Almanac

January is a waltz between a warm den and the bleak and frigid landscape.

Inside, movement is unhurried, ritualistic. The fire crackles. The gentle cadence of the cat lapping water is a dreamy incantation. You drift into the kitchen. Creaky floorboards spill their secrets in your wake.

From the deep silence of this winter morning, each sound is its own poem. Even the coffee has a pulse, cascading from dripper to mug like a dark and fragrant river. The rhythmic clanking of sugar spoon against ceramic mimics rustic wind chimes. A plume of steam dances like a risen cobra.

Outside, dawn slowly breaks. A lonely titmouse greets the day. No need to rush. Trust. You’ll know when it’s time to leave the den.

Whether you’re walking to the car or the woodshed or a mile down the road, you are ready for a sacred pilgrimage. Days like today, when the air stings like nettle, invisible treasure is afoot: silence for deep listening; stillness for the same; nothingness to spark discovery.

As your feet drum against the frozen earth, consider the world that sleeps below: the dormant roots and seeds, the creatures cozy in their burrows. And when the soft light kisses your windburned face, consider the sun, ceaselessly rising, ceaselessly giving of its warmth. Consider how you are both — the dreamer and the rising sun.

January gives you what you need. The wind sweeps through what’s still here and the titmouse sings out. You hum a few shaky notes, unearth buried treasure on the long waltz home.

All That Simmers

The new year calls for a fresh start. Or at least a fragrant simmer pot. Creating a stovetop potpourri can be a fun and soothing ritual. Start with a pot of water. Consider what you’d like to invoke: brightness (lemon slices), warmth (cinnamon sticks) or clarity (rosemary sprigs)?

There are very few rules.

Bring the water to a boil. Add your ingredients. Reduce the potion to a simmer. Enjoy.

Allow this aromatic blend to work its healing magic on your space for up to several hours — but be sure to add more water as needed.

 

Winter should not be considered as only negation and destruction. It is a secret and inward working of powers, which in spring will burst into visible activity.

—Henry James Slack,
The Ministry of the Beautiful

 

New Year’s Dip

In the Netherlands, thousands plunge into the icy waters of the North Sea each year on New Year’s Day.

Doesn’t a warm bath sound better?

And on January 4 — in the dark, earliest hours — a celestial shower.

This year, thanks to a sylph of a crescent moon, conditions look good for the annual Quadrantids, a spectacle known to light up the night sky with up to 40 brilliant meteors per hour.

Bundle up. Bring hot tea. Make a wish.

Le Style Mucha

Art Nouveau and a 19th century Warhol

By Jim Moriarty

 

Though no single artist invented the late 19th century Art Nouveau movement in the way Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque defined cubism, Alphonse Mucha’s name appears at the very top of the rolling credits. The grand sweep of his life and career, everything from his ground-breaking lithographic posters and photography to his decorative commercial work on products like champagne and chocolate, his friendships with Paul Gauguin and Auguste Rodin, his links to mysticism, and his staunch Slavic patriotism, are all on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art through Jan. 23.

Think of Mucha as the Andy Warhol of his era. He was to lithographic printing what Warhol became to screen printing. “Warhol appropriates mass culture in a way that’s different from Mucha, but he is associated with celebrity (Marilyn Monroe) in a very distinct way. Mucha gets his start working with Sarah Bernhardt in Paris, who is a superstar actress at the time. He makes a name for himself with images of a famous woman in a very similar way to Warhol,” says Michele Frederick, the associate curator of European Art at the N.C. Museum of Art.

Mucha and Warhol were artistic rock stars of their day, financially successful juggernauts, turning commercial imagery to suit their own artistic aesthetic. “The idea of breaking down barriers between fine and applied arts and using commercial language in what becomes fine art is very similar,” says Frederick. It was at the very heart of Art Nouveau — the rejection of a rigid, classical definition of what subjects and forms could define what was art and what wasn’t.

“Art Nouveau in Paris is essentially invented by Mucha in the 1890s,” says Frederick. It was called Le Style Mucha.

Mucha’s commercial art, breathtaking in its execution, was innovative in ways that remain distinctly modern. One of the posters in the exhibit is for Cycles Perfecta, a bicycle company. “He doesn’t really show much of the bicycle,” says Frederick. “You can’t tell if it has two wheels or two pedals or a seat. What he’s showing you is what it feels like to use this product. When you think of a company, like Apple, some of its most iconic advertisements show you what it feels like to use an iPod, not how it works. That’s something that’s super modern.”

Born in 1860 in the small town of Ivančice in what is now the Czech Republic, Mucha’s training was traditional in every regard. He studied at the Munich Akademie der Bildenden Künste (the academy of fine arts) and then the Académie Julian in Paris. His breakthrough work was a poster commissioned by Bernhardt for the play Gismonda at the Theatre de la Renaissance. The play opened with great success in October of 1894, and its run was being extended beyond the Christmas holidays. Bernhardt wanted a new poster to be hung on Jan. 1, 1895, advertising both herself and the play. The poster depicts Bernhardt in a richly embroidered costume with a mosaic-tiled wall and Orthodox cross in the background.

