Poem

Musings on Fitness

Do I dare to eat a peach?

  – T.S. Eliot

Calculating carbs and calories,

logging laps in the pool, miles on the bike,

my walks in the woods.

Examining family photos,

genetic code for metabolism that screwed up

our capacity to eat ice cream with impunity.

Questioning the processing of wheat,

golden staff of life,

meant to sustain, not kill us.

Thinking about endless revolutions

on a stationary bike, or the treadmill,

going nowhere but into looser pants, if I’m lucky.

Thousands of folks doing the same, spinning

away, all over the nation. What if we spent

that same energy raking leaves for those

too old to scratch the dirt themselves?

Or building something — a giant calorie-burning

skyscraper, or tap-dancing or waltzing

to make ourselves smile?

Sometimes I am jealous, of my grandparents,

never thin, never fat, farmers

who ate eggs, bacon, and biscuits with molasses,

and never once logged their work in the fields.

I miss their apple pie, MaMa’s light yellow pound cake.

Most of all, I miss not fretting about it.

—  Laura Lomax

The Accidental Astrologer

Feeling Your Goats

Everyone will experience the Capricorn Effect in 2020

By Astrid Stellanova

Eat your peas and collards, Star Children. Tradition will matter. Soften your hearts and strengthen your minds.

On January 3, Mercury joins the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn, meaning none of the signs can escape the Capricorn Effect in 2020.

Here’s what the sky says: The new year brings a new vision, and, er, caps off the past two years of tumult, transition, mergers and misfires, with calculation and transformations that will change our realities. As any astrologer will tell you: The Goat always triumphs.

Capricorn (December 22–January 19)

You have to think about your professional image, Sugar, or feel like you do. You’ve worried yourself half sick over how you stack up, because you pit yourself against an old nemesis with big juju. Basically everyone from Here Comes Honey Boo Boo could outclass this old blow-hard rival. Stop worrying.

Aquarius (January 20–February 18)

Confidential matters and family secrets have kept you knotted up. Listen, if karma won’t slap you, ole Astrid has to, because it’s time you noticed you don’t have to be the standard-bearer for integrity and discretion.

Pisces (February 19–March 20)

There are changes to your inner circle, and close networks that have been shifting. The old dynamic is completely changed, in case you didn’t notice. Want to be the ringmaster of the s*@t show? Don’t think so, Honey Bun.

Aries (March 21-April 19)

I’m thinking you seized the wrong freakin’ day, Ram. As your mission and position have changed, did you notice exactly what condition your condition was in? Right — you were too busy seizing. Let it go. Not yours to wrestle with.

Taurus (April 20–May 20)

You, Brothers and Sistahs, are sweet but twisted. Some of that blunt force you used will get you over the fence to new places this year, but also forces you to take a kinder view of the differences. That makes the new places mean something.

Gemini (May 21–June 20)

One side of you strongly wants to do the right thing. The other side of you wrestles with giving others their fair share, due credit and fair play. You insist it ain’t your pasture, not your bull crap, but, sometimes, Sugar, it is.

Cancer (June 21–July 22)

Focus on close relationships, Sweet Pea, like your partners at work and at home. It is worth remembering that they are the ham in your ham sandwich. The jam in your PB&J. The clapper in your Liberty Bell.

Leo (July 23-August 22)

You aren’t a fan of fitness or workouts, but your life and lifestyle demand a reboot. It will also need to be interior — think volunteering or offering your services. Don’t rush when you’re waiting for the last dang minute.

Virgo (August 23-September 22)

The next generation, Sugar, is writ large in your sign. Think babies, teens, pregnancies and young adults populating your life. Things are coming full circle. What does this signify? Why don’t you overthink it?

Libra (September 23–October 22)

Home, family and land are all at the center of your world. Given how outdone you feel by those near and dear, realize everybody knows your give-a-damn is busted all to pieces. But giving again, and communicating will be your redemption.

Scorpio (October 23–November 21)

You’re thinking, excuse me, Dante, but what circle of hell is this? Yet the things you excel at (even if you wish they would go away) include publishing, communicating and educating, and they keep offering opportunity. Take the stage, Sugar, and ascend.

Sagittarius (November 22–December 21)

Just show you the money. Everything you do concerning property, charity, and finance will work for you and benefit others. Keep your head up, Darlin’, or that crown will slide right off.  PS

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

Second Act

How socialist politician Robert Hunter made the jump to celebrated golf course architect

By Bill Case

In April 1909, Robert Hunter was still a fairly new golfer, having played the game just five years. Yet the 35-year-old had already established himself as a player to be reckoned with at Wee Burn Country Club near his Connecticut home. Seeking further improvement, Hunter along with wife Caroline and family, decided to spend that April lodged at the Carolina Hotel, testing his mettle in competitive events as a new Pinehurst Country Club member.

Like so many early 20th century Pinehurst visitors, Hunter had the financial wherewithal to spend a month, if not a full season, in the Sandhills. He’d grown up in Terre Haute, Indiana, where his father operated a successful business building horse-drawn carriages. His wife, however, came from even grander opulence. This wasn’t Midwestern riches; it was New York money. Her father, Anson Phelps Stokes, had amassed a vast fortune from an array of enterprises ranging from railroads, copper mining and real estate to banking. It was Stokes who donated the trophy for the Americas Cup yacht race.

But politics set the Hunters apart from the other wealthy bluebloods — in Pinehurst and elsewhere. They joined the American Socialist Party in 1905, and Robert Hunter gained notoriety as a driving force in the party, serving on its executive committee. While the Socialist Party would have been anathema to an overwhelming majority of the well-heeled PCC members, it appears most of them welcomed the Hunters’ participation in various social activities at the club. When the couple returned to the village in January 1910 for a prolonged four month stay in Plymouth Cottage, the most important man in town, Pinehurst kingpin Leonard Tufts, made it a point to host them for dinner at The Carolina.

Hunter’s advancement into the village’s in-crowd was capped by his December 1910 admission into the Tin Whistles, Pinehurst’s pre-eminent “golfing fellowship.” While there may have been some Tin Whistles who gritted their teeth a bit before voting him in, Hunter’s engaging sense of humor — along with his rise toward the top of PCC golf ranks — tipped the scales in his favor.

It’s fair to say that, notwithstanding his party affiliation, Hunter was no radical, wild-eyed flamethrower. Born at the back end of the laissez-faire Gilded Age when ultra-capitalist “robber barons” took advantage of the lack of legal protections for workers, Hunter’s core belief that America’s working poor were being horribly treated wasn’t a heavy lift. He urged that such economic injustices could be rectified by the legislative regulation of business. The specific proposals Hunter had in mind — considered revolutionary in early 20th century America — are now codified in every jurisdiction: minimum wages, workers’ compensation, old-age pensions, limitation of the hours of work, regulations governing a safe working environment, and child labor laws. Hunter was of the firm view that the only way to obtain progressive legislation was through the political process. He and Caroline emphatically rejected the arguments of Marxists, anarchists, and others on the far left who believed democratic processes, controlled by the capitalists, were of limited usefulness, and that only confrontational actions ranging from labor strikes to outright violence could bring about meaningful change.

