No Rules for Radicals

Aquarians march to the beat of a different drummer

 

By Astrid Stellanova

While I ain’t gonna say Aquarians are wild, they sure are exciting, enticing and (usually) socially engaged. Let’s add radical and (sometimes) irresistible to their qualities. A short list of these rule-breaking celebrities: Galileo, Christina Ricci, Christian Dior, Darwin, Dickens, Ellen DeGeneres, Mozart, Thomas Edison, Michael Jordan, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Paris Hilton, Mia Farrow. Two presidents were Aquarians: Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. Ad Astra — Astrid

 

Aquarius (January 20–February 18)

It’s like saying fire is hot or water is wet to say how much an Aquarian wants to be original and independent. You are wired to march to a drumbeat that is your own. Don’t fight it. When you give in to this most prized inclination, Sugar, it is not only a thing of envy but even your enemies (who are few) admire it, though they may moan and groan about it. You are a jewel in the good Lord’s ring.

Pisces (February 19–March 20)

Pump the brakes, Thelma (or was it Louise?) The cliff ahead may look like it offers the best view but you are not gonna like the consequences. Two people take special interest in you, and, if nothing else, try to serve as a good example. (Or, Baby Cakes, you can always serve by being a bad example if that’s your aim.)

Aries (March 21–April 19)

You tried to fit in, didn’t you? But no more schlumpadinka, Baby. It’s time for you to enjoy your fashionista side. You didn’t get where you are by trying to hide your glory. Maybe you have to tamp down the splurging, but don’t even think about conforming when it comes to your sense of style.

Taurus (April 20–May 20)

Some say the best way to burn fat is on the cooking stove, and, Honey, you do love your grease. But time to get off the biscuits and gravy train and go straight towards your new destiny as a fit person. You’ve had some warning signs and take them to heart.

Gemini (May 21–June 20)

Give you a straw, and you could suck all the air outta the room. You have been too full of righteous indignation, and it is alienating your friends and family. Lighten up, Sweet Thang! If you don’t learn anything else from old Astrid, who is the Queen of Self Righteous Anger, take this lesson to heart: Your wrath and indignation have never done a thing to win hearts and minds.

Cancer (June 21–July 22)

It’s bring your wine to work day! No, seriously, it is actually bring yourself to work day. You did take a necessary step back from your out-of-control job, but maybe you overcorrected. Get back down to business and settle into the routine. Balance is good, and so is discipline.

Leo (July 23–August 22)

Privately, you tell yourself that if you had a fault, it is that you’re less loveable than you used to be. Is your ego just slap crazy? The truth is, little Leo, nobody loves you quite like you love yourself. Try, just try, to love somebody else with that same passion.

Virgo (August 23–September 22)

I know, Sugar. You have been a rock to a lot of people and you are justifiably tired. Sometimes, you should look in the mirror and say: “I cannot be an adult today. I will let my inner child play all it wants to.” That’s going to bring you a break — even if only for one day.

Libra (September 23–October 22)

When you came into this world, you brought a whole lot of light to some very dark corners in your family life. You still do. If you don’t love yourself for this, Honey, just know that everyone else does. In late spring, you are going to make a new friend who will help empower you and leverage your career.

Scorpio (October 23–November 21)

The odds are not against you, Love Bug, but you get down in the dumps and think the dice are loaded. Your turn to win is coming up; keep your chin up and keep in the game. Meanwhile, a neighbor is really hoping you will draw them into your inner circle. They are, like you, surprisingly shy and need a nudge.

Sagittarius (November 22–December 21)

By the time you are reading this, you have had a shoulda-coulda-woulda moment. Be like the Disney tune and “let it go.” Your best was good enough — it just wasn’t appreciated. Show yourself the same kindness you show others — and keep on keeping on. The road is long and you have a second chance.

Capricorn (December 22–January 19)

See that trophy fish stuck over the mantel? If it had just kept its mouth shut, it would still be swimming in the sea. Every time you look at that trophy, ask yourself if you have been as discreet as you oughta be. And ask yourself if it isn’t ironic you hooked, baited and caught that fish yourself.  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.

Angels Unawares

Extending kindness to strangers . . . whoever they happen to be

 

By Jim Dodson

Mr. Pettigrew is about my age, maybe a little younger, his hair turning gray. His truck was old, his trailer older — so old the dumping mechanism was rusted shut. We had to unload the firewood by hand.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I’ll stack it for you.”

I told him not to worry, I was happy to stack it myself. Up in Maine, after all, where I lived for many years, they say firewood heats you twice — once when you cut and stack it, again when you burn it.

“You from Maine?” he asked

“Nope. Just lived there for 20 years. I’m from here. How about you?”

“Surry County. I’ve got 30 acres up there, or used to.”

A large chocolate Lab hopped out of his truck and lumbered toward us.

“That’s Fred. I better put him back in the truck or else he might wander into the street. He’s about the last thing I got these days. Sure hate to lose him.”

My dog Mulligan charged toward Fred but soon both their tails were wagging. She’s a tough old lady and Fred was smart enough not to give her any guff.

