Be Thankful

It only takes a moment

By Karen Frye

Every day, take time to be grateful for the good things in your life as if this is a prescription for your well-being. Make it a daily routine — before you get out of bed each morning is a good time to start. Or sit outside for a few minutes and go over the things in your life that you appreciate. If I don’t have the time before I leave in the morning, I’ll practice while driving to work. Find what works best for you, and make it a daily event.

Be grateful for what you have — family, friends, pets, good health, a beautiful day, the flowers in the spring, the opportunities awaiting us each day, all the little things that we often don’t think much about.

It does not matter how much strife you have in your life. The stress, the challenges that may seem unbearable are all the more reason to adopt this daily practice. After a few weeks, it’ll be like brushing your teeth: You don’t even think about it, you just do it. You will need to be patient in the process, but when the outcome appears you will be pleased.

Focusing our thoughts on gratitude daily, and giving thanks for what’s happening in our lives can bring personal growth that can transform times of worry and strife to experiences that bring happiness and love. Gratitude can boost mental and physical health, improve sleep, and create a better sense of well-being. Staying positive even improves heart health and immune function.

When you focus on what’s good in your life, rather than dwelling on everything that is not, you become more open to receive greater goodness in the future. A good idea is to start a gratitude journal. Each day write 10 things that you are grateful for in that moment. This will help you stay aware of the blessings in your life, and more good will come to you.

Open your heart to love daily, even when life challenges you. Whatever the situation, find something to appreciate about the experience. Practicing thoughts of gratitude can shift the outcome of your day and ultimately your life.

Don’t wait until Thanksgiving to begin being thankful. It takes only a few minutes a day. Start right now, and in a few weeks you will begin to realize how wonderful your life is.  PS

Karen Frye is the owner and founder of Nature’s Own and teaches yoga at the Bikram Yoga Studio.

Words to Ponder

David McCullough’s speeches deliver gentle sermons on the American character

By Stephen E. Smith

“If we are beset by problems,” David McCullough wrote in a 1994 commencement address, “we have always been beset by problems. There never was a golden time past of smooth sailing only.”

McCullough’s The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For has arrived in bookstores at an opportune moment. Whatever your political persuasion, there’s little doubt that we’re in need of inspiring words that suggest where we go from here — and David McCullough is superbly qualified to point us in the right direction. He’s the recipient of Pulitzer Prizes for Truman and John Adams, National Book Awards for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback, and he’s the author of 12 bestselling popular histories. Moreover, McCullough doesn’t shrink from his responsibility as a forward-looking historian, reminding us in his introduction that we live in a time of uncertainty and contention and that we need to recall who we are and what we stand for and “. . .the importance of history as an aid to navigation in such troubled, uncertain times.”

To that end, The American Spirit is a collection of 15 chronologically arranged speeches delivered by McCullough over a 25-year period, most of them college commencement addresses or remarks offered at the anniversaries and the rededications of monuments and historic structures such as the White House, the Capitol, and Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia. Using these ceremonies as a platform, McCullough focuses on the contributions of the famous and near famous — John and Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, Simon Willard, James Sumner, John Quincy Adams, Margaret Chase Smith and JFK — whose spirit and commitment to the nation helped shape our moral core.

McCullough is a believer in the Great Man theory, a biographical approach to history that offers access to a wealth of the inspiring words spoken by the founding fathers and their intellectual descendants. Quotes, memorable and repeatable as they are, are the stuff of thought-provoking commencement speeches — Stephen Hopkins, who suffered from palsy, scrawled his signature to the Declaration, saying, “My hand trembles, but my heart does not”; Margaret Chase Smith stood up to Joseph McCarthy by announcing that she didn’t want to see the Republican Party achieve political victory through “fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear”; physician and patriot Benjamin Rush reminded his fellow citizens that they were in need of “candor, gentleness, and a disposition to speak with civility and to listen with attention to everybody”; and John Adams offered a simple, timely truth: “. . . facts are stubborn things.”

Predictable themes emerge from the collection — the importance of education, the significance of history, the impact of language, and the value of selective reading — and McCullough brings up the oft repeated assertion that we’re raising a generation of ill-informed Americans who are historically illiterate and that it’s imperative that we redouble our efforts to teach our citizens to value their forebears.

But the strength of these essays is also their weakness. Commencement addresses and most dedication speeches are essentially mildly annoying sermons, timely reminders of the better citizens we ought to be. Americans, unfortunately, have a long tradition of ignoring good advice (jurist Clarence Darrow claimed that no American is absolutely sure he’s correct unless the vast majority is against him). On the other hand, McCullough’s faithful readers will find reinforcement and encouragement in his lofty words. He’s most persuasive, and insofar as preaching to the choir is productive, these speeches succeed admirably.

