Out of the Blue

OUT OF THE BLUE

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We Have a Day for That

From groundhogs to presidents

By Deborah Salomon

One thing Americans excel at, regardless of political affiliation: assigning a persona or a product or an event to every month, ostensibly to inform, otherwise for profit.

Is there another reason to glorify a rodent on national TV, on Feb. 2?

February is top-heavy with such occasions, most celebrated by eating specific foods, beginning with Groundhog Day.

Huh?

No, braised groundhog is not on the menu. Then why the fuss? Something about a shadow and the remaining days of winter despite such a wide weather variant from Maine to the Carolinas that its significance is lost, especially in the era when AI does the thinking and people, the heavy lifting.

Next: Abe Lincoln’s birthday, which for ages was correctly observed on Feb. 12. Then the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 had the effect of merging Abe with George Washington, born on Feb. 22. When the new law bumped George to a Monday, Lincoln inevitably came to join him, anchoring Presidents Day weekend, which made ski resorts positively ecstatic.

Let Congress do the advertising! French onion soup baked in a crock, a skier’s delight, replaced George’s cherry pie. Lincoln wasn’t much on food. Hence the gaunt cheeks and bony fingers. His favorite meal: corned beef and cabbage.

Sorry, Abe. That doesn’t happen ’til March.

No mention of the other two February birthday boys: Ronald Reagan and William Henry Harrison.

Chinese New Year, a moveable feast this year occurring Feb. 17, is a huge deal in big-city Chinatowns. First parades, then multi-course banquets, each food representing a wish for the coming year (including luck and money), are a prized invitation from chefs wanting to thank loyal customers.

Just don’t ask too many questions about ingredients, in this Year of the Horse. Fire Horse, that is.

Oops, we jumped right over Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14. Maybe that’s a good thing, given chocolate has almost doubled in price since Cupid last launched an arrow. Another conflict: Feb.17 is also Mardi Gras, “Fat Tuesday,” a final splurge before the Lenten deprivations. I visited New Orleans just before Lent, in the Cajun-crazed 1990s, and learned to simmer a gumbo, throw together a po’ boy sandwich. Divine and quite different from bread fried in bottom-of-the-barrel lard used up by European peasants.

Then, certain holidays have been mismatched with their modernized versions. I learned that Thanksgiving, a harvest feast, probably originated in October — and seafood, bountiful off the Massachusetts coast, would have been favored over scrawny, flat-chested wild turkeys spit-cooked over an outdoor fire.

But plump lobster meat dipped in butter . . . fantastic. Ditch Butterballs. Make mine a Butterclaw.

February recalls a poignant memory.

My grandparents lived in Greensboro, on Lee Street, in the house where my mother and her brothers were born. That meant fireplaces, a wood stove, one bathroom tacked onto the back, a half-acre garden where Grandaddy grew a winter’s worth of vegetables that Nanny “put up,” along with pears falling from the tree and grapes from the arbor. The southeast side of the house got full, unobstructed sunshine all winter. By late February Nanny’s daffodils poked through the ground and leaned against the clapboards. She would pick a few still in bud, wrap them in damp rags and then a plastic bread bag, secure the bunch in a cardboard box and mail them to me, stuck in wintry Manhattan. Once in water and sitting on the windowsill, buds burst into bloom.

Nanny was gone (followed soon by Granddaddy, who had come to live with us) when the city appropriated their land, knocked down the house, uprooted the pear tree to widen, and in 2013 rename the street Gate City Boulevard. In February I still mourn Nanny’s faithful daffodils, a promise that spring would eventually warm the concrete city where I waited, impatiently, for my reward. 

The Naturalist

THE NATURALIST

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The Ginger Dogs of Eagle Springs

Surprising encounters with the crafty red fox

Story and Photographs by Todd Pusser

The bite from the frigid December air numbed my fingers as I fiddled with the latch on my trail camera. Mounted to the side of a tree bordering a tiny creek, for the past five years the camera has recorded the comings and goings of the critters that call this Eagle Springs forest home every single day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A strong Arctic cold front had pushed through the state the previous evening and the forest was eerily quiet. Not a creature was stirring, not even a cardinal. It was as if all the animals had decided to sleep in on this frosty morning.

Extracting the memory card from the camera, I sat down on a nearby log and loaded it into my laptop. Thumbing through the videos, I quickly noted raccoons foraging in the shallow water on most nights since I last checked the camera 10 weeks prior. On Halloween night, a plump opossum ambled slowly by. Thanksgiving Day revealed two large bucks staring curiously at the camera. There were numerous daytime videos of gray squirrels, turkeys, American robins, even a brown thrasher. A bobcat walked through at dusk in early December. As did a cottontail rabbit.

But it was a video from the night of Oct. 18 that really caught my attention. I paused and stared at the computer screen, not sure if my eyes were deceiving me. I replayed the video to be sure. Just before midnight, a lanky critter entered the camera’s field of view from the left, quickly walked through the frame, and exited stage right. It was only a few seconds of footage but long enough to make out the salient features — a pointed nose, triangular ears, white-tipped tail and four long legs that appeared to be wearing black socks. No doubt about it. It was a red fox, the first I have seen around Eagle Springs in many, many years.

