sat.) Over 60 colleges represented in this third annual tournament for bragging rights. Pinehurst Resort, 80 Carolina Vista Dr. Info: (910) 215-0861.

Reflections, works by Sharon Ferguson and Marilyn Vendemia. Opening reception will be held November 2 from 6 – 8 p.m. Free and open to the public. Campbell House, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-2787.

ACURA NATIONAL COLLEGE ALUMNI • TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP. 12 – 8 p.m. (Thurs.); 8

November 2—4

7TH ANNUAL TRAIN &TRACTOR • SHOW. Steam engines, prairie tractors, John Deeres,

Rd., Pinehurst. Info: (910) 255-0665 or www.hollyhocksartgallery.com.

GEOCACHING WORKSHOP. 3 – 4 p.m. A • real-world treasure hunt, and fun for the whole fam-

ily. Taught by geocachers who have made their own caches, and found them all over the world. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Info: www.sppl.net or (910) 692-8235.

•

52ND ANNUAL ANTIQUES SALE & SHOW. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. (Fri. & Sat.); 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. (Sun.) With over 30 dealers featuring art, furniture, glass, jewelry, linens, porcelain, pottery and china, and many other fine collectibles, there’s something for everyone. Admission: $5. Fair Barn, HWY 5, Pinehurst. Info: www.moorehistory.com. Music/Concerts

•

Dance/Theater

November 3

as the make their way to Europe for new adventures. Bring your own pillow. Snacks provided.Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Info: www.sppl.net or (910) 692-8235.

MEET THE ARTIST AT WORK. 12 – 3 p.m. • Jane Casnellie. Hollyhocks Art Gallery, 905 Linden

•

Art

November 4

ters John Mellage and Beth Gore open their doors to show their studio and firing processes. 3883 Busbee Road, Seagrove. Info: (910) 464-5661.

MID PINES HICKORY OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP. 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. 9th annual throwback golf tournament. Play with traditional hickory shafted clubs and dress in period clothing. Entry fee: $295/person. Mid Pines Inn & Golf Club, 1010 Midland Road, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 6929362 or www.pineneedles-midpines.com.

• •

ART SHOW. The Arts Council of Moore • County presents Inspirations, Musings, and

SUNDAY AFTERNOON MOVIE. 2:30 – 4:30 • p.m. Join some of New York City’s wildest animals

CLAY WORKS WOOD-FIRED KILN WEYMOUTH CONCERT SERIES. 3 p.m. The • • OPENING. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. A once annual event, potGeorgia Guitar Quartet comes to Weymouth as a

International Harvesters, Rumleys and a lot more. Crafts and other activities. Food for sale on site. Admission: $5. Visit website for complete schedule of events. 644 Niagara-Carthage Road, Carthage. Info: (919) 708-8665 or www.edervillenc.com.

Key:

Pinecrest High School, 250 Voit Gilmore Lane, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 295-3529.

GOLF CAPITAL BARBERSHOP • CHORUS SHOW. 7 p.m. The Carolinas’ District

Championship quartet, “Let’s Sing,” will perform A Salute to Those Who Served. A fundraising event for the Golf Capital Chorus. Tickets: $15; $5/students.

• • Film

Literature/Speakers

• • Fun

History

•

part of the Chamber Music Concert season. Tickets: free/members and people 18 and younger; $15/nonmembers. Weymouth Center, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6261 or www.weymouthcenter.org.

SOUP FOR ART. 4:30 – 6:30 p.m. Sample lo• cally made soups in a hand-made pottery bowl that

you will get to take home with you. Live music and libations. Cost: $30/Arts Council Members; $35/ non-members. Tickets available at The Campbell House or The Country Bookshop. Campbell House Galleries, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-2787.

ROOSTER’S WIFE CONCERT. 6:46 p.m. • Live music from Layah Jane and Cabinet. Seating is by general admission. Tickets available at the door and online. The Poplar Knight Spot, 114 Knight St., Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-7502 or www. theroosterswife.org.

Sports

Maintenance Free Living!

Our most popular floor plan just got better! The New Canterbury Model features 3 Bedrooms, 3 Baths, a Carolina Room & Den.

Independently Owned & Operated

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November 2012 i�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

ca l e n da r

November 6

MOVIE AT THE LIBRARY. 5:30 p.m. Movie to • be announced. Robbins Area Library, 161 Magnolia Drive. Info: (910) 948-4000.

FAMILY ACT. 7:30 – 9:30 p.m. The Lowe • Family performs a variety act with singing and

dancing. Nine family members playing over 50 instruments over the course of the show. Part of DeWitt Performing Arts Season. Tickets: $25. Cole Auditorium, Hamlet. Info: (910) 410-1691 or www. thelowefamily.com.

November 6—11

FESTIVAL OF TREES. 10 a.m. – 9 p.m. (Tues. • – Fri.); 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. (Sat.); 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.

(Sun.) Visit with Santa in Candy Cane Tuesday – Saturday. Saturday will host the Festival Marketplace Christmas crafts and collectable show, and the Festival Benefit Gala. Cost: by donation; $50/gala. Carolina Hotel, 80 Carolina Vista, Pinehurst. Info: www.sandhillschildrenscenter.org.

November 7

LUNCH AND LEARN. 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. • Topic: “Liquid Face Lift with Dr. Melley, Clarisonic and Merz Aesthetics.” Includes lunch, gift bags and specials. The Laser Institute of Pinehurst, 80 Aviemore Court, Suite A, Pinehurst. Info/RSVP: (910) 295-1130.

•SUNRISE OPERA EVENT. 1 – 4 p.m. Verdi’s

Otello. Tickets: $25. Sunrise Theater, 250 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8501 or www. sunrisetheater.com.

PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 3:30 – 4 p.m. • Infants and toddlers (ages birth through 5 years).

Stories, songs, and fun, and then stay for playtime! Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Info: www.sppl.net or (910) 692-8235.

Pinecrest High School, Southern Pines. Info: (919) 733 2750 or www.ncsymphony.org.

ELEMENTS OF DESIGN DISCUSSION. • 11 a.m. Interior designer Nina Campbell comes

November 9

to Weymouth Center for a luncheon, lecture and book signing. Cocktail party to meet Campbell from 6 – 8 p.m. Cost: $60/luncheon; $85/cocktail party. Weymouth Center, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org.

SYMPHONY OF THE ARTS II. 3 – 5 p.m. • A showcase of artwork by Belle Meade residents.

Reception features a harpist and refreshments. Free and open to the public. Fordham Room at Belle Meade, 100 Walters Drive, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 246-1008.

OLDIES & GOODIES FILM. 2:30 – 4:30 • p.m. A 1951 classic, staring Montgomery Clift and

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

GATHERING AT GIVEN. 3:30 p.m. Elizabeth • Leonow is a true “foodie” and will be sharing holiday

hors d’oeuvre ideas. She will offer tastings and a brochure with recipes and helpful hints. This event is free and open to the public. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-6022 or givenmemoriallibrary.org.

• • Art

Music/Concerts

•

Dance/Theater

Auxiliary is hosting this event to say “Thank you” to the Auxiliary’s many donors and volunteers. Elliott’s on Linden, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. RSVP by Nov. 5th. Info: (910) 695-7510.

NORTH CAROLINA SYMPHONY. 8 p.m. • Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony. Lee Auditorium,

November 8

Key:

FALL WINE TASTING EVENT. 6:30 – 8:30 • p.m. The FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital

ART SHOW & OPENING. 6 – 8 p.m. The 18th • annual fall exhibit and sale will feature the work of all the full members of the League. Artists League of the Sandhills, 129 Exchange St., Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-3979 or www.artistleague.org.

November 10

PINE CONE OPEN. 9 a.m. shotgun. A golf • tournament to support the Youth Exchange program

with Newry, Ireland. Cost: $300/foursome; $75/ individual. Southern Pines Elks Club. Info: Nancy Heilman, (910) 246-4138 or heilmann@sandhills.edu.

• • Film

Literature/Speakers

• • Fun

History

•

Sports

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ca l e n da r FALL ARTS & CRAFTS FESTIVAL. 10 • a.m. – 4 p.m. Whispers’ fundraiser to support local charities. Free. Country Club of Whispering Pines, 2 Clubhouse Blvd., Whispering Pines. Info: Sandy Armstrong, (910) 949-3601.

MEET THE ARTIST AT WORK. 12 – 3 • p.m. Carolyn Rotter. Hollyhocks Art Gallery, 905 Linden Rd., Pinehurst. Info: (910) 255-0665 or www.hollyhocksartgallery.com.

SUNRISE OPERA EVENT. 12:55 p.m. Ades’ • The Tempest. Tickets: $25. Sunrise Theater, 250 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: 910-692-8501 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

SOUTHERN MIDDLE SCHOOL REUNION. • 7:30 – 9:30 p.m. Former students will return to

reprise their roles in popular shows. Proceeds benefit Southern Middle School’s Theatre Arts Program. Southern Middle School, 717 Johnson St., Aberdeen. Info/tickets: (910) 693-1550.

November 11

ROOSTER’S WIFE CONCERT. 6:46 p.m. Live • music from MATUTO. Seating is by general admission. Tickets available at the door and online. The Poplar Knight Spot, 114 Knight St., Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-7502 or www.theroosterswife.org.

November 12

WOMEN OF WEYMOUTH MEETING. • 10 a.m. Speaker: Marcia Rowbottom on “Native

American Art as seen through their Jewelry.” Coffee at 9:30 a.m. Free and open to the public. Weymouth Center, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6261or weymouthcenter.org.

SANDHILLS PHOTO CLUB MEETING. 7 • – 9 p.m. Program: “Another evening with George,”

by George Butt. Guests welcome. Hannah Center Theater at The O’Neal School, 3300 Airport Road, Southern Pines. Info: www.sandhillsphotoclub.org.

CLASSICAL CONCERT SERIES. 8 – 10 • p.m. The all-male vocal ensemble, Cantus. Tickets: $25; four-concert subscription: $80/Arts Council members; $95/nonmembers. Village Chapel, 10 Azalea Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 692-2787 or www.mooreart.org.

November 14

PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 3:30 – 4 p.m. • Infants and toddlers (ages birth through 5 years).

Stories, songs, and fun, and then stay for playtime! Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Info: www.sppl.net or (910) 692-8235.

A CONVERSATION WITH THOMAS • JEFFERSON. 6 p.m. Join Bill Barker as he portrays

Thomas Jefferson at CCNC for cocktails and dinner. Hosted by the English-Speaking Union. Cost: $40.50. The Country Club of North Carolina, Pinehurst. Info/ reservations: Hope Price, (910) 692-7727.

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Key: Art Music/Concerts Dance/Theater Film Literature/Speakers Fun History Sports November 2012 i�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

ca l e n da r

November 15

PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 10 a.m. Vass Area • Library, 128 Seaboard St. Info: (910) 245-2200. THANKSGIVING FLORAL ARRANGING. • 10 – 11:30 a.m. Aldena Frye will conduct a Thanksgiving flower arranging class. Sponsored by the Sandhills Horticultural Society. Sandhills Community College Horticultural Gardens, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 695-3882 or sandhillshorticulturalgardens.com.