Not all the essays are straightforwardly instructive. In a 2007 address at Lafayette College, McCullough emphasizes the bonds that have long existed between Americans and the French, connections that are often overlooked in a world where the French chart an impartial course. (We may have changed “French fries” to “freedom fries” when the French claimed Iraq had no WMDs, but events proved them correct.) He reminds readers that the Marquis de Lafayette and the French military were instrumental in winning our struggle for independence and that 80,000 Americans died in France during World War I and 57,000 during World War II. “Time and again,” McCullough writes, “Paris changed their [young Americans’] lives and thus hugely influenced American art, American literature, music, dance, and yes, American science, technology and medicine.”

In a 1994 commencement address at the University of Pittsburgh, McCullough proposed that the university take responsibility for rehabilitating the inner-city, working to eliminate drug addiction, violent crime, racial tensions, illiteracy, homelessness, and the cycle of poverty — the selfsame problems that trouble the country still. “And why not let it begin here in Pittsburgh,” McCullough said, “this city of firsts, with the University of Pittsburgh leading the way?”

Taking a purely cynical view, it will no doubt occur to readers that The American Spirit will make a thoughtful birthday, holiday or graduation gift, and that McCullough and/or the publisher are in it for the money. After all, the book’s contents were written long before we found ourselves in our present dilemma. But it’s more likely that readers who carefully consider McCullough’s words will take the book in the generous spirit in which it’s offered. As McCullough writes: “Yes, we have much to be seriously concerned about, much that needs to be corrected, improved, or dispensed with. But the vitality and creative energy, the fundamental decency, the tolerance and insistence on truth, and the good-heartedness of the American people are there still plainly.”  PS

Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of seven books of poetry and prose. He’s the recipient of the Poetry Northwest Young Poet’s Prize, the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for poetry and four North Carolina Press awards.

Remembering Sgt. Frye

A young man gone too soon

By Bill Fields

Even without the stories in the morning paper and the footage on the evening news, if you lived on the east side of town during the late 1960s, it wasn’t hard to figure out that America was at war.

Periodically our house rattled, and not from one of my father’s major league sneezes. It was artillery practice at nearby Fort Bragg, lots of it, particularly after a good rain. The shelling happened so often it almost ceased to startle, but the vibrations left cracked plaster on our ceilings and walls.

If only the real scars of the Vietnam War could be handled with a fresh coat of paint.

That point was driven home in September as I watched The Vietnam War, the 10-part documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick on PBS. I was mad and sad well before the end of those powerful 18 hours of television. And I wished, more than anything, that Gary Nelson Frye could have watched too.

Born as World War II was ending, Frye also grew up in a house on the east side of town. He was a neighbor, a teenager when I was born. His mother, Mary O’Callaghan, was a family friend who for years sent me a birthday card and a couple of dollars. Gary went to East Southern Pines High School with my sisters. He was in the Class of 1964. For a time after graduating, he worked at the Proctor-Silex plant, where my father also had a job.

A little more than a year after he got his high school diploma, Frye enlisted in the Army on his 20th birthday. A year after that, as he turned 21 on August. 20, 1966, he was sent to Vietnam.

Frye hadn’t been there three months when he showed what kind of soldier — what kind of man — he was. On a search and destroy mission near Bong Son on Oct. 28, 1966, his unit was attacked. A radio-telephone operator with an artillery party, Frye called in accurate supressive fire.

According to his Silver Star citation, this is what happened next.

“… with complete disregard for his own safety, [Frye] raced forward under intense enemy fire to aid a wounded comrade. Finding the man mortally wounded, Private First Class Frye moved under fire to another casualty, carried the soldier to a covered position, then helped the company Aidman administer first aid …”

He earned another Silver Star for bravery, this time for running through enemy fire to direct supporting artillery and helping defend his platoon when it was trapped for nearly a full day.

Frye volunteered to extend his time serving in Vietnam after a year. In May 1968, he had been in Southeast Asia 20 months and was due to come home to Southern Pines in a month. On May 19, in the A Shau Valley — scene of some of the worst fighting  during the conflict and described in Part 6 of the Burns-Novick documentary — Frye was killed in action by an explosion.

Sgt. Frye was 22. I was a week from turning 9, and I went with Mom and Dad to see his mother after his death. She had moved out of the neighborhood and was living in an apartment downtown above Pope’s. It was a small place, full of folks paying their respects. Some of the male callers, like my dad, were veterans of a war that had a clearer purpose.

I wasn’t old enough to understand it all, but that space overflowed with grief exacerbated by the fact Gary was so close to returning to the U.S. when he was killed. I was old enough to understand some heroes don’t get the gift of years. Until my father became terminally ill a decade later, it was the most sobering event in my life.