Long believed to be introduced into the South by early European Colonists for sport, a 2012 genetic study revealed that red foxes are indeed native to the region. Turns out, the crafty canids naturally made their way from the boreal regions of North America and points farther west as the vast Eastern forests were cleared for agriculture purposes at the time of our nation’s founding.

When I was young, the red fox was the most ubiquitous of our native canids, and I observed them regularly around the Sandhills. North Carolina’s other native fox, the gray fox, was also around, but I rarely encountered it. With a fluffier tail, tipped in black instead of white, gray foxes are easy to distinguish from red foxes. About the only time I saw them in my youth was during their early winter breeding season, when the occasional individual could be seen skulking along the edge of our yard on moonlit nights.

By comparison, red foxes were seemingly everywhere. I vividly recall observing one dashing across a green of Seven Lakes Golf Club on a bright spring afternoon while teeing it up with my old man when I was around 12 years old. I regularly saw one along the entrance road to Pinecrest High School throughout my teenage years. Up until the turn of the new millennium, it was not uncommon to see the lifeless bodies of red foxes dotting highways throughout the Sandhills, all victims of hit and runs. Soon thereafter, for reasons unknown, I started seeing fewer and fewer red foxes in the region.

The last time I had an opportunity to photograph an Eagle Springs red fox was in the spring of 2003, when I found an active den near my parents’ house. Sitting in a blind nearby, I watched as the adorable pups roughhoused and played on a sand berm beneath a turkey oak while their parents were away foraging for food. Soon after that spring, sightings of the ginger dogs became more and more infrequent. My field notes from that time record no sightings of red foxes for years. It was as if the species had completely disappeared from the landscape. Did a disease, such as distemper or rabies, wipe out the local population?

A clue came the following year, when I saw my first coyote in Eagle Springs, a hefty adult walking across a plowed field on a moonlit night. Soon thereafter, I found a road-killed coyote a half mile from my parents’ house. Around the same time, local hunters began reporting more and more sightings of coyotes in Sandhills forests during deer season.

Like red foxes before them, coyotes arrived in North Carolina from points farther north and west, albeit much more recently. A 1982 study by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences documented only three specimens of coyotes recorded from the entire state. By the early 2000s, it was becoming clear that coyotes were full-time residents in the Sandhills. Did these large, adaptable canids cause the decline of our local red foxes? Possibly. Studies in other areas have shown that the larger coyote will displace foxes from their territories in an effort to tamper down competition for food resources. It may not be a coincidence that red fox numbers plummeted around the same time that coyotes started to show up in decent numbers on the Eagle Springs landscape.

Reviewing iNaturalist (a popular citizen science app), I noted a dozen or so sightings of red foxes in the Sandhills over the past few years. Recent conversations with rangers at Weymouth Woods Nature Preserve and biologists working on the Sandhills Game Land have also revealed sightings. These anecdotes, along with my trail camera photo, offer a bit of excitement for those interested in our local wildlife.

Perhaps the ginger dogs of Eagle Springs are making a comeback. 

From the Archives

FROM THE ARCHIVES

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The March King

By Audrey Moriarty

John Philip Sousa, recognized throughout the world as the March King, was a frequent visitor to Pinehurst and his friend Leonard Tufts. The composer of America’s beloved military marches was not, however, coming for the golf. In an early attempt at the game up North, an eyewitness report described Sousa’s numerous lost balls, two broken windows, the need for more than one forecaddie (he called them “Hook” and “Slice”) to keep track of his wildly errant shots, and “driving through two estimable ladies who happened to be playing on a neighboring fairway.” He was quoted as saying that he “would play golf once he was too old for any other physical activity.”

The 17th director of the U.S. Marine Band — and the first to record it on a phonograph — Sousa was the composer of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” “Semper Fidelis,” “The Liberty Bell” (oddly, the theme song for Monty Python’s Flying Circus) and over 130 other known marches. He came to Pinehurst for something far different than golf: He wanted to shoot trap at the Pinehurst Gun Club.

Sousa began shooting in 1906 and would become part owner of a 2,000-acre preserve near the village, though he considered the killing of animals for sport “wicked.” When an English minister read that Sousa had bagged a “number of pigeons,” he wrote a letter to him asking that he repent from the “murderous practice.” Sousa responded by sending a number of broken clay targets and suggesting that the minister broil them before eating.

When in Pinehurst, he and his wife, Jane, stayed at the Holly Inn, where they were well-liked. The Pinehurst Outlook described him as having a genial personality, a keen appreciation of humor and a natural gift for storytelling.