“For Mucha,” writes Tomoko Sato in his book Alphonse Mucha, “Byzantine civilization was the spiritual home of Slavic culture . . . Mucha’s use of the Byzantine motif in Gismonda was partly influenced by the mediaeval Greek setting of the play; nevertheless, from around 1896 onward, Slavic motifs became a regular feature of Mucha’s posters.”

In 1894 Mucha met and became friendly with the Swedish writer August Strindberg, who at the time was consumed with concepts of mystical forces and the occult. “Mucha was profoundly influenced by Strindberg’s notion of ‘mysterious forces’ that guided a man’s life,” writes Sato. “This was later to contribute to Mucha’s own idea of ‘unseen powers,’ which is manifested in his work as the recurring motif of a mysterious figure appearing behind the subject.” Mucha’s spiritual journey led him to Freemasonry, which he practiced for the remainder of his life.

“So much of Mucha’s art 100-plus years later looks very French to us,” says Frederick. “Preserving the idea of his Czechness is very important. He’s not just a commercial artist, he’s a political artist as well, especially later in his career.”

After repeated trips to the United States, wealthy Chicago businessman Charles Richard Crane (son of the plumbing parts baron Richard T. Crane) agreed to finance Mucha’s grand opus, The Slav Epic, a patriotic project that would consume the last decades of his life. He began working on the first of what would become 20 monumental paintings — the largest is 19 1/2 feet by 26 feet — in 1911, when his homeland was still ruled by the Hapsburg monarchy, consolidated then as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1928, marking the 10th anniversary of the creation of Czechoslovakia following the end of World War I, Crane and Mucha together bequeathed the paintings to the city of Prague. The N.C. museum’s exhibit features large digital projections of the paintings as well as close-up views of some of their details.

“I am convinced that the development of every nation can only be successful if it grows organically and uninterruptedly from its own roots, and the knowledge of its past is indispensable for the preservation of that continuity,” Mucha said at the ceremony donating the works.

The peace and independence of Mucha’s Slavic homeland was short-lived. In 1933 Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany. In March of 1939, German troops marched into Prague, and Hitler declared the establishment of the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Mucha was arrested, then released, by the Gestapo. He died four months later.   PS

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

The Kitchen Garden

Backyard Beekeeping

Buzzing around the basics

By Jan Leitschuh

Fancy a new hobby for the new year?

There is a sweet and time-honored pastime that goes hand-in-bee-glove with home gardening — apiculture. A beehive in the yard offers multiple benefits. Backyard beekeeping can plump your culinary garden’s quality and volume, with a delicious honey chaser.

Intrigued? Your timing is impeccable. Bee school is in session.

Beginning beekeeping basics will be explored Thursday nights in Vass, from Jan. 20 through Feb. 24. Taught by Erin McDermott-Terry of the North Carolina State University apiculture program, the course will help you get your hive up and running.

As a keeper of bees, you’d join the likes of such famous people as Sir Edmund Hillary, Sylvia Plath, Henry Fonda, Leo Tolstoy, Martha Stewart (of course!) and, er . . . Sherlock Holmes.

According to the Cornell University College of Agriculture, since 52 percent of United States homeowners describe their neighborhood as suburban (and only 27 percent identify as urban, with 21 percent as rural), new beekeepers are more likely to live in a suburban neighborhood. Since a typical hive only requires a few square feet, almost every backyard has more than enough space for a hive.

Home beekeeper Kim Geddes became interested after reading news reports of declining bees. “I read an announcement in the  paper about beginning beekeeping classes offered near my home, so I decided to enroll,” said Geddes, an engineer who lives just outside Pinehurst. “After taking the classes, I was eager to get started.”

Geddes fell hard for bees and has kept them in her backyard for three years now. “I love all kinds of animals, and I’m also committed to conservation endeavors, so beekeeping seemed like a good fit for my interests,” she said.

During her first year of beekeeping, she noticed her backyard kitchen garden becoming more productive due to the increased pollination. “It’s pretty common that home gardeners, when they get bees, notice a marked improvement in their produce,” said Calvin Terry Sr., of Midnight Bee Supply in Vass.

Honeybees forage flowers for two reasons: pollen for protein and nectar for carbohydrates. Veggies and fruits require pollination to set fruit. In cucumbers, for example, a female flower needs 8-12 pollinator visits in a single day to produce a decent fruit.

It was friendship and opportunity that led avid Southern Pines gardener Cameron Sadler into beekeeping. When friend and beekeeper Marcia Bryant sold her farm to move to Penick Village, she asked Sadler if she would like to house the productive-but-now-homeless hives at her place.