As I grew up and began to read books on Vietnam — works by Graham Greene, Michael Herr, David Halberstam, Tim O’Brien, Neil Sheehan and others — Frye was in my mind, long after some of his fellow soldiers knocked on his mother’s door with the worst news, long after the rumblings of the war that claimed him stopped reverberating in the neighborhood. 

Sgt. Gary Frye is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, and his name is one of nearly 60,000 American names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. Thirty years ago or so on a visit to Washington, I located him on that wall. I stood there for a good long while, crying in the fresh air the way people were crying in that stuffy apartment two decades before, tears that did not come with answers.   PS

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

New Drinking Toys

Before the holiday rush, treat yourself to a spirited gift or two

By Tony Cross

It’s official: Black Friday approaches. Everything on the airwaves and Interweb will be screaming Christmas, and your pockets will bleed out all of your money for your family and loved ones. Even though the commercials start earlier each year, Black Friday truly marks the first day of the month for insanity. Recently, I’ve acquired some new spirits, mixers and toys; I’d like to share some of them with you. Buy these for yourselves before you run out of money spending it on others.

Wintersmiths Ice Chest

When I first got into cocktailing, I read a lot. I mean, a lot. I had no other bartenders to guide me through the basics, so the internet, GQ articles from David Wondrich, and a book from the head barmen at Employee’s Only in New York City were my mentors. In the latter, one of the first topics in the Speakeasy book was devoted to ice. On first read, I thought, “This is a bunch of pretentious garbage.” The authors described how important ice is . . . as in it’s the most important ingredient in your cocktail. After rolling my eyes, I finished the chapter, and decided that I wouldn’t knock it until I tried it.

Of course, they were right. Having terrible ice will make a great cocktail just OK, or not good at all. Case in point: I have a friend who lived in a home in Whispering Pines. It was a lovely house, but every time I’d come over and bring my goody bag to make drinks, I’d always bring my own ice. The water in her house reeked of sulfur. I felt terrible for her dogs’ drinking water; it was that bad. If I used the ice from her fridge, for even a simple Moscow Mule, the water would dilute into the Mule mix, and it would make me spit out my drink. Guaranteed.

Other (big) reasons ice is important is shape and size. Crushed ice is ideal for juleps and tiki-style drinks, but you wouldn’t want it in your whiskey on the rocks. By now, I’m sure most of you have seen spherical ice served in rocks glasses for cocktails and whiskey. I’ve got the molds to make them; they’re pretty much everywhere (sometimes Southern Whey has them), and you can definitely grab some online. I’ve made them plenty, but more important, I’ve tried to make them come out crystal clear. Why? When they’re cloudy, it’s because gas is trapped inside the ice. That causes your ice to melt faster, and gives it a higher chance of breaking inside your glass. I’ve tried different methods of achieving clear ice. I’ve boiled water to freeze, double-boiled water to freeze, used high-quality water, and stacked my molds covering up the soon-to-be cubes but I never perfected one single see-through piece of ice, cubed or sphere. Until now. Thanks to Instagram, I saw a comment from a lady who makes fantastic cocktails (and has gorgeous pictures of them to boot). She was marveling about her spherical icemaker. Wintersmiths Ice Chest is a total do-it-yourself ice maker that gives your cocktails the elegance you’d otherwise get from a craft cocktail lounge. Just fill up the container with water (distilled preferably, but not necessarily), put in the top piece, and put it in your freezer. Twenty-four hours later, you’ll have crystal clear spheres.

B.G. Reynolds Passion Fruit Tropical Syrup

I am a big fan of making everything from scratch when it comes to syrups for drinks. Making these by hand usually means it will taste better. Grenadine, orgeat, tonic — these are a few of the many that I’d rather make myself than spend at the store or online. Once you’ve figured out a good recipe, it’s hard to find a bottle of syrup on the shelf that can top your own. There are some exceptions, and this is one of them. I was recently asked to create a Hurricane cocktail to carbonate and put on draft for the new Longleaf Country Club. I was excited to add my own grenadine to the mix with a blend of rums (including Fair Game Beverage Co.’s Amber Rum). I wasn’t, however, too stoked on doing passion fruit syrup. Time was of the essence, and I knew that I might not have enough time to perfect a syrup that I’ve never tinkered with. Luckily for me, I remembered seeing a Hurricane recipe from NOLA bartender Chris Hannah. In it, he uses someone else’s passion fruit syrup. I ordered it immediately to give it a try, and was happy when it arrived in the mail. I hope you’ll be as pleased as we are. At home, you can use this sweet and tangy syrup for bartender Jim Meehan’s Mezcal Mule recipe:
3 cucumber slices

3/4 ounce lime juice

1 1/2 ounces Vida Mezcal

1/2 ounce agave syrup

3/4 ounce passion fruit syrup

3 ounces ginger beer (I’ve heard you can pick up a growler of homemade ginger beer over at Nature’s Own)

Muddle cucumber slices and lime juice in a copper mug or rocks glass. Add mezcal and syrups. Add ice, and top with ginger beer.