Sousa loved trap shooting and believed that “like love, trapshooting levels all ranks.” In 1919 he was the top shooter of the three-man Navy team in an Army vs. Navy competition in Pinehurst. He is in the Trap Shooting Hall of Fame, with a registered 35,000 targets. Sousa said, “ . . . that just about the sweetest music to me is when I call ‘pull,’ the old gun barks, and the referee, in perfect key, announces, ‘Dead.’”

Sousa’s last visit to Pinehurst was in1929. Three years later, on March 5, 1932, he conducted “Stars and Stripes Forever” while rehearsing for a concert in Reading, Pennsylvania, and died early the next morning at the age of 77. 

Omnivorous Reader

OMNIVOROUS READER

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The Theft That Wasn’t

The tale of the lost and found Picasso

By Anne Blythe

Most of us have heard that old cliché “Kids say the darnedest things,” but few of us could imagine getting the kind of phone call that Whitcomb Mercer Rummel Sr. received in March 1969 from his eldest child. There was nothing cliché or cutesy about it.

“Hey, Dad, I accidentally stole a Picasso,” Bill Rummel said to his father nearly 57 years ago. What happened afterward is a bit of creative skullduggery that has been concealed in the annals of one family’s history far longer than one of the key participants would have liked.

Whit Rummel Jr., a filmmaker who lives in Chapel Hill, and Noah Charney, an American art historian and fiction writer based in Slovenia, have written The Accidental Picasso Thief: The True Story of a Reverse Heist, Outrunning the FBI and Fleeing the Boston Mob to share that story with the rest of the world.

Disclosure: I have known Whit Rummel, the author, for many years, relishing in his stories and adventures. Although I’ve heard bits and pieces of this story before, this is the first time I’ve been able to soak it all in.

As Whit Rummel, the only surviving member of the trio that pulled off the so-called “reverse heist” writes, the book — part memoir, part true crime — “is the story of one of the oddest art crimes in American history.”

It’s a tale Rummel has wanted to share in full for decades but couldn’t — for reasons ranging from fear of the famous mobster Whitey Bulger, to respect for a brother’s wishes and a dogged hunt for the location of the painting. In June 2023 The New York Times ran a story titled “Hey Dad, Can You Help Me Return the Picasso I Stole?” but Rummel had more to say.

It begins in 1969. Whit Sr. was an empty-nester with his wife in Waterville, Maine. He was the owner of a popular restaurant near Interstate 95 and an ice cream store with in-house creamery serving up unique and enticing flavors like Icky Orgy.

Bill Rummel was in his mid-20s at the time, working as a forklift operator at Logan Airport in Boston moving crates around the world for Emery Air Freight. A historic snowstorm hit the East Coast, leaving chaos in its wake. As flights were delayed and diverted, Bill loaded several flats into the trunk of his car from pesky “orphan” piles clogging up the outbound area. Wrapped up in one of those flats was a Pablo Picasso original, Portrait of a Woman and a Musketeer, that was en route from Paris to a gallery owner in Milwaukee.

Unlike his younger brother, Whitcomb Mercer Jr., Bill wasn’t particularly interested nor appreciative of art and didn’t realize a valuable painting was in his possession. When he found out what he’d inadvertently done, he called his brother, a passionate art lover, who was at Tulane University at the time. After several phone calls, Bill and Whit decided it was time to call their dad, a man they called “the fixer.”

Whit Sr. and his wife, Ann, had moved to Maine in the ’50s and raised their sons there. The boys had a mischievous streak in them, perhaps inherited from a father who relished taking them on “wild goose chases.”

Whit and Bill, now in young adulthood, needed their father’s guidance. What should they do with the stolen Picasso? This was no wild goose chase. They had heard the FBI was on the hunt for the painting. To make matters worse, rumor was that Whitey Bulger’s notorious Winter Hill Gang also was searching for it, threatening anyone trying to move in on their airport turf.

“Our father, after all, was the grand fixer. The one guy who’d always been there for us, pulling us out of whatever kind of jam we’d found ourselves in (and there had been many),” Whit writes. Their dad reeled off several options. One was keep the painting, bury it under the floor of the Waterville restaurant and uncover it some years later, feigning shock and surprise. The other option? “He said maybe there was a way to return it. Without letting anybody know who took it,” Bill told his brother.

That’s the option they chose. Whit Jr. got instructions from his dad. “I want you to write a brief note to accompany the return of the painting,” his dad said. “Nothing long or complex. Just a few mysterious sentences to put them off the track of someone like Bill.”

To this day, Whit chuckles at the note he composed with intentional “grammatical quirks.”

PLEASE ACCEPT THIS TO
REPLACE IN PART SOME OF THE PAINTINGS REMOVED FROM MUSEUMS ACROSS THE COUNTRY. —  ROBBIN’ HOOD.

Whit Sr. and Bill would don costumes, fake mustaches and fedoras, get in a Chevy Impala and set off to return the Picasso at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. An unexpected sighting of an employee near the loading dock upset their plans, but eventually the painting made it to the museum. A blurb announcing its return was in the news, and the Rummels went on with their lives, though their dad would die suddenly just a few years later, in 1972.