“I said I’d love to have the apiary at my farm if she would be willing to teach me,” said Sadler, who recently retired from Mondelez International and is also Master of Foxhounds with the Moore County Hounds. Besides Bryant and Sadler, neighboring friend Desiree MacSorley also works the apiary.

Sadler later bought her first nuc (a small core colony of bees) from Midnight Bee Supply in Vass. She enjoys the win-win of beekeeping and gardening. Her flowers helped produce sweet honey, and the bees increased the productivity of her veggie gardens.

“I grow a kitchen garden because I love to have really fresh produce, fruit and herbs to eat and cook with,” she said. “I absolutely believe my garden and my bees’ prosperity is due to the positive interaction of the bees with the plants.”

Sold on the idea of a bee yard in the kitchen garden but somewhat intimidated? Feel like you might need ongoing support? The local arm of the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association (NCSBA), the Moore County Beekeepers chapter, welcomes newcomers and meets monthly in Southern Pines on the second Tuesday of every month, according to Master Beekeeper Hugh Madison.

While backyard bees aren’t cuddly like livestock, their proponents can be ardent. “It’s hard to describe the attachment that a beekeeper forms with their bees,” said Geddes. “I felt a sense of pride seeing my girls work so hard in the garden that I provided to nourish them.

“I got into beekeeping because I wanted to address the decline in bee population,” she added. “I had failed to recognize the benefits that I would enjoy by raising bees — not just the sense of pride in addressing a conservation issue, but I was amazed to discover that my row crops produced almost double the yield.”

And the sweet finale for Geddes? “This past year, I bottled 40 pounds of honey!”  PS

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

Resources: The Vass Bee School, Thursdays, Jan. 20-Feb. 24, $80/person or $140/couple. For more information visit midnightbeesupply.coursestorm.com.
For N.C. State’s online BEES courses and other counties bee schools, visit https://www.ncbeekeepers.org/calendar/courses-bee-schools.
The Moore County Beekeepers chapter holds meetings on the second Tuesday of every month at 6:45 p.m. at the John Boyd VFW Post on Page Street in Southern Pines. All are welcome. Visit the chapter’s Facebook page.

Birdwatch

A Tree of Delights

Decorating can be for the birds, too

By Susan Campbell

This season, why not create a gift for your feathered friends and consider “decorating” a holiday tree just for them? Although a hearty evergreen would be best, anything from a leafless sapling to a young longleaf pine will work. Better yet, a younger American holly or other berry-laden variety would be a terrific choice!

Consider this a project for the whole family, just like hanging ornaments or setting up lights in the yard. Keep in mind that, especially when using an evergreen, you are providing not one, but two, basic needs that all our wintering birds have: food and shelter.

To “decorate” your tree:

— Drape with traditional strings of popcorn and cranberries or other dried fruits for the bluebirds and the blue jays.

— Hang homemade suet on pine cones for the chickadees and nuthatches.

— Nestle shallow cups with sunflower seed or millet on the thickest branches for the cardinals and titmice.

— Smear peanut butter on the bark to attract woodpeckers and wintering warblers.

Last, but certainly not least, your tree will invariably attract natural food in the form of tiny insects. It will take no time for Carolina wrens or ruby-crowned kinglets to find them between the leaves or needles, or under the bark.

It may be that you create your gift to the birds just after Christmas — when your indoor tree is finished providing joy for the family. This is about the time that natural foods are waning and the birds are foraging in earnest. No doubt, bird species large and small will find your arboreal creation before long. Keep track of which ones you see using the tree. It may be a longer list than you might think.

Of course, other wildlife will love this holiday gift, too. In addition to gray squirrels and perhaps a fox squirrel, southern flying squirrels may glide in at night for a snack. A raccoon or opossum may sniff it out. Even a white-tailed deer or two will probably take a nibble. But then, who doesn’t appreciate a treat during this special season?  PS

Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos.  She can be contacted at susan@ncaves.com.

Tea Leaf Astrologer

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

When a Sagittarius plays with fire, it’s wonderfully innocent. Sort of. But this bold and short-fused fire sign has a reputation for being more than a little reckless — especially when it comes to affairs of the heart. Pause and reflect during the solar eclipse on the 4th. Who are you? Who do you want to be? Should you splurge for that positively extravagant vegan leather coat? Fortunately, things are looking a bit more auspicious this month. But don’t leave the candle burning unattended.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Two words: humble pie. 

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Ask for a sign. You’ll know it when you see it.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Save the smothering for the bread and butter.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

You are the Perfect Storm. Don’t hold back.     

Taurus (April 20 – May 20) 

Best not to wait for an invitation. 

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Ask again later.    

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

No matter how hot things get, play it cool.

Leo (July 23 – August 22) 

The quest for perfection doesn’t end well.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22) 

That smile on your face says it all.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Sometimes the obstacle is the path.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

When the popcorn is ready, the truffle oil will appear.  PS

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

The Creators of N.C.