November 17

COMMUNITY FLEA MARKET. 8 a.m. – 2 • p.m.  The Fair Barn, HWY 5, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 693-2511.

ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A MOORE • COUNTY FIFTH GRADER? 6 p.m. To benefit

the Moore County Public Education Foundation. Admission by donation. Pinecrest High School. Info: Michele Gowan, (910) 992-6124.

November 16

HOLIDAY OPEN HOUSE. 5 – 7 p.m. • Hollyhocks Art Gallery, 905 Linden Rd., Pinehurst. FREE WINTER MOVIE. 7 p.m. Watch The • Polar Express at the Southern Pines Recreation

Key:

MOVIE AT THE LIBRARY. 5:30 p.m. Movie to • be announced. Robbins Area Library, 161 Magnolia Drive. Info: (910) 948-4000.

• • •

A NIGHT OF BLUEGRASS. 7:30 – 10:30 p.m. Al Batten and the Bluegrass Reunion, The Julie

CELEBRATION OF SEAGROVE POTTERS.

• • Art

Music/Concerts

•

Dance/Theater

10k races to a half marathon, and race times are staggered. Cost: $35/half marathon; $25/10K & 5K; $15/fun-run. Start is at FirstHealth Center for Health & Fitness, 170 Memorial Dr., Pinehurst. Info/registration: (910) 715-1843 or www.sandhillsraceseries.com.

Rd., Pinehurst. Info: (910) 255-0665 or www.hollyhocksartgallery.com.

Center. Bring your own blanket and pillow. Concessions available. Recreation Center, 160 Memorial Park Court, Southern Pines. Info: Rynet Oxendine, (910) 692-7376.

•

TURKEY TROT. 8:30 – 11:30 a.m. Races • range in length from a 1 mile fun run to 5k and

Elkins Trio, and South Ridge. Tickets: $15. Sunrise Theater, 250 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8501 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

November 17—18

CAMERON CHRISTMAS OPEN HOUSE. 10 • a.m. – 5 p.m. (Sat); 12 – 5 p.m. Traditional decorations, hot cider and homemade cookies create a special holiday mood in Historic Cameron, the antiques capital of Moore County. 485 Carthage Street, Cameron. Info: www.antiquesofcameron.com.

November 18

GARY CARDEN COMES TO WEYMOUTH • CENTER. 3 p.m. Playwright and recent recipient of the 2012 North Carolina Award for Literature comes to Weymouth to perform scenes from his popular plays. Weymouth Center, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 6926261 or www.tannerywhistle.net.

ROOSTER’S WIFE CONCERT. 6:46 p.m. Live MEET THE ARTIST AT WORK. 12 – 3 p.m. • • music from New Found Road. Seating is by general Diane Kraudelt. Hollyhocks Art Gallery, 905 Linden

Info: (910) 255-0665 or www.janecasnellie.com.

November 16—18

6 – 9 p.m. (Fri. gala); 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. (Sat); 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. (Sun). A gathering of remarkable clay artists united in showcasing the traditional and contemporary pottery of the historic Seagrove community. Admission: $5; $40/Friday night gala. Luck’s Cannery, 798 NC 705, Seagrove. Info/tickets: www. celebrationofseagrovepotters.com.

Film

Literature/Speakers

• • Fun

History

admission. Tickets available at the door and online. The Poplar Knight Spot, 114 Knight St., Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-7502 or www.theroosterswife.org.

November 20

LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS MEETING. • 11:45 a.m. David J. Kilarski, CEO First Health, will

discuss the impact of affordable health care. Open to

•

Sports

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cA l e N dA r the public, reservations required. Table on the Green, 2205 Midland Road, Pinehurst. Info: Charlotte Gallagher, (910) 944-9611.

JAMES BOYD BOOK CLUB. 2 p.m. Will be • reading “Mirror to America,” John Hope Franklin.

Weymouth Center, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6261 or weymouthcenter.org.

November 21

HOLIDAY POPS ExTRAVAGANZA. 8 p.m. • The Carolina Hotel kicks off the holiday season.

Maestro David Michael Wolff leads the Carolina Philharmonic in selections from The Blue Danube, Schéhérezade, The Nutcracker Suite, and Holiday classics. Tickets: $25; $10/students. Pinehurst Resort, 80 Carolina Vista Dr. Info: (910) 687-4746 or www. carolinaphil.org.

November 23—25

NUTCRACKER. 7:30 p.m. (Fri.); 2 & 7:30 p.m. • (Sat.); 2 p.m. (Sun.) This interactive Taylor Dance

Nutcracker, is one a kind and invites each audience member to participate. Tickets: $10-$22. Lee Auditorium, Pinecrest High School, 250 Voit Gilmore Lane , Southern Pines. Tickets: (910) 695-1320.

November 24 MEET THE ARTIST AT WORK. 12 – 3 p.m. • Phyllis Andrews. Hollyhocks Art Gallery, 905 Linden Rd., Pinehurst. Info: (910) 255-0665 or www.hollyhocksartgallery.com.

Where European Tradition meets Southern Charm

The Bakehouse & Cafe

Established 1948 Bakery Tues-Sat 8am-3pm Sun 11am-3pm Lunch Tues-Sun 11am-2:30pm Breakfast Tues - Sat 8 - 10:30am 910.944.9204 120 N. Poplar St. Aberdeen

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November 2012 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

ca l e n da r TREE LIGHTING. 5 – 7 p.m. Christmas trees • displayed along the streets with carolers. Santa Claus will be available for pictures at 4:30 at the train station. Performances include The Pinecrest High School Ensemble, The Golf Capital Chorus and an ensemble from the Moore County Choral Society. Downtown Southern Pines. Info: www. southernpines.net.