The afternoon was a sharply cold one between Christmas and New Year’s. The kids had all gone back to their busy lives, and I was in my annual post-Christmas funk made deeper by a psychic hangover from a year that only Ebenezer Scrooge could love, a humdinger of relentlessly bad news — killer floods and record hurricanes, devastating wildfires, mass shootings, rising seas, melting icecaps, Russian meddling, a world on the brink of nuclear war, a Congress divided against itself, a president who thinks he’s a game show host.

Being a rare fan of winter — too many years in Maine to blame — I wasn’t bothered that an Arctic deep freeze was on its way, just that I was out of decent firewood. Before Christmas I’d seen a hand-lettered sign advertising seasoned firewood by a small farmhouse out in the country, so I phoned. Sixty bucks a load sounded reasonable. He brought it that afternoon.

As we worked, I asked how Mr. Pettigrew’s Christmas had been.

He shrugged. “Not so good. But at least I’m alive.”

He explained that he’d recently been diagnosed with kidney disease and had nearly died from cirrhosis of the liver just one year ago. He faced further testing in the New Year.

“This time last year I was in the hospital, sure I was about to die. So I signed over everything to my daughter,” he said. “I signed over everything I owned — even my land up in Surry County — because I wanted her to at least have something to remember me by.”

When he survived, she refused to transfer his property back to him. In fact, she evicted him from his own house.

“That’s a tough break,” I sympathized. “What keeps you going?”

“One foot in front of the other,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve got a little disability to live off of and a place for Fred and me to stay. I’m able to do odd jobs and sell some wood off a piece of land I still own. I’m pretty grateful for that.”

After a pause, chucking a piece of wood on the pile, he added, “Better enjoy this life now, I reckon. Never know when it’ll just go.”

I simply nodded.

A week before Christmas my good friend Chris passed away while sitting on his front porch reading the morning paper on an uncommonly warm December morning. Chris was only 54. Dogs were his best friends, too.

Mr. Pettigrew looked about the same age as Chris.

“You retired?” he asked me, snapping me out of my sudden wintry thoughts.

“Nope. Just plain tired,” I joked, casually adding that I would turn 65 on the second day of February “if the Good Lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise,” as both Johnny Cash and my late Grandmother Taylor liked to say.

“You don’t look anywhere near that old,” said Mr. Pettigrew.

“I don’t feel anywhere near that old,” I said. “Just certain parts do.”

Mr. Pettigrew laughed. It was a genuine laugh. I wondered if I could laugh like that if I had kidney disease and my daughter had taken everything I owned.

We finished up and he thanked me for buying his wood.

It was beautiful wood, well-seasoned red oak with some maple mixed in.

I gave Mr.Pettigrew an extra twenty, petted Fred on the head and wished them both well in 2018, marveling at his grace under fire.

He gave me his card and said, “If you need an extra hand with anything, you know where to find me.”

I watched him drive off, grateful for having met Mr. Pettigrew.

The next afternoon, an even colder one, another pickup truck pulled up in front of the house.

An older man came to my door. His hair was white.

He was well-spoken and polite. “I’m hoping, sir, if you could possibly help me . . .”

Sometimes I wonder if the angels have a target on my back. When I was 9 and my brother 11, our father walked us through Lower Manhattan’s Bowery one freezing Saturday morning during a Christmas visit to see the homeless men sleeping on the frozen sidewalks. This was before homeless shelters were commonplace. My mother thought we’d just gone out for fresh bagels.

We saw men with blue legs huddled beneath newspapers and cardboard boxes on sidewalk grates — and wound up buying a couple dozen warm bagels and distributing them. My brother and I eventually took to calling our old man Opti the Mystic because souls in need always seemed to find him — and take something away from his cornball belief that a small act of kindness can make all the difference in someone’s life.

Since that day, either a curse or a blessing, probably a little of both, they seem to find me, too — people like Mr. Pettigrew and the gentleman at my door whose name I never asked.

Friends gently chide me for giving any homeless person who asks whatever I have in my pocket. There are places these lost souls can go, they say. The poor are always with us, the Good Book reminds. Besides, they’ll just drink or smoke up whatever you give them. Not to mention that this world is full of scam artists, hucksters and thieves.

Maybe they are right. But to this day, I’ve never regretted reaching into my pocket when someone has the courage to ask.

As Opti might say, perhaps what you do even in the smallest way for another living creature, human or otherwise, you actually do for yourself in a way that only the universe may bother to take note of.

The man at my door, at any rate, had a painful story about losing his job in Washington, D.C., and driving down to stay with his son in Carolina, hoping to find a new job. He hadn’t called ahead and his son was out of town.

“The shelters are all full and I found a place that costs $60 a night. I’ve only got $20. Last night I had to sleep in my truck and the police told me not to do that again.”

He apologized and, turning away, began to cry. I’ve seen enough tears in this world to know they were as genuine as Mr. Pettigrew’s laugh. Both held notes of sorrow.

I gave him what I had in my pocket. It came to $41.

He accepted the money, wiped his eyes and offered me a weathered hand.

“Thank you, sir. When I get a job, I will repay you. That I promise.”

I told him that would not be necessary and asked him to wait a moment while I fetched another ten bucks from my loose change jar and gave him that, too. “Supper money,” I said, thinking of my late Papa — imagining him as one of those target-hunting angels standing beside me whispering Scripture in my ear. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some of us may entertain angels unaware.