Cultivating Community

Caroline Stephenson steps out from behind the camera

By Wiley Cash  •  Photographs by Mallory Cash

According to filmmaker Caroline Stephenson, “It’s all about storytelling.” She should know. She was born and raised in rural Murfreesboro, North Carolina, where she grew up surrounded by stories and storytellers. Despite the rich culture around her, as a young person, Stephenson believed that real art could only be found outside Hertford County. Her father, a retired professor and writer, and her late mother, an architectural historian, regularly traveled with the family to places like Norfolk, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and metropolitan New York, where they would visit museums and view films in art house theatres.

“That made a big impression,” says Stephenson, especially the films. “I wanted to do that.”

The restlessness that Stephenson felt as a coming-of-age artist in rural eastern North Carolina manifested itself not only in her desire to create, but also in an all-too-familiar angst-driven urge to leave home. Like so many young people who think opportunity and adventure are waiting somewhere else, Stephenson says that she “couldn’t wait to get out of there.”

First, she spent two years at St. Mary’s School in Raleigh, and then two years at Boston University before transferring to Columbia College Chicago, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in film. Soon, she was living in Los Angeles, beginning a career that would carry her to places like Prague, Vienna, Athens and Budapest, working as an assistant director on sets for films and television shows like Empire, House and, currently, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.

After marrying fellow filmmaker Jochen Kunstler and having two children, Stephenson felt a call to home. She and her young family moved back to Murfreesboro in 2010, where Stephenson came to terms with Hertford County’s rich cultural heritage as well as its incredible challenges. The county is 60 percent Black, and historical inequities in everything from education to home ownership serve to compound a poverty rate of 22 percent, much higher than the state average. The county’s struggles have also resulted in a dogged spirit of determination that immediately inspired Stephenson and her family to dedicate themselves to supporting the community.

“I’m driven by the incredible people where I’m from,” Stephenson says. “They created beauty, and above all they persevered and were proud.”

To tell the stories of the people of her region, Stephenson stepped behind the camera and relied on the talents that had taken her around the world. She made documentary films about Rosenwald Schools, which educated rural Black children during segregation, as well as a documentary about women who work in chicken processing plants in eastern North Carolina. Other documentaries and screenplays are in the works, all of them highlighting challenges that have either been overcome or are still being faced. 

Like any successful director looking for the best angles and working to make a production as seamless as possible, Stephenson is most comfortable being off camera, outside the glare of the lights.

“I like to be behind the scenes,” she says. “I want other people to shine.”

She also wants to make connections between the people and the organizations of Hertford County so they can support one another. In 2016, Stephenson opened Cultivator, an independent bookstore that quickly became a community hub. “We also sold local art and pottery, screened movies, held meetings and educational workshops,” she says. The store was the only bookstore within an hour’s drive in any direction but, as is the case with so many independent bookstores, it was tough to make ends meet. The pandemic made the venture even more difficult, and Cultivator closed its doors in April 2020, but the books — most of which were either donated or left behind after Stephenson’s mother, a voracious reader and book collector, passed away in 2014 — remained.

Stephenson quickly realized that not having a storefront did not have to stop the work of Cultivator, and so she converted her minivan into a bookmobile. “It’s just a folding table, personal protective equipment, and boxes and boxes of free books,” she says. “But we now serve more people than we served with the bookstore.”

The Cultivator bookmobile regularly sets up in front of libraries, grocery stores, big box stores and churches. Sitting behind a table in the parking lot of Murfreesboro United Methodist Church one chilly night in late October, a volunteer named Christina is handing out books at the church-sponsored monthly bilingual dinner. Young children, many of them Spanish speakers, tote armfuls of children’s books, some written in Spanish. When Stephenson’s name comes up, Christina, who has been a volunteer for 10 years, pauses.

“Caroline is who inspired me to get involved in the community,” she says. “She does for others.”

Andrew Brown owns a family farm with his daughter, Sharonda, and has partnered with Cultivator to address food insecurity in the community. Sharonda is the evening’s featured speaker. The family has also been the subject of one of Stephenson’s documentaries.

“Caroline got things going when she came back home,” Brown says. “You need someone like her to bring people together.”

Inside the church’s fellowship hall, tostadas and accompanying fixings are being placed on long serving tables as a line of hungry diners forms. A woman named Alejandra announces that dinner is ready. Pastor Jason Villegas greets everyone, moving quickly between English and Spanish.

“I met Alejandra at an ESL (English as Second Language) class at Cultivator,” Pastor Villegas says. When Alejandra joined Villegas’ congregation, she encouraged him to preach in Spanish to reach more people in the community. The community dinners began not long after.

When Pastor Villegas says the blessing, he prays first in English, then translates it to Spanish.

“Thank you that we have connection and unity here,” he says. He keeps his eyes closed, but he lifts his hands as if gesturing toward the people around him. “And thank you to Caroline Stephenson for bringing so many of us together.”