In 1904 Hunter’s book Poverty became a best-seller and brought national attention to the plight of workers and their families laboring under the specter of the poorhouse and starvation. To refute a commonly held perception of the well-off that the working poor were personally responsible for their desperate circumstances, Hunter produced data demonstrating that precisely the opposite was true — it was next to impossible for undernourished, overworked employees to claw their way out of the depths. “A sanitary dwelling, a sufficient supply of food and clothing, all having to do with physical well-being, is the very minimum which the laboring classes can demand,” he wrote. “The more fortunate of the laborers are but a few weeks from actual distress when the machines are stopped. Upon the unskilled masses, want is constantly pressing. As soon as employment ceases, suffering stares them in the face.”

According to Edward Brawley’s biography on Hunter, Speaking Out for America’s Poor, Hunter’s book “opened America’s eyes to the magnitude of poverty in the midst of plenty.” Poverty, wrote Brawley, made a convincing argument that “causing people, especially children, to suffer preventable poverty and ill health was not only shameful for a wealthy society but also a waste of the nation’s most valuable resources.” When Poverty failed to spur the Democratic and Republican parties to promote legislation, the Hunters cast their lot with the socialists. His writing brought Hunter significant street cred with socialist higher-ups who arranged for the author’s appointment to the party’s executive committee.

Hunter’s advocacy on behalf of the less fortunate grew out of his Indiana roots. Through his father, a charitable man in his own regard, Hunter met Eugene Debs, another Terre Haute native and the most famous socialist and influential labor leader of the late 19th century. Robert’s first encounter with Debs left an everlasting impression. “An old railroad workman joined us,” Hunter recalled. “I heard him explain to Debs that he could get a job if he could raise enough money to buy a good time-piece. Knowing that a watch was essential to a worker on the railroad, Debs immediately took out a handsome gold watch . . . unhooked it from its chain, handed it over to the man, saying ‘I care a lot about this watch . . . Keep it until you can afford to get another.’”

Though his own family’s finances were sufficient to withstand a downturn in the economy, Hunter was witness to the massive distress caused by the Panic of 1893 when falling prices resulted in countless bankruptcies. An empathetic Hunter distributed food to the hungry and went so far as to put himself on a strict diet of oatmeal. His growing concern for the poor was also influenced by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, who believed that obedient Christians should follow Jesus’ instruction to “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor (Mark 10:21).” A young Hunter considered it his Christian duty to share with those in need everything he possessed.

Hunter’s father expected him to enter the family buggy business or embark on a legal career, but the son harbored other ideas. A light bulb went off for Robert after a chance meeting with Dr. Phillip Ayers, the secretary of the Cincinnati Board of Charities. Hunter recalled that Ayers “made my heart leap with joy by pointing out that with adequate preparation I could expect to obtain employment as a social worker.” After visiting Ayers in Cincinnati, Hunter was taken aback by the appalling conditions of the area’s slums and wanted to assist relief efforts there. When Ayers advised him to attend college first Hunter enrolled at Indiana University, graduating in 1896. By then, Ayers had moved to Chicago and was heading up the city’s Charitable Organization Society. He arranged a job for Hunter as the organizing secretary.

After observing that the teeth of children in the slums were frequently in poor condition, Hunter convinced city dentists to donate their services to those unable to pay. He also organized the first-ever municipal facility dedicated to short-term housing for vagrants, and published a study, “Tenement Conditions in Chicago,” the first of his sociological writings.

While in Chicago, Hunter resided in settlement houses, a reform phenomenon of the late 1800s where people from all segments of society came together in urban locations to find ways to alleviate area poverty. Settlement houses also became cultural destinations where famous speakers, writers, poets, public figures and educators appeared. During his stint in Chicago, Hunter lived at Hull House, operated by one of America’s pioneer social workers, Jane Addams. While in residence, he broke bread with celebrities like Clarence Darrow, Frank Lloyd Wright and John Dewey. He also spent a summer at another settlement house in London, where he met Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells.

In 1902, Hunter moved to New York and became the head resident of the University Settlement. He led the group largely responsible for passage of the first New York state law prohibiting child labor. “It was in New York that Hunter met Graham Phelps Stokes, who like Robert, was destined to become that rarest of birds, a millionaire socialist,” wrote Brawley. The younger Stokes introduced Hunter to his sister Caroline, who was also active in social work. The two hit it off immediately and in April 1903, became engaged on the elder Stokes’ yacht, marrying a month later in Noroton, Connecticut, the Stokes’ hometown.

During the couple’s European honeymoon, Hunter visited one of his idols, Count Leo Tolstoy. The Russian confided that his attempt to give his possessions to the poor had been thwarted. The great writer’s wife refused to cooperate, maintaining that his benevolence would condemn the couple’s children to lives of ceaseless poverty. In appeasement, the author of War and Peace turned his property over to his spouse and was residing in the house as her guest. The count lamented to Hunter that this attempt at compromise had undermined his principles. Hunter described Tolstoy as “downcast, tearful and, I should say, morally wounded by his failure.”

Returning to New York, Hunter redoubled his efforts to assist the poor and live a simpler life. One frigid morning, he gave his overcoat to a shivering beggar, and then stoically did not don another throughout the winter. Rather than live in luxury, the newlyweds moved into modest quarters on Grove Street in the city’s Lower West Side (later Greenwich Village) with hopes of lending a hand toward revitalization there.

A New York newspaper reported that the Hunters had moved into “one of the vilest slums.” When it was whispered that the couple intended to give away “millions of dollars” to the poor, the rumor went viral. Hundreds formed outside their home seeking a piece of the pie — and more kept coming. For three weeks, Hunter was unable to leave the house, and it eventually forced the couple to retreat to the Stokes family enclave in Noroton.

It was during this frantic time that Hunter researched and wrote Poverty, a Herculean effort that brought him to the brink of a breakdown. His physician recommended outdoor exercise to provide a distraction, and Hunter embarked on a regimen of daily golf, despite awareness that many in his circle considered participation in the sport to be “effeminate.”

Hunter continued his deep involvement in socialist politics, writing books and lecturing. Twice he mounted runs for Connecticut political office under the socialist banner, losing both races. He sailed to Europe and attended international congresses of socialists, where he encountered Vladimir Lenin, Friedrich Engels and Benito Mussolini. President Theodore Roosevelt took notice of Poverty, and invited Hunter to a one-on-one discussion at the White House. Hunter even befriended Mark Twain.

But the amount of time Hunter was devoting to golf was beginning to rival that spent on social reform. In March, 1911, he reached the PCC club championship semifinals and then entered April’s prestigious United North and South Amateur Championship, a move specifically addressed in a tongue-in-cheek Tin Whistle bylaw that explained it was “the duty of each member to suppress the incipient conceit of any fellow member who thinks he is in line for the United North and South Amateur Championship.” Hunter surprised everyone by qualifying for match play and winning his way to the 36-hole final against the legendary Chick Evans — then at the peak of his Hall of Fame career. Hunter kept the match close during the morning round, but Evans pulled away in the afternoon to win 6 and 5. Still, it was an extraordinary feat to have reached the final given that he had only played golf for seven years.

Over the next five years, “Hunter of Wee Burn” won numerous Pinehurst events. In December 1912, he carted off the Holiday Golf Tournament’s President’s Cup, defeating former U.S. and British Amateur champion Walter Travis in the final match. He beat the great Travis again in a scintillating extra-hole match to win Pinehurst’s Mid-April Tournament in 1914, and successfully defended that championship the next two years. Hunter fashioned a second excellent performance in the 1915 North and South championship by reaching the semifinals, and he won the 54-hole medal play Tin Whistles championships of 1914 and ’15.