“Just curious,” I said to the man at my door. “How’d you pick my house?”

He smiled. “I’m really not sure. Your house just looked like a kind house.”

My wife got home after dark. I had an excellent fire going and poured her a glass of wine.

She asked me how my day had gone. She always worries about my post-Christmas funk.

I told her the funk was gone. I was eager to face a new year with genuine optimism, in part because that I’d met a couple older gentlemen who helped remind me how grateful I am to be turning 65 with a good roof over my head and a little loose change in my jar. An early birthday gift to me, I joked.

“Who were they?”

“Have no idea. Just a couple elderly angels.”

The next day, the second gentleman returned with a big smile on his face.

“I just got a job at Lowe’s,” he declared. “I wanted to let you know. I will return that money.”

I congratulated him and said that would not be necessary, though I still forgot to ask his name.  PS

Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.

Coming to a Field Near You?

How hemp may save the family farm

 

By Jan Leitschuh

There’s a new kid in town, one whose arrival holds promise for Tar Heel agriculture. Don’t look for it to be a kitchen garden crop anytime soon, at least in North Carolina (although California allows six plants cultivated for personal use). Legally, you and I can’t grow it. But last summer, some N.C. farmers — including a Sandhills producer — cultivated this robust new crop in a groundbreaking pilot program.

Yep, we’re talking about cannabis. In North Carolina that “new kid” is industrial hemp. Last year saw the planting of legal hemp in North Carolina for the first time in decades. With the loss of tobacco as a cash crop, the state hopes hemp will fill the gap, especially in view of the strong and growing worldwide demand for hemp products.  

Before the cute comments about “wacky weed” begin, know that this agricultural program has the full support of our state government, in hopes of providing a sturdy and profitable crop for N.C. farmers. Demand for hemp products is high in the U.S., but until recently hemp production has been severely limited due to Federal Drug Enforcement laws. 

This climate is shifting. And some say that N.C. is strategically positioned to be the largest hemp-producing state in America in 2018.

While industrial hemp is the same species as the stoner’s marijuana (Cannabis sativa), industrial hemp is the non-happy strain. The buzz has been bred out. The two crops differ by their tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content. THC is the psychoactive chemical that causes the high from marijuana. So, no personal joy in the industrial version. Hemp must have less than 0.3% THC, and plants with more than that are considered to be marijuana.  

But word is slow to get around. One Sandhills farmer who grew about 15 acres under the pilot program prefers to remain anonymous because he had some theft of industrial hemp plants from his fields. Until the public at large understands that industrial hemp won’t get you high, this possibility remains an economic hazard for farmers.

True story: I have hemp roots. At one point, during World War II, my Minnesota grandfather was encouraged by the U.S. government to grow acres of hemp for fiber, to be made into rope for Navy ships. The hemp naturalized and spread along his prairie farm. When my cousin came to live with him during the late ’60s, she persuaded my grandfather — as far to the “stern elder” side of the generation gap as one could be — to dry a few leaves and smoke them in his pipe. He was disappointed: “I don’t see what all the fuss is about.” It was a low-THC industrial strain.

The N.C. hemp industry is in its infancy, and is highly regulated. To grow legal industrial hemp, farmers are required to submit an application, submit to crop testing, demonstrate they make the majority of their income from farming, slap down a $250 licensing fee, and agree to participate in the pilot program’s research. The new N.C. Industrial Hemp Commission is responsible for developing rules and licensing for the pilot program. 

The Agricultural Act of 2014 allowed certain research institutions and state departments of agriculture to grow industrial hemp, as part of an agricultural pilot program. North Carolina State University, North Carolina A&T State University, and the N.C. Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services are all participants in the pilot program here. Research trials were planned at N.C. State research stations in Salisbury, Plymouth and Rocky Mount, and at the North Carolina A&T research farm in Greensboro.

A 2016 change in the law made agricultural production of industrial hemp possible here under the pilot program, but it has taken until last summer for the rules and regulations to be in place. The first statewide crop — a small, strictly regulated one — was harvested last fall from the mountains to the sea.

Hemp is and has been grown globally for millennia. Over 30 countries currently grow hemp for its stalks, seeds and flowers (the seed for N.C. originally came from an Italian strain). An impressive array of items can be manufactured from industrial hemp: fuel, seed oil and protein-rich food, clothing and other textiles, hemp plastics, fibers, hemp “milks” and beverages, paper, feed stocks, construction and insulation materials, even cosmetic products. Proponents say hemp can provide many of the raw materials we need as a society to function, and cleaner and greener. Hemp, for example, can provide four times as much pulp for paper with at least four to seven times less pollution than tree paper.

Our first five U.S. presidents were all hemp farmers. Despite hemp’s long cultivation history, however, the best agronomic practices of producing it have been lost due to decades of prohibition. This has led to a new cottage industry: hemp “universities,” courses that teach growers the basics of quality production.