Of course, Stephenson is not there to hear this prayer or witness her community’s gratitude. She is overseas on a film set, operating where she is most comfortable, behind the scenes. PS

Wiley Cash is the Alumni Author-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. His new novel, When Ghosts Come Home, is available wherever books are sold.

The Twelve Days of Delights

By Jenna Biter    •   Photographs by John Gessner

Dec. 25 marks the first day of the Christmas season, not the last. In Christian theology, the 12 days of Christmas begin with the birth of Christ and end with the Epiphany, the coming of the Magi, on Jan. 6. Thanks to the time span, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” came to be the earworm millions of radio listeners subconsciously hum from November till year’s end with the predictable vocal breakthrough at “five golden rings.”

Printed in 1780, the children’s book Mirth without Mischief features the earliest known version of the playful lover’s ode. Of course, the carol’s origins are less than clear, but most historians agree that the song was originally a memory-and-forfeit game. Singers who forgot lyrics paid their playmates with a forfeit like a kiss on the cheek. Only competitive kids, Jeopardy! champions, or carolers with serious sets of lungs typically finish the song, so we asked 12 local confectioners to interpret the verses in a visual cheat sheet of holiday desserts.

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

By Kayla Renee Cakes

Kayla Lowery found an image of a lyric sheet while searching the internet for partridge-in-a-pear-tree inspiration and knew that she wanted to scrawl the carol’s opening line, “On the first day of Christmas,” on her cake to introduce the song. She daubed the fowl and foliage with a palette knife and paintbrush to achieve a vintage design that matches the tenor of the 18th century song. “I’m more of a buttercream hands-on kind of person than I am a fondant person,” she says, referring to her painterly technique. Lowery, 22, started her baking business when she was just 14 and will open her first storefront in January in downtown Raeford.

Email: kaylareneecakes@gmail.com

Instagram: @kaylareneecakes

Facebook: @KRLCakes

Two Turtle Doves

By Grace Filled Baker

“I am always inspired by vintage cakes,” says Alison Reed, whose mother in-law, Debbie Reed, taught her how to bake, passing along vintage piping techniques in the process. “I knew I wanted to do a heart, keep it clean and simple and white,” she says of her dessert. Reed made a chocolate cake with cream cheese filling, gracing it with two chocolate turtle doves. Doves mate for life, so the heart shape is fitting. Reed prefers to work in muted tones that support the vintage modus operandi of her home-based bakery, Grace Filled Baker.

Website: gracefilledbaker.com

Email: alison@gracefilledbaker.com

Instagram: @gracefilledbaker

Facebook: @GFBgracefilledbaker

Three French Hens

By Sal’s of Southern Pines

Sarah Gunderson, an experienced chef who runs her own catering and cake business, meticulously deconstructed “three French hens” into a crêpe cake layered with a pomegranate compote and diplomat cream, a pastry cream folded with whipped cream. She garnished her cake with pistachios and honeyed orange peel. The crêpes are French. The pastry cream is made with eggs, representing the hens. The “three” represent faith, love and hope. “I did honey for hope because I hope for a sweeter tomorrow; pomegranate for love; and then crêpe again, for the unleavened bread, for faith,” Gunderson says.

Website: salsofsouthernpines.com

Email: sgunderson@salsofsouthernpines.com

Facebook: Sal’s of Southern Pines

Instagram: @sals_ofsouthernpines

Four Calling Birds

By Cakes in the Pines

Kristen Donovan has been baking since her 13-year-old daughter was 3 and has been running her one-woman show, Cakes in the Pines, for two years. “I wanted to make it bright, happy — a Christmasy feel,” Donovan says. “Especially since these past two years have been a little dark.” So, instead of blackbirds, she opted for an evergreen-colored, vanilla bean buttercream overlayed with a snow-covered Christmas tree and a trio of white birds. The fourth calling bird, made of fondant and sugar paste with wafer paper wings, alights on the top tier, which is a marble cake. The bottom tier is vanilla.

Email: cakesinthepines@gmail.com

Facebook: @cakesinthepines

Instagram: @cakesinthepines

Five Golden Rings

By Pineconefections

Mary Hannah Ellis has some serious local baking credentials, but she’s a hobby baker and wants to keep it that way. “Baking should always be enjoyable; the kitchen is where I go to escape from work,” she says. She escapes to the tropics for the fifth day of Christmas. “I love Christmas, but I’m not a fan of winter,” Ellis says. “Summer is my favorite season.” So, of course, her interpretation has a piña colada spin. The “five golden rings” of paradise is a three-tiered cake made of pineapple layers with coconut-pineapple filling and coconut cream cheese buttercream, and it’s decorated with pineapple rings and piped sprigs of holly.