Pikesville Straight Rye Whiskey

I picked up this big boy from the ABC store in Chapel Hill (the one formerly in front of Whole Foods, but now located around the corner at the Food Lion plaza). One of the gentlemen who works there recommended this whiskey out of the two that I picked up (clearly unfamiliar with both). He told me it was phenomenal, and he was right. This is almost the way mezcal is the older brother to tequila. It has a ton of wood and spice. If you’re new to rye whiskey, I’d suggest starting with either Old Overholt (very soft, and smooth for a rye), or Rittenhouse (a great bang for your buck rye, with an appropriate amount of spice). Try the Pikesville Rye in this 1890s’ version of a Manhattan. I’ll be pouring these at this year’s Sandhills Community College Culinary Fundraiser.

Manhattan

(credit to The Only William’s 1892 book, cited by David Wondrich in 2007)

2 ounces Pikesville Straight Rye Whiskey

1 ounce Carpano Antica

1 barspoon Luxardo Maraschino liqueur

1 barspoon absinthe

2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Combine all ingredients in a chilled mixing vessel. Stir for 50 revolutions (or at least, I do), and then strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. You can garnish with real Luxardo cherries, but I prefer a swath of a lemon peel. Santé! PS

Tony Cross is a bartender who runs cocktail catering company Reverie Cocktails in Southern Pines.

Oh My, Kevin

Just, and unjust, desserts

By Renee Phile

Kevin, my younger son, turns 9 this month, and to be honest, when I think of the first moments following his birth, the image that I most vividly recall was his wide, and I mean wide, open mouth and his head twisting from side to side. He was looking for food, that hefty 9-pound 4-ounce boy was, and he hasn’t stopped since.

Fast-forward a few years to when he was around 3 years old and going to a day care. It was Thanksgiving time, so the teachers threw the kids a party. Each child was given a cupcake slathered in brown icing with little eyes, a beak, and candy corn acting as turkey feathers. When I picked up Kevin that day, his teacher said she needed to have a word with me, that something needed to be discussed, that there was an issue. Oh no . . . I thought. What could he have done?

“Mrs. Phile,” she said, studying me above her glasses. “Kevin went into the bathroom quite suddenly and locked the door and was in there a long time. I was worried and waited a while, but then wanted to make sure he was OK. When I got him to open the door, I saw he had been eating two of the other children’s cupcakes, along with his own. His cheeks were full, and I could smell it on his breath.”

Oh my. Images of the cupcake-less children flashed through my mind as I offered a measly apology. “I am so sorry. We will deal with this,” I assured her.

On the way home I tried to get an explanation from him. “Why would you eat the other kids’ cupcakes, Kevin?”

“Kevin ate Jazmine and Miguel’s cupcakes in da bafrroom,” he proclaimed.

“Yes, but why would you do that?”

“Kevin was hungwy.”

Oh my. I didn’t know what was more troubling, that he pilfered cupcakes or referred to himself in the third person.

A few months later I woke up one morning and stumbled out to the kitchen to make coffee and noticed, sitting on the counter, the previous night’s brownies, no longer covered with the plastic wrap. At closer glance, I saw what looked like the markings of a wild animal pawing through them. Only mounds of brownie and scattered crumbs remained.

I saw brownie crumbs dotting the counter and trailing from the kitchen floor into the living room. I followed them . . . to the couch where I found a mound of something alive moving around under a blanket. I yanked the blanket to reveal the culprit. Kevin, cheeks full of brownie, eyes wide. Oh my.

Over the years the most common questions out of Kevin’s mouth are, “Can I have dessert? When is dessert time? Can I have two desserts?” This kid thinks he needs dessert after every meal, even breakfast, even if breakfast is chocolate chip pancakes. One evening I suggested the sweet potato counted as dessert. No deal.

The other day my friend Alison took Kevin out to Dairy Queen for a tasty treat. He ordered a mini funnel cake with a side of vanilla ice cream, topped with caramel, hot fudge and whipped cream. The young man taking the order looked a little confused. This particular item wasn’t even listed on the menu, but after a short conversation with another employee, the two decided that this magic could happen.

“Is this what you wanted, buddy?” the young man asked as he placed the treat in front of Kevin.

“Yes!” Kevin’s brown eyes danced.