In January 1913, the Hunters purchased Mystic Cottage, which, according to the Pinehurst Outlook, was “the largest and most attractive of the winter homes here.” The couple hosted dinners in their spacious home with distinguished guests like Leonard Tufts and Donald Ross. It did not go unnoticed that the millionaire socialist, having once craved a Spartan existence, was increasingly living a life of opulence. Some thought the man a hypocrite, a charge Hunter never satisfactorily rebutted. His encounter with Tolstoy (recounted in his 1919 book Why We Fail as Christians) and the adverse public reaction to his own attempt to live modestly in New York may have persuaded him that self-denial was not all it was cracked up to be.

In any event, his disenchantment with his fellow socialists was growing. A majority of party leaders advocated labor strikes and other confrontational actions that moderate socialists like Hunter thought wrongheaded. This disagreement over tactics became intractable and led to his resignation from the Executive Committee in 1912. His disaffection was further exacerbated when the party refused to support America’s 1917 entry into World War I.

Hunter approved of the war declaration, reasoning that the conduct of a militaristic and conquest-driven Germany threatened the rights of working people in all democratic countries. In protest, the Hunters and thousands of former party supporters who likewise favored the war fled socialist ranks in droves. The party nearly disintegrated and was never again a major factor on the American political scene.

Increasingly regarded by many colleagues on the left as a pariah, Hunter began pursuing another outlet for his considerable energies — golf architecture. He wrote that his interest in the subject led him “abroad in the summer of 1912 for a six months’ study of the structure and upkeep of the championship courses of Great Britain.” The courses he visited included the Old Course at St. Andrews, Prestwick, Muirfield and Hoylake, all “by the sea in links-land.” As the demand for new golf courses in America was rapidly escalating, a self-taught crash course in golf architecture at the game’s birthplace could provide enough bona fides to start a course design business.

But it was not going to happen in Pinehurst, where Donald Ross monopolized commissions for golf courses up and down the Eastern Seaboard. In 1917, the Hunters pulled up stakes from their Connecticut and Pinehurst homes and relocated to Berkeley, California, where he filled a teaching position at the University of California until 1922. While relishing his new environment, Hunter admitted missing Pinehurst’s golf courses, bemoaning in a letter to a friend, “There is absolutely none where I am now living — unless I am to consider the local country club, which resembles one of the sand clay roads of Moore County.”

However, Northern California’s lack of courses also provided an opportunity. When Berkeley locals decided to build a new course in 1920, Hunter was named chairman of the fledgling club’s greens committee. Soon, he had drawn up a set of complete plans for the course. Berkeley Country Club had already hired the well-established Willie Watson as course architect, but Hunter’s routing left little for Watson to do. He basically rubber-stamped Hunter’s design work. Hunter also oversaw the course’s construction and today, the club acknowledges he deserves the lion’s share of credit for the design.

After a fire destroyed his Berkeley home, Hunter moved to Pebble Beach, hoping his work at Berkeley CC would create sufficient splash on the Monterey Peninsula to result in further design commissions. It did not. How could he broadcast his course design chops and simultaneously prove he was no dilettante in the field? The same way he had cemented his reputation for reform advocacy — by writing a book. Published in 1926, The Links became an authoritative reference bible for every phase of golf course design and construction. It’s chock-full of the author’s philosophy regarding everything from hiring a designer and acquiring land to the placement, shape and contours of hazards, bunkers, and greens. Noted designer Bill Coore still consults Hunter’s book and says that it “became a cornerstone in my personal golf architecture education and a bond in my partnership with Ben Crenshaw, who I learned had begun studying The Links at approximately the same time I did.”

The book came to the attention of the renowned British golf architect Alister MacKenzie, who was wowed by Hunter’s grasp of the innumerable details of course design, calling “it by far the best book on golf architecture ever written.” So, when Hunter proposed that he and MacKenzie build courses together in California, the Yorkshireman, who had never been to the West Coast, listened and agreed. Hunter expected the two would find themselves deluged with commissions. He was correct. Requests for work to be performed by the firm of MacKenzie and Hunter poured in.

In August 1926, the new partners entered into a contract to design a course for the Meadow Club in the San Francisco Bay area. This was followed by projects for the California Golf Club of San Francisco; Woodside Country Club near Stanford University; Green Hills Country Club; Northwood Golf Club; Pasatiempo Golf Club; and the Valley Club at Montecito. MacKenzie and Hunter updated the Pebble Beach links in preparation for the club’s hosting of the 1929 U.S. Amateur. To some extent, Hunter’s working relationship with MacKenzie mirrored the one he had established with Willie Watson at Berkeley. The more flamboyant MacKenzie was always the name architect while Hunter promoted him and managed the details on the ground. He seemed content to play the role of second banana in the relationship, though MacKenzie fully recognized Hunter’s ingenuous contributions. Regarding their work at the Valley Club at Montecito, an appreciative MacKenzie lauded his partner for introducing “a new machine, a Caterpillar tractor with bulldozer equipment, to remove the large rocks and boulders. He thus saved thousands of dollars in explosives and manual labor.”

But the partnership’s tour de force was its work in 1928 designing and building the incomparable Cypress Point Club, an oceanside course so beautiful it’s often referred to as golf’s Sistine Chapel. Golf historian and architect Geoff Shackleford calls the course “the most stunning creation in the history of golf course architecture.” Hunter, a local, was again the man responsible for overseeing the progress of daily construction. Also involved was son Robert Jr., who headed up the American Golf Course Construction Company.

It is too late to unravel the individual contributions Hunter and MacKenzie each made that resulted in the finished product at Cypress Point. Nonetheless, it is clear that Hunter was no mere sidekick and deserves far greater credit than he ever received for Cypress and the partners’ other wonderful California courses. Their association lasted until 1929, when the Great Depression tanked most all golf construction projects.

With the advent of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the early 1930s, Hunter ping-ponged back into the analysis of the nation’s affairs. This time he had a far different spin on things. Despite the fact that the president’s leadership resulted in the enactment of progressive legislation, which he would have undoubtedly supported in his socialist days, Hunter was alarmed at what he perceived to be Roosevelt’s dictatorial tendencies. He viewed the president as a profligate spender whose economic policies were destined to result in an inflationary upheaval that would ultimately culminate in revolution.

Hunter pointed out that Lenin had hijacked Russia’s progressive movement and imposed a brutal dictatorship under similar economic circumstances. In 1940, he encapsulated his dire warnings (which, of course, proved to be greatly overblown) with another book, Revolution: Why, How, and When?, that was favorably received by those Republicans who despised Roosevelt, then running for his third term. The former socialist also served as an adviser to Republican candidate Wendell Willkie during the latter’s unsuccessful campaign for the presidency against Roosevelt in 1940.

Hunter would pass away two years later.

Most biographers tend to discount Hunter’s rants against the New Deal and Roosevelt, focusing instead on his earlier social reform efforts and authorship of Poverty. Of course the world of golf remembers another Hunter book, The Links. But the ripple effects of his contributions to the game reach beyond his writings. If he had not induced Alister MacKenzie to come to California, Cypress Point might never have been built in the glorious manner it was. And if there was no Cypress Point, Bobby Jones would never have chanced to play the course in 1929, nor would he have engaged MacKenzie in the design of Augusta National Golf Club.