Instagram: @pineconefections

Six Geese A-Laying

Form V Chocolates

“When I thought of six geese a-laying, I immediately thought of golden goose eggs,” says Scott Hasemeier, Pinehurst’s resident chocolatier, who specializes in hand-painted bon bons. In a three-day process, Hasemeier made thin-shelled white chocolate eggs, filled them with a caramel “yolk,” and then tossed the eggs in golden luster dust before cozying them into a nest of chocolate-covered pretzels. “I rolled the pretzels into a small branch, and then I covered that with some chocolate bark and sprayed it with some green cocoa butter to make it look mossy,” he says.

Website: formvchocolates.com

Email: formvchocolates@gmail.com

Facebook: @FormVChocolates

Instagram: @formvchocolates

Seven Swans A-Swimming

Cookies by Jay

When Jessica Wirth and her family were stationed in England, she and her British neighbor would take their kids to feed a few of England’s swans, all technically owned by the queen — though her majesty exercises that option only in the waters nearest Windsor castle. After mastering the art of decorating cookies with royal icing, Wirth now runs her own home-based, cookie-making bakery, Cookies by Jay. She even owns a 3D printer to make her “seven swans a-swimming” cookie cutters. The cookies are her signature almond vanilla-flavored
sugar cookies with a soft-bite vanilla royal icing and hand-painted details.

Website: cookiesbyjay.com

Email: cookiesbyjaync@gmail.com

Instagram: @cookiesbyjay

Facebook: @CookiesbyJay

Eight Maids A-Milking

Ashley’s Sweet Designs

“I decided to do the scene with a big red barn because it’s like where I came from,” 24-year-old Ashley Garner says. “Robbins is a farm town.” She constructed an entire country scene out of movable sugar cookies finished with royal icing that anyone would like to eat and every kid would like to play with . . . and then eat. Garner started making and decorating cookies and cakes after catching the bug from watching television bakers. She posted her creations to social media, and people started placing orders. Now, she’s baking at Robbins’ new Middleton Street Bakeshop, where the owner, Carrie Ritter, allows her to work on her own business, Ashley’s Sweet Designs.

Email: ashleyssweetdesigns@outlook.com

Facebook: Ashley’s Sweet Designs

Nine Ladies Dancing

Lynette’s Bakery and Café

Lynette Bofill opened her eponymous bakery and café in 2019, and she’s been serving up Cuban American favorites ever since. She’s interpreted nine ladies dancing in a flan that tastes like Christmas. “My grandmother always made flan for every holiday or birthday,” she says. “It’s not a holiday without one.” Bofill’s “nine ladies dancing” is flavored with orange and cranberry and doused in a cranberry-bourbon citrus sauce. She imagined the soft, delicate caramel custard as nine elegant ballerinas, and the cranberry, citrus and shot of bourbon as their bold moves. “It comes together just like a performance,” she says.

Website: lynettesbakerycafe.com

Email: info@lynettesbakerycafe.com

Facebook: @LynettesBakeryCafe

Instagram: @lynettesbakerycafe

Ten Lords A-Leaping

C.Cups Cupcakery

Growing up, Chelsea Schlegel enjoyed artistic endeavors like painting and sculpture. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in hospitality and resort management, cake decorating turned out to be her match-made-in-heaven career fit. “I was always watching Food Network as a kid and loved the Ace of Cakes,” she says. Schlegel works as the cake decorator at Janell Canino’s C.Cups Cupcakery, where she created the bake shop’s “ten lords a-leaping” cake. “I decided to be pretty straightforward with it,” she says. And it paid off.

Website: theccupscupcakery.com

Email: southernpinescupcakes@gmail.com

Facebook: @theccupscupcakery

Instagram: @ccupscupcakery

Eleven Pipers Piping

The Bakehouse

“I immediately knew I wanted to do something classic,” says Teresa Santiago, the pastry chef at The Bakehouse in Aberdeen. “‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ is a Christmas carol written in the 1700s, and it made me think of large chapels with stained glass windows and a really traditional Christmas.” Santiago hand-piped and painted the stained glass panels on columns of fondant, shaped the Christmas tree out of tempered chocolate, and hand-blew the ornaments from sugar. “Here at the Bakehouse, we love Christmas,” she says.

Website: thebakehouseofaberdeen.com

Email: thebakehouse@yahoo.com

Facebook: @thebakehouseofaberdeen

Instagram: @thebakehouseofaberdeen

Twelve Drummers Drumming

The Macaron Sisters

Military wives, friends and devoted bakers Morgan Wagner and Lindsay Weaver decided to tackle the art of macaron making together. They were hooked after their first batch, eventually launching their home-based business, The Macaron Sisters, to share their passion for the French cookie. “With macarons being naturally round with flat tops, we thought it would be neat to make them look like drums,” says Wagner. The lighter brown cookies with green piping are spiced gingerbread with eggnog buttercream, and the darker brown cookies with red piping are classic chocolate with chocolate peppermint ganache.