As the years went by Whit wanted to make a movie about the unwitting theft, but his brother wanted it to remain a secret, though Bill did do an interview about the incident with This American Life that never aired. He passed away in 2015.

There are some differences in the version Bill told then and what Whit remembers from their phone calls when his brother first told him he had “a friggin’ Picasso.” In the book, Whit shares both versions of how his brother recounted coming into possession of the crate. Though Whit never accuses his brother of knowingly taking the painting, he acknowledges there could be doubts about his intentions.

The book details the surviving Rummel brother’s search for the painting now and his hope to one day have his picture taken in front of it with his son, another Whit Rummel, and a nephew who shares their name, too. If that were to happen, the three — named for “the fixer” — would be “smiling proudly and loudly now, because our story has finally been told.”

For anybody who cares about art, the creation of it, and the quirkiness that makes families special, it’s a story worth telling, reading and even telling again.

Bookshelf

BOOKSHELF

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February Books

FICTION

This Is Not About Us, by Allegra Goodman

Was this just a brief skirmish, or the beginning of a 30-year feud? In the Rubinstein family, it could go either way. When their beloved older sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into decades of stubborn silence. Busy with their own lives — divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs and ballet recitals — their children do not want to get involved. As for their grandchildren? Impossible. Sharply observed and laced with humor, This Is Not About Us is a story of growing up and growing old, the weight of parental expectations, and the complex connection between sisters.

Family Drama, by Rebecca Fallon

It’s 1997, and snow is blanketing a New England beach. Two befuddled 7-year-olds watch as their mother’s body is tipped overboard from a crumbling boat. A Viking funeral, followed by a raucous wake. A sendoff fit for a soap opera star: Susan Bliss. Fifteen years earlier, Susan is a blazing, beautiful young woman, passionate about her art. It’s impossible not to fall in love with her, and so Alcott, a practical professor, does— hopelessly. And so begins the love story of Susan’s two-paneled life: an unconventional, jetlag-filled arrangement that takes her back and forth between her life in New England as a wife and mother to young twins, to the bright lights of Los Angeles, where she becomes the beloved star of a daytime soap. In the present, Susan’s twins grow up in the shadow of her all-consuming absence. Sebastian, a sensitive artist, cleaves to her memory, fascinated with the artifacts of her starry past. Viola, resentful of her mother’s torn allegiances, distances herself from the memories of her. But when Viola runs into her mother’s old co-star Orson Grey — now a renowned Hollywood star — she finds herself falling deeply in love with him and begins to put together the pieces of a mother she never really knew.

NONFICTION

The Powerful Primate: How Controlling Energy Enabled
Us to Build Civilization, by Roland Ennos

From our bipedal ancestors wielding simple tools to modern humans mastering complex machinery, Ennos takes us on a gripping journey through the evolution of human dominance. Learn the fascinating history of how humans have progressively harnessed energy from sources such as wood, animals, water, wind, sun, fossil fuels and even atomic nuclei to fuel our rise as the most powerful species on Earth. Our ancestors’ ability to hit harder, throw farther and cut deeper than any other animal laid the groundwork for the development of agriculture, industry, and ultimately, modern civilization. Yet, this power has come at a cost: Environmental degradation and societal challenges have arisen from our relentless pursuit of energy and technological advancement. There is hope, however: The same engineering skills that have brought us here can pave the way for a more sustainable future.

A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness,
by Michael Pollan

The fact that we have subjective experience of the world remains one of nature’s greatest mysteries. How is it that our mental operations are accompanied by feelings, thoughts and a sense of self? In A World Appears, Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives — scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual and psychedelic — to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life. When neuroscientists began studying consciousness in the early 1990s, they sought to explain how and why three pounds of spongy gray matter could generate a subjective point of view — assuming that the brain is the source of our perceived reality. Pollan takes us to the cutting edge of the field, where scientists are entertaining more radical (and less materialist) theories of consciousness. In a dazzling exploration of consciousness, he discovers a world far deeper and stranger than our everyday reality.

CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Is It Spring?,
by Kevin Henkes

A masterful and classic picture book that combines an evocative call-and-response text with delicate and lovely illustrations, readers will be left assured that the sun — and spring — will always come again. (Ages 4-8.)

The Lions’ Run, by Sara Pennypacker

Petit éclair. That’s what the other boys at the orphanage call Lucas DuBois. As tired of his cowardly reputation as he’s tired of the war and the Nazi occupation of his French village, Lucas longs to show how brave he can be. He gets the chance when he saves a litter of kittens and brings them to an abandoned stable. Lucas begins to realize they are not the only ones in the village with secrets. Emboldened by the unlikely heroes all around him, Lucas is forced to decide how much he is willing to risk making the most courageous rescue of all. (Ages 8-12.)