Pinehurst had its role to play. It’s where Hunter’s interest in golf course architecture was first cultivated, and his acquaintance with fellow Tin Whistle Donald Ross (whose layouts Hunter revered) undoubtedly gave him meaningful exposure to the art and science of design. While his impact may have been easy to overlook, his legacy is astonishing in its scope.  PS

Bookshelf

January Books

FICTION

American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins

On a sunny afternoon in Acapulco, a cartel massacres 16 members of a family at a barbecue. By a twist of fate, Lydia and her 8-year-old son, Luca, survive; and so begins their terrifying and interminable journey across Mexico in an attempt to cross the border. The tale exemplifies the struggle to elude the long-encompassing arms of the cartels. Who can be trusted? Propelled by fear and weighing the terror of what lies behind you against what lies ahead of you, to what lengths would you go to ensure the survival of your child? Cummins’ urgent and precise prose forbids you to stop reading until the end, then lingers long afterward.

The Truants, by Kate Weinberg

In a debut novel of suspense, Weinberg weaves a tale of obsession, deception and misguided love. Jess Walker is a young woman who enters an uninspiring university in East Anglia for the sole purpose of being a student of a charismatic professor of literature, Lorna Clay, who seems to have taken the position under a cloud of suspicion. Clay will be conducting studies on the life and work of Agatha Christie, with an underlying theme: “People disappear when they most want to be seen.” Jess not only falls under her thrall, but also that of her three new friends who introduce her to a lifestyle of excess and awakenings, with tragic and life-altering consequences. This is a moody, mesmerizing, literary read.

Run Me to Earth, by Paul Yoon

What happens when it seems that war and its atrocities are all you know, but somehow the instinct for survival and some semblance of childhood innocence prevail? That is precisely what Yoon has captured in this work, which is both elegant and spare, yet imbued with an incredible depth of emotion. The haunting story follows three orphaned children in Laos during the 1960s who find themselves working as couriers for a makeshift hospital with an enigmatic doctor. When an evacuation attempt forces the three in different directions, what follows is the tale of their lives through the decades. A magnificent read.

What I Carry, by Jennifer Longo

If a checklist exists for all the things a read requires, then this novel ticks off all the boxes. The number of foster homes Muir has found herself in far exceeds the 17 years of her life. She’s learned to pack light. Socks and toothbrush? Sure. Emotional attachments? Never. What she does have is an amazing, longtime social worker she can depend on, and what she finds is a new foster mom who is different from the rest, a for-the-first-time best friend, and a perfect boyfriend — all who actually “see” her. She also has a pillowcase resembling a blackbird’s nest of small objects acquired over the years to tell her story. Muir’s great love of the outdoors finds a home on a beautiful Pacific Northwest island as she comes to terms with her future and her imminent “aging out” of the foster care system in this unforgettable and exquisitely written book.

The Secret Guests, by Benjamin Black

A fictional account of the two daughters of the king of England, Elizabeth and Mary, who are sent to Ireland during the bombing of London. Keeping the girls’ location a secret is hard for everyone and the action starts when their secret is discovered.

Dear Edward, by Ann Napolitano

How do you go on living when the plane you’re on with your family crashes, and you’re the only survivor? That’s the dilemma for 12-year-old Edward, who is now living with his aunt and uncle, but doesn’t know how to stop feeling guilty. A wonderful story of how he discovers happiness again.

Lady Clementine, by Marie Benedict 

In 1909, Clementine steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman attacks him from the crowd, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill will save her husband. Lady Clementine is the ferocious story of the ambitious woman at Churchill’s side, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the darkness of war, and who would not surrender to either expectations or to enemies.

Big Lies in a Small Town, by Diane Chamberlain 

North Carolina, 2018: Morgan Christopher’s life has been derailed. Taking the fall for a crime she did not commit, she finds herself serving a three-year stint in the North Carolina Women’s Correctional Center. Her dream of a career in art is put on hold — until a mysterious visitor makes her an offer that will see her released immediately. Her assignment: restore an old post office mural in a sleepy Southern town. Morgan knows nothing about art restoration, but desperate to leave prison, she accepts. What she finds under the layers of grime is a painting that tells the story of madness, violence, and a conspiracy of small town secrets.

North Carolina, 1940: Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. Alone in the world and desperate for work, she accepts. But what she doesn’t expect is to find herself immersed in a town where prejudices run deep, where people are hiding secrets behind closed doors, and where the price of being different might just end in murder.

What happened to Anna Dale? Are the clues hidden in the decrepit mural? Can Morgan overcome her own demons to discover what exists beneath the layers of lies?

Hunter Killer, by Brad Taylor

Pike Logan and the Taskforce were once the apex predators, an unrivaled hunting machine that decimated those out to harm the United States, but they may have met their match. While Logan and Jennifer Cahill prepare to join their team on a counter-terrorist mission in the lawless tri-border region where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet, they are targeted in Charleston, South Carolina. A vicious explosion kills a friend, and the perpetrators have set it up to look like an accident. While the authorities believe this was not foul play, Pike knows the attack was meant for him. He and the Taskforce are under assault. Pike and Jennifer head to Brazil and run headlong into a crew of Russian assassins. Within days they are entangled in a byzantine scheme involving Brazilian politics and a cutthroat battle for control of offshore oil fields.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

Croc & Turtle Snow Fun, by Mike Wohnoutka

It’s time for a playdate, but the two friends have come to an impasse. Croc wants to play outside while Turtle is determined to stay inside. The result is a fabulous compromise. Perfect for classroom or home reading — any place where young listeners may find themselves at odds with their fellow playmates. Croc and Turtle are the coolest new characters on the learning-to-read scene. (Ages 2-6.)

Bear Has a Story to Tell, by Philip Stead

Bear has a story to tell but, with all his friends busily preparing for the coming winter, will he ever get to share his thoughts before he must make his own preparations? A sweet winter read-together just perfect for story time or snuggle time. (Ages 2-4.)

Scientist Scientist,
Who Do You See? by Chris Ferrie

Borrowing the rhythm from the classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear series, Ferrie introduces the youngest scientists to some of the most famous chemists, biologists, and meteorologists as well as pioneers in technology, artificial intelligence and space travel. The perfect book for new babies or budding young experimenters. (Ages 2-5.)

Camilla, Cartographer, by Julie Dillemuth

Camilla loves maps — old ones with crisping edges that show her home as it once was; maps left behind by summer hikers; and even maps of imaginary places. So when the snow falls deep enough to obscure all the known trails, Camilla delights in making a new map to help her friend Parsley find the path to the creek. Lovely, warm illustrations bring to life this fun title that reminds readers young and old of the value of thinking, creativity and exploration. (Ages 6-8.)  PS

Compiled by Kimberly Daniels Taws and Angie Tally

Almanac

January is fresh linens, heightened awareness, infinite possibility.

Like a dream within a dream.

Last night, I dreamed I was flying through a thick forest of pine, a holy swirl of stars like pinholes to the heavens in the winter sky above me. Cassiopeia the Queen was dancing west of Polaris, and my breath became a living veil, the Big Dipper disappearing and reappearing with every exhale. Suddenly, in the midst of all this magic — flight, the crisp night sky, the dance of breath and starlight — I realized that I could plummet to Earth at any moment. And yet the thrill of the alternative ignited me. This is my dream, I thought. And to claim a dream requires faith.

As the Big Dipper rose above the North Star, I began pumping my legs, swimming through the air at what felt like the speed of light, weaving between trees, between realms, between worlds.