So, it’s Kevin’s ninth birthday this month, and he has had his cake picked out since, well, February. He wants a vanilla and strawberry Minecraft cake with extra blue and green icing.

Any type icing is fine, Mom, I just need extra icing, that’s all.  PS

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

Farewell to the Yankees

A Southerner loses that lovin’ feelin’

By Susan S. Kelly

A love affair of 55 years is coming to an end. All the symptoms are there: the nitpicking, the tetchiness, the gradual disaffection, even annoyance. Plus the self-searching question — Is it really worth it? — and the go-to from Ann Landers: Am I better off with or without him?

The romance began when I was around 7, and discovered among the Lifes and Times a magazine with a colorful cover drawn or painted — not photographed — with pictures I understood: beach scenes, city scenes, seasonal scenes. Scenes with dogs or kites or sailboats. Most surprisingly of all, there were cartoons inside. Cartoons in an adult magazine?

I was raised on the cartoons, on hardback collections of Peter Arno and Charles Addams and George Booth cartoons. When my parents had parties, I was allowed to eat Spaghettios in the kitchen and pored over those collections so long that I memorized them, and automatically use the punch lines in situations — Put us in the rear, we’re bound to make a scene, and Boo, you pretty creature! — and no one has the slightest idea where the non sequitur came from. When my sisters and I divided items before our family home was sold, the flatware sat there unnoticed while we eyed each other over who would choose the cartoon our father had framed and hung in our swimming pool dressing room: Do you realize there are hundreds of little girls who’d be happy to have a pool they had to clean?

I’m speaking, of course, of The New Yorker.

I have read The New Yorker, or at least parts of it, since I was old enough to read. As with any long-term relationship, we “went on a break,” in today’s parlance, during the partying years of college. But Nancy Bryan Faircloth of Greensboro’s own Bryan family, who saw a future writer in me, gave me a subscription at 20, which continued until her death, by which time I had been mainlining the mag so long that I re-upped and upped and upped. I’ve read The New Yorker on the treadmill and road trips and vacations and by the fire and by the club pool when my children were swimming and friends thought I was deeply weird.

I wallpapered my first apartment bathroom in its covers, as one does when in love. I framed the covers and hung them, checkerboard-like, over the sofa. I have poster-sized prints of a pair of covers (William Steig, illustrator of The Phantom Tollbooth), beautifully framed and hanging in my daughter’s bedroom.

I have gone to hear speakers based on their articles and stories in The New Yorker, including Calvin Trillin at UNCG. I’ve searched the internet for photographs of its writers (especially the cartoonists). I’ve sat in an otherwise depressing Algonquin Hotel lobby to see if the scalawag wits of the Round Table would speak to me. I’ve written an outraged letter to the editor — How dare you overlook a typo in a John Updike story? I’ve turned down hundreds of pages to look up vocabulary words, scissored sections for my To Keep Forever file, sought out books by and biographies about its writers, from E. B. White to J.D. Salinger and even the editor who decided where the commas belonged. Based on its reviews, I’ve gone to see movies that make me even weirder in the eyes of my friends, and endured my husband’s thinly veiled scorn for the magazine’s self-superiority. I’ve submitted stories — a truly laughable exercise in futility for a publication that receives some 300 submissions a day — perhaps just to get the rejection slip to tack on my bulletin board beside another cartoon; this one of a fellow speaking into a phone: “How about never? Is never good for you?”

And I’ve learned so much. About Shakespeare and sand. About Spanx and Zappos. About Stephen Sondheim and Willa Cather and chefs and foragers and long-distance swimmers and celebrities and scientists and what happens to unsold books. Personal histories about summer camp or losing a child or aging or writing, the tragic childhoods of aristocrats — wide-ranging and informative with a dose of human interest. Topics that appeal to the essentially voyeuristic personality of a writer, or someone who’s pretty good at Jeopardy!

And therein lie the reasons for the thinning of devotion, the dissolution of loyalty, the slow, painful, deliberate bust-up with the mother lode of linguistic perfection. More and more, the beloved covers have morphed to political caricatures and cartoons rather than sprightly, witty, whimsical art. Inside are articles about child soldiers and genocides and uprisings and corrupt leaders and terrorist strategy and the judicial system and failing — well, everything. So that, like texts that go unanswered in contemporary romances, two and three unread issues pile up, where they once were eagerly devoured. Glad anticipation has been replaced with relief, when an issue arrives with zero articles I want to read.

Ever heard this one? “You’re just not fun anymore.”

And so, goodbye luminous literary stars. Goodbye cartoons. Goodbye big words. Instead of a bang or a whimper, there’s just this variation on a Dear John: Dear The New Yorker, No need to renew my subscription. But I’ll never forget you.  PS

Susan Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and proud new grandmother.