The Rare Bird, by Elisha Cooper

The imagination of one housecat takes him to unexpected adventures as he dreams of spreading his wings as a “Rare Bird.” A Rare Bird can do anything! Fly fast through the forest, or splash in the bird baths, or meet animals from faraway lands . . . Readers will fall head over heels for this extraordinary tale of dreaming, the power of imagination, and the freedom of creativity. (Ages 4-8.)

PinePitch January 2026

PINEPITCH

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January 2026

Between the Covers

Enjoy a trio of January book talks beginning at noon on Thursday, Jan. 8 when Jack Kelly discusses his book Tom Paine’s War: The Words That Rallied a Nation and the Founder for Our Time virtually with Kimberly Daniels Taws at The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad Street, Southern Pines. Then, at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 14, Ford S. Worthy will talk about his book In Search of a Boy Named Chester, also at The Country Bookshop. Last, but certainly not least, Donna Everhart will engage in a discussion about her book Women of a Promiscuous Nature, in the Boyd House at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. For information and tickets for all three events go to www.ticketmesandhills.com.

A World of Magic

Erikson Herz knew from the age of 12 that magic was his calling, but the journey is about more than just tricks and illusions — it’s about connecting with people through wonder and imagination. You can catch his act at BPAC’s Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst, at 7 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 30. For information and tickets go to www.ticketmesandhills.com.

It’s Baaack!

OK, maybe it’s still winter, but the Sandhills Woman’s Exchange will warm things up when it reopens for the spring season beginning on Wednesday, Jan. 28. The gift shop hours are from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the cabin café will be serve up lunch from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. For information go to www.sandhillswe.org.

Send in the Symphony

The North Carolina Symphony will perform A Little Night Music on Thursday, Jan 29, at 7:30 p.m., in BPAC’s Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. The Stephen Sondheim musical, originally performed on Broadway in 1973, includes the popular song “Send in the Clowns,” written for Glynis Johns. For more information go to www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Strawberry Fields Forever

“Yesterday and Today: The Interactive Beatles Experience” returns to BPAC’s Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst, beginning at 7 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 16. The band, anchored by brothers Billy, Matthew and Ryan McGuigan, performs as themselves and leave the song choices completely up to the audience. The set list is created as the show happens, and the songs make up the narrative for the evening. Every show is different, every show proves that The Beatles’ music truly is the soundtrack to our lives. For tickets and information go to www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Ruth Pauley Lecture Series

The always thought-provoking Ruth Paul Lecture Series continues with Dr. Deigo Bohórquez, an associate professor of medicine and neurobiology at Duke University, delivering a presentation on “The Gut-Brain Connection and Neuropods” on Tuesday, Jan. 20 at 7 p.m. in BPAC’s Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. A pioneer and leader in the field of gut-brain biology, Bohórquez focuses on how the brain perceives what the gut feels, how food in the intestine is sensed by the body, and how a sensory signal from a nutrient is transformed into an electrical signal that alters behavior. In 2025, he was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Joe Biden, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding early-career scientists and engineers. For tickets and information go to www.ticketmesandhills.com.

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

Experience a world where film and music become one when The Carolina Philharmonic, under the direction of Maestro David Michael Wolff,  performs the iconic Wizard of Oz soundtrack live-to-picture in two performances — at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. — on Saturday, Jan. 24, in BPAC’s Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. For further information go to www.carolinaphil.org. or call (910) 6897-0287.

Reelin’ in the Years

Get swept up in a night of smooth rock at 7 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 23, when Dirty Logic, the Steely Dan tribute band known for its impeccable musicianship and faithful recreations of the Donald Fagen and Walter Becker jazzy grooves, lush harmonies and razor-sharp lyrics, takes the stage at the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines.  Tickets are as affordable as $39 to get through the door, up to $139 for the VIP, dinner, drinks and premier seating treatment. For more information and tickets go to www.sunrisetheater.com.

Meet the Met

The Met has assembled a world-beating quartet of stars for the demanding principal roles in Vincenzo Bellini’s 1835 opera I Puritani on Saturday, Jan. 10, at 1 p.m. at the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St. Southern Pines. Soprano Lisette Oropesa and tenor Lawrence Brownlee are Elvira and Arturo, brought together by love and torn apart by the political rifts of the English Civil War. Baritone Artur Ruciński plays Riccardo, betrothed to Elvira against her will, and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn portrays Elvira’s sympathetic uncle, Giorgio. For info and tickets go to www.sunrisetheater.com.

Simple Life

SIMPLE LIFE

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My Own Soulful Green Books

Food for the journey ahead

By Jim Dodson

I’m often asked by readers where I find my ideas to write about each month.

“It’s simple,” I reply. “Life.” Hence the title of this column.

It helps, however, that I also have what I call my “Green Books.” Not the historic Green Book that served as a guide to safe places for accommodations and food for traveling African Americans in the mid-1900s South.

Mine are something very personal: four leather journals, several with cracked bindings from age, that I began half a century ago. In their pages, I’ve recorded memorable quotes, funny observations and the wisdom of others who graciously provided food for the journey ahead.