January is here, and with it, a world of infinite possibility.

A seed of hope.

A bulb, cracking open beneath the soil.

A field of daffodils in the making.

New beginnings, new rituals, new dreams.

All that is required is faith.

Rabbit, Rabbit

Every New Year’s morning in the first blush of light, I bundle up, go outside, and listen to the deep quiet. As Earth begins stirring with unseen critters, silhouettes dance in the periphery. Often, one of a rabbit.

On such occasions, I’ve wondered if there was some correlation between rabbits and New Year’s, but settled with my own belief that it was some sort of good omen. Only recently did I discover the quirky superstition of saying “Rabbit, rabbit” on the first day of the month for good luck. Have you heard about this?

According to the Farmers’ Almanac, the first written record of this strange rabbit habit traces back to a 1909 British periodical called Notes and Queries. 

I think I prefer my New Year’s tradition, and how the language of nature seems to transcend words. But, for what it’s worth: Rabbit, rabbit.

Rabbit, rabbit, and happy New Year!

Year of the Rat

Twelfth Night (Jan. 5), the eve of Epiphany, marks the end of the Christmas season. But the merriment continues. Saturday, Jan. 25, marks the celebration of the Chinese New Year. Cue the paper lanterns for the Year of the Metal Rat, a year of wealth and surplus. Bring it on.

According to one ancient myth, the rat is the first of all zodiac animals because it tricked the ox into giving it a ride to the Jade Emperor’s party, a race to determine the order in which the animals would appear. Just as the ox was approaching the finish line, the rat leapt down in front of it, arriving first. All this to say that 2020 just may be a year of newfound ingenuity and resourcefulness. But in case you’re not convinced that the Year of the Rat will be an auspicious one, this is for you:

In Rajasthan, India, there is a Temple of Rats dedicated to a Hindu warrior worshiped by her followers as the incarnation of the goddess Durga. Outside, a beautiful marble façade with solid silver doors. Inside, 25,000 black rats plus a few rare and especially “holy” white rats, all revered.

Now, on a side note, it’s said that cleaning or throwing out garbage on the day of the Chinese New Year is a spring festival taboo — you don’t want to “sweep away” the good luck! Unless you’re inviting a certain zodiac animal to the party (ahem), you might want to turn a blind eye to it. 

In the Garden

Bare branches against bright sky in every direction, and yet a closer look reveals flowering witch hazel, camellia and daphne, hellebores, apricot and winter jasmine.

In the garden, now’s the time for preparation. Prune what’s asking to go. Fertilize beds with wood ash. And when the soil is dry enough, plant asparagus crowns for early spring harvest.

Soon, a sea of spring vegetables will grace the garden. English peas, cabbage, carrots, radish, turnip, rutabaga. But now, patience.

Patience and faith.

Nature has undoubtedly mastered the art of winter gardening and even the most experienced gardener can learn from the unrestrained beauty around them. — Vincent A. Simeone

PinePitch

Watch the Birdie

Discover strategies to attract birds to your backyard, including information on feeders and types of food, in a program at Weymouth Woods-Sandhills Nature Preserve, 1024 Fort Bragg Road in Southern Pines, on Sunday, Jan. 12, at 3 p.m. You may even learn how to scare a crow or two. For information call (910) 692-2167 or go to www.ncparks.gov.

Artistic Pioneers

Author and lecturer Vivian R. Jacobson pairs Marc Chagall and Elvis Presley — innovators in their respective fields — in a presentation at the Bradshaw Performing Arts Center, Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road in Pinehurst, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 9. Tickets can be purchased at www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Jammin’ the Beat

Bring an instrument and a love of music to a jam session and song circle on Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 6 p.m., at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. It’s free and open to the public. For more information call (910) 692-6261 or go to www.weymouthcenter.org.

The Phil Does Films

The Carolina Philharmonic Orchestra will present music from the Golden Age of Film at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 18, at the Bradshaw Performing Arts Center, Owens Auditorium, Sandhills Community College, 3395 Airport Road, in Pinehurst. For more information call (910) 687-0287 or visit www.carolinaphil.org.

Lecture Series

Historian Kevin Duffus begins a three-part lecture series on the Cape Fear and 500 years of American history at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 19, at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. For additional information call (910) 692-6261 or visit www.weymouthcenter.org. Tickets are available at www.ticketmesandhills.com.

A Day at the Opera

The Sunrise Theater’s Met Opera series continues on Saturday, Jan. 11, at 1 p.m., with Wozzeck, Alban Berg’s 20th century shocker staring baritone Peter Mattei in the title role. Groundbreaking visual artist and director William Kentridge unveils a bold new staging set in an apocalyptic wasteland. For information call (910) 692-3611 or visit www.sunrisetheater.com.

Get Well

Learn about Kombucha tea, CBD and essential oils at a holistic wellness expo running from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at The Pilot office, 145 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Holistic health experts will exhibit and be available to answer questions. For more information contact mollie@firstflightagency.com. Tickets can be purchased at www.ticketmesandhills.com.

The Rooster’s Wife

Sunday, Jan. 5: The Gibson Brothers. The best brother duo in bluegrass makes its annual appearance with shows at 12:46 p.m. and 6:46 p.m. at the Poplar Knight Spot. Cost: $35.

Sunday, Jan. 12: The Kennedys with special guest, Grammy-winner Jon Carroll. Old friends and collaborators from the D.C. area meet at musical crossroads in Aberdeen. The Kennedys, Pete and Maura, have shared many stages, tour buses and studios with Carroll over the years, and they’re excited to catch up at The Rooster’s Wife. Cost: $20.

Friday, Jan. 17: An Evening with Chris Smither. Honing a synthesis of folk and blues for 50 years, Smither is truly an American original. Rolling Stone and The New York Times agree that Smither continues to be a profound songwriter, a blistering guitarist, and intense performer as he draws deeply from the blues, American folk music, modern poets and humanist philosophers. Cost: $30.

Sunday, Jan. 19: Tire Fire, Stoll Vaughn. Kentucky singer/songwriter Vaughn opens the show for this newgrass-jam-funk-groovemachine-headbangin’-electrified-party-band! Cost: $15.

Sunday, Jan. 26: Cliff Eberhardt with special guest Louise Mosrie. Eberhardt knew by the age of 7 that he was going to be a singer and songwriter. Living close to the Main Point, one of the best folk clubs on the East Coast, he cut his teeth listening to the likes of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bonnie Raitt and Mississippi John Hurt. At the same time, he studied great pop songwriters like Cole Porter, the Gershwins, and Rodgers and Hart, all of which explains his penchant for great melodies and clever lyrical twists. He’ll be joined by Louise Mosrie. Cost: $20.

Thursday, Jan. 30: DamnTall Buildings. Whether live or on record, the band radiates the energy of a ragtag crew of music students playing bluegrass on the street. Anchoring that energy is their instrumental chops, their strong songwriting, and their varied influences that stretch beyond bluegrass. Sharing lead vocals, instrumental solos and high-spirited harmony, DamnTall Buildings is more than the sum of its parts. Cost: $15.

Unless otherwise noted, doors open at 6 p.m. and music begins at 6:46 at the Poplar Knight Spot, 114 Knight St., Aberdeen. Prices above are for members. Annual memberships are $5 and available online or at the door. For more information call (910) 944-7502 or visit www.theroosterswife.org or ticketmesandhills.com.