November 25

THANKSGIVING CLASSIC. 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. • Watch this jumper classic, with ringside tailgate parking and hospitality. Spectators welcome. Carolina Horse Park, 2814 Montrose Road, Raeford. Info: (910) 875-2074 or www.carolinahorsepark.com.

ROOSTER’S WIFE CONCERT. 6:46 p.m. Live • music from Jonathan Byrd and SoNia. Seating is by

general admission. Tickets available at the door and online. The Poplar Knight Spot, 114 Knight St., Aberdeen. Info: (910) 944-7502 or www.theroosterswife.org.

November 27

GARDEN OPEN HOUSE. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. • Find a unique gift of ornaments, garden accents,

nature-related toys, books and more. Select items will be on sale or specially priced, and there will be seasonal treats to enjoy while shopping. Cape Fear Botanical Garden, 536 N.E. Blvd., Fayetteville. Info: (910) 486-0221 www.capefearbg.org.

November 28

PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 3:30 – 4 p.m. • Infants and toddlers (ages birth through 5 years).

Stories, songs, and fun, and then stay for playtime! Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave. Info: www.sppl.net or (910) 692-8235.

•

CHRISTMAS GALA AT WEYMOUTH. 6 – 9 p.m. Live music, dancing, refreshments and heavy hors d’oeuvres. Reservations required. Black tie optional event. Tickets: $50. Weymouth Center, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 6926261 or www.weymouthcenter.org.

November 29

CAROLS AT WEYMOUTH. 5:30 – 7 p.m. • An evening filled with music, poetry and songs. Free and open to the public. Weymouth Center, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 6926261 or www.weymouthcenter.org.

MESSIAH. 8 p.m. The NC Symphony. Tickets: • $18-$60. Lee Auditorium, Pinecrest High School, Southern Pines. Info/tickets: (877) 627-6724 or www.ncsymphony.org.

November 29—December 1

CHRISTMAS AT WEYMOUTH. 10 a.m. – 4 • p.m. “Believe in the Magic.” The local garden clubs

decorate Weymouth in live greens. Refreshments, musical entertainment throughout the day. Tickets: $10/ advance; $15/door. Weymouth Center, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6261 or www.weymouthcenter.org.

••• • •

Key: Art Music/Concerts Film Literature/Speakers Sports

• • •

APPAREL CoolSweats Gentlemen’s Corner The Faded Rose The Village Fox Boutique

BOUTIQUES Eye Max Optical Boutique Green Gate Gourmet Green Gate Olive Oils The Potpourri Old Sport & Gallery Tesoro Home Decor & Gifts

SALONS & SPAS Elaine’s Hairdressers Glam Salon & Boutique

RESTAURANTS & INNS Lady Bedford’s Tea Parlour & Gift Shoppe Tenya Japanese Cuisine and Sushi

SERVICES Village of Pinehurst Rentals & Golf

Dance/Theater Fun History

105

ca l e n da r p.m. 35th annual tour features five homes from the Pinehurst area, all decorated for the holidays. Tickets may be purchased ahead of time at The Country Bookshop, Gulley’s Garden Center, Cool Sweats, Lady Bedford’s Tea Parlor, Nature’s Own, One Eleven Main. Cost: $15/advance; $20/door. Episcopal Day School, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3492.

November 30—December 2

DISCOVER OUR STATE WEEKEND. A • weekend filled with exploring Pinehurst, Southern

Pines, and Aberdeen. Activities include Friday and Saturday night concerts, and private tours of the NC Writers Hall of Fame, Old Bethesda Church, and Tufts Archives. Reservations: (855) 265-9091; info: Todd Simons, (800) 948-1409 or www.ourstate.com.

HOLIDAY HARMONIES. 4 p.m. Moore County • Choral Society presents its 38th Annual holiday con-

November 30

VILLAGE OF PINEHURST TREE • LIGHTING. 3 – 6 p.m. Enjoy entertainment in the

cert. Enjoy this tradition with family and friends featuring Moore Brass. Tickets: $15/adults; $7.50/students. Owens Auditorium, Sandhills Community College, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 215-0730 or moorecountychoralsociety.org.

village with Christmas carols, the tree lighting and a visit from Santa. Downtown Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-7462 or www.pinehurstbusinessguild.com.

CANDLELIGHT TOUR OF WEYMOUTH. 7 • p.m. – 9 p.m. Wine, cheese and desserts following the

December 3

tour. $30/person, reservations requested. Weymouth Center, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-6261 or www.weymouthcenter.org.

December 1

•

HOLIDAY FASHION SHOW & DESSERT BAR. 6 p.m. Proceeds to benefit the Moore County Literacy Council. Tickets: $10. Reservations required. The Old Buggy Inn, 301 McReynolds St., Carthage. Tickets/info: (910) 986-3711.

•

SANTA’S WORKHOP. 1 – 3 p.m. Make orna• ments, stocking stuffers, and many more gifts to

share. Songs and dancing for everyone. For ages 5-12. Cost: $20/residents; $50/non-residents. Train House, downtown Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BEER PRESSURE. 6 p.m. Learn the art of home brewing. Proceeds to benefit the Moore County Literacy Council. Tickets: $10. Reservations recommended. 502 McReynolds St., Carthage. Tickets/ info: (910) 585-2750.

Weekly Happenings

December 2

• CANDLELIGHT TOUR OF HOMES. 1 — 6 Tuesdays • • • • • Key:

Art

Music/Concerts

Dance/Theater

Film

Literature/Speakers

• • Fun

History

•

Sports

NEEDLES, HOOKS, & BOOKS. 3 – 5 p.m. • Join a gathering of knitters. No reservations needed,

just drop by with a project and get caught in stitches. Robbins Area Library, 161 Magnolia Drive. Info: (910) 948-4000.