Today, four such books anchor my writing desk and library shelves, crammed full of helpful words — some famous, others anonymous, comical, spiritual or plain common sense — a resource I turn to when life seems out of whack, or I simply need a shot of humor or optimism to face the moment. 

A new year strikes me as the perfect time to share some of my all-time favorites.

“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world, as a result, will have a generation of idiots.” – Albert Einstein

OK. Had to put this one out first because I’m a confirmed Luddite who writes his books with an ink pen and can only function on a computer with proper adult supervision, meaning my wife, Wendy, a techno-whiz. Recently heard a “Super” AI “expert” warn that “living authors” will eventually be a thing of the past. That’s a world I don’t wish to live in.   

“I knew when I met you an adventure was going to happen.” – from Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

This gem hung with an illustration of Pooh, Piglet and Eeyore on my childhood bedroom wall. Stop and think for a moment about the amazing people you didn’t know until they unexpectedly, perhaps miraculously, stepped into your life — and a new adventure began.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your wild and precious life?” – From “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver

This timeless poetic question hung on a banner over my daughter Maggie’s beautiful autumn wedding three years ago at her childhood summer camp in Maine. It’s one we all must invariably answer, even late in life. Especially late in life.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” – from Walden: or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau, poet, naturalist, Transcendental rock star.

I discovered — and memorized — this stanza in Miss Emily Dickenson’s English Lit class in 1970 (by the way, her real name). So moved by it, I vowed to someday retreat to the northern woods. Looking back, I think it partially explains why I built my house on a forested hilltop in Maine. That gold-and-green woodland enchanted my children and their papa, a would-be transcendentalist who has learned more from the solitude of the forest than in any city on Earth.

“There will be a time when you think everything is finished. That will be the beginning.” – Louis L’Amour, Western novelist

Useful advice for those of us anxious about the fate of American democracy.

“Solvitur ambulando.” Translation: It is solved by walking. –
St. Augustine

Amazing what a good walk around the block or hike through the woods can do to calm the mind, work out a solution or simply remind one how life’s ever-changing landscape can clear away the cobwebs.

“Stop looking at yourself and begin looking into yourself. Life is an inside job.”

Someone once said this to me, but I can’t remember who. I sometimes remind myself of this when I’m shaving in the morning and see myself in the mirror, often followed by a second observation: I thought getting older would take more time.

“If something is lost, quit searching for it. It will find its way back to you.”

Sage advice passed along from a longtime golf pal’s mama. I’ve found it works splendidly with misplaced car keys, eyeglasses, wallets, (most) golf balls and missing Christmas candy. Not so much with politics or old romances.

“The meal is the essential act of life. It is the habitual ceremony, the long record of marriage, the school for behavior, the prelude to love. Among all peoples and in all times, every significant event in life — be it wedding, triumph, or birth — is marked by a meal or the sharing of food and drink. The meal is the emblem of civilization.” – James and Kay Salter, from Life Is Meals: A Food Lover’s Book of Days

A well-loved book in our household, one every food lover should own, a gloriously entertaining volume chock full of quirky, fun and extraordinary gems about the origins and traditions of food, drink and fellowship at the table.

“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing could feel more luxurious than paying attention. And, in an age of constant motion, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.” – from The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere by Pico Iyer

This note from this wise little book pretty much summarizes my personal ambition for 2026 — to go slower, to pay closer attention, to sit still as often as possible.

“Modern American society is marked by a high degree of mobility, a decline in voluntary civic activities, and an emphasis on rights (i.e. what others owe me). The result is rootlessness and detachment from family and friends. Higher crime rates, chiefly among youth, show a strong statistical correlation with lack of self-control. And moral disputes are often marked by dogmatism, the inability or unwillingness to see the moral force behind another point of view. In response, the possibilities for improvement include (1) reinvigorating our civic associations, (2) developing and inculcating self-control, and (3) demanding higher levels of mutual respect and tolerance in the way we speak to and treat one another.” – from Civility & Community by Brian Schrag

May you all have a safe and much more civil New Year. I leave you with one of my favorite wisdoms from my books:

“Do not be afraid, for I am with you. From wherever you come, I will lead you home.” – Isaiah 43:5

Crossroads

CROSSROADS

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The Pink Ballerina Room

A taste of independence

By LuEllen Huntley

I am the new girl, a late enrollment. My parents and I are ushered into an expansive office with heavy drapes for an interview. They sit in the back on a plush couch, me up front in a straight-back chair across a hefty desk from the assistant headmistress, a smallish woman with thick oval glasses. She begins, “What have you read, Miss Huntley?”

I stare at her owlish face and freeze, incapable of telling her about our smalltown library a half block from my house. Ever since fourth grade I’d been allowed to walk there on my own and stay as long as I liked. The two librarians, Ms. Shep and her sister, allowed me access to all the rooms, even the attic that housed the Civil War archive, where they let me wander among the armed and uniformed manikins. Other days I pore over articles and discover Seventeen in the magazine alcove. Somehow I pass the interview. I tell my parents goodbye.