Mystery Men and Women

Sexy and secretive Scorpio vamps it up in November

By Astrid Stellanova

Sugar, here’s wishing all your champagne and caviar birthday wishes will come true. For starters, Dynasty is returning to the airways, checking at least one box for you. Scorpio is all about mystery, vamping and tramping. Everybody wants to date or be a sexy Scorpio at some point. And yet, think about how much we really know about even very public Scorpios . . . Julia Roberts, Katy Perry, Matthew McConaughey, Kathy Griffin, Bill Gates and Hillary Clinton are Scorpios. — Ad Astra, Astrid

Scorpio (October 23–Novetmber 21)

You haven’t wasted time this year; but you can’t get it back either. So don’t bother wishing you were younger, better looking, or had the body of an Olympic skater. Like Grandpa said, don’t we all wish we could be like a load of laundry and spin in the dryer to get rid of our wrinkles and shrink a few sizes? But you can realize you are one of the lucky ones, possessing your own teeth, both kidneys, and more class and sass than ought to be allowed. Mystery is not your whole history, Sweet Thing.

Sagittarius (November 22–December 21)

Are you kidding me right now? Don’t question yourself. Colonel Sanders had his finger-lickin’ chicken, but you have your own secret recipe. Yours is a finely tuned sense of intuition, and it is right on the money. Change your passwords, hide your money and don’t trust the very person you know you shouldn’t trust with your deep dark secrets.

Capricorn (December 22–January 19)

You get your revenge. And Honey, it feels so good, like sitting in a tub of Cool Whip after a bad sunburn. But you will have to move on with your fine life and let it go. That double crosser won’t double-cross you again, but ask yourself if you wouldn’t be better off high-tailing it on out, and getting yourself into a new circle of trust.

Aquarius (January 20–February 18)

You had a breakthrough and took a stand that needed taking, Sugar. But Lordy, Nancy Grace, just reel that self-righteous anger back in a little. By this time you are reading this, everybody that mistook your good nature for being a fool has figured out only the first part is true.

Pisces (February 19–March 20)

Yes, you won it hard and square, Sweetheart. But your windfall of cold hard cash had the effect of making your heart harden up faster than a pan of hot lard. It is possible to be frugal and also to help those who need it. Compromise a little and you will be rich in ways that matter.

Aries (March 21–April 19)

A straightjacket is not your best fashion statement. You’ve always had a knack for spotting trends, being the first and making others follow. But look behind you, Darling. Nobody’s there. It doesn’t matter so much how you look as how fulfilled you are, and right now you know you’re a quart low on fulfillment.

Taurus (April 20–May 20)

Jack Daniel’s said you could dance, just like it said you could do a lot of things. At least the glass was half full, Honey. When the line dancing ended, everybody had to agree you outdid yourself. Sometimes you just have to fly your freak flag and howl at the moon. No real harm done, Sugar.

Gemini (May 21–June 20)

Scary to take a long, hard look at yourself, right? Sometimes it’s like visualizing your skinny cousin Oscar wearing a hot dog bun. But being truthful and vulnerable is a good thing, and you are right to ask yourself if you are being true to yourself in your current situation. Don’t let yourself settle for a scenario that doesn’t honor your true self.

Cancer (June 21–July 22)

Mr. Sun and Mrs. Moon might have been your parents. Now, you are having an eclipse of your own. You helped someone and they somehow managed to cut in line in front of you. You are going to learn from this, recover, and they will make amends. Honestly. You’ll be basking in the sunlight and the moonlight.

Leo (July 23–August 22)

Attitude? Honey, you might want to chill. Lately, you make Leona Helmsley look like a GoFundMe charity organizer. Something got into you and all the state and half of Georgia knows it, too. You have bigger things to attend to, and after an attitude adjustment you’ll be sitting in the butter — and not alone.

Virgo (August 23–September 22)

Cool your heels, Darling, and let time wound all heels. Seriously, karma is reckoning with someone who took credit for your work. Whistle while you work and never let ’em see you sweat. Because very, very soon, they will. In the meantime, an escape from your worries is needed. Don’t ignore your health.

Libra (September 23-October 22)

You don’t need a whip. But a carrot would help your motivation, Honey Bun. Everybody thinks you are self-sufficient but you are like the rest of us — a kind word helps you feel your life is on track. Trouble is, the person you want approval from is not catching your drift. Hang on, hang in and don’t sweat it.  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.

Five on a Blanket

And the memory of a simple Thanksgiving

By Joyce Reehling

Thanksgiving means a gathering of family, at least when I was a kid and even in college. Holidays are always a mixed blessing of food and potential mayhem. But in about 1974 I was living in New York, struggling to begin my theatrical career.