FREE YOGA FOR PTSD VETS. 6 p.m. Yoga • for retired veterans who suffer from post-traumatic

stress disorder. No previous yoga experience necessary. Yoga Massage in the Sandhills, 5374 NiagaraCarthage Road, Southern Pines. Info: Mary Ann at (910) 949-2162.

Wednesdays

CHILDREN’S STORYTIME. 1:30 p.m. Given • Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-6022.

Thursdays

PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 10 a.m. All • Thursdays except Thanksgiving. Robbins Area

Library, 161 Magnolia Drive. Info: (910) 948-4000.

ROBBINS ELEMENTARY BOOK CLUB. • 10 a.m. Elementary school students will be reading

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. On the 29th at 11 a.m. the club will watch the movie. Robbins Area Library, 161 Magnolia Drive. Info: (910) 948-4000.

• STORY/ACTIVITY TIME. 10:30 a.m. Stories

CUTLER TREE

Tree Pruning • Removal Plant Site Consulting Stump Grinding • Shrub Care Tree Conservation for New Home Sites Free Estimates Geoffrey Cutler Fully Insured 910-692-7769 910-690-7657

107

18th Annual Fall Art Exhibit and Sale Nov 9th - Dec 28th

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910-944-1580 120 W. Main St & 107 South St

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910.944-5011 barndoorconsignments.com

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108

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November 2012 i�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

cA l e N dA r Pinehurst. Showcases works by nationally recognized artists such as Louis St. Lewis, Lula Smith, Shawn Morin, Rachel Clearfield, Judy Cox and Jason Craighead. Meet-the-artist opportunities available. Tuesday-Friday, 11 a.m. — 5 p.m., Saturday, 1—4 p.m. (910) 295-4817, www.broadhurstgallery.com.

and activities at The Country Bookshop, 140 NW Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-3211.

Fridays

•

PRESCHOOL STORYTIME. 10:30 a.m. Stories with crafts, and activities to follow. Moore County Library, 101 Saunders St., Carthage. Info: (910) 947-5335.

THE CAMPBELL HOUSE GALLERIES, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Monday-Friday 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. and every third weekend of the month from 2-4 p.m. (910) 692-4356, www.mooreart.org.

Art Galleries ABOUT ART GALLERY inside The Market Place Midland Bistro Building, 2160 Midland Road, Pinehurst. The gallery features local artists. Open Monday-Friday 11 a.m. — 2 p.m. (910) 215-596.

THE DOWNTOWN GALLERY inside Flynne’s Coffee Bar, 115 NE Broad St., Southern Pines. Everchanging array of local and regional art, pottery and other handmade items. (910) 693-1999.

ART NUTZ AND RAVEN POTTERY, 125 SW Broad St., Southern Pines. Come see the potter at work. Features art, pottery from local potters, handmade jewelry, glass and more. MondaySaturday 10 a.m. — 5 p.m. (910) 695-1555, www. ravenpottery.com.

THE GALLERY AT SEVEN LAKES at the St. Mary Magdalene building, 1145 Seven Lakes Drive. Just nine miles from the Pinehurst Traffic Circle up 211, this gallery is dedicated to local artists. Wednesday-Thursday 1 — 4 p.m. HASTINGS GALLERY in the Katharine L. Boyd Library at Sandhills Community College, Pinehurst. Gallery hours are Monday-Thursday 7:45 a.m. - 9 p.m., Friday 7:45 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Saturday 8:30 a.m. - 2 p.m.

ARTIST GALLERY OF SOUTHERN PINES, 167 E. New Hampshire Ave., Southern Pines. Features art and fine crafts from more than 60 North Carolina artists. 10 a.m. — 5 p.m., Monday-Saturday. (910) 692-6077.

HOLLYHOCKS ART GALLERY, 905 Linden Road, Pinehurst. Features artwork by local award winning artists, Phyllis Andrews, Betty DiBartolomeo, Equine Sculptor Morgen Kilbourn, Diane Kraudelt, Carol Rotter and artist/owner, Jane Casnellie. MondaySaturday 10:30 am to 9:30 pm. Fine oil paintings,

ARTISTS LEAGUE OF THE SANDHILLS, 129 Exchange St. in historic Aberdeen. Exhibit hours are noon — 3 p.m., Monday-Saturday. (910) 944-3979. BROADHURST GALLERY, 2212 Midland Road, Key:

• • Art

Music/Concerts

•

Dance/Theater

• • Film

Literature/Speakers

• • Fun

History

commissions and instruction. Meet the Artists on Saturdays, 12 - 3 p.m. (910) 255-0665, www.hollyhocksartgallery.com. LADY BEDFORD’S TEA PARLOUR, 25 Chinquapin Rd., Pinehurst. Features local artist Nancy Campbell’s original oil and watercolor paintings. Tuesday - Saturday 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. (910) 255-0100, www.ladybedfords.com. THE OLD SILK ROUTE, 113 West Main St., Aberdeen. Specializes in Asian original art, including silk paintings, tapestries, Buddhist Thangkas and Indian paper miniatures. Monday, Thursday-Saturday 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. (910) 295-2055. SEAGROVE CANDLE COMPANY, 116 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Showcases art of the Sandhills and Seagrove area. Monday, WednesdaySaturday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., (910) 695-0029. SKY ART GALLERY, 602 Magnolia Drive, Aberdeen. Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. (910) 944-9440, www.skyartgallery.com. STUDIO 590 by the pond in Dowd Cabin, 590 Dowd Circle, Pinehurst. This historic log cabin is the working studio and gallery of artists Betty DiBartolomeo and Harry Neely. Fine oil paintings, commissions and instruction. (910) 639-9404. WHITE HILL GALLERY, 407 U.S. 15-501, Carthage, offers a variety of pottery. (910) 947-6100.