Southwords

Four-Alarm Coffee

Breakfast with fire and rescue

By Beth MacDonald

I’d really like to be one of those calm, put-together people when a crisis strikes, someone who’s graceful and elegant. Someone who can keep their wits about them when everyone else is losing theirs. My husband, Mason, somehow pulls it off. I am more like Kevin from Home Alone, slapping my face and screaming. Catastrophe never seems to have the decency to strike after I’ve gotten dressed and applied fresh makeup.

Generally speaking, I wake up early, drink my coffee on my back porch in my pajamas and admire my garden. My hair looks Einstein-crazy and I’ve got the previous night’s makeup smudged on my face. Entertaining the Fire and Rescue Squad is not part of my normal routine.

One morning, coffee mug in hand, my dog was barking at what I naturally assumed was the usual — nothing.

“Shhh! Stop. Stop. Don’t bark. There are only deer out there.”

“Bark. Bark. Barkbarkbark.”

I rolled my eyes. I needed to engage the two useful brain cells that had awakened. I looked toward our garage and saw plumes of smoke rising above two trucks parked on the side of the detached building. I ran over, saw flames a few inches from the vehicles, rushed inside to wake Mason, and called 911.

Exactly two breathless seconds into the call, I wished I hadn’t skipped Pilates for, let’s say, the last month. Between wheezing gasps stating my name and address, I tried to express the potential urgency of the fire. I had to repeat myself three times. The 911 operator couldn’t understand me. I sounded like Darth Vader trying to make an emergency call that the Death Star was about to blow up. Heaving, hunched over, I was finally able to get out the basic details.

Mason calmly got out of bed, went directly to the source of the problem, took a shovel, and began to put the fire out at its base. I supervised. “Maybe you should get away from the gas tanks. They’re exactly six inches from the flames,” I said. He ignored me. He had on matching sweats, sneakers, his hair looked combed, and he was easily extinguishing a potential disaster. I looked like Garth from Wayne’s World.

I was still trying to catch my breath when the firetruck pulled up. I looked down at myself, and bolted inside (they probably thought I was in search of my oxygen tank). I tried to put my hair in a ponytail so I looked somewhat presentable, but my low pony only made me look like a young man in Colonial America eager to start his woodworking apprenticeship.

I went back outside. Vanity is useless when you’re at the mercy of others. Why was I even trying? The fire marshal was now on the scene and looking directly at our chimney, asking if we knew anyone who would have put hot ashes in the pine needles. Wait, what?

I looked at Mason, my eyes bulging. “YOU did this?”

“Yeah, I’m the dummy.” He said it so matter of fact, without shame.

“You took the ashes out of the galvanized bucket and put them IN the pine needles?”

“Yeah, uh huh, that happened.” He stood there, nodding, arms crossed, shoulders shrugging.

I put my hoodie over my head and pulled the strings shut. I slowly started backing away toward my neighbor’s house like I lived there and was just an innocent bystander. My neighbor was taking pictures of the firetrucks in front of my house so I tried to hide in the bushes instead.

Mason thanked everyone that came by to put the fire out. The town’s fire and rescue team was accommodating and kind, even though I knew we’d be the topic of a social media, public service announcement later. I could see it now, “Smokey Says Don’t Be a Moron.” I’m sure they wouldn’t use the word “moron,” they are much more professional than that. My internal monologue is not. Sometimes I think our lives serve as a living, breathing Public Service Announcement, a bold kind of volunteerism.

While we were very aware of the danger we put ourselves in, we were even more grateful that we had a capable and amiable Fire and Rescue Squad. Later, Mason dropped off a thank you note with some cookies our daughter made. He apologized and promised not to be left unsupervised again — a promise he’s not capable of keeping considering I have no idea where he is at this very moment, and I can hear the not so distant buzz of power tools.  PS

Beth MacDonald is a Southern Pines suburban misadventurer that likes to make words up. She loves to travel with her family, read everything she can, and shop locally for her socks.

Golftown Journal

The Boss

The wit and wisdom of Claude Harmon

By Lee Pace

Every morning in the late 1970s at Winged Foot Golf Club, Lex Alexander had three jobs: Make the toast, pour the coffee, and sit down with Claude Harmon and review Harmon’s lesson schedule for the day. From there, who knows?

Alexander, the young assistant professional, was ready for anything tagging along with the 1948 Masters champion and renowned head pro at the venerable club in Mamaroneck, New York. He would certainly be entertained, educated and regaled with insights and stories from Harmon’s lively career in golf. He’d do some physical labor, e.g., teeing balls up for the older members as Harmon tried to eke out a hair more clubhead release through their impact position. To be Harmon’s right-hand man at one of America’s finest clubs was high cotton for a boy from Charlotte.

“For four years, I had the best job in golf,” Alexander says. “You hung around ‘The Boss’ and listened to him tell stories, you watched him teach, you gave your own lessons and then you played or practiced. You got to play a lot of golf. He wanted you to be a good player. He said, ‘Don’t be going out there and shooting 78.’ He said, ‘You don’t have to answer the phone and sell gloves. I can hire other people to do that.’

“He was such a character. Boy, was he funny.”

Harmon was just 33 years old and working at Winged Foot when he won the Masters, beating Cary Middlecoff by five shots. The club pro business was better suited to Harmon during that era given he would have six children (with sons Butch, Craig, Claude II and Billy following him into the golf business), and there was meager money on the pro tour. So he served more than three decades at Winged Foot with winters spent at Seminole Golf Club in Palm Beach, Florida, and later at Thunderbird Country Club in Palm Springs, California.

Alexander fell into Harmon’s sphere of orbit in 1975 at the suggestion of John Buczek, a fellow Wake Forest University golfer who had worked at Winged Foot, and Davis Love Jr., who’d taught Alexander the game at Charlotte Country Club in the 1960s and was friends with Harmon. Lex played golf at Wake Forest in the early 1970s on teams that featured Lanny Wadkins, Curtis Strange, Jim Simons and Eddie Pearce, among others. He caddied on the PGA Tour for a couple of seasons out of college, then decided to test the golf instruction waters at Love’s suggestion.

Looking back four decades later, Alexander chafes that Harmon didn’t get the recognition and respect that Alexander feels he deserved. Harmon gave lessons to presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Ford, and the Moroccan king, Hassan II. He nurtured an impressive list of young pros like Mike Souchak, Dave Marr, Rod Funseth, Dick Mayer and Jackie Burke, in addition to his own sons.

“I would submit that Claude Harmon was a golfing genius,” says Alexander, who lives in Durham and is a regular at Duke University Golf Club. “Every lesson was awe-inspiring. His eyes were blue with a definite twinkle. With each shot, his eyes would dart from the set-up to the club as it swung back, then he took a mental photograph of the clubface position at the top. He had a keen sense of sound as well and would listen intently for clues when club impacted ball. Then he would pick up the flight of the ball and watch until it fell to the ground. He always said, ‘Lex, watch the ball. The ball doesn’t lie.’”

Harmon was famous for executing and teaching bunker shots and was pictured on the cover of Golf Digest in 1972 saying, “Get Out of Sand With One Hand!” 

“The Boss would do a clinic or an outing of some kind,” Alexander says. “He would say, ‘OK, here’s the deal! I’m going to explain the fundamentals of playing a bunker shot, then I’m going to hit a few, but once I make my first one, we are out of here!’

“I remember there was one night that he made the first shot, and, true to his word, he climbed out of the bunker and bid the crowd farewell.”

Harmon once had Alexander break a branch of about 4 feet in length from a nearby hedge and then swing the branch as if he were swinging a golf club. Harmon watched and turned to his pupil.

“Do you hear that noise?” Harmon asked, then gave the branch to the golfer and implored him to swing the branch and “Let me hear some noise!” Soon enough, the older fellow was cracking pure 5-iron shots.

“As we rode back to the clubhouse, the Boss said to me, ‘I hope you learned something here this morning because you just witnessed a miracle,’” Alexander says.

On more than one occasion Alexander can remember Harmon taking umbrage when a member told him he was flying to Florida and taking a lesson from Bob Toski, another prominent teacher of the era. After one such trip, Harmon queried the man about his session with Toski.

“What did Mr. Toski teach you?” Claude asked.

“He strengthened my left-hand grip,” the member answered.

Harmon didn’t flinch. “Did he teach you how to chip out of the woods?”

Harmon thumbed his nose at much of the convention in the golf instruction business. Among his pet peeves were articles and advice telling golfers to “Take it back low and slow” or “You need to slow your swing down.” He also took no truck in instructors who couldn’t play a lick themselves.

“The Boss used to say, ‘Teachers who never had any success playing, why would you listen to them? If they knew what they were talking about, they would make themselves a good player,’” Alexander says.

The rotund Harmon loved to eat and was at his best holding court at the dinner table with a cocktail and big piece of meat. Alexander laughs at a standard line when Harmon perused the menu in a new restaurant.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” he would tell the waiter. “I don’t want anything swimming or flying. Four legs on the ground for me.”

Harmon loved pork chops and eggs for breakfast and hated turkey at Thanksgiving. “If those Pilgrims had a taste of a nice rib eye, we wouldn’t have to eat this dry turkey every Thanksgiving,” Harmon said every November.

Overweight and ridden with high cholesterol, Harmon spent time in a cardiac program at a Houston clinic near where son Dickie lived and worked at River Oaks Country Club. Miserable at being starved and fed healthy food, Harmon one day paid a window washer $100 to bring him a meatball sub.

“It took him two hours to remove all the evidence,” Alexander says. “He had sauce all over his face and gown. He told the guy, ‘I don’t know where you’re washing windows tomorrow, but there is another $100 where that came from!’”

Harmon didn’t suffer fools well, and one of Alexander’s favorite stories involves a member at River Oaks who was struggling with his bunker play and came to Dick Harmon for help. Dick hit a wall in helping the guy and brought his dad in for a consultation. The Boss worked with the man for half an hour, then told him to adjust his hands on the club. 

“Pro, you want me to change my grip?” the man exclaimed. “I just won a toon-a-mint in Abilene! I can’t change my grip.”

The Boss said, “Dickie, what’s the soup in the grill room today? I’m all done!”

Alexander left the golf business when Harmon exited Winged Foot in 1979, and he his wife, Ann, moved to Durham, where they opened a health food store and later sold it to a burgeoning young company out of Austin, Texas, called Whole Foods. He stayed on as a consultant for many years with the flexibility to pursue interests in classical music, art, wine, gourmet cooking and playing golf with the guys at Duke and his summer club in the mountains, Blowing Rock Country Club.

The guys in Lex Alexander’s gang have had a steady diet of Claude Harmon stories for many years.  PS

Longtime PineStraw golf columnist Lee Pace remembers Lex Alexander’s rhythmic and flowing golf swing from covering the Durham Amateur in the early 1980s for the Durham Morning Herald.

Crossroads

Morning Oats

A small connection that feeds the soul

By Claudia Watson

It’s an icebound January, and as the morning light leaks through the shutters, I dig in under the down comforter for a few more minutes of warmth as my dog Tilly jumps up for her tummy rub. The thought of breakfast offers motivation to greet the spun-gold dawn.

Tilly’s at the kitchen door watching as the deer meander down the still dark tree line, and in a flash she’s out the door to give them chase. Minutes later, a robust call of “Let’s eat!” and she’s back, tail wagging and at her bowl, while I start the kettle and find the oatmeal pot.

As I warm the water, I can still hear his voice, “Did you put a pinch of salt in the water?”

“No,” I say out loud, barely awake and staring into the pot. “That’s an old wives’ tale. It doesn’t make the water boil any faster.”

“No, babe, but it makes it taste better, and that’s why it’s on the recipe,” the voice insists. I add the pinch of salt to end the too-early tutoring moment.

“A recipe, really?” I playfully ask.

This instruction is from a man. Say no more — and a man who never read a recipe in his life but went on a health kick and became the connoisseur of oatmeal. I add some milk to the heated water and hurriedly dump in the oats.

“Hey, let me take over before you mess it up,” he says, gentling nudging me from the stovetop. “I brought the paper in, so go read. I’ll bring breakfast to you.”

He monitors that darn pot of simmering oats, adjusting the heat and adding a bit more milk or water, as needed. Then, he chops half a ripe banana and sets it aside along with a handful of chopped walnuts. The other portion of banana gets a healthy dollop of peanut butter (a la Elvis) that he happily shares with Tilly. Once they are done, the reserved chopped plain banana and walnuts are added to the creamy oatmeal and gently stirred in.

The first few times he made it I was opposed to the banana flavor, let alone the nuts. As an oatmeal purist, a sprinkle of cinnamon and a drizzle of maple syrup was enough for me, but never a banana! In time, though, I began to enjoy his oats as much as the ritual — it was a simple pleasure of life.

One winter’s day he made his regular weekly trip to pick up goods for a local restaurant and stopped at the historic Old Guilford Mill to get stone-ground grits, a staple of any true Southern breakfast —  unless, of course, you eat oatmeal.

When he returned home and unpacked our supply of grits and flour from the brown paper bag, he held out a bundle wrapped in newspaper. “Here, I got this for you,” he said with a sweet smile.

I carefully unwrapped it to find a hand-turned footed earthenware bowl with the top half glazed in sapphire blue.

“I thought it would be good for your morning oats and it’s a nice blue. You love blue,” he grinned. “I asked the store manager for another, but there was only one left.”

“It’s beautiful, thanks,” I said as I ran my fingers around the bowl’s rustic surface, admiring it and putting it in the dish cupboard.

The next morning he made his banana-infused oatmeal, but this time he made me laugh as he arrived tableside with a kitchen towel draped over his arm, presenting the steaming bowl of oats in the new bowl with a waiter’s grand flourish and followed by the neatly folded newspaper placed just so on the table.

As we finished breakfast, to my annoyance, he started rumbling around in the cupboard. “Hope you don’t mind, but I’m making a spot in here for this bowl,” he said, placing it on a shelf by itself. “Take care of this, babe. Wash it by hand and don’t let anyone else use it. It’s just for you.”

“Will do, babe,” I said, giving him a quick kiss and dashing off for my morning walk with a happy heart.

This morning, my spoon scrapes the last of the oatmeal that clings to ridges of the blue bowl. The sound seems oddly loud and unfamiliar, making me look up to see the sunrise as Tilly rests in her bed by the door. Then I remember the long-ago winter mornings when he asked, “Did you put a pinch of salt in the water?” and Tilly waited for her slab of banana a la Elvis, a small connection that feeds my heart today.  PS

Claudia Watson is a longtime contributor to PineStraw and The Pilot who finds the joy in each day.

Simple Life

For the Time Being

To count the hours . . . or make them count

By Jim Dodson

My office over the garage, which I fondly call the “Tree House,” is a place where time stands still, in a manner of speaking, something of a museum for dusty artifacts and funky souvenirs that followed me home from six decades of traveling journalism. Among them is a collection of wristwatches that accompanied me most of the way.  They’re part of what I call Uncle Jimmy Bob’s Museum of Genuine & Truly Unremarkable Stuff.

Most unremarkably (if you know me), many of the watches are broken or simply worn out from the misfortune of being attached to my person. Suffice it to say, I have a history of being tough on timepieces, having cracked more watch crystals than I can count, and either lost or damaged half a dozen of these loyal beauties by various means.

I suspect that a good shrink could have a field day with the fact that all these defunct watches are the same model and brand — the famous Timex Expedition models, an outdoors icon known for its durability and rustic beauty.

You can blame black-and-white television for this unholy devotion.

See, when I was a little kid and the TV world was not yet in living color — I was a highly impressionable son of a successful advertising executive, it should be noted — my favorite commercial was a spot for Timex watches in which suave company pitchman John Cameron Swayze subjected Timex watches to a series of live  “torture tests” in order to prove that the durable timepiece could “take a licking and keep on ticking.”

To this day I remember watching slugger Mickey Mantle wearing his Timex during batting practice. Other favorites included watches freed from solid blocks of ice by a wielded hammer, also dropped to the bottom of fish tanks for hours or put through the washing machine cycle, even attached to the bow of a roaring speedboat!

In fifth grade, I actually wrote a research paper on Timex watches, learning that the company started in 1854 in Waterbury, Connecticut, producing an affordable six-dollar clock using an assembly line process that may have inspired Henry Ford to do the same with cars half a century later. The company made its name by selling durable pocket watches for one dollar. Even Mark Twain carried one. During the Great Depression, they also introduced the first Mickey Mouse watch.

I received my first Timex watch for Christmas in 1966 and wore it faithfully everywhere — to bed, to baseball practice, even to Scout Camp where I took it off to do the mile swim and never saw it again, the start of a tradition. 

The next one I owned was an Expedition model purchased for about 25 bucks with lawn-mowing money. I wore that sucker all the way through high school, occasionally losing and finding it in unexpected places while putting it through the kind of personal abuse that would have made me a natural for Timex TV spots.

For high school graduation, my folks gave me an elegant Seiko watch, a sleek Japanese quartz model that never needed winding and kept perfect time but never felt right on my wrist. 

I have no idea what happened to that lovely timepiece. Or at least I ain’t telling.

By the end of college, I was safely back to Timex Expeditions, the cheap and durable watch that would accompany me  — one lost or broken model at a time — across the next four decades.

I mention this because a month or so ago, during a particularly busy stretch, I misplaced my longest-running Expedition and, feeling it might be the end of time or at least civilization as we know it, impetuously ordered a replacement model from the internet with guaranteed 24-hour delivery  . . . only to discover, the very day the new watch arrived, that the missing watch was under my car seat all along, keeping perfect time.

God only knows how it got there.

But the message wasn’t lost on me.

Why do I need anything delivered within 24 hours?  Instead, perhaps it’s time to slow down and pay attention to what is already happening here and now, to pause and take notice of the simple things that give my life its greatest purpose and meaning. 

The start of a new year is a time when many of us pause to take stock of how far we’ve come this year and may be headed in the year to come.  After a certain age, the question of how to make use of whatever time we have left to do the things we still hope — or need — to do is also on our minds.

Yet in modern America, “where time is money,” most of us live by the silent tyranny of the ticking clock, obsessed with achieving deadlines and keeping schedules. With no time to waste, we put everything on the clock or at least mark it down in the Day-Timer, making helpful “To-Do” lists and dinner reservations, planning holidays a year in advance, booking flights to warmer seas, appointments with the decorator or therapist, paying the mortgage on time, picking up the kids at 3 —all of it shaped by, and subject to, the hopeless idea of saving time.

Someone, my late Grandmother Taylor liked to say, is always waiting beneath the clock for a child to be born, a life to pass on, a decision to be made or a verdict to be rendered. A proper Southern Baptist lady who knew the Scriptures cold but enjoyed her evening toddy, she often told me, “Child, for the time being, you’re on God’s time. This is heaven.”

A nice thought, but just to complicate matters on the planetary scale, there’s the shadow of the infamous Doomsday Clock to contend with, the symbolic timepiece created by the world’s concerned scientists that chillingly charts the steady devolvement of the planet’s environmental and nuclear climates. In 2019, the minute hand was moved forward to two minutes to midnight.

So what happens next?

Presumably, God only knows that, too.

When it comes to contemplating the passing of time, I often think about the month “out of time” my wife and young son and I spent following our noses through rural Italy and the Greek Islands with no firm travel agenda or even hotel reservations. We met an extraordinary range of unforgettable characters and ate like gypsy kings. We swam in ancient seas, probed temple ruins and disappeared into another time, discovering a race of people who happily ignore the clock if it involves the chance for an interesting conversation about life, food or family. For the time being, it really was heaven. Somewhere along the way, I managed to lose yet another Expedition watch — but failed to notice for several days.

To us, a siesta between noon and 3 p.m. would be unthinkable in the heart of an ordinary work day, generally viewed as either a costly indulgence or colossal waste of time. Yet in Italy, Spain and many Arab cultures, the idea of pausing to take rest and recharge batteries in the midst of a busy day is viewed as a sensible restorative act, a way to slow down and keep perspective in a world forever speeding up.   

From the mystical East, my Buddhist friends perceive time as an endless cycle of beginning and ending, life and death and rebirth, time that is fluid and forever moving toward some greater articulation of what it means to be human. Native American spirituality embraces a similar idea of the sacred hoop of life, a cycle of rebirth that prompted Chief Seattle to remark that we humans struggle with life not because we’re human beings trying to be spiritual, but the other way around. A version of this quote is also attributed to French Jesuit priest and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, proving great souls think alike, even in different languages.

How ironic, in any case, that a booming West Coast city that is home to time-saving megaliths of commerce like Amazon, Starbucks, Costco and Microsoft is named for a man who lovingly presaged, decades ahead of his time, that we humans essentially belong to the Earth and not the other way around, and that, in time, when the last tree falls and final river is poisoned, we will finally learn that we cannot eat money or replace whatever is forever lost in time.

Fearing his own time brief on this planet, Transcendentalist Henry Thoreau went to live by Walden Pond “because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

I hold a similar desire close to my own aging heart, though in the short-term I sure would like to finish a trio of half-written novels I’ve been cobbling on for years, write a few more books about subjects that greatly interest me, and maybe — if there’s any time leftover — build a cabin in the Blue Ridge like the one my late papa and I always talked about “someday” building together.

For the record, just for fun, I’d also like to learn to speak Italian, play the piano and spend a full summer exploring the fjords and forests of Scandinavia with my wife. 

So much to do. So little time to do it.

That seems to be our fate. At least mine.

On golden autumn afternoons and quiet winter days, however, I swear I can almost hear Chief Seattle, Father De Chardin and Grandma Taylor whispering to me that we are all living on God’s Time, wise to wake up and slow down and live fully in the now as we journey into a brave new decade, hopefully appreciating the many gifts of time and its precious brevity. 

For the time being, I now have two fine Expedition watches that can take a licking and keep on ticking.

Though how long I can do the same, goodness me, only time will tell.  PS

Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.