Amid a group of similar women, I lived in the now defunct Rehearsal Club, two brownstones which housed, in shared rooms, girls starting out. Carol Burnett had lived there, Blythe Danner and many others. And me, Kathie and Connie.

When someone really made it they got an apartment. This was likely to be a fourth floor walk-up with a roommate or boyfriend. The apartment would be very small with furniture that was often found on trash removal days around the city. It used to be that if you knew when the high-end neighborhoods were throwing things out, the chances were you could score really nice chairs, tables and other finds. Sometimes a coat of paint, a new seat cushion or no change at all landed you something you could not begin to afford.

And so it was that Connie had an apartment with her boyfriend. She invited her circle of girlfriends to come for Thanksgiving. This flat was up a lot of stairs, no view except the street and two rooms plus bath. I don’t recall much in the way of furniture. In the bedroom they had built the ubiquitous loft bed to provide a desk/dressing area below.

We all were to bring something. We had no way to cook at the Rehearsal Club. Two meals a day were provided, but we did not have access to the kitchen. We all had to save up a little extra so we could buy a baked pie or cans of food to warm up at the flat. Once we paid our room and board we were mostly broke. This took planning.

My absolutely fondest memories of that day are quite humble. The kitchen was a former closet into which the landlord had stuffed the world’s smallest sink, stove and refrigerator. I referred to it as the Easy Bake kitchen. It looked like a real kitchen but barely was.

Connie and her fella committed to having a large chicken — turkey was beyond our budget and well beyond the width of the Easy Bake oven. Someone brought peas or beans, someone a pie. We resembled the motley dinner in It’s A Wonderful Life more than we did the Pilgrims’ feast.

We borrowed cutlery from the Club and because there was no dining table, we had a picnic on a blanket on the floor, sitting around eating our humble meal. We felt like adults on their way, and Connie clearly had gone up a rung in our eyes.

We talked and laughed. I do not remember a cross word or anything approaching an argument. We were not the typical family, so we did not have the drama many families have at Thanksgiving. We were deeply and truly thankful. We were young and pursuing our chosen careers and we had one another.

The Easy Bake oven took a little longer than normal to bake that poor little chicken, but we did not care. We were in an apartment of a friend, on our way to what we would become.

Connie went on to TV shows, including Knots Landing, and later became a certified psychotherapist. Kathie got a Ph.D. and is a psychologist. I spent the better part of 35 years in the theater. A couple of years ago we had a reunion to celebrate 100 years of women starting out at the Rehearsal Club. It is greatly missed.

We have all had many Thanksgivings since, but none shines brighter in my heart than the five of us on a blanket, in a fourth floor walk-up with canned food and a solitary chicken.

“We were very tired, we were very merry,” wrote Edna St. Vincent Millay, and we gave all we had for that day. We gave thanks for our little path toward our future. Time and blessings can dull our sense of gratitude. Rushing from a table to buy something for Christmas weakens the day. Nothing reminds me to be truly grateful like the memory of those girls, of that picnic and the Easy Bake kitchen. We had so little but we had hope, and each other. We were very young and very merry. PS

Joyce Reehling is a frequent contributor and good friend of PineStraw.

The Most Revealing Month

Savoring the bittersweet fruits of November

By Jim Dodson

For a number of reasons, I call November the Most Revealing Month.

To start, the gardener in me likes to see my gardens nicely mulched and tucked in for a decent winter snooze. This is when I step back and take stock of my brilliant and bonehead gardening maneuvers conducted over the long hot summer, while awaiting the post-holiday avalanche of spring gardening catalogs, which a fellow gardener pal calls “porn for plant people.”

The outdoorsman in me loves the soulful sight of November’s bare hardwoods stripped clean of leaves, revealing nature in all her naked glory, “That time of year thou mayst in me behold,” as my fellow autumn-lover Will Shakespeare described in his 73rd sonnet, “When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang/ Upon those boughs which shake against the cold /Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang.”

During the two decades we lived in a house I built on a forested hill near the coast of Maine, surrounded by 600 acres of old-growth birch, maple and hemlock, November was prime time for topping up my woodpile and erecting my elaborate Rube Goldberg plant protectors that never failed to amuse the FedEx guy when he found his way up our lonely road into the forest. More than once he asked me why I went to all the trouble to build an elaborate garden deep in a wood that only family, friends, occasional lost strangers, the odd moose and the FedEx Guy himself would ever see.

“Summer’s lease is brief. And bittersweet November simply reveals how far I’ve progressed on this earth,” I continued, though I don’t think he cared a fig for either bare ruin’d choirs or boughs shaking against the cold.

Owing to the angle of the retreating sun, that said, the November sunlight always seemed deeper and richer on late autumn afternoons, a benediction through stained glass, throwing the contours of my wooded patch of earth into stunning relief, while the rocky soil underfoot offered spicy scents of decaying leaves and the garden’s last gasp as my private world turned inward. As a bonus in the department of sidereal affairs, the stars on any clear November night tended to glitter like diamonds splashed across black velvet — ideal for catching the Milky Way, the year’s final meteor showers and in some years the rare treat of the Northern Lights.

To my November-loving way of thinking, blazing fires, the earlier darkness and the annual gathering of the tribe for the slower, unrushed Thanksgiving rituals  —  cook, eat, watch football, doze in an armchair, take a walk in the woods, eat again, doze again, have a final slice of pumpkin pie before bed —  made the holiday my top designated feasting day of the year. (Though I’m thankful it comes but once a year. Otherwise I’d resemble either Shakespeare’s Falstaff or at the very least Clifford the Big Red Dog balloon from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.)

Not surprisingly, November is the keeper of many of my favorite memories.

Three decades ago, having uprooted my life and moved from Atlanta to a bend in the Green River outside of West Brattleboro, Vermont, I found myself unexpectedly renewed owing to the charms of the eleventh month.

Having taken possession of a small wooden “solar cabin” owned by a pair of  delightful aging hippies who’d grown wealthy selling chemical toilets to fellow urban escapees, I heated the place with apple wood I split by hand, falling asleep most nights under a down quilt, warmed by the glow of my Intrepid woodstove and a young golden retriever from the local Humane Society who believed two-dog nights were better than one.

Before month’s end, I’d taken up fly fishing and playing golf again on a 9-hole course in town. An old-timer informed me Rudyard Kipling played there during the time he lived in Brattleboro, allegedly not long after he published The Jungle Book. I never managed to confirm this story but the very idea of it helped me rediscover my favorite boyhood game.

That November, my neighbors along the river road invited me to a community “alternative” Thanksgiving supper at a local hay barn. There was a fiddle band and lots of covered dishes made from local organic gardens, “all natural” dishes that to my traditional Southern palate tasted suspiciously like sautéed boxwood, including something that looked just like turkey but turned out to be my first encounter with tofu.

To a slightly homesick Southern boy far from home, missing his mama’s famous collard greens, cornbread and fried okra, this constituted a walk on the wild side of American counter-culture that I cherish to this day. That evening, I danced with a beautiful gal named Snowflake who ran a mushroom farm and had more underarm hair than me and innocently inquired if — my being from “The deep South” — I’d ever met anyone who was “actually in the Ku Klux Klan.” I replied with a tongue firmly planted in cheek that my daddy his own self was once in “our local Klan – until his klaxon switched from wearing all-natural cotton sheets to perma-press.” For some reason, she did not find this amusing. The dance ended quickly and I never did get to try one of her gourmet mushrooms.

The next time November rolled round, however, I went on a first date with a beautiful dark-haired girl who’d just graduated from Harvard and had come to work at the magazine where I was not only the senior writer but also the first Southerner in Yankee Magazine’s 75-year history. By then I was living in the middle of a New Hampshire apple orchard just outside Peterborough and having the time of my life writing about life in every cozy corner of rural New England — working at a legendary magazine where I learned most of what I know about the power of great storytelling.

That next autumn, that beautiful girl and I got married in a salt marsh north of Boston, days after a hurricane swept up the coast from Carolina. Our colorful Yankee neighbors in the village of Essex brought covered dishes — baked beans, turnip pie, Indian pudding and homemade wine. The dancing went on until well after midnight, about the time the dance floor began to sink in the mud.

I’d come far and my romance with November continued — and grew — over the next two decades. It was the month I most loved for working in my large faux English garden at summer’s end in Maine, topping up my woodpile for the winter, cleaning my tools, tucking in plants, drinking hot cider, watching fires and changeable skies and the southward flight of birds, savoring the solitude and beauty of nature’s most revealing month.

Between us, I thought I would never part with that house I designed and built on that beautiful forested hill of birch and hemlock; I had always imagined my ashes someday being spread over a garden I spent almost a third of my life building and tearing apart, fussing over and planning, digging into the soil and delving into its soul.

But as Truman Capote once pointed out, every Southern boy comes home again — if only in a box.

In time, after my children had grown and headed off on their own life journeys, I succumbed to a quiet longing for home that had to be answered.

It was a decision I’ve never fully regretted, for memories are like glowing coals in winter and life is full of lovely compensations. One is this magazine and the circle I’ve somehow closed.

Another is November in North Carolina where I can grow roses almost to December, a month just as sweet and revealing as it ever was on my soulful Maine hilltop . . . though I do miss the naked forest, that lonely moose and the mystified FedEx Guy from time to time. PS

Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.