•

Sports

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910-986-0289 LivingontheBliss.com PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �November 2012

109

ca l e n da r

Nature Centers

Historical Sites

Sandhills Horticultural Gardens (32 acres of gardens). The Sandhills Horticultural Gardens are handicapped-accessible. Daylight hours year-round. (910) 695-3882.

Bethesda Church and Cemetery. Guided tours for groups by appointment. 1020 Bethesda Road, Aberdeen. (910) 944-1319.

Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve (898 acres). 1024 Fort Bragg Road, Southern Pines. (910) 692-2167. VILLAGE ABORETUM. 35 acres of land adjoining the Village Hall on Magnolia Road, Pinehurst. (910) 295-1900.

House in the Horseshoe. Open year-round. Hours vary. 288 Alston House Road (10 miles north of Carthage), Sanford. (910) 947-2051. Malcolm Blue Farm and Museum. 1-4 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday. Group tours can be arranged by appointment. (910) 944-7558 or (910) 603-2739.

Bryant House and McLendon Cabin. Tours by appointment. (910) 692-2051 or (910) 673-0908.

North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. 10 a.m. - 2 p.m., Monday-Friday, at the Weymouth Center for Arts and Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. (910) 692-6261.

Carthage Historical Museum. Sundays, 2-5 p.m. or by appointment. Located at Rockingham and Saunders streets, Carthage. (910) 947-2331.

Shaw House Property. Open 1-4 p.m. TuesdayFriday. (910) 692-2051. Tufts Archives. 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday-Friday, and 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Saturday. (910) 295-3642. Union Station. Open 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. Located in downtown Aberdeen. (910) 944-5902. Sandhills Woman’s Exchange Log Cabin Open 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. (910) 295-4677 To add an event, email us at pinestraw@thepilot.com by the first of the month prior to the event.

PineNeedler Answers From page 127

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November 2012 i�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

The 2012 Holly & Ivy Dinner PineStraw Magazine and Pinehurst Resort Present

at the Holly Inn Frank Sinatra Comes to Christmas Dinner Pinehurst, Circa 1960s Featuring

Singer John Love and members of the Count Basie Orchestra

the Holly inn

tuesday, December 4, 2012 Cocktails at 6:30 p.m. â&#x20AC;˘ Dinner at 7:30 p.m. $125 Per Person

A Special Benefit for the given Memorial Library & tufts archives tickets will be available October 9. Make your reservations at www.shoppinehurst.com. For more information, please call (910) 235-8415.

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112

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November 2012 i�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

SandhillSeen Malcolm Blue Farm Friday, September 28, 2012 Photographs by Cassie Butler

Lou Smith, Lea Chavis (Grandma Lou-Lou’s Homemade Lollipops)

Roy & Scotti Hooker, Chase Hunt, Sherri Hooker (Kiddie Kritterz Petting Zoo & Pony Rides)

Hugh Shepard, Kelly Hinson, Darrell Moss (Moore County Scotch Riflemen Sons of Confederate Veterans, United Daughters of the Confederacy)

Christy Lawson, Gail Lee (Roseland United Methodist Church) Hazel Smith, Mildred Moore (Country Pots)

La Donna Brigman, Jim Simmons, Melinda Conner (Jim’s Gems and Gold in Aberdeen)

Don & Kate Alward (Buffalo Creek Hand Crafts)

Ryan & Lindsey Imbs

Paul Brill, Chris Kibler

Doug Bell

Susan & Nick Ingram, Chet Garrison mining for gemstones

113

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SandhillSeen

Jon Shain and Joe Newberry at The Roosterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wife Sunday, September 30, 2012 Photographs by Cassie Butler

Darice Greene, Carol McDuffie

Paula & Rob Tomson

Joe Newberry, Jon Shain

Donna Benoist, Rhu Smith

Ruth & Jim Frazier

Julie Wick, Jordan Baker with Daisy, Barry Hartney

Gloria Mitchell, Roger LeClair

Joe Newberry, Janet Kenworthy

Jeannie Carpentier, John Whalen

Shirley Donaldson, Jerry Phipps

Jake Kenworthy, Bill Wick, Don Gray Chuck & Ginny McCarthy

Dr. Marty Bacon, Claudia Coleman

Tommy & Jenny Deese

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November 2012 i�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

SandhillSeen

Wanda & Ed Nicholson

Southern Pines High School Reunion Friday & Saturday, September 28 & 29, 2012 Photographs by Jeanne Paine

LaNelle Clontz, Phillis Hinton, Carol Sue Roycroft

John Ormsby, D.P. Black, Jack Barron Bill Baker, D.P. Black

Dee Fearrington, Nancy Adams, Carol Sue Roycroft, Mickey Bainbridge

Sam & Diana Self, Mary Ann & Peter Winkelman

Mickey Bainbridge, Al Adams

Eli & Gladys Jakie

Bobbie Roberts, Bill Warner, Ann & Jim Collins, Linda Posey

Ted York, Jim Harrington, Margaret Page, Bill Warner, Andy Page

Norris Hodgkins, Dr. Charles Phillips

Georganne Austin, Don Thompson

117

SandhillSeen

Blessing of the Therapy Dogs in the Healing Gardens Sunday, October 7, 2012 Photographs by Cassie Butler