Cannabis plants also produce cannabidiol, or CBD, an interesting phytochemical attracting strong medical interest lately. CBD oil is now legal in all 50 states, and is used to treat glaucoma, epileptic seizures, arthritis, neurological disorders, PTSD, depression, pain and other ailments. The oil is reported to have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and anti-nausea properties. It is sold in a number of locations locally.

One company, Hemp, Inc., is interested in high-value CBD production, and has planted in Franklin and Nash counties, along with acreage in Kentucky, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon. The company recently bet large on N.C., building the largest industrial hemp commercial processing facility in North America in Spring Hope. The 70,000-square-foot facility also has a massive CO₂ supercritical extractor, the state-of-the-art processing method for the CBD oil. The company contracts with local farmers to grow the product, which Hemp, Inc. then processes, packages and distributes.

The company’s promotional material is glowing, perhaps excessively. “The family farm, once a staple of the American landscape, is fast disappearing,” says Hemp, Inc.’s brochure. The company CEO, Bruce Perlowin, envisions a 5-acre farm with a cloning room, a greenhouse and 5,000 high CBD hemp plants. “By showing farmers how to grow high CBD  hemp, operate a greenhouse and turn a barn into a cloning room to earn $5000,000 a year, the small family farm can reappear in the American landscape.”

In an article in the Rocky Mount Telegraph last summer, Perlowin said, “One plant equals one pound. If you don’t do anything but sell the bud to someone with a big extractor, you’re talking $50 to $500 a pound. What we do is a joint venture with local farmers to maximize their income.” The company even operates a Hemp, Inc. University to train its prospective growers.

Whether these gold rush numbers bear out or not, the fact remains that hemp seems to be as economically viable, if not more so, than tobacco, which provided a strong chunk of income to many farm economies. N.C. tobacco producers have greenhouses and other equipment that could convert to hemp production. Who knows? A useful crop with myriad applications in our modern world, hemp holds out hope for replacing both tobacco and petroleum-based manufacturing with greener products. 

Stay tuned for further news as 2018’s harvest comes in next fall.  PS

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

Seeking the Moon

She wakes from darkness 

to moonlight’s glow,

peers through windows  

in room after room. 

Where is the moon,

silver all around, yet nowhere

to be found?

Stepping out to bright cold night,

she bends back, almost falling, 

spies the moon at last,

shining cream directly above, 

waiting all the white while, 

just to be seen.

— Barbara Baillet Moran

Look Out Below!

A day of schussing and moguls

 

By Renee Phile

We’d talked about going the past few winters. It’s one of those activities that seems fun but overwhelming. In theory, appealing, but the logistics are scary. Well, we decided this was the year. We were visiting my grandparents in the mountains — Boone, North Carolina. He woke me up early.

“How much longer? When can we go?”

“David, we can’t go till one.”

“Can we go early?”

“It doesn’t even open until one.”

The time ticked slowly (for David) and around 1 p.m., David and I — in our three layers of clothing, armed with gloves and hats and those knitted ski masks bank robbers wear in the movies — piled into my car. Up the mountain we drove. My grandparents drove their car, too, to get us checked in. This was their idea, after all.

We peered over the houses on the mountain. It was snowy, steep, and gorgeous. Like in a jigsaw puzzle or calendar. Scary, too. The wind was ferocious. Halfway up the mountain, the traffic stopped, a foreshadowing of what was to come. We inched our way to the lodge. To say it was packed would be. . . let’s just say it looked like an Uber convention. It was 1/2 off lift tickets day, and the world loves a bargain. The whole world. All the times I spent at Walmart nearly having a panic attack from too many people dimmed by comparison. There were three lines that wrapped around halls and swirled around walls. Finding the end of one was the goal. Anxiety built.

Some people were filling out forms, and my grandpa left the line to find some for us. These are the forms where you absolve the entire world of responsibility in the event you crush every bone in your body. When Grandpa stepped into the madness, I wondered if I would ever see him again. He returned with paperwork for David and me, with an extra set for the red-haired kid in front of us, who already had his skis. It was at this point my grandma said, “We are going to go home. Call me before you leave here.” Part of me envied them as they left. It was the part that screamed, “For godsakes, don’t leave me here!” on the inside. We chatted with our line mates. It turned out the red-headed kid was from a town close to Southern Pines.

“Have you skied before?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yes, a lot, but this is the first time I have been here. You?”

“I skied when I was his age,” I said, pointing to David. “This is his first time. We are going to need a lesson.”

“Nahhh, we don’t need a lesson,” David chimed in, his phone out as he YouTubed How to Ski. “It’s easy, Mom.” I could remember nothing of the basics of skiing besides gravity. The red-haired kid said, “I can show you a few things; you probably don’t need a lesson.” I was unconvinced but agreed.

Time passed. Another 30 minutes, then another. David became grouchy, and I reminded him over and over that he was the one who really wanted to come. We helped each other out of our coats as sweat dripped down our faces. Finally, it was time to step up to the counter. A rush filled me. Almost two hours of waiting had ended.

We paid for our lift tickets, skis, helmets and a locker, and the adventure began.

The actual ski part could be summed up like. . . well, how about I share with you some texts that I found, yes found, on my phone later that night. Caren is my best friend from high school, and I had sent her a picture of David and me standing in the forever line. I must have left my phone somewhere and forgotten about it for a while.

Caren: How was your Christmas?

David: Good, this is David (smiley face)

Caren: Hey David! Looks like y’all went skiing. Did you have fun?

David: Yes we did, my mom fell every few feet though.

Caren: Haha! That’s always fun (smiley face)

David: Not for the people in her path.

Caren: (2 smiley faces)

David: She just about killed this one guy and took out about 6 others.

Caren: (smiley face) Maybe she’d be better on a snowboard. I did awful on skis.

David: Maybe you should go with us next time.

So, I read through these messages that had been exchanged on my phone. While there is some truth in these texts, they are exaggerated, of course, and David failed to mention that he, too, nearly “killed one guy and took out about 6 others.” At one point he was just lying in the middle of the slope while others, trying not to use his body as a ski jump, zoomed by. (Don’t tell him I told you . . . )

Neither of us learned how to stop without falling or even move around without going straight down the hill. Both of us came home with bruises, hurt pride, but lots of laughter.

Next time — and there will be a next time — we won’t pay attention to any red-haired kids.  PS

Renee Phile loves being a mom, even if it doesn’t show at certain moments.

Jeopardy!

My daily dose of after-dinner angst

 

By Deborah Salomon

When people of a certain age finish comparing aches and pains, medications and grandchildren, the conversation turns to Jeopardy! — hereafter known as J!. Odd, since few seniors appear as contestants. I mean, they don’t compare notes on 2 Broke Girls after eating the local diner’s Early Bird Special.

That’s because this backward quiz show, which debuted in 1964 (! indeed), serves as a barometer. Make that thermometer, since nobody’s sure what a barometer measures. And if they are, they can’t define barometric pressure.

Can you?

Anyway . . . I have learned much about myself and others from J!, things unrelated to the answers. First, deal with suave Alex Trebeck, who wears great suits and looks amazing for 77. His only fault seems to be a language affectation, mostly French, where he exaggerates pronunciation, meaning “See, I know what I’m talking about and you don’t.”

He does, actually, since his mother was French-Canadian. I won’t excoriate his know-it-all attitude. Not hard, Alex, when answers are on the card you’re holding, with the foreign words spelled phonetically.

As for the exclamation mark, the producers offer no explanation except emphasis — and to raise the question among people who notice, because all don’t.

Then, “It’s the category, stupid!” Well-rounded, I’m not. Gimme food, literature, vocabulary, body parts, famous people dead or over 50, architecture, art, nursery rhymes and I’ll pop out answers, right or wrong, abetted by three stupefying (except for the toga party) years of high school Latin, since Latin is the root of everything.

Do kids take Latin anymore?

But pop culture, pop music, movies and TV shows I thought nobody watched, American history, science (chemistry and biology didn’t stick), geography, math (got As, don’t remember a thing) put me under a dunce cap, in the corner, now considered child abuse. The occasional miracle happens: The answer to an obscure clue just bursts from my mouth. I can’t place where I heard or learned it. I call it “stray matter,” instead of gray matter. Right now, I can’t even remember an example — not a good sign.

In fact, I’m much more likely to score in Final Jeopardy because I know, after years of watching, to seek the clue within the clue. Hello, Captain Obvious!

Now, the real fun. Or, what happens when you watch alongside someone from a similar memory pool. The air crackles with unfriendly competition. Your reputation is on the line. And then a particle floating through the parietal lobe short-circuits the synapses, causing you to freeze with the answer just beyond tongue tip. This erodes confidence, may ruin a friendship.

During these sessions I hear, “I do much better when I watch alone.” (Don’t we all?)

How about, “I’d get ’em all on multiple choice.” (Better than nothing.)

Remember, contestants study, practice with coaches. These hot shots know Indonesian inland waterways and English kings’ Roman numerals like I know, well, enough stuff to get the occasional thrill, especially during the junior championships.

Last, I’ll confess a wicked pleasure: Spectrum airs the same episode of “Jeopardy!” at 7 and 7:30 p.m., on different channels. Watch the first, round up regulars for the repeat and show ’em who’s boss. (!!)

Otherwise, don’t sweat the results. Win or lose, brain games keep mature minds sharp. And, eventually the big-money answer to Final Jeopardy will be Arthur Godfrey, ipso facto, Happy Rockefeller, carpe diem, vox populi, ad hoc, Daisy Mae or moratorium.  PS

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

The Homecoming

Putting guru David Orr brings his fantastic fundamentals back to Pine Needles

 

By Lee Pace

On a December afternoon, David Orr peers around the building and the wall space at the Pine Needles Golf Learning Center at the far end of the resort’s practice range. There is an enlarged version of a vintage American Golfer magazine cover featuring Peggy Kirk Bell, who owned the resort for some 60 years prior to her death in 2016. There is a 1920s photo of the par-3 third hole at Pine Needles. There are assorted other charts and images tied to the business of golf instruction.

Finally, Orr finds an uncluttered spot with no decorations or adornments.

“Here,” he says. “They can sign their names right here.”

Over a decade of teaching putting and the short game to more than 60 Tour professionals from his previous headquarters at Campbell University in Buies Creek, Orr established a tradition of having his clients sign and date a wall in his putting studio.

Justin Rose has been there. So have Hunter Mahan, Cheyenne Woods, Suzanne Pettersen, Edoardo Molinari and Trevor Immelman.

“It started when I was working with some guys who were pretty much unknown, were trying to get established on the Web.com Tour or European and Asian tours,” Orr says. “I told them, ‘I want your autograph before you become famous.’ Then I started working with guys further up the World Rankings — Justin and Hunter, guys like that. The wall kind of represents my development as a coach. It’s pretty cool.”

Orr’s career as a swing coach and putting guru has essentially came full circle in the fall of 2017 as he relocated his Flatstick Academy teaching and coaching business back to Pine Needles, where he was on the instruction staff from 2000-04 and learned the business under the tutelage of Mrs. Bell and a staff that included Pat McGowan, a PGA Tour regular from 1978-91, and Chip King, who’s gone on to become director of golf at Grandfather Golf & Country Club.

“This is a homecoming for me,” Orr says. “I think of Peggy every day. Every day. I stand on the range and look around and say, ‘Wow, every brick, every blade of grass — they’re here because of her.’ She built the dream. You cannot replace her. But it’s an honor to be back.”

Kelly Miller, the CEO of the company that owns and operates Pine Needles and its sister resort, Mid Pines, plays frequently in top amateur tournaments and last summer needed some help with his golf swing. He invited Orr to drive down from Buies Creek and look at his swing — and talk a little business. Miller had been following Orr on Facebook and on Orr’s Flatstick Academy website and saw references to golfers traveling to Buies Creek for a lesson.

“I thought, why not have those people come to Pine Needles if David is operating from here?” Miller says.

He took a 15-minute full-swing lesson from Orr, who got Miller’s swing plane adjusted from laid-off to on-line, and threw out the idea. Miller proposed that Orr could still have the freedom to teach at Campbell, work with his professional clients and travel as he does around the world to speak at instruction conferences.

But the rest of the time, he would use Pine Needles’ facilities for his individual and group lessons focusing on putting, chipping, pitching and bunker play. He would also operate multi-day short-game schools and consult with the Pine Needles staff in running the resort’s well-known golf instruction programs.

“This is a unique opportunity to get someone of David’s skill and reputation to come here,” Miller says. “David is certainly one of the top two or three putting instructors in the United States. He’ll bring some energy and an exciting niche to what we’re already doing.”

Orr says his experience working at the top level of the PGA Tour has given him a sense of accomplishment that makes the move back to Pine Needles a comfortable one at this juncture of his career. He helped Rose with his putting and short game, and then watched as Rose won the 2013 U.S. Open. A year later, he followed as Rose went head-to-head against another of his clients, Mahan, in the Ryder Cup.

“I don’t have to prove myself any longer,” Orr says. “Early on, I was like a salmon swimming upstream. Now it’s cool to step on a practice tee on tour and think, ‘I don’t have to prove anything.’ I have so much fun working with amateur golfers and juniors. I can help some younger guys and borrow from my experiences the last 10 years.”

Orr is a native of upstate New York, played college golf at Bridgewater in Virginia, and then graduated in 1991 from Oswego State in New York with a degree in political science. That summer he was working at a club in Syracuse and was impressed by the wad of hundred-dollar bills the head pro was making on the lesson tee. The idea of becoming a golf instructor lingered in the back of his mind the next several years as he played the mini-tours, and Orr eventually moved to Raleigh and worked at Cheviot Hills and North Ridge Country Club.

“I was still playing some on the mini-tour in the mid-90s when I was giving lessons at Cheviot Hills,” he says. “I won one mini-tour event but was making more teaching than playing.”

Orr joined Mrs. Bell’s teaching staff at Pine Needles in 2000 and learned over four years that there was more to teaching than simply applying the highly technical dictums from two of the enduring influences on his own swing — PGA Tour player Mac O’Grady and Homer Kelley’s book, The Golfing Machine.

“I got to Pine Needles with a lot of science in my head and learned from Peggy the art of teaching,” Orr says. “‘How-to’ instruction doesn’t work all that well. The brilliant ‘ah-ha moment’ with Peg was her drumming it into my head that you need to get students to do something in order to learn it. I can remember, David, get them out there doing it. That was a huge turning point. I learned to make instruction palatable so that people could understand it and improve.”

Orr left in 2004 to take classes in the Professional Golf Management program at Campbell and obtain his Class A-6 PGA status, which he did in 2007. He joined the Campbell faculty and became director of instruction for the PGM program, and during the late 2000s began doing extensive research into putting — from technique to equipment to green reading.

One of his motivations to crack the putting code was the fact that his own putting ability had been, in his word, “terrible” over his competitive career.

“I was terrible for many of the same reasons everyone else is,” he says. “You miss a couple short ones and you get down on yourself and all of a sudden you’re afraid. I used to avoid practicing putting. I changed putters and grips and changed my stroke. I’d go take lessons. The more I tried, the worse I got. That’s how I came to a turning point. I did the research and started teaching putting.”

One of the significant developments for him was learning the SAM PuttLab system, which uses 3-D technology to analyze some 28 parameters of the putting stroke and displays the results in easy to understand graphic reports. He and Dr. Rob Neal of Golf BioDynamics pioneered research on the working of the hands, wrists, forearms and upper arms in the putting stroke. That research became the basis for Neal’s GDB 3-D System, which in the last decade has taken putting stroke and full-swing analysis to new technical levels.

“My teaching method is based on research, not on theory,” Orr says. “I offer very little ‘how-to’ information. One of the things I learned from using SAM was, ‘Never guess what you can measure.’ That’s one of my policies: I don’t guess.”

Orr evaluates each golfer and offers suggestions and direction based on analysis of three key skills to holing a putt: Can a player read a green? How good are they adjusting to speeds of greens? And are they able to start the ball on-line?

“Those are the three skills — read, speed and line,” says Orr. “With each element, we take the guesswork out. We measure it. Then we take what you have and make it the best it can be. There is no perfect putting technique — except your own.”

Orr turns 50 in 2018 and says he’s at the perfect place at Pine Needles to write the next chapter of his teaching career. Indeed, there’s a blank space of wall in his new putting lab just awaiting some signatures.  PS

Chapel Hill-based golf writer Lee Pace has been writing “Golftown Journal” since 2008.

The Last Ballad

Wiley Cash creates a model for other writers

 

By D.G. Martin

Readers of this magazine have come to know and admire Wiley Cash as a regular contributor of poignant essays about his family, his work, and his writing.

In the October issue, he gave us a very personal report about the origins of his latest novel, The Last Ballad. He told us that for the past five years he had been “living in a 1929 world of cotton mill shacks, country clubs, segregated railroad cars, and labor organizers with communist sympathies. Everything I know about the craft of writing and the history, culture and politics of America, especially the American South, has gone into this novel.”

Now that the book is out and Cash’s promotional book tour is drawing to an end, it is a good time to take another look at this remarkable story of blended fiction and important history.

When Cash takes us back to 1929 Gaston County’s textile mill country, he forces us to confront real and uncomfortable facts about the brutal conditions workers faced. All the while Cash uses his storytelling gifts to create a moving tale about a real person, textile worker and activist, Ella May Wiggins.

On the frame of this real character, Cash builds a moving story that puts readers in Wiggins’ shoes as she walks the 2 miles every evening from her hovel in Stumptown to American Textile Mill No. 2 in Gaston County’s Bessemer City, works all night in the dirt and dust and clacking noise, and then walks back to tend to the children she has left alone the entire night.

Cash follows her decision to support the strike at Loray Mills, where her ballad singing at worker rallies mobilized audiences more than the speeches of union leaders. He relates how her actions also provoked negative responses from union opponents that led to her death.

In the book’s powerful fourth chapter, Cash compresses the conversion of Ella May from oppressed textile worker to inspirational union hero into one evening. As she rides in the back of a truck from Bessemer City to a pro-strike rally at the Loray Mill in Gastonia, she tells Sophia, a union organizer, about her family’s struggles, the death of her beloved son, and “the weight of her children and their lives upon her heart.”

“Hot damn,” Sophia says. “And you sing too?

“Hell, girl, we hit the jackpot with you. You might be the one we’ve been looking for.”

That evening in Gastonia, in the shadow of the “colossus of the Loray Mill . . . its six stories of red brick illuminated by what seemed to be hundreds of enormous windows that cast an otherworldly pall over the night,” Ella May tells her story to the rally’s crowd and sings a song from her mountain youth that she adapted on the spot.

She began,

“We leave our home in the morning,

We kiss our children good-bye.

While we slave for the bosses,

Our children scream and cry.”

And after several more verses of struggle and woe, she concluded,

“But understand, dear workers,

Our union they do fear,

Let’s stand together, workers

And have a union here.”

When it was over, “people cheered, whistled and pointed, called her name and chanted union slogans. Flashbulbs popped and illuminated ghostly white faces as if lightning had threaded itself through the audience.”

By the end of the evening and the conclusion of the fourth chapter, Ella May has the makings of a legend and a target of the anti-union forces that will bring about her early death.

In the book’s other chapters, Cash introduces us to people who shaped Ella May’s life: her no-good husband John, her no-good boyfriend Charlie, the Goldberg brothers who ran the mill where she worked, her African-American co-worker and neighbor Violet, the union strike leaders, a 12-year-old worker who loses half his hand when it gets caught in the mill’s machinery, and Wiggin’s children as they struggle through hunger and illness.

We also meet an African-American railroad porter, Hampton Haywood, a communist union organizer. Ella May makes an unlikely friendship with Katherine, the wife of mill owner Richard McAdams. Katherine persuades her husband to sneak Hampton out of town to save him from a racist and anti-union lynch mob, risking Richard’s place in the elite social order — and his life.

The picture Cash paints is an ugly one, showing conditions of Wiggins and her fellow workers to be only a step or two away from serfdom and slavery.

Education for the workers or their children was a pipe dream, as Wiggins explained to U.S. Senator Lee Overman, when the union sent her to Washington to tell the union story. Overman had told a striker she should be in school.

“Let me tell you something,” Wiggins shouted at Overman. “I can’t even send my own children to school. They ain’t got decent enough clothes to wear and I can’t afford to buy them none. I make nine dollars a week, and I work all night and leave them shut up in the house all by themselves. I had one of them sick this winter and I had to leave her there just coughing and crying.”

In his first two best-selling novels, A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy, Cash had wide freedom to develop compelling stories and fashion endings that would surprise and satisfy his readers. But he lost this freedom with The Last Ballad. Historical fiction binds its authors to certain facts. There can be no surprise ending. Cash’s readers know from the first page that Ella May is going to be killed.

In Cash’s case, however, the genre does not restrict his great gifts in character development or in developing rich subplots that give his readers a satisfying literary experience. As a bonus they come away with a deeper comprehension of Ella May’s experiences and those of the people on all sides of the Loray labor conflict.

In his October article for this magazine, Cash, who grew up in Gastonia, explained what made writing about Wiggins a difficult task. “How could I possibly put words to the tragedies in her life and compress them on the page in a way that allowed readers to glean some semblance of her struggle?”

Recently he told me, “I wanted to write a novel that was not only true to the facts, but I wanted almost more importantly to write a novel that felt true to the experience as I understood it. When I was writing this novel I was perfectly aware that these are real events. And the facts are all there. The facts in this novel, are indisputable. And I felt like, by getting the facts right, it allowed me a scaffolding to let the characters come alive.”

So how did Cash do?

I agree with Charlotte Observer writer Dannye Romine Powell, who called The Last Ballad Cash’s “finest” novel, one that she suspects “will serve as a model for any writer who wants to transform fact into fiction.”

In creating this model for other writers of historical fiction, Cash met his challenge of putting into words Wiggins’ tragic life and the oppressive times in which she lived.

And those words and the story they tell confirm Cash’s place in the pantheon of North Carolina’s great writers.  PS

D.G. Martin hosts North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs Sundays at noon and Thursdays at 5 p.m. on UNC-TV.

A Policeman’s Life

Duty and kindness serving the citizens of a small town

 

By Bill Fields

At a gathering of my Pinecrest classmates a few months ago, men and women closing in on 60 like a restless Corvette, one of them pulled me aside early in the evening to tell me a story. During a stressful year that included some challenges, listening to his recollection turned out to be a highlight of 2017.

In the late 1970s, not long after we had graduated from high school, my friend had gotten in his car after a few too many drinks at a work party. Realizing his condition, he parked in an empty lot in West End. As my friend tried to sleep it off, my father, then a deputy sheriff working the second shift, came upon the car to check it out. Startled and scared, the driver roared away quickly. Blue lights on, Dad soon followed, and my friend was pulled over, more anxious than he had been a couple of minutes earlier.

As my friend, an African-American, was recalling the encounter, it seemed like a scenario that these days all too often unfolds into disaster. But his tale didn’t have a bad ending. When my father walked up to the offending vehicle and pointed his flashlight at the driver, he recognized who was behind the wheel and let him explain what had taken place. There was no overreaction, no show of force, no ticket, no crisis. After a warning from my father and a promise from my friend to go straight home, that was it.

An anecdote isn’t everything, but hearing it sure made my night.

Dad came to law enforcement late, when he was in his late 40s, and it became a belated career after a series of jobs following World War II — farmer, gas station operator, clerk and factory foreman. He worked as a third-shift radio dispatcher in Southern Pines, then was hired as a patrolman in Aberdeen. He also had two stints as a Moore County deputy and, during the latter, when he was a warrant server, he got to drive the squad car home.

Whether wearing Aberdeen blue or Moore County khaki, Dad looked sharp in his uniform, probably cocking his hat a few degrees more toward jaunty than specified. Some of his fellow officers went for low-maintenance plastic-exterior work shoes, but my father’s black ankle boots were leather that he kept beautifully shined with a sturdy brush that seemed older than he was.

I was fascinated by the shorthand of the radio communications, the 10 codes. On the occasional snow-day morning when I was riding shotgun, there was nothing better than driving into the Town and Country shopping center and hearing Dad 10-20 at Cecil’s Steak House for breakfast. A few years later, riding through Aberdeen in my girlfriend’s orange MG en route from Chapel Hill on a sneaky trip to the beach, I knew Dad was on duty and got to the town limits hoping he was out of service having a meal.

Being a cop — although Dad hated that word — in Moore County back then was a lot more Mayberry than Manhattan. Directing traffic after July 4th fireworks at Aberdeen Lake could have been as dicey as things got. I am not aware that he ever had to draw his .38 caliber service revolver. (He let me fire it once, at a tin can out in the country north of Southern Pines, and that was enough.)

Dad was involved in one high-speed pursuit, when a car raced north at 100 miles per hour on Highway 1 until it took the Morganton Road exit and crashed at Memorial Field. Investigating bad car wrecks was the toughest part of the job. Once, on a day when Dad got home after dealing with a serious accident, he quickly corrected me when I mentioned that I wished I had been able to see it.

He was an imperfect man, but being a policeman brought out his best. On a cool, dreary day in 1980, through a rain-dappled rear window of a Powell town car on the way to Pinelawn Memorial Park, I was reminded that others thought so too. Many officers from multiple area departments lined our route and blocked intersections, traffic not the reason for their presence.  PS

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