Most of the dorm rooms are doubles but, because I’m late, I’m assigned the single the other girls call “the pink ballerina room.” It’s a small room down a cornered hallway with an exterior window ledge almost large enough to crawl onto. I’m happy to have ballerinas dancing on the walls in pink tutus and toe shoes, reminding me of the program in third grade when I wore a ballet costume borrowed from a girlfriend. In the short tulle skirt, a sequined top and matching tiara, I played a wood fairy and learned a poem by heart. My mother pin-curled my hair the night before the performance, and I got to wear lipstick.

I play my music in the ballerina room, a collection of 45’s that includes Motown, The Doors, Johnny Rivers, The Beatles, James Taylor, Bread, The Guess Who and Carole King. Some of the other girls ask to borrow them. Weeks after moving in, one classmate in particular keeps dropping by. She’s the first person I know who wears round John Lennon glasses, setting off naturally curly hair, a sly grin and quirky laugh. I find out she’s a cartoon artist.

She starts chatting about her roommate, making it sound like I’m missing out. She says if I want a roommate, she has the best; and I can trade places with her, move to a double on a main hall. This way, she promises me, I’d have a roommate. I won’t be alone anymore. I fall for it and we swap, privacy for friendship. But the thought of the pink ballerina room never fully goes away. Like time alone in the town library, I enjoy solitude, the space to think. The girl with the John Lennon glasses finagled this gift for herself.

But I do like having a fun-loving roommate. After dinner we hold “dance-outs” in our room to my 45’s. It becomes the place to be, the place where 16-year-old ballerinas truly come to life, in the bargain of a lifetime. And I say this now because the new girl then did not know when she landed the private room tucked down the small hallway, off to itself, it was just the sort of place that fit the person she would become. The way of the universe was to give her a smalltown library and a few weeks in the pink ballerina room as a taste of independence. Each left its imprint.

Bookshelf

BOOKSHELF

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January Books

FICTION

The Infamous Gilberts, by Angela Tomaski

Thornwalk, a once-stately English manor, is on the brink of transformation. Its keys are being handed over to a luxury hotelier who will undertake a complete renovation but, in doing so, what will they erase? Through the keen eyes of an enigmatic neighbor, the reader is taken on a guided tour into rooms filled with secrets and memories, each revealing the story of the five Gilbert siblings. Spanning the eve of World War II to the early 2000s, this contemporary gothic novel weaves a rich tapestry of English country life. As the story unfolds, the reader is drawn into a world where the echoes of an Edwardian idyll clash with the harsh realities of war, neglect and changing times. The Gilberts’ tale is one of great loves, lofty ambitions and profound loss.

Meet the Newmans, by Jennifer Niven

For two decades, Del and Dinah Newman and their sons, Guy and Shep, have ruled television as America’s “Favorite Family.” Millions of viewers tune in every week to watch them play flawless, black-and-white versions of themselves. But now it’s 1964, and the Newmans’ idealized apple-pie perfection suddenly feels woefully out of touch. Ratings are in free fall, as are the Newmans themselves. Del is keeping an explosive secret from his wife, and Dinah is slowly going numb, literally. Steady, stable Guy is hiding the truth about his love life, and the charmed luck of rock ’n’ roll idol Shep may have finally run out. When Del is in a mysterious car accident, Dinah decides to take matters into her own hands. She hires Juliet Dunne, an outspoken, impassioned young reporter, to help her write the final episode. But Dinah and Juliet have wildly different perspectives about what it means to be a woman, and a family, in 1964. Can the Newmans hold it together to change television history or will they be canceled before they ever have the chance? 

NONFICTION

The Typewriter and the Guillotine: An American Journalist, a German Serial Killer, and Paris on the Eve of WWII,
by Mark Braude

In 1925, Indianapolis-born Janet Flanner took an assignment to write a regular “Letter from Paris” for a lighthearted humor magazine called The New Yorker. She’d come to Paris with dreams of writing about “Beauty with a Capital B.” Her employer, self-consciously apolitical, sought only breezy reports on French art and culture. But as she woke to the frightening signs of rising extremism, economic turmoil and widespread discontent in Europe, Flanner ignored her editor’s directives and reinvented herself, her assignment and The New Yorker in the process. While working tirelessly to alert American readers to the dangers of the Third Reich, Flanner became gripped by the disturbing crimes of a man who embodied all of the darkness she was being forced to confront: Eugen Weidmann, a German conman and murderer, and the last man to be publicly executed in France mere weeks before the outbreak of WWII. Flanner covered his crimes, capture and highly politicized trial, seeing the case as a metaphor for understanding the dangers to come.

Opera Wars: Inside the World of Opera and the Battles for Its Future, by Caitlin Vincent

Drawing on interviews with dozens of opera insiders — as well as her own experience as an award-winning librettist, trained vocalist, opera company director, and arts commentator — Vincent exposes opera’s internal debates, never shrinking from depicting the industry’s top-to-bottom messiness and its stubborn resistance to change. Yet, like a lover who can’t quite break away, she always comes back to her veneration for the art form and stirringly evokes those moments on stage that can be counted on to make ardent fans of the most skeptical.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

The Amazing Generation: Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-Filled World, by Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price

This engaging guide is packed with surprising facts, a graphic novel, interactive challenges, secrets that tech leaders don’t want kids to know, and real-life anecdotes from young adults who regret getting smartphones at a young age and want to help the next generation avoid making the same mistakes. It’s a bold, optimistic, and practical guide to growing into your most authentic, confident, and adventurous self. (Ages 9 – 12.)

The Wildest Thing, by Emily Winfield Martin

What would you do if you let the wild in? With gorgeous illustrations, this book is the ideal addition to any bedtime reading routine or read aloud. The Wildest Thing beautifully expresses a timeless message about little ones unleashing their inner “wild” and encouraging their budding imagination and unique individuality. (Ages 3 – 7.)

Rock and Roll, by Ruby Amy Thompson

A laugh-out-loud story of friendship that reminds readers that first impressions can be deceptive. Rock is strong, and Roll is soft. Rock hates attention. Roll loves it. But they are both team players; they are able to handle pressure; and they LOVE to get dressed up. Maybe they’re not so different after all! This sweet story reminds readers that first impressions can be deceptive. (Ages 3 – 7.)

Southwords

SOUTHWORDS

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Auld Lang…Humbug

By Jim Moriarty

I confess to being a New Year’s Scrooge. To those of us whose passing will be marked by the screwing of a brass plate into a particular spot at the end of a bar, the shenanigans and tomfoolery of the evening was commonly dismissed as “amateur night.” There is, however, one New Year’s Eve that I’ll not soon forget, and I’ve forgotten a lot of them.

I was married in an honest-to-God church during the fertile days between Christmas and New Year’s. Contrary to rumors, widespread at the time, this was not entirely done because the Methodist church was already decorated to the rafters, thus sparing the happy couple, i.e., me, any expense sprucing the joint up. Not entirely, that is.

Once all the stammering (me again) and vowing was over and done with, the War Department and I lit off on our honeymoon adventure like the giddy misfits we were. We actually had not intended on having a honeymoon. The ceremony fell smack in the middle of the Arab oil embargo. Lines at the gas pump resembled particularly slow-moving queues for particularly boring Disney rides, and the national posted speed limit might just as well have featured a drawing of a slug as the number 55.

My mother, however, had seen an advertisement for a steeply discounted weekend at a posh Indiana resort hotel. She tore it out of the newspaper and booked it for us as a wedding present. We were off to French Lick — the honeymoon destination that launched a thousand jokes. It should be pointed out that French Lick’s most famous citizen, Larry Bird, was a teenager at the time.

We were driving in the first automobile I ever owned outright, a severely oxidized white Volkswagen Beetle that may well have rolled off the production line the same year Khrushchev threw up the Berlin wall. As was typical of the model in those days, nothing functioned quite the way it was supposed to. The heater worked, for example, but only in the summer. It was definitely not summer.

When we pulled up to the grand hotel in our coach (rust bucket), we were met by a sharply dressed valet attendant. To my everlasting regret, it was years too soon to be able to quote Eddie Murphy from Beverly Hills Cop. If ever there was an opportunity to utter the line “Can you put this in a good spot ’cause all of this shit happened the last time I parked here,” this was it.

Our glorious weekend began with bowling in the hotel’s basement and finished in a New Year’s Eve celebration that, much to the War Department’s indifference, revolved almost entirely around the Sugar Bowl, which was the national championship game between undefeated and No. 1-ranked Alabama and unbeaten and No. 3-ranked Notre Dame, the university that was a mile or two north on Eddy Street from our apartment. We had found ourselves in South Bend that fall because she was a highly employable teacher and I was a decidedly unemployable English major and a kept man — which, come to think of it, hasn’t changed all that much in the last 52 years.

Be that as it may, that particular New Year’s Eve was not so much memorable because on a third and 10 from their own 1-yard line, Notre Dame quarterback Tom Clements hit back-up tight end Robin Weber for a 35-yard gain that allowed the Irish to run out the clock and win an 11th national championship. No, no. It was memorable because the War Department had developed an abscessed tooth, and while I had one eye on Ara Parseghian and Bear Bryant, the other eye could only sit there and watch as her face and jaw swelled like a Jiffy Pop aluminum balloon. Oh, my God, I thought, her father is going to kill me when he sees her.

The next morning, New Year’s Day, we drove home in a snowstorm as the War Department, cradling her throbbing jaw in a gloved hand, stuffed dirty socks into the heating vents to stem the polar vortex blasting through them, whilst riding with her feet propped against the dash because of the two inches of watery slush that had been strained through the Swiss cheese wheel well behind the right front tire.

So, yes, I’m no fan of the ghost of New Year’s past.