Cathy McGougan with Buddy, Jane, Stuart & Gordon Hall

Bill & Dorris Russell with Tux & Max

Caroline Acker, Anne Krahnert with Duffy, Lynda & Christina Acker

Amy Sawyer with Scout

Lois Pollard with Pete

John & Christie Hartlove with Bonnie

Nancy & John Bouldry with Abby

Father John Jacobs from Village Chapel

Joe & Nancy Kling with Molly

Mary Jo Morris with MoJo

119

120

November 2012 i�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

SandhillSeen 34th Annual Autumnfest Saturday, October 6, 2012

Photographs by Cassie Butler Lisa & Jade Hand, Beverly & Sara Darhower

Phyllis Marion, Lois McCarthy, Dee Fordree, Sue LeClair, Alice Shaughnessy

Madison, Victoria & Kassie Willis, Kathy Goodfellow

Kaidence Moreno (in mirror), Kim Kirkpatrick

Jean Cassidy, Pat Tibbs

Roger & Carol Wilson

Niki, Stephen, Cayden & Steven Doust

Tina Brooks, Leslie Brinkley

Bobby & Betty Wilson

Vivian & Victor Trott

Robbie Locklear, Angela McRae, Carleen Joyner

Adreyana Diaz

Joni Ujfalusy, LuEllen Sorget

121

i n i n g

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LIVE JAZZ MUSIC

November 9th & 23rd Starting at 6 PM

farmersmarket_NOV2012:Layout 1

10/24/12

Thank you for shopping at the

MOORE COUNTY

FARMERS MARKET in 2012

Winter Season November thru mid-April Thursdays: Morganton Road - Armory 9:00 am - 1:00 pm Greenhouse and in-season produce will be available plus meats, baked goods, and crafts FirstHealth & Downtown Southern Pines closes for the Season at the end of October

Call 947-3752 or 690-9520 for more info facebook.com/ moorecountyfarmersmarket Websearch: Moore County Farmers Market Local Harvest

122

November 2012 i�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills

1:37 PM

SandhillSeen Human Trafficking Conference Saturday, October 6, 2012 Photographs by Cassie Butler

Anne Friesen Andrew Sieg, Wendy Randall, David Pratt Anne Friesen, Judi Kempf

Ken Hadaway, Tony Haywood, Randy Thornton Dana, Katlyn & Rebekah Brobecker

Mimi & Kim Deardorff Julie & Brad Riley Christy & Josh Blanchard Deborah Sessions, Debby & Rob Sherman

Tracy, Amber & Slim Thompson

Brad Riley

123

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T h o u g h ts f r o m T h e Man S h e d

The Best American Holiday

By Geoff Cutler

Thanksgiving has become my favorite

holiday. It seems to be one of the few left in America where you don’t have to buy anything besides good food and drink to be then shared with family and friends. Back when my father was alive and we were young, his two brothers, their families and we would all get together at one of the houses, and it was wonderful. One of my uncles always seemed to have something extra to eat, the result of successful bird hunting, so there was apt to be quail, or partridge, maybe woodcock to go with the traditional Thanksgiving turkey. And every year, we’d beg my father, the oldest of the three boys in that generation, to sing us his songs. He knew exactly two: “I Had A Little Doggie Once,” a single verse ditty about mending a pet’s broken leg after a terrible fall down the stairs; and “Nellie,” a woeful little ballad about the death of some fellow’s dark Virginian bride. Also one verse. Well, maybe two. And you see, we begged my father to serenade us with these preposterous tunes, year after year, without fail, because he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. I can’t speak for my cousins, but in our family we had the “singers” and the “non-singers,” and my father was the lead non-singer. What he lacked in an ear for music, though, he made up in acting. And as we pressed and begged for him to sing his two songs, he’d shake his head, quietly mumbling “no” over and over again to his adoring audience, and then, faking exasperation with us, he’d finally give in to our pleas, eager to perform. Sitting back in his chair, he closed his eyes and began. And as he pitched and warbled his way through these two tragic hymns, mangling octave changes and striking not a single note, tables full of family members were reduced to uncontrollable hysterics. Peals of laughter filled the room, and tears rolled down each and every face. My father would finish the last line of “Nellie:” So toll the bell for little Nell . . . my dark Virginian bride . . . and open his eyes to see us all slumped in our chairs, wiping our eyes with cranberry

sauce-covered napkins, thoroughly exhausted from laughing so hard. He’d look around the room, feigning indignation at our response to his emotionally charged tales, and say with great irony, “I don’t see what it is you all find so funny.” Which of course brought on one final round of giggling hysteria from all. We gave thanks for the patriarch of our family for completing the day and sending us home, tired, full and with joy in our hearts. Thanksgivings with that side of the family came to an end when all the kids were older and living by themselves, or with wives, but we continued to come to our parents’ house for the day, usually with invited friends. One was a great old pal, and each year he’d arrive early in the morning, plied with rum and apple cider. In the outdoor fire, we’d build a nice blaze, and then the whole clan set about raking up the last of autumn’s fallen leaves. When all was to my father’s liking, we moved to the outdoor fire for hot Rum and cider, or “Rusty Matties” as we called them after our friend Matt, who brought them each year. At lunch, we’d still get my father to sing his two songs; we never got tired of hearing them, nor did we ever stop laughing, but of equal excitement to us was that Mattie would be required to eat one mouthful of vegetables. From good strong Irish stock, one would think that Mattie would like all things green. But not vegetables. They never passed his lips. Somehow, it became a Thanksgiving ritual that he would oblige us all by eating just one mouthful. Usually spinach. He’d take his fork, if I remember correctly, a fresh one that could be relegated directly to the dishwater afterward, and as we all looked on in anticipation, he’d slip the greens into his mouth, eyes closed, a grimace of horror on his face. The children stared intently to make sure he had swallowed, and then hover all over him afterward asking to see inside his mouth, just to be sure, and then once we were all sure the veggies had indeed slipped down his gullet, we broke into a hearty round of applause. It’s the little things, seemingly so unimportant and simple that make Thanksgiving so enjoyable. Songs sung off key, a single bite of spinach. Now, that’s a holiday! In recent years, we’ve hosted Thanksgivings at our house, no family other than our own now-grown children, and lots of friends. They’ve been terrific with “turkey taste-offs.” Different members of the group bring turkeys and cook them in different ways. On the grill, deep fried, and the traditional in the oven way. We then judge which is the best tasting in a friendly competition. I think I paid the children each a buck or two for their votes to say that, definitely, the barbecued was best. This year we’ll be gathering with my wife’s family on the farm in Virginia. There were many Thanksgivings in there where we went north each year to be with them. We had to stop because our kids were in college and it was an awful long way for them to come. But one is now teaching in China; sadly, he won’t make it, and the other has enough time off to make the travel worthwhile. We so look forward to being with family again on this, the best of all American holidays. Gobble-gobble! PS Geoff Cutler is owner of Cutler Tree LLC in Southern Pines. He is a regular contributor to both The Pilot and PineStraw. He can be reached at geoffcutler@embarqmail.com.