Website: morganbatanian.wixsite.com/themacaronsisters

Email: morganbatanian@gmail.com

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Pleasures of Life Dept.

Reconsidering a White Christmas

Perfection isn’t what it’s cracked up to be

By Tom Allen

The chances of a white Christmas in the Sandhills of North Carolina are slim to none. Even if a few flurries put folks in the holiday spirit, the National Weather Service defines a white Christmas as having at least 1 inch of snow on the ground the morning of December 25. But a couple of inches on December 22 that hang around for a few cold days would make the cut, right? Liturgically speaking, Christmastide is 12 days, so more days equals a greater probability, correct?

Dreaming of a white Christmas, where the treetops glisten? Bing crooned the iconic song, first heard in Irving Berlin’s classic, Holiday Inn, then later in the eponymous motion picture. It continues to be the bestselling Christmas song of all time.

The concept is lovely, but when it actually happens, the dream, more often than not around here, becomes a nightmare — wind, cold, ice, cars off the road, and sundry other unpleasantries. In our part of the world the three French hens wouldn’t have electricity.

Aside from a couple of Christmas day dustings, I’ve only experienced one white Christmas, in Louisville, Kentucky, the winter of 1990. One front after another brought several inches of snow, starting the first week of December, continuing, almost weekly, for the next three months. Snow and a couple of ice storms kept the frozen stuff on the ground until early March.

Western Kentucky is well-equipped for these seasons, unlike the more temperate parts of the South, where a couple of inches brings life to a standstill. Roads and parking lots stayed pretty clear. Even the apartment complex where I lived kept the sidewalks and entryways clean. But dirty, piled-up snow, gray mush and salty slush made for a depressing winter. And even with salt trucks and snowblowers, I often found myself waddling on an icy sidewalk or gingerly taking baby steps, hoping not to fall, which I did on a few occasions, bruising my ego more than other bodily parts.

On Christmas Eve 1990, my then-fiancée, Beverly, and I headed out to a service at the church we attended. The night was cold, raw, with just enough flurries to slow driving. Inside, the setting was beautiful, traditional, candles and crèche, and “Silent Night” to wrap things up. Heading out to my car after the service I noticed a grey Buick sedan had skidded on an icy patch into the front door panel on the passenger side of my red Toyota. Before I could yell, “Hey, hold on,” the car was gone. The dent was minor; I’d like to believe the chap driving the grey Buick had no idea he bumped my car. After all, it was Christmas — peace on Earth, goodwill to men, even the ones who dent your red Toyota. My instinct was to run, to catch the fella’s attention, to wish him a “Merry Christmas” before I pointed out we needed to talk. But another patch of ice brought me down, making me wonder just how merry and bright this Christmas would be.

As I recall, other than the dent — which I never got repaired — and a sore backside, it was a pretty good holiday. Oddly, the fact that our Christmas was white mattered little. I’ll take a chilly morning, clear roads, whatever family is gathered, and a snuggle with my dog. Because the perfect Christmas, like the perfect marriage or kids or job or church, really doesn’t exist.

So, consider letting go of that perfect holiday. Substituting canned biscuits for yeast rolls that failed to rise isn’t the end of the world. What if the recycled Dollar Tree bag you had to use because you forgot that pretty roll of paper had someone else’s name on it? Don’t sweat it. Kids wiggly at Christmas Eve services? Baby starts crying during “Silent Night”? What better night to hear an infant cry?

The probability of a white Christmas here is low. Chances of a 70-degree day are the same as a 40-degree day. So be thankful for whatever’s on your table — and the people around it. Be civil. Be kind. Be glad.

Just watch out for that guy in a grey Buick sedan.  PS

Tom Allen is minister of education at First Baptist Church, Southern Pines.

The Omnivorous Reader

Hell of a Read

A dizzying journey of the imagination

By Anne Blythe

The adage that you can’t judge a book by its cover is not one that works for the fourth novel written by Jason Mott, a writer and poet who lives in southeastern North Carolina. The title of Mott’s latest work of fiction, Hell of a Book, is in large, bold capital letters at the top of a black and yellow cover. Go ahead, judge it.

It truly is a hell of a book, one that explores racism, police violence and being Black in America.

It’s a novel — and a mystery, too — about a novelist with a vivid imagination. It’s difficult to know what’s real and what the writer is imagining. It’s also challenging to see how the main characters are connected, until the very end. Even then, there’s no certainty as to whether they’re truly bound in anything other than the novelist’s mind.

Mott pulls readers through a difficult and sometimes overwhelming conversation about “The Altogether Factual, Wholly Bona Fide Story of a Big Dreams, Hard Luck, American-Made Mad Kid” — his subtitle — with madcap humor, painfully poignant prose and a show-me-don’t-tell-me contemplative style.

The protagonist is a Black fiction writer on a dizzying book promotion tour, an unnamed bestselling writer who is breathlessly whisked through a blur of airports, hotels and cities by a quirky cast of drivers, and a profit-driven agent.

We first meet him at 3 a.m. in the hallway of a Midwestern hotel, where he’s naked, locked out of his room and being chased by an angry husband who has caught the author with his wife. He runs after him, flailing at him with a large coat hanger.

As the protagonist is about to be caught, the elevator doors open, and he escapes into a new scene with his savior of the moment, an elderly woman bringing home groceries in the wee hours of the morning.

“She’s eighty if she ever danced a jig,” Mott writes, showing his voice that delights throughout the novel.

As the naked novelist and blue-haired woman watch the hotel floors counted off in the elevator, Mott introduces readers to a sobering reality that becomes a central theme as the writer moves through his chaotic, alcohol-infused tour. Another Black male has been shot and killed by police, but Mott doesn’t give him a name. The old woman asks the novelist a question:

“Did you hear about that boy?”

“Which boy?”

“The one on TV.” She shakes her head and her blue hair sways gently like the hair of some sea nymph who’s seen the tides rise and fall one too many times. “Terrible, terrible.”

The novelist tries initially to go on with his celebrity life without fleshing out his feelings about “the boy.” He tries to push the latest outrage blaring on TVs and pulling Black Lives Matter advocates into the streets with signs and chants into that place deep inside himself where injustices stew without boiling over.

This time, though, the world is outraged, and the protagonist can’t tune out the calls to stop the madness or the cries to confront centuries of oppression and brutality.

The morning after the naked ride in the elevator, we meet The Kid, a mysterious but thought-provoking boy who might, or might not, be a figment of the author’s imagination. He looks to be about 10 years old, “impossibly dark-skinned,” and might, or might not, represent the all too many Black children lost to police violence.

We also get to know Soot, another Black boy in rural North Carolina, whose father tries to teach the power of invisibility, picking up on a theme in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man about not wanting to be seen by oppressors. We’re left to wonder how these boys are connected to the protagonist.

Early on, it becomes clear that the touring novelist has what he describes as “a condition,” an unnamed affliction through which he can blend an imaginary world with reality. His storytelling style, almost a stream of consciousness, can be disorienting but riveting, mind-numbing but thought-provoking.

On one trip from an airport to a book event, The Kid appears in the backseat of a limousine. He’s fully aware that the driver up front can’t see him, and he’s ready to test the author’s assertion that he’s just a character made up in his mind.

“Why am I not real?” The Kid laughs.

“Because I have a condition,” the protagonist says. “I see things. People too. They say it’s some sort of escape valve for pressure on the mind, probably caused by some sort of trauma. But I don’t go in on that. I haven’t had any type of trauma in my life . . . Nothing worthy of a Lifetime network movie or anything like that.”

Trauma eventually takes readers from the misadventures of the book tour to the dirt roads of Bolton, the hometown of Soot — and Mott as well, raising yet another conundrum. Is Mott’s Hell of a Book really a novel, or is it more fact than fiction about a Black novelist from the South?

“Nestled in the sweaty armpit of Carolina swampland, surrounded by gum trees, and pines, and cedar, and oak, and wild grapevines, the town of Bolton is the land that time forgot,” he writes. “The main exports of Bolton are lumber and black manual labor. The wood comes from the forests and swamplands — all of which are owned by the local paper mill — and the labor comes from the town’s seven-hundred-odd residents. I wish I could tell you that there’s something more than those two chief exports that comes out of Bolton, but there’s nothing else. Bolton isn’t a town that gives, but neither is it a town that takes. It’s the type of place that keeps to itself. It’s self-sustaining, the way the past always is.”

The past and the present need to confront, and reckon with, what generations of Black Americans have endured.

“Down in this part of the world, we got it all: fifty-four Confederate flags planted along the Interstate, statues put up by the daughters of the Confederacy, plantations where you can have wedding pictures taken of the way things used to be, we got lynchings, riots, bombings, shrimp and grits, and even muscadine grapes,” the novelist writes.

“Yeah, the South is America’s longest-running crime scene. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. But the thing is, if you’re born into a meat grinder, you grow up around the gears, so eventually you don’t even see them anymore. You just see the beauty of the sausage. Maybe that’s why, in spite of everything I know about it, I’ve always loved the South.”

It’s also the place where the protagonist, The Kid and Soot converge — without fully solving the air of mystery that surrounds them throughout the book. The enigmatic threads Mott so adroitly weaves together become more tightly stitched toward the end. Hell of a Book will make you think while also entertaining you on a helluva journey.

“Laugh all you want,” the protagonist writes as he and The Kid come to the end of the journey, “but I think learning to love yourself in a country where you’re told that you’re a plague on the economy, that you’re nothing but a prisoner in the making, that your life can be taken away from you at any moment and there’s nothing you can do about it — learning to love yourself in the middle of all that? Hell, that’s a goddamn miracle.”  PS

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