125

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By Mart Dickerson

National Peanut Butter Month! 41 43 44 46 47

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1 Artist Chagall Pergolas • Statuary • Planters 5 Left over Fountains • Garden Art • Aluminum Fencing 10 __ Major (Big Dipper) 14 Winged 15 Feather 16 Clothing stitch 17 Prego's competition 18 Tax payer's fear 19 Rim 1650 Valley View Road • Southern Pines, NC 20 Make corrections to Adjacent to Hyland Golf Course on US 1 www.WindridgeGardens.com 22 Sire, biblical style 24 See 9 down Wednesday - Saturday: 10am-6pm; Sunday: 1pm-6pm 25 Sesame Street's grouch 69 Foot contest 27 Speak in public 58 Iraq's neighbor 29 Laughing animal 70 Sifter PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 . . . Eve's . . . . .garden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . November 2012 127 32 Revert back to bad behavior 71 Level 61 Not taped 35 Story on stage 72 Had known 63 Skeletal part

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Running For My Life An old pair of track shorts and peace at last

By Sean Smith

The party is a surprise — a

quiet dinner for two at the Ironwood Café where several of my friends happen to have shown up.

The gifts are hilariously embarrassing. Some suggest imminent decrepitude and the end of physical prowess. Then I notice a small box. In it is a pair of running shorts built for an 11-year-old — and a particularly skinny one at that. Obligatorily absent from the festivities, Mom had sent me a present. Instantly I’m mentally on the second-to-last turn of the 800 meters, caught in an unexpected reverie and leaving behind a string of galloping adolescents as Coach Carter leaps excitedly at the finish line. My wife, Jody, asks me if everything is OK. In August 1983, my brother and I floated down the narrow country roads of Stamford, Connecticut, in my gregarious father’s Pontiac land yacht. I saw the weariness in his eyes even before I heard the heavy sigh. Eight years of knock-down, drag-out court battles, private detectives and calculating charges against my stepfather had yielded only a modicum of visitation rights. Dad was not winning, and that was cause for alarm. “Boys, how’d you like to stay with me awhile? I mean, I’m not bringing you back to your mother tomorrow.” I knew it. My father could be smolderingly cruel, and usually he left the impression that violence was a distinct possibility. At some point we had stopped being children in his eyes, and instead we had become possessions he must take back. Neither my brother nor I had any desire to live with him. It had been an ugly visit. Days later his possessions disappeared. My brother and I rode our bikes to a small market near the New York border. I pumped the pay phone full of quarters, had the owner of the market give Mom directions from the Merritt Parkway, and an hour-and-a-half later we were running to her outstretched arms. Dad laid low for weeks. Late into the fall semester, and just days after I’d set a record in the mile fitness run, Dad tried to abduct me from Goshen Middle School — he was

well aware that I had orchestrated the great escape. Mom saved us by running south. I arrived in Seven Lakes, North Carolina, a nervous fugitive with little use for amenities such as lakes and pools. At the time I was not much for horseback riding or golf either. What I did have a use for was freedom and open mileage. The north side features a much younger population now, but in 1984 an 11-year-old speeding around Lake Sequoia in 25 minutes or less on foot was noticeable. It wasn’t long before I was introduced to Nat Carter. He eventually took me to two AAU national championship meets with his Sandhills Track Club. Coach gave me confidence. Seven Lakes gave me years of peace and normalcy. I traveled to track meets, built tree forts in the woods with the Bartletts, watched videos with the Maroun boys, had serious discussions about the A-Team with Rob Erwin, and I never looked over my shoulder. In 1986 a state trooper knocked on our door and handed us a summons. My father had found us using the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The court proceeding created a media stir and ended life as we knew it. Each night my brother and I watched ourselves on the news. The judge reinstated summer visitations with Dad. My brother’s oneweek reunion went off without a hitch. My visit with Dad lasted three days, and the Stamford police had to be called. I never heard from my father again. For Mom, the reason for being in the South had expired, and I could not convince her otherwise. We returned to New York, and at age 16 I left home despondent and troubled. In 2009 I bought a cottage on the north side of Seven Lakes. The party at Ironwood concludes, and I drive home to thank Mom for babysitting and for finding my shorts. In the evenings I run around Lake Sequoia as my daughter Reilly babbles and coos from the jog stroller. I pass the Bartletts and the Marouns and the street where Rob Erwin lived. I’m a little older and a little slower, but I’m at peace. It’s good to be home, and still running. PS Sean Smith is a professional writer and actor. Illustration by Pamela Powers January

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November 2012 i�� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills